Wednesday
The browser wars have a new winner after major updates to platforms
Just a couple of months ago, Microsoft bragged with the performance of its IE9 browser after it blew competition out of the water in a browser benchmark fight plotted by Redmond itself. But two months later, iOS 5 is official, and we have a whole new ball game. Running Mobile Safari on an iPhone 4 updated to a beta of iOS 5 shows that there's a new winner in the browser battle.
Safari scored a whopping 31fps despite the fact that it runs on a handset with a higher resolution, dwarfing the 26fps result on the WP7 handset and the 15fps on Android. The iPhone 4 sports a screen rendering 640x960 pixels in comparison to the respective Windows Phone device which only had to support 480x800 pixels. Initially, Microsoft's browser claimed to succeed due to its hardware accelerated HTML5, but while Redmond's new platform is about to use new hardware, the iPhone 4 manages to outscore with its year-old silicon.
Tuesday
BMW electric vehicle Android app learns from your driving patterns
BMW is no stranger to integrating smartphones in its products, or using your iPhone, BlackBerry or Android device to provide Roadside Assistance.
It now takes the relationship between the BMW car driver and their smartphone to the next level, by outing the BMW EVolve app.
The goal by launching the app, which analyzes your driving patterns, is to determine if a BMW ActiveE, the company's all-electric vehicle, or some other upcoming engineering marvel, will be a good fit for your driving habits.
You can log on to a dedicated website, and submit the results to BMW's servers, while the car maker is calling all app users its Collective Engineers, who are helping it shape up the electric vehicles of tomorrow.
Friday
Microsoft releases Android developer poaching package for Windows Phone 7
Microsoft's App Guy has quite a job on his baby-soft hands: to boost Windows Phone 7's numerically-challenged Marketplace by encouraging developers to port apps across from other platforms. The little fellow helped iPhone devs out a couple of months ago with an API mapping tool to makes it easier to translate iPhone APIs to WP7 code. Now he's extended the mapping tool to work with Android APIs too, and backed it up with a 90-page white paper and a promise to get more involved in developer forums.
Thursday
Android Market attrition rate is twice that of Apple's App Store
Android, and the Android Market specifically, are growing at an incredible rate. Recent research from Distimo and research2guidance claimed that the Android Market was on its way to eclipsing the Apple App Store by the end of this year. But they failed to take the attrition rate into account.
The earlier research only factored in new app additions. But new analysis by AppsFire shows that the Android Market has an attrition rate twice that of the App Store. Of the 300,000 apps published in the Android Market, 32% of those have since been removed. But of the App Store's 500,000 total apps, only 16% have been removed.
So why is this the case? AppsFire says that Android developers might have a harder time monetizing their apps, or it becomes unprofitable to try and maintain them. The Android Market also has an easier process, as well as no $100 development fee. App Store additions, on the whole, tend to be more carefully brought to market.
GigaOM suggests that the Android Market is a better venue for experimentation, while the App Store is better for making money. And we tend to agree. The only downside to Android's openness is that it lends to many under-thought apps, and less quality/security vetting.
Android Market now shows which handsets are compatible with each app
With the new feature, those wanting a specific app on their phone won't have to read the text that is posted in the Market. Sometimes longwinded and too much of a hassle to go through, some developers slip in which handsets are compatible with a specific app, but like the fine print on a contract, it doesn't get read. The addition by Google of the device compatibility check will save Market users time and eliminate the aggravation of having to uninstall a recently downloaded app because it doesn't work on your phone.
Saturday
Android pulls two dozen virus-infected apps from the Market, over 30,000 users affected
Is Android becoming a virus haven? More and more malware-infected applications appear on the Market raising this question once again after Google removed 58 apps containing viruses in March. Just over the last weekend the company pulled an additional two dozen of them in an attempt to clear its application storefront. Mobile security company Lookout estimates the number of affected users between 30,000 and 120,000.
"This weekend, multiple applications available in the official Android Market were found to contain malware that can compromise a significant amount of personal data. Likely created by the same developers who brought DroidDream to market back in March, more than 25 applications were found to be infected with a stripped down version of DroidDream we're calling 'Droid Dream Light' (DDLight)," the company commented.
A developer tipped Lookout to put them in the know about modified versions of his applications being distributed on the Android Market.
The list of virus-infected applications as presented by Lookout follows below:
Developer: Magic Photo Studio
1.Sexy Girls: Hot Japanese
2.Sexy Legs
3.HOT Girls 4
4.Beauty Breasts
5.Sex Sound
6.Sex Sound: Japanese
7.HOT Girls 1
8.HOT Girls 2
9.HOT Girls 3
Developer: Mango Studio
1.Floating Image Free
2.System Monitor
3.Super StopWatch and Timer
4.System Info Manager
Developer: BeeGoo
1.Quick Photo Grid
2.Delete Contacts
3.Quick Uninstaller
4.Contact Master
5.Brightness Settings
6.Volume Manager
7.Super Photo Enhance
8.Super Color Flashlight
9.Paint Master
Developer: DroidPlus
1.Quick Cleaner
2.Super App Manager
3.Quick SMS Backup
Developer: E.T. Team
1.Call End Vibrate
Developer: GluMobi
1.Tetris
2.Bubble Buster Free
3.Quick History Eraser
4.Super Compass and Leveler
5.Go FallDown !
6.Solitaire Free
7.Scientific Calculator
8.TenDrip
The security company says that the listed application don’t require a manual launch for the virus to become active as it’s invoked on every phone action like a regular voice call. "The broadcast receiver immediately launches the .lightdd.CoreService which contacts remote servers and supplies the IMEI, IMSI, Model, SDK Version and information about installed packages,” the company detailed the security risks. "It appears that the DDLight is also capable of downloading and prompting installation of new packages, though unlike its predecessors it is not capable of doing so without user intervention."
It’s hard to protect yourself from malware on a mobile platform partly because virus-protection is not as wide-spread as on a regular PC, but there are a couple of steps which could help. Downloading apps from trusted sources, checking permissions required by the app, monitoring your phone for abnormal behavior and finally getting an app that would check your downloads for security are some of them.
Friday
SE promises 23 more games for the Xperia PLAY
Xperia PLAY owners are probably still busy playing the load of high-quality games that launched along with the handset and here comes Sony Ericsson throwing another bunch at them. The company has just announced 23 new titles that will be made available to the PlayStation-certified phone.
Minecraft is obviously the most popular of the bunch, but the rest of the titles seem pretty intriguing too. The hugely popular indie game will be an Xperia PLAY exclusive on Android, alongside nine other titles.
The other 13 games that the Xperia PLAY owners should look forward to won’t have the exclusive status, but are all high-quality time-killers. Not to mention that many of them would probably be much more enjoyable on the PLAY with all those buttons and joysticks.
And here goes the complete list as provided by the Sony Ericsson blog:
New Android Games Exclusive on Xperia PLAY:
•Minecraft™ by Mojang
•Battlefield Bad Company 2 by Electronic Arts
•Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6 Shadow Vanguard by Gameloft
•Desert Winds by Southend Interactive
•Ruined by Bigpoint
•Icebreaker™ by NaturalMotion
•Sleepy Jack by SilverTree Media
•Cracking Sands by Polarbit
•Armageddon Squadron 2 by Polarbit
•An unnamed fighting game from Khaeon Gamestudio
New Games coming soon on Xperia PLAY:
•Pocket Legends by Spacetime Studios
•Star Legends: The Black Star Chronicles by Spacetime Studios
•Eternal Legacy by Gameloft
•Guns 'n'Glory 2 by HandyGames
•Dungeon Hunter 2 by Gameloft
•Pocket RPG by Crescent Moon Games
•D.A.R.K. developed by Gamelab
•Samurai II: Vengeance by MADFINGER Games
•Vendetta Online by Guild Software
•Order & Chaos - Gameloft
•Happy Vikings by Handy Games
•A Ball Game by Trendy Entertainment
•Lumines by Connect2Media
Sunday
Apps selling in App Store and Android Market
iOS and the App Store have been in the forefront of monetizing from applications, but is the gap between the Android Market and Apple’s storefront closing? The latest report from market researchers Distimo suggests the contrary. Developers on iOS are enjoying a much more active ecosystem with regularly updated lists of apps by Apple and thus a higher chance to be noticed, while slow updates of app listings are in the core of Android remaining a place where users pick the free apps. To back up those claims, stats show that nearly 80% of paid Android applications can’t reach 100 downloads.
To worsen things further, there were only five games on the Market that have passed the 250,000 download threshold, while in the last two months alone, the App Store has registered ten games with over 250,000 downloads in the States alone.
“It is more challenging for developers in the Google Android Market than in the Apple App Store to monetize using a one-off fee monetization model. We found that only two paid applications have been downloaded more than half a million times in the Google Android Market worldwide to date, while six paid applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone generate the same number of downloads within a two month timeframe in the United States alone,” Distimo summarizes. What's your personal experience with iOS or Android, do you use many paid apps?
Microsoft gets $5 from every Android device sold by HTC
Microsoft has five times more income from Android for its patent fee than it has registered from its own Windows Phone platform. Some 30 million HTC Androids sold so far make for a total of $150 million solely from licenses for Microsoft.
In addition, another Citi analyst, Kevin Chiang, shared his estimate on Android device producers operating margins standing at 10% to 15% for handsets, while for tablets the number stood at the mere 2% to 3%.
To put it all in perspective, the average selling price of HTC-made phones hovers around the $360 mark, so that translates into a 1.39% share Microsoft snatches from the cost of the smartphone. If the software giant manages to force all phone makers to pay the patent fee, it would certainly swing the scales towards Windows Phone as Android would turn to be considerably less profitable.