Android: Past, Present and Future

Google I/O's first keynote was all about Android and there were many impressive announcements.

Android stats continue to be surprising: 100 million activated Android devices, 400,000 Android devices activated every day, 200,000 apps in the Android Market, 4.5 billion apps downloaded from the Android Market, 310 Android devices.

The next major Android release is called Ice Cream Sandwich and the goal is to create a unified operating system that runs on phones, tablets and TVs. Ice Cream Sandwich will be released later this year, but there's a Honeycomb 3.1 update that adds support for USB accessories and for Google TV. This summer, people who bought Google TV devices will be able to install Android 3.1 and run apps from the Android Market.


Android users from the US can now rent movies from the Android Market. "You can choose to rent from thousands of movies starting at $1.99 and have them available across your Android devices — rent a movie on your home computer, and it'll be available for viewing on your tablet or phone. You can rent from Android Market on the web today, and we'll be rolling out an update to Verizon XOOM customers beginning today. We'll start rolling out the update to Android 2.2 and above devices in the coming weeks," informs Google.


There's no music subscription service, but Google launched an invitation-only service that stores all your music on Google's servers and lets you stream it from almost any computer and Android device.

iPhone/iPod/iPad users can install the latest software updates for at least two years, but that's not always the case when it comes to Android devices. Some Android phones run outdated software at launch and not all of them are updated to the latest version because phone manufacturers and carriers don't think that's really important. Google and some of the other members of the Open Handset Alliance (Verizon, HTC, Samsung, Sprint, Sony Ericsson, LG, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Motorola and AT&T) started to develop some guidelines for updating firmware. "To start, we're jointly announcing that new devices from participating partners will receive the latest Android platform upgrades for 18 months after the device is first released, as long as the hardware allows," informs Google.

Google also developed Android Open Accessory, "which allows external USB hardware (an Android USB accessory) to interact with an Android-powered device in a special accessory mode. (...) Many previously released Android-powered devices are only capable of acting as a USB device and cannot initiate connections with external USB devices. Android Open Accessory support overcomes this limitation and allows you to build accessories that can interact with an assortment of Android-powered devices by allowing the accessory initiate the connection."

Probably the most interesting announcement is Android@Home, a framework that allows Android devices to communicate with home appliances and other devices. It's an ambitious project that could make home automation part of everyday life. That's also one of the main reasons why Google bought Android: bringing Google's software to new devices, finding new ways to use Google's information in everyday life, creating an ecosystem of smart devices with standard features and APIs that make "the world's information" more useful.

Google Music Streaming

Wall Street Journal reports that Google will unveil a music streaming service at the Google I/O developer conference.

"Users of the service are expected to be able to listen to songs they have uploaded to the service in a so-called streaming mode but won't be able to download the files themselves. That limit appears to be a bid by Google to hinder the service from being used to spread pirated music. (...) The service is unlikely to be tied to an online music store like Amazon MP3, which gives users the option of adding new songs to their music locker at the time they buy them."

If you go to http://music.google.com/music/, you'll get an error message: "We're sorry. Music Beta is currently only available in the United States," but you'll at least see Google Music's logo, borrowed from a new version of the Android music app.



Update: As Google's blog informs, "Music Beta by Google [is] a new service that lets you upload your personal music collection to the cloud for streaming to your computer and Android devices. With the new service, your music and playlists are automatically kept in sync, so if you create a new playlist on your phone, it's instantly available on your computer or tablet. You can use a feature called Instant Mix to create a playlist of songs that go well together. You can even listen to music when you're offline: we automatically store your most recently played music on your Android device and you can choose to make specific albums or playlists available when you're not connected. The service is launching in beta today to U.S. users and is available by invitation." While it's in beta, the new service is available for free. To upload your music, you can use a Windows/Mac application called Media Manager. There's also a new version of the Android music app that has a new interface and integrates with the Google Music service.

{ Thanks, Scott. }

Visualizing Android Activations

This video from Google lets you visualize the evolution of Android activations from October 2008 to January 2011. HTC Dream/G1, the first Android device, was launched in the US and the UK in October 2008 and it became available in other countries in 2009, but it wasn't until the launch of Motorola Droid in November 2009 that Android became popular.


Android Central says that this is "a staggering reminder of just how far Android has come in a relatively short amount of time". Eric Schmidt has recently mentioned that the average number of daily Android activations is now 350,000, up from 300,000 in December, 200,000 in August and 60,000 in April 2010.

Android Gingerbread for Nexus One

Two months after Android Gingerbread was released, Nexus One users can finally update their phones to the latest Android version. "Gingerbread (Android 2.3.3) update now rolling out to Nexus S and Nexus One. Be patient, may take a few weeks for OTA to complete," informs Google. Ry Guy explains that Google "sends out OTA updates (...) incrementally to ensure that everything is going smoothly".

The good news is that Nexus One is the second Android phone updated to Gingerbread and it's likely that the feedback from Nexus S users helped Google fix the most important bugs. Unfortunately, Google is caught between releasing the Android version for tablets, continuing to improve Gingerbread, developing new Android apps and services, improving the Android Market, so the delays are inevitable.


{ via Android Spin }

Blogger's Android App

Blogger is catching up with the times: Android users can finally post timely updates to their blogs using a native app. You can always use Blogger's site or even write your posts in a mail client, but a mobile app is more user friendly.

Blogger's Android app is really basic and doesn't offer too many features. It's mostly useful if you want to write a new post, since you can't edit the existing posts. The editor only lets you enter text and include one or more photos. You can add some labels and geotag your posts, taking advantage of your phone's GPS. If you haven't finished a post, you can always save it as a draft, but you won't be able to publish it from a computer because it's only saved locally.


Blogger's blog mentions that Blogger is a new sharing option, so you can easily share a photo from the Gallery or a web page. "By switching to the List View, you can view all your drafts and published posts that you wrote using the app." Unfortunately, you can't edit existing posts.

All in all, Blogger's Android app offers very few features and I would only use it to write short posts or to share photos from a trip. Maybe Blogger's team should also develop a mobile web app which could be updated faster.

Android Market link: Blogger's app.

Android Market for the Web

Google has finally released the Web-based version of the Android Market, which is now available at market.android.com. You can link to applications, find apps from your computer and install them over the air.

Android Market for the Web includes all the applications, not just the ones that are available for a certain device or a certain version of Android, so it's much more comprehensive than the application that's installed on your Android device. You'll be able to find paid apps even if you live in a country where you can only install free apps and you'll be able to find apps that require Froyo even if your phone still uses Android Donut. In fact, you don't even have to be an Android user to explore the Market.

I've tried to install an application from the web site, but Google shows an "invalid request" error after the authentication process.



To make the Market even better, Google announced two additional features that will be available soon: in-app purchases and fixed pricing for various currencies. That means you'll see less apps that cost $1.73 or €2.26, assuming that developers will adjust their prices.

Android Honeycomb's Browser Supports SVG

One of the most annoying things about Android's built-in browser was the lack of support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). Android's browser was the most popular mobile browser that didn't support SVG and that was surprising, considering Google's push for better web apps.

Ariya Hidayat tried to see if Honeycomb's browser can handle SVG files and the good news is that the answer is affirmative. Hopefully, the next Android release for smartphones will include this feature.

The Good News About Android's Version Distribution

When you develop a product and use liberal licensing terms, there's always the risk that someone else will use your code to create a poor product. Maybe it will include a lot of unnecessary features, it will be slow and have a lot of bugs or it will never use the latest version of your software.

Android's goal was to be a common baseline that enables innovation in the mobile space. Convincing other companies to use Android wasn't easy and that's one of the biggest Google accomplishments. Not many people believed in Android's success three years ago and its adoption rate is still surprising.

Convincing companies to update their Android-based firmware faster is much easier. If users only buy Android phones that have the latest version of the operating system and constantly request phone manufacturers and carriers to update the software, then they'll work harder to improve their products.

Google has recently released some information about the current distribution of the Android versions and the good news is that 87.4% of the Android phones use Android 2.x, up from about 55% in July. 51.8% of the phones use Froyo, a version released 7 months ago. In only one month (August 2010), Froyo's share grew from 5.5% to more than 28%, after Motorola and HTC updated phones like Droid, Droid Incredible, Evo 4G, and Desire.


ZDNet says that "almost 13% of Android users are still running versions of the mobile OS that are several generations old and these users will never see Android 2.1", but this percentage is constantly decreasing. Even if they're using Android 1.6, that's still a much better operating system than the one from a feature phone and it still lets them use many apps from the Android Market. A slower update rate is a small price to pay for creating an ecosystem of heterogeneous devices that run the same operating system which is not perfect, but it's "good enough".

{ image licensed as Creative Commons Attribution by Google }

Google Goggles Solves Sudoku Puzzles

Google's visual search tool has a new trick up its sleeve: solving Sudoku puzzles. Google Goggles 1.3 for Android scans barcodes much faster, recognizes print ads from the major U.S. magazines and newspapers, but most people will probably ignore those useful features and will try to see if Goggles can actually solve Sudoku puzzles. The nice thing is that this feature also works in the latest version of Google Mobile App for iPhone, along with print ads recognition.

"Now, Goggles on Android and iPhone can recognize puzzles and provide answers to help make you faster than a Sudoku champ. So if you ever get stuck, take a clear picture of the entire puzzle with Goggles and we'll tell you the correct solution," explains Google.

Maybe providing a hint would also be useful, especially if you want to solve the puzzle.




The new features show that Google Goggles has a lot of potential, but it's still not useful enough in the real world. An interesting article from Xconomy quotes Hartmut Neven, Google's technical lead manager for image recognition, who says that Goggles is not yet an universal visual search tool. "What keeps me awake at night is, 'What are the honest-to-God use cases that we can deliver,' where it's not just an 'Oh, wow.' We call it the bar of daily engagement. Can we make it useful enough that every day you will take out Goggles and do something with it?"

Android Addresses UI Shortcomings

It's amazing to see how much Android's user interface has changed ever since Matias Duarte was hired by Google to improve Android. Matias has previously worked on Sidekick, Helio and Palm's WebOS, so Android is a perfect fit for him. In only 9 months, Matias Duarte and his team managed to address a lot of Android's UI shortcomings: a virtual keyboard that wasn't good enough, an uninspired interface for multitasking, the hidden menus that required to click on a soft key to display them, inflexible soft keys that were restricted to a single orientation.

Here's, for example, the navigation bar that replaces the hidden menu for common actions in Android Honeycomb:


The Gmail app currently available in the Android Market requires to use a hidden menu to perform common actions like composing mail or going back to the inbox:


Here's a comparison between the Froyo keyboard and the Gingerbread keyboard. According to Google, "the Android soft keyboard is redesigned and optimized for faster text input and editing. The keys themselves are reshaped and repositioned for improved targeting, making them easier to see and press accurately, even at high speeds."


In an interview with Joshua Topolsky from Engadget, Matias says that Honeycomb is the future of Android in terms of user experience. His job is to make Android's interface so good that companies like HTC or Samsung don't have to spend so much time improving it. The stock user interface will raise the bar high enough to be more than a solid foundation.

You're not working on one product, you're not saying "we're one company, vertically integrating and making one product and we're going to focus on one market and we're going to try and meet that particularly need." But instead, the idea is that there's a common problem that every company that wants to succeed in making computing better, making computing mobile has and that's the fundamental platform problem. We're not only going to try to find a way to get everybody to benefit from it, we're going to do it for free. We're going to work on building this common tide that rises all boats.

It's interesting to think of Android as "the tide that rises all boats", a platform that accelerates mobile development not just for smartphones, but also for tablets, media players, digital cameras, TVs, cars, appliances and much more.

Honeycomb: Android for Tablets

Google has accidentally made public a YouTube video that shows Android 3.0 in action. It's a completely new interface for tablets that borrows a lot of ideas from BumpTop, the 3D desktop software acquired by Google last year.


Engadget says that the new interface "looks more or less nothing like Android". You might think it's a new operating system. The video mentions that this is "the next generation of Android" and that's built entirely for tablets.

Google has focused on improving the user interface and Android 3.0 comes with fluid home screens, better app switching, browser tabs, video chat, dynamic app shortcuts and new versions of Google's Android applications that take advantage of the bigger screen.

It seems that the Android tablets that will be launched in the coming months will have impressive hardware and an updated operating system that looks stunning, so they're poised for success.



Update: Google confirms the release of Android Honeycomb.

Honeycomb is the next version of the Android platform, designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets. We’ve spent a lot of time refining the user experience in Honeycomb, and we’ve developed a brand new, truly virtual and holographic user interface. Many of Android’s existing features will really shine on Honeycomb: refined multi-tasking, elegant notifications, access to over 100,000 apps on Android Market, home screen customization with a new 3D experience and redesigned widgets that are richer and more interactive. We’ve also made some powerful upgrades to the web browser, including tabbed browsing, form auto-fill, syncing with your Google Chrome bookmarks, and incognito mode for private browsing.

Google Maps 5 for Android: 3D Maps and Offline Caching

Google Maps 5 for Android comes with two features that make Google's mapping software a lot more useful. Google now uses vector graphics instead of map tiles and it caches some of your most frequently used maps so that they are available offline.

Vector-based maps allowed Google to add a lot of cool gestures:

Tilting: Drag down with two fingers to tilt the map. Tilt while zoomed in on one of the 100+ cities around the world with 3D buildings to see a skyline spring to life.

Rotating: Twist with two fingers to rotate the map. After tilting to see 3D buildings, rotate around them to gain a new perspective from any direction.

Smooth zooming: Slide two fingers together or apart, and see the map and labels continuously scale to any zoom level, stopping when your fingers stop.

Compass mode: Center the map on your location, and then tap the compass button in the top right corner. The map will flip into 3D mode and start rotating to match your perspective, while still keeping all the labels upright and readable.

The new 3D view makes maps more intuitive and easier to use, but that's not all. Since Google no longer has to download map images from its servers and vector-based maps require 100 times less data for all zoom levels, it's feasible to cache data. "Rather than having a static set of maps when installed, Maps will automatically start caching the areas you visit the most when your device is plugged in and connected to WiFi (e.g., the nightly charge)." You can't manually control caching, but it's an important first step toward an offline Google Maps.

Google also promises to add offline rerouting to Google Maps Navigation. "You'll still need a connection to start a route, but if you miss a turn along the way, we'll quickly get you back on track, even if you don't have an Internet connection."

Google Maps 5 for Android uses about 70% less data than the previous version, so it loads maps much faster. The new features require Android 2.0+, but not all devices support them. The list of devices that support all multi-touch gestures includes: Samsung Nexus S, Samsung Galaxy S, HTC G2, HTC Incredible, HTC Evo 4G and Motorola Droid/Droid 2/Droid X, while HTC Nexus One, HTC Desire, Sony Ericsson X10 and LG Ally don't support rotating gestures.

Vector-Based Google Maps for Android

Google's Andy Rubin showed at the Dive Into Mobile conference an early prototype of a Motorola tablet running Android Honeycomb and demoed a new version of Google Maps for Android with vector-based maps and offline caching.

Engadget says that Google Maps 5.0 for Android will be available in the coming days, but not all Android devices will support the new features. "The biggest visual change is dynamic map drawing: vectors instead of flat images that scale without render hiccups and will show the buildings fleshed out for over 100 cities -- we gotta say, it looks great. Even more fun is that you can now use two fingers to tilt and rotate around the map (in addition to moving and pinch-to-zoom, of course). We've been told it's a much snappier experience, and the storage for these vectors is much smaller than the current images, which brings us to... offline caching. Maps will keep on file the locations that you go to (and search) most often, and it'll be able to reroute while offline in Navigation."

{ Thanks, Daniel and François. }

Gingerbread, an Evolutionary Update to Android

Google announced Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), a version that fixes many flaws and adds a lot of APIs for developers. The reference device for Android Gingerbread is Nexus S, a Samsung Galaxy S phone with a few extra features and a stock Android interface. "After December 16, Nexus S can be purchased (unlocked or with a T-Mobile service plan) online and in-store from all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores in the U.S. and after December 20 at Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy retailers in the U.K.," informs Google. Nexus S will be the first phone that will run Android Gingerbread and it will soon be followed by Nexus One.


Gingerbread fixes two of the most important flaws in the previous Android versions: it finally adds a soft keyboard that supports multitouch and it's optimized for faster text input, while also implementing system-wide copy-paste that actually works. Google borrowed iPhone's copy-paste implementation, which was also available in HTC Sense.


Google tweaked the user interface, but the changes are subtle. "The user interface is refined in many ways across the system, making it easier to learn, faster to use, and more power-efficient. A simplified visual theme of colors against black brings vividness and contrast to the notification bar, menus, and other parts of the UI," explains Google.

Android 2.3 adds support for VoIP calls to SIP accounts, WebM videos and near-field communication (NFC) tags. Applications can now access the front-facing camera and the gyroscope. There's also a download management application that lists all the files downloaded from the browser, the email client and any other app that uses the API.

Compared to Froyo, Gingerbread may seem underwhelming, but that's probably because most of the apps that come with Gingerbread can already be downloaded from the Android Market and Honeycomb, the next Android release, is coming soon.

You Can't Search for Android from an Android Phone

This is a really strange bug. If you use Google to search for [android], [android market] or [android phone] from an Android phone, you won't get any result. Google only shows ads related to your query and a standard message: "Your search did not match any documents".


It's not clear if this is an Android bug or a Google search bug, but it's certainly not an Easter egg. If you don't have an Android phone, try this page to use the Android-optimized interface.

Update: it seems that the same bug affects Google's iPhone interface and there are many other queries that don't return any result. "When signed into the mobile site, I see some search results, but not for all queries. I'm on a Nexus One. In the classic interface, everything works fine," says a Google user. "I'm having the same issue on an iPhone 4. No results for super common terms, but images and location searches are unaffected," confirms another user.

Update 2 (one day later): The issue was fixed.

{ Thanks, Andrew. }

Google Maps Navigation for Australia and New Zealand

Google's free navigation software is now available in Australia and New Zealand. "Google Maps Navigation is a feature of Google Maps for Mobile that provides voice-guided turn by turn directions in real time. That means that instead of printing out your directions in advance, or having your co-pilot read aloud from list of directions, you can use your Android smartphone to guide you there directly," explains Google. To use this feature you need a smartphone that runs Android 1.6 or a more recent version of Android.


At the moment, Google Maps Navigation is available in 17 countries, but this number will increase when Google starts to use its own mapping data in other countries. As Greg Sterling points out, "at some point during the course of the past couple of years, perhaps catalyzed by the shock of Nokia's roughly $8 billion acquisition of Navteq, Google decided it needed to 'own' maps top to bottom. Since that time the company has been making a systematic effort to collect and improve the base data for this highly strategic product. That's partly what Street View driving is about: getting roads and other data for Maps (and now Navigation) in addition to imagery and WiFi hotspot locations."

An Android Keyboard that Uses Google Scribe

Google Scribe may not seem very useful, but it's one of the features that could significantly improve virtual keyboards from mobile phones. Instead of showing suggestions from a dictionary, Google Scribe can provide contextually-relevant suggestions.

Scrybe is a free Android keyboard that uses Google Scribe to generate suggestions. It's not developed by Google and it uses an unofficial Google Scribe API, but it's an interesting application.



Scrybe needs to fix many issues to become really useful. If you delete some letters from word, Scrybe is not able to detect that you're not writing a new word. Another problem is that you can't type very fast because Scrybe tries to fetch the suggestions.

Reddit users think that SwiftKey has a better approach: it preloads the data, so there's no lag. "So this is basically the same thing as SwiftKey, but offloaded to Google's servers? Seems to work well, but no better (and slower) than SwiftKey," says Podspi. SwiftKey is $3.99 and there's a two-week trial.

{ Thanks, David M. }

Steve Jobs on Android's Fragmentation

Apple's CEO says that Android is fragmented and that the open vs. closed dilemma is not important as long as Apple's proprietary mobile operating system manages to provide a better user experience.

"Many Android OEMs install proprietary user-interfaces to differentiate themselves from the commodity Android experience. The user is left to figure it all out. Compare this with iPhone where ever handset works the same. (...) We think the open vs closed is just a smokescreen to try and hide the real issue, which is: What's best for the customer? Fragmented vs. integrated. We think Android is very very fragmented and becoming more fragmented by the day."

Steve Jobs is right, the real question is: What's best for the customer? Some people like to have options. Not everyone likes iPhone's form factor, iPhone's interface and some may even want a hardware keyboard, a custom virtual keyboard or a weather widget. Android is a diverse ecosystem and there's a lot to learn until Google, hardware manufacturers and all their partners manage to come up with revolutionary phones, consistent interfaces and integrated experiences. Android is just an opportunity to innovate, it's not a complete package. Google chose a non-restrictive license for Android to encourage innovation, even if that meant less control and more fragmentation.

Mobile phones are more personal than computers and I don't think we'll live in a world where every smartphone user will choose an iPhone. There's always a trade-off and not everyone wants a perfect phone if that means they'll have to change their definition of a perfect phone.

Google Acquires BlindType to Improve Android's Virtual Keyboard

Google bought BlindType, a service that allows you to type faster and more accurately on a virtual keyboard. "With BlindType, users can type on the touch screen the way they are used to, but without the traditional need to constantly focus on the keyboard. Although this would typically lead to countless spelling mistakes that would be impossible to autocorrect, BlindType predicts what the user intended to write with a success rate not previously seen on any other system."

Singularity Hub found that BlindType's application "knows what you meant to type, even if you make mistakes. Lots of them. In fact, you can type without looking at the screen at all."

Unfortunately, the application is not available in the Android Market or the iTunes App Store, but it will certainly be used to improve Android's virtual keyboard.



{ via Mashable }

More People Can Buy Apps from the Android Market

If there's one thing that Google should do to improve Android, it's developing a better Android Market. Google's app store has a lot of limitations, it still doesn't have a desktop interface, applications are priced in multiple currencies, and it's not easy to find new applications.

Android Developers Blog announced that people from 18 additional countries will be able to buy Android apps. The new countries are: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, and Taiwan. Google says that paid apps will be available over the next two weeks. Android Market's paid apps will be available in 32 countries and Google promises to bring them to even more countries in the coming months.

Now that many other companies develop Android app stores, Google has to improve the Android Market if it doesn't want to see too many Android phones without the market.