Keane Ingram – Android blog

Google have updated the Android Market to become the Play Store. The Play Store incorporates apps, films, books and music (only in the US so far), and looks to be an attempt to take on Apple and Amazon at providing content across a range of devices.

To promote the new name, the store has a range of offers for 7 days. At the moment, you can buy the ebook of ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ for just 20p, and the popular game ‘Where’s My Water’ is also available for 20p. There are also a range of apps available for just 49p including World of Goo, SoundHound and SwiftKey X.

The big event in the technology world is currently taking place in Barcelona. The Mobile World Congress (MWC) has seen a lot of big reveals from the major players in the mobile industry. Here are some of the highlights from each manufacturer.

Samsung

Samsung aren’t giving away any details about the Samsung Galaxy S3 just yet, but they have announced the Galaxy Note 10.1, which is a larger version of the current Note, complete with stylus. They’ve also revealed the Galaxy Beam, a 4″ phone with a built in projector!

HTC

HTC have announced their new ‘One’ series of phones, which will become their flagship Android devices. It will be available with a variety of screen sizes and come in One S, One V and One X flavours.

Sony

Now missing the Ericsson name following their recent parting of ways, Sony is going it alone with the Xperia X and Xperia U. The Xperia range now seems to come bearing a white line across the bottom of the phone, which features the usual Android capacitive buttons. I don’t like the style, I have to say.

Asus

Asus have been busy, revealing the Padfone concept (a phone, tablet and notebook all in one) and the Transformer Pad Infinity, a faster, higher resolution version of the Transformer Prime.

Arobas Music have announced that the popular iOS app Guitar Pro is now available for Android devices. Their press release gives details of a special launch price for the app on the Android Market of €3.99 (£3.39).

Guitar Pro is an app that allows you to view, hear and learn guitar, bass and drum scores wherever you are, on your Android device. The app can reproduce the sound of over 80 instruments and also features useful things like a metronome, the ability to play sections of the score in loops and also share files via Wi-Fi and USB. This app is definitely recommended for musicians who would like access to their scores on their Android phones.

An interesting idea from Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu operating system, has been announced. Ubuntu for Android will allow owners of multi-core Android phones to use both Android and Ubuntu on the same device. By docking the phone at a workstation you can run the Ubuntu operating system, and when you’re using it out and about it will run Android. Both operating systems will have access to the same data.

The potential for this is enormous, and should drive mobile technology improvements as well as giving Android a big boost over competitors such as iOS and Windows 8. I will be very interested to see if this comes to fruition, it would definitely persuade me when choosing a handset to see if it was compatible with this.

Version 2.0 of the popular media player VideoLAN VLC is now available as a release candidate (download link is for Windows 32-bit) which offers new features including improved playback and a new interface. However, the most interesting part of the changelog is the mention of ports for Android and iOS devices. It will be interesting to see how the media player works on Android devices.

A beta version of Google’s Chrome browser is now available for download for Android phones and tablets, albeit only those running the latest version of Android, v4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich.

Chrome can be downloaded from the Android Market if you have an ICS device. It offers the following features:

• Faster browsing with accelerated page loading
• New tabs for browsing multiple pages
• Sync Chrome between your phone and desktop browser
• An ‘Incognito’ mode for private browsing.

I look forward to trying out the new browser once my phone receives the ICS update.

The latest bundle of games from Humble Bundle is now available – and this one is aimed at Android owners! All four of the games in the bundle work on Android phones, as well as also working on Windows, Linux and Mac computers. All of the games are DRM free and best of all is that you can pay what you want!

The four games included in the bundle are:

• Anomaly
• EDGE
• Osmos
• World of Goo

World of Goo will only be included if you beat the average price paid so far, which is currently $5.91. The RRP of the four games is $60 it’s well worth getting the bundle! World of Goo is a great game which I own on several different platforms (it was in a previous Humble Bundle), and Osmos has had excellent reviews as well. I look forward to getting the time to play these games!

A court in the Netherlands has rejected Apple’s calls for a ban on the product, clearing the way for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to be sold in the country. Today’s ruling by the Court of the Hague gives Samsung a minor victory, although there are still many other patent battles being fought around the world. One day, perhaps, these major IT companies will stop spending their money on legal bills and spend it on research instead?

The classic game Another World will soon have it’s 20th Anniversary Edition released on Android devices. The game, which is currently available on iOS devices, is being developed and published by DotEmu along with original developer Eric Chahi, and will feature HD graphics and remastered sound.

I look forward to getting a chance to play this on my phone – hopefully it will be optimised for the Xperia Play too.

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Asus have announced details of a new Android tablet. The Asus Eee Pad MeMO ME370T will have a 7″ screen with a resolution of 1280×800. It will also have a dual-core 1.2GHz CPU and run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Most importantly, Asus claim it will be sold for $250.

If the selling price is true, then this will hopefully give some impetus to the Android tablet market, and hopefully provide some much-needed competition for the Kindle Fire.