Despite having been around for considerably less time than the App Store, Google Play has grown to house almost as many apps as its Cupertino rival. With 2012's conclusion nigh, the Big G has released a list pertaining its favorite apps and games released this year in two separate lists. "Games We Love" focuses on those addictive, exciting, and thought-provoking releases this year, while "App Focus" gives an insight into the rich, diverse quantity of apps available.
Android is constantly a target for those looking to spread malware, and the latest - discovered by Russian security outfit Doctor Web - is probably one of the more significant to date. Arriving in the form of a trojan, it can aid the loathed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, while also housing the ability to send spam SMS messages and receive commands from the criminals behind them.
Thanks to the release of the iPhone 5 back in September, Apple has captured a 53 percent of the smartphone market in the United States - the very first time it has passed the 50 percent barrier. The number crunching was carried out by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, and its most recent sales data figures show the Cupertino company's market share has increased dramatically on the 37 percent recorded at the same period of last year, and takes into consideration the 12-week period ending on November 25th.
The fact that the Google Maps app is sitting at the top of the iOS download charts, it shows that iOS users definitely have a need for a fully-functional maps app that is built on top of extensive and accurate location data. Despite its somewhat insane popularity, iOS still uses the stock Apple Maps app for all direction requirements that are passed through to it via Siri.
When talking about the mobile market and assessing its strengths and weaknesses, conversations and debates usually take an Android versus iOS format. Each of the two major mobile operating systems has its own perks and limitations, and in the case of Android, one of the key issues for a long time has been that of malware. Its open source nature leaves it naturally more susceptible than its Cupertino counterpart, but according to security research firm Lookout Mobile Security, things could take a turn for the worse in 2013.
The Nexus line up of devices has always received the prime cut of all that is Android, be it OTA updates, developer attention, mods and custom recoveries, root procedures and whatnot, and that, too, before the rest of the Android lot. This holds true not just for the smartphone showcase, but the tablets, too, since Google decided to enter that market itself. Generally, all the Nexus devices have been at the top of the Android food chain, as it was at the times of their respective releases. Their Achilles’ Heel, however, has always been their cameras, where the units mounted atop the Nexus devices were either inadequate or low performing, resulting in a loss of the battle in the mobile photography arena. Indeed, even mid-range droids had a better camera sensor as compared to the one built into, say, Galaxy Nexus.
Jaws definitely dropped when Apple launched the first iOS 6 beta with no Google Maps support, but we have moved on since then through the Mapgate scandal and now we have the official launch of Google Maps for iOS through the App Store, that comes with a reported admission from within Google that this latest launch for Apple devices provides a better experience than its Android based counterpart.
The wait is over. Months after Google Maps found itself unceremoniously kicked off of iOS 6 devices, Google's mapping software is back with a vengeance.
Android has now become a generally pretty stable platform/operating system for smartphones and tablets, and every new iteration only adds to that. Long gone are the days when an Android device would go into constant freezes, get repeated app Force Closes, or would generally become sluggish in performance; a huge of contribution of that goes to the open source development community, too, that strive day and night to make our devices more useful and stable. However, there still might be time when you install an app that doesn’t agree with your operating system or firmware version, or that might have some broken pieces of code, or any other issue, resulting in the same problems that we discussed above. Even worse are the cases when you start suffering from severe battery drain, or when the device itself goes into a boot loop after having installed a certain APK. For all those cases, Google has built-in a neat hidden feature in Android, called safe mode.
In its early stages, Android wasn't a great platform. It's main problem was lag, but in the past twelve months, Google's mobile operating system has become a much smoother, much more streamlined experience. Of course, Project Butter isn't the only positive enhancement presented to Android recently, and the introduction of many new features and apps - particularly Google Now - have been defining factors.
