Facebook, although the world's number one social network, has failed to capitalize fully on the mobile market, and its apps for each of the respective three big mobile operating systems have left a lot to be desired. Mark Zuckerberg's company is always releasing updates for each platform, and despite usually amending bugs from the previous iterations, always seem to have a multitude of new, prominent performance issues.
The British Broadcasting Service, or BBC, is renowned worldwide for its eloquent, objective news publications, and with this year's Olympic Games being held in London, it was only right the BBC, often referred to as the Beeb, would deliver its own app designed especially for the games.
Android is, by a long shot, the most customizable of the three major mobile operating systems. With most modders and developers congregated over at XDA Developers and RootzWiki, it's one of the most thriving communities of all, allowing Android users to customize and enhance their device's software to the nth degree.
As with Instagram, which was recently bought out by Facebook for a whopping one billion dollars, I often wonder whether the guys over at Rovio could have predicted just how successful their mobile title Angry Birds would grow to become. Beginning on iOS, the title is now available on most platforms facilitating casual gaming, with Microsoft's Xbox 360, the Sony PlayStation 3, and Nindendo's 3DS also soon to join the party, as we revealed yesterday.
One of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean biggest new features – other than the vastly smoother user interface, significantly improved voice actions, more powerful notifications, offline voice typing – is the new predictive keyboard. Just like the 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard, the new keyboard has been ported to older versions of Android for everyone to use. Check it out after the jump.
Using Twitter, perhaps more so than any other social platform, seems perfectly matched to the mobile market. Everything said is within the 140 character limit - fending off those who like to broadcast an unabridged version of their life story, and it has overtaken the RSS reader in allowing users to keep up with the news feeds they really want to follow.
Although the mobile market has taken some time to adapt to a touch-based interface, there's no dispute that apps implementing a certain amount of touch-gestures are infinitely enhanced. Switcher for Android has prided itself on this ideal, and today, developer Vito Cassisi has updated his popular application.
Google released Android Jelly Bean, or at least announced it, at Google I/O recently. Since then, Android enthusiasts the world over have been clamoring to get their hands on the latest version of the mobile operating system to come out of the search giant's Googleplex campus. If you're the owner of a Galaxy Nexus then you're one short flash away from having the Jelly Bean experience installed on your very own device. If not though, you face a wait of indeterminable time.
If there was one thing I really enjoyed in my time with the Samsung Galaxy S II (before shifting to the iPhone 4S), it was the ability to easily customize large parts of my smartphone. The home screen launcher - the user interface from where you launch apps and absorb information in a glance with widgets - is one area where Android offers unmatched variety. There are launchers that promise awesome performance, others that offer wide variety of features and others one that promise both.
Google’s recently announced Nexus 7 is receiving critical acclaim throughout the blogosphere. It offers the hardware of a $500 tablet – a 7” HD IPS display, quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean – for the unbeatable price of $199. Some sacrifices had to be made to bring price down to this level, sacrifices like the lack of a rear camera, higher storage capacity, extendable storage and GSM connectivity.
