Posts tagged Google
Multitouch on Nexus One may be broken
Mar 4th
There have been quite a number of complaints about multitouch on Nexus One isn’t working properly. Robert Greeen of Battery Powered Games has created an application called Multitouch Visible Test (available in Android Market Now) for testing multitouch on phone. And he quoted: “This app shows how your phone’s hardware handles multitouch. The event data is not processed in any way. The two dots are drawn exactly where the phone reports you are touching. For many current Android phones, there will be lots of bad data including axis flipping and near-axis influence.”
However Dianna Hackborn, a Google engineer, has responded: “Sorry I meant exactly what I said: this is how the touch screen hardware on the Nexus One works (which is essentially the same screen as on the G1 and myTouch). The Droid has a sensor from a different manufacturer, with different behavior. Other phones will likewise have different sensors.”
It could mean a hardware issue on Nexus One. Shall we dump Nexus One and get a Motorola DROID?
Google to back HTC in Apple lawsuits
Mar 4th
Google has emailed Techcrunch and officially stated that they will back HTC against Apple for the patent infringement lawsuits.
“We are not a party to this lawsuit. However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it,” as stated in the email from Google spokesperson.
General believe that Apple action is actually targeted at Google’s Android. After Eric Schmidt left Apple’s board and Google’s decision to turn on multitouch for Android few months ago, Apple fires the first shot to HTC (or Google?) That marks the end of the buddy relationship between Apple and Google.
May be Apple is afraid of Android will destroy their smartphone phone market like how PC destroy the Mac market years ago. And may be that’s why Steve Jobs is doing this to prevent history to repeat itself.
But Apple, please stop suing people around for patent infringement and concentrate on bring better products to the consumers. I like your products and creativities but not the things you do.
[via techcrunch]
Google Earth has come to Android
Feb 23rd
After several delays, the Google has finally come to Android devices. It is now available in the market. However, it is for Nexus One only but will be available for most of the Android 2.1 devices later.
It is a huge application. The download takes about 5Mb and it will be blown up to about 22Mb after install. There are a number of layers available for Google Earth, including Places, Businesses, Panoramio, Wikipedia, Roads, Borders and Labels, and Terrain.
If you want this beautiful app that has been available on you desktop to be on your phone, download it from market or scan the QR code here.
Video of HTC Sense (from Desire) running on Google Nexus One
Feb 22nd
Interested to run the Alpha ROM of HTC Desire on your Nexus One? Paul from Modaco has ported the ROM to Nexus One and it is quite stable (although it is still an alpha ROM). Most of the thing work and it is fast. View the video below before you decide whether you want to load that into you device or wait.
Sony Ericsson refused to make Nexus One for Google
Feb 19th
During a press conference of Sony Ericsson during MWC, Sony Ericsson CEO Bert Nordberg made a remark that they actually turned down Google when Google approached them to make the Google phone (a.k.a. Nexus One).
I am not sure who Bert Nordberg is trying to impress during a press conference like this. However, this does send multiple messages to the market. Did Google think that SE can make a better Nexus One than anybody else in the market in the first place? Was SE too pride to be a manufacturing subcontractor of another company? Was SE too busy making the Xperia X10 and they had no time for other things? Why did Bert Nordberg make such a comment in public when this is usually back end things?
I can’t be sure that SE actually missed an opportunity to make money because the move has to be inline with their overall strategy.
[via engadget]
Myriad Dalvik Turbo and Google Android JIT compiler to boost Android performance
Feb 18th
Ever wonder why applications running on Android handset don’t seem to running faster than those running on iPhone even the CPU used in the handset is much faster than the one used in iPhone? That is because Android is using a virtual machine called Dalvik to run the Android applications. It is similar to Java on desktop and some of the mobile phones. Basically it is a software layer in the phone to provide an exactly same program execution environment to ensure same Android program is able to run on different Android phone even if the hardware and CPU are not the same. However, since it is an additional layer, the application code will need to be translated all the time when it is being executed and this will normally mean the program will run slower than the native programs.
We are seeing light. Company like Myriad (a member of OHA) has created a new virtual machine for Android called Dalvik Turbo and it promises to run the Dalvik code 2-3 times faster than the current Dalvik VM provided by stocked Android. You can see the video below. And at the same time, Google is working on a JIT (Just-In-Time compiler, it will compile the Dalvik code to native code during the start of the program execution) for the Android kernel and it is now in the experiment branch. It is reported to boost the performance by 2-3 times also but it is not as stable as Dalvik Turbo for the moment. However, we are seeing progress from Google.
So do expect performance boost for Android applications once we see Android handsets that come with Dalvik Turbo or when Google releases a stable version of the JIT.
HTC Desire ROM brings Sense to Google Nexus One
Feb 18th
I expected this but not so soon. The hackers don’t sleep, do they? Just shortly after HTC demoed the HTC Desire with Android 2.1 and Sense, it is quickly ported to Google Nexus One and shown off to the world.
The fast port could due to the fact that the hardwares of Nexus One and Desire are very similar. The moder from Modaco is able to load the ROM extracted from HTC Desire to Nexus One with just a few modifications. Most of the things work now with some needed more work.
With these moders around, we should be expecting a ROM with HTC Sense to be available soon from the community.
How excited!
[via modaco]
