As with Apple and the 12 Days of Christmas app, Google has launched its own festive goodie bag for those running its flagship Android mobile operating system. Today arrives the very first in a series of savings and giveaways on things like apps, games, books, TV shows, music and movies, and the surprise calendar countdown begins with a $35 credit for Hotel Tonight.
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.
Although Google is responsible for the upkeep, maintenance and development of the Android operating system, they have been making serious waves in the iOS world over the last 24-four hours with the expected release of their brand new Maps app for the iPhone and iPod touch. Users have been expecting Google to release their own iOS based mapping solution ever since it was announced that Apple would be rolling their own Maps application as part of iOS 6, but Google has taken things a little step further by also making their Maps SDK publicly available for iOS developers to include in their projects.
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.
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.
Android 4.2.1 Update is barely out the door, bringing with it all the bug fixes and patches, along with the much-needed and missing “December” from the People app. A new version of Android always means one thing in particular – wait time for a new root method or package for the latest update. Well, thanks to the wonderful developer community that we have all come to trust and love, wait is over, or rather, got over long before you knew it, because Android 4.2.1 is also rootable on all the devices – Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10 and Galaxy Nexus – just like its predecessor was. The method has no bells and whistles attached to it, either, and involves flashing a custom recovery and pushing the SU binaries to your device. We’ll guide you how just past the jump.
As with iOS and Windows Phone 8, quite a few Android devices have launched in quick succession over the past couple of weeks, and as such, the famously thriving Android community has been busier than the gadget retailers this holiday. Among the torrent of new Android smartphones and tablets arrived the Nexus 10 slate, and with a toolkit for the HTC One X+, HTC Droid DNA and its accomplice - the LG Nexus 4 - already released, it only seemed a matter of time before the all-in-one arrived for the Nexus 10 tablet. Today, that day has arrived, and if you want to get busy modding and playing around with your shiny new slate, the folk of XDA-Developers have just made things that little bit easier.
Thanksgiving weekend may have been enhanced by the Black Friday savings on offer, but as many of you will be aware, the deals have not yet ceased. After Black Friday comes Cyber Monday, and with so many big-money savings, it can be hard to keep track. Here, we run through some of the best offers from the companies you like to purchase from, so if you have any money left, check out the Cyber Monday options after the break.
When the Nexus 4 was announced as next Android flagship, there was no mention of any 4G/LTE support. Then, when the phone came out mid-November, there was, again, no LTE support again – not very surprisingly, though, since supporting 4G would have essentially meant manufacturing multiple versions of the device to make it agreeable for all the different 4G bands around the globe – an approach that Apple had to adopt with the iPhone 5. LG, however, decided to avoid going down that road, and hence, Nexus 4 stuck to the plain old 3G bands.
