Quickoffice on Android

Quickoffice have ported their top-selling mobile office application to Android that edits Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint documents, allows access to Google Docs and to documents stored on home PCs through the Internet. They are also working on an iPhone version. Quickoffice is currently available for Palm, S60 and UIQ platforms.





They recently announced collaboration with Esmertec to integrate the Quickoffice Scalable Vector Graphics Tiny (SVGT) Platform with Esmertec’s leading Jbed™ Virtual Machine (MVM). Jbed provides OEMs with a comprehensive and extensive Java solution.

Just to remind you, Esmertec is a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance, delivering customized solutions for Android.


PCMag.com has some more screenshots of Quickoffice on Android.

Wireless Innovations 2008 and Android

Speaking at the Wireless Innovations 2008 conference, T-Mobile and other speakers touted Android as an "iPhone for the masses" that will help spur open innovation in handsets. T-Mobile is expected to be the first carrier to come out with Android phone when it launches a handset using the software later this year and plans to put open software platforms on all its phones.

"We are working on a new approach for all our platforms so developers can have access to open software development kits and applications programming interfaces," said Joe Sims, VP and GM, Broadband and New Business,T-Mobile USA. He also added, "We are very excited about a set of open APIs and a variety of devices using them(Android).I hope it will generate development of not dozens but tens of thousands of new applications that will spawn a new level of excitement in this industry". Carriers like T-Mobile are beginning to embrace open platforms and allow more handsets and apps to run on their network which is a change from their previous stance of allowing only some closed apps. "All carriers have a lot of baggage. We know we are hard to do business with. We can be caught up in our own bureaucracy with the size of our business," said Sims.

Qualcomm on their part, are working with OEMs on more than five handsets that will use Android. The phones will ship in the next 12-18 months, as indicated by Sayeed Choudhry,VP, Product Management, CDMA Technologies, Qualcomm. He also added that the Android phones would have features similar to the Apple iPhone but be available at prices closer to mass market feature phones and sport better links to Web services for photos, video and more. " Google has really thought through what Apple has just begun to unlock". Speaking about LiMo foundation of which Qualcomm is a member, he said, "It's still early days for the LiMo platform but we believe it will get there. Having two flavors of Linux is better than the dozens of proprietary environments we have seen to date". Qualcomm is working on three handset designs for the software.


"The computer industry did this many years ago and it spawned the development of several major companies. Now we want to do it in cellular," said Sims.


Via [EETimes]

Android Developer Challenge 1 statistics

Since it got over, there have been many speculations(statistical, logical....) in the official groups about the no. of entries received. Google has put an end to it on their blog in which Azhar Hashem, Product Marketing Manager for Android said, "I'm thrilled to share the news that developers from over 70 countries submitted 1,788 entries to the Android Developer Challenge!". So there you have it, the official number is 1788.


Hashem also mentioned that the rate of submission had jumped to 170+ submissions per hour in the early hours of Tuesday. Sharing some more statistics, about 600 entries were from US and rest from Germany, Japan, China, India, Canada, France, UK, and other countries.

The judging process will begin soon in which over 100 judges,experts from within OHA and the mobile industry, will rate each of the apps on the basis of 4 criteria, assigning score of 1 -to 10 for each of the criteria. The results, 50 Semi-finalists who will be awarded $25,000 each, will be declared around May 5.

Best of luck to all the participants !

Opera Mini for Android

A preview version of Opera Mini is available for the developer community to test and provide feedback for a later scheduled beta release.

Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, said: "Opera Mini will be able to empower users of Android-based handsets with access to all of their favorite web sites with popular features for smooth effects and scalable, tailored viewing."

The J2ME version has been ported over using MicroEmulator, which is an implementation of J2ME that runs on J2SE. Head over to Opera labs to download the app.

So, after trying out the apk provided, I noted that its damn slow. Now we all know that the emulator isn't fast n stuff, but all our apps do run at decent (and even amazing) speed and this was opposite of amazing. You would expect speed issues in preview version releases, but theres a difference of more than a couple of seconds between action and response once the webpage opens, hence the rant.

some screenshots,















This EditText is kinda big !!








btw, the app didn't start again once closed.

Android ported to N810

Folks at elinux.org have successfully ported Android (m5-rc14) to Nokia N810 tablet, well, TI's OMAP SoCs to be more general. Android has been already ported successfully to Sharp Zaurus SL-C760,SL-C3000, Armadillo-500 and several other OMAP 1 & 2 boards.

The Wiki offers specific instructions right from compiling, extracting the system files to booting the system. The screenshot below shows a m5-rc14 kernel with m3 image.

HTC Dream launch on May 6 ?

May 6 could well be the launch of the first batch of Android loaded HTC Dream phones if the invitation sent out to tech press is anything to go by,





Phonemag.com reports that HTC is holding a special launch event on May 6 in London to “Witness the next wave of HTC Innovation.” This could be it. Apple’s Worldwide Developers convention is around the corner and 3G iPhone is expected by June 4, HTC is looking at stealing some shine off Apple this time. The announcement is in sync with HTC's previous announcement that the Dream would go live in mid-2008.

Dream is 3-inches wide & 5-inches long, will sport a large touchscreen, full QWERTY keyboard (slide or swivel style), and will be geared towards easy internet navigation.

We had already seen a snapshot of what HTC is upto in the recent BBC video of Android. May 6 is the date we'll know for sure.

AT&T in Android land

AT&T are considering jumping onto the Android bandwagon. At CTIA, AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega said that customizability had attracted him to Android. "I like it a lot more than I did before, its something we would want in our portfolio."

Although in December, AT&T was wary of Android,that the platform would be oriented too much toward Google applications, after looking at the OS at GWC in Barcelona and meetings with Google executives, who showed that AT&T would be able to put its own applications on Android phones, they are now convinced that Android is the place to be, “What I’m saying is I like it a lot more than before … We’re now looking to see when it’s ready to be developed. Now I’m in the camp where I’m positive that it’s something I’d want in our portfolio”.

AT&T was the only biggie staying away from OHA where T-Mobile USA and Sprint Nextel are members, and Verizon Wireless has said it will open its network to any device, which would include phones with Android. "One of the things we were looking for was that it was truly open and that you could put other features and applications on it", now, it remains to be seen to what extent does AT&T "customize" Android. The OHA have verbally agreed not to modify the OS to the point that applications coded for it will not run on other Android-based devices, but its possible an AT&T Android phone may look completely different from others Android phones.


Ralph de la Vega's announcement,





Via [Phonemag] [PCMAG]

Quake on Qualcomm phone

At CTIA, Qualcomm showed off an Android prototype cellphone capable of playing Quake. The device uses Qualcomm’s 3D hardware graphics acceleration and gives 30fps at VGA. The screen size is smaller that what we use in the SDK,so lets hope the chip gives the same fps on 320x480 screens.





Also in their presentation, Qualcomm executives spoke about advertising on mobiles. Len Lauer explained the company's strategy to empower mobile services with user-specific info, "We believe advertising will take off in the mobile environment when it comes relevant to the consumer". Qualcomm's acquisition of Irish firm Xiam Technologies was a step in this direction. Xiam’s My Personal Offer System (MPOS) enables operators to profile consumers in order to give them more personalized recommendations of content and advertising. The company is hoping to combine user-relevant data with a mobile wallet and location-based services to, say, improve a customer's experience when they walk into a store.
Did Qualcomm just squash the $25,000 dream of some developers ?


Via [Phonemag] [WashingtonPost]