Android distribution in June: Gingerbread doubles again

Google just updated the Android version distribution charts and confirmed the continued exponential growth of Gingerbread. The latest smartphone version of the platform has managed to more than double its market for a second month in a row and is now the second most popular Android release.

The first Android Gingerbread (2.3), which was skipped by most manufacturers actually lost 0.1 percent points of its market share, but its updated 2.3.3 and 2.3.4 versions have gained 9.5 percent points and has moved to second place ahead of Android 2.1 Eclair.

With lots of phones getting their updates and a bunch of hot new handsets running Gingerbread hitting the market it’s not hard to see where this growth is coming from. Yet we have to admit we are a bit surprised by its speed.

Froyo is still the most popular Android version worldwide and Gingerbread will need some more time to catch up. Still after slipping 5.2 percent points Android 2.2 has lost almost a third of its advantage in just one month.

Version	Market Share, 1 June	Market Share, 5 July	Change
1.5 Cupcake	1.9%	1.4%	▼0.5%
1.6 Donut	2.5%	2.2%	▼0.3%
2.1 Eclair	21.2%	17.5%	▼3.7%
2.2 Froyo	64.6%	59.4%	▼5.2%
2.3 Gingerbread	1.1%	1.1%	▼0.1%
2.3.3 Gingerbread	8.1%	17.6%	▲9.5%
3.0 Honeycomb	0.3%	0.4%	▲0.1%
3.1 Honeycomb	0.3%	0.5%	▲0.2%

The outdated Android smartphone distributions are, unsurprisingly, continuing their way down, with 1.5 Cupcake, 1.6 Donut and 2.1 Eclair losing a total of 4.5 percent points of their market share. Their shares now stand at 1.4%, 2.2% and 17.5% respectively.

Finally the tablet-ready Android Honeycomb is continuing to make baby steps forward, gaining 0.3 percent points this month. The later distribution, 3.1, is now holding a 0.5% share, while 3.0 has gained 0.1 percent points to a total of 0.4%.

With Android daily activations now over 500000 we expect to see the current trends carry over in the upcoming couple of months. Gingerbread will certainly continue catching up with Froyo, which is now past its peak. If manufacturers and carrier do a good job of the expected updates we might see Android 2.2 and 2.3.3 neck and neck in a just a couple of months.

At that point Cupcake will probably have dropped out of the picture, while Donut will be close to 1% market share. The Honeycomb growth is rather hard to predict, but it will probably continue at about the rate we saw over the past two months, until Android slates prices drop a bit.

Motorola Droid HD gets leaked by its own camera

This one is definitely close to the top of the list of our favorite rumors of upcoming devices, which we have encountered to date. A mysterious, yet unannounced handset by Motorola found its way on the popular photo sharing site Flickr through its camera unit.

As you can see from the above picture, the device in question bears the name Droid HD. What makes this rumor so relevant it the location where the picture was taken (by the way, it is no longer online) - Libertyville, Illinois is a location of a Motorola campus. This fact makes the rumor as legitimate as it gets these days.

Now on with the Motorola Droid HD. As far as specs of the phone are concerned, we currently know, well, pretty much nothing. The name creates certain associations with an HD capable screen, much like the one which is rumored to land in the third Nexus phone in terms of resolution. Of course, it might just be a large 4.5" qHD unit as well.

There is a word in rumorland that the device in question might be the highly anticipated Droid Bionic for Verizon Wireless - an LTE packing, dual-core beast which is still yet to come.

At this point however, our guess is as good as yours. Feel free to tell us what you make of this picture in the comments section below.

Orange to launch QWERTY Android phone in the UK

Orange is going to launch a new Android based phone in UK. Called the Barcelona, the device will feature a 2.6-inch touchscreen display, below which is a full QWERTY keypad. On the back is a 3.2 megapixel camera.

The Barcelona also has other features such as HSDPA, Bluetooth, HD Voice, GPS, Orange Maps, FM radio and video calling, all in a 9.9mm thick body. The Barcelona will be running on Android 2.2 Froyo.

The Barcelona will be offered for free on select monthly plans and at a price for PAYG customers. Orange is yet to reveal the plans for the device.

Motorola Droid 3 for Verizon leaks out in tutorial videos

Verizon Wireless and Motorola did a great job in keeping the highly anticipated Motorola Droid 3 a well guarded secret. Until today at least. The upcoming Android handset showed itself completely in a series of tutorial videos and left nothing to our imagination, at least as far as looks are concerned.

The videos confirm the 8MP camera on the handset. It will be capable of recording 1080p videos as well. On the left side of the device, you get a microUSB and HDMI connectors much like another Droid by Motorola - the X2. The right side of the device will host two volume keys. There is no camera shutter button on the smartphone.

There is a five-row QWERTY keyboard with a dedicated row for numbers only. In case you get bored with it, there will be a virtual keyboard at your disposal too.

There is no info on the CPU in the Droid 3, or the screen resolution. We suspect, they will be Tegra 2 and qHD respectively. The Android version is unknown too since all the videos note that the software shown is not final.

Huawei Ideos U8150: Budget Android 2.2 Smartphone for Rs. 8,499

Huawei is knows a lot for their really cheap communications equipment. To continue the legacy and to join the race of cheaper Android smartphones they announced the launch of their Android master piece ‘IDEOS’.

IDEOS comes preinstalled with Froyo (Android 2.2) and has a 2.8” full capacitive touch screen display. Its equipped with a 3.2Mp and has impressive finish. Its bundles with rest of the Android necessary hardware stuffs such as 3G, WIFI, proximity and accelerometer. Lets have a look at the detailed specification below.

Huawei Ideos U8150 Specifications

Processor	Qualcomm MSM 7225 528 MHz processor
OS	Android 2.2 ‘Froyo’
Memory	256 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM
Camera	3.15 MP, 2048×1536 pixels
Display	2.8′” (240×320) capacitive touchscreen display
Connectivity	GPRS, EDGE, 3G, Wi-Fi MicroUSB
Storage	Internal 2Gb, expandable upto 32GB
Battery	Standard Li-Ion 1200 mAh battery
Stand-by	280 hours
Talk time	8 hours

Huawei Partners with Aircel

Huawei has launched their IDEOS in collaboration with one of the India’s leading mobile operator company Aircel. They have bundled a 2Gb internet pack with the smartphone for their prepaid and postpaid customers.

Price and Verdict

As I have mentioned above the phone is a really cheap for just Rs. 8,499. Although it has not yet outbid Micromax’s Andro which comes for just Rs. 6,999. The estimated battery life of the phone is also good which is a real concern for Android devices. Definitely if you want an Android in your pockets at a cheaper price I vouch for it .

Huawei Ideos U8150: Android 2.2 Phone Personal Opinion and Hands on Review

Android is quite a rage now in Smartphone market. We got to try our hands on Huawei’s Android 2.2 Smartphone – Ideos launched recently in India. People who always want a Phone easy on pocket with average features and that too Android, then Ideos is best bargain.

Android 2.2 Phone under 10K, 2.8 inch capacitive touchscreen with fair display clarity, Average Photo and Video capturing quality, 3G, WiFi and colorful back covers could be some tags to define what Huawei Ideos is all about. Let’s go in detail about each aspect of the device.

Display and Touchscreen

2.8 inches with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels which is not that enough. TFT Screen, though has wide angle viewing but it is difficult to operate in bright sunlight.

Touchscreen response is fair; You may have to press instead of just tapping and things become worst while scrolling. But, there is a good thing that you can move on screen with help of 4 way joystick button. May be Huawei was aware of this so, they introduced both touch and buttons.

Interface

Don’t know whether Huawei developed their own User Interface but it looked like Android Stock User Interface. On Homescreen, Widgets can be added just by keeping tapped at one point. App shortcuts can be added to homescreen by keeping tapped on icon in drawer and deleted by swiping them to bottom of screen.

Gallery view however is not that attractive but simple and importantly, you CANNOT browse photos by sliding finger to see next.

Web Browsing and Maps becomes mess without Pinch Zoom support.

Android based Sharp slider coming Stateside on AT&T

Pictures of a yet to be announced Sharp slider phone have surfaced and it is said to be running on Android.

This phone that looks remarkably like a Sidekick, but is probably the successor of last year's Sharp FX for AT&T. The new guy should come with a 3.2-inch HVGA display, GSM/WCDMA connectivity, Wi-Fi, GPS and of course, a full QWERTY keyboard. The phone is supposed to launch on the AT&T network in the US.

Android distribution in May: Gingerbread more than doubles

We just got the updated Android platform version distribution chart and it shows that the latest smartphone edition of the Google OS is gaining momentum. Android 2.3 and 2.3.3 Gingerbread have more than doubled their total market share and are rapidly closing on 2.1 Eclair for the second spot.

The first Gingerbread build, 2.3, hasn’t improved dramatically (just 0.1%) as it was simply skipped by most manufacturers, but it's the newer and better revision, the V2.3.3, that surged 5.1% in just a month.

Seeing that the dominant Android 2.2 Froyo actually lost some ground this month we can see that some of the Gingerbread progress is due to updates, but a host of new smartphones released over the past month has helped too.

Anyway, even after the 1.3% slip, Froyo is still running on almost two thirds of the droids out there and it will remain like that for a while given the 43.4% lead over the second most popular distribution.

Version	Market Share, 2 May	Market Share, 1 June	Change
1.5 Cupcake	2.3%	1.9%	▼0.4%
1.6 Donut	3.0%	2.5%	▼0.5%
2.1 Eclair	24.5%	21.2%	▼3.3%
2.2 Froyo	65.9%	64.6%	▼1.3%
2.3 Gingerbread	1.0%	1.1%	▲0.1%
2.3.3 Gingerbread	3.0%	8.1%	▲5.1%
3.0 Honeycomb	0.3%	0.3%	0.0%
3.1 Honeycomb	0.0%	0.3%	▲0.3%

What’s more, that second placed Android version at the moment is the outdated 2.1 Eclair, which is, as expected, declining much faster than Froyo. In May Eclair lost 3.3%, which is pretty big and that’s more than it lost in April so the trend is picking up pace.

The two oldest still active Android distributions, 1.5 Cupcake and 1.6 Donut, are also continuing on their way down, losing another 0.4% and 0.5% respectively. They now have 4.4% of market share between them so we suspect they will be long forgotten by the time Android Ice Cream Sandwich comes out. As a matter of fact, Cupcake will probably be there by the end of the summer.

Finally, we come upon the tablet-friendly Android Honeycomb, which is finally starting to make its presence felt. Its 3.0 release has kept a 0.3% market share, but in just two weeks after its announcement the 3.1 build has matched that, doubling the total Honeycomb market share in the process.

With the Asus Eee Pad Transformer availability promised to improve and the two ultra-slim Galaxy Tab slates (8.9 and 10.1) just about to hit the shelves, Honeycomb still hasn’t revealed its full potential.

Also the Gingerbread share is improving much faster than expected, so we'll probably see it breathing down Eclair’s neck as soon as the end of June. Froyo is too beyond its peak, but we don’t expect too rapid a shrink in its market share for at least another month or two.

The future of Android 2.2 Froyo will mostly depend on carriers providing timely updates for their most popular handsets. Here’s hoping that Gingerbread will be in the lead by the time the world gets to taste an Ice Cream Sandwich from the Google freezer.

Huawei to announce MediaPad tablet at CommunicAsia

Huawei has just announced its plans to present a new tablet called MediaPad at the upcoming CommunicAsia expo in Singapore. It will most probably run on Android and will be part of their IDEOS lineup.

While the hard facts are scarce at this time, at least we have press photos of the tablet.

Huawei MediaPad

Huawei claims that "the MediaPad is our smartest, smallest and lightest tablet ever – guaranteed to transform the consumer’s entertainment experience".

Whether this will come true or not, we’ll know on June 20, a day before the CommunicAsia expo kicks off in Singapore.

Android is top smartphone OS in the US, iOS is a close second

According to the latest report by the analysts from Nielsen, Android enjoys the highest usage among smartphone platforms in the United States, followed by iOS and BlackBerry OS.

Some 36 percent of US smartphone users have an Android smartphone. In comparison, 26% are using Apple iOS devices, whilst 23% are using RIM's BlackBerry OS.

The remaining 15% of the smartphone pie is shared between Windows Mobile, which still has a decent 9% user base, and by WebOS, Symbian and PalmOS collectively. It's a little disappointing to see Symbian despite being the oldest platforms here and still very much alive unlike the now defunct Windows Mobile having no more than 2% market share. Same goes for HP's WebOS, which deserved a lot more success than it received.

Android's overall domination comes as no surprise really, considering the huge number of Android devices out there and new ones coming out almost every other week now. Apple's iOS, on the other hand, has so far been restricted to a handful of devices, ten to be precise, with four versions of the iPhone and iPod touch each and two versions of the iPad, launched over a period of four years. RIM too has a fair number of handsets under its belt and has been around much longer than the other two. We are sure if this chart showed smartphone users across the world, however, the difference between Android and iOS would be even higher as Android phones are available in lot more areas compared to iOS.

Nielsen also has some more statistics for us, including the data usage of all these platforms and once again Android is leading the race with 582MB of monthly data usage compared to 492MB of iOS and 448 MB of WebOS, which has raced past others for the number 3 spot.

Another chart shows us that app downloads consist of a major portion of the data that is downloaded on these phones, with audio streaming coming second and video streaming in third position

ViewSonic's V350 dual-SIM droid hits the stores in June

ViewSonic V350 was announced back in February at the MWC, but it's just only now that it's ready to hit the shelves. The dual-SIM droid, capable of running on two different 3G networks, has been redesigned since February though.

We already met with the V350 in Barcelona. It was a good looking fella running on Android OS, even if it came with specs that are mid-range at best - a 600MHz processor, a 3.5-inch HVGA capacitive display, 512MB RAM, a 5 megapixel snapper with WVGA video recording and the usual connectivity stuff.

The most interesting thing about the Froyo running V350 is the support for 3G network on both SIM cards. This means you can have both SIMs connected to a (different) 3G network.

ViewSonic V350 old design

While the hardware will remain the same inside, ViewSonic has slightly redesigned the panel. As you can see the shell has lost the rounded edges, the back looks different too, but the front is pretty much the same.

ViewSonic V350 new design

There is still no official info on the pricing of the smartphone of if it will eventually get updated to Gingerbread. We guess the details should be revealed soon, though.

Asus unveils Padfone droid with tablet dock, MeMO 3D tablet

At Computex, Asus announced a phone with half a tablet and a tablet with half a phone. The Padfone that leaked earlier today is official, although its specs haven’t been finalized yet and then there’s the MeMO tablet with a glasses-free 3D screen and phone-like Bluetooth gadget.

Leaked photos of the Asus Padfone barely entered the rumor mill and it’s already official (this happens a week after the initial teaser). Asus showed only a mockup at Computex as the design for the gadget hasn’t been finalized yet.

Here’s the deal (if the name hasn’t given it away yet) – it’s an Android phone with 4.3” screen that inserts into a 10.1” tablet. Not much is clear about the Padfone, aside from Asus hinting it will run Ice Cream Sandwich, which makes sense since that’s the Android version that is supposed to unify the phone and tablet Android branches.

Anyway, the tablet is just a dock – it displays the phone’s UI on its bigger screen and provides a big battery, speakers and some extra ports. The phone has a microHDMI and microUSB ports that hook up to the tablet to output the screen image and charge the phone and there’s a 5MP camera on the back (with a hole at the back of the tablet dock so that you can still take photos).

Sharp treats us to a waterproof 16MP Android clamshell in 3D

Prepare to feast your geeky souls on one of the hottest Android devices you have ever seen. Sharp has just unveiled the waterproof AQUOS PHONE THE HYBRID 007SH (a mouthful indeed) with a 16 megapixel camera and a 3.4” FWVGA stereoscopic display that doesn’t need glasses to work.

The Android 2.3 Gingerbread clamshell (yeah, you read that one right) sports GSM and WCDMA connectivity so it should be able to operate on networks worldwide. Unfortunately, the handset will initially only be available in Japan and knowing Sharp we doubt they will expand its reach, ever.

Anyway, with the AQUOS 007SH you will also be getting a 0.7” secondary OLED display as well as GPS, Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0 connectivity. There’s also an infrared port on board - a feature that’s still pretty popular in Japan.

The highlights list continues with a microSD slot that allows expanding the internal memory by up to 32 GB, 720p video recording, digital TV tuner and a microHDMI port. The waterproof body of the smartphone measures 113×51.8×19.3mm, which is pretty thick, but it only weighs 140 g.

The AQUOS PHONE THE HYBRID 007SH will become available at SoftBank shops in Japan next month.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Play and Arc get Android 2.3.3 security update

Sony Ericsson will be rolling out an update for Android 2.3.3 on their Xperia PLAY and Xperia Arc phones. The update will fix some security issues and will come with Sony Ericsson's latest Facebook integration which was introduced with the latest Xperia Mini and Xperia Mini Pro handsets.

The fancy integration with the social network, dubbed Facebook inside Xperia, isn't new to us. It'll help Facebook become best friends with your Xperia phone by syncing the Facebook contacts, calendar and photos all together.

Unlike HTC, who are making an entire phone around the interaction with the social network, Sony Ericsson is just "enriching the experience", as Calum MacDougall, SE's Head of Web Service Partnerships, puts it.

Facebook inside Xperia, as the name suggests, is coming for all recent Xperia models, including the Xperia Neo, Xperia Mini and Xperia Mini Pro.

The Android 2.3.3 update is (hopefully!) expected next week.

Android security fix coming, no device update necessary

Google is already hard at work to fix the security hole that affects the security of Android apps that sync with servers on the Internet. They have found a way to fix the problem without having to update users’ devices, which is good since 99.7% of devices (all running Android 2.3.3 and below) were affected.

It’s a server-side fix – Google will make its servers switch to a secure channel when syncing users’ data. The fix should roll out to Google's servers over the next few days and affect every Android device.

The Contacts and Calendar apps were affected and this fix should make them secure. The Gallery app, which syncs online albums with Picasa, however is and will remain vulnerable after the fix (the Gallery app is developed by a third party). Google is looking into that but didn’t give a timeframe for fixing the Gallery hole.

It’s a good thing Google managed to find a solution that doesn’t require updating the Android devices themselves – that usually takes quite a while and some older devices aren’t being updated at all any more.

Pantech unveils 1.5GHz dual-core Vega Racer droid

Pantech has just announced what looks like the most powerful Android smartphone to date. The Pantech Vega Racer packs a dual-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz plus the Adreno 220 GPU, which is a mouth-watering combo.

Unfortunately at launch the Pantech Vega Racer will only be available in Korea and there's no saying if availability in other regions will follow.

Pantech Vega Racer

The Vega Racer is based on the same chipset as the HTC EVO 3D - Snapdragon MSM8660, but due to the overclocked 1.5GHz CPU should be even speedier.

The other specs highlights of the Vega Racer include a 4.3" LCD of WVGA resolution, 1GB RAM and a couple of cameras - an 8 megapixel one at the back and a 1.3 megapixel unit for video-calling.

Pantech Vega Raver will run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread when it hit the SK Telecom shelves later this month. Whether it will later set on a world tour remains to be seen, but it has every chance of going in the history books as the first 1.5GHz dual-core phone.

Pantech has also revealed that it is already working on a tablet of its own. They didn't give us an estimate as of when it might become available but we'll be on the lookout for more information about it in the future.

Android security hole makes stealing your personal info easy

Security is a relative term in digital communications, as German researchers discovered after putting Google’s Android OS through some testing. Reportedly, 99.7% of all droids could be broadcasting the authentication key to your personal Google data when connected over unsecured Wi-Fi networks, making it easy for opportunist attackers to gain access to it.

The problem lies in how some Android apps communicate with the cloud servers. You see, researchers discovered apps transmit user name and password to the server securely and the server returns an authentication token to be used so that the app doesn’t have to log in every time it makes a request.

Researchers discovered, however, that this token is the weak link as it's often transmitted insecurely (making it very easy to steal). An attacker can easily steal one of these tokens by sniffing the unsecured public Wi-Fi network you use. And since the token is valid for up to two weeks (from any device), the attacker can go on and sync your contacts or calendar entries to a device of their own.

In short, your droid may be leaking the key to your personal info without you even knowing it. This type of attack is very similar to how the notorious Firesheep could once steal people’s Facebook accounts.

The researchers tested different Android phones, from different vendors, running different OS versions and found that syncing contacts and calendar data is done insecurely prior to v2.3.3. The Gallery app (developed by a third party and not Google) uses the insecure method even in the latest smartphone version of Android.

Unfortunately, the problem isn't limited to Android’s native apps, third party apps are vulnerable too and will have to be updated to patch the hole.

You can read the blog post by the researchers that found the loophole for more info.

We don't know about you, but that sounds scary to us.

Android Market gets a facelift, lets you buy apps in 99 new countries

The Android Market has gone through a major update after Google I/O conference. Google has done some refreshing design changes to the interface of the Market for both mobile and desktop and made discovering of new apps easier. On top of that paid apps are now available to 99 new countries, which is a win-win for everyone.

Let's start with the improvements made to the online version of the Android Market.

The Android Market is continuing to grow larger and larger and here are some statistics to prove it. There are now over 200,000 apps available on over 300 devices. Android users have installed north of 4,5 billion apps. Those are impressive numbers, but they also mean that the Android Market has to be more user-friendly and apps have to be easier to find than before.

Hence the new features in the online version of the market. One of them is the revamped Top app charts section. It shows you the apps that are doing the best. They are country-specific, as well, which should make them more relevant to you. Google has also added top new free, top new paid, and top grossing lists to the Android Market home page. Google has also created an "Editor's Choice" which consists of applications chosen by the Android Market staff.

Developers doing well on the Market have their appearance on the Top Developers section in homepage, too. Successful developers will get a special badge next to their name.

If you are an Android user, you should be familiar with the online version of the Market and appreciate how easy it is to install new apps, without having to go through the app on your phone and do it from there.

The related apps section in the Android Market has been made better too. There are now "apps frequently browsed by people who viewed this app" and "apps that people tend to install alongside this app".

And finally the trending apps section, which lists the apps with the most daily installs.

Also the amount of countries, supporting paid apps has been increased by 99 new ones. This means that those countries will have the full access to the Android Market experience (and most of all, paid apps), without the need to employ hacks and mods. Here's the full list.

ZiiLABS introduces two new CPUs for Android tablets - the ZMS-20/40

It seems that a competitor to the Tegra 2 and Exynos chips has just entered the tablet competition. Meet the dual-core ZMS-20 and quad-core ZMS-40 from ZiiLABS. The ZMS-20 is clocked at 1.5GHz and offers 1080p video playback, OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics with 3D support and DDR3 compatibility.

There's not much word on the quad-core ZMS-40, though. Its architecture however is supposed to scale up to 6GHz and should support up to 100 cores. Wait what? Those are some mind-blowing numbers.

The ZMS-20 is based on the ARM Cortex-A9 architecture. It's HDMI 1.4-ready and supports OpenCL. It will be released with a dedicated Android tablet platform and SDK.

Both chipsets are optimized for Android Honeycomb use, so their main target are, naturally, droid tablets.

The dual-core ZMS-20 chipset is sampling as we speak and should become available this summer, while the more intriguing quad-core ZMS-40 still has some way to go. We hope to hear more news soon and will keep you posted.

Sony Ericsson prepping a Cyber-shot Android smartphone?

The line of camera-centric devices with the Cyber-shot branding has been left aside in favor of Xperia's for some time now. And many Sony Ericsson fans may disagree with this policy. Well, this may all change as a blurry photo of an unknown Cyber-shot Android device has popped-up and poured oil on an old flame.

The photo is truly horrid but focusing on it, we were able to spot the standard Android Home/menu/back buttons styled as on the Xperia mini and just above them the Cyber-shot logo. Sadly the photo doesn’t come with any specs, whatsoever. It’s a touchscreen smartphone, it looks thin and probably boasts at least a 3.7” diagonal screen.

Many would argue that the Cyber-shot lineup was one of the best in the cameraphone realm.

Still, fans could be in for a treat, as this one might just be a top dog Android cameraphone. Perhaps soon Sony Ericsson could introduce dual-core processing to its droid lineup too. Well, here's hoping.