Month: August 2012

Yesterday saw Samsung announce details of the new Galaxy Note 2 device at the IFA Berlin show. The widely expected announcement saw details of the sequel to last year’s ‘phablet’ device unveiled. It has the following specifications:

• a 5.5″ Super AMOLED HD screen (the original Note had a 5.3″ screen)
• 1.6 GHz quad-core CPU
• 2 GB RAM
• 16-64 GB of storage as well as a micro SD slot for expansion
• 8 megapixel camera
• Jelly Bean (Android v4.1) operating system

The most obvious feature though continues to be the S Pen stylus. Some new features include ‘Air View’ which allows users to hover over items with the stylus in order to see a preview.

The Galaxy Note II will be released in October 2012, prices yet to be confirmed.

A teaser trailer has been released for the upcoming Galaxy Note 2 produced by Samsung. The mobile device will be unveiled at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin. The unveiling, due to be held at an event called ‘Samsung Mobile Unpacked’ on 29th August, will be for the Galaxy Note 2.

Nothing is known about the device as of yet, other than it will continue to make use of the stylus, known as an ‘S Pen’. The teaser trailer, featuring well known director Wim Wenders, doesn’t show us much of the device but does show a few teases of the stylus. Check it out below.

Google have released a new version of Google Maps for Android, which has lots of new features which will be especially interesting to users of public transport. The Google Lat Long blog describes some of the new features, which include:

• You can now select a specific type of transport to show in the Transit Lines layer, making it easier to see your route when there are lots of transport types close by.
• You can now see departure times when viewing a station page.
• There are new tabs under ‘My Places’ making it easier to access your personalised information.

Also, when you search for a town or postcode, the region will be highlighted on the map, as seen below for E17 in London:

Perhaps the biggest change of all though is the new icon!

Google’s podcasting app, Listen, has been discontinued. The app has been removed from the Google Play store, and whilst existing users can still use the app from November they will no longer be able to search for new podcasts. The news was announced on Google’s blog, where they also announced that Apps for Teams, Video for Business and several official blogs will also be discontinued. Here is what they wrote about Listen:

I previously used Google Listen because although it was basic, it synced with Google Reader and I could manage my podcast subscriptions from Reader. However, I’ve now switched to Podkicker (free version or paid version available) – I initially tried the free version but was impressed enough to switch to the paid version, which has a more modern feel.

It’s a feature that has been requested ever since Android first became popular – the ability to have multiple accounts on the same device. It’s something that would make a lot of sense, especially with devices such as a tablet which might be passed between multiple users in a home.

Now it seems that Google has been quietly adding some of this functionality into the latest Jelly Bean update. Developers using the latest Android 4.1 source code have discovered new code that allows new users to be added and the user account to be switched. Obviously this is a long way away from being realised as a full feature but it is good to see that Google are working at it.