Google took the wraps off their Google Music service earlier today. At this same event, the company also spilled some interesting statistics of their Android operating system.
So far there have been a total of 200 million Android activations. This number is growing by 550,000 devices every single day. In June 2011 they announced that there were a total of 100 million activations. So in just a few months the company has managed to double the amount of Android devices out there. Great work!
You don’t really have to be a rocket engineer to hack the Face Unlock feature found in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Seems pretty straight forward and simple :)
Currently this feature is only available on the Galaxy Nexus due to it being the only one with ICS. Let’s hope that Google releases an update to ICS to make this feature a little bit more robust.
Google jumped the gun a bit faster than expected when they today released the source code of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Earlier rumors suggested that we’ll see the source code released on November 17th. The source code can be obtained from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository.
The released of the source code luckily means that work on the next version of 3rd party Android modifications can begin. I think it is safe to say that work on CyanogenMod 9 has now also began. Smart phone manufacturers can now also start porting their software and prepare to release updates to bring Android 4.0 on board their devices.
Ever since Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was announced, people have been worried that the cool Face Unlock feature will not be fool-proof. Now, as proven in the video above, the Face Unlock feature can be tricked with a simple photo of the owner. For comparison, face unlock features on Symbian use eye lid movement or need a specific facial expression to unlock the phone. Let’s hope something like this will make its way to Android 4.0, too.
Google and Samsung has decided to delay their Unpacked event, which was originally planned for next Tuesday, October 11th. A new date for the event will be announced shortly.
Both companies sent out the following announcement:
Samsung and Google decide to postpone the new product announcement at CTIA Fall. We agree that it is just not the right time to announce a new product. New date and venue will be shortly announced.
One guess is that this is due to respect to the recent death of Steve Jobs.
Just few minutes after the previous Nexus Prime leak we get even more. Now we have 9 screen grabs of Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, running on the Nexus Prime.
Everyone is waiting for Samsung’s and Google’s BIG announcement on October 11th. As usual, when we’re moving closer an announcement, we get leaks. Yesterday we got specs of the Nexus Prime, and today, we have image and video! Above you see the first live image of what is claimed to be the Nexus Prime. Hit View Post to see the Nexus Prime pose for the videocamera.
BGR got hold of an impressive spec list for what is claimed to be the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, or previously codenamed the Nexus Prime. It is said to be Verizon Wireless only in the States. Currently we don’t have any more info on the world-wide availability.
Here are the specs for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus:
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
9mm thin
4.65-inch 1280 x 720-pixel Super AMOLED HD with curved glass
TI OMAP 4460 dual-core Cortex A9 processor clocked at 1.2GHz
1GB of RAM
32GB of built-in storage
5-megapixel camera on the back, 1.3-megapixel in the front
1080p HD video capture support
LTE/HSPA depending on carrier
Wi-Fi a/b/g/n
NFC
1,750 mAh battery
The device is also said to come without any UI moderations from Samsung, it will be a pure Android experience, the way it was designed to be by Google. Great! This should eventually mean much faster software updates.
I have to say that IT SOUNDS NICE! How is the iPhone 4S supposed to beat this..? We’re expecting Samsung and Google to announce this jointly at Samsung’s UnPacked event next Tuesday, on October 11th.
