Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Flipboard for Android 'liberated' from Galaxy S III demo unit, available for all
Best Android-powered smartphones
After the post I did on the best Android-powered tablets the other day, I was expecting this question to land in my mailbox:
Because of that fact, I’m going to ignore price as a differentiator. All I’m going to say on the subject of pricing is that if you’re on contract then it might be worth you shopping about for the best deals. And for those of you not on contract who are looking to buy an unlocked handset, then you might want to sit down before looking at the price. Some of these handsets are very expensive.
Rather than price, I’m going to look purely at features.
Note that I am only covering handsets that are currently available — which is why the Samsung Galaxy S III isn’t in the listing.
An excellent all-round Android handset.
It’s also tough, constructed form DuPont Kevlar fiber and Corning Gorilla Glass, and features water-repellent nanoparticles to shield against water, even on the internal circuit boards.
Probably my favorite handset in the list.
The unique feature of this handset is that it can be combined with an optional $129 desktop dock to turn the smartphone into a webtop system running a bare-bones version of Linux.
In your — not so humble ;) — opinion, what are the best Android smartphones currently available?When I looked at Android tablets, price was a major factor in determining what was best. Smartphones are tricky because it’s almost impossible to compare them on price because subsidies vary from carrier to carrier, and even based on how good a customer they think you are.
Because of that fact, I’m going to ignore price as a differentiator. All I’m going to say on the subject of pricing is that if you’re on contract then it might be worth you shopping about for the best deals. And for those of you not on contract who are looking to buy an unlocked handset, then you might want to sit down before looking at the price. Some of these handsets are very expensive.
Rather than price, I’m going to look purely at features.
Note that I am only covering handsets that are currently available — which is why the Samsung Galaxy S III isn’t in the listing.
Samsung Galaxy Nexus
This handset tops my list for a number of reasons. First, it runs the latest Android 4.0 ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ operating system. It has a gorgeous contour display that has to be seen to be believed. It’s also unlocked, so you can use it on over 200 GMS networks worldwide.An excellent all-round Android handset.
HTC One X
Here’s another excellent handset powered by Android 4.0 ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’. It features a stunning screen, an excellent camera, and a superb built-in speaker system. When combined with AT&T’s LTE network, it also offers blazingly fast browsing.Samsung Galaxy S II
The first handset in this list not powered by Android 4.0. This one features the older Android 2.3 ‘Gingerbread’ operating system. Still, if you can look beyond the operating system, you’ll find that the Samsung Galaxy S II is a very capable handset.Motorola Droid RAZR MAXX
Another awesome handset powered by Android 4.0 ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’. This one comes fully-loaded with a fast dual-core processor, Verizon 4G/LTE high-speed data, and excellent battery life — enough for a 21-hour conference call.It’s also tough, constructed form DuPont Kevlar fiber and Corning Gorilla Glass, and features water-repellent nanoparticles to shield against water, even on the internal circuit boards.
Probably my favorite handset in the list.
Motorola Photon 4G
Another handset in this list not powered by Android 4.0, this one also features the older Android 2.3 ‘Gingerbread’ operating system. Don’t let the older operating system put you off, though; this is still a very capable handset.The unique feature of this handset is that it can be combined with an optional $129 desktop dock to turn the smartphone into a webtop system running a bare-bones version of Linux.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Introducing the Android for grid batteries: GELI
Networked energy storage will fundamentally disrupt the energy sector, Ryan Wartena, founder and CEO of Growing Energy Labs Inc
(or GELI), tells me in his startup’s small lab and office space in the
South of Market area of San Francisco. Wartena, a chemical engineer who
previously set up a battery lab within the U.S. Naval Research Lab
and led the team at MIT that created the world’s first self-assembled
battery, is a self-professed gear-head who’s eyes light up as he talks
about the elegant design of cylindrical batteries or when he shows me
the company’s research building self-contained grid battery boxes that
the company calls “energy computers.”
GELI is a recent grad of the new green digital-focused accelerator Greenstart, and as part of that incubation process, the two-year-old GELI has emerged with a new focus on software, and has developed an operating system and set of software to connect batteries for use on the power grid. Part of GELI’s software will be open source, and you can think of the idea as creating the Android for power grid batteries.
The future of energy storage
O.K., let’s step back a minute and look at a snap shot of the current power grid. Right now the grid has very little energy storage and power plants are basically producing the exact amount of energy that buildings and systems are consuming in real time. That makes the grid inefficient and also costly, and in addition the lack of energy storage is a barrier when it comes to adding less reliable clean power sources like wind and solar (the sun only shines and the wind only blows at certain times).
New forms of energy storage are starting to be added to the power grid to combat this problem, and batteries are one of the types of energy storage that utilities — as well as building owners and home owners — are looking at. Batteries are attractive to utilities because the charge and discharge of a battery can be tightly controlled, so grid operators can use the battery systems for various grid applications. For example, groups of batteries can store and discharge energy when a utility sees that the demand for energy is becoming out of balance with supply (called “frequency regulation in grid geek speak).
GELI enters this picture because a universal operating system and algorithms will be what utilities can use to smartly control the batteries and deliver these services. This software layer could also enable new types of applications — ones that haven’t even been invented yet — because a GELI customer could dream up their own application and write their own program. Picture something as out-there as peer-to-peer energy sharing if every home had a big battery and solar panels and the software to control the exchange, says Wartena.
GELI isn’t the only company building the software to connect batteries and other forms of energy storage or devices. A company called Grid Mobility has built software and connected hardware to enable utilities to use hot water heaters (and other energy-consuming appliances) as on-demand grid storage in conjunction with local clean power when it’s available. Tendril is also looking to develop a sort of Android for energy layer for home energy consumption, electric cars and the smart grid. (For more on this idea, check out our research note from GigaOM Pro (subscription required):
Are you GELI?
GELI plans to launch its beta software in the coming weeks to some initial customers like Korean battery maker Kokam. GELI is targeting battery manufacturers as its customers, and the battery makers themselves will be the ones that will sell the batteries to the utilities and building owners. Wartena says initial markets that he thinks GELI-enabled batteries will land in include homes and buildings in Japan, commercial and industrial buildings in the U.S., and utility grid services in the U.S.
Through the Greenstart incubator program, GELI raised a small bit of a seed round, but is now working on raising more money to kick off the business and start selling. The Greenstart mentors were also able to convince Wartena to pivot from selling just the hardware (the energy computer battery box) to focus on the software. But tinkering with the energy computers was crucial to the team for developing (and continuing to develop) the software. The EC1 and EC2 (energy computers 1 & 2) are in GELI’s SOMA labs, and Wartena gestures excitedly at EC2 during our interview.
Software seems like a better way to go from a startup perspective, as the margins are higher, and the business model is less capital intensive than hardware. In addition, the huge battery giants in Asia will likely be able to benefit more from the software innovations born out of Silicon Valley than they would from a design to package a battery system in a box (which is what the EC is). In fact, Wartena recently went to a battery show in Japan and realized that there are already dozens of battery box systems from established Japanese companies. Those are our first target customers, Wartena said.
The Energy Internet needs storage
The idea of the EC1 & EC2, though, could one day be more common place than you’d think. Japanese buildings and even homes are beginning to add more and more solar and accompanying battery systems, now that the country is no longer going to rely on nuclear. At the smart grid conference Distributech early this year Panasonic was showing off a battery box that strings together hundreds of small format lithium-ion laptop batteries; a couple of battery stacks would be enough for a single family home, combined with an inverter.
Last month I reported that Tesla and SolarCity have been quietly making deals that could one day lead to dozens of sales of battery projects coupled with rooftop solar systems built at both residential and commercial buildings in California. SolarCity confirmed the energy storage plans with me, and the duo have submitted at least 70 applications for projects to attempt to receive rebates from the California Public Utility Commission’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP), which provides incentives for distributed energy generation.
In the same way that computers and the Internet have been shaped by storage, a connected energy system will need to rely on storage, too. The energy grid is currently a centralized system, where energy is created and distributed from a centralized location by utilities. But eventually energy could form into a decentralized network with solar rooftops and microgrids, not unlike the architecture of the Internet. GELI wants to provide the OS for that energy Internet.
GELI is a recent grad of the new green digital-focused accelerator Greenstart, and as part of that incubation process, the two-year-old GELI has emerged with a new focus on software, and has developed an operating system and set of software to connect batteries for use on the power grid. Part of GELI’s software will be open source, and you can think of the idea as creating the Android for power grid batteries.
The future of energy storage
O.K., let’s step back a minute and look at a snap shot of the current power grid. Right now the grid has very little energy storage and power plants are basically producing the exact amount of energy that buildings and systems are consuming in real time. That makes the grid inefficient and also costly, and in addition the lack of energy storage is a barrier when it comes to adding less reliable clean power sources like wind and solar (the sun only shines and the wind only blows at certain times).
New forms of energy storage are starting to be added to the power grid to combat this problem, and batteries are one of the types of energy storage that utilities — as well as building owners and home owners — are looking at. Batteries are attractive to utilities because the charge and discharge of a battery can be tightly controlled, so grid operators can use the battery systems for various grid applications. For example, groups of batteries can store and discharge energy when a utility sees that the demand for energy is becoming out of balance with supply (called “frequency regulation in grid geek speak).
GELI enters this picture because a universal operating system and algorithms will be what utilities can use to smartly control the batteries and deliver these services. This software layer could also enable new types of applications — ones that haven’t even been invented yet — because a GELI customer could dream up their own application and write their own program. Picture something as out-there as peer-to-peer energy sharing if every home had a big battery and solar panels and the software to control the exchange, says Wartena.
GELI isn’t the only company building the software to connect batteries and other forms of energy storage or devices. A company called Grid Mobility has built software and connected hardware to enable utilities to use hot water heaters (and other energy-consuming appliances) as on-demand grid storage in conjunction with local clean power when it’s available. Tendril is also looking to develop a sort of Android for energy layer for home energy consumption, electric cars and the smart grid. (For more on this idea, check out our research note from GigaOM Pro (subscription required):
Are you GELI?
GELI plans to launch its beta software in the coming weeks to some initial customers like Korean battery maker Kokam. GELI is targeting battery manufacturers as its customers, and the battery makers themselves will be the ones that will sell the batteries to the utilities and building owners. Wartena says initial markets that he thinks GELI-enabled batteries will land in include homes and buildings in Japan, commercial and industrial buildings in the U.S., and utility grid services in the U.S.
Through the Greenstart incubator program, GELI raised a small bit of a seed round, but is now working on raising more money to kick off the business and start selling. The Greenstart mentors were also able to convince Wartena to pivot from selling just the hardware (the energy computer battery box) to focus on the software. But tinkering with the energy computers was crucial to the team for developing (and continuing to develop) the software. The EC1 and EC2 (energy computers 1 & 2) are in GELI’s SOMA labs, and Wartena gestures excitedly at EC2 during our interview.
Software seems like a better way to go from a startup perspective, as the margins are higher, and the business model is less capital intensive than hardware. In addition, the huge battery giants in Asia will likely be able to benefit more from the software innovations born out of Silicon Valley than they would from a design to package a battery system in a box (which is what the EC is). In fact, Wartena recently went to a battery show in Japan and realized that there are already dozens of battery box systems from established Japanese companies. Those are our first target customers, Wartena said.
The Energy Internet needs storage
The idea of the EC1 & EC2, though, could one day be more common place than you’d think. Japanese buildings and even homes are beginning to add more and more solar and accompanying battery systems, now that the country is no longer going to rely on nuclear. At the smart grid conference Distributech early this year Panasonic was showing off a battery box that strings together hundreds of small format lithium-ion laptop batteries; a couple of battery stacks would be enough for a single family home, combined with an inverter.
Last month I reported that Tesla and SolarCity have been quietly making deals that could one day lead to dozens of sales of battery projects coupled with rooftop solar systems built at both residential and commercial buildings in California. SolarCity confirmed the energy storage plans with me, and the duo have submitted at least 70 applications for projects to attempt to receive rebates from the California Public Utility Commission’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP), which provides incentives for distributed energy generation.
In the same way that computers and the Internet have been shaped by storage, a connected energy system will need to rely on storage, too. The energy grid is currently a centralized system, where energy is created and distributed from a centralized location by utilities. But eventually energy could form into a decentralized network with solar rooftops and microgrids, not unlike the architecture of the Internet. GELI wants to provide the OS for that energy Internet.
Flipboard for Android on the Samsung Galaxy S III
The Flipboard application, which reorganises the message
streams from Twitter accounts on the page so that they read like
magazine pages, started out on iOS by creating an original presentation
style for news.
It was so good that Google used it as inspiration when they created their own Google Flux / Google Currents application which has been available for a few weeks. This is the second well known applications to make the move, following the Instagram picture sharing application, the original application to move to Android after taking a solid position on Apple’s devices.
To start on this new platform, the application will be initially present on the new Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone. The South Korean manufacturer will have exclusive access to this application for a few months on their top of the line model.
The developer is then looking to release the application to other Android smartphones (although not all models) by the summer, although no other information was provided. Samsung, who has just released the technical characteristics of their smartphone and details of their interface based on user’s needs, has found a way to differentiate their product with the original application, even if other alternatives exist for the platform.
It was so good that Google used it as inspiration when they created their own Google Flux / Google Currents application which has been available for a few weeks. This is the second well known applications to make the move, following the Instagram picture sharing application, the original application to move to Android after taking a solid position on Apple’s devices.
To start on this new platform, the application will be initially present on the new Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone. The South Korean manufacturer will have exclusive access to this application for a few months on their top of the line model.
The developer is then looking to release the application to other Android smartphones (although not all models) by the summer, although no other information was provided. Samsung, who has just released the technical characteristics of their smartphone and details of their interface based on user’s needs, has found a way to differentiate their product with the original application, even if other alternatives exist for the platform.
Best Android-powered tablets
Question from yesterday’s Hardware 2.0 mailbox is one that I’ve been receiving in a variety of forms for months:
While I firmly believe that the iPad is the best tablet out there, there are some fantastic Android tablets on offer. You’ve not offered a budget so I’ll suggest a range of tablets starting at $199, and going all the way up to $599.
For $100 more than Amazon’s Kindle Fire or Barnes & Noble’s Nook, this tablet it worth taking a look at.
Price: $300.
The ease of use of the device, combined with the Amazon brand and the low price, has made the Kindle Fire a very popular choice among those looking for an Android tablet.
Price: $199.
Price: $599.
Price: $199.
Price: $199.
Compared to the ASUS Transformer TF300 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, this tablet is overpriced from a hardware specification standpoint, but if you want a rugged, waterproof tablet, this is worth a look.
Price: $500 (contract-free).
“I want to buy a tablet, but I do not want to get an iPad. I’ve got nothing against the iPad itself, it’s just that I have an Android smartphone and juggling two platforms is going to get both complicated and expensive.Your reason for not wanting to buy an iPad makes sense. As someone who has standardized on iOS hardware, I have to agree with you that one mobile platform is much easier to handle than two. If nothing else, it reduces your costs by allowing you to buy an app once, and then go on to install it on multiple devices. Juggling between two different mobile platforms would mean having to buy all those must-have apps twice.
What do you suggest I look at?”
While I firmly believe that the iPad is the best tablet out there, there are some fantastic Android tablets on offer. You’ve not offered a budget so I’ll suggest a range of tablets starting at $199, and going all the way up to $599.
ASUS Transformer TF300
If you want a tablet that transforms into a notebook, then this is the tablet for you. Through the use of the optional keyboard dock ($149), not only can you add a keyboard and touchpad, but you also get 5 hours of extra battery life.For $100 more than Amazon’s Kindle Fire or Barnes & Noble’s Nook, this tablet it worth taking a look at.
Price: $300.
Amazon Kindle Fire
Amazon’s Kindle Fire has come from nowhere to become the number one Android tablet in the United States. It runs a heavily customized version of Android that doesn’t look or feel like any other version out there.The ease of use of the device, combined with the Amazon brand and the low price, has made the Kindle Fire a very popular choice among those looking for an Android tablet.
Price: $199.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1
The Galaxy Tab 2 is a revamp of the original tablet. It’s not as much of a reworking as some were expecting, and more of an evolutionary step than a revolutionary one, but it’s still a good upgrade to what was already an excellent tablet. A premium tablet with a premium price tag.Price: $599.
Lenovo IdeaPad A1
Lenovo’s 7-inch IdeaPad A1 is a compact yet rugged multimedia tablet that runs the Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” operating system. The A1 is also durable, and features a magnesium alloy roll-cage internal frame that protects the critical system components in case of accidents or jolts.Price: $199.
Barnes & Noble Nook
The Nook is Barnes & Noble’s answer to Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Like the Kindle Fire, the Nook is essentially a conduit into the digital content that Barnes & Noble has to offer.Price: $199.
Pantech Element
This is the tablet for those who like to take their electronic devices into the outdoors. The Pantech Element is waterproof against incidental exposure to water when all ports — including USB and earphone ports — are tightly closed, and is submersible up to 1 meter for up to 30 minutes.Compared to the ASUS Transformer TF300 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, this tablet is overpriced from a hardware specification standpoint, but if you want a rugged, waterproof tablet, this is worth a look.
Price: $500 (contract-free).
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Google Could Have Used C# for Android: Xamarin
Xamarin, in an experiment, proves that .NET and C# could be used instead of Java for Android – to better effect performance-wise – enabling Google to sidestep patent issues.
Xamarin has ported Google’s Java-based Android software to use C# and the .NET framework.
In light of the ongoing legal battle over Java
between Google and Oracle, this development proves that there are
options for Google if Oracle triumphs.
The research project, called XobotOS, ported
Android 4.0 from Java/Dalvik to C# to explore the possibilities of
improving the performance and memory footprint benefits that C# brings
in by leveraging the best parts of .NET/C# – such as real generics,
P/Invoke, structures etc. And they have opened the source code for it
under Apache 2.0 License.
Xamarin CTO Miguel de Icaza, in a blog post about the project, said:
“Java is not the only way to build native apps on Android. In fact, it’s not even the best way: we have been offering C# to Android developers
as a high-performance, low-battery consuming alternative to Java. Our
platform, Mono, is an open source implementation of the .NET framework
that allows developers to write their code using C# while running on top
of the Java-powered operating system, and then share that same code with iOS and Windows Phone.”
Indeed, de Icaza added that “Unlike Sun with Java, Microsoft submitted C# and the .NET VM for standardization to ECMA and saw those standards graduated all the way to ISO strong patent commitments. The .NET framework is also covered by Microsoft’s legally binding community promise.”
Indeed, in a 2005 email Google’s Android chief Andy
Rubin told Google co-founder Larry Page: “If Sun doesn’t want to work
with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR
[Common Language Runtime] VM and C# language, or 2) Do Java anyway and
defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way.”
De Icaza said Android’s Dalvik is a young virtual
machine and is not as tuned or performant as Xamarin’s Mono. So the
Xamarin team set out to swap Java with C# and avoid the Dalvik
limitations. Thus far, the result is that the team has most of Android’s
layouts and controls entirely in C#, de Icaza said.
The team started with a Java translation tool called Sharpen from db4o,
which is an open source Java to C# converter. In the process, the
Xamarin team matured the Sharpen tool to improve its Java-to-C#
translation capabilities and on May 1 released a new version of Sharpen
along with the code for XobotOS. XobotOS is available on Github.
As a result of their efforts, Mono now blows Dalvik
away in benchmark tests, de Icaza said. However, “Our goal as a company
is to provide the best platform for building mobile apps, and so
XobotOS will not be a focus for us going forward,” de Icaza said.
However, a de Icaza added that few technologies have come out of the
effort that Xamarin will be able to include in future versions of its
products:· Direct Graphics Access to Skia: Currently Mono for Android accesses the underlying graphics libraries through Java, with the code that we built for XobotOS, we will skip the middleman and use Mono’s P/Invoke to get straight to the native rendering code in Skia.
· Java to C# tooling: Our new version of Sharpen is available as part of the XobotOS release.
· Replacing Java code with C# code we now have the tools necessary to replace some chunks of Java code with C# code where performance is critical and when C# can offer better solutions than Java has. Our plan is to take elements of the research project and integrate those into our products.
Hacked websites with malware target Android devices
A new batch of hacked websites pose a new threat to mobile devices
running Google's Android operating system, a computer security firm
warned.
Lookout said
the sites serve "NotCompatible," a new Android Trojan that appears to
serve as a simple TCP relay and proxy while posing as a system update.
"This threat does not currently appear to cause any direct harm to a
target device, but could potentially be used to gain illicit access to
private networks by turning an infected Android device into a proxy," it
said.
Potentially, it said an infected Android
device may be used to gain access to normally protected information or
systems, "such as those maintained by enterprise or government."
Also, it pointed out this appeared to be the first time that
compromised websites have been used to distribute malware targeting
Android devices.
Lookout said that if a user
visits a compromised website from an Android device, the mobile web
browser will automatically begin downloading the NotCompatible app named
"Update.apk."
But a user will still need to install the downloaded application before a device will be infected.
To actually install the app to a device, it must have the “Unknown
sources” setting enabled. If the setting is not enabled, the
installation will be blocked.
"Based on our
initial investigation, we’ve confirmed that a number of websites have
been compromised. However, affected sites appear to show relatively low
traffic and we expect total impact to Android users to be low," it
added.
Lookout said suspicious applications are currently served from the following sites:
- gaoanalitics.info
- androidonlinefix.info
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