Chrome for Android Eases Mobile Headaches With Password, Form Syncing

Google has updated the stable channel of Chrome for Android to Chrome 26, which offers two new syncing features designed to save you a bit of time on mobile devices.

You can grab the latest version of Chrome for Android from the Google Play Store.

This release has two noteworthy features — password syncing and form autofill syncing. Keeping track of passwords is a pain and let’s face it, most mobile password managers leave much to be desired. With the new Chrome for Android you can sync and access your saved passwords across devices.

Even if you prefer not to have Chrome store your passwords for you, the form autofill syncing is equally handy — especially given how tedious it can be to fill out forms using your mobile device’s tiny keyboard.

Like all of Chrome’s syncing features, you’ll need to be signed into your Google account to use the new password and autofill sync.

This release also fixed a few bugs and offers some modest performance and stability improvements. For more details, see the Chrome blog.

Read complete at: webmonkey.com

Google Play gaining on iTunes App Store in race for most apps available

The war between Apple and Android wages on, and now the battlefield is the online app market. Google Play, the marketplace for Android devices, has always trailed the App Store in number of offerings, even though it launched just three months after the Apple resource. The App Store has 700,000 products up for sale, according to Apple's iPhone 5 presentation on September 12. But Google Play is nearing that total with 675,000 apps available. The platform also passed 25 billion downloads yesterday and held a major sale in honor of the milestone, with several top apps still available for just 25 cents.

While the number of available apps for each operating system is drawing even, there are still major differences in how each store works. Apple requires an approval process before an app can go up for sale on iTunes, but Google Play has no such vetting procedure. There's an up and a down side to that. It means that Apple went without any spam appearing on its store for five years, and the first malware app popped up on the system just this summer. So although there have been complaints that Apple is inconsistent and overly conservative in the content it approves, you're all but guaranteed a safe app when using Apple.

Google Play has a lot more opportunity for developers, but does require a little more effort for shoppers. If you own an Android device, you'll want to research an app's safety and usability before buying. We have a comprehensive guide that can help you track down great Android apps that will best fit your needs.

[Image credit: LAI Ryanne]

This article was written by Anna Washenko and originally appeared on Tecca

Android Browsers: The Best Of 2012 So Far

There are a lot of Android browsers making their way into your devices. Each has its own unique abilities with some promising a great experience while others providing the sheer simplicity to get a job done. So which are the best Android browsers of the year so far?


Google Chrome Beta: Chrome from Google is frankly one of the best web browsers around currently. Only recently it became the world’s most used browser and Google, in the last few months, released and updated the beta version of the browser for devices running on Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich.


The Android version of Chrome is one of the smoothest browsers with a great speed and displaying only that which is absolutely required. However, Chrome doesn’t have Flash integration and hence regardless of the fact that your device is Flash enabled or not, nothing will adapt to Chrome. Some sites often send a link to a mobile version of a website sometimes, but Chrome lacks in a toggle to request desktop sites.


Nonetheless, Chrome makes amends by its clean and minimalistic approach and appearance and a great tab management that can be compared to its desktop compatriot.


Firefox: Firefox is currently catching up with the other browsers in the market. Although the desktop version of the browser is pretty cool to work with, the Android version still needs some work to do. Although it can be slow at times to render certain pages which make everything sluggish later, it does provide a synchronized integration and keeps the history and tabs available on all the devices.


Firefox for Android also provides a unique method of hiding and showing the active tabs. You can reveal them by dragging them from the left hand side of the screen, and you can also continue browsing as normal. Later, by either tapping the ‘X’ or pulling your finger to the right hides them again. This is pretty innovative on its part.


Read complete at ibtimes.com

iPhone closes in on Android in growing U.S. smartphone market

As of February, smartphone users accounted for nearly half of all wireless subscribers in the U.S., and Apple's iPhone adoption rate saw growth while Android handset activations slipped.


According to new data from Nielsen published on Thursday, sales of Apple's iPhone accounted for 43 percent of all new smartphone purchases over the past three months, a 6 percent increase from the period ending in December, while Android's share fell nearly 4 percent to cover 48 percent of activations.


Riding on strong iPhone 4S sales, Apple's iOS is slowly closing the gap with Google's Android OS and now accounts for 32 percent of all smartphones. The iPhone isn't eating into Android's market, however, and is instead picking up deserters from RIM's sinking BlackBerry platform. 


Android remained top dog and took 48 percent of the smartphone market, while RIM accounted for a 12 percent share. Other devices like Windows Phone and Symbian filled out the list with an 8 percent stake.


The smartphone market as a whole took 49.7 percent of all mobile subscribers, a 38 percent increase form the same time last year when feature phones dominated the landscape.

During the three months ending in February, more than two-thirds of those who purchased a new mobile device opted for a smartphone.

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Linux and Android Kernel Finally Merged

Until recently, Android and Linux have been two open source projects which have been known for their distinct identities despite being closely linked with each other. The version 3.3 of the Linux kernel was announced by the leader of the Linux kernel project, Linus Torvalds which will help create an operating system core that will now bridge the gap which has been isolating the two projects so far.


Essentially, almost every Android phone can be considered as a Linux phone though most developers for Android use an interface resembling Java which is a customized version of Linux developed by Google aimed at handling details such as keeping the required data in the memory ready to be used, multitasking among the different chores and keyboard input.


A consequence of integrating Torvalds’ version of the Linux kernel with Google’s Android version will result in easier programming for developers. This will also mean that Google will have to face fewer hassles in trying to make sure that the mainline kernel and their own code are in sync. Even users of mobile devices powered by Linux can now benefit from these changes as they as the two platforms will have much greater interoperability.


Often, Google uses code which has been already developed in other open source projects while giving its own improvements or changes to the code and releasing its own open source work. Google however isolates itself from the primary developers and their project during the course of developing its own project and this can at times lead to tensions between the involved parties as open source relies on code sharing and collaborative ethos. The Android mainlining project was initially announced in December by a Sony programmer, Tim Bird. The merger of the two had been underway for months now as a result and despite Torvalds not having made any specific mention of the Android merge during the release of Linux 3.3, the merger is now official.


A longtime kernel developer and new Linux Foundation fellow, Greg Kraoh-Hartman said that the Android components on the Google+ and Linux 3.3 are expected to be the same. He said that the 3.3 version might not have very good power management but expects it to be corrected in the next release, kernel 3.4.


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FBI Can’t Crack Android Pattern-Screen Lock

Pattern-screen locks on Android phones are secure, apparently so much so that they have stumped the Federal Bureau of Investigation.


The bureau claims in federal court documents that forensics experts performed “multiple attempts” to access the contents of a Samsung Exhibit II handset, but failed to unlock the phone.


An Android device requires the handset’s Google e-mail address and its accompanying password to unlock the handset once too many wrong swipes are made. The bureau is seeking that information via a court-approved warrant to Google in order to unlock a suspected San Diego-area prostitution pimp’s mobile phone. (For details on the pimp investigation, check out Ars Technica‘s story on the case.)


Locking down a phone is even more important today than ever because smart phones store so much personal information. What’s more,  many states, including California, grant authorities the right to access a suspect’s mobile phone, without a warrant, upon arrest for any crime.


Forensic experts and companies in the phone-cracking space agreed that the Android passcode locks can defeat unauthorized intrusions.


“It’s not unreasonable they don’t have the capability to bypass that on a live device,” said Dan Rosenberg, a consultant at Boston-based Virtual Security Research.


A San Diego federal judge days ago approved the warrant upon a request by FBI Special Agent Jonathan Cupina. The warrant was disclosed Wednesday by security researcher Christopher Soghoian,


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Google announces Android Design style guide for apps

The new style guidelines for Android - which Google has released on its new Android Design website - are supposed to help developers working on apps for Ice Cream Sandwich create software with a common Google look. With summaries of Google's design principles, user interface capabilities and overarching creative vision available for perusal, Google looks to be tightening the reins a little on the previously free-from Android Market, at least where aesthetics are concerned.


Speaking to The Verge at CES, director of Android user experience Matias Duarte said that Google's mission with Ice Cream Sandwich was "to make it beautiful, to make it powerful" and that the framework of ICS made it "much easier for people to create beautiful, simple apps". In that spirit, the new Android Design site covers topics from themes to colour matching to typography to touch feedback - every visual element an app developer could care to name. "If you want to be serious about design, you have to do this stuff." Says Duarte. "Ice Cream Sandwich is Android getting serious about design."


The Android Design site is now live, and while some of the claims it makes about the design of Ice Cream Sandwich might raise a few eyebrows ("app icons are works of art in their own right" - yeah, we're sure your installation in the Tate will open any day now), pretty-fying and streamlining a mobile OS that has in the past been seen as something of a geeky younger brother to Apple's iOS is no bad thing in our books. Check out the full 35 minute interview at the link below.


Source: The Verge and T3


Link: Android Design

Tablet War: Can Google’s Android Tablets Overtake Apple’s iPad?

With Apple planning to launch the highly anticipated iPad 3 as early as February of 2012, Google appears to be planning on launching a competing device in the near future. In a recent interview with an Italian newspaper, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said; “In the next six months, we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality.”

Although Schmidt is normally talkative and eager to discuss Google’s future plans, he was uncharacteristically quiet regarding the details of the future tablet. However, many people are interpreting his statement that the tablet will be of the “highest quality” to imply it will compete directly with Apple’s new iPad 3.

The new iPad 3 is expected to be a much more technologically advanced model than the iPad 2 and experts are predicting it will include a high-end quad-core processor and a high-resolution screen display of 2048 x 1536 (similar to the Retina display in the current iPhone). In addition, Apple has been rumored to be considering producing a smaller version of the iPad with a screen size of 7.85 inches.

Read complete at SearchEngineJournal.com

Android: Could 700,000 Daily Activations Be Just the Start?

On Tuesday night, Android chief Andy Rubin noted that Google is now seeing 700,000 daily activations of new devices using its operating system.


That’s up from a 550,000 activations-per-day figure touted in July and the 300,000 per day figure mentioned a year ago.


But that could be just the start. Appitalism CEO Scott Buckingham predicts that by the end of next year daily activations could reach an astronomical 2.5 million per day — a run rate of more than 900 million a year.


“My view is it is just going to accelerate,” Buckingham said in an interview. While he acknowledged that is a pretty aggressive target, he maintains it is achievable given the momentum behind the operating system and its expansion into emerging markets and to other devices, including tablets and televisions.


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