Android 5.0 Lollipop review | The Android L Review | The most awaited Android Update | The Complete Review

The complete Android Lollipop Review

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Nexus 6 UK release date confirmed for December 1

The Nexus 6 UK release date is finally official, and you won’t have to wait too much longer to get your hands on the 6-inch Android 5.0 device.

Having been formally unveiled last month, the Nexus 6 has now been confirmed to be heading to British retailers from December 1.

Despite leaving less than two weeks until the handset will hit store shelves, high street seller Carphone Warehouse has already started accepting Nexus 6 pre-orders.

Pairing a 6-inch QHD display with a 2.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor and 3GB of RAM, the Nexus 6 specs sheet is further enhanced by a 13-megapixel, OIS-enhanced, rear-mounted camera. The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 rival is to be available in both blue and white colour schemes.

Sadly, unlike past Nexus handsets, the Nexus 6 isn’t going to be too light on your wallet. The 32GB iteration has been priced at £499 on a SIM-free deal.

Although cheaper than the similarly specced iPhone 6, this near-£500 asking price makes the handset £100 more expensive than the LG G3. Those looking to snap up the Nexus 6 on contract will need to sign up to a two year, £34.50 per month deal.

For those after more storage space – the Nexus 6 does not support microSD expansion – a 64GB edition is available for the princely sum of £549.

The Nexus 6 is the first device to come sporting Android 5.0 Lollipop direct from the box. Introducing Google’s new Material design UI, the software adds an improved Notifications system, 64-bit processor support and smarter lock screens.

Read More:Android 5.0 Lollipop Complete Review

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Google Android One smartphones launched in India, start at Rs 6399 | The first three Android One smartphones are the Karbonn Sparkle V, Micromax Canvas A1, and Spice Dream UNO | www.reviewrulezz.blogspot.in

 Google Android One smartphones launched in India, start at Rs 6399 

The first three Android One smartphones are the Karbonn Sparkle V, Micromax Canvas A1, and Spice Dream UNO | www.reviewrulezz.blogspot.in

 

Google has officially introduced the first range of Android One smartphones in India. The new smartphones are up for grabs via e-commerce sites from today, and will hit retail stores across India from early October. Prices of the new Android One smartphones start at Rs. 6399.

The first three Android One smartphones are the Karbonn Sparkle V, Micromax Canvas A1, and Spice Dream UNO. The Karbonn Sparkle V (Magnum Blue, Mild Grey, Wild Red and Pearl White) is available online exclusively at Snapdeal; the Micromax Canvas A1 (Black, White) is available online exclusively at Amazon; and the Spice Dream UNO (Black, White) is available online exclusively at Flipkart.

The new Android One phones run the latest Android 4.4 KitKat and will receive the Android L release, which brings Google’s new material design, improved battery life, security features, and smarter notifications. In terms of hardware, the phones feature front- and rear-facing cameras, 1G of memory, quad-core MediaTek processor, long battery life as well as features particularly important to Indians, including dual SIM slots, a FM radio tuner, and a microSD card slot for additional storage. Google apps such as Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Search, and Google Translate will come pre-loaded on the phones.

Karbonn Sparkle V Red listed on Snapdeal

Visit Snapdeal to view deatails about this phoone Click here[mobile users]

                                                                                Click here[computer/laptop users]

Airtel is offering a promotion to reduce data costs for those who buy Android One phones.  With an Airtel SIM card, Android One users will get free over-the-air (OTA) updates, and 200MB per month worth of app downloads from Google Play for the first six months. 

Google also announced that in coming weeks much of YouTube will be available offline in India, meaning that people can store videos in the YouTube app when they are on WiFi and watch them later.

Sundar Pichai, Google Senior Vice President of Android, Chrome & Apps, said, “If we look at how people are getting online and accessing information today, increasingly it’s through a smartphone. While 1.75 billion people around the world already have a smartphone, the vast majority of the world’s population—over five billion more—do not. By working closely with phone and silicon chip makers to share reference designs and select components, we’re making it easier for our partners to build phones that are not just great to use, but also affordable. With Android One, we not only want to help people get online, we want to make sure that when they get there, they can tap into the wealth of information and knowledge the web holds for everyone.”

At today’s Google press conference, Pichai also announced an expanded set of hardware partners for the Android One initiative, including Acer, Alcatel Onetouch, ASUS, HTC, Intex, Lava, Lenovo, Panasonic, and Xolo, as well as chipmaker Qualcomm. Google also unveiled that Android One phones will launch in Indonesia, the Philippines, and additional countries in South Asia by the end of the year
 

We at www.reviewrulezz.blogspot.in are eagerly waiting  for HTC and Asus to launch their Android One Smartphones.

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Advantages of buying an Android One device | Google announced three Android One devices today and here's what you need to know in terms of the advantages that are connected with buying an Android One device | www.reviewrulezz.blogspot.com

Advantages of buying an Android One device

  Google announced three Android One devices today and here's what you need to know in terms of the advantages that are connected with buying an Android One device.

         At the Google I/O this year, the creator of Android had made an announcement that was especially interesting for Indians. It was the Android One, Google’s attempt to revolutionize the budget smartphone segment. Well, that attempt materialized today and as the company had said, Micromax, Spice and Karbonn were the first three manufacturers to come out with smartphones. The first three smartphones are,

- Micromax Canvas A1
- Karbonn Sparkle V5
- Spice Dream Uno

 Spice Dream Uno (Left) and Karbonn Sparkle V5 (Right).

What is Android One?

Android One is a program from Google, where it gives manufacturers a set of device specifications to choose from. It is a means for manufacturers to provide a much better Android experience in inexpensive and easily affordable smartphones. Basically, you get a devices that is in a way certified by Google as the best Android can offer in the given price range.

            Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Product Management, speaking at the Android One launch in Delhi.

What are the advantages?

- Better performance: The UI on these smartphones is very fluid, but more importantly, your things like navigation on Google Maps run more smoothly on Android One smartphones. Also, the first devices on Android One run on a ‘stock’ experience, which isn’t new, but the OS runs as smoothly as a Moto E. So, if manufacturers can come up with cheaper devices, it would mean Moto E level performance on a cheaper smartphone.
- Customizations for India: According to Google, the Google Translate feature has been updated for better Hindi translation. Also, Google Now understands the Indian accent better. The company said there will be other customizations for India as well.
- Updates: In Sunder Pichai’s own words, the Android One devices will be amongst the first to get the Android L updates. That’s not something you hear everyday for a phone that costs Rs. 6,399.
- Camera: In sub-10k smartphones, the camera has till now gone up to 8 MP. With Android One, Google has room for 5 MP, 8 MP and 13 MP shooters. While the prices will vary, it could mean that you can get a pretty amazing camera for a relatively low priced device.
- Build and Design: With Google providing the software and the ‘best specs’ list, manufacturers can concentrate on things like design and build. According to Cesar Sengupta, VP, Product Management, manufacturers will be coming up with different designs for Android One smartphones in future.
- Brand: For the brand conscious, Google has announced with three brands right now, but nine more are joining the fray soon. This includes names like Asus, HTC, Acer, Xolo, Panasonic, Lava, Intex, Alcatel and Lenovo. It would mean that each brand has an affordable Google certified device for you to buy.

      These vehicles will go around various cities, allowing people to get a hands on with the Android One devices.

What this means?

Android One is advantageous for the first time Android users and it is evident that both Google and its partners are looking to reach out to the 'next billion' users, who are all going to come from the tier II and tier III cities. If you've been following the Android smartphone market, you will be hard pressed to find a reason to choose an Android One smartphone over a Moto E (unless you the Rs. 600 difference makes a big difference to you). The reach for these smartphones is much higher, because they are inexpensive not without the advertising campaigns, but rather, despite them. Google is making efforts to take them to consumers and make them aware about them.

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HTC - first to roll out updates of Android L | reviewrulezz.blogspot.com

HTC - first to roll out updates of Android L

HTC, Being very successful in Smartphone market is going to be the first one to release updates of the newer version of Android OS. 

HTC is also the first handset manufacturer to have used & provided "Android 4.4" KitKat for their devices. And now, it seems they are again the winner in the race of providing latest O.S. updates!

HTC is now ready roll out the 'Android L' O.S. in their 2013 released devices, namely HTC One M7 and HTC One M8. HTC has clearly stated this in their official blog.

As said by them,"Our approach will be same with the Android L release from Google. This release promises to bring new features and tools to Android and we are excited to bring it to you and your HTC. As part of our HTC Advantage commitment globally, we pledge to update all of our HTC One (M8) and HTC One (M7) smartphones within 90 days of receiving final software from Google."

HTC promises to upgrade both the flagship handsets in less than 90 days after they receive the final version from Google.

Recently, HTC One M7 recieved Android Kitkat updates, which was preloaded with HTC Sense 6.0 U.I., while, HTC One M8 had had Android Kitkat out-of-the-box.

For more updates, stay tuned!

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Android L overview and what it brings to Android | The developer preview for the new version of Android is now available and here's what's new about it

Android L overview and what it brings to Android  

The developer preview for the new version of Android is now available and here's what's new about it

We know it only as L right now, but Android L brings some major changes to Google’s design philosophy along with some other new features. According to the company, this is the biggest update to Android made till date. Here’s a quick look at the changes, but read on for a detailed report.

- New flatter ‘material’ design UI
- DALVIK runtime scrapped for ART
- Support for 64-bit processor architectures
- New Google keyboard resembling the one from Windows
- New themes
- New APIs for custom shadows and animations for developers
- New notifications and lock screen

Google has already made the developer preview available with all the above changes. According to comments made on the Google+ developer preview page for Android L, it is available for the Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 2013 WiFi only. But enough about that, there’s a lot to cover and we’ll get right down to it.

Material Design

Google’s ‘material’ design entails a flatter look, which in some cases (like the new Google keyboard) is very similar to the Windows and iOS platforms. It is perhaps best explained through the following:

Notifications

Perhaps the biggest change in Android L is in terms of the UI. Google goes for a flatter card-based system, which up untill now has been seen on its Google Now assistant. This new design is more apparent on the notifications and lock screen, both of which have card based views on them.

The standard drop down menu has been done away with on Android L, to be replaced by a drop down card. This is followed by a thin line in between, which differentiates each new notification and other ongoing processes (like Connected to a media device etc). Further, you can swipe down again to reveal the quick settings menu, which contains Wi-Fi status, Auto Rotate and other settings.

The menu doesn’t reach till the bottom of your phone’s screen, showing the home screen in the background. Google has also added a ‘Do Not Disturb’ function to the notifications menu, which allows the user to silence notifications for a designated time period.

The company has also taken advantage of the ‘heads-up notifications’ feature in Android. Since the introduction of JellyBean, Android allowed apps to mark their notifications under high, low, default, min, max priority. The heads up notifications will show up even while you’re playing full screen games etc. based on the priority the app gives to them. So, you can get a small actionable notification on the top of the screen notifying you about calls and texts (Right side of image above).

Lock Screen

Your lockscreen now gives you the lock/unlock, phone and camera options at the bottom, which will perform their designated activities. On the top you see the battery status, services provider and profile picture. Below this, is the clock, which takes up approximately a fourth of your screen.

The major change though is below the clock, where the top four notifications will show up in the same card format mentioned above. These will be accompanied by a ‘+’ sign or a number, showing the notifications available below it.

Google Keyboard

The keyboard now uses a slate-grey theme with borderless keys, which looks almost exactly like the Windows keyboard seen on Lumia devices. Google has also packed some other themes for the keyboard and you can also shift to the standard keyboard you currently see on KitKat.

Out with DALVIK in with ART

With the launch of KitKat, there was some talk of Google allowing users to shift from the default DALVIK to ART runtimes (do this from ‘Developer Options’ on Settings). Well, Android L brings ART to the forefront, obliterating DALVIK completely.

ART is a cross-platform runtime that allows you to run apps on MIPS, ARM and x86 architectures simultaneously. The difference between the two runtimes is in how they process code, with DALVIK processing only the code that is needed (just-in-time), while ART processes code ahead-of-time.

This makes ART much faster than DALVIK and allows for smoother performance. Moreover, ART is compatible with the present app ecosystem, which means that developers don’t really have to make any major changes for it. It also supports 64-bit systems.

Of course, this is only the developer preview of Android L and there’s a lot that can still happen till the OS is actually rolled out to users.

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