The Wall Street Journal reported this afternoon that Google may give multiple (5 to be exact) smartphone and tablet manufacturers early access to the latest builds of Android for lead devices, and then sell those directly to consumers through the Play Store. The plan, according to this report, is to have these 5 devices ready by the time Jelly Bean is launched around Thanksgiving. As you all know, in the past, Google has hand-selected one partner to release new versions of Android each year, a program better know as the “Nexus” program. This would be a drastic change from that, but I’m having trouble trying to find a reason why it doesn’t sound like the most amazing change ever. 

Every time Mozilla announces that a new Firefox beta has been released (this time to the Play Store), a part of me hopes that it is nothing short of awesome. And not that I’m all that willing to give up on Chrome, but competition is good and having used Firefox on a PC for so long before Chrome became such a powerhouse, it would be nice to see it carve out a niche on mobile as well. Then I install it and always immediately say, “Ugh.” Such is the case again today with the latest beta that introduces a new UI and Flash support.

The changelog got me excited, especially with the “user interface has been completely re-designed.” Unfortunately, the good news seems to stop there. It’s still buggy, clunky, and freezes up during the simplest of tasks. Once you get it rollin’, it can open pages fairly fast, but the way multi-touch and scrolling work are odd enough to give you a headache. The Flash support is welcomed though. I guess I’ll just have to wait for the next release.

Play Link

Via:  Mozilla

Back in early April, Chrome beta for desktops received the ability to sync tabs throughout all of your other Chrome experiences. It was essentially the same sync feature that the Android version of the browser had at launch, but this would complete the syncing experience. Today, this same syncing feature was released to the non-beta or stable Chrome for desktops. If you don’t see the option after signing into Chrome, Google has said that it make take a few weeks before it is active on everyone’s browser. 

Developers who follow Google’s back-end work religiously noticed within the last few days, that edits were made to their Git repository which included references to Samsung’s Exynos 5250 dual-core chipset. That would be the Cortex A15 based processor with the Mali T-604 GPU inside, aka the SoC that we are all hoping would end up in the Galaxy SIII (Exynos 4412 with Cortex A9s and a Mali 400 GPU). Assuming it comes loaded into a device this year, we aren’t sure any other processor will touch it.

More importantly though, people have started to ask one very complex question, “Does this mean Samsung and Google have partnered up to produce the next Nexus, again?” I’d say that’s still anyone’s guess, but if this Git repository is indeed Google’s, then this could be our first hint at that happening (at least on the processor front). One thing to keep in mind is that Exynos and Samsung Mobile are separate from each other. So Google could use an Exynos chipset in something, but that doesn’t mean that Samsung is making the phone too. After all, the Galaxy Nexus had an OMAP4460 chipset made by Texas Instruments inside, but of course, was made by Sammie on the outside. 

A company named Seraku showed off a mirror recently, that through a series of hookups, connects to an Android tablet and then projects an interface onto the reflective surface of the mirror. Plus, so you don’t smudge up the nice clean glass with your greasy hands, the mirror uses RF proximity sensors to react to your touch without needing to contact the glass.

The display can show weather, sports scores, and even the temperature and force of the faucet that it’s working above. It looks pretty nifty and would be a great way to start the day if you are constantly plugged in. Seraku says the product isn’t near being commercially ready yet, but when it gets closer, they see them as being useful for news reading in hair salons and barbershops. There are much more fun applications of this that people can probably think of, so let’s hope we see them around in more places as soon as possible.

Via: The Verge

The battle to dominate the mobile market has never been about smartphones. Android, iOS, and Windows Phone are attempts to use the most personal computers ever made to lock users into one ecosystem. Google is using Android, an open ecosystem, to lock users into Google apps and services.

Google is looking to improve a few of their services in the near future, and in this case: build a new one. Google+ has had a gaming center for a while now, whether or not it gets used as much as Google wants it to is another story. But now, rumor is that Google is looking to expand that into a full fledged Android Gaming hub.

Most likely taking a few cues from Apple’s Game Center, users will be able to read leaderboards with friend’s scores and battle against them to try and beat their numbers and times. Since it’s heading towards social it would be only obvious to use Google+ as a center of all this. Could we hear more about this when we learn about the Nexus tablet later this year? We’re gonna have to wait and keep a look out.

Via: Phandroid