Qt is a cross-platform application and UI framework for developing once, and deploying across lots of embedded Linux platforms, Windows CE, Symbian and Maemo without rewriting the source code. At Mobile World Congress, Qt was demonstrating their solution used in many different devices.
Qt Quick (Qt User Interface Creation Kit) is a high-level user interface technology that makes it dramatically easier for UI designers and developers with scripting language skills to quickly and easily create beautiful, pixel perfect UIs and lightweight, touch-enabled apps with Qt – all without requiring any C++ skills. It will be part of the Qt 4.7 release, which has had its first technology preview released in March.
Vodaphone is releasing their first own-branded Android phone, described as a low-cost Android phone. It has got a 2.8-inch resistive screen, a 3.2MP camera and runs Android 2.1 Eclair. To be released in May. It also comes with a suite of Vodafone 360 Apps (for Facebook widgets integration and the like), it is to be seen how the Vodafone 360 experience as apps on Android compares with Vodafone’s previously released Linux Mobile Foundation based 360 phone.
How low will the price be? Will Vodafone go all the way and sell this phone for £99 on a pre-paid plan? Interestingly Vodafone is pointing out this feature in their press release:
2. Vodafone’s proprietary pre-pay balance indicator permanently displays the customer’s latest balance status – it is updated after each voice call, SMS, start up, and also every 12 hrs when idle mode. There is also a soft-key configured for convenient top up.
This type of task bar, status bar overview of pre-paid credit status with one-click top up could really accelerate the adoption of pre-paid plans for Android devices instead of buying them with very expensive 2-year contracts. The Android phone sold like this would still be locked to only work on Vodafone for 2 years, but would at least only require pre-paid services hopefuly reasonably priced for voice, sms and most importantly for data usage of web browsing and apps.
As manufacturing cost for this 2.8″ resistive Android phone might be below $100, this could really provide a taste of what is to come in terms of reaching huge worldwide market share for Android, reaching emerging markets as more than 4 Billion people around the world still don’t have a smart phone and Internet access. How soon the sub-$50 Android phones with sub-$3/month pre-paid Internet data access in all the developing countries?
Vodafone own-brand devices are available in 31 Vodafone subsidiary or partner markets. It is the world’s second largest mobile phone operator behind China Mobile. See an overview of Vodafone’s market share in this Wikipedia article.
The latest monthly report by AdMob on US-based web usage on smartphones (of sites and apps where AdMob is serving ads) shows that Android phones combined are now being used more than the iphone OS devices.
By these numbers, one can speculate if the overall share of Android devices sold per month in the USA is about to overtake the overall monthly share of sold iPhones, iPod touch and iPads.
Consider that most of the iphone OS share consists of iphones and ipod touch that were bought by consumers during these past 2 years. While most of the Android devices used at this point were purchased during the past 6 months. So this may increase the likelihood that Android sales per month have already overtaken the monthly sales of iPhones.
Consider that the Chinese market is getting several “Ophone” branded phones, which are based on modified Android OS source code. Consider also that the US and European market have not yet received significantly cheaper Android phones on their markets although many are planned to be released soon. Once pre-paid or totally unlocked Android phones are sold below $200 without contracts, those may expand the market share of Android phones even faster, as consumers likely much prefer a $200 unlocked phone or locked on pre-paid plans than a $200 locked phone that comes with a $3500 2-year contract.
In AdMob’s numbers the Google Nexus One device is only achieving a 2% marketshare. My guess is that Google doesn’t need to sell more Nexus Ones at this point. The Nexus One is only there to push the Android market forward. Google isn’t going to compete with its partners yet. Nexus One is basically like a Development Kit for the Android industry that is also available to early adopters who can buy it over the web. But the more interesting business models will come once Google is selling Android phones at http://google.com/phone at below $200 unlocked and out of contracts.
Dell is announcing (or leaking) this 4.1″ WVGA OLED based (probably Super AMOLED), to run Android 2.1, AT&T and worldwide HSDPA versions to be released this year also with Dell’s proprietary “Stage UI” overlay user interface.
Here’s another new Android phone announced (or leaked) by Dell, to use the Qualcomm MSM7230 800mhz processor, 14.4Mbps download and 5.6Mbps upload HSPA, 512MB RAM, TV-out, Bluetooth 3.0 in this “curved glass” design. Dell is designing some kind of “Stage UI”, similar to HTC’s own Sense UI for their customized Android home screen and user interfaces.
Here’s a design for an Android phone by Dell to be released next year, it will be based on the next generation Qualcomm MSM7230 processor, come with a 2.8″ QVGA screen, 14.4Mbps HSPA and is said that it will be sold for cheap.
The HTC Supersonic is basically the same hardware as the HTC HD2, but this time it runs Android, comes perhaps with slight hardware changes such as a slightly larger battery (people might have been complaining about battery runtime on the HD2), it has a HDMI output when using an adaptor for that, 720p video recording and the 1ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.
Very interestingly, this is the first WiMax phone released by Sprint in the USA. That requires a whole new Mobile WiMax network and only some carriers are deploying that in some places. Though I have been covering WiMax for years such as in these interviews that I filmed at CeBIT 2006: http://techvideoblog.com/cebit/wimax-forum/ http://techvideoblog.com/cebit/runcom/
So perhaps now finally some things may be happening on the Mobile WiMax front. My question is still, how much better is WiMax in terms of bandwidth capacity per user, bandwidth capacity with many mobile users. What is the performance of Mobile WiMax compared to 700mhz unlicenced wireless mobile networking over White Spaces or how does it compare with 3G HSDPA and LTE technology?
Super AMOLED is spectacular, that’s for sure. Blacks are incredibly black and vivid colors and brightness is super. The Super AMOLED is officially 20% birghter and reflects 80% less light than the first generation AMOLED screens, it removes some kind of layer that was covering the screen so devices can be thinner and the angle of vision is incredible.
Yet, my question is how much more does Super AMOLED cost compared to LCD, especially at sizes larger than 4″ in diagonal. I guess this is a matter of Samsung having invested huge amounts of billions of dollars into developing the AMOLED technology, that they have to try to mass manufacture those screens in quantities of millions for them to get down in cost. I wonder though, what is the difference in cost between AMOLED and LCD in those screen sizes? Anyone who knows the bill of material, please post in the comments.
I probably don’t really like Samsung’s attempt at making a different UI layer on top of Android which they call “S Life UI”. With the bit that I played with it on the Samsung Beam, I would probably prefer to disable that and somehow enable a normal standard Google Experience user interface.
Cool. The cheap unlocked Android phones are coming! This Kyocera Zio M6000 is announced to be released unlocked on the US market from $169 to $216. That is without contract, thus a cheap pre-paid Android phone.
Here are the specs:
3.5″ 800×480 touch screen
600 Mhz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor
3G (CDMA for now), WiFi and stereo Bluetooth
3.2-megapixel camera
512MB of onboard app memory (what’s the RAM?)
Android 1.6 but it will be user-upgradeable to Android 2.1
Kycoera/Sanyo is a leader in producing low cost phones sold with pre-paid carriers in the USA such as Virgin Mobile, Cricket, and MetroPCS. The arrival of cheaper unlocked and pre-paid-only Android phones is just awesome. Having to pay $529 for an unlocked Nexus One or having to pay more than $3000 over a 2-year contract is just ridiculously expensive. Android will dominate the market as soon as unlocked sub-$200 Android phones start becoming available worldwide.
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, recently spoke about large screen Android Tablets at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit keynote (at timecode 10 minutes and 39 seconds). It’s a nice way of Eric Schmidt to indirectly confirm that Google is definitely going to support the development of Android based Tablets as alternatives on the market to the upcoming iPad.
When I say “phone”, you might have a really big phone, like a phone about “this” big (he shows a size of about 10″ diagonal for a tablet with his hands), also known as a Tablet, makes sense [to have] big screens (…) you are going to have them from many vendors including using Google’s Android Operating System.
How soon until Google announces official Marketplace support for all Android Tablets?
Of all the Android Tablets which I have filmed so many of at the last couple months at CES, Mobile World Congress and CeBIT consumer electronics shows, none of the companies presenting those tablets were able to confirm if and when they might be allowed to include the Google Marketplace on those tablets officially supported by Google. As you may know, the Archos 5 Internet Tablet and any other currently shipping Android tablets around the world, none are yet officially certified by Google to include the Google Marketplace.
As you can see from my videos of the Archos 7 Home Tablet, the Hott MD500, the $199 Freescale powered tablets, Creative Zii Egg, Altina’s 4.8″ Android GPS Tablet, the Camangi Webstation, Forsa 7″ Android Tablet, 1Cross Tech MIDhybrid, Hard Kernel ODroid and many many more which you can find at http://138.2.152.197/category/tablets/, Android Tablets can be sold for cheaper, they can come with or without 3G, they may not come with capacitive but only resistive screens to save costs, they may not include cameras or even accelerometers. They instead bring higher resolutions, larger screens, more connectors and ports (such as built-in USB host, HDMI outputs..) and most importantly, Android Tablets can be sold at more affordable prices and be sold at retail stores without the need to signup for 2-year subscription plans with telecom carriers. Basically, the Android Tablets can occupy the market segments that go from the iPod Touch to the iPad.
Will Apple have a hard time selling as many devices and making as much revenues and profits in a market when dozens or hundreds of Android based competitors are going to be available for a lot cheaper prices and offer if not at least the same, then likely more features because of differentiation through free market competition? Android Tablets are likely to come with Flash support, HDMI outputs, USB host ports, hard drive storage options, storage expantion, Pixel Qi screens, removable batteries, video-conferencing, full video and audio codecs support, mass storage device modes not requiring iTunes to synchronize media files, open source and even open firmware software updates for the installation of alternative Android firmwares and even alternative Linux OSes including Ubuntu, Maemo, Angstrom. Can Apple compete with that?
This following video starts at the correct 10m39s timecode when you click the play button, where you can see Eric Schmidt’s above statement regarding Google’s official support for Android Tablets:
You may copy and paste this embed code to your blog if you want the embedded video to start at that same timecode:
ARM talks to Robert Tolbert, Director of Product Management at Texas Instruments at Mobile World Congress about their latest OMAP 4 platform showcasing multiple display capabilities.
Motorola HS1001 is being released at CeBIT 2010, it features a very customized version of Android 1.6 running on its 2.8″ QVGA touch screen display. This cordless phone will be sold for 99€ in Europe and $149 in the USA. It supports 2h of cordless phone calling on the battery, comes with a MicroSD card reader.
ARM is presenting this hardware based secure payments and authentication system which all future mobile devices may be shipping with. The functionalities of those calculators that people use for their netbanking can thus be integrated in the future mobile phones, to let people do secure payments and authentication using a simple 4 number pin code on their mobile phone. The way they do it is that they guide the keyboard entries directly into a separate secure encrypted OS that functions separately from Android to do the secure authentication that then sends back the certificate (or how it’s called) back to the web based application. This kind of system, I would guess, could also be integrated in laptops, or you could use your phone to authenticate yourself on any website very securely using any computer.
http://1crosstech.com is showing a cool looking combination of a 6″ e-ink e-reader on one side, with a 3.2″ HVGA Android LCD on the other side, and also with a touch panel keyboard input and a whole bunch more hardware features such as a 3G sim card slot, WiFi, Bluetooth an accelererometer, VGA webcam for video-conferencing and more.
Chinfai, distributed by http://leicke.de in Europe, sells this rollable Bluetooth keyboard which I am testing with my Archos 5 Internet Tablet in this video. It seems to work great.
These are the latest HTC smart phones shown at Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona. This video shows how the HTC Legend is an improvement on every aspect compared to the HTC Hero and offers some talk and explanations for HTC Sense UI, and the HTC desire compared with the Google Nexus One.
The 7X30 is Qualcomm’s next generation Snapdragon processor to come in some of the next generation of Qualcomm powered Smart Phones later this year. This is what the Nexus Two or HTC HD3 may look like. This video features demonstrations of the improved video playback, built-in HDMI output, improved 3D acceleration and even more advanced animated and 3D Android user interfaces.
Atul Aggarwal, Director of Product Marketing at Texas Instruments, explains the performance difference between the OMAP3430 and OMAP3630 series of processors at Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona.
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