The smartphone industry is currently enjoying a much appreciated and welcome boom at the moment with various manufacturers pushing out multiple handsets to the market that allow a whole host of choice for consumers. If the iPhone 5, Galaxy S III, One X+ or the Windows Phone 8 powered Nokia Lumia 920 doesn't entice you in, then maybe the next Google Nexus smartphone is the one you have been waiting for.
There's been plenty of talk centered around iOS and Windows Phone 8 of late, but today seems to be the turn of Google and their fabulous Android OS as the Android Open Source Project is seeing the release of 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. The 4.1.2 incremental update is only a minor improvement over the previous 4.1.1 release, but will definitely bring some notable improvements to Nexus 7 owners.
With their $199 7-inch Nexus 7 tablet successfully launched in the market and successfully received by critics, Google may be eyeing the high end tablet market to take on the 9.7-inch iPad and upcoming Windows 8-based tablets directly. This comes by way of a new report which we have discussed after the break.
The Nexus 7 tablet, which was the brainchild of a collaborative effort between Google and ASUS, proved to be a huge hit with consumers thanks largely to its low starting price and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean implementation. Talk has been rife recently regarding a 32GB model - offering a little more storage for folk who find 8 and 16GB configurations as requiring too space management - and to throw a little more weight behind the murmurings, a 32GB Nexus 7 looks to have made an appearance in Japan.
With the Galaxy Nexus being over a year old now, rumors for the next device in the Nexus series of Android Experience smartphones are getting stronger and stronger by the day. Back in August, details regarding the specifications of the next Galaxy Nexus smartphone emerged online. Last month, we heard more news about the next Galaxy Nexus’ specifications and then, after a week, we saw an alleged photo taken using a Galaxy Nexus II.
Google is the undisputed champion of mapping solutions today. MapQuest, Nokia, Bing, Waze and all these other map services are good, but only in limited regions; Google Maps covers more area and in greater detail.
To many of us tech-orientated folk, there's something really fascinating about a wristwatch which, to some degree, manages to offer the features we've become accustomed to with our various other mobile gadgets. Much has been made over Apple's purported "iWatch" over the past couple of years, and although the fruit company hasn't even so much as hinted such a device would be on the way, various patents filed have been more than suggestive. Now, Mountain View-based Google looks as though it might get in on the act, filing a patent of its own for what looks to be a so-called "smartwatch."
Fans of Android who have been patiently waiting for Google to announce some hard details on their next Nexus smartphone could be in for some good news, as the latest speculation is suggesting that we could be seeing some moves from the company during the month of October. The chatter doesn't extend as far as specifying whether or not Google will treat us to an announcement of the purported device, or go one step ahead and actually launch the product the next month, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.
Although Apple's iPad has dominated the tablet market consistently since first launching in 2010, Google threw down the gauntlet to its Cupertino-based rival by launching the Nexus 7. Prior to the 7-inch slate, which was manufactured by ASUS, the only non-Apple tablet to create any sort of hype was Amazon's Kindle Fire, and although it - similarly to the Nexus 7 - was priced at an incredibly low price compared to the rest of the market, it didn't quite pack the performance we'd come to expect, and essentially felt like a cheap alternative.
Google will be bringing Street View to its mobile web app within two weeks, according to The New York Times’ David Pogue. The note was plucked from a report in which Pogue spoke of Apple's problematic new Maps offering, and although the mobile web app hasn't been such a hot topic in the past (mainly because the two main mobile ecosystems had native apps), Apple's poor first attempt in the Maps game has left Apple scrambling to remedy the problem.
