ARM has officially announced the launch of their new ARM Development Studio 5 Community Edition. This is a suite of Eclipse-based tools that are designed to help Android app developers who use the NDK to write native code. The tools will simplify the debugging of native ARM code in apps and help performance of the applications as well.

Usually, Android applications are coded in the Java programming language. Then, they are compiled and ran on the Dalvik runtime environment. In 2009, Google launched the Android Native Development Kit (NDK). This provided a way for third-party application developers to incorporate libraries coded in C or C++ within their Android applications. C and C++ are far more powerful and performance-enhanced than Java, which is why Google pushed the NDK and developers loved it. This new release by ARM will help even further to reduce the technical challenges and allow developers to push even more performance out of their applications.

The toolkit should be widely accepted and welcomed by developers who use the NDK. Android is moving more and more towards the x86 architecture due to Intel’s growing commitment to the platform. Android applications that rely on native code compiled for ARM aren’t going to work on future Intel-based Android devices and app-enabled, such as Google TV, products.

Source: Ars Technica

Intel has released some more information about the next-gen processors at its Intel Developers Forum in San Francisco. Due out in the second quarter of 2012 is the Ivy Bridge, which is a 22nm die-shrink “tick” to Sandy Bridge’s “toick.” Ivy Bridge will include Intel’s new 3D tri-gate transistor technology, which offers a 37% power efficiency improvement from the current generation. This also improves integrated graphics as well. After the Ivy Bridge will be the 22nm Haswell in 2013, which will promise “all day” laptop battery life along with up to 10 days of “connected standby.”

The shrink in the die for the Ivy Bridge will mean that more room can be dedicated to graphics. The Ivy Bridge will consist of 1.48 billion transistors, which is impressively half a billion more than Sandy Bridge. Intel has promised a 60% improvement in GPU performance to go along with the Ivy Bridge processors, which should be enough for nearly any gamer.

As far as the replacement in 2013 for the Ivy Bridge, we have the Haswell. Intel has stated that the design is complete and even showed off a working protytpe during a presentation at the Intel Developers Forum. Not many details have yet been revealed, but we do know that it is a low-power mobile processor. Mobile Ivy Bridge processors range from about 35-45W, yet Intel has designed Haswell for a 10-20W power “envelop.” That being said, the same amount of performance will be produced with a lot less power used, which amounts to 30 percent less used according to Intel. Intel’s idea from this is to take “current notebooks that manage 5-7 hours of battery life” and create “more like 8-12 hours.”

Source: Ars Technica

Have you ever been walking out in the middle of nowhere, or somewhere, and had your cell phone give you that god awful report of the battery dying? Well, “in-shoe” technology may be coming soon in order to charge batteries.

The technology was invented at the University of Wisconsin – Madison by Tom Krupenkin and Ashley Taylor. This was done within the mechanical engineering program as well. Basically, they invented a shoe insert that generates electrical energy from people’s footsteps. These two have stated that their invention may very well charge people’s cell phones during a 2-hour walk.

Basically, when a human walks there is thermodynamic power that is generated. This technology simply, but not so simply, harnesses this power. These two inventors had to reverse a process that is called electrowetting, where conductive liquid applied to the surface of an electrode will change with exposure to an electrical charge. By reversing this process, Taylor and Krupenkin were able to generate electrical charge by using the changing physical form of liquid drops.

In simpler terms, “If you run a motor in reverse you get an electrical generator,” explains Krupenkin.

The team has so far gotten 150 droplets to produce several milliwatts of power. But if they coat a 40-centimeter-thick electrode with 1,000 droplets, Krupenkin predicts the device will produce 10 watts. These 10 watts will be enough to power a mobile phone or netbook. This would also be portable power that Krupenkin describes as “a mobile electronic unit with you that is always ready.”

Taylor and Krupenkin have formed a company titled InStep NanoPower and are working on a prototype. This prototype should be for sale within two years.

Source: Mobiledia

The game Beards & Beaks was released for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform last week. The object of the game is this: a group of gnomes are fighting crows that have invaded their home town of Gnomeville; the cows try to steal the gnomes’ diamonds; the gnomes must kill the thieving birds and defend their diamonds. Different gnomes have different abilities, but are mobile and can be moved around the battlefield with a “flicking” action.

Beards & Beaks was developed entirely in-house by Microsoft Game Studios and the phone is the sole platform that this game is available on. That is one notable feature about the game.

The second is that it includes microtransactions. The player only has a certain number of mushrooms that they can use to attack the crows with certain special weapons. Though mushrooms grow naturally and are given after completion of each level, the player must purchase more mushrooms if they run out, though you can refill once for free. The player can purchase other things besides mushrooms, such as the DLC (downloadable content) using the microtransactions. The first DLC map has already been given and distributed for free, but maps use a new in-application purchase API to enable it. Future maps will more than likely not be free, even though the price reads zero at the moment.

Applications through the market on the Windows Phone 7 platform use real currencies and are paid for either by credit card or the user’s operator billing, the in-application purchases are a bit different. Similar to the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows Marketplace, they use Microsoft Points. This further embeds Windows Phone into the broader Xbox ecosystem, but kind of represents an inconvenience for maintaining a points budget. It can be a little annoying, since you can’t just buy any amount of points you want, as they come in certain amounts. As well, the platform does already know how to bill users’ credit cards, so the decision to run hybrid like this is a little strange and unnecessary.

In-application purchasing has proven risky for developers on iOS and Android, being as some of these developers were sued by Lodsys for patent infringement. Though, this purchasing is also an important feature to mobile platforms. Developers on Microsoft’s platform should be covered by a patent agreement that Microsoft has with Intellectual Ventures, who owned the patents Lodsys is suing iOS an Android developers over. However, Google has a similar agreement, and that hasn’t exactly stopped the patent troll (Lodsys) from going after Android developers, so Microsoft might find a little heat with the decision to include in-application purchasing.

Source: Ars Technica

After they surveyed 2,277 US adults between April and May of 2011, they found out that 83 percent have a cell phone. Of that group, 42 percent own smartphones, making it so that 35 percent of all adults surveyed own a smartphone. Smartphones tended to be the most popular among those with a college degree and seeming financially “well off,” and the highest rate of ownership came under the age of 45. Given the “new” age of this technology, that isn’t too surprising, either.

Nearly half of the people surveyed that were employed full time had a smartphone. Only a small percentage over 25 percent had a smartphone when they were unemployed. Smartphone owners were also found to generally be more likely to own laptops, music players, desktop computers, tablets and e-book readers.

The unexpected result is the one of the primary internet source. So, 28 percent of smartphone owners access the Internet primarily through just that. That amounts to 10 percent of all cell phone owners, or 8 percent of all adults in the US. It may come as no surprise, but with the growing availability and decreases in pricing for smartphones, while broadband access is yet too expensive and not readily available, the trend is likely to continue for quite some time.

“Smartphone owners under the age of 30, non-white smartphone users, and smartphone owners with relatively low income and education levels are particularly likely to say that they mostly go online using their phones,” wrote Pew, which says that nearly a third of the “mostly cell” group lacks any kind of traditional broadband Internet access.

Market share statistics are also a must in such a study. Pew Internet Project found that 15 percent of all cell owners and 35 percent of smartphone owners reported owning an Android device. Apple and RIM are both at 10 percent for cell phone owners are 24 percent of smartphone owners. Microsoft and Palm both were at 2 percent of all cell owners.

While the Android lead is not surprising, Apple has been reported to be rising in sales, according to Nielsen. However, the demographics of the cell phones are interesting. More than a quarter of African-American cell owners own an Android device, roughly “twice the rate for Caucasian and Latino users.” BlackBerry and iPhones are “particularly high” among those with the highest level of education and incomes. These people are four times more likely to own a BlackBerry or iPhone. And last but not least, those who live in urban or suburban environments are twice as likely to own an iPhone than a rural user.

Source: Ars Technica

iPhone users spend nearly twice as much as the average amount of time playing games on their mobile platform. iPhone users spent 14.7 hours playing mobile games over the 30 day period. To compare, Android users spent 9.3 hours. The overall average is 7.8 hours, which would have been impacted by the 14.7 and 9.3, as that is naturally how numbers work. That being said, the Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry platforms would have been significantly lower in order to lower the average. In fact, if my math is correct, and assuming that only the 4 mentioned platforms are being considered, then 7.2 hours would have been spent on both Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry combined.

64 percent of users downloaded a game in the last 30 days, with 60 percent for weather apps and 56 percent for social networking apps. If you aren’t familiar with statistics and realized that this is more than 100, I would just like to add that you have to remember that a user can download from more than one category.

But how hardcore is the gaming? Well, it isn’t quite Call of Duty: Black Ops or World of Warcraft, but the idea is there. The users want to game, not be educated. With the mentioned 64 percent of downloaders grabbing a game from their market, only 11 percent of those were “education/learning” apps.

Source: Ars Technica

Windows Phone 7 can now get their hands on Angry Birds. This comes after a long wait and demand from the users, but Microsoft finally pulled through.

However, it doesn’t come free. Unlike iOS and Android, Angry Birds will take $2.99 to put Angry Birds on your Windows Phone 7. There is a free trial, though, straight from Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds. Currently in Apple’s App Store, Angry Birds is 99 cents, with a Lite version as well. In the Android Market, it is simply free.

Last fall, Microsoft posted a web site for releasing and detailing the Windows Phone 7 platform. On this image, there was included an image of an Angry Birds icon, showing that the game would soon come to Windows Phone 7. However, Rovio tweeted that they had “not committed to doing a Windows Phone 7 version” of Angry Birds. Furthermore, “Microsoft put the Angry Birds icon on their site without [Rovio's] permission.”

Microsoft, being the intelligent and crafty people they are, responded by stating that the Angry Birds icon was mistakenly added to the site, in which time they took it down.

At least finally, amidst a series of zigging and zagging, Angry Birds has slingshotted itself on to the Windows Phone 7 platform. Even if it is an ugly $2.99, hopefully soon enough, the price will drop, and users will be playing Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio on all 3 major platforms (iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7).

Source: CNET News

More about this technology. Do 3-D glasses hurt your eyes or make you feel quirky? Well, with this device, the glasses aren’t even needed, as it works with a technology called “switchtable barrier,” introduced by Nintendo’s 3DS. Another cool thing that this device is capable of is hooking up to a 3D-TV in order to watch movies, play games, and view photographs. Imagine viewing family portraits in 3 dimensions.

CNN noted something interesting when saying “…so far [the LG Optimus 3D] offers no spinning 3-D text messages or eye-popping dial pads, meaning Android app developers have a new mission to fulfill.” The industry behind mobile phones could vastly change if it started becoming 3-dimensional.

For better or for worse with this technology, that is what everyone has yet to find out. It could be the next big thing, or it could just be another idea that comes to the market and then fails within a couple of years. We will have to play the waiting game and see who jumps at the opportunity to purchase the Optimus 3D when they are finally released.

Not too much is not about this phone, as it was just shown to the public, but the pricing information was said to be “affordable” by an LG spokesperson. The release date is still unknown.

Source: CNN

Current holders of the Windows Phone 7 include LG and HTC phones, so adding Nokia could potentially increase popularity and likability of the Windows Phone 7. As well, there was some tension that Microsoft had to break. Google Inc. tried to get Nokia on the Android platform, but was nowhere near paying billions of dollars for a company that most would say is years behind the competition in software.

Even though they may behind in software, Nokia is very efficient in the hardware industry. That being said, Microsoft may have benefited from the partnership a lot, as users tend to visibly notice and appreciate the software before digging deep into the hardware. But one thing must be remembered: Windows Phone 7 is not even liked by the majority of the mobile industry yet. It is still rather new and only a few percent of the mobile industry uses it.

Will this deal prosper? It is hard to say. 2011 and 2012 have been said to be “transitional” years for the Microsoft and Nokia partnership. Waiting this long could be very dangerous. With the competition as fierce as it is and the industry growing almost exponentially, the Android and iOS platforms could simply wipe Windows Phone 7 clear out of the possibilities.

Source: MSN

Source: Trend Micro