Decided not to get an iPhone 4S and bought the Galaxy S3 instead. I know nothing about android and need tips on getting started.

HDMI Dongle Turns Any TV into an Android TV

Essentially this dongle is a small Android-powered computer (and like a
computer though, it requires you to plug it in to a wall outlet to power
it) that uses your TV as it’s monitor. You can surf the web, run
Android apps, watch YouTube videos, etc. just like on a normal Android
tablet. It even has a USB slot on it to plug in other devices like
keyboards, mice, harddrives, etc. and a microSD card slot capable of
utilizing up to a 32GB card for storage.

http://theunlockr.com/2012/06/08/hdmi-dongle-turns-any-tv-into-an-android-tv/

Japan’s Gree moves mobile gaming into the spotlight at E3 (interview)

GamesBeat: So what would you predict as far as what happens in the coming months or the rest of this year?

Aoyagi: The rest of the year is going to be pretty
interesting. In the next quarter, we’re going to see more content from
Asia make it into the U.S. We have seen some success already, including
our Zombie Jombie game. Ngmoco has launched one game from Mobage, Rage
of Bahamut, which is now the top-grossing in Japan. So now, after
talking with many Japanese developers, I get the sense that they’ve
become pretty confident about the Western market opportunities. They’re
going to ship more and more products from Japan. So some of them,
probably, may work in the U.S. market.

We’re going to see more and more high ARPPU games, like the kind that
Kabam is doing and Funzio, Gree, and DeNA. The interesting thing is,
the Funzio studio is actually Asian-American. Kabam is also. They know
about Asian MMOs or social gaming and high ARPPU techniques. There’s an
advantage for those kinds of people. We’ll see more and more of those
high ARPPU games in the market. So then they’ll continue to spend more
on marketing.

It’s going to be a really tough market for startups. By the year’s
end, it’s hard as it can be. We have to be really prepared and ready for
this year. What happened in Japan in the last two years is that, after
they saw some successful games, everybody followed and then the market
became very big, very rapidly. In just, like, 18 months. From a $1
billion to a $4 billion market. That kind of big jump, we’re going to
see that this year and next year. And then the older market and the
conventional games are going to be over by the end of next year. That’s
how I see it.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/10/gree-e3-naoki-aoyagi-interview/

Tokyo-based mobile gaming company GREE announced today the open beta launch of its social network tool suite for iOS and Android devices.

GREE’s existing Japanese platform, which reaches 230 million players
worldwide, provides developers a plethora of social features for their
mobile titles, such as leaderboards, Achievements, and a friend
invite/request infrastructure.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/23/gree-platform-open-beta/

--------------------

apple is going to be a road kill soon in gaming arena, players from 80%+ android land is about to start their invasion. They have big home experience running large scale cloud game. The era of angry bird and cut the rope is about to be over abruptly, apple. You'll be stuck with shitty racing games soon.

I want this game in Android nooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww.....

Fragmentation

Oh, they didn’t announce fragmentation? Those little footnotes at the
bottom of the Maps and Siri pages that read, “Flyover and turn-by-turn
navigation will be available only on iPhone 4S and iPad 2 or later” and
“Siri will be available only on iPhone 4S and iPad (3rd
generation)” made it seem like they did. So let me get this straight,
iOS devices are updated to the newest versions of iOS at some incredible
pace, making Android look so silly on giant projector slides, but those
new versions of iOS don’t even include all of the same features? There
you go Android OEMs, now you know the trick – just start pulling
features from your updates to push them out faster. (Cheers SR!)

http://www.droid-life.com/2012/06/11/a-quick-look-at-ios-6-and-its-new-android-features/

Hey, you can't say that. apple has no fragmentation... *chuckle*

Mail enhancements: I almost fell on the floor
laughing when I saw how excited people were about multiple email
signatures coming to iOS. You can now have a different signature for
each email account on your iOS device, WOW

You can also now finally add attachments from within the email client
rather than having to go to the Photos app and then create an email.
However, attachment support is still extremely limited due to Apple’s
closed approach to the file system. You can attach just photos and only
one at a time.

iOS 6 will also include a VIP mailbox so you can filter people’s
email that you really want to see. One thing I love about HTC Sense is
this same ability to have groups that let you quickly filter your email
with the touch of a tab. Again, nothing new or groundbreaking
for Android, but nice to see Apple catching up.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/cell-phones/android-ics-already-offers-more-than-what-is-coming-in-ios-6/7769

from android point of view, it seems iOS 6 is gingerbread with enhanced siri. (I bet that old MIUI apple mod can still do more than iOS6) ... blah...I was hoping this will inspire google team with more features in OS 5.0.

I for one want smart display mode. the phone can adapt itself for small screen or if connected to full display (instead of merely projecting a small screen digitally onto a large display. it gives that 'doll house' effect.

Apple suppliers are routinely tight-lipped about their deals and a
TomTom representative declined to detail the services TomTom will
provide for Apple. Besides maps, however, TomTom also sells real-time
traffic information, helping drivers to bypass congestion, and warns on
speed cameras.

TomTom already has mobile navigation apps that run
on Apple's iPhone and iPads selling for between EUR40 and EUR80,
depending on the country, and it charges another EUR29 a year for
real-time traffic information. But it also provides maps and related
content to other smartphone makers like BlackBerry maker Research in
Motion (RIMM), Taiwan's HTC Corp. (2498.TW) and Samsung Electronics Co
Ltd (005930.SE) of South Korea.

TomTom worked on its deal with
Apple for around a year, according to a company spokesman, who added
that it won't affect the agreements with other smartphone makers.

The Apple deal will provide a "meaningful contribution" to TomTom's sales and profits, the spokesman said, without elaborating.

At
the developer conference, Apple showed off a number of new software
programs that as a whole underscore how the company is distancing itself
from Google Inc (GOOG), previously a close partner but now a major
rival in the smartphone market.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2012/06/12/apple-picks-tomtom-for-maps-edging-out-google/

Nvidia has also just received AT&T’s certification for Nvidia’s
LTE data modem chip. That means it could be used in phones that access
AT&T’s LTE high-speed data network. That could help the company get
off the ground in the U.S. market. The modem chips are built by Icera, a
startup that Nvidia recently acquired.

Rayfield said that Tegra will be getting into sub-$300 tablets and
smartphones. And the company is making progress in China. Rayfield said
that five Tegra designs debuted in China last year, and 18 more will
debut in China this year. Two carriers embraced Tegra phones in a big
way last year, but dozens are expected to do so this year, Rayfield
said.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/24/nvidia-expects-a-breakout-year-for-mobile-chips/

http://www.xda-developers.com/android/galaxy-s-iii-found-to-work-with-usb-on-the-go-xbox-360-ps3-controllers-and-more/

GREE and Ubisoft teaming up to bring Assassin’s Creed Utopia to smartphones

http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Multiformat/Assassin's+Creed:+Utopia/news.asp?c=41972




------------

I want this game on android noooooooooow.... enough with shitty games already. ps. where are the 3D RTS games? The only games I really want to play.

Raw performance is really important, but a robust feature set is even
more so, as it allows more efficient rendering techniques to be
implemented on mobile hardware. With a better feature set, you can both
increase the image quality and reduce the battery usage.



I am not talking about some high end stuff like tessellation, geometry
shaders, 32 bit floating point texture filtering or robust anisotropic
filtering. I am talking about basic feature set that allows us to create
efficient rendering engines. There's a lot of problems with basic
features in OpenGL ES 2.0. The standard doesn't even support basic 8888
uncompressed textures without an extension, as many mobile devices at
that time didn't even support true color (565 and 4444 were popular
display front buffer formats). iPhone and Android changed all that, and
now the mobile hardware is advancing at very rapid pace (iPhone 4 ->
4GS had 7x GPU performance improvement).



Here's some things that I would personally like to see in the new GLES
version (all features that improve performance and efficiency):



1. There's no official texture compression format in OpenGL ES 2.0
standard. PowerVR chips use PVRTC, NVidia Tegra supports DXT and ARM
Mali supports ETC. If you want to develop an Android game, you basically
have to use uncompressed textures (a huge waste of bandwidth &
performance), unless you want to include 3 separate versions of textures
to the game package (not a good option since that kills you sales, as
it makes the download much bigger). So you likely end up with a bad
compromise (for example 565 textures) that both look worse and perform
worse than compressed textures.



2. Limited vertex formats. 16 bit formats (both integer and float), 8888
formats and 10-10-10-2 formats need to be officially supported by the
API (not just by some vendors specific extensions). Currently you need
to use fat vertices on mobile devices, and that feels really ackward
since you have no extra memory bandwidth to waste. You can use much more
efficient vertex layouts on PC / console hardware.



3. Multi render target (MRT) rendering support. Almost all AAA games are
currently using deferred rendering, and it's used because it improves
performance (less shader combinations, less GPU state changes, less GPU
constant changes, less vertex interpolants, no need to spend CPU cycles
to find affecting lights for each rendered object, better scaling when
there's lot of overdraw, etc, etc). Tegra is the only hardware with an
GLES extension for MRT, and PowerVR guys have said (long time ago) that
MRT rendering is possible with their hardware, but there's no API
support yet. Official API support is desperately needed, and would
enable many more efficient rendering techniques to be used on mobile
hardware as well.



4. Efficient way to (partially) modify GPU resources (especially
compressed textures) and retrieve GPU rendered data. Current API does
format conversion under the hood (cache tiling, etc) and that consumes a
lot of CPU resources. We need to have a more straightforward and
efficient way to update GPU resources with CPU. Extra API overhead is
fine for a PC graphics API (lots of extra headroom), but for mobile
devices API overhead both kills your performance and degrades your
battery life. As the mobile GPUs and CPUs are using the same memory
(unified memory), it would be most efficient if both could simply access
the same data directly (DX map/lock style API could be used for
synchronization).

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=61388

The OpenGL ES 3.0 specification is most likely to be released by the
Khronos Group next month during the E3 gaming conference or in early
August during SIGGRAPGH 2012 -- the specification is effectively done at
this point already and the preliminary documents in the hands of
vendors. OpenGL 4.3 will also most likely be released on the same day
since OpenGL 4.2 is nearly one year old and it's been the Khronos trend to release multiple specifications at the same time.



While the proprietary NVIDIA and AMD graphics drivers will likely
introduce OpenGL ES 3.0 support right away (it should not be an issue
for any GL4-capable desktop graphics card), the open-source driver
support will sadly take a while. Among the mobile GPUs capable of doing
OpenGL ES 3.0 will be the Mali T600 series and the forthcoming NVIDIA
Tegra 4. With OpenGL ES 3.0 being based upon OpenGL 3.2+ functionality,
it will be a while before the support is there in Mesa/Gallium3D. OpenGL 3.1 isn't even likely until next year
in Mesa. Hopefully a need for OpenGL ES 3.0 on Linux in the mobile
space will lead to greater overall work on GL/GLES enablement, but that
remains to be seen. Based upon the current timing and trends, OpenGL ES
3.0 isn't likely to appear in Mesa/Gallium3D until H2'2013 or early
2014, but let's hope that changes.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEwNzk

... the thinnest phone in the world... (Before Samsung comes in with their in cell OLED screen, NEC doing their ultra thin chasis magnesium alloy...or probably Sony if they feel like re-doing their walkman fame design all over.) I am still waiting for first company that comes up with sub 5 mm thickness. That would require entirely new construction and manufacturing methods. Apple won't make it in this race. It's all plastic composite and new manufacturing method.

Microsoft is a lot like a freight train: it may be fat, bloated, and
heavy, but once it finally gets up to speed, it's a force to be reckoned
with. There's certainly something to be said for a company that
commands about 90% of the US PC market and 40% of the US console market
at a time when consoles are becoming less gamey and more
comprehensive-entertainment-centery. That's without touching on
Microsoft's impending entrance in the tablet game and the upcoming release of Windows RT and Windows 8, nor the early 2013 release of the Xbox 720.

By now, you can probably see where I'm going with this. Odds are very
good that your home and work computers both run Windows, and I'm going
to guess you use Office on both. Roughly 30 million Xbox 360s have been
sold in the US, so I'm going to guess that a fair number of readers may
have one of those too. That's our foundation: the company already has a
commanding presence in many corners of consumers' lives.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/06/16/why-androids-greatest-threat-isnt-apple-its-microsoft/

They are charging $80 bucks for that POS OS. No OEM in the world can make money when competing Android device is selling for $60. Gimme a break.

I think Microsoft will attempt to pull Amazon style store-hardware tight integration... Good luck tho' They have to build a huge customer service and retail network. Their Xbox saga - hardware keep losing money should tell something. (Is their Xbox division even making money yet?)

CM9 !

Linus Torvalds: 'fuck you, Nvidia' for not supporting Linux

Linus Torvalds isn't someone you'd accuse of excessive
diplomacy and his answer to a question about Nvidia's lack of support
for Linux with its Optimus
technology has been far from compromising. When posed with that query
during a Q&A session at Aalto University in Finland, Torvalds begins
by identifying Nvidia as "the single worst company we've ever dealt
with" and goes on to give his assessment of its actions with a resolute
"fuck you" and an accompanying middle finger gesture to the camera.

The frustrated user of an Optimus laptop says that she finally got full support for her machine via a GitHub
project that's been working decently well, but Linus evidently shares
her annoyance at Nvidia's unwillingness to support the open source OS.
He's particularly incensed by the fact Nvidia's Tegra line of ARM chips
is selling so well because of Android, a mobile OS that has its roots in
Linux. While Torvalds believes there's little we can do to influence
Nvidia's decision making, he does see a silver lining in the fact that
its attitude is "the exception rather than the rule."

http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/17/3092829/linus-torvalds-fuck-you-nvidia

Jumping Ship: A Guide to Switching from iOS to Android

What other differences does Android offer?

Widgets! There’s several popular ones, like HD Widgets, Android Pro
Widgets, and Beautiful Widgets. All are fairly popular. Free ones are
less customizable in general, but there’s still some okay ones.

Google Apps! Gmail provides excellent e-mail functionality. Google
Voice lets you have a singular phone number. Google Talk is a
cross-platform IM client. Maps offers free turn-by-turn navigation.
Wallet holds some cards and lets you pay using NFC. Translate will
translate text across languages. Goggles will scan an environment for
identifiable information. Music stores your music in the cloud. Books is
a decent e-book service. Authenticator allows 2-step account
authentication for your Google account. And Sky Map shows you the stars!

Voice Actions and Search integration! You can do a search across your
phone and the internet. Voice Actions has been around for several years
and while we’re expecting an update soon it presently can launch some
apps, send texts, and perform services.

Tasker! You can configure your phone to run certain tasks when
something triggers it. These are basically batch files that run when
trigger conditions are set. You have to pay for it, but it enables a lot
of automation.

Sideloading Apps! You can install an app from anywhere just by
running the .apk on your phone. You’ll have to enable non-market apps in
the Developer options, though. You can pull apps from anywhere.

Face Unlock and Security! You can encrypt the phone yourself so the
data is safe and nobody can access it. You can set a variety of lock
screens with different security methods to access your phone. And among
them is Face Unlock. Mostly a gimmick that falls back on real security.
But there’s a lot of ways to keep your phone safe.

Install Apps Wirelessly! You can use the Play Store to install apps
over the air. Sign in, select Install, and it will be on your phone next
time you pick it up. Some apps are built to utilize this, such as “Plan
B”, an app for when your phone is lost or stolen.

The Camera! The iPhone camera is generally of pretty high quality,
but the software on the Android side is excellent in ICS. It supports
Camera, Camcorder, Panorama-mode, and the video setting supports a
time-lapse. There’s exposure settings, special effects, etc. All
built-in. And the speed is excellent. Hardware differentiation obviously
applies, but the software end has you covered for basic point-and-shoot
photos and video editing.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/v7uyj/jumping_ship_a_guide_to_switching_from_ios_to/c5238p2

Just remember this is the phone Apple is ripping off iPhone from.

Cash for Clunkers

But Samsung isn’t resting on those laurels. Its trade-in program, called SAFE2SWITCH, lets people exchange their current smartphones for an S III at very competitive prices.

The prices are as good or better than the ones offered by popular used electronics sites like Gazelle.com, and includes devices with little or no resale value.

For instance, a good condition 16 GB iPhone 4 with AT&T that fetches $160 from Gazelle will get $165 from Samsung.

While Gazelle won’t buy a Nokia Lumia 900 on AT&T, Samsung will pay $225.

Even the discontinued Dell Streak tablet on AT&T, Samsung will buy for $55 (Gazelle won’t buy).

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/sybase/samsungs-pincer-movement-android-strategy-to-winning-the-mobile-enterprise/3365

Samsung is playing hardball. cold cash.

NTT DoCoMo Inc. (9437), the only major
Japanese carrier not selling Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone, is trying to
stem market-share losses by using its own voice-recognition app
to woo the nation’s fastest-growing demographic: the elderly.

Japan’s biggest mobile-phone company is counting on
software and handsets tailored for older subscribers to regain
customers from Softbank Corp. in the $110 billion wireless
market after consumers flocked to the iPhone. Two million users
have downloaded DoCoMo’s app called Shabette Concier, which,
like Apple’s Siri, lets users control their phone by voice -- a
selling point among elderly consumers who struggle with keypads.

The carrier’s voice app, whose name translates as “Talk to
Me, Concierge,” was introduced March 1 and is available for 38
handset models using Google Inc.’s Android software. They
include Sony Corp.’s Xperia acro HD, which was Japan’s best-
selling smartphone model for April and May, according to
research company BCN Inc.

“I’ve been planning to get a smartphone and try the voice
app since I saw it on TV,” said Kazuko Ohara, 81, who lives in
central Tokyo and plans to visit a mobile-phone store this month
to choose a handset model. “My eyesight is weak because I had a
cataract operation.”

Ohara, who doesn’t own a personal computer, has a KDDI
mobile phone and doesn’t mind switching carriers, she said.

“The voice app might help me write e-mails, and I want to
use the map function to go places,” she said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-18/docomo-aims-to-recoup-lost-mobile-share-with-older-users.html

not being allowed to get too close... hmmm.