Ben Bajarin:
There is no single unified Android codebase which is dominating the world. There is no single Android app store, there is no single Android ecosystem. What does exist is a vast array of different platforms and different ecosystem running this underlying kernel called Android.
Fans of the fledgling cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin got quite a shock in recent days as some clever thieves worked out yet another method to swipe virtual cash from unsuspecting users. The source of the theft was traced to a bug in Android, and now Google has acknowledged the flaw exists.
Another day, another Android flaw.
Farhad Manjoo for Slate:
It’s hard to call Android anything other than a resounding success.
Well, except for one small thing: Most Android phones are crap. As part of a New Year’s resolution, I promised to trade in my beloved iPhone 5 for an Android phone sometime in 2013. I reasoned that, as a tech writer, I should spend more time with the world’s most popular operating system. Phone makers and carriers have regularly sent me Android phones to test out in the past, but I’d never given most of them more than a passing look—I’d open them up, turn them on, get aggravated by their bad keyboards or poor touchscreens or frustrating add-on software, and I immediately package them up and send them back.
Pretty damning article for Android.
Daniel Eran Dilger:
Open Source enthusiasts love to tell you Android is winning, and that it is winning because it is open. But they’re wrong on both counts. The history of computing makes that abundantly clear, as do the current leaders in profitability.
Some great points in this article.
Less than a tenth of Android users care that it’s open
The number of people who care that Android is open is about the same as the number of people who run Linux
This was a fascinating read.
Daniel Eran Dilger:
Malware targeting mobile devices is rapidly growing in both the number of variants found in the wild and in their complexity and sophistication, but the only platform being actively targeted is Google’s Android, which researchers now say is resembling Windows on the desktop PC.
Perfect.
Security firm Lookout has detailed a clever new bit of Android Malware lurking in the Google Play store. The good news: unless you’re downloading questionable Russian clone apps, you’re probably not affected. The bad news: that hasn’t kept it from being downloaded a few million times.
Nice going Google.
And there you have it — Google and Facebook just want to serve us ads. I still believe it could work out for Facebook.
Jordan Golson for MacRumors:
Facebook claims users turn on their phone 100 times per day, and, among other things, is redoing the lock screen on the Android phone to give users a slideshow of photos and updates from their Facebook News Feeds.
This isn’t a bad idea for Facebook and it’s users. Facebook is making itself the center of the user experience and that could work very well for them.
Google is just crazy, but they’ll get away with it and it will look better for Jelly Bean adoption.
Dan Frommer:
But even from the outside, it’s easy to see that the Android situation isn’t ideal. Yes, it is the world’s “most popular” mobile phone platform, if you sort by the number of people using it, and that’s an impressive achievement. But it certainly isn’t making the sort of impact — on the world and on Google itself — that it perhaps could or should.
Interesting thoughts.
Schiller did an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Apple devices are still reigning above the clouds, following the tablet trend with the iPad being the device of choice. Among all mobile devices being used to connect through Gogo, 84 percent carry Apple’s iOS operating system while 16 percent carry the Android operating system. If you look only at the smartphones our customers are using, the iPhone makes up 73 percent and all Android devices make up 26 percent, with Blackberry and Windows based devices each making up less than 1 percent of devices being used in air.
Maybe Android users are too busy getting rid of all the Malware on their devices.
To get around this, researchers Tilo Muller, Michael Spreitzenbarth and Felix Freiling from FAU put Android phones in a freezer for an hour until the device had cooled to below -10C.
The trio discovered that quickly connecting and disconnecting the battery of a frozen phone forced the handset into a vulnerable mode. This loophole let them start it up with some custom-built software rather than its onboard Android operating system. The researchers dubbed their custom code Frost – Forensic Recovery of Scrambled Telephones.
Not a good day for Android. Then again, not many days are good for Android.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
The firm notes that the number of Android devices infected with malware increased by 41% in the second half of 2012 with individual malware reports increased 75%. In fact, 94.35% of unique malware samples in 2012 were found to be Android trojans.
And it’s going to get worse? Yeah, Android is definitely winning.
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Doesn’t Google make its revenue from ads? Sucks when even your own users hate you.
Michael Bartholomew takes a look mobile market share, usage share and the seeming disconnect between the two.
Intial reports said that about 90,000 smartphones users were infected with a virus lurking in applications they downloaded, But later they found that developers stole more than 10 million pieces of personal information from users mobile.
Android is just so awesome, being all open and such.
Of the 412,222 Android apps evaluated from Google Play, Bit9 says more than 290,000 of them access at least one high-risk permission, 86,000 access five or more and 8,000 apps access 10 or more permissions “flagged as potentially dangerous.”
Great news for Android… oh wait.
John Kirk pulls them all together.
That was funny. […]
After one month of availability, Apple’s iOS 6 has been installed on 60 percent of iDevices in the U.S. and Canada, and will possibly see further growth with the expected debut of a 7.85-inch “iPad mini” on Tuesday.
Apple’s newest OS is over 60% and Android’s latest release is less than 2%. It’s great to be open and winning.
The agency said it has relied on RIM for eight years, but the company “can no longer meet the mobile technology needs of the agency.”It also said it analyzed Apple’s iOS-based devices and Google Inc’s Android operating system and concluded that, for the near term, Apple’s iPhone services offer the best technology for the agency because of Apple’s tight controls of the hardware platform and operating system.
Seriously, who’s surprised? They could have gone with Android, but it leaks passwords like a sieve.
Android applications downloaded by as many as 185 million users can expose end users’ online banking and social networking credentials, e-mail and instant-messaging contents because the programs use inadequate encryption protections, computer scientists have found.
Of course, iOS doesn’t have this problem, so all of you Android owners that want to switch from the malware invested, security sucking Android can make the move any time.
It is widely speculated that the Mountain View-based company will announce new Nexus smartphones and an updated version of its Android operating system.
Most companies don’t use the current version of Android, how will an updated version help?
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has issued a warning alerting users about malware that targets the Android mobile operating system.
But Android is great… and open… and other stuff that Eric Schmidt says it is.
I laughed when I read that.
I’ve seen a number of comments around the Internet about how Apple didn’t exactly go “Thermonuclear” in its win against Samsung. There’s an important point to remember — Steve Jobs wasn’t talking about Samsung, he was talking about Google. […]
Google’s statement on Apple’s landslide win:
The court of appeals will review both infringement and the validity of the patent claims. Most of these don’t relate to the core Android operating system, and several are being re-examined by the US Patent Office. The mobile industry is moving fast and all players — including newcomers — are building upon ideas that have been around for decades. We work with our partners to give consumers innovative and affordable products, and we don’t want anything to limit that.
I wouldn’t get too comfortable.