It's been a pretty big day in mobile space, with two of the big guns both showcasing new products and innovations to be released in the near future. Motorola's "On Display" event saw a glut of new devices slide into the fold, including the DROID RAZR HD, RAZR MAXX HD and RAZR M Android smartphones, while the Nokia and Microsoft partnership saw the birth of a couple significant new Lumia devices, as well as more details regarding Windows Phone 8.
If you were one of the many people around the world who took the plunge and purchased the Google Nexus 7 when it was first announced during the annual I/O conference back in June, then congratulations on making a great decision. Google has managed to work together with ASUS to design and develop a rather fantastic little tablet that really manages to sit in a class of its own within its size category. Google may not be everyone's company of choice, but they have managed to release a product that has immediately become one of the best tablets on the market for the price point it sits at.
A new report claims that both iOS and Android smartphones are currently outpacing any previous consumer technology, with worldwide sales driving huge user adoption. A quick glance at any social network, technology blog or even the man in the street will show that smartphones are big business and gaining traction rapidly. Everyone seems to have either an iPhone or an Android phone these days, and mobile analytic firm Flurry has done what it does best - take a lot of numbers and extrapolate them into an interesting collection of facts.
Google has released a public statement in which it tackles the recent legal goings on between both Apple, and the largest Android phone maker, Samsung. While both Samsung and Apple were keen to release statements following the court's decision to order the Korean firm to pay over one billion dollars to the iPhone maker. The whole thing revolves around Samsung's use of technology which infringes upon Apple's patents, and with Android beating at the heart of Samsung's smartphones, many wondered what Google would have to say about the matter.
When Google eventually took the plunge and pushed out the Chrome browser to the iOS App Store during the second day of their I/O conference in San Francisco, it answered the prayers of thousands of iPhone and iPad users who had been longing for a worthy competitor to the native Mobile Safari browser which Apple ships with the operating system. Chrome for iOS immediately jumped to the top of the App Store download charts and has remained there ever since with users loving the simple and elegant design with great features such as the Chrome Omnibar and gesture integration.
Although we didn't expect an official announcement quite this soon, we have been aware for quite some time that Google was planning on bringing a collection of gift cards to certain retail outlets which would allow users to purchase virtual currency that can then be exchanged for goods and services from the Play Store. It hasn't really been a great secret that they were coming and we've already seen them out in the public eye as well as evidence of the cards in the Google Play Store app.
Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets mean big business across the world, which in turn means that apps which are developed and submitted to marketplaces like the iOS App Store and Google's Play Store for Android are also capable of turning up large amounts of money for the developer as well as the operating system owner. We already know that Apple turns over a substantial amount of money from their 30% cut of App Store sales, which is enough for them to break even and provide an app economy that effectively doesn't cost them a dime to run.
CyanogenMod 10 has been demoed via Google+ quite frequently on a number of devices over the past couple of months, and now the CM10 Team has taken to the Big G's social network to officially reveal CM10 nightly builds, now available for a handful of devices.
Considering it has been bubbling away and growing in size for the last eighteen months, it is going to be extremely interesting to see how the Apple vs. Samsung patent case progresses and ultimately pans out. It appears that both sides have fairly credible evidence to present to Judge Lucy Koh and the selected jury, but one of the most interesting parts of the case from an outsider’s point of view is the level of information that the companies have been forced to leak into the public domain as part of their own defense.
If there is one thing which we love the most apart from an official launch of a new smartphone from manufacturers like Apple or Samsung is when concept developers throw their hat into the ring and produce some seriously gorgeous looking renders of entirely fictional devices. It isn't uncommon to see designers producing images of what they believe new Apple devices will look like, but this time, it’s the turn of Google to get the treatment as Dorian Lust has knocked up what he believes a possible Google Nexus device could look like.
