The Samsung Galaxy S2 will be getting Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the company’s UK arm has confirmed this week via Twitter.
While it should come as no surprise – even six months on, the Samsung Galaxy S2 is still just about the most powerful phone on the market, and to ignore it would be a shock – it is reassuring to see Samsung publicly committing to it.
It’s become de rigueur for Google to brag about its Android activation stats whenever it holds a big launch event. And last night’s Google Music bash was no exception. While talking up the new, Stateside-only service, Google’s Jamie Rosenberg revealed that 550,000 Android phones are now activated daily around the world, with 200 million active Android handsets now out in the wild.
With Asus already unleashing its quad-core Eee Pad Transformer Prime, it’s no surprise that big rival Acer is all set to show off a similarly specced slate. And while its new Acer Iconia 700 tablet isn’t official yet, the PC giant has managed to let slip details of the device via its own servers.
Google Music ditched its beta tag last night, with the Big G revealing its own dedicated music store for both the web and Android, sitting alongside its existing cloud storage and streaming offering. But as ever, there’s a snag: UK users can’t play nice with Google’s new MP3 store, and there’s no news on when it’ll fling open its virtual doors to music fans in Blighty.
The Boxee Box media streamer has added a new string to its bow in the US, by unveiling a branded Antenna add-on that’ll bring content from some of the biggest American networks to the device with no monthly subscription.
Nokia’s Snake, the classic mobile phone game, is dead. This morning we brought news of a playable version of Snake that’s taken over MSN’s homepage as part of the campaign for the new Nokia Lumia 800. In that piece, we mused that the classic game could be making a comeback on future Nokia Windows Phone handsets. Not so…
The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series has made a rod for its own back. ‘Difficult second album’ syndrome for artists is far worse for game developers, and spiraling expectations will trip you up if you don’t have an incredibly clever plan set in place for future editions. Sequel parameters in modern gaming are limited only by the collective imaginations of those with their names in the credits, which on paper roughly translates to: ‘Make everything similar, but better and with bigger explosions than before.’
This is truer nowhere than in the Modern Warfare series, the third and most recent release in which, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, is set during and just after an international World War III. It’s a stunning game, but it begs one serious question: where the hell do you go from there?
I love Google. I might not own an Android phone, but I can’t get enough of their Gmail service, fall back on Google Docs constantly and am still a big fan of Google Reader, despite Twitter now being my main source for breaking news and comment.
But there’s a problem: Google is making me stupid. I’ve stopped thinking, or trying to work simple stuff out without resorting to the Big G’s ever improving search engine. Mountain View is offering me too much information and it’s becoming an issue. So, short of unplugging the internet, what can we do?
