SAN FRANCISCO—We're live from Google I/O 2014, where Google has just taken the wraps off the next version of Android, dubbed the "L release." The new OS is Google's follow up to KitKat , which came out last October. "It has over 5,000 new APIs," Google's Sundar Pichai said, adding that the OS is "designed for form factors beyond mobile." The L developer SDK will be downloadable on Thursday, June 26, directly from Google, while the full public release is expected "this fall." Further Reading Google reveals “Android One” phones with no bloatware, automatic updates Android Design Lead Matias Duarte took the Google I/O stage to describe L's big UI changes, particularly Polymer, which offers new typography, grid structure, and colors by default. L brings prominent new animations throughout Android, most noticeably a "ripple" effect in messaging, phone dialers, and more. (The Android font "Roboto" sees a tiny tweak as well.) David Burke, director of engineering at … [Read more...] about Google previews next version of Android, codenamed “L release”
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At I/O, Google launches Android Wear, says Moto360 coming this summer
SAN FRANCISCO—While the Android Wear emulator has been out for months, Google said today at its I/O conference that the OS and hardware are now ready for consumers. Google is jumping into the wider wearables market with an Android-based OS designed for smartwatches and other wearables. Just like Android for phones and tablets, Android Wear is an OS that depends on OEMs to adopt and ship on their devices. Further Reading In-depth with Android Wear, Google’s quantum leap of a smartwatch OS Android Wear is primarily driven by voice commands and Google Now, which pops up cards it thinks would be useful on the home screen. Google's trademark "OK Google" hotword detection is here, and voice commands query Google and work the same way they do on Glass or Android. Android Wear's big leg-up on the competition is that it seamlessly works with every Android app, and unlike Samsung devices, Wear is compatible with any Android phone running 4.3 and above. Out of the box, … [Read more...] about At I/O, Google launches Android Wear, says Moto360 coming this summer
Huawei’s Android-baiting HarmonyOS will come to smartphones in 2021
Huawei has said its new version of HarmonyOS operating system will be ready for development use on smartphones beginning in December, and expects phones with the new software to come in 2021. Beyond this, HarmonyOS will be made available to other hardware makers for use on non-Huawei devices. Huawei Business Group chairman Richard Yu announced HarmonyOS 2.0, the updated version of its still-young software platform, on stage during the company’s annual developer conference taking place in China this week, along with the news of its impending arrival on smartphones. “The beta version of HarmonyOS 2.0 will be available for developers on September 10 for use on smart TVs, wearables , and in-car head units,” Yu said, “Later this year in December the SDK, documentation, tools, and simulators for HarmonyOS 2.0 will also be available for smartphones. So starting from next year, we will see smartphones with HarmonyOS.” HarmonyOS is Huawei’s operating system designed for all connected … [Read more...] about Huawei’s Android-baiting HarmonyOS will come to smartphones in 2021
With iOS 10, Apple has made the phone carrier less necessary than ever
Apple doesn't like carriers. It tolerates them because it has to, but year after year the company has committed to reducing the prevalence of the network providers in the its plans for the iPhone. For the first few years, Apple wasn't a semiconductor company, so it used minimally-changed components from Samsung and Qualcomm. Then, in 2010, it introduced the custom-designed A4; three years later, it introduced the world's first 64-bit mobile processor, the A7, a product so ahead of its time that Qualcomm pushed up its own plans for a 64-bit solution for Android users, with disastrous results . For Apple, carriers continue to be a necessary evil. Though Apple has managed to reduce its reliance on outside parties in the production, distribution and maintenance of the iPhone , without building its own infrastructure in every country in which it sells, working with the carriers continue to be a necessary evil. But disruption comes in waves, and with a … [Read more...] about With iOS 10, Apple has made the phone carrier less necessary than ever
You don’t deserve a nice phone: Misusing iPhone features
It is a sad fact of life that there are no standards for who is allowed to use an iPhone. If there were some kind of minimum, we probably wouldn’t have to deal with these kinds of problems. Writing for Fast Company , Mark Sullivan tells us “How Apple could easily fix the iPhone’s “cyber flashing” problem.” (Tip o’ the antlers to @designheretic .) This would be the problem that when people have AirDrop set to accept file transfer invitations from “Everyone”, they can receive invitations from — are you sitting down? — everyone. Having it set like this can be a problem because some people — it’s men — get a thrill from showing their gross bits to other people. Here the Macalope means their physical gross bits and not the gross bits of their souls, although they are also putting those on exhibition. Forgive the Macalope for thinking, however, that this is mostly a solved problem since, you know, you can actually change your AirDrop setting to “Contacts Only” or “Receiving … [Read more...] about You don’t deserve a nice phone: Misusing iPhone features