Google Android
- Thread starter westmeadboy
- Start date
radioman
状元
I thought the government backed off off of that WiFi position. China Mobile has infiltrated Starbucks for sure, and its annoying, with a new login scheme where they need to SMS passcodes for you to input. But with that said, my iPad and iPhone 3GS have no problem connecting through the WiFi networks there.
JPBarringer said:
JPBarringer
Member
radioman said:
Well that's good news. I was last over there in April so my information may be out of date...
ryanwhalen
Member
Is there any sort of mailing list I can get onto that will update me when there's an impending Pleco Android release? I loved and used the WM version for years, but switched to Android last September. I'd love to have Pleco on my phone again, and I'll certainly send more money pleco's way as soon as the app is available...
westmeadboy
榜眼
The preview for SDK 3.0 is out and it looks great!
http://developer.android.com/sdk/androi ... ights.html
http://developer.android.com/sdk/androi ... ights.html
mikelove said:
Hi Mike, I can't express my excitement that you will be supporting android. After belatedly reading this thread, I was surprised that you mentioned "any device not made by HTC" seems to be working well with HWR. As a previous Nexus One user, I wouldn't be surprised the the N1 failed your expectation (it's a known fact that the N1 touch screen was very poor), but do the later HTC devices (like the more recent G2 / Desire Z or Desire HD) also fail your expectations? I've been a long time HTC fan for android devices, but believe me, if HTC cannot make devices that will ensure a smooth experience for the future Pleco dictionaries, I'll seriously consider switching to a new phone for the next time. But still, I would be glad if you could confirm if the more recent HTC devices really fail you. (and thanks for reading my first post!)
nomadism said:
Thanks!
nomadism said:
Haven't done enough testing on those yet to know for sure; we're doing pretty well, but we can't afford to buy every Android phone model (especially with the vast amounts of money we're currently spending on new licenses - already signed three of them in 2011 and we've got tentative deals negotiated on three more). And most of our testing phone budget is going to go to buying whichever models are popular at the time the finished version is (almost) ready, since those are likely to be the phones that end up on our official compatibility list.
But as far as the HTC issue I've been mentioning here, that actually relates to a bug in HTC's OpenGL implementation which as far as we can tell affects every HTC model - haven't seen anything in developer forums to suggest otherwise, anyway. It's a software problem rather than a touchscreen quality problem. Android 3.0 is adding hardware-accelerated 2D drawing support, which means that the slow / non-accelerated way we would have to do handwriting stroke capture on HTCs would actually be nice and fast on 3.0, but that'll only help if your phone is upgradable to 3.0.
mikelove said:
Great news!!!
Eagerly looking forward to the outcome.Now, I'm not sure if I followed the preceding discussion correctly, do you know which is the lowest version of Android you'll end up supporting? I can tell that 3.0 brings developer-support much closer to where you'd like it, but have you decided which version will be required for basic dictionary functions?
mandu said:
I've got a pretty good idea, but I don't think I should say anything specific here yet... there's the possibility our plans might change, plus I'm really really worried that I might post something here that might motivate somebody to choose a particular Android phone only to discover that that phone doesn't actually work with Pleco; better to just say nothing. Sorry...
westmeadboy
榜眼
westmeadboy said:
Indeed... this falls into "give a man a fish" territory; rather than fixing the things that cause Android Market to have fewer apps / Android development to be less lucrative than iPhone development (hardware incompatibility / platform fragmentation chief among them), they try to work around the problem by developing apps themselves. But all that'll really do is drive app developers towards Microsoft, especially if Microsoft follows through on their recent friendliness towards jailbreakers by adding an official "allow unsigned apps" option in the next WP7 update...
Especially worrying:
So they're pretty much proclaiming the death of the pay-for-apps model; the more high-quality apps are available for free with ads, the less likely people are to pay for the apps that aren't. That model's already struggling on Android (witness Angry Birds opting to go ad-supported on Android in spite of the countless millions they've made at $1/copy on iOS) and this would be the final nail in its coffin.
The problem with that model is that it's next-to-impossible to support complicated specialty apps like Pleco with ad revenue alone; even if they use Pleco for hours a day there's no way our users could generate enough advertising revenue to offset our licensing and development costs. If we weren't already seriously committed (in terms of money, labor, and reputation) to developing an Android version this would certainly raise some doubts about whether or not to do one. As is, I'm hoping that the fact that we were still making pretty good money selling Windows Mobile apps in 2009 means we're somewhat immune to the ups and downs of particular platforms' app stores.
But if I were looking to develop a new mobile app and didn't want to do it on iOS I'd certainly be giving WP7 another look (my many grievances with Microsoft notwithstanding), and as-is this nudges me a few steps in the "release sooner with fewer features" direction on Android simply as reassurance that we're not throwing good money after bad.
So yeah, very worrying news indeed.
westmeadboy
榜眼
I read somewhere that Angry Birds makes more than a million dollars a month from advertising on the Android app. If true, then I think that's pretty good for them right!? Still, like you say, the advertising model on works for certain types of apps. Probably those that appeal to a wide audience rather than niche products like Pleco.
They've also said that Android is not the market for paid apps:westmeadboy said:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/angry-birds ... -9535.html
Galaxy Tab is not selling as well as previously reported.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/31/ ... ite-small/
January 31, 2011, 10:20 AM ET
Samsung Galaxy Tab Sales Actually ‘Quite Small’
By Evan Ramstad
Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy Tab, the company’s answer to Apple Inc.’s iPad, isn’t selling as well as the company has let on.
In early December, Samsung announced it had sold 1 million, declaring that sales were going “faster than expected.” Then, in early January, Samsung announced sales of 2 million.
But during the company’s quarterly earnings call on Friday, a Samsung executive revealed those figures don’t represent actual sales to consumers. Instead, they are the number of Galaxy Tab devices that Samsung has shipped to wireless companies and retailers around the world since product’s formal introduction in late September.
In her comments, she used the terms “sell-in” to reflect Samsung’s sales to distributors and “sell-out” to reflect the distributors’ sales to consumers.
Ms. Lee’s response to the analyst:
“Well, your question was on sell-in and sell-out. As you heard, our sell-in was quite aggressive and this first quarterly result was quite, you know, fourth-quarter unit [figure] was around two million. Then, in terms of sell-out, we also believe it was quite small. We believe, as the introduction of new device, it was required to have consumers invest in the device. So therefore, even though sell-out wasn’t as fast as we expected, we still believe sell-out was quite OK.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/31/ ... ite-small/
January 31, 2011, 10:20 AM ET
Samsung Galaxy Tab Sales Actually ‘Quite Small’
By Evan Ramstad
Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy Tab, the company’s answer to Apple Inc.’s iPad, isn’t selling as well as the company has let on.
In early December, Samsung announced it had sold 1 million, declaring that sales were going “faster than expected.” Then, in early January, Samsung announced sales of 2 million.
But during the company’s quarterly earnings call on Friday, a Samsung executive revealed those figures don’t represent actual sales to consumers. Instead, they are the number of Galaxy Tab devices that Samsung has shipped to wireless companies and retailers around the world since product’s formal introduction in late September.
In her comments, she used the terms “sell-in” to reflect Samsung’s sales to distributors and “sell-out” to reflect the distributors’ sales to consumers.
Ms. Lee’s response to the analyst:
“Well, your question was on sell-in and sell-out. As you heard, our sell-in was quite aggressive and this first quarterly result was quite, you know, fourth-quarter unit [figure] was around two million. Then, in terms of sell-out, we also believe it was quite small. We believe, as the introduction of new device, it was required to have consumers invest in the device. So therefore, even though sell-out wasn’t as fast as we expected, we still believe sell-out was quite OK.”