Google removed a number of malicious applications from the Android Market last week.
In addition to preventing further infection by removing the malicious applications from the Android Market, Google will also be using its remote kill switch to forcibly uninstall the application from infected handsets. The company is also pushing out an update to the Android Market that can reverse the exploit, thus preventing the attackers from using it to cause further damage. Google has already started to send out e-mails to affected users in order to explain the situation.
Although Google can deploy software to undo the damage caused by the malware, the underlying vulnerability that the attackers exploited can’t be closed so easily. Google says that the bug is fixed in Android 2.2.2 and later, but there are still a large number of users at risk because their handsets runs a previous version of the operating system. Google is making a patch available, but it’s going to be up to the carriers and handset makers to make sure that the patch gets deployed. In light of the mobile industry’s poor track record updating Android phones, it’s possible that this flaw will continue to be exploitable on a considerable number of handsets.
Another problem with Google’s “Open” approach to their smartphone OS.
We’ll see just how much service providers care about their customers’ security versus control over, and monetization of user features, in the coming days.
[There's] Google’s Android Market where a leaner 100,000-plus Android apps reside. That’s up from 60,000 in May, with an average 5,000-plus added weekly. Approximately 15 percent are games (although the company would not give a more specific breakout).
Or the Ovi Store where the daily number of app downloads for Nokia smartphones just topped 3 million.
And then there’s the platform-agnostic GetJar which provides more than 60,000 mobile apps across all the major handset platforms and where the daily download rate is similar to the Ovi Store’s.
All three stores are eagerly welcoming game submissions as evidenced by recent interviews with corporate spokespeople.
Just an Android with a flip out control pad. *yawn*
Somehow it becomes even more mundane than the rumour originally was, when you actually get to see it.
Surely the Playstation phone should have been something we all got as excited about as the original iPhone?
I don’t think Sony is really behind this product. What’s more I think they are going to disappoint with the PSP2 from what I am hearing.
Perhaps they should have got behind one or the other, and tried to do something special.
People have theorised that the console market could be in trouble in the future simply because of the convergence of portable and home hardware.
I don’t think so. But I do think that the day of the dedicated portable console is over. Nintendo’s 3DS will most likely be the last marginally successful one, and for similar dubious reasons to the Wii.
But after that it’s going to be hybrid smart phones all the way for mobile gaming…
Oh, and iPads and iPods of course!
Unfortunately this Playstation Phone doesn’t stand a chance in that market.
We are aware that a number of our fans have had trouble running the game on their devices. For example, some older and lower performance Android devices are experiencing severe performance issues.
We are preparing a new solution for the next update, but for the time being, the Android devices listed below are not officially supported by Angry Birds:
Droid Eris
HTC Dream
HTC Hero
HTC Magic/G2/Sapphire/Mytouch 3G
HTC Tattoo
HTC Wildfire
Huawei Ideos/U8150
LG Ally/Aloha/VS740
LG GW620/Eve
Motorola Backflip/MB300
Motorola Cliq/Dext
Samsung Acclaim
Samsung Moment/M900
Samsung Spica/i5700
Samsung Transform
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini
T-Mobile G1
Furthermore, devices running Android platform version below 1.6 or custom ROMs are not officially supported.
What a mess. I’ve looked at the Android ecosystem several times. And each time I did, despite being offered good money and incentives to put software on that platform, I decided that the chances of dealing with all the various flavours of hardware in an elegant way was minimal. So I declined.
To be totally open handed about this, even with just iOS, iPhone OS and the various flavours of hardware in Apple’s mobile eco-system right now, it is a non-trivial task for small developers to support all the possible permutations of hardware and OS.
Android is suffering from the same problem that Microsoft has always had with Windows and the myriad flavours of PC hardware they must support.
A year ago, the idea of being able to run Android on the iPhone was damn near laughable. Surely, no hacker was good enough to pull off that feat!
Then this happened, and our minds were blown wide open.
7 months later, the project has progressed enough that just about anyone can do it — in fact, you don’t even need a computer.
You can now install Android on your iPhone 2G or 3G via Cydia, as long as it is jail-broken (obviously) and running iOS 3.1.2+
If you want to do it manually, the old fashioned way, or the quick way via “Bootlace” and Cydia, then info on all that is all here.
So what are you waiting for? If your 2G doesn’t multi-task, or your 3G is crippled and slow, why not switch to Android.
Go for it. Experience “freedom” and “openness” on Google’s mobile OS.
Good luck with that!
UPDATE : Bootlace, the app that you install via Cydia to then be able to swap OSs and install Android, is a really solid app. I am playing with it all now on an iPhone 2G.
Apple’s legal battle with Nokia looks to have seen some setback, with staff at the US International Trade Commission (ITC) telling the judge in the case that Apple’s patent allegations are ‘unfounded’.
“The evidence will not establish a violation” of Apple patent rights, the staff, which acts on behalf of the public as a third party in the case, said in a pre-hearing memo released yesterday.
Bloomberg tells us the case will begin before Judge Charles Bullock today. Apple is attempting to have Nokia’s US phone imports banned on strength of its four allegations.
Nokia also has a case against Apple. Meanwhile, Apple is suing HTC and Motorola over Android phones, and Microsoft is suing Motorola. In fact, the mobile business is a minefield of legal fun and games, as displayed in the above info-graphic.
The graph above shows just how crazy this has become.
In the end this will come down to who has the most influential lobbyists. Or who blinks first, and settles in a back room somewhere with an undisclosed deal.
[L]ikely boasting Android 3.0 (aka Gingerbread), along with a custom Sony Marketplace which will allow you to purchase and download games designed for the new platform. The device … is sporting a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 (a chip similar to the one found in the G2, but 200MHz faster), 512MB of RAM, 1GB of ROM, and the screen is in the range of 3.7 to 4.1 inches.
I hope Sony manage the software side of things for this better than they have on the PSP.
People who want physical buttons on a phone / gaming device will be very happy.
But how many will they sell outside of that demographic?
The overall share of Internet traffic from Windows PCs has dropped slightly in the past two-and-a-half years, from 95.4% to 91.1%. But that’s true across the board for competing desktop OSes as well. Linux usage is down dramatically in 2010, to 0.85% from an all-time high of 1.08% in early 2009. Interestingly, OS X usage is also down, dropping by roughly a quarter of a percentage point since a year ago, from 5.26% to exactly 5.00%. In relative terms, that’s almost exactly the same overall drop as the Windows platform has seen in the same period.
It is clear that all desktop OSs are under attack from mobile OSs.
The mobile Internet is growing at an astonishing rate. This was the most fascinating set of numbers to me, and they’re also the ones that should have Microsoft most concerned.
…
Not surprisingly, Apple’s iOS-based devices are the leader in the mobile category, as measured by usage, accounting for 42% of the total traffic from mobile sources. The very close runner-up, at 37%, is a big surprise: Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME), presumably running mostly on Nokia feature phones. Symbian is a distant third at 11%, with Android in fourth at 8%.
42% for iOS versus 8% for Android really puts recent device “activation” claims from certain quarters into perspective.
Windows Phone 7 currently has what is effectively a 0% share. And it’s a few years behind both Android and iOS in every way.
Today, there’s only one operating system: Unix. (Okay, there are two, but we’ll get to that.) This is why I contend that the OS doesn’t matter—or that we need to take another look at the word’s content, at what we mean when we say ‘Operating System’.
Jean-Louis Gassée stating the obvious. But he is right. A good read.
The only exception is Windows. Initially built on top of DOS, Microsoft painstakingly added version after version, always striving for backward compatibility while, at the same time, adding new features. It didn’t always work well (who wants to remember Windows Me and Vista?) but it worked well enough because Microsoft never gave up. They fixed mistakes that they claimed didn’t exist, and now we have the well-respected Windows 7. (Inevitably, critics will say that Microsoft wouldn’t have gotten away with such a tortuous path if it weren’t for its vigorously enforced monopoly.)
Unrelated : It’s interesting (read: irritating) to me that Microsoft are also the only Smart Phone manufacturer who are going with their own proprietary Graphics API.
The Tab seems to have a very robust, feature filled OS, well implemented. Sure a lot of it is influenced by iOS. But at least Samsung get what mobile tablet computing is about.
