android

Opera Software just unveiled Opera Mobile 10.1 beta for Android tonight, but we've had a chance to play around with a prerelease version for several days. Opera has already had a presence on Android phones in the form of Opera Mini, a Java-based proxy browser that delivers Web pages fed through Opera's servers. Opera Mobile, by contrast, is a standalone HTML browser that can request, render, and display Web content independently of Opera's servers.

On the front end, the two apps look identical, down to the log-in screen and license agreement you'll have to accept before you can begin browsing. Opera Mini 5 and Opera Mobile 10.1 beta both have tabbed browsing, and a signature nine-entry "speed dial" for storing favorite sites. There's also a password keeper, long-press context menus, and support for Opera Link, Opera's service for syncing bookmarks, favorites, notes, and browser history across Opera browsers.

Mobile versus Mini Despite the similarities, there are a couple of significant differences between the two Android browsers. Opera Mini is usually the faster of the two browsers, a move that hearkens back to Opera's days making browsers move quickly on feature phones with slow processors and slow data connections. As a result, Opera's servers compress Web page data; this assures that pages load in a timely manner, but it also reduces text and image resolution quality. Besides that, there's no Flash support.

Opera Mobile, on the other hand, renders images (using its Presto rendering engine) with more clarity. If the browser seems too sluggish for your tastes, you can engage Opera Turbo, Opera's compression engine, to essentially make Opera Mobile adopt Opera Mini's levels of compression and speed. Opera Mobile beta doesn't currently support Flash, although an Opera representative assured CNET that the release version will.

Naturally, we tried out Opera Mobile 10.1 beta and Opera Mini 5 side by side on Android phones. In addition to rendering more clearly, Opera Mobile displays the desktop version of CNET.com, whereas Opera Mini opts for the faster-loading mobile-optimized site, which is also lighter in content and imagery. … Read more

Sometimes, convergence between two devices happens so naturally that you hardly notice. You wake up, and your iPod and your phone are the same thing, and you wonder how you ever managed them as separate devices.

Some convergence is a bit more blunt. Case in point--the Entourage eDGe, a dual-screen tablet and e-book reader CNET reviewed in March of this year. In a perfect world, there would be one screen that offers e-ink readability as well as LCD features like color, photos, and video playback. Not content to sit and wait for this mythical color e-ink technology to arrive, Entourage literally links the two screen types together to deliver the best of both.

Is it an elegant solution? Nope. But it works, and it delivers the experience of marking and annotating e-books like nothing else on the market. Its biggest problem (aside from the $490 price) was its unwieldy size.

To answer this criticism, Entourage is now selling the Pocket eDGe--a scaled-down version of its original product offered at a scaled down price of $399.

The two connected screens of the Pocket eDGe include a 6-inch e-ink Wacom tablet on the left, and a 7-inch (800x480) resistive LCD touch screen on the right. Like the original eDGe, the Pocket version includes Bluetooth, Wi-Fi b/g, and USB sync and host ports. You also get a microSD memory slot to expand on the 3GB of internal memory, built-in microphone, and built-in 2 megapixel camera capable of video and stills.

During our hands-on demonstration of the Pocket eDGe, we noticed that the modified Android 1.6 OS performs much faster than original eDGe we tested in March. We're told the performance boost is entirely due to software optimizations Entourage has rolled out to users over the past few months.

Compared with any other popular e-reader on the market, the Pocket eDGe is still a little chunky at a half inch thick when open, and an inch thick closed up. Still, we have to admit, it's a much more portable proposition than its predecessor. … Read more

Samsung Mobile's U.K. Twitter account confirmed late last week that Android 2.2 is rolling out to the i-9000 Galaxy S handset. According to the tweet, the long-awaited Froyo update will hit "everyone" by the end of November.

Assuming that "everyone" includes only U.K. residents, we have to ask when other countries and carriers will see a similar update to their respective phones. The Galaxy S is available in more than 100 countries including the United States where it has been uniquely branded by the top carriers.

If leaked ROMs are any indication, … Read more

NEW YORK--Though not much of a surprise, Samsung and Verizon officially unveiled the Samsung Continuum at a press event in Manhattan today.

The latest in Samsung's Galaxy S series of Android phones, the Continuum is special in that it has two separate displays: a larger 3.4-inch Super AMOLED touch screen on top and a smaller 1.8-inch ticker display on the bottom. The ticker display is customizable and streams real-time information from your social networks and your news, sports, entertainment, and weather feeds.

The idea is that you can simply look at the ticker display for quick updates … Read more

The ever-functional and increasingly popular note-taking application Evernote has been available on desktop and mobile devices for a few years, though the app for the Android OS became available only at the beginning of this year. Today, the company made some noticeable improvements to the interface and functionality of the app with version 2.0.

The first thing Evernote addressed on its Android app was the home screen, which is now cleaner and simpler to navigate. Here, you're greeted with six main options: new note, snapshot, all notes, tags, notebooks, and search. This screen also displays sync status, when … Read more

The wait for Android 2.3 could be over quite soon.

"Prepare your Nexus One (developer version) for Android over-the-air update 2.3 (Gingerbread) for the next few days," according to a translation of a tweet in Spanish sent yesterday by Alvaro Fuentes Vasquez.

It can't be immediately confirmed that Vasquez or his prediction is for real. However, Vasquez states on his LinkedIn page that he's been a member of the "leadership team and usability" for the Open Handset Alliance for the past two years. His blog seems to back up his credentials as … Read more

One of the things I like best about Android-based smartphones (even lower-end, no-contract models like the Samsung Intercept) is their expandability. Most can accommodate microSDHC storage cards of up to 32GB. You could have one for music, another for movies, a third for documents, and so on. Take that, iPhone!

Alas, 32GB cards are extremely pricey; the sweet spot right now is 16GB. Of course, just how sweet depends on where you shop. Walk into your local Best Buy (or similar big-box store) and you could easily pay upwards of $60 for that kind of storage.

Take it from me: … Read more

OSLO, Norway--Opera Software, the scrappy Norwegian browser maker, today faces arguably the biggest competitive threats of its 15-year history.

The first challenges are on personal computers. Right after Google's Chrome burst onto the scene two years ago, Opera slipped from fourth to fifth place in browser usage worldwide. And longtime archrival Microsoft is no longer the punching bag of the browser market; its forthcoming IE9 is a serious attempt to match rivals in performance and support for new Web standards.

Second, in Opera's other domain, Apple's iPhone and now Google's Android are rewriting the mobile browsing rules. Their browsers are adapted for phones more like miniature desktop computers than the small-screened, candy bar-shape models that prevailed when Opera's mobile browsing business began.

And yet the Oslo underdog has adapted to crises before and appears to be adapting to the present changes as well.

In a series of interviews at its headquarters here, Opera executives showed they suffer no illusions about the competition. They also made a credible case that Opera, while not about to dethrone its bigger rivals, will continue to defend its turf with a profitable business.

A new mobile strategy One cornerstone of its confidence comes from a major shift in its mobile strategy in response to a dark, unprofitable patch in the second half of 2009. Opera shifted its alliance efforts from phone companies to the powerful network operators who see their future threatened by the new generation of smartphones and services. … Read more

Smartphones exist so that people can feel something.

Our inner lives, after all, are so numbing that we are forced to rely on our outer vestments to speak to us and to others.

While our stripes--single slim, red Prada, or three jagged Adidas, depending on your bent--can be shown by our clothes, it's our smartphones that speak by their very public presence at all times of day and night.

Please, then, peruse this artistic depiction of the image parameters of smartphone users and wonder whether you see yourself and your own feelings. This creation is the work of C-Section Comics, … Read more