Android Auto First Look Video With Google Automotive Chief Andrew Brenner

Google is about to make your smartphone the powerhouse behind your in-car infotainment system, with Android Auto, a new feature it’s introducing to Android devices that replaces your built-in car navigation and media system with a version of Android designed specifically for vehicular display systems.

The effort is very much reminiscent of Apple’s CarPlay, with an interface that highlights things people use on their devices when they’re in their cars specifically, including navigation, music playback, and voice-based interaction for search, composing messages and more.

As you can see in the video, the idea behind the design of the system was to build something resembling Google Now for a central jumping off point, and then making sure that there are plenty of contextual smarts built into search so that it can understand even the most informal queries, and also anticipate your next requests without you even asking.

Google will begin shipping its Android Auto solution later this year, beginning with a few select car and device manufacturers supporting the feature, and then expanding from there. It’s already looking pretty much road ready, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see it hit the streets once they’ve had a chance to get more third-party developers on board.

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Security Researchers Uncover The Tools Governments Use To Spy On Our Phones

Edward Snowden, whistleblower of the decade, has made it consistently clear that he didn’t trust cellphones. While he never described the methods governments and other miscreants used to crack into our handsets, he maintained that eavesdroppers could hear us even if the phone seemed off and everything on our devices was open to a dedicated hacker. But he never said how it was done.

Now we know… at least partially. The app used is called RCS/Galileo by an Italian company, The Hacking Team. The app allows for full control of the data on the phone and allows users to activate the microphone on Android, iOS, and Blackberry devices. In short, this is what Snowden feared.

An intercepted Skype call

In two very detailed and independent posts, both Citizen Lab and Kaspersky have produced some very interesting documentation of the program and have even traced a piece of Hacking Team software to a Trojan horse that had been modified to look like an Arabic news reader. The teams traced the command and control servers and found multiples in over 40 countries with the majority appearing in the U.S., Ecuador, and Kazakhstan. The major exploits included access to the following phone features and apps:

Control of Wi-Fi, GPS, GPRS
Recording voice
E-mail, SMS, MMS
Listing files
Cookies
Visited URLs
Cached web pages
Address book
Call history
Notes
Calendar
Clipboard
List of apps
SIM change
Live microphone
Camera shots
Support chats, WhatsApp, Skype, Viber
Log keystrokes from all apps and screens via libinjection

It should be noted that the iOS version requires a jailbroken phone – therefore requiring physical access to the phone – but it was easier to reverse engineer than the Android version. The Android version didn’t require a rooted device but was obfuscated to hide the functionality. All an attacker needed to do for an Android attack was to download an infected app like Qatif Today, a news app. By spoofing a legitimate app source, the attackers were able to install the Hacking Teams applications on phones in Arabic-speaking countries including Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

The proof that these tools are used by the NSA or other governments is still circumstantial – no one has admitted to using the apps to spy on citizens – but the power of the remote control app is clearly disconcerting. An iOS phone left in a hotel room could be easily attacked and compromised at any time and Android phones are especially susceptible.

“This type of exceptionally invasive toolkit, once a costly boutique capability deployed by intelligence communities and militaries, is now available to all but a handful of governments,” wrote the Citizen Lab Researchers. “An unstated assumption is that customers that can pay for these tools will use them correctly, and primarily for strictly overseen, legal purposes. As our research has shown, however, by dramatically lowering the entry cost on invasive and hard-to-trace monitoring, the equipment lowers the cost of targeting political threats.”

Citizen Lab has a full PDF of the manual used to train law-enforcement on use of the RCS program and, although they refused to make the entire document public they did publish some excerpts. Below we see one of the most jarring examples of the Hacking Teams tradecraft: the ability to inject malware into a seemingly innocuous app package and upload it with a single click. While tech-savvy users will claim that this sort of attack would never happen to them, it’s clear that now no one can know for sure.

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Microsoft Has Just Launched Its First Android Smartphone, The Nokia X2

Meet the Nokia X2, the first Android-based smartphone being made by Microsoft.

Yes, you read that right: Microsoft has just made a new Android-based handset.

It’s also still using the Nokia name at this point, despite previously saying it didn’t plan to trade on that name for long. (Evidently Microsoft’s marketing minions are still working on cooking up that “go forward” smartphone brand.)

The Nokia X2 is not the first Android device Microsoft owns, being as Redmond took over Nokia’s mobile making division in April – a move which brought the original Nokia X device under its wing. But some doubted whether Microsoft approved of Nokia’s Android experiment — and speculated that the line would be quickly culled by Redmond.

Nokia forked Android back in February to create a new smartphone platform, which it called the Nokia X Software Platform to slot in between — pricing-wise — its Series 40 based low-cost Asha devices and its Windows Phone powered Lumia smartphones.

At the time Nokia described the fork as a Lumia “feeder” — with then CEO Stephen Elop saying Nokia X devices would be a Trojan horse within Google’s ecosystem by introducing first time smartphone owners to Microsoft’s services rather than Mountain View’s.

Evidently Microsoft approves of this strategy after all — since it’s now building on that experiment with a follow-up device. Or at least it’s willing to give the fork a chance.

The Nokia X2 is priced at €99 before taxes and subsidies (a little up on the original Nokia X’s €89 price-tag), and has a slightly larger screen (4.3 inches vs 4 inches), along with a beefier processor (1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor vs 1GHz dual-core in the original device).

Otherwise it’s much the same fare, with the handset coming in a range of eye-popping colours and featuring Nokia’s blend of UI experiences — with a Windows Phone-esque tiles-based homescreen, combined with Nokia’s Fast Lane notifications screen, plus plentiful Microsoft (and Nokia) services preloaded, including Skype, Outlook, OneDrive, Mix Radio, Here Maps; and — of course — access to Android apps.

The X2 also supports dual-SIM — a popular feature in emerging markets where Microsoft will be hoping the Nokia X platform can better compete with other Android rivals than Windows Phone has been able to, thanks to those plentiful Android apps — and by reaching a lower price tag than entry-level Lumias can.

The Nokia X2 extends the original trio of devices on the platform which were the Nokia X, X+ and XL.

Below is a Microsoft demo video of the X2:

Wondering what Nokia has been up to since handing off its mobile-making division to Microsoft? It’s also been dabbling with Android — releasing an alternative homescreen for Google’s software platform called Z Launcher just last week.

In mobile, (almost) all roads now lead to Mountain View. So finding ways to build atop Android is the order of the day for mobile players of all stripes.

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An Upper Limit For Apps? New Data Suggests Consumers Only Use Around Two Dozen Apps Per Month

There are now well over a million mobile applications in both Google Play and the iTunes App Store alike, and growth of those app marketplaces shows no sign of slowing down. However, according to new data from Nielsen out this morning, there may be an upper limit to how many apps people will interact with over the course of a month, and that number – just over a couple dozen – hasn’t grown much over the past few years.

That’s good news for the everyday must-haves, like Facebook and Google or the default email, messaging, maps or weather applications, for example. But it’s bad news for the young companies trying to establish a foothold and core group of dedicated, engaged and loyal users within the ever-expanding app universe.

According to Nielsen, U.S. iPhone and Android users over 18 have been increasing the time they spend using mobile applications, which is up 65 percent over just two years ago. In the last quarter of 2013, for example, users spent 30 hours, 15 minutes using apps per month. That’s a full half-day more than the 18 hours, 18 minutes they spent per month in Q4 2011, the new report notes.

What’s interesting is how little the number of apps used per month has changed over this same period of time, however. In Q4 2011, the average number of apps used per month was 23.2. The following year (Q4 2012) it grew to 26.5, and as of Q4 2013 it was just 26.8.

Says Nielsen, this appears to indicate that there may be an “upper limit” to how many apps users will engage with each month.

Of course, those apps being used may not always be the same ones every month, as evidenced by the onslaught of new gaming releases to choose from on any given day, for example. Users are often playing, then disposing of, old titles in favor of new ones on a regular basis.

And these days, the hit-driven nature of mobile gaming seems to be seeping over into other areas of the App Store as well, where trending, buzzed-about hits are not always of the “Flappy Bird” variety, but are sometimes just goofy apps we’ll all talk about for a few days, like Yo, then forget.

Nielsen found that social networking and search apps still dominate the time we spend in smartphone applications - even more so than games – accounting for nearly 11 hours per month as of Q4 2013.

Gaming and other entertainment (including video and audio) grew 71 percent year-over-year to account for 10 hours, 34 minutes.

All the other app categories also saw growth in time spent over the past year, but Photography apps really blew things away with a 34-minute or 131 percent per-person increase over the year prior.

Nielsen additionally examined how app usage and time spent varies by age, and found that older smartphone owners (ages 25-44) use more apps, averaging 29 per month, but younger users (13-24) spend the most time in them, with 37 hours, 6 minutes in apps per month.

That makes sense, given that younger users aren’t likely as tied down by other responsibilities with either their jobs or their families. They’re still working their way up the ladder at work, and fewer will have their own children to parent and worry over at their age.

That being said, notes Nielsen, even though older users may not have as much time to spend using apps per month, that usage is still quite significant. For instance, those aged 55+ today spend more than 21 hours across 22 apps per month. It’s this kind of trend that’s having an impact outside of the app universe as well, as apps have begun to eat into the time we would have spent on other leisure activities, like reading books or watching TV.

The question for mobile companies today is no longer just how to get installed, but how to become one of those some half-dozen apps that gets used monthly.

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Samsung Gear Live Review: Samsung’s Smartwatch First Mover Advantage Helps Its Android Wear Effort

Samsung is one of the first to market with an Android Wear smartwatch, and the company arguably has a head start since it’s been making its own smartwatches since last year. The Gear Live owes much to its predecessors, which have run both a modified version of Android and Samsung’s own Tizen, but it manages to feel like much more than an older sibling’s hand-me-downs.

1.63-inch Super AMOLED 320×320 display1.2GHz Processor512MB RAM with 4GB storageComes in black and wine redMSRP: $199Product info page

Pros

Great screenHeart rate monitor

Cons

Samsung hasn’t strained themselves with the Gear Live’s design – this is a very similar device to the Gear 2 on the outside, minus the camera at the top and the button at the bottom. It looks a lot like an original Galaxy Gear, in fact, but with a bezel that makes the screen seem a bit more like it’s protruding from your wrist and cleaner lines overall. The minor tweaks are for the better, however, and this is overall a better-looking device than any of Samsung’s older smartwatches.

The design is much more prone to strong negative reactions than that of the LG G watch, however, at least in my experience. While many were fine with its looks, a lot more said they definitely didn’t like it, vs. a mostly neutral or net positive reaction to the G Watch. You’re less able to add your own personal flair to the Gear Live, too – it uses a proprietary band connector meaning aftermarket options aren’t nearly as readily available.

That said, the wrist-hugging design is comfortable on the wrist, and though the clasp isn’t all that easy to affix to begin with, it’s secure once you’ve got it clipped in. Samsung also gets points for including a recessed hardware button on the right side of the display – it’s every bit as surreptitious as LG’s complete lack of any physical controls, but loads more convenient for power on/power down functions.

As mentioned in my review of the LG G Watch, all Android Wear devices are virtually identical in terms of their software experience so far, and that’s by design. The exception here is that Samsung offers some of its own apps for monitoring heart rate and activity (alongside the native Google-provided software for handling both).

The similarity of experience is a very good thing: users who learn Android Wear once will never have to go through a learning curve or adjustment period again when they upgrade or change devices, so long as Google sticks with this plan.

Android Wear does offer everything that users should need in a smartwatch, however, and nothing more. The crucial part will be keeping things clutter free: I enjoyed the relatively spare influx of notifications and activity possible on the wrist, but developers will be able to do a lot more with the Wear SDK, so simplicity might not last forever.

Existing watch apps from partners including Pinterest offer interesting functionality, however. And Google’s own turn-by-turn navigation on the wrist is pretty much perfect for walking or even biking (if you’re extra careful) places without continually taking your phone out of your pocket.

Samsung has proven with its most recent devices that if there’s one place it excels, it’s in display tech. The Super AMOLED screen on the Gear Live has all of the advantages of the big, bombastic versions it includes in its new Tab S line of Android tablets, but shrunk down and on your wrist.

Founded 1969     Overview Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, is engaged in consumer electronics, information technology and mobile communications, and device solutions businesses worldwide. It develops, manufactures, and sells various consumer products, including mobile phones, tablets, televisions, Blu-rays, DVD players, home theaters, and digital cameras and camcorders; home appliances, such as … Website http://www.samsung.com/us Full profile for Samsung Electronics

Those advantages include super contrast and deep blacks thanks to the absence of a backlight, decent daylight visibility and colors that really pop. Receiving photos on the Gear Live through Hangouts actually provided a pleasant enough experience that I was seldom tempted to reach into the pocket and pull out the connected phone, in fact.

Samsung’s screen is also more pixel-dense than LG’s, and it makes a difference. Text appears super crisp and legible, and overall Samsung is the clear winner when it comes to display quality.

The battery on the Gear Live is one of its least appealing features. Your watch will probably last you through any given day, but don’t expect it to go much further than that. Depending on how actively you’re using the device, you’ll probably need to hit the charger around the same time your head hits the pillow.

The price of wearables, at least for now, appears to be getting used to the fact that these devices require at least as much charging as our smartphones. Samsung’s charger is at least small and easy to hide on a nightstand, but it clips in with a ferocity that makes plugging in and unplugging

Samsung may not have had to do much to pivot its own existing smartwatch efforts into a launch day product for Android Wear, but that doesn’t mean the device it did ship feels half-baked. In fact, if anything it benefits from not having been as rushed as its competition, and for the time being at least, that earns Samsung bragging rights as the best available Android Wear device for most users.

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Google Shames Apple’s iOS For Adding What Android Did Years Ago

Apple’s Tim Cook insulted Google at WWDC earlier this month saying “Android dominates the market in malware”, and quoted an article calling the fragmented open operating system a “toxic hellstew of vulnerabilities.” Well Google punched back this morning at its I/O conference when Sundar Pichai put up a slide showing Android’s progress over the years, noting “If you look at what other platforms are getting now, widgets, custom keyboards, many of these things came to Android four, maybe five years ago.”

And the Google fanboys and fangirls went wild.

Pichai never said Apple, but he was clearly jabbing at the recent announcement that iOS 8 would include widgets and custom keyboards. And to play a little defense, Pichai then described how Google was fighting Android malware by forcing all security updates to be pushed through Google Play so hackers can’t send them straight to unsuspecting victims.

For years, the fight between Apple and Google on mobile has been about iOS’ beauty vs Android’s power. But now Apple is opens up more developer flexibility, and Android is getting the new “Material” design overhaul. As the two mobile operating systems converge, expect this fight to get even dirtier. “Android is for robots!” “iOS is for toddlers!”

And poor Windows Phone wishes someone would at least make fun of it.

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Google’s Principal Designer For Search And Maps Explains Material Design

Google’s design work was center stage at I/O this year, from the keynote through sessions and things being demoed on the show floor. The changes run across Google’s range of devices and platforms, and embrace a new set of design principals grouped under the central concept of ‘Material Design.’

I spoke to Jon Wiley, Principal Designer of Search and Maps and Google, about the process of changing the company’s design language across its platforms and products. Material Design doesn’t necessarily throw out Google’s existing design work, according to Wiley, but it does represent a comprehensive new way of thinking about software interaction in the context of modern devices.

“It’s definitely an evolution, although I do think at this point that we’ve also pushed it farther, and we’ve been working pretty hard on that,” Wiley explained. “We talked [during the keynote] about [how] material is the metaphor, and there were actually two metaphors that guided us in terms of thinking about how we could design specifically for high-density displays with touchscreens.”

Touchscreens, combined with high resolution screens with very high pixel-per-inch counts, have conspired to give device users very different expectations around what software should feel like in use. We no longer stare at crudely rendered green text on a black field, after all.

“That affords kind of a new dimension of interaction and interactivity – you’re physically interacting with software interfaces, and so I think that people have far greater expectations,” Wiley said. “They have all the expectations that they have with beautiful, functional, useful design in the physical world that we’ve had for a very long time, they’re bringing those expectations to the software that they’re interacting with because of the nature of the medium.”

“Mouse and keyboard dominated the input/output mechanism with computing devices for quite some time, and we’ve only had widely available touchscreens and high density displays for a few years,” he added. “We initially saw a lot of interface design that was ‘well, we’ll go take what we know, and we’ll jam it on these smaller screens, just kind of jam it on there.’ And we started [...] over a year ago, really thinking about if i’m someone who uses software and i’m coming to the table with all of these expectations about the physical interaction of things and how they behave, all of that is informed by some basic rules and underlying physics.”

That’s where Material Design comes in; the entire system is engineered to mimic real world analogs, without going all the way and becoming what we know as ‘skeuomorphic,’ where interfaces try to offer up almost photorealistic renderings of analogous surfaces in the real world – like a Moleskine for a notebook app, for instance.

“The Material metaphor cuts through a lot of this – we say, ‘what is this made of, what are some of the basic physics of this material?’,” says Wiley. “What’s nice about software is that it doesn’t have to be completely constrained by real-world physics, but you do want to set up an environment where it’s internally consistent.”

Building these physically sound worlds allows Google’s designers to create interface and interaction heuristics that users grow accustomed to and recognize across platforms. Which means that for users, intuiting required behavior becomes much easier.

“It’s actually an imposed set of constraints, but by imposing constraints it enables you to creatively solve within an internally consistent framework of how things work,” Wiley explained. “That way, as you use the software, you’re doing the task on one device, then you’re doing the task on another device, and you’re using multiple applications to solve whatever problem you have, that it doesn’t feel like you’re jumping around from one universe of physics to another universe of physics – that everything feels consistent in terms of how you interact with it.”

Material Design talks about real world analogs like paper and ink, but Google also considered another metaphor to guide its new animations and transitions, which are a big part of its visual and interactivity overhaul.

“The other metaphor that’s driven us quite a bit [...] comes from Fred Gilbert, who’s a director of design for Google+, is that software has followed a metaphor of film and television editing, where each interaction is a series of jump cuts and this is amplified on touchscreen devices,” said Wiley. “The actual world and software design and interaction is probably better suited to a metaphor of theater, where you’ve got almost a proscenium that you’re seeing things happening on. A bad play would go ‘Scene.’ and then a curtain would come down and then you’d wait a while and the curtain would come back up and there’d be something completely new.”

To counter that, Google wanted to pin down a visual language that would not just entertain with flourishes and animated shifts, but that would also inform a user, providing contextual information about how you might interact with the incoming interface as its being set up.

“We were looking at all this software and that’s what’s happening – you’re doing these really important things, and you’re interacting with the software and it’s doing these jump cuts, where you do this and it does this other thing and it’s actually really jarring,” said Wiley. “So we started thinking about how we can actually convey a sense of continuity, where you’re going from one state to the next and it’s done in a thoughtful, composed fashion.”

While Google made Material Design seem like a brand new revolution in software aesthetics during the show, it’s actually something the company has been working on for years, which pops up across its range of products. Wiley says that it’s also the product of Google’s unique approach to product development, where teams from distinct projects talk to each other all the time, and in this way they arrived collaboratively at the new principles. As Wiley said, it’s still relatively early days for high density displays and touchscreens, but it’s far enough along that any efforts to help deepen our experience of interacting with them is worthy of praise.

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