Android News, Android Reviews, and Everything Android
With the release of the T-Mobile G2 around the corner, folks who haven’t already pre-ordered it can now get back at the front of the line by hopping over to Radio Shack. According to the designed-in-word-pad flyer above, Radio Shack will be the first to stock the US version of the Android smartphone, offering it for $149.99 with a two-year postpaid contract. Not sure how Radio Shack lined this deal up, but it sure should bring in a good amount of traffic for them.
A recent study from Intel Labs, Penn State, and Duke University took 30 out of the 358 most popular Android applications on the Market- that when installed, ask for permission to obtain your location, camera, and audio data. What was revealed will leave many of us avid users rather disgruntled. So, this test showed that 15 of the 30 apps sent off location information to its advertisers without any notification to the user. Some apps even sent location info even when the application wasn’t even running, as much as every 30 seconds! To put the icing on the cake, results showed that 7 of the apps shared IMEI numbers, phone numbers, and SIM card serial numbers.
Although discouraging, it’s quite interesting how the team was able to manage such a study. Scientists created a little application called TaintDroid, which created logs of what each and every application performed after installation. Neat, huh? So what exactly does this say about the level of security that the App Market provides? Obviously not much, since there was never really a high level of criteria to begin with.
It’s always been advised to only install applications that you trust, but how are some novices able to know what’s best for their device? “The blanket permissions a user gives on installing an app can give carte blanche to malware and spyware providers to collect as much private data as they want, under the protective nicety of a simplistic warning from the operating system,” mobile security analyst Nigel Stanley stated.
Until we can expect some kind of improvement from Google on this aspect, there’s not much that can be done short of thoroughly inspect a developer prior to granting this level of access. Of course, not every developer has such malicious intentions, but protecting your Android boils down to protecting you.
Boy, do we have a treat for you DroidNerds out there. This fancy looking beast is said to be the Samsung SCH-i400 Continuum. Lets go ahead and point the most attractive feature about the Continuum right off the bat – a secondary OLED display. You heard right. Located below the main UI, the “Ticker” will allow you access to your notifications, RSS feeds, weather, date, time… all while not sacrificing the cell-sucking battery power that would normally be taken up by using your standard UI display. Pretty gnarly right? The ticker is enabled as soon as you grasp the bottom of the device. Additional goods include a microSD slot on the side of the device (No more battery pulls!!), and a dedicated camera button. Verizon users will get first dibs on this bad boy, and it’s possible that the Continuum may be a Galaxy S device – however it’s still too soon to confirm that. Excited yet? Cause I sure am.
CSL’s newest Tablet is due to hit stores starting next month, and you know… this tablet looks strangely familiar to something I’ve seen before. The Spice Mi700 seems to be a revamped version of the ViewPad 7. Although the physical features seem to be spot on with the ViewPad, internally it’s not quite the same story. The Spice Mi700 comes packed with Android 2.2 (Froyo), Qualcomm’s 600MHz MSM722, 3-megapixel camera, and a VGA webcam on the front. Not surprisingly, we’re looking at another 7-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen that also doesn’t have support for Flash nor paid apps in the Android Market. But hey, if this sounds like it’s right tablet for you then you’ll be able to pick one up rather soon for a measly $500. Yeah, that’s all.
If you have an Epic 4G you probably got the recent update for the phone. Problems being that it did not completely satisfy the upload speeds being rather slow. Sprint will be pushing out an additional update that should fix this problem starting tomorrow and sent in waves for the next four days. This will be an over the air update so no worries if you do not see it by 9am tomorrow.
It looks like the 7-inch Android tablet from Dell we heard about only a week ago should be making it debut within a few weeks, according to the company. Along with the 7-incher, we can expect a variety of other form factors from 3 inches up to 10 inches. Of course not all are expected to run on Android, with Windows OS in the line up as well. We hope to hear more from Dell soon on this highly anticipated Android tablet.
Here it is, folks – A listing of release parties for the R2-D2 Droid 2. If you consider yourself a true Star Wars fanatic, or even a Droid Nerd to boot, then we assume you won’t want to miss this epic event. Listings are by city, below.
East Coast
New York, NY
Rochester, NY
Chicago, IL
Boston, MA
Miami, FL
New Orleans, LA
St. Petersburg, FL
Orlando, FL
Orange Park, FL
Atlanta, GA
Bloomsburg, PA
Mt. Laurel, NJ
Philadelphia, PA
Columbia, MD
Fairfax, VA
West Coast
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA
Houston, TX
Salt Lake City, UT
Lone Tree, CO
Corte Madera, CA
Mountain View, CA
San Diego, CA
Santa Monica, CA
Tempe, AZ
Las Vegas, NV
Logitech sure seems to have high hopes for their upcoming Revue units, featuring Google TV. A recent report by Digitimes indicates that the company is set to ship 500,000 units before the end of this year. Now is this really a good idea, Logitech?
Sure, most of us would love a brand new GTV Revue box under our tree, but the fact of the matter is, there just may not be that big of a demand for them, at least… maybe not so soon. It’s also rumored that there are shipments currently making the trek from Taiwan to the US, possibly for an even earlier release. October possibly? Let’s see how sales pan out for the Revue.
With the Samsung Galaxy Beam only being available in Singpore, and no further plans to expand the devices horizons- it’s really no surprise that Galaxy Beam users won’t be seeing an Android 2.2 update. Samsung claims that, “The customer base is too small to justify for the allocation of dedicated resources at HQ.” Seems like a lousy excuse on Samsung’s part, but it’s not like it leaves us with any other alternative. It’s also been reported that the Galaxy Beam is sold out in Singapore, which could signify a means to an end for the Android device.
Most people realize that their cell phone is omitting radiation. It is one of those things that we hate but simply try not to think about as much. A new app is now available for Android OS running devices that lets you monitor the radiation that your phone is putting out. If you talk on your phone all the time this may be a helpful thing for you to check out and hopefully reduce the amount that you are exposed to. It implements the simple red is stop and green is go to let you know when it is safer to be chitchatting it up. It is currently in beta so there is a free version available.
