Though Samsung may still hold the crown of the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile devices, the other major players in the Smartphone market don’t intend to take the South Korean conglomerate’s dominance lying down. You’re probably aware of Apple’s upcoming September 12th event, which is widely speculated to be the grand unveiling of the new iPhone 5 (a notion backed up by the press invites Apple has distributed, which consist of a number ‘12’ casting the shadow of a number ‘5’), but you may not be aware of two lesser companies throwing their horses into the race – Motorola Mobility, which is owned by Google, and Nokia, which has a longstanding commitment to Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, are both slated to reveal several new devices over the coming weeks.
For Nokia, there’s a special urgency to produce a quality Smartphone. They have undergone some tough times, recently – though their past successes lay in creating a comprehensive catalogue of devices of every stripe, from low-end feature phones to mid-range Smartphones, this traditional market has been completely usurped by Samsung, the South Korean chaebol which is well-known for producing a huge range of devices at breakneck speed. Similarly, Microsoft has a great impetus for Nokia to succeed; their Windows Phone platform has been overshadowed by Google’s open-source Android OS, which is freely distributed to manufacturers and thus a far more attractive option for the burgeoning Asian marketplace. Nokia’s event – kicking off at 3PM GMT today in New York - is consequently expected to mark the grand unveiling of a number of new high-end Smartphones running Windows 8. Rumours abound that Nokia intend to unveil two flagship devices, the Nokia Phi and the Nokia Arrow, intended to improve upon the disappointing sales of their earlier Lumia range by possessing larger battery life, superior screen size, higher Megapixel cameras, 4G compatibility and even capacitive stylus pen support (which will certainly be a selling point in the cold climes of Nokia’s native Finland, where gloves are a necessity most of the year). It remains to be seen whether some good Smartphones can turn around the flagging fortunes of the Nokia/Microsoft partnership, however, given the current financial downswing of both companies.
The Motorola event is far more tantalizing, however. Though Motorola Mobility has been undergoing similar downsizing of staff and operating facilities to Nokia, it’s been for a very different reason. The acquisition of Motorola by Google marked a significant shift in its approach to the Smartphone market; at Google’s advice, they’ve jettisoned much of the chaff (bloated employee rosters and a surplus of lower-end devices with poorer sales) in favour of a focus on the high-end market, which will bring them into direct competition with other heavy-hitters such as Samsung and HTC, whose Galaxy S3 and One X are respectively two of the most powerful devices currently on the market.
The invite image for Motorola’s September 18th event is simple and stylized, an invitation to “Let us take you to the Edge” which features the logos of both Motorola and Intel. The obvious conclusion to draw from this wordplay is a new Razr device (razor’s edge, anyone?) with a chipset manufactured by Intel. Speculation abounds that the new device will be Motorola’s much-touted Motorola Razr M, and that Intel’s contribution will be the Medfield chip currently used in ZTE’s Orange San Diego. The Razr M is rumoured to boast some impressive specifications, including a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 4G connectivity and Android 4.04 on launch. But here at Mobile Madhouse, we’re more interested in the potential involvement of Google in proceedings – they’ve certainly offered some advice to Motorola in their latest ventures, but most pundits seem to agree that Google is letting their subsidiary act autonomously in all of the actual decision-making.
Nevertheless, they loom large over Motorola’s current legacy, and it’s entirely possible that the launch of the Razr M plays into Google’s own plans to a greater degree than is yet realized. No matter how the upcoming launch events of both Nokia and Motorola play out, however, we’re happy to see the two plucky companies continue to diversify and do their utmost to break open the two-horse race that the Smartphone market has become, courtesy of Samsung and Apple’s constant head-butting. Even if the Nokia Phi/Arrow and Motorola Razr M fail to find significant mainstream success, the spirit that lies behind these devices is the spirit that could improve the market for the consumer – more choice is never a bad thing, after all!
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Why is this a surprise, you may ask? Well, for a start, Google bought Motorola Mobility for 12.5 billion dollars, a huge amount of money even compared to the lofty standards set by the search giant. For their money, it doesn’t appear as if Google has gained very much; they outsourced the manufacturing of their recent (wildly popular) Nexus 7 tablet to Asus, a Taiwanese company they’ve previously worked with, despite having complete control over Motorola, who are well-known for high-quality past products such as the Droid Razr. And this trend doesn’t seem likely to change, either – if rumours are true, Google’s next “pure Android” Smartphone, the latest in their Galaxy Nexus range, is to be manufactured by Samsung, the South Korean mobile giant that presently dominates the Android market. Why would Google purchase Motorola only to let the company languish in pre-existing financial turmoil, without even offering their new subsidiary the chance to climb up on Google’s bootstraps?
The answer could be simple; Google may not have been interested in Motorola Mobility for its manufacturing potentialities. Google gained one very definite advantage from their purchase of the mobile manufacturer; their impressive portfolio of over 17,000 technology patents. Given that Google’s chief competitor in the Smartphone software marketplace is Apple - who have recently been on the legal warpath with suits, countersuits, litigation and patent infringement claims of every stripe imaginable – the search giant may have considered it a prudent step to safeguard their own interests by quietly acquiring as many registered patents as possible. By amassing such a huge quantity of registered patents, Google have buffered themselves against future allegations of copyright infringement by Apple; and while Apple have yet to go directly for Google in the courtroom, they have simultaneous suits against HTC and Samsung regarding the software on devices such as the Galaxy Tab and HTC One S – devices which run Google’s open-source Android operating system. It seems like it’s only a matter of time until Apple goes for Google’s jugular, and it’s only natural for Google to want to be prepared.
But even so, a $12.5 billion investment seems steep for a patent arms-race in what, thus far, has amounted to a Cold War between Google and Apple, with no direct shots fired. Perhaps Google do have plans for Motorola in the future, and perhaps downsizing the company plays into those plans: after all, if Google intends Motorola to manufacture “pure Android experience” devices to Google’s own exacting specifications, a great deal of the chaff can be slimmed down from Motorola’s existing employees, many of whom are focused upon the manufacturing of weaker, low-end mobiles that are simply not profitable in today’s marketplace. If Google no longer wants Motorola to create low-end feature or mobile phones, they can probably stand to trim the fat somewhat - if only to keep costs low. Preliminary rumours suggest that Google has by no means abandoned Motorola entirely, with reports that artificial intelligence and supply-chain experts are being recruited to assist in the manufacturing of high-end Smartphones, intended to compete on direct footing with Samsung, HTC, Apple et al. But that opens up a whole new can of worms entirely – will other, lesser Android adoptees such as Sony and LG feel threatened by Motorola, who now have a favoured place at Google’s right-hand, and potential access to the kind of cutting-edge technology that only Google possesses? Only time will tell what kind of ramifications Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility has for the Smartphone market at large, but one thing is for sure – it’s bound to be exciting!
Only recently, concerns were raised over Google Now – a voice search function pre-packaged with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean – and its capacity to ‘learn’ information about the user in order to tailor results more accurately to their specifications. In fact, we wrote a blog post about the very topic! The chief concern of Google Now is that Google will retain the information culled through it, effectively building up in-depth dossiers about individuals customers habits in a way heretofore unknown: not only learning their preferences, but also personal information such as where they live and how they travel. This would, theoretically, permit Google to tailor their advertising with pinpoint accuracy – and while this would in theory provide a boon to the average Google consumer, it’s still treading a dangerous line between trust and anti-trust, a fact some customers are vociferously aware of.
Instances such as that pale in comparison to some of Google’s other lapses, however. From 2006 to 2010, Google Streetview cars culled around 600GB of data from unencrypted public and private Wi-Fi networks in over 30 countries. No disclosure was given to any of the affected parties, nor to the owners of the Wi-Fi stations in question; in fact, until further investigation was made, Google sat on the information. Once it was brought to light, Google categorically asserted that not only was this information not used in their search functions or other services, they were unaware that it had even been collated… however, they also stated that they would not delete the data in question until permitted by regulators. A representative from Consumer Watchdog replied to the imbroglio by releasing a statement to the effect that Google “[gathered] whatever data they [could] until their fingers [were] caught in the cookie jar”, strongly suggesting that this was not an isolated issue. And given that Privacy International currently ranks Google as “hostile to privacy” on one of their reports (a rating shared by no other major corporation), it’s certainly food for thought.
Google has faced even more criticism recently – and a record $22.5 million fine from the Federal Trade Commission – for allegedly breaking the terms of their own privacy policy. According to the FTC, Google used tracking cookies to monitor the browsing habits of millions of users of Apple’s Safari internet browser, in order to more effectively direct advertising, while assuring users that they were not. According to the FTC, Google placed an advertising tracking cookie on Safari users who visited sites within Google’s DoubleClick advertising network, despite earlier categorical statements that the default settings of Safari automatically opt users out of such methods of tracking. Though Google claims that they have done nothing wrong, they submitted to the fine (which constitutes a tiny minority of their yearly revenue stream: their reported revenue earnings for Q2 of 2012 was $12.21 billion), and agreed to stop placing tracking cookies on Safari users in future, though they still retain the capability to track them through ‘legitimate’ means (such as logging in through Google Mail, Google Plus and YouTube).
What does this mean for consumers? It’s certainly true that by collating dossiers on their users, Google is able to customize search results and advertising to better cater to you – but is that worth compromising your privacy to the extent that Google now expects? A $22.5 million fine may seem like a hefty penalty, but given their gross revenue per annum, it scarcely constitutes a slap on the wrist for the search giant; and without proportionate penalties for misconduct, there’s no impetus for Google to halt their campaign. It all comes down to your personal preferences: if you put stock in Google’s unofficial motto of “don’t be evil”, you probably believe that your information will only be used to enhance your internet experience - and given Google’s track record of providing quality products at the expense of advertisers, instead of consumers, there may be a grain of truth in that. But if you disagree, you’ll simply have to follow Eric Schmidt’s advice, and avoid any online activity you don’t want others to see, because Google’s ubiquity in the realms of search and advertising means that there’s no escaping them for now.
So how did Google respond to the detractors? With the typical showmanship we’ve come to expect from the search and mobile giant, they’ve decided to delay the Nexus Q in order to add more features. But instead of just closing sales of the Nexus Q, they refunded the cost of purchase to all consumers, and announced that everyone who pre-ordered the device prior to this announcement will still receive their pre-adjustment Nexus Q free of charge. It’s a savvy move that’s fostered some real goodwill towards the company; the pain of having to wait longer for the home-streaming device has been offset by the fact that it’s now likely to feature much greater cross-platform compatibility with applications like Netflix and Hulu, permitting a diverse range of uses for the device, and their act of charity towards existing consumers gives them some breathing space to avoid criticism.
We have to wonder why Google didn’t consider this in the first place, however. As a home-streaming device created by Google, the Nexus Q is naturally positioned as a rival to Apple TV, since the Cupertino-based corporation is by far Google’s biggest rival already in the Smartphone and tablet markets. Did Google really expect a device priced $200 more expensively than their competitor, with a reduced range of applications, to compete on equal footing? Some have argued that the Nexus Q was always intended to be a device appealing to the hard-core, bleeding edge Google enthusiasts: hackers have already succeeded in jury-rigging the device to perform a number of functions, including playing games and launching applications like Netflix to stream home movies. But no matter how loyal Google’s fanatical core of customers may be, the average user simply isn’t prepared to crack open their $299 device in order to tinker with it, and you can’t sustain a product by appealing solely to a minority.
With that said, Google have certainly been making measures to amend their initial error, and the future looks bright for the Nexus Q. The price tag may still be a stumbling block for many, but if they manage to increase the ease with which the average user can utilize a broad range of apps, they stand to make a tidy little profit on their investment. In the end, it’s not even about the money with the Nexus Q: the plucky little sphere is a statement that Google can go toe-to-toe with Apple, not just in terms of software and marketing, but also in terms of hardware manufacturing and design. It’s no coincidence that the brains behind the Nexus Q were two former Apple employees – there’s more than a little of the Cupertino-based company in its sleek, streamlined and minimalistic design. Whether the Nexus Q falls or rises, Google have thrown their chips on the table: for better or worse, they’re now looking to compete on equal terms with Apple, across every spectrum. Only time will tell whether or not they manage to succeed.
With the Toilet Map application, those worries (and that flush of embarrassment… get it?) will be removed. It’s incredibly simple to use: once you open the application, it culls information from Google Maps to automatically pinpoint every known toilet in the surrounding area. As if that wasn’t handy enough for the tourist-on-the-go, clicking on one of the floating toilet icons brings up a chart with relevant information about the toilet: the name of the shop it is in (if any), the hours it is accessible, any attendant price, whether it’s male or female only, or available to both, and even the type of shop it is located in (for example, it might say ‘Café’, just in case you want to get a bite to eat after you micturate)! Utilitarian in the extreme, you won’t find yourself fiddling around with Toilet Map like you would with one of the tie-in Olympic game apps, but we guarantee you’ll still be sighing with relief that you bought it!
4 – BBC Olympics
One of the official applications distributed by the BBC, BBC Olympics is the only application that streams live feed from the Olympic Games 24 hours a day. After all, though you may be attending the games, you can’t watch every single event at the games – so when Usain Bolt is performing his trademark leg stretches and you’re bored to tears waiting for him to actually start running, you can pull out your Smartphone and take a look at the concurrent swimming event, instead!
BBC Olympics is really easy to use. All of the most recent and high-profile events are organized in a Facebook-esque “top stories” section, allowing you to instantly access the most up-to-date information right as you open the application. Events stream live, and are saved for later perusal, which means you won’t miss a single moment unless you really just don’t want to see it. BBC journalists update the application with a live text feed as events occur; so if you happen to blink and miss a crucial moment, you’ll instantly know about it from their reaction - and as if that wasn’t enough, there are handy bios for each athlete performing in an event, allowing the less sports-savvy amongst you to garner a bit of context! And the capper? – This is a free application. You can have the whole of the Olympics at your fingertips for no cost at all! If you have even a passing interest in the games – even if you’re not attending – you owe it to yourself to install this application post-haste!
3 – London 2012 – Official Game
Something a little bit different, this time – not an application that will aid you in your trek around London or that will help you gather context on the Games, but rather a fun little diversion for you to plink away at in your hotel room at night. (Or in the stands during the pole vault event, for that matter!) Licensed as the official game for the London 2012 Olympics, the aptly-named London 2012 – Official Game is free to download and an awful lot of fun to play. It features a plethora of Olympic events – whether you want to see your little electronic avatar sprint the 100m dash, swim the 100m butterfly or leap their way into the stratosphere with the triple jump, there’s bound to be at least a game or two that you’ll enjoy.
In terms of graphics, it’s reminiscent of Wii Sports: stylized and cartoony, with deliberately disproportionate characters for added cuteness. You can buy new outfits for your character and outfit them to make them stand out in the multiplayer challenge mode. But don’t worry about power expenditure: if you have an up-to-date Smartphone, it runs incredibly smoothly, with bold, swooping camera angles that really put you in the thick of the action and add a sense of drama to proceedings. The only real complaint we had was with the controls, which can be sloppy from time to time.
There’s nothing more frustrating than coming in second place because the game decided to bring your avatar to a dead halt for no discernible reason. Multitouch support is all well and good, but if you’re going to rely on it so heavily, it needs to be more polished and less mushy than this. Nevertheless, the game was fun enough that we managed to muscle through and have a great time with it anyway. So if you find yourself with a free moment during the 2012 games pull out your Smartphone and give it a go!
2 – Travel+ London
In our overview of Toilet Map, we mentioned the two things that can never be found in London: rubbish bins and toilets. Well, we’re appending that list with a third addition: public transport that isn’t crammed with a veritable throng of people. At the best of times, London is one of the largest and busiest cities in the world, and the vast majority of people commute to their workplace via public transportation; during the Olympic Games, we can comprehensively state that it’ll be worse than ever before, courtesy of tourists flocking from all corners of the globe to catch a bit of the Olympic action. You really need to plan your journeys out in advance to ensure that you don’t get left out in the cold, unable to catch a train or hop aboard a bus thanks to a whole horde of tourists – and when it comes to forward planning (and on-the-fly amendments), nobody does it better than Travel+ London.
In their own words, they “[aggregate] live TFL feeds across Underground, Bus, Train, DLC, Tram and River networks, [allowing] users to find, plan and select the most efficient and direct route to their destination of choice”. In layman’s words, Travel+ London is constantly updating their store of information to take into account things like delays or crashes, ensuring that you’re always kept aware of mitigating circumstances that could affect your journey. A route planning feature means you can enter your destination and instantly have Travel+ plot the fastest way from A to B, utilizing whichever public transport you want, and a superb online map (parsed from Google Maps itself) ensures that even on foot, you know exactly where you are and exactly where you need to be going.
As if all this wasn’t enough, Travel+ London also saves your search history and previous journeys – so if you want to make the same trip twice, you simply have to open up your previous entry and check it out! For real convenience, it’s hard to find a better journey planning tool than this… and though you may find it unbelievable, Travel+ London is still in Beta. Imagine the plethora of features they’ll manage to pack in when they finally issue a full release!
1 – Hotel Tonight
Transportation is important, and games are a lot of fun to noodle about with in your spare time, but the most important factor in your 2012 Olympic experience should be where you’re staying. Most London hotels – most London hostels, in fact – are booked solid, and have been for months. It’s incredibly difficult to just “wing it” and check in somewhere – but if you’re stuck with nowhere to stay, there’s no better way to try than with the superb Hotel Tonight application!
They say the best ideas are the ones you think of and wonder “why has nobody else done this yet?!”, and we certainly felt that way about Hotel Tonight. The concept is simple: they are connected and in contact with a huge number of hotel chains, motels and hostels in major cities (including London, of course), and are notified when bookings fall through. They then update their application with the information. Everybody wins: Hotel Tonight receive money for filling the spare room with a warm body, the hotel chain receives money they wouldn’t otherwise have attained, and you – naturally – get a room for the night at a heavily discounted rate! There are few other circumstances where you could reasonably expect to stay in a hotel at a 70% discount on a same-day booking, but with Hotel Tonight it’s just a run-of-the-mill experience. It’s intuitive, it’s easy to use - but above it, it’s unbelievably convenient. And – incredibly – it’s free to download. If you ever plan on entering London, let alone attending the Olympic Games, you owe it to yourself to download this amazing application as soon as possible!
The plot is typical zombie fare: a dystopian vision of society, where the common man rose up against the ruling classes – and the corrupt politicians release a virus to turn people into bloodthirsty monsters en-masse to make good their own escape. You play a generic grizzly-voiced survivor, who stumbles into a haven of other survivors (imaginatively dubbed ‘Safe Haven’) and becomes their primary protector, roving around the city and using a selection of guns to help out his new friends. But the plot is almost immaterial; the short missions (rarely lasting more than a few minutes) and broad-strokes storyline lend itself to a burst style of play, putting Dead Trigger in the curious position of being a lunchtime game with next-gen graphics. We approve of this pick-up-and-play style of gaming, but it might have made the game more engrossing if there was an ongoing story – unfortunately, most of the ‘plot’ consists of text-only info-dump at the start of story missions, and it’s easily overlooked by casual gamers, who click “skip” to get to the zombie jamboree as swiftly as possible.
On the plus side, there are a large variety of missions. Some of them charge you with merely surviving until the timer runs out, and generally place you within an enclosed area to make the task more difficult. Others force you to protect escape routes to let your fellow survivors make good their escape. However, with a fairly small handful of enemies to shoot in the face, and repetitious map design, it can become tiring doing the same thing over and over. Fortunately, the wide range of different guns – everything from pistols to machine guns to a freakin’ mini-gun – and a prompt to change your equipped weapon/s at the beginning to each level (along with a ‘Recommended Gun’) means that you’ll at least have a healthy arsenal of weapons in your war against the undead. The game has faced some flak for only allowing the best weapons to be unlocked by spending real-life cash, but given the price of Dead Trigger itself (currently retailing at £0.75 on the Android app store), it’s difficult to find fault with Madfinger’s strategy. They have to recoup money somewhere, after all.
In terms of graphics, it stands head-and-shoulders above its competitors. (It’s certainly a far cry from, say, Temple Run!) In particular, the Tegra 3 version of the game automatically pre-packages an “ultra high” graphics setting, which dramatically boosts the quality of such niceties as water effects and the muzzle-flash on your gun; but if you’re fortunate enough to own a Tegra 3 chipset device (such as the HTC One X), you’re going to notice a sizeable decrease in your amount of battery time when running ultra-high. The lower settings still permit a respectable experience - particularly when compared to competitor games, or even Madfinger’s previous offering, Shadowgun – but if you’ve purchased Dead Trigger, you’ll probably want to set your graphical settings as high as possible. Unfortunately, on older compatible devices, this can cause frame-drop issues which seriously interfere with the experience.
Speaking of issues, there are several to be found with the controls. Dead Trigger opts for a similar input to Shadowgun: the left-hand side of the screen permits movement, the right permits aiming, and a small targeting reticle allows you to shoot. (There’s also an option to zoom in, via another button located close to said reticle.) But the touchscreen controls aren’t always the most responsive. Sometimes in the heat of the moment, a careless sideward swipe can cause your character to spin around, allowing a zombie to bite at your back before you have a chance of recovering. More serious is the indistinct overlap between the left and right hand sides of the screen: occasionally you’ll attempt to alter your aim, only to find you’ve began running towards the enemy, instead. And as a veteran FPS player, I found the zoom-in function slightly lacking: often, the targeting did not accurately map to the location I was shooting, and reloading causes you to exit the zoom-in function entirely (unlike many comparable console shooters, which zoom out for the reload animation and instantly zoom back in, permitting seamless fire). We’d recommend anyone playing Dead Trigger on Android to opt for a gamepad, which Madfinger (wisely) support for use in their game, as this makes the experience vastly less frustrating.
Overall, Dead Trigger is an excellent game that suffers few problems. These problems are restricted mainly to its polish and presentation; with just a little more pre-testing, the annoying issues with aiming and controls could have easily been averted. The repetitious level design is a little harder to remedy, but given the majestic, baroque environments of Shadowgun, we’re sure Madfinger had more in them than a succession of dreary car parks. Nevertheless, Mobile Madhouse heartily endorses Dead Trigger, and recommends you purchase it – because despite its issues, it’s just fun to play. It might not devour your brains, but it’ll sure eat up your lunchtimes!
Look at the statistics: though Amazon’s recent Kindle Fire dominates the smaller, 7” tablet market, its sales are grossly outmatched by Apple’s ubiquitous 10” iPad. Despite being more than twice as expensive - the Kindle Fire retails at $199; iPad prices start at $400, and rise to $800+ for superior models – Apple regularly boast sales which leave Amazon in the dust. While Amazon confidently expects to sell 17 million Kindle Fire’s this year, Apple is equally sanguine about the possibility of selling 70 million iPad’s. Apple dominates over 60% of the tablet market, in fact – and it’s entirely possible that the Kindle Fire only lays claim to its humble piece of the pie because of its comparative cheapness. What are they going to do when Google’s Nexus 7 retails at $199 for the basic model, with superior spec and hardware to the Kindle Fire?
It’s a similar story in the Smartphone market. Google’s Android OS currently lays claim to over 51% of the US market, with Apple’s iOS close on its tail with around 30%. The rest of the market is divided up between smaller operating systems, such as Windows Phone, Symbian, Tizen and others. The same applies to the consumer side of things; Samsung and Apple together dominate over 50% of Smartphone sales, and – owing to their high-end devices such as the Galaxy S3 and iPhone 4S – over 90% of Smartphone profits. So in essence, the operating system war is a two-horse race between Google and Apple, and the sales war is a two-horse race between Samsung and Apple. How much of a dent can a new contender possibly make, when long-going mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia and RIM have already been edged out of the running by the current industry leads?
There’s a more pressing problem, as well – patents. As anyone with a passion for Smartphones will be aware, litigation is rife amongst Smartphone manufacturers. Apple is leading the fray, with simultaneous lawsuits against companies as diverse as HTC, Samsung, Motorola and Google, courtesy of their enormous legal department and impressive cash reserves. But even Nokia have been getting in on the act recently, launching a patent suit against Google for allegedly infringing upon one of Nokia’s Wi-Fi patents with their new Nexus 7 tablet. Most of these companies have spent years building up solid patent portfolios; Apple is well-known for registering enormous amounts, and Google has a reputation for buying out companies in order to acquire their patents: they recently bought out Motorola for $12.5 billion, obtaining more than 17,000 patents in the process. Amazon, by contrast, recent balked at the possibility of spending $400 million to outbid chipset manufacturer Intel on a number of Smartphone-related patents, despite the obvious impact this would have on their plans to diversify.
So how committed are Amazon to their new Smartphone? And how do they expect to gain substantial profits in a market already saturated with Smartphones of every stripe? Only time will tell.
For the uninitiated, Windows RT is a stripped-down version of Windows 8 designed to run on devices using ARM-based processors, such as tablets. The OS is sold only to developers, for the express purpose of preloading onto their devices; it is not intended as a standalone product for consumers. So why have Samsung opted to follow Microsoft’s lead, and release a new tablet to coincide with the release of Windows 8, when they’ve traditionally been associated with Android? Surely it would make more sense for the South Korean chaebol to utilize Google’s upcoming Android 4.1, Jelly Bean – or even wait for their much-anticipated Chrome OS, which is ultimately expected to homogenize the Google user experience and act as a bridge between laptops, tablets and Smartphones.
There are a number of explanations. The most obvious is the notion that Samsung have already established themselves as a force to be reckoned with in the Android market: they’re exceeded only by Apple as the premier provider of Smartphones (at least in terms of profits). It would make sense to try and diversify their market with a tablet utilizing a new OS, rather than stick to the same, tired iterations of Android. More ominously, this could signal a sea-shift in Samsung’s attitudes towards Google. Many have hypothesized that Samsung are attempting to distance themselves from Google, recently - though Google make a show of support for all adopters of their Android OS, Samsung has recently made the decision to utilize the Tizen operating system on their lower-spec Smartphones, despite the surfeit of older versions of Android (such as Froyo and Gingerbread) that are perfectly suited for this task. Samsung clearly want a little more autonomy in terms of software; or perhaps they’re just uncomfortable with putting all of their eggs in Google’s basket.
Whatever the case may be – whether diversifying their market share, or radically shifting dimensions into a new one entirely – Samsung’s tablet is slated for release in October, which will coincide with the release of both Windows 8 and Microsoft’s Surface tablet. They’ll have a lot of work ahead of them; with both a new OS to tinker with, and a hardy market opponent in the form of the Surface, diversifying into the Windows tablet market will be an uphill struggle. But assuming they can overshadow their Microsoft competition, Samsung stand to gain substantial profits from this move!
Even in its current, beta form, as demonstrated at I/O, Google Now appears to be a powerful application. For example, if you are waiting at a platform for a train, Google Now will automatically update your device with details of upcoming trains; and if it has stored your home address (or knows your destination), it will streamline results in order to find the fastest way there. The software is not infallible, of course – developers and reviewers noted that, occasionally, Google Now would offer suggestions which seemed counter-productive. One Google employee actually noted that, after several days of staying in a hotel room, Google Now decided that was his home and began tailoring directions and information in favour of it, requiring him to program it contrariwise. But for emergent technology, the things it is capable of are fairly startling, and it’s garnered near-universal acclaim for its clean, utilitarian UI, framing suggestions in the forms of pop-up ‘cards’ containing relevant information.
Like most of Google’s repertoire, however, detractors are leery of utilizing Google Now for one reason – privacy concerns. Waves of dissenters have noted that, in order for Google Now to effectively build up a dossier on your habits and details, Google has to harvest personal details about its users. This is nothing new; accusations of personal invasion have dogged Google for years. As the information supergiant diversified into new areas, they began to utilize their capacity as a search engine to other ends: nowadays, their main source of income is from advertising, and it sure doesn't hurt their various advertising campaigns by being able to harvest personal information about its users via their searches. Google itself has dismissed claims of negligence – or worse, 
So the question is - is convenience worth the cost of your privacy? If you have nothing to hide, is sharing your personal details with Google a risk-free proposition anyway – or is Google, like many detractors have claimed, equivalent to an isolated boy genius; capable of manufacturing incredible technological leaps but incapable of understanding the ethical and social ramifications of its own actions? We’d be interested in hearing your opinion on this nuanced topic in the comments section!
First up, the tablet we all knew was on the way, the Nexus 7. The specifications were exactly the same as were leaked in a training document earlier this week: a 7” screen, which gives the device its name; a front-facing 1.2MP camera, but no dedicated back-facing one; a 1280x800 IPS display; 1GB of RAM; Wi-Fi and Bluetooth availability; and a Nvidia Tegra 3 chip, enabling the quad-core processor which is, increasingly, becoming standard in top-end tablet and Smartphones. As you might expect from the size, the Nexus 7 is intended to counterpoint Amazon and their Kindle / Kindle Fire devices, which currently dominate the cheaper end of the tablet market – a clever marketing decision by Google, as it doesn’t tread on Apple’s feet by challenging the high-end tablet supremacy of the iPad. Nexus 7 is reportedly going to ship with Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, pre-installed: which brings us neatly to Google’s next announcement!
The Jelly Bean OS was officially announced as an incremental improvement to Android’s current OS, Ice Cream Sandwich. The largest new feature introduced is codenamed ‘Project Butter’, and is essentially software intended to improve Android hardware performance. Project Butter produces smoother animations, and improves touchscreen input recognition, as well as cutting down the speed on load times significantly. Google also managed to streamline their proprietary search interface by introducing a new search interface, which they call ‘cards’. Cards are intended to split up information into digestible and attractive snippets; for example, if you entered a number of appointments for July 25th and then searched for July 25th on your Smartphone, all of your appointments might be segregated by time. Or if you searched for a weather forecast, the display could be segregated into multiple cards displaying temperature, whether or not it is raining, barometric pressure, etc.
Google have introduced this card featured alongside a polished-up version of their voice interface software, Google Assistant. Though it doesn't yet have the sheen of Siri, Google Assistant is fast approaching the time when it will be competitive with Apple software – and the combination of clean card interface/vocal interaction offers an intuitive user interface light-years ahead of anything possible with Ice Cream Sandwich. The remainder of Jelly Bean’s innovations were largely incremental; changes like a polished-up home-screen, a superior camera application, Google Beam software to Bluetooth photographs and other media back and forth, and several other interesting utilities.
Finally, the Nexus Q. Though the Nexus Q was unveiled as Project Tungsten at I/O 2011 - and preliminarily linked to Android@Home, Google’s controversial plan to interconnect home appliances like cars, TVs and lights and have your Android Smartphone act as a ‘universal remote’ controlling them all – it was largely forgotten in the wake of other Google successes, or overshadowed completely by rumours of the Nexus 7. It was a real surprise for the Mobile Madhouse team when this spherical device was pulled out on stage. Essentially, the Nexus Q is a home media device: a black sphere with a built-in amplifier, which can wirelessly access music and play both music and video when hooked up to different devices. It’s intended to act as a gateway to Google Play, their online content distribution service, and streams music direct from the Cloud. When we predicted Cloud storage potential in Google’s future, we didn't quite have this in mind!
Streaming hubs have existed before, however. The main innovation of the Nexus Q lies in its manufacture – it is officially the first piece of hardware to be manufactured in-house by Google’s own design team. Though Google have always excelled at creating software (their open-source Android is adopted by companies as disparate as Motorola, Samsung and HTC), their true test has always been matching competitors like Microsoft, Amazon and Apple in the hardware stakes. But if the sleek and stylish sheik of the Nexus Q sphere is anything to go by, Google have nothing to worry about – they’ve passed the design test with flying colours, creating a product that Apple themselves would be proud to call their own. Though, with a price tag of $300 ($200 more than Apple TV, Apple’s version of a media streaming hub), it remains to be seen how many consumers will adopt the Nexus Q in the long-run.
So that’s Google’s I/O Conference in a nutshell – for now, at least. Its unlikely Google will be revealing any new hardware or software over the next two days, but it’s eminently possible that they’ll lay out their plans for the future, or spend their available time convincing developers of the boons of creating applications for the Android OS. We here at Mobile Madhouse can’t wait to see what they come up with next!
Unlike Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which is more about spectacle, showmanship, and the unveiling of new products, Google’s I/O (which stands for both input/output and “Innovation in the Open”, the I/O motto) is focused more on the technical side of things: it is designed primarily to appeal to developers. It features in-depth sessions and seminars, with the central aim of expanding Google’s internet and mobile phone market applications. Past I/O events have run the whole gamut of themes: from OpenSocial and the App Engine in 2008 to an onus on Google TV in 2010, Google have a habit of fixing their sights on a target and doggedly pursuing it, using the I/O as a platform to define their intent. But Google has two products that are always just in the background, defining and propping up Google themselves: their mobile phone OS, Android, and their proprietary Chrome OS, an operating system designed to run on only specific hardware from Google and its manufacturing partners (such as Asus). Given the way things have been going this year, we can make some educated guesses as to which way the wind is blowing!
First up is the Google Nexus 7 tablet. This is a definite showpiece: after an internal training document leaked online recently, revealing the design and specifications of the device, Google will really have to pull out the stops to ramp up some excitement for this long-anticipated tablet. Dubbed the Nexus 7 because of its 7” screen, this smaller tablet offering is designed to compete directly against Amazon’s Kindle in the budget tablet market, eschewing the more expensive tablet marketplace (currently dominated by Google’s chief competitor, Apple, and their ubiquitous iPad).
Secondly, the new version of the Android OS, dubbed Android 4.1, or “Jelly Bean”, if we’re following Google’s alphabetical/sweets naming scheme. Judging by the fact it’s Android 4.1 instead of Android 5.0, Jelly Bean will be an incremental update over the current Ice Cream Sandwich OS, providing a more polished experience and greater utility, but no real overhaul. Common consensus is that alterations will include Chrome becoming the default browser, a refurbished GUI, and the debut of Google’s long-rumoured voice interface program, currently codenamed ‘Majel’ after the wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Such a program could provide the edge that Google needs against Apple’s much-touted Siri system.
Finally, we can probably expect to see some expansion in Google’s Cloud-based storage systems. Out of all the “big three” developers (Google, Microsoft and Apple), Google are the company to embrace the potentialities of Cloud-based storage and computing the most fervently. It wouldn’t surprise us if an expansion to their Cloud storage services was imminent – though this news would be of little importance to the casual user, as the ability to rent out virtual servers to provide extra power for applications is something only the hardcore user (or developer) would be interested in pursuing. But for budding online businesses, such an expansion could be a real boon – and it would make sense to compete with Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon’s Cloud storage service, since Google are already going for Amazon’s tablet jugular with the Nexus 7.
But this is all speculation for now – we’ll have to wait until tomorrow for any real details. And just like a child at Christmas, we can’t wait to see what Google pull out of their sleeve!
Whatever the case may be, the design looks to be completely in tune with what we predicted in one of our previous blog posts – the 7 inch screen from which the device derives its name is capable of 1280x800 IPS display, as well as the requisite 1080p HD which consumers have come to expect from their tablets. The Nexus 7 will be running a 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor, which – along with its round 1GB of RAM – is likely to provide all the processing power that the casual user could desire. It should also ship with Android 4.1, the Jelly Bean OS which has caused so much hype and speculation recently. Though a dedicated camera is absent, a 1.2 MP front-facing camera is present; it’s probable that the more powerful back-facing camera was cut off during production to help keep the costs low.
The reason for that is obvious, of course – to stay competitive with the Amazon Kindle Fire (the chief competitor in the smaller tablet market), the Nexus 7 will need to be a ‘budget’ device, with a price tag lower than that of the Kindle Fire. The leaked document attached to the image of the Nexus 7 suggests that pricing will start at $199 (for an 8GB tablet) and run up to $249 (for the more muscular 16GB); and frankly, it’s likely you’ll need the extra storage, because there’s no microSD card slot present. On the flipside, the device has all the usual suspects in terms of connectivity, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3, meaning you’ll be able to hook yourself up to the internet at a moments notice to download films and TV shows at your leisure – just don’t expect to store too many of them at a time.
On the whole, then, the device is as we expected and predicted. Will it be a ground-breaking addition to the tablet marketplace? It’s unlikely. But will it be a classy (check out that chassis!), understated affair, shipping with all the specs the dedicated tablet consumer could want, making it a worthy opponent to Amazon and their ubiquitous Kindle? We here at Mobile Madhouse suspect it will. So check our site regularly if you’re planning on purchasing a Nexus 7 – we’re sure we’ll be first on the front line with a plethora of competitively priced Google Nexus 7 cases, covers and accessories!
What does this mean for the consumer? Given the lower version number, we can assume that Jelly Bean is going to be a less radical overhaul of the Android OS than previously anticipated. Images of the Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ seem to corroborate this, with new default wallpaper and a different version of Google’s search bar on the homepage, but few other differences from the standard ICS. We confidently predict Google to notch up a few additional features, too; it’s likely Chrome will become the default browser for the iOS at this point, and the drivers will probably be optimized to help save battery life, especially considering the surplus of new quad-core Android Smartphones like the One X and Galaxy S3 (which can run out of battery in a mere day of hard usage).
But if you’re looking for any kind of overhaul – whether in terms of software or UI - we’re afraid you’re going to have to wait for the Key Lime Pie update!
She can hardly be blamed; nowadays, Apple seems to communicate mainly via lawsuits and summonses instead of marketing communiqués. Their closed-source software policy appears to have spread to their public service department, which has remained clammed up about their legal tussles with companies ranging from Samsung, to HTC, to chief rival Google. And their publicity is suffering accordingly – many Android stalwarts are up in arms about their tactics, accusing them of bullying rivals and attempting to monopolize the Smartphone industry via legal harangues, instead of the quality of their products. Even many of Apple’s fans are beginning to turn against them: type in “Apple lawsuit videolog” into YouTube and you can peruse a selection of rants from disgruntled ex-customers, many of whom turned to Android devices to spite Apple, rather than any legitimate desire to own a One S or Galaxy S2. Apple’s traditional strategy of high emotional engagement with their established audience, at the expense of non-users (thus building a brand sourced on perceived elitism, allowing its users to feel elevated against ‘outsiders’), is beginning to work against it; they are alienating potential customers with their high-handed tactics.
All of which might be acceptable if there was any basis for these lawsuits, but many of the concepts Apple claims they have patented are absurdly broad. They claim, for example, the Samsung Galaxy S3 has breached the patent for Apple’s Siri software because it contains a voice input system. They claim similar things about the S3’s unlocking mechanism, because you have to slide your finger across the screen ala the iPhone. It’s hard to empathize with Apple on this; it wouldn’t really have made a difference if the S3 was unlocked via touchscreen tap, or a dedicated button – how does the S3 possessing a slide unlock damage Apple’s potential sales? Is it truly possible to patent the concept of voice activation input, particularly on a system developed completely separately from Siri? Were patents ever really intended to be “gamed” like this, used as weapons for the purpose of defeating competitors, rather than protecting original intellectual copyright? But their legal tussles with Samsung could just be the beginning of a slippery slope; similar lawsuits with HTC and Google risk making Apple a target for exclusion by all of their competitors. There may be a pre-existing flimsy alliance between Google and many Smartphone manufacturers (courtesy of its Android OS, which they utilize), but can you imagine the damage they could do to Apple if they put aside their differences and formed a full-on alliance to crush the technological giant that is fast becoming their common foe?
Currently, this is all hypothetical – Apple have yet to alienate their market to that extent, and they still possess substantial advantages over their competitors, such as a more unified operating system and a stronger, more cohesively marketed brand than Android. But the longer they persist in doggedly suing competitors rather than creating the groundbreaking products that made their name, the more and more distrust they will engender. It’s not hard to see a bruised and demoralized Apple overtaken by Android in the year 2014 or 2015. So here’s hoping that Mr Cook can rein in his legal lapdogs and focus on his R&D division before it’s too late!
There are obvious merits to a system like Android; parent company Google’s policy of allowing disparate companies to adapt the OS as they see fit means that massively more Android Smartphones are being activated every day – some estimates place it at over 900,000, or roughly 10 per second. But with so many Android handsets out there, it’s a strain for developers to create applications that are capable of running on multiple devices. For example, when Instagram – a popular application that made its name on the iPhone – initially launched on Android systems, it lacked compatibility with HTC’s flagship One X device; arguably the most powerful Android Smartphone on the market at that time. That would be equivalent to Instagram lacking compatibility with the iPhone 4S on release; it would curtail a massive amount of potential users.
Apple, by contrast, utilizes their proprietary, homebrewed iOS on their Smartphones. The numbers speak for themselves: while only 7% of Android users are utilizing Android’s most recent version, 5.0 (the Ice Cream Sandwich OS), more than 80% of Apple consumers use the iOS 5 (and are consequently poised to immediately upgrade to the iOS 6 upon release with no issue). For the majority of users, this isn’t exactly a deal-breaker; only the hardcore fringe of customers cares about having the most up-to-date operating system sheerly for the sake of it. What is a deal-breaker, however, is being unable to use the most recent and popular applications because your phone was left out of some anonymous developer’s calculations. And it’s impossible to deny that the risk of that happening is far greater for an Android device than an Apple device.
That’s the biggest difference between the two opposing operating systems – unity. While Android may have a vibrant audience (and unquestionably broader, in terms of market appeal, than Apple’s), their sturdy opponent has a much greater ability to shepherd their users towards the most recent versions of their device. But, as in all things, there is a trade off for this - at the top echelons of development, the iPhone becomes inferior to devices like the Samsung Galaxy S3 or HTC One X. While a much more consistent OS than Android, leaving the iOS in the hands of one company has made it less adapatable and spontaneous overall. So while Apple may snicker at the "nerds" who tinker with their devices to maximize performance, or the applications which make such software alterations possible, they're still able to milk much less out of their Smartphones than the dedicated Android user.
Though it seems like a dramatic schism, in practical terms the decision wouldn’t make much of a difference to Google. They’d stand to lose very little revenue; they might even gain, if Apple permits them to release a polished-up version of Google Maps via the Apple store. It’s an important decision, however, in terms of psychology, because it represents Apple throwing down the gauntlet to Google. Apple’s philosophy has always been a laissez-faire one; their closed-source iOS, their tight code and proprietary technology, all represent a company with the ultimate goal of standing on their own two feet, without having to rely on the software or hardware of any potential competitors (discounting the application store, which gains them a substantial revenue stream). They’ve had no issue with utilizing Google’s technology in the past - but now that they possess the capacity to take them on, and stymie Google at yet another turn, they have no qualms in doing so.
Google doesn’t appear to be worried, though, judging by their response – a glitzy media event in San Francisco on June 6th, at which they previewed some of the upcoming features of Google Maps. Their platform looks to be expanding rapidly, judging by some of their goals for the future: they’ve commissioned a whole team of planes to take 45 degree aerial photographs, ensuring the capacity to offer full 3D, fully scalable aerial map models of towns and cities in the future. Almost as impressive, though, was a portable, satchel-like device which permits people on the street to become vectors for the software, allowing Google to map narrow locations a car could not fit – in the future, they may even be able to offer full floor plans for buildings, based on this technology!
Of course, the language of business is a language of subtlety – neither Google nor Apple has made a public show of their burgeoning rivalry, despite it simmering under the surface for quite some time. (Some of the late Steve Jobs’ criticisms of Android in his biography go beyond scathing and straight into the realm of incendiary, however.) Google program manager Peter Birch even stressed the importance of the struggling partnership between the two companies, stating “I can’t really speculate on what the rumours may be” and “… we’ve been on Apple devices since 2008” when questioned on the possibility of a split. But actions speak louder than words, and we’re eagerly awaiting the outcome of this latest spat between the two Smartphone giants; will Apple’s map system be able to measure up to Google’s multi-million dollar counterpart? Or is this just the latest example of Apple’s dogged – and sometimes insane – determination to rely on nobody but themselves, no matter what the financial consequences? Only time will tell.
But as a site that manufactures mobile phone peripherals, our chief area of interest lies in Google’s mobile phone operating system – the freely distributed Android OS. Owing to this open-source policy of distribution, Google have successfully manoeuvred themselves into a position of supremacy in the Smartphone market; the concept of a mobile OS that can be tinkered with extensively is an attractive prospect for companies like Samsung and HTC, who incorporate their own GUIs to ensure browsing their unique phones is a singular experience. It’s the anti-iOS: unlike Apple’s proprietary operating system, which is singularly linked to the experience of owning an iPhone, Android prides itself on its diversity and usefulness across a broad spectrum of devices.
But Google, clever company that they are, know that there’s always room for improvement, and they’re looking to their competitors for inspiration. In the past, Microsoft attempted to run their Windows OS across different types of devices, such as tablets, phones and desktops, to provide a homogenous user experience, building up brand familiarity. Their efforts, sadly, failed. This stands in contrast to Apple’s successful policy of building up a brand through marketing, while utilizing thoroughly different operating systems for different devices – just compare the iOS, their iPhone operating system, to the OS X, the classic operating system of their wildly popular Macs. Keeping this in mind, Google are opting to move towards a gradual conflation of Android, their Smartphone operating system, and Chrome OS, their cloud-based operating system that recently debuted on their chromebook and chrometop devices.
It makes sense from a business perspective. In the past, Google had to adopt the simpler Android system for phones, because they lacked the processing power to run software as sophisticated as that found in the Chrome OS. But as Smartphones grow smarter, and prices gradually decrease, it’s becoming more and more cost effective and easy to premiere powerful, versatile software like Chrome OS on a device small enough to hold in one hand. But they don’t want to make the mistake that Microsoft did, which was, essentially, brutally ramming an operating system designed for desktops across platforms that simply didn’t complement it. So their plan is to smoothly and organically combine the two platforms, taking the best features of each to create a seamless (but still distinctive) browsing experience. Their Chrome web browser has already made its debut on Android 4.0, marking Google’s first steps into convergence; who knows what kind of conflated Chrome/Android powerhouse could be created by the time the 5.0 or 6.0 versions roll around?
It’s easy to lose yourself in the clouds (or perhaps simply place your head in cloud-based storage for a time) when thinking of such heady notions, but for the casual consumer, there’s likely to be little change. Google is a superb company ran by bright and forward-thinking people; they’re sure to retain the unique elements that make Smartphones and desktops special, no matter how similar the operating systems of each may become!
Though the platform is outsourced to different hardware vendors, in much the same way Android is, there’s no clear sense of that community that makes the Android such a singular experience; there’s a dearth of apps, and much fewer developers, compared to the Android’s surplus of both. There’s considerably less customization available as a consequence – meaning that despite having a business ideology similar to Google’s Android, the homogeneity and simplicity of the OS makes it seem a lot more like Apple’s. Compare and contrast this to the hardware of Windows phones, which, by and large, express the same degree of variation that you’ve come to expect from Android. The experience is not cohesive enough: it lacks the trademark focus of its competition.
Microsoft is certainly attempting to make up for this deficit; they’ve been making a real push to expand their market lately, contributing huge amounts of money to developers and even, in some cases, giving away devices in order to ensure that the prospect of developing for their company seems as attractive as possible. They’ve also updated their design philosophy: with the advent of proprietary, functional software like Metro (a clean and minimalistic UI, with easy window toggling to reduce confusion while utilizing multiple applications) and Bing (a multi-input search engine function that allows you to seamlessly blend touchscreen, voice, and vision input to fluidly search for content), they seem to finally be developing a market identity of their own.
Sadly, however, it still seems to be a market identity founded on the notion of compromise – compromise between the respective extremes of the open-source Android OS and the proprietary Apple iOS. Even at their most inventive, the Windows phone selection that presently exists is mid-range: mid-range in terms of specifications, mid-range in terms of price and, sadly, mid-range in terms of available features. Whether they can pick up the slack to eventually compete on an equal footing with their competitor’s remains to be seen; but, given the current climate of Smartphone development and programming, Microsoft would be better sticking to the desktop computer marketplace.
It’s a shame; a greater range of Smartphones can only result in more choices for the consumer. But in this system dominated by only two companies, it seems that consumers aren’t interested in choice; they’re more concerned with brand recognition.
This is a much cleverer route to go down. While the Kindle practically dominates the market of smaller tablets, no significant competition has arisen, yet, to challenge them. Consequently, a strong new contender could deal a serious blow to Kindle, and open themselves up to a much larger consumer base than they could if dealing with the (heavily diluted) market of 10 inch tablets. The downside of this is that the Google Nexus will have to have a very low price indeed to stand a chance against the mighty Kindle.
Amazon’s market strategy, after all, is to sell their Kindles at a loss, and recoup the price via digital media sales (the e-books and streamed movies that the Kindle is famous for). Google will, presumably, adopt a similar strategy in order to stay ahead of the curve. They have an advantage from the offset - while Amazon relies solely on digital media, Google can also rely on advertising revenue: their ubiquity in the realm of search engines, coupled with their ownership of video giant YouTube, means that they can heavily subsidize any potential losses by leaning on advertisements to recoup lost cash.
So that’s their strategy – what are the specs of their device? Well, we know it’s going to have a screen in the seven inch range: a Samsung-branded panel running at a 1024 x 600 resolution. We also hear that the Google Nexus will have an Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset. In terms of OS, it’s likely the Nexus will ship with Android 4.0, the Ice Cream Sandwich OS, but don’t be surprised if Google takes the opportunity to ship it with Android 5.0, the upcoming Jelly Bean OS. As the creators of Android, it would be a savvy and showman-like move for Google to include Jelly Bean on launch, as it would ramp up anticipation to fever pitch.
It would also make sense from a software point of view. Industry insiders report that Jelly Bean is intended to complement laptops, netbooks, and tablets; with Jelly Bean installed, those devices will be able to dual-boot both the Android and Windows OS. This permits a much greater degree of versatility, as you can switch between the intuitive, simple Android for swift tasks, and the more powerful (but less convenient) Windows OS when you need a bit of oomph.
With a launch date set for July, most people assume that Asus are set to be the manufacturer of the Google Nexus, an impression bolstered by insistent rumours that Google is looking for a manufacturing partner in the Taiwanese market. This is unusual, and even slightly ominous; Samsung built the last two Nexus mobile phones, and last year Google spent nearly £8 billion acquiring Motorola (reputedly to provide extra muscle – and patents - in their continual legal spars with Apple). Why opt for a different manufacturer to produce what is arguably their most important product yet?
Why not tell us what you think? Whether it’s about the specifications of the Google Nexus, or your conspiracy theories about why Google is utilizing Asus – throw ‘em in the comments below! Who knows - maybe you have some information we don’t!
