Andrid Jelly Bean

Instead of jumping ahead a full version number from 4.0 to 5.0 with Android this year, Google has wisely decided to slow down the new feature freight train just a little, instead expanding upon the solid foundation introduced with Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich last year.
We saw the first version of Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) in the middle of this year, and we've now updated our review to cover the latest incarnation of the sugary treat - Android 4.2 - so feast your eyes on what the latest version of Google's OS has to offer.
Although this decision may have more to do with slow adoption of ICS, the iterative release allows Google to catch its breath while hopefully allowing carriers, developers and users alike the chance to play catch-up.

Of course, that doesn't mean Google abandoned its traditional sugary confection-themed naming scheme: The name's Bean… Jelly Bean… and its mission is to hone Android into a leaner, meaner mobile operating system.
Where Android 3.0: Honeycomb was exclusive to tablets and Ice Cream Sandwich attempted to port the slicker UI over to smartphones as well, Jelly Bean is intended to smooth out the platform's remaining rough edges – while hopefully having more success at widespread adoption than its predecessor did.
In the meantime, Google is seizing this opportunity to not only show OEMs how Android tablets should be done but also swat away unwelcome rivals forking its older mobile OS as their own.
Built in conjunction with Asus, Samsung and LG, Google is shipping its own seven-inch Nexus 7 tablet, 10-inch Nexus 10 tablet and powerful Nexus 4 smartphone - all of which have been treated to Android 4.2.
Will the changes in Jelly Bean be enough to finally make the ambitious goals of Google's Mobile Handset Alliance a reality? Or will handset makers and carriers continue to bog down Android with their own skins, bloatware and other encumbrances?
We may not have the answers to those questions, but there's no denying that Android Jelly Bean is the best version yet – assuming your device is capable of installing it in the first place.

Jelly Bean is the fifth major release of Android and finds Google at the top of their game, showing restraint when it comes to feature bloat while streamlining what worked so well with Ice Cream Sandwich – and making it even better.

Our early frustration with Jelly Bean is actually directed towards the carriers and handset manufacturers who continue to be slow off the mark when it comes to implementing Android updates – leaving many stuck on the now two year old Gingerbread platform.
While turning on a stock Android 4.0 device filled the screen with a breakaway rainbow of colours during boot, Jelly Bean briefly follows the familiar white Google logo with a pulsing blue, red, green and yellow "X" here.
We compared the boot time of two Samsung Galaxy Nexus handsets, one running Android 4.0.4 and the other running Android 4.1, and found a noticeable difference in startup time: 50 seconds for the elder software, versus 34 seconds for Jelly Bean. (The 4.1-powered Nexus 7 came in somewhere in-between, at 43 seconds.)
Then we pulled out the Google Nexus 4 running Android 4.2 and it blitzed through the start up process, clocking in at just 19 seconds – that is some performance increase.

The custom Roboto font is still very much present and accounted for (with a few subtle tweaks depending upon where you're viewing it), and Google reduces Android's dependence on neon blue accents while retaining the same dark background – with one notable exception which we'll get into in a moment.
Aside from fresh wallpaper, Android Jelly Bean doesn't look appreciably different from Ice Cream Sandwich at first glance.
Google sidestepped any potential infringement of Apple's "slide to unlock" patent by allowing users to swipe left for camera, right for another custom tile which can show messages, emails or the calendar, while to unlock, you just drag the padlock icon to the edge of the highlighted circle.
You can also swipe up to unlock, although this now serves as a shortcut for Google Now, the company's key new feature in Jelly Bean (more on that in a moment).

Read More

Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie

Google's showing no signs of slowing its pace of Android development, with Android 4.0 appearing on the Galaxy Nexus late in 2011, followed in July of 2012 by the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean release that arrived powering the super Nexus 7.
But, forward-looking, update-obsessed people that we are, we can't help but imagine how Google's going to maintain the pace of innovation in its next version of its mobile OS, Android 5.0.
All we know so far is that Google's working away on the K release of Android, which it's developing under the dessert-related codename of Key Lime Pie. Regarding the version number, it's likely that the Key Lime Pie moniker will be given to Android 5.0. We thought we might find out on 29 October but as yet there is no official word from Google.
Rumours of a new Nexus handset started trickling in during the third quarter of 2012, as we reported on 1 October 2012. There was speculation that this phone would be sporting Key Lime Pie, but sources who spoke to AndroidAndMe correctly claimed that the handset, which turned out to be the Google Nexus 4 would be running Android Jelly Bean.
So now as we wait on official news of the Android 5.0 release date and features, we can start to pull together the Key Lime Pie rumours from around the web, with the first sighting of Android 5.0 on a benchmarking website, apparently running on a Sony smartphone. There has previously been speculation that Sony is in line to produce the next Nexus phone, which may lend some credence to this rumour.

Android 5.0 release date

Google has announced that its next developer conference - Google IO - will take place from May 15 to May 17 2013, a month earlier than 2012's June dates. Given that Google announced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean at 2012's IO conference, it's not unreasonable to expect to see Android 5.0 at this year's event.

Android 5.0 phones

While the Nexus 4 didn't appear with a helping of Key Lime Pie, speculation that we reported on 21 January 2013 suggests that the Motorola X Phone is the Android 5.0-toting handset that will break cover at Google IO. According to a post on the DroidForums website, the phone will also feature a virtually bezel-free, edge-to-edge, 5-inch display.

Android 5.0 features

Key Lime Pie features are yet to revealed, but as we scour the web for more Android 5.0 news, we've been thinking about what we want to see in Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie. Hopefully the new mobile OS will feature some of these things...

1. Performance Profiles

It's bit of a fuss managing your mobile before bed time. Switching off the sound, turning off data, activating airplane mode and so on, so what Android 5.0 really needs is a simple way of managing performance, and therefore power use, automatically.
We've been given a taste of this with Blocking Mode in Samsung's Jelly Bean update on the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the Note 2 but we'd like to see the functionality expanded.
Something like a Gaming mode for max power delivery, an Overnight low-power state for slumbering on minimal power and maybe a Reading mode for no bothersome data connections and a super-low backlight.
Some hardware makers put their own little automated tools in, such as the excellent Smart Actions found within Motorola's RAZR interface, but it'd be great to see Google give us a simple way to manage states.
Another little power strip style widget for phone performance profiles would be an easy way to do it.

Set telephone to BEDTIME SLEEPY MODE

2. Better multiple device support

Google already does quite a good job of supporting serious Android nerds who own several phones and tablets, but there are some holes in its coverage that are rather frustrating.
Take the Videos app which manages your film downloads through the Play Store. Start watching a film on one Android device and you're limited to resuming your film session on that same unit, making it impossible to switch from phone to tablet mid-film.
You can switch between phone and web site players to resume watching, but surely Google ought to understand its fans often have a couple of phones and tabs on the go and fix this for Android Key Lime Pie?

3. Enhanced social network support

Android doesn't really do much for social network users out of the box, with most of the fancy social widgets and features coming from the hardware makers through their own custom skins.
Sony integrates Facebook brilliantly in its phones, and even LG makes a great social network aggregator widget that incorporates Facebook and Twitter - so why are there no cool aggregator apps as part of the standard Android setup?
Yes, Google does a great job of pushing Google+, but, no offence, there are many other more widely used networks that ought to be a little better "baked in" to Android.

4. Line-drawing keyboard options

Another area where the manufacturers have taken a big leap ahead of Google is in integrating clever alternate text entry options in their keyboards. HTC and Sony both offer their own takes on the Swype style of line-drawing text input, which is a nice option to have for getting your words onto a telephone. Get it into Android 5.0 and give us the choice.
UPDATE: Google heard us and this feature appeared in Android 4.2.

P-U-T T-H-I-S I-N A-N-D-R-O-I-D 5-.-0

5. A video chat app

How odd is it that Google's put a front-facing camera on the Nexus 7 and most hardware manufacturers do the same on their phones and tablets, yet most ship without any form of common video chat app?
You have to download Skype and hope it works, or find some other downloadable app solution. Why isn't there a Google Live See My Face Chat app of some sort as part of Android? Is it because we're too ugly? Is that what you're saying, Google?

6. Multi-select in the contacts

The Android contacts section is pretty useful, but it could be managed a little better. What if you have the idea of emailing or texting a handful of your friends? The way that's currently done is by emailing one, then adding the rest individually. Some sort of checkbox system that let users scroll through names and create a mailing list on the fly through the contacts listing in Android Key Lime Pie would make this much easier.

Make this a destination, rather than a never-used list

7. Cross-device SMS sync

If you're a constant SIM swapper with more than one phone on the go, chances are you've lost track of your text messages at some point. Google stores these on the phone rather than the SIM card, so it'd be nice if our texts could be either backed up to the SIM, the SD card, or beamed up to the magical invisible cloud of data, for easy and consistent access across multiple devices.

8. A "Never Update" option

This would annoy developers so is unlikely to happen, but it'd be nice if we could refuse app updates permanently in Android 5.0, just in case we'd rather stick with a current version of a tool than be forced to upgrade.
Sure, you can set apps to manual update and then just ignore the update prompt forever, but it'd be nice to know we can keep a favoured version of an app without accidentally updating it. Some of us are still using the beta Times app, for example, which has given free access for a year.

Let us keep older versions. Many people fear change

9. App preview/freebie codes

Something Apple's been doing for ages and ages is using a promo code system to distribute free or review versions of apps. It even makes doing little competitions to drum up publicity for apps much easier, so why's there no similar scheme for Android?
It might encourage developers to stop going down the ad-covered/freemium route if they could charge for an app but still give it away to friends and fans through a promo code system.

10. Final whinges and requests...

It's be nice to be able to sort the Settings screen by alphabetical order, too, or by most commonly used or personal preference, as Android's so packed with a huge list of options these days it's a big old list to scroll through and pick out what you need.
Plus could we have a percentage count for the battery in the Notifications bar for Android 5.0? Just so we know a bit more info than the vague emptying battery icon.

Read More

Blackberry 10 News

Update: BlackBerry 10 (or BB10) is still under development and not yet a finished product, but we've checked out an almost-final version of the user interface, which is pretty close to perfection, according to RIM - but we'll let you be the judge by checking out our findings below.
Delayed until early 2013, the first BB10 devices should land in January– although we're now hearing it could be as late as March and RIM is now saying it will arrive during the first quarter of the year.
We saw the near-final version of BlackBerry 10 running on the new Dev Alpha B handset, building on the other test units and newer devices we've seen in the past.
The Dev Alpha B handset has been seeded to select BlackBerry developers, to aid them in their quest to produce applications for the new platform.
RIM has already handed out over 5,000 of the original Dev Alpha devices, and we wouldn't be surprised if the new handset gets the same sort of circulation.

We've also heard about the first Dev handset to sport RIM's famous Qwerty keyboard. Known as the Dev Alpha C, this will be the first handset with physical keyboard to run BlackBerry 10.
1,500 Dev Alpha C handsets will be winging their way to the hardcore BB10 developers before the official launch on January 31, so apps can be tweaked to work on the smaller screened phone.
BB 10 sees the implementation of a whole new user interface, with RIM doing away with the familiar BlackBerry system we're all used to, in favour of something which resembles the likes of Android and iOS, although with its own unique features.
With BlackBerry 10, RIM has merged homescreens, widgets, app lists and a unified inbox into one slick interface, offering up an easy-to-navigate user experience.

Lock screen

The lock screen shows notifications for alarms and unread messages on the left plus your upcoming meetings as well as the date and time, with a button to launch the camera straight from the lock screen to grab a quick snap.
You unlock the phone by sliding your thumb up the screen and from there slide from anywhere on screen and the handset starts to draw in around where you slide so if you just want a quick peek at the information in one area of the screen, you can just drag to show it and then let go – with the device remaining locked (more on that in 'Peek' mode below).

Home screen

The main homescreen comprises of 'Active Frames', technically mini-applications, which give you an overview of information from a particular app and launch the full version when tapped.

Users can select up to eight of these active frames, which arrange themselves in order of most recently used, with the latest app appearing in the top left position.

A maximum of four frames are shown on the screen at any one time, and if you scroll down and you'll be able to view the others – the display in order of use allows you to jump quickly between your recent applications.
RIM tell us that any application, even third party ones, will be able to appear as an 'Active Frame' on the BB10 homescreen, which is excellent news for anyone left frustrated by the limited widget options on Android or live tiles on Windows Phone.
For those of you who may be concerned that these 'Active Frames' could be both data and battery intensive, Research in Motion assures us that this is not the case, with the QNX core of BlackBerry 10 providing efficient power management, and the frames only downloading the minimum amount of data required for them to update.

Interface

Swiping from right to left will take you to the app list, with 16 apps on the screen at any one time – if you have more than 16 apps additional pages are added and can be accessed by swiping the same way again – familiar territory for iOS and Android users.

At the bottom of both the homescreen and app list you'll notice a shortcut bar, with quick links to the phone, search and camera applications – allowing you to quickly jump to these regularly used features.
There's a pleasant fading animation as you flick between pages, and you'll see the previous page of apps fade away to the side of the screen, to be replaced by the new page.

The idea behind BB 10 is that it Flows... which is the phrase RIM is using mercilessly to describe the new OS.
Further screenshots of the BlackBerry 10 interface have appeared online, showing off official social networking apps from all of the big players, plus a voice control feature which will likely challenge Apple's Siri and Google Voice on Android.

Notifications

The whole Flow concept really comes to life when you swipe up from the bottom of the screen – this minimises the current app/screen you're viewing and shows new notifications counts down the left hand side, including new emails, BBMs, texts and social media messages.

If you continue the slide to the right, the unified 'Hub' application can be previewed – allowing you to 'peek' at your messages.
Complete the slide and you'll open the hub fully, otherwise you'll be returned to the page you were viewing before the little red light on your handset started to flash.

This means you can easily see who has just messaged you without having to close down your current application, and knowing who it's from allows you to make a decision on whether or not to answer them straight away or continue with what you were doing originally.

BlackBerry Hub

When we say all, we mean all, as the unified inbox, or the 'Hub' as RIM likes to refer to it as, can deal with multiple email accounts, text messages, BBM, call history, third party messaging apps such as Whats App and a whole host of social networks including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Of course, with so many accounts feeding into the handset, the more popular among us will be quickly inundated with notifications from various different channels, and this is where the peek idea makes it easy to see when you've got anything new to look at.

To make the reams of messages easier to manage place your finger on the title in the bottom left corner of the message centre and pull across to reveal a list of all the accounts you have linked up and then select the one you're interested in – this will then populate the Hub which notifications from just that source.
There are also various options which can be selected for a particular message, hold down on the communication in question and a slim column of tools will pop up to the right for you to choose from, including reply, forward and delete.

Drag down from the top of the message centre and the Hub will automatically pull in your calendar events for that day in the top half of the screen, allowing you to quickly see what you've got on without having to launch the full calendar app.

Peek

Peek works much better when you get your head around all the gestures - however it may prove to be overly complex for some users, although RIM will be providing video tutorials on its BB10 handsets during the initial set up phase when you switch the phone on for the first time.
Having the 'peek' idea work the same way in so many applications helps you get used to it as well (though we don't yet know how well third-party applications will be able to do the same thing, although RIM has said it's developed nearly every API asked for when it comes to developers, and they have full access to the Peek code).
When you do get into a message or an appointment, you can see more information about the people involved in a way that will be familiar to BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0 users; you can see who you know in common, what messages you've exchanged or recent social network updates.

It's a new look for the 'flow' between different apps and information sources that BlackBerry has always been good at, but with a fresh modern look on a much larger screens.

Personal and Work modes

Sweep down on the home screen or an app list page and you'll see Personal and Work buttons that let you switch between the two BlackBerry Balance modes.
In Personal, you can install any apps you want, send any email, save any file and so on, working in a partition that's encrypted for privacy but not locked down in any way.

If you use your BlackBerry for work though, you'll also have a Work partition that's also encrypted but completely separate and can be locked down if that's what the company wants.
Drag down on the screen, pick Work mode and all your personal apps disappear – so you can't accidentally copy a work file into your personal cloud storage account.
Your company can have complete control of this work section, giving you as much, or as little freedom within this area as they see fit – and everything in Work mode is fully secured, with remote wipe available just it case your handset goes astray.
However work won't be able see what files you have on your personal area when they're managing it, because your personal partition is encrypted.

BB10 in work and personal modes

Select Work mode and you'll be prompted to enter a password before gaining access to your protected area, which means prying eyes won't be able to steal a glimpse at all your company secrets. Phew.
Work mode still features the same UI as found in Personal mode, with all the flow and peek activity present, allowing you to perform some slick, one-handed operations.
Other apps use the swipe-down motion in a different way, allowing to function like a menu key - for instance the mapping app allows you to change accounts or settings with a quick finger flick.

Cascades

Then there's Cascades, a new navigation system cooked up by RIM especially for BB10, allowing for quick multitasking from within applications.

The example we've seen is in the messaging app - open an email it will display full screen, but drag your finger from left to right and the message will slide with you, revealing the inbox below.
This means if you get a new message in the middle of reading an email, you can check who it's from without having to close the application – similar to the notification bar on Android and also now iOS.
If you were to open an attachment from the email, a PDF document in the case of our demo, pulling to the side to view the cascade will show the app's layers stacked up – a more visual paper trail, if you will.
It's certainly an intuitive feature that we found to work smoothly on the development handset – but it will be interesting to see how this feature is embedded into other applications and if it will have the same pleasing results.

New App world

BlackBerry App World is also getting a makeover with a cleaner, more intuitive design ready to show off all the apps RIM is pushing developers so hard to make in time for launch.
As well as offering applications, the new App World will also provide music and videos to purchase and download – allowing BlackBerry 10 handsets the chance to compete with the likes of Google Play, iTunes and the Apple App Store.
There's a sperate version of BlackBerry AppWorld where your company can offer specific work apps – like an app that uses the NFC chip in your BlackBerry to unlock the door to the office, as well as locking out applications they don't deem suitable for using while at work.

Keyboard

BlackBerry handsets are famous for their physical boards and RIM is keen to bring this typing experience to its BB10 touchscreen smartphones with its own offering.
Visually the keyboard looks similar to the stock Android offering, but each row of keys is separated with a silver line, or 'fret' – which is supposed to reflect the metal strips between buttons on the Bold range, such as the Bold 9790 and Bold 9900.

Next word prediction, auto-correct and spell check are all common features on smartphones today and RIM has spent some time developing its own system to offer an efficient typing experience.
It sees next-word suggestions appear above the character the word begins with, and if it's the word you want to use, you just need to swipe up over the word and it will be added to your sentence.
As with many offerings these days, the keyboard will learn your style of writing, meaning it will be able to suggest better words the more you use your phone.

RIM reckons that heavy users will quickly see a marked improvement once they start using the keyboard, as BlackBerry 10 will only take a couple of days to learn their style of writing.
Another interesting feature is that the keyboard can support up to three languages at any one time, so if you're writing in English it will offer up English words as suggestions, but suddenly switch to tapping out French, even in the same message, and the BB10 board can detect the change in tongue and adjust its recommendations accordingly - smart.
We found the keyboard to be fairly accurate and relatively well spaced, but for those of you used to the physical buttons of a traditional BlackBerry it will take some getting used to.

Camera

RIM is making a big song and dance about its BB 10 camera application as well, especially the 'Time Shift' feature, which allows you to select the perfect smile of your subject after taking the photo.
Fire up the camera app (from the lock screen if you so wish), which was relatively quick to open on the Dev Alpha B device, select 'Time Shift' mode and snap your subject, and the app will then search for faces in the image.

Once a face is located in a photo, you can tap it and literally roll back time to find the point at which your friend had their eyes open and the perfect grin.
If there are multiple people in your snap, you can individually adjust each person, however during our demo we found 'Time Shift' struggled in lower lighting conditions, subjects face's need to be illuminated well for the camera to detect their mugs.

'Time Shift' did take several seconds after the photo was taken to detect faces and offer us the chance to tweak the image, but this could be down to the fact it's running on a development build of the BB10 software, and speed could be improved in the final product.
Of course the camera can take standard photos and record video alongside the 'Time Shift' function, which itself is an impressive function, but we wonder how much we'd actually use it day to day.

Browser

The BlackBerry browser has also had a refresh for BB10, bringing it in line with the minimalist style of current offerings on other devices, and the location of the URL bar at the bottom of the page is reminiscent of Internet Explorer on Windows Phone.
Even though Adobe has already ditched future support and upgrades of its Flash platform, RIM has made sure it's built in support for the dying format, allowing you to access all your favourite Flash built sites and videos of Korean men dancing on invisible horses.
There seems to be a partnership with a particular search engine, allowing you to search via the URL bar, as well as pulling info into other applications, but RIM are currently not in the position to disclose whether they've opted for Google, Bing or something a little more left field.
Sweep from left to right while in the browser and the 'peek' functionality comes into play again, this time showing various internet-centric options such as History, Bookmarks, New Tab and currently opened tabs.
There's also a Reader mode built into the new browser, which lifts article text and images from a web page and displays it in a more manageable and easy to read format, stripping out fancy ads, menu bars and any other clutter which gets in the way of actually reading something.
Comparison tests have shown the BlackBerry 10 web browser to be faster than its equivalent on Apple's iOS 6 and the new version of Windows Phone - we'll reserve proper judgement until we have a final handset in our sweaty palm, but at least this is a positive sign.

Battery life

As we've mentioned briefly earlier on, RIM is promising that BlackBerry 10 will help to deliver decent battery life, even with the big touchscreen and those lovely 'Active Frames'.
RIM has even gone as far to say that's its two BB 10 launch devices, one fully-touchscreen and the other sporting the famous Qwerty keyboard, will offer up a full days battery life, thanks to a lot of hard work by the QNX team on power management in the core of the BlackBerry 10 platform.
Obviously we were unable to put this claim to the test during our brief hands on viewing, but we'll be sure to push the new BB10 devices to their limits once we get our review units in.

Early verdict

Although the BlackBerry 10 operating system is in development, we must say that we were impressed with how smooth and slick the interface felt under out fingers – seamlessly zipping around without fuss.
BlackBerry assured us that is smooth experience would still be present in the final product, thanks to the clever integration of the HTML 5 system, which optimises the performance of the software. We certainly hope they're right.
There are plenty of features of BB 10 that are exciting - the gestures work very, very well after a few minutes, the powerful messaging ecosystem is still there and even the on screen keyboard is great.
What does strike you about the new OS is how the phone is so integrated - Facebook, Twitter, Email are all available, connected to your friends or easy to share to throughout the phone.
It's a much more complex OS than iOS or Windows Phone, but there are only so many ways to re-invent the smartphone wheel; in the case of BB 10, RIM has gone for usable power over rows of easy to use icons.
It's a bold move, and one technophiles will love. If the hardware is decent too, there may be enough BB fans out there willing to use the finger-flicking platform... but with so many things to learn, it will take some serious and quick eduction to get users up to speed.

Read More