Author Archive: Vince Chan

Android leads the growth in smartphone market

The smartphone market has grown 64% this year, though it’s Android who steal the show. Although its development rate has been rapid to say the least, with some analytics suggesting it’s too fast, the consumer market seems to suggest otherwise. Canalys reports that Q2 shipments of Android devices are up by, wait for it, 886%! That’s compared with the same quarter of 2009, and the epic sales growth has no doubt been helped by the release of high end smartphones coming left right and centre from HTC, Samsung and Motorola to name a few. With countless Android beasts rumoured for release in the near future, we can only expect Android sales to continue rising.

Post by: Vince

Why the British Government still uses IE6: it’s too expensive to upgrade

After reading the headline you may be wondering why money has anything to do with upgrading a browser – after all, they’re free to download and install. Well, 6000 government workers also think the same way, and so signed a petition to urge the government to upgrade away from the nine year old browser. However, the seemingly simply proposal has been rejected with this statement:

"To test all the web applications currently used by HMG departments can take months at significant potential cost to the taxpayer. It is therefore more cost effective in many cases to continue to use IE6 and rely on other measures, such as firewalls and malware scanning software, to further protect public sector internet users."

Hmm. We all know that IE6 is a pain to webmasters, and the government’s decision isn’t helping the situation. It also shows how poor the applications they use really are – how many web programs do you have that break upon an upgrade in your browser?  The excuse is that it’s not ‘cost-effective’  to upgrade, but does that mean that they expect it to get any cheaper if they leave it? Everyone knows that’s not the case – in fact it would probably get more expensive when newer applications are brought in. From that statement, we can only assume that if they’re not upgrading now, because its not cost effective, then it looks like the great leaders of our great nation will be using IE6 to infinity, and beyond.

Post by: Vince

Samsung Galaxy S now available on Three

Samsung’s latest superphone, the Galaxy S, is now in stock and available at Three’s UK store. James wrote an excellent review on the Galaxy S, and if the wonder of a 4″ Super AMOLED display has you mesmerised, then it’s all yours, providing you sign two years of your life away. 

As well as a beautiful display, the Galaxy S also features a 5MP camera which also boasts HD video recording. And of course it runs Android, and its probably the best Android handset yet (but not for long probably).

Three offer the phone free on £35, £38 or £40 contracts which range from 500 inclusive minutes to a ridiculous 2000 minutes per month. All three plans include 5000 texts, yet only 1GB of data. It seems all UK operators seem to be moving down this route, away from the unlimited data we know and love. Still, 1GB should be more than enough for everyone but the most hardcore users – though I suspect you’ll spend most of your time drooling at the screen.

Post by: Vince

Obama: my BlackBerry is ‘no fun’

Since the start of his presidency, Obama has made no secret of his love for RIM’s Blackberry. He certainly fought for the right to continue using it as president, but now Obama seems to have changed his mind.

Understandably, it’s super protected with encryption and so only 10 people are allowed to email him. Talking on “ABC The View”, Obama said, "I’ve got to admit, it’s no fun because they think that it’s probably going to be subject to the presidential records act, so nobody wants to send me the real juicy stuff."

Post by: Vince

HTC increasing production to meet demand

HTC is a relatively small company compared with other giants such as Samsung or RIM, yet the demand for their handsets has been way above expectations. Phones like the HTC Desire have proved so popular that HTC have struggled to keep up the supply, and now they’re ‘heavily investing in new production capacity’. This should mean that future handsets from HTC shouldn’t be so hard to get your hands on.

HTC have admitted that they were ‘caught out’ by the high demand, and will catch up with demand as soon as possible. All this is really quite good news for HTC, supply shortage is probably the best problem a company can have!

Posted by: Vince

BBC Trust approves plans for mobile apps

The BBC have been planning to create apps for quite a while, but only now have the BBC Trust approved those plans. There will be iOS, BlackBerry and Android apps, and currently the BBC News app should be available this afternoon for iOS in the App Store. There will also be similar apps for BBC Sport and finally an official BBC iPlayer app. The BBC News app will be available for other platforms as well later on this year. They were supposed to be available back in April, but the BBC Trust had to postpone them while they ‘assessed the proposals’.

Posted by: Vince

webOS v2 landing later this year

Since HP’s acquisition of Palm, HP have said that they will continue development of the promising webOS platform and put it on consumer devices, such as phones, tablets and even printers. Jon Rubenstein, the Palm CEO who nurtured webOS’s birth, has said that webOS 2.0 is ‘on track for release later this year’ in an interview with Fortune. It is praised more or less across the board for being one of the nicest, most intuitive and modern mobilie OS’s made, and it would be a great shame to see it go. Luckily, HP have also seen it’s potential and have decided to carry on developing it. Hopefully the next major version of webOS will also bring new cutting edge hardware to match, something Palm seemed to lack, and also something that we hope HP can help out with. 

Google halts direct sales of Nexus One, Nexus Two anyone?

The Google Nexus One was launched only 7 months ago but now Google have stopped selling their Nexus One, at least through their own online store. Despite not moving a great number of handsets, they did admit that they didn’t expect huge sales numbers – the Nexus One was supposed to raise Android’s presence and mind share whilst being easily accessible.

Back in May, Google announced that after the last batch of Nexus Ones, that would be it. Now that day has come, and checking in at their store greets you with a message saying that it’s no longer available. That doesn’t mean you can’t buy one via other means though – it’s still available via Vodafone here in the UK, and Google will also be happy to sell you one if you’re a developer. So, are we disappointed? Well, not really as there’s still it’s superbrother, the HTC Desire, and other current and future Android competition like the Samsung Galaxy S and maybe a Nexus Two?

Posted by: Vince