Motorola caught up with Droid-Life regarding a rumor that slipped out earlier saying the Motorola DROID BIONIC for Verizon and the Motorola Atrix 4G for AT&T had some overheating issues, suggesting a delay was possible. Thankfully, their response was that nether of these beasts suffer from overheating issues and that both will be launched as scheduled. Awesome! But we’d REALLY like to know just where these devices are on that schedule, Motorola. Make us a bunch of happy campers, will ya’?
Some interesting news just came out of GigaOM: vice president of platform, mobile, and new ventures at Paypal Osama Bedier has left the company to work with Google on similar advancements. His responsibilities with Paypal dealt with bringing mobile payments to handsets and refining that experience, and it’s said he’ll be doing much of the same with Google.
This move suggests a couple of different things, but the biggest of which would be about Google’s desires to speed up in-app payment development and to refine the market experience in an attempt to increase revenue for developers.
Nothing sounds more likely at this moment in time, and considering how fast Paypal made it to mobile under the direction of Bedier, we hope the system Google’s looking to employ is implemented just as quickly. We’ll be keeping our eye on this one.
Some interesting news just came out of GigaOM: vice president of platform, mobile, and new ventures at Paypal Osama Bedier has left the company to work with Google on similar advancements. His responsibilities with Paypal dealt with bringing mobile payments to handsets and refining that experience, and it’s said he’ll be doing much of the same with Google.
This move suggests a couple of different things, but the biggest of which would be about Google’s desires to speed up in-app payment development and to refine the market experience in an attempt to increase revenue for developers.
Nothing sounds more likely at this moment in time, and considering how fast Paypal made it to mobile under the direction of Bedier, we hope the system Google’s looking to employ is implemented just as quickly. We’ll be keeping our eye on this one.
Some people are already saying that a Facebook phone doesn’t make any sense, but the rumors just keep on coming. This morning it was reported that HTC might produce a pair of Facebook phones and now BGR received a tip from someone who says they were part of a focus group for an upcoming device that sounds very similar.
The tipster says the device was not specifially referred to as a “Facebook phone,” yet they were asked many questions related to social networking including “How many photos do you upload to Facebook a day” and more.
Other possible features reported by BGR include:
Most of these features could probably appear on any Android device, but I keep asking myself – Why not a Facebook phone? You know your mom and little sister would just eat this thing up and Facebook could mine priceless data by taking control of the entire operating system.
If there really is an official Facebook branded phone in the works, we should find out in a couple of weeks. The original rumor stated that the devices would launch at Mobile World Congress and we will be in Barcelona to report on what happens.
Do you know anyone that would surely buy an official “Facebook phone”?
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Following the rumor earlier today that HTC was working on Android-based “Facebook phones”, BGR received a tip from someone who was part of a focus group for what appeared to be a Facebook phone. I won’t get into whether or not I believe this and earlier rumors personally, but here’s the full rundown:
- Location aware coupons: you pick main categories of interest. When youre near any stores that fall into those categories, coupons are pushed to your phone. Basically, it sounds like "Facebook Deals on steroids," as our tipster elegantly phrased it.
- An always-on GPS service much like Google Latitude that would run in the background. The service would provide automatic "check-ins" and might share your location with friends.
- No local storage (or very little). Everything is cloud based including contacts, media, data, etc.
- Obviously the phone will include a camera, but everything will be uploaded automatically and stored in the cloud.
- A news ticker-style message system: all messages funnel into one mass inbox, sortable by type, but initially unfiltered. There will also be a ticker of some kind that reads off message content as its is delivered, regardless of message type.
We should note that the phone wasn’t immediately presented as a Facebook-specific phone, but participants were asked social media-heavy questions such as “how many photos do you upload to Facebook a day?” Are we being primed for a Mobile World Congress unveiling? We’ll find out soon enough.
Following the rumor earlier today that HTC was working on Android-based “Facebook phones”, BGR received a tip from someone who was part of a focus group for what appeared to be a Facebook phone. I won’t get into whether or not I believe this and earlier rumors personally, but here’s the full rundown:
- Location aware coupons: you pick main categories of interest. When youre near any stores that fall into those categories, coupons are pushed to your phone. Basically, it sounds like "Facebook Deals on steroids," as our tipster elegantly phrased it.
- An always-on GPS service much like Google Latitude that would run in the background. The service would provide automatic "check-ins" and might share your location with friends.
- No local storage (or very little). Everything is cloud based including contacts, media, data, etc.
- Obviously the phone will include a camera, but everything will be uploaded automatically and stored in the cloud.
- A news ticker-style message system: all messages funnel into one mass inbox, sortable by type, but initially unfiltered. There will also be a ticker of some kind that reads off message content as its is delivered, regardless of message type.
We should note that the phone wasn’t immediately presented as a Facebook-specific phone, but participants were asked social media-heavy questions such as “how many photos do you upload to Facebook a day?” Are we being primed for a Mobile World Congress unveiling? We’ll find out soon enough.
Why are game developers so excited to develop for the Tegra 2 platform? NVIDIA just released a new whitepaper titled Bringing High-End Graphics to Handheld Devices (.pdf) that details their GeForce GPU architecture, compares performance with the leading PowerVR SGX540 GPU, and explains the benefits to the end user. If you are a hard-core geek, I suggest just hitting up the source link and reading the entire 28 page report. For everyone else, I have broken down the highlights after the jump.
The Tegra 2 system-on-a-chip (SoC) features an ultra-low power (ULP) GeForce GPU with an architecture that is similar to that of desktop GeForce GPUs. NVIDIA took their years of GPU experience and designed a mobile GPU with several specific features that reduce power consumption and increase graphics quality.
The mobile GeForce GPU processing pipeline is similar to the one defined by the OpenGL 2.0 specifications, but it has several unique optimizations that enable it to deliver performance of a pipelined GPU architecture while keeping the mobile power requirements in mind.
NVIDIA included eight cores (four pixel shader cores and four vertex shader cores) in the GeForce GPU to deliver high-speed graphics processing. They also implemented a unique and proprietary Anisotropic Filtering (AF) algorithm for improved texture quality (up to 16x AF).
Overall, it appears the ULP GeForce GPU is exactly what NVIDIA has been telling us. It’s a high-end, mobile graphics processor with desktop GPU roots that delivers console-quality features and performance.
Additional special features and customizations of the ULP GeForce GPU include:
So how fast is the GeForce GPU? Many have claimed it was slower than the current leader PowerVR SGX540 (found in the Galaxy S), but NVIDIA’s benchmarks paint a different picture. In several game scenarios, NVIDIA has found that the GeForce GPU is 25-50% faster than the SGX540.
That performance gap might continue to grow because NVIDIA claims that current mobile games “do not employ many advanced graphics features, and the performance advantages of NVIDIA Tegra 2 will further increase when advanced graphics features are implemented.”
We will be receiving a LG Optimus 2X later this week, so check back to see how our results match up with what NVIDIA is advertising. From my personal experiences at CES this month, I noticed that games on the Atrix 4G certainly felt and played a lot smoother than anything I’ve seen on a Galaxy S.
Hardware accelerated Adobe Flash is another area where the GeForce GPU should shine. NVIDIA worked closely with Adobe to offload the Flash processing from the CPU core and do nearly all the rendering on the GPU core. This reduces the amount of power consumed and greatly increases the overall performance because the CPU is freed up to handle other tasks.
In the popular Flash benchmark GUIMark2, NVIDIA found that hardware accelerated Flash improved performance 2x to 3x over competing devices that use the CPU to process Flash content.
NVIDIA also says that the Tegra 2 is well equipped to handle hardware accelerated, touch-based user interfaces when the Android OS adopts GPU-based UI rendering.
Finally, NVIDIA is also boasting that they have the industry’s largest content development team that works closely with developers to optimize their games for the best performance and visual quality on their Tegra 2 platform. This means that their showcase app Tegra Zone really will have the best games because NVIDIA worked directly with the developers to increase the quality of their games.
Featured developers that have committed to support Tegra 2 include several big names like Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Gameloft, Glu, Factor 5, Trendy Entertainment, and many more.
If you are a real nerd, it’s great to see a company release this kind of detailed information about their GPU architecture. I hope that Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are taking notes and do the same.
There is no way of knowing how the GeForce GPU will stack up against the GPUs inside other dual-core processors, but it appears to clearly surpass the current leader PowerVR SGX540 which is a good sign.
As I said yesterday, I don’t really think it matters who comes out on top of the benchmarks in this first round of the dual-core wars. What really matters is the premium content optimized to take advantage of these new platforms and NVIDIA has taken the early lead.
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Today Google released a non-final preview of the Android 3.0 SDK to allow developers to test their applications with the upcoming tablet OS, inherit the new “Holographic” theme, and work on providing alternative layouts for extra large screens. The Android Developers Blog notes that applications developed with the Android 3.0 Platform Preview cannot be published on Android Market, but they will be releasing a final SDK in the coming weeks.
Also released today were updates for the SDK Tools (r9), NDK (r5b), and ADT Plugin for Eclipse (9.0.0).
The Android 3.0 platform highlights was also expanded to reveal several new features and a handful of screenshots. Android 3.0 will feature a system bar at the bottom of the screen for global status and notifications and also an action bar at the top of the screen for application control.
Similar to previous versions of Android, users will have access to five customizable home screens. Each screen offers a large grid that allows users to customize the layout of their widgets, app shortcuts, and wallpapers. The homescreen also includes the familiar launcher to access all your applications and a universal search box to easily find anything.
Multitasking is being improved with updates to the recent apps feature. Users will now be able to see snapshots of their apps actual state when they last viewed it. The virtual keyboard has been improved with tweaks to enter text faster and a Tab key was also thrown in.
New connectivity options include the ability to sync media files with a desktop computer or USB-connected camera. Users will also be able to connect a full keyboard either by USB or Bluetooth. Devices can now share network connections with the new Bluetooth tethering support.
Most of the native Android apps have received updates as well. The Browser now support the “incognito” mode found in Chrome, the Camera app has been redesigned to take advantage of the larger screen, Contacts now features a new two-pane UI to make organization easier, and the Email app also has a new two-pane UI to make things more efficient.
Developer features available in Android 3.0 include a new UI Framework for creating tablet apps, high-performance 2D and 3D graphics, support for multicore processor architectures, rich multimedia and connectivity, and enhancements for enterprise.
Overall it looks like a really exciting release. Only a few more weeks and we should be getting some hands-on time with several Honeycomb tablets at MWC.
Some of the highlights for Android 3.0 include:
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We just took a gander at the platform highlights for Android 3.0 and came away a bit impressed. It’s a shame that this version of Android is only available for tablets starting out. (Though we’re sure some of you XDA-bred folks will cook some interesting things up nonetheless with the SDK that is now available.)
For starters, the UI is overhauled. We knew that before. They’re calling the new look a “holographic” design – it looks and works just as futuristic as they describe it here. The notification bar is now know as a “system” bar, where you’ll have a central location for status messages and notifications, navigation buttons (for buttonless tablets), and phone status.
An “Action Bar” is a contextual dynamic bar that changes depending on what application you’re in. Think of it as the top bar in Mac OSX – most application settings will present themselves here, as well as other information defined by developers. Sounds awesome.
Then there’s the new multi-tasking: it’s ALMOST like the Pre-style system you guys have been waiting for. Instead of getting an icon and an application name for recent apps, you’re also given a visual look of the state you last left the application in.
They detail a redesigned keyboard and a new text editing system – something that was already introduced with Android 2.3. All of the standard sets of apps – such as YouTube, Gmail, Contacts, Email, the Gallery, and the browser – have all been updated and takes great advantage of the screen real estate you’d get from a tablet.
For developers, taking advantage of all that stuff is as simple as it can be with the updated SDK. You’ll be able to take advantage of high-quality, great-looking and functioning widget systems, the action bar, richer notifications, and more.
You’ll also be able to interface with the hardware acceleration controls introduced in Android 3.0 and you’ll be able to tap into a brand new animation framework – your applications can be as sexy as they are on iOS, basically. You’ll also be able to take advantage of new connectivity options and multimedia frameworks.
Developers will be able to create their applications to be mindful of a multicore architecture, as well – something that will be a godsend for many of you once the industry inevitably moves toward dual and quad core architectures.
I didn’t get extrmeely deep with everything here, but that’s what the Android-Developers site is for. Go ahead and check out the new highlights for yourself, and for you developers, new versions of the SDK, the NDK, and Android Development Tools are all available to help you get started.
We just took a gander at the platform highlights for Android 3.0 and came away a bit impressed. It’s a shame that this version of Android is only available for tablets starting out. (Though we’re sure some of you XDA-bred folks will cook some interesting things up nonetheless with the SDK that is now available.)
For starters, the UI is overhauled. We knew that before. They’re calling the new look a “holographic” design – it looks and works just as futuristic as they describe it here. The notification bar is now know as a “system” bar, where you’ll have a central location for status messages and notifications, navigation buttons (for buttonless tablets), and phone status.
An “Action Bar” is a contextual dynamic bar that changes depending on what application you’re in. Think of it as the top bar in Mac OSX – most application settings will present themselves here, as well as other information defined by developers. Sounds awesome.
Then there’s the new multi-tasking: it’s ALMOST like the Pre-style system you guys have been waiting for. Instead of getting an icon and an application name for recent apps, you’re also given a visual look of the state you last left the application in.
They detail a redesigned keyboard and a new text editing system – something that was already introduced with Android 2.3. All of the standard sets of apps – such as YouTube, Gmail, Contacts, Email, the Gallery, and the browser – have all been updated and takes great advantage of the screen real estate you’d get from a tablet.
For developers, taking advantage of all that stuff is as simple as it can be with the updated SDK. You’ll be able to take advantage of high-quality, great-looking and functioning widget systems, the action bar, richer notifications, and more.
You’ll also be able to interface with the hardware acceleration controls introduced in Android 3.0 and you’ll be able to tap into a brand new animation framework – your applications can be as sexy as they are on iOS, basically. You’ll also be able to take advantage of new connectivity options and multimedia frameworks.
Developers will be able to create their applications to be mindful of a multicore architecture, as well – something that will be a godsend for many of you once the industry inevitably moves toward dual and quad core architectures.
I didn’t get extrmeely deep with everything here, but that’s what the Android-Developers site is for. Go ahead and check out the new highlights for yourself, and for you developers, new versions of the SDK, the NDK, and Android Development Tools are all available to help you get started.
