The best Android portal in Mauritius
The Google Galaxy Nexus will be released on Friday 9 December.
This smartphone is the first to run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and features a 4.65-inch 1280×720-pixel HD Super AMOLED screen, a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, 1Gb of RAM, a 5MP camera and an HDMI output.
Journalists all over the world are saying that this is most probably the best smartphone ever eclipsing anything from Cupertino… We’ll see when we manage to get hold of one.
In this video, Aaron takes a look at Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) on the Google Nexus S. Overall, it’s a minor upgrade from Android 2.2 (Froyo) and offers a new Android keyboard, NFC support, modified system colors, and improved performance throughout.
Interestingly, it would seems that more than half of the Android devices in existence are running 2.3 (Gingerbread) so this video is bound to be useful!
Knowledge Seven provides two quality mobile applications development training courses in Mauritius.
Mobile Application Development with HTML5
During this training, participants will use the latest technologies and features of HTML5 and Javascript to build mobile applications which feel and behave mostly like native applications.
Android Application Development
During this second training, trainees use the latest Eclipse IDE with the official Google plugin for developing Android applications.
Participants will become Mobile Developers and they will know how to develop Android applications ready to be submitted to the Android Market.
In a previous post, I explained what Android is and how Android smartphones can be used to empower people. I mentioned that smartphones from HTC, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson, Motorola and LG now run on this platform developed by Google.
A Fortune Magazine study published on 16 June 2011 shows that Android smartphone sales in the U.S. is ahead of all other smartphones platforms (e.g. 35% market share compared to 18% for the Apple iPhone).
A major difference between a regular phone and a smartphone is that one can install applications from third parties on smartphones and this is, of course, true for Android devices. The Android Market has, to date, over 240,000 applications, some free, others requiring payment, which have been downloaded more than a billion times to date. In this post, I would like to introduce you to five very interesting Android applications which are all available for free!
World Newspapers
This free application provides access to all newspapers, magazines and online news sites existing in the world. The 6000 newspapers are sorted by country which greatly facilitates exploration. Of course, World Newspapers also lists the few online newspapers available in Mauritius. Keeping oneself abreast of world events becomes easy, fast and pleasant thanks to World Newspapers.
Google Translate
Google Translate is simply magical. You only have to loudly say a sentence and your Android smartphone translates and says the same sentence in a different language! A far cry from the days when you had to use a dictionary for a translation! The potential of this application for people who travel is enormous. Right now, Google Translate requires an Internet connection as the voice recognition and translation are done by the Google cloud.
Can we talk about Android applications without talking about Facebook? In a few years, Facebook has become the essential social network where everyone is connected daily. The official Facebook application provides access to profiles of friends, allows people to interact through walls, share pictures and naturally converse in real time using chat.
An interesting aspect of the Facebook application is its successful integration with the Android address book (also known as contacts). It allows you to enhance your contacts with photos from Facebook (and thus make them more recognizable, for example, during a call) and also to synchronize the status (which gives a clear idea of what your friends are doing in real-time).
Other social networks are not left out. Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn and of course, Google Plus, have applications equivalent to that of Facebook.
Google Earth
Yet another application from Google, some would say! But why not if the result is as fun and interesting as Google Earth? This application allows you to visit, from the comfort of your chair, the entire surface of the globe from Acapulco to Zuxiang via Mauritius. The satellite view is very precise and allows you to recognize the details of a few tens of centimeters. Visit the exterior of the Taj Mahal or the Louvre Museum and try to recognize the lions in the African savannah. Google Earth is a great discovery tool and has enormous potential in the educational environment. It is easy to imagine a teacher doing a course on the rivers of Mauritius and who asks his students to determine what towns and villages the river passes through using this application. Google Earth is the atlas of modern times.
Angry Birds
It is impossible to ignore the global phenomenon which is Angry Birds! This game is deceptively simple because it involves projecting angry birds (hence the name) on pigs to be killed. This gets complicated because the pigs are often between walls must be destroyed so as to reach the animals. Since the number of birds is limited, it requires the player to follow a deliberate tactic in order to kill all the pigs to advance to the next level.
This strategic dimension largely explains the success of Angry Birds. This free game, being so addictive, is responsible for a lot of sloppy work hours, of marital discord and wrinkled friendship! But no matter what, Angry Birds has become a necessity for a lot of people! Perhaps because it allows us to externalize our appetites for destruction 
The Apple iPhone now has a formidable competitor: the rest of the world. Indeed, the Android platform launched by Google in October 2008, is currently being used by companies such as Acer, Dell, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson to power their smartphones.
According to a study conducted over the period July to September 2010, 44% of smartphones sold in the United States run under Android while 23% are iPhones and 22% are BlackBerry devices. How can we explain this craze for Android? There are many reasons: the variety of Android smartphones on the market, the power and ease of use of Android, the near-perfect integration of Google services (Gmail, contacts, calendar, YouTube…) as well as Facebook and Twitter, and the availability of a large number of applications, most of them free, on the Android Market.
The innovative aspects of Android
Android is a software platform which provides all the features needed in a modern smartphone. It is actually an evolution of the Linux operating system and is open source software released under an Apache license. Consequently, manufacturers of smartphones can use Android to power their smartphones without having to pay Google. This greatly reduces development and manufacturing costs which explains why some of the devices are so affordable (compared to the iPhones for example).
Another innovative aspect is that each manufacturer can easily customize Android in accordance with its specific needs. For example, HTC offers several Android smartphones from the very powerful HTC Desire HD to the basic Tattoo. These devices are naturally available at different prices. For example, one can buy Android smartphones in Mauritius from Rs 8000 like the Samsung Galaxy Europa reviewed in December. The contrast is striking with the iPhone which Apple positions as a premium product exclusively.
The HTC Desire HD, a high-end Android smartphone reviewed in December too, was launched at the end of 2010 worldwide and is currently available in Mauritius. At the hardware level, the HTC Desire HD has a Snapdragon processor running at 1GHz and a 4.3-inch AMOLED capacitive multitouch widescreen with a resolution of 480 x 800. It features a 8 megapixel camera, an FM radio, an accelerometer, a GPS and runs on both 3G networks (up to 7.2 megabits per second) and WiFi. It can even record video at 720p (hence the HD, albeit HD-ready only…) For information, the Google Nexus One is based on the HTC Desire HD’s little brother, the Desire.
Android has been designed to rely on web services provided by Google. Once an Android smartphone is turned on, the user can link it to a Gmail account and thus get access to all Google services. For example, he can use the smartphone to read and write his emails, view and update his calendar, browse his contacts and, of course, call them and send them SMS, etc… An Android device may be linked to multiple Gmail accounts at the same time (including Google Apps for Domain accounts) and this capability allows the smartphone to become a formidable productivity center.
The latest major version of Android, 2.2 Froyo, brought major advances compared to previous versions: (1) a five-fold increase in speed, (2) the possibility for the smartphone to become a WiFi access point for other devices (e.g. use an Android device to allow a laptop to access the Web), (3) support for Adobe Flash 10.1 and AIR (because, despite Apple’s claim, there are still millions of websites which require these technologies), (4) a web browser derived from Google Chrome which renders modern websites using the latest HTML5 and Javascript technologies, and (5) full compatibility with Microsoft Exchange mail servers.
The integration of Facebook in Android smartphones is deep. It is possible to display a Facebook widget which allows the user to post new status messages very easily and also to view news feeds from friends in real time. In addition, the synchronization of existing Facebook profile data (such as phone numbers and email addresses) with existing contacts on the smartphone is done automatically. The pre-installed Facebook application provides access to all features of Facebook including taking and uploading photos. The Twitter integration is as good. Consequently, Android smartphones allows people to know at every moment what is happening on the two most popular social networks on the planet.
A plethora of applications
A smartphone differs from a conventional telephone because it allows the installation of additional applications. Android smartphones have access to Android Market, which currently contains over 100,000 applications. These applications are often free and of very good quality. Unfortunately, paid applications are not yet available in Mauritius… but Google is working on that.
Naturally, the most popular applications tend to come from well-known companies. For example, Google provides very powerful applications like YouTube, Translate, Earth, Maps and Skymap. Examples from other companies include Last.fm, Amazon MP3, Gowalla, Foursquare, TweetDeck and Dropbox. And, naturally, Adobe Flash 10.1.
Lots of applications come from smaller publishers and many of them are of excellent quality. Examples are PicSay, Sketcher, doubleTwist, XiiaLive and Shazam. Android Market also provides access to a variety of free games such as Angry Birds, Air Control, Jewels, Tower Raiders and Raging Thunder.
Developing an application for Android is easy because all the tools are available for free and follow established software development standards. Programmers can work on Linux, Windows or Mac OS X and only needs to download Java, the Eclipse development environment and a plugin provided by Google. The plugin contains an Android emulator which even allows people to develop Android applications without having to buy a smartphone. Uploading the application to the Android Market takes a matter of minutes and no formal acceptance procedure is required.
Next step: the tablet
The success of the iPad indicates that the public wants tablets with larger screens than a smartphone. Archos, Cisco, Dell, LG, Samsung and other manufacturers are putting the finishing touches on tablets running Android. Google has even announced Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the next version of Android specially designed for tablets… Interestingly, the Indian Minister of Human Resources Development has announced an Android tablet for 2011 which will be available in India at $35 (about Rs 1000).
The future will be full of smartphones and tablets… Android smartphones and tablets naturally!
[This article, in French, originally appeared in the 100% Mauritian IT magazine, TechKnow.]
Approximate price: Rs 26,899.00
The HTC Desire HD is better than the Apple iPhone 3GS (the 4G is not yet available in Mauritius). Voilà, I’ve said it. It has beautiful 4.3″ 480 x 800 touchscreen, runs Android 2.2 Froyo (with Sense, HTC’s own customisations to the default Android user interface), has ample processing power and memory and synchronises seamlessly with all Google services. It’s camera has a resolution of 8MP and can record HD video at 720p (hence the name!). The Desire HD has 3G capabilities as well as GPS and Wifi. It connects wirelessly using Bluetooth to, say, stereo headsets. It plays all kinds of media files including AAC, OGG, MP3, M4A and WMA audio as well as MP4, WMV and DivX/Xvid. The Desire HD can also function as a DLNA media server for, say, a Playstation 3 to connect to it and play videos on a LCD TV. HTC has innovated on the social network front by creating Friend Stream, a widget which shows what friends on Facebook and Twitter are doing in real-time. The web browser is pretty good as it is a derivative of Chrome and, of course, Android 2.2 likes Flash unlike iOS (there are still many websites which require Flash…) Ask Father Christmas for one and you won’t regret it.
Other comparable models worth considering: Motorola Milestone, Samsung GT-I9000 Galaxy S, Sony Ericsson X10 Xperia, Apple iPhone 3GS 16Gb, Apple iPhone 3GS 32Gb.
Approximate price: Rs 7,999.00
The Samsung GT-I5500 Galaxy Europa the one of the cheapest smartphones in Mauritius (less than Rs 8,000) yet it has most of the most desirable features: it runs the Android 2.1 operating system (which makes it a Google phone which works seamlessly with all Google services like Gmail and Google Maps), integrates fully with Facebook and Twitter, has an acceptable 2MP camera, an FM Radio, a GPS, an Accelerometer, Bluetooth, Wifi and 3G capabilities. The smartphone has a fully functional Android Market application which opens the door to hundred of thousands of third party applications. The only downside is the screen: even though it’s a very reactive capacitive touchscreen, it’s somewhat small (2.8″) and has a resolution of 240 x 320 only. And, frankly, this is understandable as a higher resolution screen costs a lot. All in all, the Galaxy Europa is the best deal in Mauritius right now.
Other comparable models worth considering: Nokia C5, Nokia E5, LG GT540V Optimus, Nokia 5800.
Approximate price: Rs 22,770.00
The HTC Hero is fantastic. It runs the Linux-based Android operating system developed by Google (a free upgrade to the recently released v2.0 is coming.) Being a Google phone, the Hero can access Google services (like Gmail, Docs, Maps) easily. The Hero is 3G, supports HSDPA up to 7.2 Mbps, has a great capacitive multi-touchscreen and runs the beautiful Sense UI on top of Android. With its 288 MB of user memory, support for microSD cards, GPS, Bluetooth and Wifi capabilities, the Hero is very powerful and flexible. It runs Java applications, has a digital compass and plays any multimedia file thrown at it. It has a fantastic 5 MP autofocus camera as well. The HTC Hero is a hell of a smartphone and is more affordable than the competition. Get it.
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