Right now, when a user walks into a store, she has to choose from among a few different iPhone models, a countless array of Android devices, some Windows Phone 8 models and even the BlackBerry Z10.
Even as a phone OS, Android has some impressive accomplishments.
Motorola created quite some buzz with its first "Intel inside" Android phone, the RAZR i, back in September, so it's only natural to see the company tapping into the Chinese market with a localized variant.
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Don't necessarily expect them to work on every Android phone, however, as there are some prerequisites for AIR, namely an ARMv7 processor or better with a vector co-processor, OpenGL ES 2.0 and Froyo, but Adobe says if your device handles Flash 10.1, it'll probably run AIR.
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So this year the 5, 500 geeks and geek watchers like us in the press (400 of us, Google tells me) will have to be satisfied with maybe a tablet, possibly a phone, almost certainly some kind of new Android software, and a few new services to run on it.
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Jelly Bean is also now available for the Galaxy Nexus phone by Samsung and will slowly roll out to some other Android devices.
"While the ability to scroll by tilting a phone is a feature we've seen on some earlier Android models, its automated activation is new, " wrote Gikas of Consumer Reports.
It not only allowed them to produce some impressive phone-specific apps but also to run off-the-shelf Android apps.
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Last time we checked in, he was lauding some of Android's finer points, and now he's raining praise on Windows Phone.
Even if you're not into Swype, though, these phones have some of the most generously-configurable input options we've ever seen on an Android phone without having to install additional keyboard.
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To make sure my Wi-Fi wasn't faulty, I tried some of the same sites, in the same spot, on an iPhone, an Android phone and even an older Samsung Windows Phone.
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Misek notes that carriers and to some degree handset makers want a third viable smart phone ecosystem to go along with Apple and Android.
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Some online-only mobile phone distribution sites like Wirefly allow subscribers with any carrier to get an Android for free or little cost, while the iPhone is not distributed there.
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Instead, it found that some HTC smartphones using Android violated only two claims of one Apple patent related to extracting information such as phone numbers from emails and doing something with the information, such as making a phone call.
While there are certainly some high-end models, such as the new phone-tablet hybrid Samsung Galaxy Note, Android also runs on cheaper, less-advanced phones and on discount carriers instead of the handful of Apple-approved networks that the iPhone can access.
In other words, there would appear to be an opening here for Microsoft to gain some traction with its Windows Phone software with handset makers who fear that competing with Motorola in the Android phone market will no longer be a fair fight.
If RIM wanted to obtain some glory, they needed to give the USA at least a 4G phone, rather than let Google Android walk all over them in the 4G arena.
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Faced with the prospect of competing with their operating system's lead benefactor, some have proposed that Google's takeover of Motorola will lead to an exodus to Windows Phone 7 by Android licensees.
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But a lot of the media coverage has been less enthusiastic, asserting that the phone is less revolutionary than evolutionary, and that Apple in some ways has fallen behind some rival Android phones.
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The phone feels like it means business -- something we can't say for some of its plasticky Android competitors.
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