An Openly Biased Review of Android Jelly Bean by an iPhone Lover

An Openly Biased Review of Android Jelly Bean by an iPhone LoverBy Sam BiddleI've never liked Android. It's an opinion born out of ignorance and bias: The iPhone is the only smartphone I've ever owned. I love it, and I think Android is generally an inferior mess. I'm OK with that. But wow, Jelly Bean: the greatest version of Android ever, cold-blooded Apple-killa. Thousands upon thousands of man-hours from one of the largest collections of smart people on the planet, explicitly devoted to winning over jerks like me. Shouldn't that be enough? I gave Jelly Bean an open channel into my heart, using it as my only phone for nearly a month. How'd it do?Android 4.1, otherwise known as Jelly Bean, is meant to (finally) sweeten Google's mobile software so that it better resembles the grace of iOS. Better resembles, and maybe even beats entirely. The update's two most important features-Project Butter and Google Now-overhaul the way you talk to and feel your Android. They're clear attempts to slay Siri and play catch up with the absolutely flawless touchscreen fluidity of an iPhone. And that's perfect, on paper, because the two worst things about Android are its relative sloppiness and the expertise needed to use it. It's been a first versus third world divide.Toshiba Portege R505 Battery , Toshiba Portege R500 Battery , Toshiba Portege A601 Battery , Toshiba Portege R501 Battery , Toshiba Portege A600 Battery , Toshiba PA3612U-1BAS BatteryProject ButterAs much as Android diehards are loathe to admit it, superficial matters. Superficial is why Apple continues to make the best smartphone in the history of the cold little things. Superficial is what you're looking at, with your eyes, almost every single day of your life. Superficial is what's going to stimulate the important sensitive zapping parts of your brain. Superficial is why Apple put so much weight (and reaped so much triumph) from something called Retina Display. Looks matter when you're constantly looking, and Android's ugly duckling software has been a fundamental hindrance since its inception. Superficial is why the iPhone is more enjoyable, on a both a gut-level and the more cerebral planes. It's been a sad gap for Google.Not anymore. For years now, Android phones and tablets have tended toward being jittery, laggy, and jumbled. Swiping between cluttered screens earned you stutters and slips; even the simplest Google Map pinch made many phones cough. This was awful, and given the state of the art, bizarre. From its birth, the iPhone was able to slide things around on its screen like butter. It required of Google an entire aesthetic Manhattan Project, Project Butter, to get Android to where the iPhone has been all along. Google engineers labored to put a phone's guts in perfect sync with its screen, and ramp up the way a handset's processors render the menus we finger.The bottom line is this: I can say, for the first time in my life, Android isn't ugly. In fact, it's rather pretty. Android is smooth-incredibly smooth. As smooth as, yes, my iPhone. The work Google has put into unclogging the interfaces and making pixels move at the exact same rate you touch them-a perfect 60 frames per second-is profound. It's as if there are actual little rainbow gems and buttons under your fingertips.This is a superficial boost, but it's not cosmetic. Building a phone that responds the instant you touch it makes it exponentially more functional-it makes you want to use it. And given that our phones are tiny pedestrian pocket computer tools, being happy while we use them is a great thing. Tools shouldn't feel like tools. With Jelly Bean and Project Butter, Android feels less like a wrench and more like a conductor's wand.Making everything buttery and luscious pays off, because Android has never given you so many worthwhile things to prod and rub. The beautification efforts that started with Ice Cream Sandwich are consummated with Jelly Bean-Android's base no longer looks like the drunken hookup impregnation of GeoCities by Tron, but has taken on an aesthetic of panels, lights, and three dimensionality that's almost as uniquely Google as Metro is Microsoft's and iOS is Apple's. Almost: There's still a whiff of generic computing as you poke around-particularly when it comes to 3rd party apps, which still tend to be ugly thanks to Google's lax software policies. It's jarring when you're used to Apple's fascistically enforced aesthetics. If you are acclimated to an iPhone, apps for Android can still make your head feel like splitting. But the daily grind is at long last more than palatable.Google NowWithin the OS itself, Android makes clear functional leaps. Pull-down notifications are more informative than ever before, giving you an instant look at which apps have updated, how far along your Facebook photo uploads are, and that your GPS is currently looking for a satellite lock. Each notification can be swiped away, frictionless-ly, to make room for what you'd like to hold onto. My iPhone's notification pane seems bare by comparison, merely a list. But touches like new notifications are a garnish. Google Now is the most philosophically important shift in the history of Android.On the face of it, Google wants to make Siri out to be a plain Jane. Google Now whirls natural language speech queries and general search into one beautifully designed, ostensibly powerful hub-and it is beautiful, the perfect exemplar of Jelly Bean chic. Instead of a series of searches-thai food menu, dark knight tickets, etc-resulting in a big text vomit, you get wonderfully graphic, highly readable, thoroughly helpful cards, which pull together your location and habits. It thinks for you, providing information cues even when you haven't ask for them. Google Now is supposed to be as smart as you-maybe even smarter. This isn't search, it's tell.But in practice it just doesn't work out. Google Now trumps Siri in terms of speech recognition and presentation, sure, but that's not much of a fight. When Google Now works-Who's the President of Israel?, followed by a voice answer and portrait with more information-it's truly impressive. But aside from these unlikely test scenarios, these fun demos, Now never shines as a life-changer. Where's all the creepy-smart magic Google showed off this summer? Google promised that Now would give you "just the right information at just the right time, and all of it happens automatically." Ambitious. But absent.At very, very few points did my Galaxy Nexus perk up of its own volition and tell me to avoid traffic. At no point did it show me the menu of a restaurant I searched for. At no point did it ever warn me it was going to rain, or prompt me with better directions to a meeting. It never felt smarter than me, better than me, or in any way intelligent. It just doesn't do anything as advertised, and unless you're a daily jetsetter with a sports score addiction, you probably won't know it's there. That's either broken or deceptive on Google's part, depending which way your sympathy swings. The search results are more beautiful than ever, sure, in terms of formatting. But asking the names of presidents and canyon depth with my voice and getting a formatted card in return isn't significantly better than just looking the damn stuff up with any number of better-designed iPhone apps.And so Android, despite its newest polish, is profoundly confused. Google poured money and effort into matching the iPhone's grace and surpassing its intelligence, but it still feeds into the same dubious Android ethos of the past half-decade: your phone should be messed around with. And that's still a giant appy pain in the ass: Why, in the name of Sergey Brin's cyborg face, does Android not give you a screen alert when you receive a text? And what is the solution to this gaping functional crevasse? Downloading a third-party app. How could that possibly be construed as better than a phone working well out of the box? Android zealots beam about not being spoon-fed tech like iPhone holders; they cherish the ability to tinker with their phones, to swap ROMs, to splatter apps and widgets. And with Jelly Bean, they'll be able to do it better than they ever have before. They'll be able to do it with the software responsiveness and an attention to design detail everyone deserves. But Jelly Bean is a simultaneous declaration that users don't know best, and that a top-down makeover and information IV is a good thing. Project Butter intervened to make Android look and feel good. Google Now serves you data about your life without you asking for it. Jelly Bean tacitly admits you should be fed a diet of technology.The entire conceit of Jelly Bean is a phone that's better without you messing with it. And this is dead on, aligned with an iPhone. A phone should be beautiful when you turn it on for the first time. A phone shouldn't just be intuitive on its own, it should have intuition of its own-it should know what's best and right for you without you having to decide. This is antithetical to the DIY/hacker/dimly-lit workbench mentality Android has used to attract tech's most virulent nerds, who think the solution to bad software is using more software. Jelly Bean steers toward an awkward and tenuous inbetween, and if Google's going to slowly shift toward a Phone-Knows-Best attitude, I'll continue to reside in the iPhone's perfect, topiary-filled dictatorship. Because my phone should know best. It should be a tool that makes me smarter than I could ever be on my own, not some pixel erector set. Apple demands this, Google laments it.And that's just not enough to jump ship if you've been spoiled by Apple. Jelly Bean applied a powder coat of loveliness, overdue speed, and helpful tech mothering to the user experience, but doesn't change it fundamentally. The sprawl of unruly widgets, of over-information, of inexplicably absent features-that's all there. It just looks nice and moves better. Google Now is a quiet failure, Project Butter is a lush success, and so Jelly Bean is a strained schizoid: Google knows Apple's spoon-fed model is virtuous. Jelly Bean didn't make it work yet. The iPhone's been boasting it since 2007. And so Google is posing a massive dilemma to both itself and its zealots: will Android be the rough platform of free-thinking hackers and customization hawks, or a verdant valley of other people's good idea? It can't be both, and harms itself in the process. Jelly Bean, the best Android ever, is still an operating system in crisis.Toshiba Portege A602 Battery , Toshiba PABAS176 Battery , Toshiba PA3612U-1BRS Battery , Toshiba PA3614U-1BRP Battery , Toshiba PABAS175 Battery , Toshiba Portege R600 BatteryPinterest Nudges Users Off the Couch and Into the World With New Android and iPad AppsPinterest co-founders Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp today debuted Pinterest apps for Android and iPad, from a party at the company's new San Francisco headquarters.A "succulent cupcake" at the Pinterest party.Mobile is particularly important to Pinterest because the company is about interacting in the world, not sitting at a computer, Silbermann said."Our goal has never been to get you in front of the computer transfixed for hours and hours on end, it's to get you offline," he explained.These products are nothing unexpected; they were top of the list of natural areas for Pinterest to expand.Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann shows off his company's new apps.Pinterest's lack of Android app was such a frequent piece of user feedback that it had become a joke at the company, said Silbermann. How long after any new feature - like attributions or translations - was posted online would someone comment asking "Where's the Android app?"Sharp noted the Android app was built from the ground up for Android, not as a simple port from iPhone. Just like many of the products its users pin, Pinterest the company loves to handcraft its own projects.The new Pinterest for iPad includes a Pinterest-specific browser built into the app, including a new button that pops up a display of everything people have pinned from that Web site.Also out tonight: a re-architected and redesigned version of Pinterest's year-old iPhone app.The Pinterest party also included a cornucopia of crafts and artsy foods (see the "succulent cupcake" above), including a station for putting together Mason jar terrariums.Silbermann deadpanned, "For those of you who use Pinterest, you know the only thing cooler than making a terrarium could be a terrarium inside a Mason jar."PlayStation Mobile aims for iPhone and Android at GamesconBy Chris BurnsThis week at Gamescon in Cologne, Germany, Sony is making a case for PlayStation Mobile, their next big phase in keeping relevant with the very smart device-minded society we now all live in. This initiative will be aiming for both Apple's mobile OS and Google's Android, but in very different ways for the both of them. While Apple's iPod nano, iPhone, and iPad are all essentially declared enemies of this PlayStation Mobile initiative, Sony is embracing Android as the only 3rd party operating system to be able to run PlayStation-certified games.Sony has made it clear that their own devices running Android - tablets, the original PlayStation Phone (Xperia PLAY) and a vast collection future phones will be first on their list when it comes to definite entry into the PlayStation Mobile program, 3rd party devices and manufacturers are now being accepted into the fold. Two examples are the manufacturers Asus and Wikipad, both of them ready to bring on PlayStation-certified games as they launch new products later this year.When a device is "PlayStation Certified", it means that Sony has literally checked out the device and approved it before it's been released to the public. Sony's approval process requires that each device is able to play their quickly growing set of mobile games and that they essentially agree to continued software support as well. This PlayStation Mobile initiative also promises cross-compatibility and one-download-only situations with the PS Vita this week as well.Another notable device currently in the PlayStation Mobile universe is the HTC One X, a smartphone with either a dual-core processor from Qualcomm or a quad-core processor from NVIDIA. The power is there, and Sony wants a piece!Have a peek at the timeline below to see more about the PlayStation Mobile initiative, and get pumped up as Sony takes a charge into the future!QCOM, INVN: Evercore Starts at Buy; Hold on RIM, NOKBy Tiernan RayMark McKechnie, formerly with ThinkEquity, has re-emerged at Evercore Partners and this afternoon initiated coverage of four telecom-related stocks: Qualcomm (QCOM), Research in Motion (RIMM), Nokia (NOK), and motion-sensing technology vendor InvenSense (INVN).McKechnie rates Qualcomm and InvenSense shares Overweight, with price targets of $85 and $20, respectively. He started RIM and Nokia shares at Equal Weight, with $8 and $3 price targets, respectively.Aside from "near-term catalysts" such as the introduction of Apple's (AAPL) next iPhone this fall, he speculates, and improved yield of chips generally at the smallest feature sizes (28 nanometers), McKechnie sees Qualcomm possibly getting a boost with the spreading of wireless chipsets to PCs and tablet computers:4G will drive higher 3G/4G penetration into PCs and tablets. We think a combination of better 4G performance, improved service plans, and new WinRT notebooks will drive higher demand for mobile 3G/4G connectivity. Will we monitor the deployment of 4G small cells as a key longer-term enabler for network traffic growth and thus tablet adoption. For reference, every 10M of incremental 3G/4G notebook/tablet sales could add ~ a nickel in royalty EPS and another nickel if it uses QCOM chips.McKechnie also thinks Qualcomm's profit margins in its chipset business will return to levels in the low 20s on a percent basis next year as the company reaches a more stable ramp in those 28-nanometer chips, and as it achieves "tiering" of smartphones at lower prices in developing markets.McKechnie likes InvenSense's "proprietary advantage" in the market for motion sensing, writing that he anticipates "an estimated 62% and 40% CY12 and CY13 unit growth forecast for the motion sensor market driven by increased attach rates to smart phones and tablets."Specifically, "We see the attach rate of motion sensors growing from about 45% of an 800M smart phone and tablet market in 2012, to 70% of a 1.7B smart phone and tablet market by 2015."McKechnie views RIM's future as "deteriorating fundamentals and an increased cash burn, with potential takeout value for RIMM's IP," adding, "We see the outcome as fairly binary."McKechnie thinks the company's 78 million subscribers could eventually shrink to a steady state of 30 million "die hard" users willing to pay $3 per month.In the meantime, the services business is one of the more valuable assets the company has, but the "clock is ticking" as "independent Mobile Device Management ("MDM") players such as Airwatch, Mobile Iron, Good, or others serve the BYOD market with secure smart phone and tablet management systems."Nokia is worth $3 based on a "sum of the parts" analysis, he thinks, consisting of $1.10 per share in patent value, 35 cents a share for its Nokia-Siemens Networks unit, 70 cents a share for the location business, and 7o cents a share in net cash, based on his 2013 projections.As for the partnership with Microsoft (MSFT), McKechnie writes is not optimistic:"We view NOK's commitment to Windows Phone ("WP") as problematic in the face of the accelerating iOS and Android ecosystems. We note that even if WP finds traction from carriers (i.e. VZ) to keep Apple and Android in check, NOK will have to compete with other ecosystem OEMs and face limited share and single digit margins.Toshiba Portege R502 Battery , Toshiba PABAS103 Battery , Toshiba Portege A605 Battery , Toshiba PA3609U-1BAS Battery , Toshiba PABAS106 Battery , Toshiba PA3609U-1BRS BatteryThese Android Music Apps Could Keep You From Getting Run Over by a CarBy Aarti KelapureLast week, we took a look at iOS apps that keep you aware of your surroundings as you listen to music through headphones, and found a fairly healthy selection to choose from on Apple's mobile platform. These apps either allow you to hear surrounding noises while listening to music through your phone's or headphone's microphone, or paused the music when a sudden noise was detected.Not only is this a useful safety feature, a good way to listen to music while attending to a sleeping baby, and probably applicable to more situations than we can imagine, but it can also turn your music into a real soundtrack for your life.Yes, listening to music mixed with sounds from the outside world makes you feel like you're in a movie with a soundtrack - and not the cheesy montage, the actual movie part.Now, we turn our focus to Android, with the same quest. We found plenty of Android apps that can measure the decibel level of outside noise, and others to customize and improve your Android's sound quality, but only two apps that let you hear surrounding sounds while listening to your music, and one of them was no good.The two contenders were Around Sound and Hear Voice.Unfortunately, a few minutes of testing revealed a large disparity in quality between these two apps, so we can only recommend one of these at this time. So without further ado, we give you the winner: Around Sound (free) - or its sibling, Around Sound Pro ($2), which adds expert-level niceties such as a pause mode and a noise floor for the trigger.If you're potentially in the market for an app like this, which lets you hear what's going around you without sacrificing your musical soundtrack, it's still worth reading to the bottom of this story though, because we show you how to use Around Sound Around Sound and why you don't want Hear Voice. (Also, from a legal perspective, we should point out that using any of these apps will not 100 percent prevent you from being hit by a car.)Around SoundTo use Around Sound, plug in your headphones, launch the app, and press Start to measure the ambient noise level of your current surroundings with the app's Sound Meter. At this point, you'll need to determine the appropriate trigger level to stop your music. We recommend choosing a trigger level somewhere above your ambient noise level so that constant sounds, like typing on your keyboard or traffic, don't set off the app, although you might want to play around with this a bit.Once all of that's done, throw on some music using almost any Android music player app (check compatibility here) and go about your business. When the app registers a noise exceeding the set trigger level, a few different things might happen, depending on whether you have the free or paid version and your settings.If you're rocking the free version, offending noises will either pause your music or lower the volume, depending on your preference, and then play back the disrupting sound for you. The music will either resume after a few seconds, or stay paused - also depending on your preference.If you've got $2 (not a bad price in our opinion) to spare for the Pro version, you can opt to turn on Street Mode. This allows you to hear noises above your set trigger level while continuing to listen to music. In other words, it mixes the outside and inside signals, just like our $7 favorite on the iOS side. This works great for walking down a busy street (hence the name "Street Mode"), since you don't want your music to stop at every sudden noise, the way it does with the free version, but you still want to hear what's going on.For best results, use headphones with a built-in mic, as with all apps like this. Otherwise your device will rely on its own mic, which will register noises from shuffling around in your pocket or purse.We heartily recommend Around Sound – free or Pro – for your surrounding sound awareness needs. It's easy to use, effective, and cheap. We're also really into the Pro version's flexibility in terms of you having the choice between continuing your music, lowering the volume, or pausing your music.Hear VoiceYou may be wondering what's wrong with Hear Voice to make us adamantly discourage you from using it. Well, after purchasing this $1.50 app, you've basically paid to add a background of constant buzzing and static to your music. Oh, no you didn't.On top of that, you can barely hear the environmental sounds that the app registers because the static emanating from it is so loud. Turning up the app's volume raises the volume of those outside sounds - but it also raises the static volume toshiba laptop battery.Considering you have a really great alternative above, we suggest you steer clear of Hear Voice.While Around Sound is the only Android app of its kind worth having at the moment, we'd like to note that Awareness! The Headphone App should be coming to Android any day now. We highly recommend the iOS version, and can only imagine that the Android version will be just as great, now that some of the issues with Android as an audio platform have been resolved. Keep your eyes peeled.