Celkon, Intex set to be Google's new India partners for Android One

Low-profile Celkon Mobiles and Intex Technologies are hoping to vault into a higher league by becoming the next set of Indian smartphone vendors to tie up with Google for the search giant's low-cost smartphone initiative Android One, which is aimed at emerging markets, starting with the South Asian nation. 



Hyderabad-based Celkon Mobiles has become the fourth Indian vendor to sign a pact with Google for the Android One initiative, after Micromax, Karbonn Mobiles and Spice, while Delhi-based Intex is hoping to seal a deal soon. 

Late last month, Google senior vice president Sundar Pichai had announced partnerships with Indian smartphone makers Micromax, Karbonn and Spice for the Android One initiative. Under the programme, Indian handset makers will get hardware reference models to create high-quality phones priced below $100 (around Rs 6,000). These devices will run on a standardised version of Android, allowing faster updates. 
Intex, which is in talks with Google to join the Android One programme, is hoping to build its brand image in the highly competitive Indian market. 

"We are in talks with Google for the Android One initiative. In 15-20 days, I would be able to give more information on the same," said Sanjay Kumar Kalirona, business head, mobile, Intex Technologies. 

The company has already tied up with Firefox web browser maker Mozilla to introduce what could possibly be the world's cheapest smartphones in a few months costing below or around Rs 2,000. 

Both handset vendors don't have a prominent presence in the highly competitive Indian smartphone market led by Samsung and followed by local handset makers Micromax, Karbonn and Lava. Global companies such as Nokia, Sony, Apple and BlackBerry as well a plethora of Chinese vendors including Gionee, Oppo and soon-to-enter Xiaomi have a higher profile among consumers. 

Intex, a computer peripherals maker that entered the mobile phone segment, and Celkon have been plying their trade mainly in the high-volume, low-cost handset market, which has given them sixth and seventh position in terms of market share, according to Gfk, but not much brand recall. According to estimates, more than 500 million people use non-smartphone devices in India, and as prices of the latter decline more people will migrate to the category, one which Google, helped by its tie-ups, is eyeing. 

By joining Google's initiative, Indian smartphone players are looking to get brand recognition at the local and global level. Micromax and Karbonn have already ventured into some global markets, while others are aspiring to do the same. 

Hollywood’s worst nightmare just got worse, as Popcorn Time’s Android app gets Chromecast support

Torrent-streaming platform Popcorn Time already has the movie industry quaking in its proverbial boots, with a cross-platform service that streams video content via torrents in real-time. It’s like Netflix, except its peer-to-peer (P2P), offers infinitely more content, and has very questionable legality. But with its latest update, things are being pushed to the next level.

Last week, you may recall that Popcorn Time’s Windows app received Chromecast support, essentially bringing any popular movie to your TV screens for free in next to no time. And a couple of months after Popcorn Time arrived on Android, its mobile app now has Chromecast support too.

Google’s Chromecast dongle is available to buy in 12 countries across Europe and North America, letting anyone stream or mirror content from their Chrome browser, or compatible Android and iOS apps. This includes Netflix, and offers a massively convenient way of browsing for movies or TV shows on your smartphone, and beaming them directly to your flat-screen.

While movie industry bodies have been pushing hard against the rise of torrent sites in recent years, with varying degrees of success, Popcorn Time is pushing back. It basically makes it easy for anyone to access all the big-name releases to stream instantly, meaning they don’t have to wait for huge file downloads before they can start watching. And with the Popcorn Time Mac app next up for Chromecast support, it’s safe to say that Hollywood’s worst nightmare is getting a whole lot worse.

Unofficial Android L port lands for HTC One

Android L is still some months away from being officially available, but the preview release has given developers enough to port the firmware to HTC's One M7.

Google only released its preview Android L firmware for the Nexus 5 and latest Nexus 7 at the start of the month, but within days developers had built ports extending what was available inthe preview to the Nexus 4 and older Nexus 7 models.

Others meanwhile have extracted working components, such as the Android L keyboard — it made a brief appearance on the Play Store before being removed by Google last week. And there's even the Nova launcher, with features borrowed from the preview release.

As of last Friday, HTC One M7 owners have also had another way to play with Android L, thanks to about two weeks' of work from XDA developer Suyash Srijan who created an L port for the old HTC flagship.

Given the port's status as an unofficial 'alpha' release of an incomplete product, it's probably not the wisest thing to flash to a HTC One being used as a primary phone. Some of the features that aren't working including wi-fi, Bluetooth, sensors, camera, and sound. In other words, "half the things that don't work" could render a device fairly useless to anyone wanting more than a sneak peek of Android L on their HTC One.

For HTC One owners that do want to install the firmware, the process should take about 15 minutes. HTC One M7 owners wanting the real deal could be in store for the Android L update when it arrives later this year — probably around the same timeframe this year as KitKat's launch last October.

Other devices that are most likely to get the Android L update include of course the Nexus 5, Nexus 7, Nexus 4 and Nexus 10.

Besides the new 'material design' UI overhaul and improved battery performance, Google has taken a leaf from Apple's book on notifications on a locked iOS screen, which pop-up when the screen is off. It's a handy feature that's missing from KitKat but with Android L, developers will be able to push summaries of messages in some apps to the lockscreen rather than be limited to icons that can't be viewed from the lockscreen.

How long should a smartwatch last?

 

It’s still the early days for smartwatches. With the first few Android Wear devices on the market and a 3rd one on the horizon we have a pretty good glimpse of what wearables might be like. Android Wear is exciting and feels generations ahead of what came before it.  But like any burgeoning technology, the hardware and software are going to grow exponentially with each generation.

As somebody who would want to buy a smartwatch, it might be important to consider how long they will last before becoming obsolete. After all, $200 being the low end, it’s hardly an impulse buy for most people. Just how long will a generation be for smartwatches? That’s a difficult thing to determine for a new category but the best way might be to look at other similar markets.

What came before

 

The most obvious comparison to make is to other existing smartwatches. The original Pebble came out in early 2013 and a year later the Pebble Steel was released with a software update for both.

While Pebble released two devices in one year Samsung has done it at a considerably faster pace. The Galaxy Gear came out in late 2013 and the Gear 2 arrived six months later in conjunction with the Gear 2 Neo and Gear fit. The Galaxy Gear ran a version of Android while  the sequels ran Tizen-based software – only to be usurped by the Gear Live running Android Wear two months later.

While most tech companies make new hardware yearly, the true generational shifts often come when the latest software doesn’t support old devices. That’s typically when a product becomes obsolete because there is no longer a promise of improvement. So while there have been two Pebble watches, functionally they’re so similar that there hasn’t really been a true second generation. Contrast this with Samsung and there have been two generations of Gear watches that have become obsolete in that same period of time (although Samsung could continue to support the Tizen software simultaneously with Android Wear).

But not all product life-cycles mimic such short and erratic schedules. Smartphones are generally replaced every two years because of contract pricing and early termination fees, both of which are carry overs from the dumb cell phone era. On the positive side this allows phone makers to iterate and refine their phones as well as providing some guarantee of value to customers who would like their brand new device to be updated over the course of it’s life. In recent years though, more manufacturers are designing cheaper, off-contract options, that allow much more flexibility so that, in the future, that model may well change.

Laptops and desktops tend to have longer life-cycles simply because of price. Most people spending a grand or more on a computer would probably want it to work for as long as possible and while future proofing is impossible, you can reasonably expect to get four or more years of value from your purchase provided you temper your expectations over time.

But even beyond strict contracts and up front price, some products have life-cycles determined by traditional consumer expectations. Video game consoles tend to last as long as 6 or 7 years, extending well beyond the hardware’s capability and driven mostly by software sales.

The best part about this system is that consoles also gain more software improvements than just about any other technology over their lifetime. Remember the original dashboard of the XBOX 360 with the blade menus? It’s is almost unrecognizable compared the Windows 8 style tile interface of the later years. The bad part of the longevity is that while developers are allowed to squeeze every last ounce of power from the well known hardware, at some point, the games themselves become limited by it.

Similarly, what may end up being the most important aspect for determining Android Wear life-cycles is simply what consumers expect from their $200 or $300 purchase. The common wisdom is usually to never buy a first generation device and judging from early feedback about the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live, that might be the smart choice for now. The market is still in its infancy and we haven’t figured out what is acceptable functionality from a hardware or software perspective.

Again, this will ultimately be determined by you and me. The smartwatch is unique because it must straddle the line between two finicky markets – fashion and technology. Today the Moto 360’s circular display, leather strap, and metal bezel might look refined and chic, but trends might dictate a different feeling in two or three years. By the same token, the colorful display and card interface taken from Google Now might reflect what is best in today’s hardware and UI design but could become archaic within a few years.

What is awesome about new gadgets, like smartwatches, is that they give us a possible glimpse into the very near future. The problem is that the future is always in motion and what seems like the right prediction one day could be proven wrong very quickly. Whether or not the life-cycle of a smartwatch will be one year or five years, Android Wear has shown us Google’s vision of a wearable-centric future. The only question is, will you bet $200 on it to make it a reality?

Looking for an easier way to launch apps on Android Wear? Here is Wear Mini Launcher

The first round of Android Wear devices shipped to consumers this past week, and in true Android nature, Wear customization apps are hitting the Google Play Store. This time out, we’re looking at the Wear Mini Launcher, a custom launcher for your Android Wear powered hardware.

Wear Mini Launcher is a free app, found in the Google Play Store.



The idea behind the new Wear Mini Launcher is, as with all of the other Android Launchers, to provide a different experience to the device. Specifically, Wear Mini Launcher looks to overcome what the developer calls a pain in the default Android Wear launcher, the simple act of opening an app on the device.

Wear Mini Launcher is designed to allow you to launch any app from anywhere.

 

There is always voice commands to launch apps on your Android Wear device through the default launcher, but for those times where speaking into your watch is not an option, you’re currently forced to do a bunch of scrolling to get to your installed apps. Wear Mini Launcher looks to expedite app launching by providing an edge gesture slide over with links to all of your favorite apps.

Now, keep in mind that this is early software, users are reporting some difficulties using the app, especially with accidentally triggering other actions when activating the pop out. It’s nothing major, just be careful you do not pull down the mute panel or swipe away your active screen.

Head on in to the Google Play Store if you’re ready to give Wear Mini Launcher a go. Don’t forget that you can also check out Google’s curated list of Android Wear ready apps in the Google Play Store.

What do you guys think, did you feel the need for a new app launcher on your LG G Watch or Samsung Gear Live?

Possibly coming to Android L: Quick Torch, customizable Quick Settings

Google may have released a developer preview of Android L this summer, but the operating system won’t officially launch until this fall. So while developers dig into the preview to make sure their apps are ready to take advantage of the new design and other features, developers at Google are busy killing bugs… and adding new features.

The folks at xda-developers have discovered a handful of new features that could find their way into the next version of Android by the time it launches this fall.

 

Here are some of the features that may be included in Android L by the time it hits the streets this fall:

Customizable Quick Settings
When you swipe down from the top of a screen on an Android device you can access a Quick Settings panel which gives you fast access to features including screen brightness, wireless settings, and alarms.

Right now Google doesn’t provide an easy way to change the settings that are available in the Quick Settings area. But it looks like the company could be planning to make this area customizable .
If you’ve used a custom ROM or a rooted device with GravityBox or other Xposed framework modules, you may already know how this works: Don’t need to disable mobile data very often, but find that you’re constantly turning WiFi Hotspot functionality on or off? Just add or remove a tile, or change their placement in the Quick Settings panel.

Google hasn’t committed to adding the ability to customize Quick Settings to Android L, but the company has “accepted” the issue in the Android L Developer Preview Issue tracker and given it a feature number. That suggests the company is at least considering bringing it to Android L.

Native Quick Torch
Have a phone that has an LED flash by the camera? Odds are you can use it as a flashlight by opening the video recorder app, turning on the flash, and leaving it on… or you can install any number of third party apps that do this without shooting a video.

Soon you might not need a third party app. Native Quick Torch has been marked as a “feature” in the Android Developer Preview Issue Tracker, which means that you might be able to fire up the flashlight from the Quick Settings tray.

External storage
Another feature that may be on the way is aimed at developers — although it could have a big impact on users. Google has acknowledged and marked as “feature” a request to re-enable the ability for third party apps to write to external storage (like a microSD card), something that’s available in earlier versions of Android but absent in Android 4.4.

How Siri, Cortana, and Google Now are replacing our brains

 

Smart devices and digital assistants are becoming the norm in technology thanks to Siri, Google Now, and Cortana, but how useful are they, and what does the future hold for these innovations? We investigate the rise in popularity of talking machines, and look to where it can all end up.

Intelligent computers have been the dream of technologists for many years. The idea has also proven a popular one in books and films, but the end results are often rather different. Whereas the scientists and programmers see machines that can help cure diseases, enrich the human experience by eradicating menial tasks, and at its furthest extreme actually usher in a new form of intelligent being; Hollywood usually portrays them as the destroyer of worlds who seek to overthrow and extinguish their cruel masters. Films such as Terminator, Wargames, and Transcendance offer a future where flesh-based life is something of an irritant that needs upgrading to a purer state - or merely point to the dangers of connecting computers that control a nuclear arsenal up to the internet.

Reality has a habit of being slightly less dramatic, and the revolution of artificial intelligence has quietly gone about its business with nary a global annihilation in sight. An invasion, though, is most certainly underway. In recent years our computers and mobile devices have gone from passive units with little agency of their own, except for scheduled updates or calendar alarms, to ones that constantly monitor our conversations, awaiting the magic words that mean we need their assistance.

They silently gather information on our likes, use of language, whereabouts, habits and routines, all with the aim of being able to understand us better. (See also: No-one cares about privacy any more.) As these systems grow in sophistication, and our interaction with them becomes more effortless, we could see a future where - just as many of us can’t remember more than a few phone numbers now - our devices begin to know more about our lives than we do ourselves. But just how intelligent do we want these devices to become, and how much can they already  accomplish?

Open the pod bay doors HAL…

When Apple launched the iPhone 4S back at the end of 2011 the company didn’t focus on the excellent camera, enviable security, or high quality construction, instead it spent its copious advertising budget making a beta product the entire centre of its campaign. Siri became a star overnight. Images of celebrities like John Malkovich and Zooey Deschanel conversing with their new iPhones about soup, their schedule, or the finer arts of comedy, filled TV and computer screens the world over. But the endorsements weren’t the factor that really caught the public’s imagination - after all Samsung and Microsoft have used the same tactics with differing levels of success - instead it was the effortless way that they were interacting with their phones.


 

Of course, as any honest Apple user will tell you, Siri was far from the efficient PA that the adverts sold. Depending on your accent, and internet connection, the digital assistant could be far harder work. Misinterpreted commands, frustrating randomness, and complete paralysis when web access was absent, meant that it was often quicker to type things in yourself. But...in those moments when it worked, it seemed like magic. The future had arrived.

Two years on, all of the major platforms have their own variant of digital assistant. Google Now sits at the heart of the newest Android devices and Chromebooks, Samsung has S-Voice, while Microsoft recently announced the newest addition, Cortana. Named after an Artificial Intelligence character in the hugely popular Xbox series Halo, Cortana boasts an impressive set of features that could elevate the Windows Phone 8.1 OS to the head of the pack and possibly emerge as a new control interface for Windows as a whole.

‘One of the first things we did when we conceptualised Cortana,’ states Joe Belfiore, Head of the Windows Phone programme at Microsoft, ‘was to chat with real world, human assistants to learn how they actually worked. One technique real world assistants spoke about was the idea of a notebook, tracking all the interests and likes of their clients. Cortana also keeps a notebook...where she stores what she’s learned about me, and I can view or edit what she knows about me whenever I want.’


 

This information gathering is an essential element of an efficient, intelligent system, but in an age where privacy concerns are headline news this can leave users with important choices to make about how much they share with their assistants. Google Now monitors your internet search history, location, and general usage habits to collate a profile that allows it to suggest things that might be helpful. It can be incredibly useful, but some people find it a little unnerving that their devices are paying such close attention to their activity. There is the option to disable access to much of this data if you want more privacy, but this substantially reduces the capabilities of the service.

Siri is even more elusive, with the control options open to the user scaling down to pretty much which language you want to use. A nice feature though is that you can teach the assistant who your mother, father, sister, partner or other close relations are, which can then be used in features such as Find My Friends. Otherwise it’s not entirely clear what the service knows about you. Cortana’s notebook feature is admittedly still quite basic, but the fact that there’s one at all is at least a step in the right direction.  

Say what you see

Of course the most obvious area of intelligence in a computer assistant is the voice interface. There’s nothing quite like telling a program what you want and then seeing it do exactly that. Nuance, creators of Dragon Dictate, have pioneered this technology for many years, and know what it takes to make our devices seem truly smart.

 

‘The personality of a system will be that instant thing that you latch onto about whether something is intelligent,’ explains John West, Principal Solution Architect at Nuance. ‘Taking you from your question to your answer in the quickest way possible. That’s different to the way you and I would interact as humans to a certain degree, because we could go off on tangents and come back. An intelligent agent in the future will possibly have the capability to do that, but at the moment its very much about you asking the intelligent agent to do something and the intelligent agent being able to fulfill that in the quickest possible way.’

Voice control has certainly developed to a point now where it’s a usable interface rather than just a party trick. Google’s voice search has also extended beyond mobile devices to the desktop Chrome browser. Opening a new tab on www.google.com and clicking on the microphone icon at the right of the search bar enables you to speak your search queries (so long as you have a built-in microphone), and in many cases Google will read the results back to you. In recent versions there is also the ability to ask related questions, for example - ‘When was Jaws released?’, then when the answer is given you can say ‘Who starred in it?’ and the system will know what you mean.

 

Thanks to Google maps you can also ask for directions to a location and the system will work them out and display them. You might not realise it but Windows has, for some time now, also had a comprehensive suite of voice control tools built into the OS. If you search for Speech Recognition in versions as far back as Vista, you’ll find a program that enables you to navigate, dictate, and generally control your PC all via spoken commands.

While voice control may still catch on when using the desktop, the personal nature of a mobile device seems to make it easier to accept for users. After all, we already talk into our phones, so transitioning to speech recognition is a much smaller mental step. Then there’s the interoperability of the apps and information that these devices bring. In Cortana there is a novel feature which allows you to tell the handset ‘remind me about borrowing the suitcase next time I talk to Jim’, and Cortana will monitor your contacts until Jim is on the phone next then pop up the note. Very simple, very clever.

A major drawback of intelligent assistants is their need to be constantly online. Put your mobile device in airplane mode and you’re back to typing in calendar entries and reminders yourself. This is because most of the translation and processing is done on large, powerful servers in the cloud that can handle the number crunching required. Depending on the handset you can have basic elements of control completed locally - say ‘Launch Music Player’ - but the majority will likely be online for the foreseeable future. This isn’t surprising, as so much of the information an assistant needs to be intelligent is based in the cloud anyway. This is particularly true in one of the fastest developing areas in the technology at the moment - cars.

KITT cars

‘You can imagine a mapping database sitting in your car,’ explains John West, ‘it could be a TomTom, whatever is embedded in your vehicle, and you say to it ‘Find me the nearest petrol station’. It looks at where you are, it will know all the petrol stations around that area and can display them. However if you’re connected to the cloud, it could actually say, ah, John collects Tesco points for example, and he’s traveling North on the M1, and I know that, so I can provide John with the petrol stations going North on the M1 that are Tescos, but I also know that he’s only got fifty miles left of diesel, so I’ll only provide him the ones within the area that he’s going to or has the capability of reaching. Likewise it could say ah, there’s congestion here, so he possibly won’t make that, I’ll show the ones closer.

 

‘With Dragon Drive we’ve got partnerships with a number of companies so that a user can say ‘Take me to a hotel in London’ and it finds the hotel you want to go to, again this is a hybrid between the handset and the vehicle, so you can arrange this in the house on your handset, and then when you get in the vehicle it’s aware that you’ve already set these destinations. Or it could look at your calendar and say oh, you’re going to this address and put it in. But then as you go along you could say ‘find me the nearest parking spot’, and you could then use services such as Parkopedia or Parkaround to be able to go out there and actively find you a parking spot. These services already exist, it’s just the method of bringing them together in a way that’s useable. If you wanted to do that right now on your PC you’d go to a mapping software, then a parking piece of software, but you couldn’t do it all in one piece of information. The personal assistant approach is very much a proactive system...if it knew your preferences, it could do those things for you.’

In many ways the car is the most obvious place for this technology to find its home. Being able to converse with an assistant verbally, organise your appointments, send email and text messages, have new arrivals read out to you, and conduct internet searches all without the need for a screen or physical interaction, would be a god-send for many. Google, Blackberry, Apple and several other giants have already outlined their in-car assistant programs, some already available in newer models, and it can only be a matter of time before the kids watch Netflix in the back while you get some work done on the long drive to the campsite for a summer break.

With the Internet of Things becoming a tangible reality in the near future the possibilities exist for a convergence of intelligent agents that could see you fridge knowing its contents and referencing your calendar to see if you have any dinner recipes planned for which you require ingredients. Our televisions will use biometric technology to recognise our voices and display the programs we prefer to watch, while GPS sensors in our cars and devices will tell our automated home systems when we’ll be home and set the temperature accordingly. If bathroom technology continues to advance then it might tap into this to run a warm bath when it knows we’ve been caught in the rain. But rather than a single, unified experience, it does seem more likely that companies will want you to sign up to their particular flavour of this brave new world. The future won’t be quite as egalitarian as we might have hoped.

‘From their perspective it gives you an allegiance to that brand or company,’ says John West, ‘so when you replace, say, your television set or set-top box or whatever, you’ll go with the company that are already set up with on your mobile phone...At the moment we’re spending a lot of time with organisations changing the [interface] voices for them to differentiate their service’.
Nuance is in a good position to watch these developments, as the company currently licenses technology to some of the largest brands in the world, including Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung, among many others.

‘It’s going to be difficult,’ West concludes, ‘at the moment it’s very much different people want to do different things. I see it really being...having this information sitting in the middle and people being able to access it. I don’t see any time in the future where we’re going to get a common set of APIs that will allow us access...I don’t think any of us would trust anybody with [sole control of] that information sitting in the centre. Who is going to own that? Who would we trust to own that?

‘We’ve been looking at the Internet of Things for example, about the amount of data that we’ve got, and the amount we’re willing to share. Who owns it? Who aggregates it? And such things. We’re very suspicious, and even more so recently, because of what’s gone on about data being leaked, the NSA, and all these sorts of things. The governments can’t be trusted with this information in the view of most people, so who would we trust? Would you trust Apple? It depends on your allegiance.’