All About Android 31

All About Android Episode 31

All About Android 31: Flip That Bird!

What devices should see Ice Cream Sandwich, Asus Transformer Prime, lot's of games, and more!

Guests

• Justin Eckhouse
  • cnet.com/android-atlas
• Mario Tapia
  • getjar.com

News

• What Would Andy Say (at AsiaD conference)?
  • The day after Samsung and Google had their fancy Galaxy Nexus/Ice Cream Sandwich announcement, Andy Rubin, Google's SVP of Mobile and Android guru sat down at the AsiaD conference and continued to drop juicy bits of info about the soon-to-release version of Android. *These are just a few snippits:
  • “Ice Cream Sandwich is the best we’ve ever done,” Rubin said.
• Ice Cream Sandwich update to start rolling out ‘a couple of weeks’ after Galaxy Nexus release
  • Andy stated that "a couple of weeks after" the Galaxy Nexus arrives, ICS updates should begin to rollout to other devices. Stay tuned for our hardware section for our best guesses as to who might see that update first.
• Related: Google confirms Ice Cream Sandwich will be open source, released publicly after Galaxy Nexus
• As for the hardware business, Rubin reiterated that a Google-owned Motorola would operate “at arm’s length” from the Android unit. thank god!
• RE: Android Market - “It’s going to get better exponentially very soon.”
• Rubin acknowledged it hasn’t always been as good as it should have been.
• “I recognize that we were a little behind.”
• “How come Android tablets have completely flopped in the marketplace?”
• “I wouldn’t say completely flopped,” Rubin said.

• A few other quick tidbits:
  • When asked about the lack of Honeycomb apps, Rubin said he doesn’t think there should be apps specific for a tablet, claiming that with ICS, all apps will run well on tablets.

• Walt Mossberg asked for a do-over of the Face Unlock feature. It worked this time around, thankfully.
• Android Chief Says Your Phone Should Not Be Your Assistant

• ICS - Things we missed or they didn't announce
  • Create Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks With Wi-Fi Direct
  • Ice Cream Sandwich supports USB game controllers and HDMI, turns your phone into full game console
  • Ice Cream Sandwich adds native stylus support to Android

• Guest interview: Mario Tapia, Get Jar (in-house)
  • GetJar: We've given away $1 million worth of premium apps

Hardware

• Hardware said to be getting ICS
• Tehnically, if a phone can run Gingerbread, it can run Ice Cream Sandwich.
• SAMSUNG: No official plans announced for upgrades yet
• Although, Google says Nexus S getting ICS for sure, possibly Nexus One too.
• MOTOROLA: RAZR to get updated to Ice Cream Sandwich in early 2012
• Motorola Confirms Ice Cream Sandwich for XOOM
• Motorola Droid Bionic will too, someday, according to rep on Facebook
• The ICS future of the rest of Motorola's phones to be announced 6 wks after Google releases it
• HTC: "As many HTC devices as possible" to be upgraded to ICS, no further details
• ASUS: Ice Cream Sandwich On Existing Tablets Before Year's End
• SONY ERICSSON: General plans to upgrade, no specifics

• Transformer Prime Landing Page Goes Live, Formal launch November 9
• NVIDIA’s new quad-core Tegra 3 processor, and keyboard dock
• The Galaxy Nexus' Super AMOLED display is a minus, not a Plus
  • SGS2 is SAMOLED Plus. Plus means each pixel has RGB. Galaxy Nexus is simply SAMOLED, meaning no RGB stripe. It's Pentile, as was the Nexus S and Nexus One, a cheaper approach that allows different pixels to share RGB between them. Anandtech has some fancy graphs that detail the reality when it comes to pixel density in the screen compared to the other players. Overall, they claim that if the pixel density of the SGS2 doesn't bother you, then this shouldn't either despite the presence of Pentile. ps: Pentile is exactly what I hated so much about the Bionic screen.
• Remember: Nexus S did too, and it was fixed with a software update

• Video Review: Droid Charge (4m38s)

Android Arena!

• Last Week's Poll
• This week's face-off: GAMES
• Justin - Battle Bears (FREE/$.99)
• Jason - Air Attack HD ($2.99)
• Eileen - Early Bird ($.99)
• Ron - Jenga ($2.99)

• This Week's Poll

Email

"Okay I have a question for the hive mind. My wife has an evo 4g. She was using the Calendar and contacts without syncing to a gmail account. She asked my to add a new gmail account that she is using with her students. After I added the new account her contacts and calendar data disappeared. I remove the new account from the phone and the data did not come back. Is there anyway to get the data back. My google searches have come up short. I don't care how technical the fix is, I just have to get her data back if its possible.

Thanks, Steve Hoos"

• Home,>Settings>Applications>Manage applications - sort by ALL and find Contacts and Contacts Storage. CLEAR DATA from both, Force Stop. Basically, make sure all buttons are greyed out. Reboot and sync should begin.

Sponsors

Ford

• ad times: :21-:34 and 34:55-36:25

Squarespace

• ad times: :34-:46 and 1:15:13-1:17:03

Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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