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During Google’s earnings call last night, Google gave us some more information of how well Android is currently doing.
According to Larry Page, Android has now been activated on over 250 million devices. Last November the number was 200 million. Another noteworthy fact is that Android Market again has generated over 11 billion downloads.
GTA III on iOS
Rockstar today announced their plans to release ‘Grand Theft Auto III: 10 Year Anniversary Edition’ for a selection of iOS and Android devices. The game will be delivered via Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market. We’ll see the game hit the said app stores on December 15th, for a price of $4.99.
List of devices that will get GTA III: 10 Year Anniversary Edition:
Apple iOS Devices: iPad 1 & 2, iPhone 4 & 4S, iPod touch 4th Generation
Android Phones: HTC Rezound, LG Optimus 2x, Motorola Atrix 4G, Motorola Droid X2, Motorola Photon 4G, Samsung Galaxy R, T-Mobile G2x
Android Tablets: Acer Iconia, Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Dell Streak 7, LG Optimus Pad, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1, Sony Tablet S, Toshiba Thrive
It was only a few days ago when Samsung released their ad that mocked Apple fans. I found this ad to be pretty hilarious. Now Samsung has done it again and released an ad that continues from where the last one ended. This time they tackle the apps, and the Apple App Store that doesn’t have a trial function. Not as hilarious as the first one, but I can see some hard-core Apple fans going nuts over this ;)
Something that slipped through my fingers earlier this week, was the death of Adobe’s Flash Player for mobile. At that same time the company also announced that they will ship one final version of Flash Player for Android.
This day is today, with Adobe releasing Flash Player 11.1. As usual, this update is all about security. It actually plugs 12 critical security flaws in the software.
Fire up Android Market to get your final bits of Adobe Flash Player for Android!
Facebook made today an interesting move by releasing the Facebook Messenger app. This is simply their messaging solution in one app, and nothing more. Users can send messages directly to friends or groups. Additionally, the user can choose to send an image or share a location with a friend.
Messenger is a separate app, so it only takes one click to get to your messages or send a new one. Messages are delivered through notifications and texts, so your friends are more likely to get them right away.
You can use Messenger to reach all of your friends — whether they’re on Facebook or in your phone contacts. All you have to do is type the person’s name.
The app should hit Google’s Android Market and Apple’s App Store in the coming few hours.
Google has finally released an official Google Docs client for Android. The app is now available in the Android Market totally free of charge.
Here’s the description from the Android Market:
Create, edit, upload and share your documents with the Google Docs app.
Create, edit, upload and share your docs from your phone with the Google Docs app:
- Designed for Android to save you time finding your docs
- Edits to your documents appear to collaborators in seconds
- Make quick changes to spreadsheets
- View your documents, PDFs, images and more.
- Upload and convert files to the Google Docs format
- Take a photo of printed text and convert it to a Google document
- Share docs with your phone’s contacts
More of it here.
CNN announced today that their official news app for Android is now available in the Android Market.
Get the latest news, watch live video and iReport from your Android phone.
Experience what happens when storytelling meets the latest technology with the new CNN App for Android – a smarter, sleeker way to experience a world of news and insights. Now available on all Android powered mobile phones.
Features:
To download the app, fire up the Android Market from this link.
Mozilla Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo is now available as a release candidate in more than 10 languages from the Android Market and for download on your Maemo device.
This release offers faster scrolling, better responsiveness with Firefox Sync and improves the overall user experience of Firefox. Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo brings the performance and customization of Firefox to mobile devices with features like Firefox Sync, Awesome Screen, tabbed browsing and Firefox Add-ons, to create a personalized and effortless mobile browsing experience.
Full Release Notes here.
Android Market was again hit by a malware threat. This time around it is rather big, since malware was found in 21 apps, and 50,000 possible infected users. The applications got access to basically everything stored on your phone. The malware was able to download more code over-the-air, so the possibilities for this little malware were nearly endless.
It is very alarming to see that the official Android Market has been hit with a massive malware attack like this. Previously we’ve only seen this happen on 3rd party markets for Android, but this time around it’s the real deal!
Android Police wrote the following:
I asked our resident hacker to take a look at the code himself, and he’s verified it does indeed root the user’s device via rageagainstthecage or exploid. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: it does more than just yank IMEI and IMSI. There’s another APK hidden inside the code, and it steals nearly everything it can: product ID, model, partner (provider?), language, country, and userID. But that’s all child’s play; the true pièce de résistance is that it has the ability to download more code. In other words, there’s no way to know what the app does after it’s installed, and the possibilities are nearly endless.
All the applications with malware were from publisher Myournet:
The good news? Google has already removed the 21 affected apps from the Android Market.
Lookout Mobile Security has again found evidence of an Android specific trojan. This new trojan is called HongTouTou.
Here’s what Lookout found out about HungTouTou:
HongTouTou is included in repackaged apps made available through a variety of alternative app markets and forums targeting Chinese-speaking users. To date Lookout security researchers have identified fourteen separate instances of the HongTouTou Trojan repackaged in Android apps including RoboDefense (a well known game) and a variety of wallpaper apps.
When an app containing HongTouTou starts, it sends encrypted data containing the device IMEI and the IMSI to a remote host. In response, the HongTouTou receives a set of search engine target URIs and a set of search keywords to send as queries. HongTouTou then emulates the search process using these keywords to create searches in the search engine, crawls the top search results for those keywords, and emulates clicks on specific results. To the search engine, the searches appear to be coming from a mobile user using a mobile web browser with User-Agent corresponding to the UCWeb browser (J2ME/UCWEB7.4.0.57).
HongTouTou can also process a command instructing it to download an APK (Android package file). Although we have not yet seen it attempt to install the APK, the APK appears to have the ability to monitor SMS conversations and insert content related to specific keywords (potentially spam) into the SMS conversation.
The following permissions can be accessed by HungTouTou:
android.permission.WRITE_APN_SETTINGS
android.permission.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED
android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE
android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE
android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE
android.permission.INTERNET
android.permission.MODIFY_PHONE_STATE
HongTouTou currently spreads on forums and third-party Android markets in China. It will be interesting to see how Google will react to the ever increasing amount of trojans and malware targeted at Android.
