Episode 21 – Gingerbread

Gingerbread SDK, messages galore, some news, superheroes, Christmas was invented in New York, groping at the airport, and more on this week’s show.

Show Notes

• Messages
  • From Scott Evans: “Hi Guru & Jere, I gave that new launcher a try and for me the excitement was Oh OK is that all… it did sound better than it looked! but anyway at least I gave it a try.”
  • From CJ: “Just wanted to let you know its been great. Love the laid back yet informative format. Keep up the great work and I’ll keep listening.”
  • Wolf commented, “I hope in the future that the Developer’s Corner actually transcribes a bit about the audio segment. It is/was hard to follow, but might have been clearer if given a little text to go with it.”
  • Pete Turner: “Hi, I subscribed to your podcast several weeks ago via iTunes, but haven’t been able to get a complete download of any episode. The download stops between 1/4 and 1/3 of the way through, and then eventually times out. Do you know of any workaround for this issue? I subscribe to a number of other podcasts and don’t have any problems with any other downloads. Thanks.”
  • From David H. “I thought I would let you know that I listen to your pod@ast via iTunes. I do so for a couple of reasons. One is my droid has a bad audio jack (I guess this happens a lot to droids) second is I am one of those wierdos that listens to a million podcasts. ( one cool thing about listening to so many podcasts us that I got to be the second voice mail played by you guys.) One of the reasons I still use my ipod is that I have close to 16 gb of music and with all my rooting and saving back up I have little space on my sd card for podcasts. As a side note can I suggest the miui rom for the original droid? I really love it!” He follows up with a second message, “I should mention as a follow up that while I am huge android fan, itunes does podcast collection better than any one else!”
  • Greg has a voicemail
• Platform News
  • Man Hospitalized after Droid 2 explodes while next to ear. Seems rather suspicious.
  • Android Market now has Similar/Related button.
  • Android 2.0 or greater now on 83% of devices. 1.6 is down to 10.6, 1.5 to 6.3.
  • Based on a survey of 9200, Nielsen has stated that 33% of male respondents wanted an Android phone, compared to 23% of female respondents. For the iPhone, it was 29% vs 31%. And for the Blackberry, roughly equal.
  • Gingerbread is here. The SDK will be discussed more as part of Developer’s Corner. Here are some user highlights:
    • UI Refinements for simplicity and speed
    • New Keyboard – Optimized for Faster text input and editing, predictive input. Now available as an update for Rooted Phones
    • Improved Power Management – Android seems to now have a built in Task Manager
    • Internet Calling – SIP integrated into the dialer/contacts. “Support for the platform’s SIP and internet calling features on specific devices is determined by their manufacturers and associated carriers.”
    • Download Management
    • Camera App now supports multiple cameras
  • Google is selling another phone, the Samsung manufactured Nexus S. Will launch with Gingerbread soon.
  • Google EBooks launched. Yet another online bookstore, but this one is run by Google. More on this for next week. (Install via AppBrain)
• App News
  • Dolphin Mini. Dolphin Mini is based on the Android 1.6 engine, as opposed to Dolphin HD, which is 2.0 based. Apparently, Mini will be extremely fast. Currently in its second beta.
  • Thickbuttons was updated, now offering a non-predictive landscape mode and voice-to-text.
  • Revision3 released an app (Install via AppBrain)
  • Winamp for Android updated to 0.9.2, final release, offers Shoutcast support. (Install via AppBrain)
  • Doubletwist Updated, now supports syncing over Wi-fi with its desktop app for Mac or Windows. Syncing sold separately. (Install via AppBrain)
  • Sony Ebook Reader App coming to Android in December
• Root Report – Cyanogenmod 6.1 Stable released.
• Music Folder Player (Install via AppBrain) – Folder-based as opposed to tag based music player with nice and simple interface. Paid version available.
• Spaghetti and Marshmellows (Install via AppBrain)
• Robo Defense (Install via AppBrain)
• Official Google Reader App (Install via AppBrain) – Great application, but doesn’t yet support offline caching and cache to SD. Once you install it, sync to Google Reader becomes an option under the Account settings and sync menu for all accounts in the same way calender is.
• Developer’s Corner
  • Gingerbread SDK released.
    • Enhancements for Game Development
    • Rich Multimedia – VP8/WebM support, AAC and AMR-Wideband recording. New audio effects such as reverb, equalization, headphone virtualization, and bass boost.
    • Near Field Communications
    • Preview of new UI Builder, a visual layout editor
• Andy Rubin and Android
• A Visit from St. Nicholas

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:19:10 — 29.4MB)