Archive for January 17th, 2011

Samsung Galaxy Mini and Source Code for the Fascinate 3G+

One of the most important aspects when talking about Android is the fact that you have quite the diversity. As one might say that strength lies in numbers, the Android platform should be a titan indeed. Although a lot of people do go through great lengths to purchase an iPhone I still sustain my point that Android smartphones are the way to go when planning on leaving the feature phone market and joining us smartphone users. The reason for which I am saying this is that there is a lot to choose from. The other important factor is that, when purchasing an Android powered handset you won’t have to pay in excess of 300 dollars to get it on a subscription. There are a lot of good deals available to enter this group and it’s good to see that manufacturers pay a lot of attention to the mid-range devices or to the new user.

In either case it seems that Samsung has been dancing around in the market as of late as we got our hands on some more leaks regarding a new smartphone who’s existence has been known for quite a while now, but it’s only now that the first images appeared.

The device in frame this time is the Samsung Galaxy Mini the S5570. There hasn’t been any official announcement regarding this little device yet, and most likely just like the other two Samsung Android smartphones introduced earlier, this one as well will be announced officially at MWC in Barcelona in February. The rumored specs are including TouchWiz UI, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, microSD support for extending storage, Android 2.2.1 and a 240 x 320 pixels screen with 262K colors. The device seems really small, so by this Samsung might target a larger female user base as the device measures only 110 x 60.7 x 12.7 mm. The device has already been certified by the FCC in China so we can expect it to pop up on the market rather soon.

In other news, but staying on Samsungs trails, the Korean manufacturer announced that they released the Android 2.2 source code for the Samsung Fascinate 3G+ on the Telus Network. The great benefit of this source code is that it will allow for the development of working ROM’s for any other Samsung Galaxy S devices. The one more specified is the Samsung Vibrant, because of the similarities it shares with the Fascinate. In order to get your hands on the source code, head on over to Samsung Open Source and look for the model number SGH-T959D, and download your “copy” of the source code.

The most important aspect I found was to see that even after the resounding success of the Galaxy S series and the unbelievable sales figures the Samsung Galaxy Tab managed to reach, Samsung still doesn’t stop and enjoys its laurels but heads on to the next big thing. So a quick lookout for any of you who aren’t really willing to empty a week’s salary into a smartphone and make sure to grab a Samsung Galaxy Mini 5570 as soon as it’s out because considering the specs this device will be rather cheap – in smartphone terms obviouslyJ. Until next time, I’ll find my way through the source code.1

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January 17th, 2011 Catalin Mengheris

Posted in Android News

Upcoming Samsung Android Smartphones

It’s always nice to see how many new smartphones are coming to our doorsteps and thanks to CES this year we’ve gotten a look at what to expect this year – dual-core and 4 to 4.3 inch displays. One of the most important aspects a lot have been asking on is the introduction of Android 2.3 Gingerbread on a lot of devices and the ever increasing need for raw performance. Still it’s more than nice to see devices which won’t cost us a leg and an arm to purchase just in order to get that extra bit of performance out.

This rather relates to 2 new devices that have been leaked thanks to Samsunghub.com which managed to get some pictures of a few upcoming Samsung Android Smartphones. I for one can say that I always enjoyed their devices, mainly for their beautiful Super AMOLED screens, their speed and overall build quality and these two upcoming models seem to keep the standards high, although when looking at the specs we might just see 2 mid-range devices.

The first one on the list is the Samsung 5830 Ace, which comes with a 3.5 inch HVGA TFT display and a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels. Up until now the leaks say that it will come with Android 2.2 Froyo, powered by a 800 MHz processor, the MSM 7227-1 Turbo and will integrate most of the features we’ve come to enjoy in our Android handsets. TouchWiz 3.0 UX, with its Horizontal UI, lock screen and preview/edit and camera preview settings. The camera on the rear will be a 5 MP auto-focus cam with LED flash, which will be able to record 720 p videos at 20 frames per second and WVGA at 30 fps. On the audio part we will get to see a 3.5 mm headphone jack and the ability to play back MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA and RA formats. Stock memory is 150 MB with the ability to increase it with a 32 GB micro SD card, something we’ve become used to by now – don’t mind the Nexus S as he’s the weird one of the bunch. Spec wise I’d say that we’ve got ourselves a mid-range phone here, but if we were to compare it to early 2010, late 2009 devices, we get the chance to see how quickly technology evolves and gives us more computing power for less cash.

Samsung Galaxy Suit 5670 is the other Samsung Android smartphone to be announced most likely at the MCW in Spain. Most specs aren’t known for this device, but according to the leaks it will be introduced with a 3.2 inch OLED display, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, micro-SD card slot and a 3.2 MP camera. This one seems by the looks of it a pretty decent mid-range device as well, most likely aimed at the 100 dollar mark when purchase with a 2 year subscription and we might even see some special offers which might even give it away for less.

Although these 2 new leaked devices don’t seem to be part of the premium class Samsung has been playing around with in the past few months, just think of the Galaxy S or the Samsung Inspiration previewed at CES, they seem to be targeted at an audience and a user base which would like to dip their fingers into the Android smartphone market, yet aren’t willing to pay up to 300 dollars for a premium device. Until next time, it’s time to see what smartphones I can get for less than 100 dollars with a subscription.1

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January 17th, 2011 Catalin Mengheris

Posted in Android News, Android Phone

Android OS overatkes iOS

It’s not about sales figures, although even in that aspect Android smartphones and the OS itself has been doing very well for itself, but rather in Ad impressions. This latest research done regarding the number of ad requests was conducted by Millennial Media. For any of those who don’t know them, they are the 3rd largest ad network, trailing only after Google AdMob and Apple’s iAd. As such shifts in their ad market mean quite a lot.

Millennial Media just closed a 27.5 million US dollar investment round, thusly growing their profits by 300 percent in 2010 and releasing one of the most interesting monthly reports yet. The company has quite the large network, as their ads reach over 77 million mobile web users in the US which translates into 81 percent of the United States mobile web. Now the company released some figures regarding the latest ad requests they received in the past year. According to their statistics Android OS had a huge increase in ad requests last year, with 3130 percent increase during the course of 2010. The statistics for Q3 and Q4 show that Android managed to grow 141 percent in ad requests while Apple only managed 12 percent in the same time period and RIM taking actually the 2nd place with 60 percent increase for the same period.

During last year, Apple managed to grown only by 14 percent and RIM taking 224 percent. In this aspect Apple saw a larger growth on their ad requests on the iPad, which managed to grow by 280 percent during Q3 and Q4. This shows that Android OS has been gaining a lot of ground on the mobile ad market as well, while the competition has seen an increase as well but compared to what we saw Android powered devices, it’s a slow growth at best. Considering all the numbers, at this rate Android will manage to become the leading operating system on this field.

Further numbers show that if taken by manufacturer, Apple is still leading the chart, and has been for the past 15 months. This is partly because the Android platform doesn’t revolve around a single manufacturer, but even so Samsung, HTC and Motorola are leading the storm on this one. Apple takes in this aspect 21 percent of the networks impression’s share by manufacturer in December, the iPhone and iPod touch being two of the top three mobile devices. Samsung took the 3rd place with 9 percent and as I said earlier HTC and Motorola are right behind them on this aspect. When looking at the top 30 devices for December, Android smartphones were represented by 16 devices in the top, compared to 11 devices in November.

The real question which pops up is that, will Android hold its ground in the following few months as well. Considering the growth and the fact that 14 percent separate Android OS from Apple’s iOS, I think it’s safe to assume that Android will still be commanding this for the near future at the very least. Also when looking at the huge number of new Android phones coming out in the following few months, we might see another huge wave of activations in the months to follow combined with the release of the very fast 4G networks and the smartphones to take advantage of that extra speed. Until next time, don’t click on every ad you do find on your smartphone.1

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January 17th, 2011 Catalin Mengheris

Posted in Android News

Android Platform to double sales in 2010

For a while now we got to see the huge improvements Android has been releasing to us everyday users and the great new devices coming to this platform have assured ever increasing figures for the platform. There have been rumors according to which the Android platform will be losing some ground in 2011, mostly because of Verizon, probably the carrier which pushed the largest amounts of money into marketing Android smartphones in the US, might add the iPhone as well to its list of products, thus decreasing the sale of Android devices on the network.

Research firm Canalys, shows that the Android platform will not just simply grow in sales, but double the figures of its competitors, like the iOS or Blackberry OS within this year. Bold statement by the company, but according to them, despite the fact that fragmentation is large across the platform as a whole, this lead to a lot of diversity as users could get mid-range devices with great specs for a lot less than the competition was charging. Also as the Android OS is becoming more and more stable, and software updates have increasingly beneficial effects on smartphone performances, this fragmentation will slowly fade away as well. This will lead to a much more solid look to the segment represented by your Android smartphone.


The most important aspect when considering the growth predicted by the research firm Canalys, is the fact that Google powered smartphones managed to reach in Q3 of 2010, 25 percent of the global market, with over 20 million shipments of Android smartphones worldwide. Still when taking a look at the fragmentation the analyst firm was talking about, it’s easy to note that since Android OS’s launch in September 2008, counting Gingerbread, we have 8 versions already of the operating system. This fast pace Google is leading the smartphone industry by, has assured users that they will constantly get updates to their devices, giving them more and more features, while manufacturers are racing to make the quickest and the “smartest” (see what I did there) device out.

Surely this will slowly calm down with time, and once that will happen a large part of the fragmentation will dissipate, but we must consider that unlike the iOS platform, Android is spanning across a huge number of manufacturers and specifications. By setting new standards for newer versions of the operating system, Google is trying to create classes within Android. Considering statistics taken from carriers, Android smartphone sales have increased by 1000 percent within the first 3 quarters of 2010 when compared to the same time period in 2009.

Android OS has been beneficial to the establishment of Samsung and HTC as major manufacturers on the smartphone market, each of the two giants offering some great devices over the past few months, but the OS has helped out newer manufacturers to enter the market. No matter if we are talking about smartphones or tablets, new companies in this field, like Acer, still manage to get a piece of the action. The race between manufacturers has been truly phenomenal, as Acer showed us a while back their plans for a 4.8 inch Android phone while LG was the first to put a dual-core processor out on the market with their South Korean launched smartphone. Whatever the future holds, all things are pointing towards a steady growth of the market, a solid evolution which will bring us great new devices and huge improvements on the operating system itself. Until next time, I’ll be doing graphs to see if my spelling improved just as quickly as Android sold phones – I doubt it.1

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January 17th, 2011 Catalin Mengheris

Posted in Android News, Android OS
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2013-05-25 05:20:13