Android mobile web usage grows 17% while iOS drops 11%

It looks like even the mighty iPhone 4 can’t stop Android’s progress in winning the hearts of mobile users.

Data released by Quantcast, an online analytics firm, has revealed Android’s upward trend is continuing strongly whilst the usage of iOS for mobile browsing is continuing to decline. In the month of August Quantcast analytics showed that iOS mobile traffic has dropped 11% from the beginning on 2010 to 56% despite the launch of the iPhone 4. Meanwhile in the same time period mobile web browsing on Android has increased 17% from under 10% to 25%. Mobile web browsing on BlackBerry has remained roughly stagnant in the same period.

Interestingly, Android is the only OS that’s seeing growth in usage for 2010, raking in near 19% growth whilst iOS dropped 11.4% and BlackBerry OS usage declined 1.6%.

Do note that the data is representative of mobile browser usage in the US and that for iOS only iPhones and iPods are tracked. Quantcast doesn’t consider iPads as a mobile device. You can get the full details on the methodology used by Quantcast here.

It’ll be interesting to find out how Malaysian users pan out in terms of smartphone OS. What is the most popular smartphone platform here? Android, BlackBerry, iOS or Symbian?

[source, via]

Nokia N8 walkthrough: Symbian S^3 Intro and Music Player

At the Nokia N8 preview, Glen Cha, the Manager of Nokia Product Marketing gave a walkthrough demo on some of the highlights of the device.

In this post we’ve uploaded a video of Glen giving a brief intro of the Nokia N8 and the new Symbian S^3 mobile platform, along with the Nokia N8’s music player.

As you can see from the video, the S^3 OS that will making its first appearance in the Nokia N8, offers up a much improved and responsive user experience.

You can read our first impression of the Nokia N8 here.

Head on after the jump to view the video.

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First look at iOS 4.1 HDR feature

Picture on the right has gone through the iOS 4.1 HDR processing, left has not.

iOS 4.1 will only be available for download next week, specifically sometime around September 8, and one of the features that a lot of people are excited about is the built-in HDR feature for iPhone 4.

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. What HDR does is basically balances the high, low and mid-tones of a picture to produce and even tone across the picture. Normally if you take a picture where there’s a strongly lit area and a poorly lit area in the same composition, you either get a picture that’s too bright in the strongly lit area or too dark in the poorly lit area. HDR can balance that out by combining high, low and medium exposures in one a picture resulting in an image that is more like what you see with your own eyes.

So how does the new HDR feature in iOS 4.1 perform? Is it able to really balance out a high-contrast picture? AppleInsider gives a first look at how HDR performs on the iOS 4.1 and iPhone 4. Click on the link to read more.

Revealed: iOS 4.2 features for the iPad

While the iPhones and iPod will be getting iOS 4.1 which promises numerous bug fixes and the addition of a few borderline useful features, iPad owners have been missing out on multi-tasking and folders for he longest time.

They can look forward to November when Apple will release the iOS 4.2 developed for the iPad. It brings folders and multi-tasking to the iconic table device plus a whole host of other nifty features like wireless printing and streaming.

Hit the link to go Apple’s official page giving some highlights of the features that will be coming with iOS 4.2 for the iPad.

Apple UK says iOS 4.1 update coming 8 September

Apple UK has revealed the latest iOS — ver 4.1 — will be available for download on September 8. A quick look at Apple’s Asian region website and we’re still seeing the very vague “coming soon” placeholder there, but you can bet your horses that once the iOS 4.1 is launched in the UK, it will be a matter of hours (or 1 – 2 days at most) before we can download it here in Malaysia.

As always, keep it locked on to SoyaCincau.com, we’ll keep you posted on the latest.

[source]

iOS 4.1 vs iOS 4.0 on iPhone 3G

After the introduction of iOS 4, iPhone 3G users complained about slow performance after upgrading. Steve Jobs had purportedly responded by saying a fix was underway to solve these sluggish issues with the next iOS update.

During the big event few days back, Steve Jobs announced that the new iOS 4.1 update carries a lot of bug fixes for the iPhone 3G which we hope addresses the issue.

So has the iOS 4.1 fixed the slow issue? Gizmodo puts that to the test. Overall, it is faster than the previous iOS 4.0 especially when it comes to Maps.

Head after the jump for the video comparison.

[ SOURCE ]

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Angry Birds Beta come to Android

UPDATE: Still having problems finding Angry Birds for Android beta? You can download the APK file directly from MediaFire (11.4MB).

Rovio needs your feedback as well. If you have any comments or complaints, you can submit them here.

Original Post: Angry Birds have landed on Android as announced by RovioMobile’s twitter. The popular addictive app on iPhones has finally made its appearance but in lite beta release. At time of posting, we couldn’t find it in Android market. You can give it a try by searching for “Angry Birds” but make sure its from RovioMobile and not some other app of the similar name.

Alternatively you can try downloading from here via AppBrain.

[ SOURCE ]

Nokia E5 Unboxing

We managed to get our hands on a Nokia E5, Nokia’s latest in its line of E business phones. But unlike high-end E71 and E72 devices before it, the E5 is targeted at a different segment of buyers altogether. Nokia calls them life-builders, the 20 to 30 somethings who’ve just started on their careers and are building a life for themselves. They might not want to splurge on an expensive phone but are demanding mobile users and what a phone that can get the job done but doesn’t cost much. Basically what we have with the E5 is Nokia’s concept of a do-it-all phone at a grab-it-now price.

How does the E5 performs in the hands of life-builder? We’ll explore that in our in-depth review but for now let’s look at what you get for RM830 — the asking price for the E5 outright.

Read on for the unboxing of the Nokia E5.

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Apple introduces iOS 4 – what to expect

If you’re an Apple fanboy, you might have already known that there was an Apple media event early this morning to announce the arrival of a slew of new iPods, a new Apple TV and, what we’re very interested about, an update of the iOS 4.

The iOS 4.1 which will be available for download next week, will add a few new features to the iPhone including major bug fixes for the iPhone 3G and other versions of the iPhone.

So what improvements can you expect with the iOS 4?

First up, iPhone 3G owners running iOS 4 will know that having the iOS 4 installed on your device has turned it into a bit of a slouch, with overall performance being laggy and unstable. With version 4.1 Steve says “a lot of bugs” on the iPhone 3G will be fixed. He didn’t elaborate much on what kind of bugs has been fixed but we expect to see major improvements in performance for the 3G in addition to bug fixes in the iPhone’s proximity sensors and Bluetooth performance.

Most of the other improvements coming for the new iOS 4 will be for the iPhone 4. If you’ve got one, you’ll soon be able to take pictures in HDR mode where the iPhone 4 will automatically combine three seperate exposures into one HDR image. This is not really a feature we think, it’s more of a neat party trick for the iPhone 4.

With iOS 4.1 iPhone 4 users will be able to upload HD videos directly from their phone via WiFi. Again, not really anything groundbreaking here, in fact we’re surprised that it wasn’t available from the start.

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Review: Samsung Wave S8500

The Samsung Wave S8500 is sort of like a proof of concept for the bada platform. A showcase of what Samsung can do if it had full and complete control over the hardware and software of a smartphone.

When Samsung announced the Wave, and with that the bada platform, the questions running in our minds were, does the world need another mobile OS? As it is, Palm has already been sold and after years of success in the business world, the makers of BlackBerry, RIM are still finding it tremendously difficult to make any headway in the non-business consumer market. Android and iPhone are the current top picks when it comes to smartphones, and whatever Samsung are going to bring to the table with the bada OS, it had better be stupendously good.

So the question is, can the the bada OS hold its own against the likes of the HTC Desire and the iPhone 4? How does it compare with Samsung’s very own (and rather good, we might add) Galaxy S?

Read on to find out, if the Samsung Wave and bada is worth your attention and more importantly, you hard earned cash.

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