iPhone 5 Launcher for Android Released

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Opera 7.5 Mini for Android introduces new social Smart Page

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Opera 7.5 Mini for Android introduces new social Smart Page

If you are not using Google Chrome as your browser on your Android smartphone you may have at least looked at Opera’s offerings for the operating system. According to the statistics on Google Play, the browser has been installed on at least 10 million devices. Opera Mini 7.5 has just been released for Android phones running Android version 1.5 or higher introducing a new Smart Page and other features in the version.

You are probably wondering why Opera is making available two different browser versions, Opera Mini and Opera Mobile. The main difference is how pages are rendered using the browser. Opera Mini uses Opera servers to render pages while Opera Mobile renders pages on the smartphone directly. This makes Opera Mini ideal if a smartphone’s hardware is not the fastest as it removes the time it takes before the pages are displayed on the screen.

Back to Opera Mini 7.5. Smart Page is a new social tab in the browser that taps right into popular social networking sites to keep you updated with the latest activities. The browser supports Facebook, Twitter and vKontakte, and once you have signed in on the browser you receive the latest updates right on the page without having to visit the sites directly.

Another addition is the My News section which displays news from a variety of sources based on your browsing habits or your preferences. Opera Mini furthermore displays link suggestions on the start page based “on the region your Android phone is located” in.

The speed dial feature is just a tab away in the browser, and since data gets compressed when you use Opera Mini, you benefit from faster browsing and reduced bandwidth usage, which is especially helpful for people who pay per Megabyte or with a plan that is only providing them with a low amount of free bandwidth per month.

Opera Mini 7.5 is available for download on Google Play.

Here is a video by Opera Software highlighting the new features of Opera Mini’s Smart Page feature.

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Thursday September 20, 2012 -
Tags:android, Opera, opera mini, web browser
Categories: Browsing, Google Android, Opera

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Game Developer Abandons Android App Citing Unsustainability

The company behind the popular Battleheart game for Google’s Android operating system are ceasing support for the platform citing the unsustainability of the platform in the long term.  In a blog post, Mika Mobile said…

 We spent about 20% of our total man-hours last year dealing with Android in one way or another – porting, platform specific bug fixes, customer service, etc.  I would have preferred spending that time on more content for you, but instead I was thanklessly modifying shaders and texture formats to work on different GPUs, or pushing out patches to support new devices without crashing, or walking someone through how to fix an installation that wouldn’t go through.  We spent thousands on various test hardware.  These are the unsung necessities of offering our apps on Android.  Meanwhile, Android sales amounted to around 5% of our revenue for the year, and continues to shrink.  Needless to say, this ratio is unsustainable.

Clearly there is an economic argument here as the company state clearly that they’re not making money, at least not from this one game.  Their problem however is exacerbated by the fact that Android has become such a fractured platform for them, and updates to the OS are coming so quickly that they’re spending too much time updating existing titles to keep them working.  This is cutting into the time they want to spend developing new titles instead.

This raises an interesting question as it should be a simple matter of writing an app and putting it on sale.  This, after all is what happens on iOS and what will happen for Windows 8.  These two platforms are very different from Android though for quite significant reasons.  With Windows 8 all the cross-compatibility work is done by the compiler, which is something Microsoft worked very hard on, and the main operating system itself will not be updated for another three years.  In the case of iOS very little changes and with the new iPad coming next month with it’s higher resolution screen, all upscaling of apps will be handled by the operating system seamlessly in the background.

Under the hood of both of these platforms everything is stable and nothing changes.  Android however is suffering from the fragmentation that being open-source has brought to some Linux distributions with even the creator of Gnome admitting last year that each new distro of the kernel is “breaking APIs all the time”.

In no small part Android is becoming a victim of its own success.  It is nowhere near as tightly controlled as either iOS or Windows 8 with individual hardware makers able to add their own elements to the OS.  This creates device-specific versions of Android, with good examples being the Amazon Kindle Fire and the HTC Flyer, that software makers have to check application compatibility with.

So is this the beginning of a slippery slope for Android?  It is possible that we could eventually find ourselves in a position where tablets begin to crash as software houses write apps that will run on one version of the OS on most tablets but not on one or two specific machines.  It is also possible that many apps will come with a list of supported devices before you buy or download them, and with advice not to update the firmware for risk of breaking the app.

It will be interesting to hear what you think on this.  Do you think Android is unsustainable or do you believe the open-source approach is simply superior to the closed-development that Apple and Microsoft bring to their platforms?  Why not tell us in the comments below.

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Android Phone Emulator About the Author:Mike Halsey is a Microsoft MVP for "Windows Expert". He is also the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out from Microsoft Press and the Windows 7 Power Users Guide, a how-to guide for non-technical Windows users on how to get the best out of Microsoft's new operating system, with step-by-step and quick guides. You can follow Mike on Facebook, Twitter or on his own website The Long ClimbAuthor: Mike Halsey MVP, Sunday March 11, 2012 -
Tags:android, battleheart, game, Google, tablet

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Get Android Notifications Pushed To Your Desktop

There may be times where you do not have the time to pay attention to your Android phone. This can be at work where you may not be allowed to have your phone out in the open, or with you at all, or in situations where you are working with noise-cancelling headsets that would, well, make you ignore the phone’s notifications.

And while you probably can live without your phone for the time being, you may have a nagging feeling in the back of your head that you may be missing out on important notifications. This can be an emergency call, an important reminder that you receive per SMS or simply the fact that your Android phone is running low on battery.

Android Notifier is a free app for Android, that works in combination with Windows and Mac operating systems as well as Linux distributions. It basically redirects notifications from the phone to the desktop you are working on.

The phone currently can notify you about the following five events:

When the phone ringsWhen you receive an SMSWhen you receive an MMSWhen the battery is running out of powerWhen you receive a call to your voicemail

You will for instance see the callers phone number on your desktop PC if the option has been enabled. The Android app can be configured to send notifications on all five events, or only on select events.

You furthermore need to configure how your Android smartphone should communicate with your desktop system. Available for selection currently are Wifi or Bluetooth, with an USB option coming in the future.

Once you have set up the notification and connection options on your phone, you need to install a notification application on the desktop. A program that needs to be downloaded and run on the system is provided in the project’s download section over at Google Code. I suggest you follow the guide there to get everything set up properly.

If you plan on using Wifi as the connection type, you should be ready to go right after installation of both applications as Wifi is enabled in both apps by default. You may want to check the Wifi options on the Android app’s settings page if you run into issues there. It is also necessary that both the phone and the desktop PC are connected to the same network.

The app has an option to send a test notification which you can make use of to make sure everything has been set up correctly.

Android Notifier is a handy app for Android phone owners who sometimes cannot pay attention to their phone, but would like to be informed about important events.

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday February 21, 2012 -
Tags:android apps, androids

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