Kiran Upadhyay

Almost exactly a year after the Android N Developer Preview launched, Google is unleashing a developer preview of the next major version of Android, "Android O." We haven't tried it yet (images should be dropping any minute now), and the heavy developer documentation is still on lockdown, but we do have a big list of new features to go over. This first developer preview is apparently not going to be super stable. Google's blog post notes that "it's early days, there are more features coming, and there's still plenty of stabilization and performance work ahead of us. But it's booting :)." Because of the early status, this first version of Android O won't be rolling out to the Android Beta program, which offers handy in-place OTA upgrades. Instead Google will be kicking it old school with images for the Nexus 5X, 6P, Player, and the Pixel, Pixel XL, and Pixel C. There's a Wear 2.0 version of Android O, but it's only available via ...

Google’s Android has gobbled up market share world wide, now accounting for over 80% of all smartphone shipped globally. But when it comes to actually making money, Apple is eating all the profits as it continues its focus on premium devices. Today Strategy Analytics said that Apple in Q4 last year accounted for 89% of all smartphone profits, equating to $18.8 billion, with Android taking only 11%, or $2.4 billion. The blow for Android is softened only slightly less so only by the fact that other platform players like Microsoft, Blackberry and Firefox seemingly made no profit at all. The figures given here relate to profits generated by handset makers, not the services ecosystem and potential profits made by app publishers and others, which, of course, includes Google itself, which adds new users of for its mobile search business, mobile ads business and other apps with each unforked Android sale. Overall, smartphone handset profits were up 31.4% compared to the same quarter a...

I really, really like Android 5.0 (or “Lollipop” as it’s known by those of us who probably care too much about these things). It cemented my preference for Android, and has earned the Nexus 5 another few months as my go-to phone. Alas, most Android devices still aren’t running 5.0. In the grand scheme, really, hardly any are. Google has just updated its official version-by-version usage chart, which breaks down what share of the Android market each release has. Lollipop’s current count, almost exactly three months after its public launch: 1.6%. The only version of Android with less of the pie is Android 2.2 (Froyo) — the oldest build that Google still tracks. The overwhelming bulk of the handsets out there are running Android 4.1/4.2/4.3 (collectively known as “Jelly Bean”) with 44.5 percent, and Android 4.4 (KitKat) with 39.7 percent. If there’s an upside, it’s that a good chunk of important user-facing stuff once built directly into Android (things like Gmail, Google Maps,...

Here’s something neat. Google has introduced offline video playback for YouTube mobile users. That’s an exciting feature but there’s bad news for most TechCrunch readers: it’s only available on Android devices in India, Indonesia or the Philippines at this point. The company said the update will allow “much of [the] popular YouTube content” in these places to be watched without an internet connection. Videos that support playback will include an offline icon which, once tapped, offers a choice of playback quality. Once cached, each one is available to watch without internet access for up to 48 hours. Google has specifically picked these three markets because of the importance of mobile internet, coupled with the lack of people with data packages — not to mention the sometimes frustratingly poor quality of internet too. “Asia has proven itself to be a mobile-first world in terms of smartphone adoption, but access to high-speed, affordable data remains a big challenge. In respo...

Why pay E*Trade $8 to buy or sell a stock when you can trade for free on Robinhood? After two years of development, $16 million in funding, and 500,000 waitlist signups, Robinhood finally hits the iOS App Store today. Robinhood lets you track the performance of stocks, and buy or sell them with just a few taps at no cost. The app could attract a younger, less wealthy demographic to the stock market because people can trade smaller amounts without having their potential earnings eaten up by the fees most brokerages charge. Instead, Robinhood makes money through interest on funds you hold with it or when you trade on margin, plus selling trade volume to stock exchanges. During my demo, I found Robinhood to be stylish, and easy to use — uncommon traits for financial apps. Robinhood hopes to onboard the waitlist within two months and then start adding those who signup today. But until then, anyone can use the app to just monitor stocks. Financial tech serial entrepreneurs Vlad Ten...

Google’s recently released Android 5.0 mobile operating system is currently running on fewer than 0.1 percent of handsets, according to data released by the company. The new software, code-named ‘Lollipop,’ was made generally available November 12. Carriers are currently rolling Lollipop out to consumers, according to their own schedule. The limited uptake of Android’s fifth version so far underscores a wider problem in the mobile world: Fragmentation. It took Windows Phone 8.1, for example, nearly half a year to make it to the 50 percent market share mark. And as Wired notes, Apple is seeing slower adoption of its new iOS 8 than some expected. Current reports indicate that Lollipop is seeing increasing over-the-air updates, which could quickly push its market share numbers higher. Google was not immediately available to comment on the current Lollipop figures. However, even if Lollipop manages to grow its share of the Android install base through the end of the year, it will l...

Need more space on your Android smartphone or tablet? Want to play tunes from another device, or view videos and pictures stored elsewhere? You could be planning on a trip and want to take some movies with you, but don’t want to fill up your phone’s storage. If your Android has a microSD card slot, then the problem is easily resolved. You buy a high capacity microSD card. On the other hand, if you can’t afford greater storage but have some USB flash devices laying around, why not connect one of these? You can’t? Of course you can! It’s all thanks to the magic of USB OTG, “on the go”! What Is USB OTG? OTG stands for “On-The-Go” and is a facility we can utilise by means of a USB OTG cable. This is usually a short cable with a wide “female” end for inserting a USB device, and a narrow, “male” connector for hooking it up to your phone. What OTG does is allow your Android device to act as a host, thereby enabling other USB devices to be attached not just physically, but to the o...

Google’s new Lollipop release has been heralded by many as a sign of the increasingly sophisticated design of Android, but despite that advancement there still exists a feeling that Apple’s iOS is the most aspirational mobile platform on the planet. But, with a new iPhone 6 costing upwards of $750 off-contract, many consumers — and particularly those in emerging markets where operators don’t subsidize devices — don’t have much of a choice about their operating system. Enter APUS Group and its Android launcher app that aims to bridge the gap between Android and iOS, with a particular focus on cheaper devices running the Google OS. Launched in early July of this year, APUS revealed that the launcher has now clocked 30 million downloads users worldwide. The company is based in China, as such it’s rather interesting to note that it claims less than 10% of these downloads have come on home turf. Instead the US, India and Brazil are its top countries, with Latin America, the Middle Eas...

If you were thinking that a high-end handset or a Nexus would be the first device to get the Android 5.0 update, guess again: as far as we can tell, the $179 second-generation Moto G is the first phone to receive a final version of the update. Other phones, including the second-generation Moto X and the LG G3, have made steps toward a Lollipop update, but the Moto G appears to be the first device to move beyond the testing phase. Our unlocked US version of the phone is downloading its 386.7MB Lollipop update now. Motorola's "Moto" phones are known for their relatively clean, "stock" versions of Android, and as such the official release notes for the Moto G's Lollipop update focus mostly on things that will be coming to all Moto and Nexus phones that will get Lollipop. High on the list are the new "Material Design" UI, lock screen notifications, multi-user support (brand-new to phones, though it was introduced to Android tablets in version 4.2)...

Google’s new mobile operating system is now available to consumers, as new Nexus hardware (starting with the Nexus 9) begins to make its way into the hands of pre-order customers. Version 5.0 of Android continues the candy naming tradition with “Lollipop,” and despite the fact that ‘L’ is just next in the alphabet, something about the name seems to resonate with the bold new design direction Google has introduced for this generation of its software. Lollipop’s playful, animation-rich aesthetic, which Google calls “material design,” feels fresh and alive, with an internal logic that should mean both longtime and new Android users can get accustomed to their new surroundings quickly – for the most part. Design It’s possible that design is the most significant part of Android 5.0. Lollipop marks Google’s full commitment to its material design principles of user interface creation, which take cues from real-world materials to present the user with UI elements that slide over one ano...

You can now run the latest version of Internet Explorer on your Android, iOS, OS X or non-Windows 10 Windows machine. Microsoft has built and released something it calls RemoteIE, which allows developers to run the company’s browser preview builds without requiring them to be on the most current version of Windows. Microsoft wants developers to build their websites to be compatible with its browser. At the same time, the company can’t expect all developers to use Windows. RemoteIE, which is powered by Microsoft’s cloud computing platform Azure, provides a reasonable compromise. (For some live examples, head here and here.) The service is just for testing, with Microsoft noting that “[s]essions are limited to conserve server resources. Sessions idle for 10 minutes will be logged out and no session can last more than 60 minutes – you’ll need to start a new session.” RemoteIE is free. In short, regardless of your operating system or development environment, you can now quickly sp...

Spare a thought for Microsoft, a relative newcomer to the mobile making business, after Redmond completed its $7.2BN+ acquisition of former European mobile making powerhouse Nokia earlier this year. If Microsoft was hoping to see quick marketshare wins in Europe once its hands were fully on the levers of production that has not come to pass. The latest 12-week smartphone sales figures from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, up to this September, indicate that Windows Phone’s already small share of the smartphone market has shrunk in Europe — dropping 0.3 percentage points in aggregate across the top five markets in Europe (the UK, France, Spain, Italy and Germany). Breaking those markets out individually, only Italy continues to see marketshare gains for Windows Phone, with a 1.5 percentage point rise on the year ago period in that market — giving Microsoft’s OS a 15.2 per cent share on smartphone sales in the country (where it is second only to Android’s 71.8 per cent). But Italy rem...

Android’s newest update is coming soon, with devices running 5.0 Lollipop beginning to ship November 3. While the visual update might be the one that most users pay the most attention to, Android 5.0 also has a number of under-the-hood changes, including some major updates to the overall security of the platform. Google has put a lot of effort into addressing the biggest threats to Android user security, which still overwhelmingly represent lost or stolen devices, and today the company is detailing a few of these efforts. Lollipop adds some new lock methods that make it easier to keep your device secure, which is a huge boon to the overall integrity of the platform. The biggest roadblock to mobile device security is actually user apathy, which sees people skipping basic security practices like implementing a lock screen pin code because it’s inconvenient when you’re checking your device every few minutes. Lollipop offers Smart Lock to help address this, which uses paired devices t...

Google has released its Fit app, which acts as a central storehouse for activity recorded via your Android device, and via apps that use the Google Fit SDK introduced at the I/O developer conference back in June. The dedicated Android app is pretty spare, but it provides a way for users to see an overview of their collected health and fitness data in one central location. The Google Fit app doesn’t present me with much as of right now, but it uses your device’s sensors to tracking walking and other activity, and you can manually enter information about workouts not tracked, or your height and weight. Heart rate info from compatible devices, including Android Wear smartwatches, are also fed to the app. In short, it’s a competitor to Apple’s Health application, but with a very different approach to UI that appears to want to aim for simplicity above all else. Google Fit also has a web-based destination at Google.com/fit which doesn’t appear to be live just yet, and it’s likely we’...

Scenario: It’s 12:30 am. You’re in Taco Bell. You’d do pretty much anything for a crunchwrap supreme. The problem: If you open your mouth and try to speak, it’ll become immediately obvious that you just smoked what you’re at least 90% sure was all of the weed in the entire world. Solution: You can now order Taco Bell on your phone. The company is prepped to announce that they’ve launched a mobile ordering application for iPhone and Android. Once the respective apps go live, you should be able to find the iPhone app here and the Android app here. This is great, because sometimes saying “Two tacos, please” and waiting 19 seconds is way, way too much work. Oh, and good news for the sober folk: food ordered via the mobile app can be picked up through the drive-through. They’ve eliminated the need to get out of the car; they’ve mostly eliminated the need to speak to anyone… you know what this means? The only logical next step is, clearly, tacocopter. Some of the key ingredien...

Why wait for an official Android TV? Android boxes designed for connecting to a TV have been around for ages – the Probox2 EX is the latest and most powerful model in the market. How does it perform, and does it serve a genuine need in the living room? Read on to find out, then enter to win your own at the end of the review. What’s in the box? Probox2 EX unit and wireless antenna Standard Remote Remote+ (in a separate box, with USB dongle) and generic media remote Power adapter (ours included a UK plug adapter) HDMI, and composite cable Read More

If you remember, about a week ago, Google gave Chrome OS the ability to run Android apps through the "App Runtime for Chrome." The release came with a lot of limitations—it only worked with certain apps and only worked on Chrome OS. But a developer by the name of "Vladikoff" has slowly been stripping away these limits. First he figured out how to load any app on Chrome OS, instead of just the four that are officially supported. Now he's made an even bigger breakthrough and gotten Android apps to work on any desktop OS that Chrome runs on. You can now run Android apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The hack depends on App Runtime for Chrome (ARC), which is built using Native Client, a Google project that allows Chrome to run native code safely within a web browser. While ARC was only officially released as an extension on Chrome OS, Native Client extensions are meant to be cross-platform. The main barrier to entry is obtaining ARC Chrome Web Store, which flags ...

A bug quietly reported on September 1 appears to have grave implications for Android users. Android Browser, the open source, WebKit-based browser that used to be part of the Android Open Source Platform (AOSP), has a flaw that enables malicious sites to inject JavaScript into other sites. Those malicious JavaScripts can in turn read cookies and password fields, submit forms, grab keyboard input, or do practically anything else. Browsers are generally designed to prevent a script from one site from being able to access content from another site. They do this by enforcing what is called the Same Origin Policy (SOP): scripts can only read or modify resources (such as the elements of a webpage) that come from the same origin as the script, where the origin is determined by the combination of scheme (which is to say, protocol, typically HTTP or HTTPS), domain, and port number. The SOP should then prevent a script loaded from http://malware.bad/ from being able to access content at h...

Today, Google is launching "Android One" in India, an effort to get high-quality, cheap smartphones into the hands of people in developing countries. Google provides a reference design to OEMs, which then build devices to Google's spec. The devices run stock Android, and Google provides all the updates—you can think of it as a non-flagship version of the Nexus program. Google has high hopes for Android One, as its blog says it hopes to reach "the next 5 billion" people with the program. Google says only 1.75 billion people have a smartphone, leaving over five billion potential Android users out there. Most of those five billion people don't have any Internet access at all. These smartphone statistics line up pretty well with stats for the world's disconnected: only one-third of the world is online. A big part of getting online is having a device that can download and render the Internet, and smartphones are the smallest, cheapest Internet browsers...

Microsoft has built a universal hardware keyboard for the three operating systems that have large global market share: iOS, Android, and Windows. The new piece of metal, called the ‘Universal Mobile Keyboard,’ will be available in October. The device marks the continuance of the company’s cross-platform efforts, but in something of a new way: The keyboard is hardware, made for all, and is not a software iteration of an extant Microsoft product brought to a rival platform. That’s to say it is slightly different to build a keyboard that can pair with an iPad, than it is to bring Office to Android tablets, as the company is also doing. The Bluetooth-capable keyboard can pair with three devices and has a tool to let users quickly switch between their various operating systems. A home key has been included that works across device class. So why in the name of gracious god is Microsoft doing this? The answer is actually pretty simple: If you want to sell Office across every operat...