New Android Tablet from Dell Drops Tomorrow, Cheaper than iPad

Tomorrow you will be able to get your hands on the new Dell Streak. This 5-inch tablet device will be $300 with a two-year AT&T contract or $549 for an unlocked edition. The Dell Streak uses Google’s Android OS, has front and back facing cameras, Wi-Fi, 3G, and a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor (Nexus One).

 

I don’t know how I feel about this device as it sounds really nice and at the price is a great deal, but it may just fall into the category of “Why do I need this again?” Many other phones, pads, and pods offer the same thing the Dell Streak offers. Why is this device any different from the rest other than price?

 

It’s too big to be a comfortable smart phone and too small to be a “real” tablet. Oh and if you want the $300 deal from AT&T you have to get it with a full data and voice plan. Dell is also not the biggest name when it comes to mobile devices. So maybe we’ll see some Kin numbers or it could be in Droid territory. Who knows?

 

How does this affect you?

 

You have so many choices now with phones and tablets that you may just want to check it out tomorrow at a local AT&T store. But with the Droid 2 coming out and the HTC Evo, the Dell Streak seems a little late to the party.

 

Would you buy a Dell Streak? Let me know in the comments!

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

New Payment Options for the Android Market

Android developers will have more ways to satisfy customers in the near future according to Google's Tim Bray. He mentions that the Android team is working on "introducing new payment options" for the Android Market.

 

From the Android Developers Blog:

In the spirit of transparency, we wanted to highlight the changes:

• In Section 13.1, “authorized carriers” have been added as an indemnified party.

• Section 13.2 is new in its entirety, covering indemnity for payment processors for claims related to tax accrual.

These new terms apply immediately to anyone joining Android Market as a new publisher. Existing publishers have been notified of this change via email; they have up to 30 days to sign into the Android Market developer console to accept the new terms.

 

Right now, T-Mobile is the only carrier that lets its customers put charges for mobile apps on their monthly phone bill. This is great news for anyone who doesn't like or know how to use Google checkout. I know I would like a PayPal option and it would be welcomed by other many people as well.

 

Read the Android Developers Blog Post.

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Was Nexus One a Loss Leader for Google?

Chris Brogan’s post on Blogs as Loss Leaders inspired me to write this post. Ironically he got his idea from Chris Voss. Basically Voss was explaining that his blog was a loss leader, because it didn’t exactly earn revenue. But the flip side is that it leads to other things that can earn money and possibly at a higher rate.
Photo by Steve Snodgrass

To better understand what a loss leader is; imagine a supermarket selling sugar or milk at less than cost to draw customers into the store. Now scale this formula up about 1000 times and you have Wal-Mart. That’s just one example, but you should know that loss leaders are as old as retail and some companies just use them better than others. So why do I think Google’s Nexus One was a loss leader?

Nexus One as a Loss Leader
Before the Nexus One was delivered to the world, what were your options if you wanted an Android phone?  Well, let’s take a walk down memory lane:

• G1 (T-Mobile) – Released October 22, 2008
• myTouch 3G (T-Mobile) – Released August 5, 2009
• HTC Hero (Sprint) – Released October 11, 2009
• Motorola CLIQ (T-Mobile) – Released November 2, 2009
• Samsung Moment – Released November 1, 2009
• Motorola Droid (Verizon) – Released November 6, 2009
• Droid Eris – Released November 6, 2009
• Samsung Behold 2 – Released November 18, 2009

Out of all of these phones only 3 stand out: the G1, myTouch 3G and Motorola Droid (the fastest selling android phone). And of those 3, only the Motorola Droid was pushing the upper limits for smartphones when it was released.
So what is my point? Back in 2009, rumors were going around that Google wasn’t happy with current lineup of Android devices. This may have prompted them to build a “What-If” phone. So January 5, 2010 the Nexus One was born – with a little help from HTC.
Jumping back to the present and with Google essentially ending Nexus One’s life, some have said that Nexus One was a failure due to low sales. Mainly due to the much criticized direct sell method by Google. Sure sales weren’t at the level a major release smartphone should have been, but Google didn’t make a great effort either. I am sure that T-Mobile offered to carry the Nexus One in their retail stores. The Nexus One could’ve had 3 times the sales if T-Mobile sold it in their stores.



I don’t believe selling millions of phones was Google’s primary goal. Their goal may have been more of a large scale market research / development project. Their audience wasn’t exactly customers only but technology geeks, developers and manufacturers. It’s not like Google couldn’t afford to go ahead with a possible project like this. They seem to buy a new company every month.
In my humble opinion the Nexus One was more of an effort to push phone manufacturers (HTC, Motorola, Samsung and LG) and carriers (T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint. AT&T doesn’t count: see iPhone) forward with Android.  Once the Nexus One was released, the passion mobile developers had for Android was definitely known; possibly causing the Android OS to be more attractive to the manufacturers stated above.
Another good reason why Google released the Nexus One may have been to alert these same manufacturers that Google could enter the market with an excellent phone. Mainly a warning shot. There is no greater motivator than the bottom line.

Loss for Gain
So did Google achieve the goal of loss for gain? If you look at the recent stats, I would say yes.

Back on June 23, 2010 Google posted the following to their Official Blog:

Every day 160,000 Android-powered devices are activated — that’s nearly two devices every second, used for the first time by people from New York to New Zealand.
Android started with one simple idea: Provide a powerful, open mobile platform to drive faster innovation for the benefit of consumers. This idea has come to life around the world. Today, there are 60 compatible Android devices, delivered via a global partnership network of 21 OEMs and 59 carriers in 49 countries. The volume and variety of Android devices continues to exceed even our most optimistic expectations. In some instances, Android devices are selling faster than they can be manufactured.

“Selling faster than they can be manufactured” – Any company in the world would love to say they couldn’t make enough of their product to keep up with demand. Also the Android OS is no longer limited to just smartphones. You will soon see a version of the Android OS on tablets, netbooks, laptops, and tons of other mobile devices in the coming months.
You may be thinking right now that Google didn’t lose much since they charged $529 per phone. That would be true if retail price and cost to design, develop, manufacture, and bring to market were equal. The fact is most companies take an initial loss on a new product for future gains; when cost goes down due to economies of scale. Essentially the more you produce the cheaper it becomes to make a product. Also new methods for faster manufacturing and cheaper come into place over time.
So considering the Nexus One was only on the market for about 6 months, means that Google may have taken a large financial loss. But that was worth the loss if the gain was increased market share and large brand recognition, which Android has currently.

 

Droid Incredible by HTC

After the release of the Nexus One, take a look at the 2010 Android Phones:

• Motorola Backflip
• HTC Aria
• Dell Aero
• HTC Evo
• HTC Droid Incredible
• HTC myTouch 3G Slide
• Samsung Behold II
• Motorola Droid X
• Motorola Droid 2

I believe that Android still would have been a great platform without the release of the Nexus One, but we may not have seen the phones we have available today. But that’s only speculation as most of this post is…just speculation.

What do you think? Was the Nexus One an overall winner for Google?

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

DIY Paintable Android Figurines Coming This August

Project your true inner geek onto this paintable mini Android. The $6 Do It Yourself Android will be available at Comic-Con this week and should pop up for sale on Dyzplastics in early August.

 

But its not just dressing up Google's Android; you can make the little guy stand out anyway you want. Illustrator Sam Spratt got creative with a few mini Androids:

 

 

I'm still waiting on Dyzplastics original Android mini collectibles Series 01 to be back in stock.

 

From Dyzplastics:

Our initial stock of figures is small, at first they will be available at the online Android collectible shop (link coming soon!). In a few weeks the rest will be available at select retailers. After that you'll probably have to wait a few months!

Check back here and on the blog for a list of some places to get your hands on our robots!

 

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Trees Rejoice: Amazon Sells More Kindle Books Than Hardcovers

From Amazon:

Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books.

 

Full press release below

KINDLE DEVICE UNIT SALES ACCELERATE EACH MONTH IN SECOND QUARTER;
NEW $189 PRICE RESULTS IN TIPPING POINT FOR GROWTH

Amazon.com now selling more Kindle books than hardcover books

SEATTLE-July 19, 2010-(NASDAQ: AMZN)-Millions of people are already reading on Kindles and Kindle is the #1 bestselling item on Amazon.com for two years running. It's also the most-wished-for, most-gifted, and has the most 5-star reviews of any product on Amazon.com. Today, Amazon.com announced that Kindle device unit sales accelerated each month in the second quarter-both on a sequential month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year basis.

"We've reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle-the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189," said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "In addition, even while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books-astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months."

Kindle offers the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read. The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 630,000 books, including New Releases and 106 of 110 New York Times Best Sellers. Over 510,000 of these books are $9.99 or less, including 75 New York Times Best Sellers. Over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle.

Recent milestones for Kindle books include:

Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books. This is across Amazon.com's entire U.S. book business and includes sales of hardcover books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.

Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books in the first half of 2010 as in the first half of 2009.
The Association of American Publishers' latest data reports that e-book sales grew 163 percent in the month of May and 207 percent year-to-date through May. Kindle book sales in May and year-to-date through May exceeded those growth rates.

On July 6, Hachette announced that James Patterson had sold 1.14 million e-books to date. Of those, 867,881 were Kindle books.

Five authors-Charlaine Harris, Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer, James Patterson, and Nora Roberts-have each sold more than 500,000 Kindle books.

Readers are responding to Kindle's uncompromising approach to the reading experience. Weighing 10.2 ounces, Kindle can be held comfortably in one hand for hours, has an e-ink display that is easy on the eyes even in bright daylight, has two weeks of battery life, lets you buy your books once and read them everywhere-on your Kindle, Kindle DX, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, BlackBerry, and Android-based devices-and has free 3G wireless with no monthly fees or annual contracts-all at a $189 price.

SOURCE: Amazon.com

 

What does this mean exactly? Well it could be a tipping point. It was only a matter of time. With music, newspapers and magazines going digital over the past 10 years, books had to make the jump sooner or later.

 

What do you think? Are physical books over or do they still carry some appeal? Let me know in the comments!

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Why Should You Start Using Dropbox?

We often save our most important data and information on our computers without giving it a second thought due to the reliability they have provided recently. This is great until your hard disks fails or your PC / Laptop gets stolen. They can even burn up in a fire or we delete our stuff on our own by accident. All of that can happen and if it does we can only be thankful for a recent – up to date backup which will bring back your most valuable data.

 

Now you should use external hard drives for backups but they are not totally safe against damage or theft either. Any physical media is susceptible to failure. To resolve this issue, a very good and cheap method to backup your data online and in the cloud is Dropbox. There is a free basic plan with 2 GB space, and two pro plans with 50 GB for $9.99 per month or 100 GB for $19.99 per month. The free basic plan is more than enough for most users.

 

Why Dropbox?

 

Let's say you're editing a document at home. As soon as you click 'Save', Dropbox will sync this same file to all your other computers and your mobile devices (iPhone, Android and Blackberry coming soon!) instantly and automatically. It's as if you saved the document to all of your computers. This gives you the freedom to work on any of your computers and always have the files you need.

 

You can easily share entire folders or photo albums with Dropbox. You can also send people links to specific files within your Dropbox.

 

 

Any file you put into your Dropbox folder is automatically backed up to their servers. Even if your computer has a melt-down, your files are safe on Dropbox and can be restored at any time.

 

Dropbox Replaces:

• Emailing file attachments to yourself and other people
• Using USB drives to move files between computers
• Renaming files to keep a history of previous versions
• Complicated backup software and hardware

 

 

Setting Up Dropbox

Signup

In order to sign up with Dropbox go to Dropbox Signup (With this Referral you will receive a 250 MB bonus on top of your 2 GB free space automatically!)

 

Download

After the successful registration, the download of the Dropbox application should start automatically. Dropbox is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux.

 

Install

Double click the downloaded application and start the install by clicking “Install”

 

Now Dropbox should be installed and up and running. When prompted, fill in the same data you filled in for your registration and choose either the free plan with 2 GB or one of the pro plans. Again, go with the 2 GB plan unless you need more space.

 

Working with Dropbox

Dropbox has created a folder on your computer which will synchronize with the online backup on each change.You can double click the Dropbox icon in your task bar to open that folder, or just right click the icon to get more options.

 

Backup

You are now able to change, delete and then copy files and folders with your most important data in the Dropbox folder, these will be automatically uploaded to the online cloud. Should you ever delete something from that folder by accident then you got about a month worth of time after deletion to be able to un-delete those files – also all changes will be saved should you need a previous version of a file.

 

Dropbox can also be used for various other things like an image gallery, to make files publicly downloadable or to share files to your friends and family.

 

I have been using Dropbox for about 6 months and the reason why I like it so much is because it's so easy and seamless to use. It just works and is dead simple. Also having the ability to have my files on my Android phone makes life a lot easier.

 

If you are interested in Dropbox, I highly recommend this backup solution. Sign up for Dropbox here!  

 

Are you already using Dropbox? Let me know what you think in the comments!

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Droid X Hits Verizon Stores This Week

The Droid X, the next member of the Droid family, will be coming to Verizon Wireless stores on Thursday.

 

The Droid X is Motorola’s latest Google Android device, featuring a 4.3-inch screen, 8-megapixel camera, HDMI out put and more.

 

The Droid X looks like it will be shipping with Android 2.1 to start. Android 2.2 (Froyo) and Adobe Flash Player 10.1 will be available via an over-the-air update before fall.

 

The original Droid was a massive hit for Verizon and has been the most successful Android device to-date. Since original Droid release last November, many high-end Android-based smartphones have showed up, including the Nexus One, HTC Incredible, HTC EVO 4G and the Dell Streak.

 

The Droid X will be available for $199 after a $100 mail-in-rebate and a new, two-year contract. So get your hands on one right now!

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Official XBMC Remote for Android

Test versions of the XBMC controller app have been floating around for some time – now it’s launched on the Android Market in public beta for everyone.

 

Obviously you need a build of XBMC to make it work, as without that it’s just some useless app on your phone. Here’s the description:

Besides using the app as pure remote control with the look of the famous Xbox DVD Dongle, you’ll be able to browse your music, movie and TV shows library. Browse through your albums by genre or artist, select or queue an album without even turning on your television? No problem. Make incoming calls automatically pause the film you’re watching? Go to settings and check the option. You can find a complete list of features on the project page. Also check out the screenshots gallery.

 

See the full gallery on posterous

 

You’ll need at least Android v1.5 (Cupcake) and XBMC v9.11 (Camelot) in order to run it correctly.

 

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Android Surging in U.S. Smartphone Market; RIM Still Tops

USA Today is reporting that BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is king of the smartphone hill, according to data released by researcher comScore.

RIM had a 41.7% market share among smartphone platforms, topping Apple (iPhone) 24.4%, Microsoft (Windows) 13.2% and Google (Android) 13.0%. Palm, which was recently acquired by HP, lagged with a 4.8 % share.

The folks at RIM may not want to get overly giddy. The numbers reflect the three month period ending in May 2010, prior to the iPhone 4's release and before a slew of new Google Android devices invaded the market, including the HTC Evo 4G from Sprint and Motorola's Droid X from Verizon.

Most of the momentum indeed points to Android. Google gained four percentage points compared to the previous three month reporting period of February 2010, the only smartphone rival with a positive point change in market share during that time.

Still, comScore says overall smartphone ownership continues to grow, with 49.1 million people in the U.S. now owning such a device, up 8.1 percent over the corresponding February period.


I suspect that RIM will be king for another 1 - 2 years as companies relax use of non-blackberry phones on their networks. With the failure of KIN, Microsoft needs a home run with Windows Phone 7.

The competition in the mobile phone market will only get more fierce as more users move to smartphones. We are not even near 80 saturation of the smartphone market, so this a great time for companies to build device/brand loyalty.

How long do you think RIM can hang on? Let me know in the comments!

Read the post at USA Today.

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

Hate Looking for Parking? Google Has an Answer

Google Labs has just released a new Android app that aims to help users find and share parking. It's called Open Spot and works by letting people who are leaving parking spots share their spots with people who are searching for parking.

 

Have you driven around aimlessly, trying to find a parking spot? I know I have and whether it’s on a street corner or in a shopping mall, Google is hoping to crowdsource a solution that can save, gas, pollution and ultimately time.

 

Open Spot will show you parking spots located within about a mile radius of your location. While moving, Open Spot will automatically refresh to show you parking spots within about a mile radius of where you currently located. Spots are removed from the map after 20 minutes.

 

The Google FAQ has more on this:

We know that 20 minutes is a long time for a parking spot to stay open, but we think that more information about available parking is better than less.

 

There are some issues and limitations to this new service:

 

• No fresh spots available

  They will remove spots from the map after 20 minutes. Although 20 minutes is a long time for a parking spot to stay open in places where parking is hard to find, they think that knowing where someone has recently left a parking spot might be useful information.

• Not enough users near you

  Another reason you might not see any parking nearby is there may not be enough Open Spot users in your area. 

 

Just getting people to use the app is going to be the biggest challenge. It’s the sort of clever solution that I could see using once or twice and then utterly forgetting about.

 

All in all, this just looks great on paper but may be too much work for too little payoff to gain lots of traction. But this is from Google Labs so this is not a app they are fully pushing. If it gets some traction, I'm sure Google will bundle it with another app or newer version of Android. Maybe 3.0? Who knows - only time will tell. Still a clever idea.

 

Android owners can download the app now and give it a try.

 

Would you be interested in using an app to find parking spots? Let me know in the comments!

Posted via email from Neville's Blog

HTC Will Complete Android 2.2 Upgrades By Christmas

Waiting for the Froyo upgrade on your Desire or Legend? Well the team over at Pocket-lint got some one-on-one time with Eric Lin, HTC's global PR and online community manager, at the recent Qualcomm Uplinq convention and got the low down on when Android 2.2 will arrive for HTC Sense devices.  

 

Mr. Lin said:

It takes time to port all of our applications over to Froyo and then make sure that it is running well on each of our devices. That’s not like a one week kind of project. We need to make sure that our applications are taking advantage of the Froyo features. To make sure that they’re all running properly on the OS now that it’s a new version. And then to make sure that it's running on our hardware as well as we expect.  I would believe that we would be done with our Froyo updates before Christmas.

 

Indeed, he suggests that the updates are going quicker than could be expected: "I don’t think you’re going to see that really long six month, seven month lag, like you saw in the updates from 1.5 to 2.1, simply because it’s a less severe change.

With Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) expected before the end of the year, could it all be in vain?

 

Lin continues:

I don’t think so. I don’t know what Gingerbread involves, but I would believe that we would be done with our Froyo updates before Christmas. And since Google hasn’t made any announcements as to when Gingerbread is going to come out, I’m not going to make that guess, it could be Q1 of next year.

 

It looks like HTC will leave a nice gift under the tree this Christmas. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

 

Read more at Pocket-Lint.

Posted via email from Neville's Blog