All About Android 162

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All About Android
Episode 162


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"Booty Call and Duty Call"
Hosts: Jason Howell, Gina Trapani, and Ron Richards
Guest: Andrew Martonik
Topic: The potential dawn of patent peace, Google buys more companies, iOS apps on Android, Google+ and Gmail app updates, and more.
Recorded: May 20 2014
Duration: 1:38:23

Transcript

Previous episode – Next episode

All About Android 162: Booty Call and Duty Call

Guest

News

IO schedule is live. Few big giveaways from some of the sessions:
Single 2 hour keynote, day 1
"What's New in Android" hints at a new version (duh)
Session on ART Runtime (moving closer to ART switch)
New Android Camera API
Lot's of Chromecast stuff
Some Android Wear
More sessions open up AFTER the keynote so spoilers rarely exist prior to that.
If you're not going, you can see what's live-streaming on the schedule - pretty much all the big stuff seems to be.
Is this the case of hell freezing over? IN the past week, two major patenty things happened. First, Apple and Google's Motorola Mobility group filed a settlement agreement where they plan to dismiss all existing patent lawsuits against each other. No cross-licensing agreement though. Apple and Google have also agreed to work on patent reform as well. This comes after countless cases between Apple and Motorola over the past few years, back to 2010. Each company bears its own court and attorney costs as a result.
And then, news broke today coming from the Korea Times that Samsung and Apple are having talks to settle their own patent disputes out of court, citing the recent verdict of the Apple/Samsung patent case in the US as a key reason for the resumed discussion. Florian Mueller of FOSSPatents said "Things should come to an end during the summer. Apple doesn't have an endgame strategy. Its agreement with Google shows that its management is looking for a face-saving exit strategy from Steve Jobs' thermonuclear ambitions that were based on a totally unrealistic assessment of the strength of Apple's patent portfolio,"
What do we think? Is thermonuclear way coming to an end? Might we see patent peace?
Businesses might soon have more reason to deploy Android devices thanks to Google's acquisition of Divide, which currently allows businesses to specify a portion of a device to act as full featured encrypted work space. That means an employee doesn't need to use a personal device AND a work device. So the work space can be managed by IT while leaving the personal space unseen.
Press release didn't cover Google's plans exactly. But integrating this functionality INTO Android could be a huge step for making the devices for Enterprise-ready. Samsung does this with its KNOX security features.
iOS apps on Android. Who wants some?
A video shows a proof of concept called Cider running on a Nexus 7 (2012) and slowly running the iOS apps Yelp and iBooks. Cider is able to copy libraries and frameworks needed to tell the apps that they are running on an Apple kernel. This is not virtualization, it's running "domestic and foreign binaries" on the device. (according to The Next Web)
Cider doesn't support things like GPS, cameras, cell phone radios, bluetooth, etc, as of yet. The six Columbia University PhD students developing Cider plan to continue their research and development to tackle these issues and more.

Email

Hi guys,

Great show. I'm not even in the android universe but I still listen/watch every week. My girlfriend's mum suffered from a stroke a couple years ago. She has been in a care facility since then. She's now becoming more independent however she can't quite communicate what it is that she wants to say. My girlfriend and her brother are worried that if she is out on her own and she call because something is wrong that they won't know where she is.

Any recommendations for an app that will work like find my friends does on ios? Thanks heap guys, keep up the great work.

Much love from Australia

Scott

Hardware

  • LG G3 announcement next Tuesday, pretty much all details already leaked
Here's the LG G3 in all it's glory, front, back, Titanium, Gold and White. And LG released this LOUD promo video teasing next Tuersday's announcement of the device.
Bought an HTC One M8 and want a reason to regret it? How about an new HTC One M8 Prime, in a full 360 degree rotating GIF, thanks to Evleaks. Bigger than the M8, more of a camera bump, but flatter design with less rounding on the corners. Evleaks also claims: 5.5" 2560x1440 screen, Snapdragon 805, 3GB RAM, category 6 LTE, waterproof design, case made of composite aluminum-silicon carbide. No timeframe as of yet.

OnePlus One - Andrew

Glass News

Some changes in the Glass department that might shape the next iteration of Glass: First, lead electrical engineer Adrian Wong left Google for the Oculus/Facebook team. He was a major asset to the team, holding 10+ patents and now he's moving on to arguably one of Google's biggest competitors.
Also, Ivy Ross will now head the Glass division, after holding high level marketing positions at Mattel, The Gap, Disney, Coach to name a few. This could be a move to take her leadership and make Glass appeal to the mainstream.

Apps

As we mentioned earlier, G+ for Android saw a major update today:
Big UI refresh
Auto Awesome stories- auto-created travelogues
On-demand animated GIFs/photobooth shots "Just tap the new plus button in Photos, and select either Motion or Mix."
Save to Google Drive
Instead of downloading attachments to your device which takes up valuable space, you can now save attachments directly to Google Drive. Files saved to Drive are easily accessible from any smartphone, tablet or computer.
Spam explanations
Have you ever wondered why a message ended up in spam? You'll now find an explanation at the top of every spam message.
Improved RTL support
If you’re an English speaker, you’re used to reading sentences from left-to-right. But there are a lot of languages out there that are written from right-to-left (RTL), such as Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. If you’re a speaker of one of these languages, Gmail on Android now looks and feels the way you'd expect with profile pictures and the navigation menu on the right instead of the left.
Faster access to the side navigation menu
It’s easier to get wherever you need to go in the app. While reading messages, you can now swipe from the left edge (or right edge for RTL languages) to quickly access your accounts and labels. You’ll also find Settings, Help, and Feedback in the side menu.
Google. They are the developers of Word Lens. As a result, the app and all language packs are currently free "for a limited time" so get em while you can.

Email

With the talk of Yahoo Digest last week, I have to step up a bit for Play Newsstand.

I've been using it since it came out a few months ago, at least once a day, to get news on just about everything. Aside from full the main channels, it will also pulls RSS feeds. The hamburger menu also allows you to jump to the original URL without a hassle.

Best of all, I can read C|NET without being constantly pestered by adds or being asked to sign into an account!

Ironically, the one thing I haven't used it for is reading magazines, because I don't subscribe to any... Ah, well. Love the show; keep up the good work!

Jim, Fort Worth, Texas

Android Arena!

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Production Information

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