Tech QQ

The Nexus S was officially announced today. As suspected from all the leaks the device is indeed produced by Samsung and it’s running the new stock Android 2.3(Gingerbread) OS.

A lot of the rumors flying around didn't hit home like a 8MP camera, 1080p recording, Bluetooth 3.0, dual core processor and HDMI connectors. But one new exiting thing showed up, namely NFC support!

If you are new to it, NFC is short for Near Field Communication and enables you to for example paying for your Coke by just swiping your phone near a vending machine. It’s pretty cool technology being used in among others the UK now, but at the moment mostly integrated to various card products.

The Nexus S will be running the anticipated Gingerbread version of Android. Gingerbread is version 2.3(or API Level 9 if you are a developer) of Google's popular smartphone OS that mostly brings a lot of optimizations for both performance and battery longevity. Other improvements are VoIP support, NFC framework, gyroscope support, multi camera support, mixable audio effects, extra large screen support for tablets and quite a few other additions.

For more information about what’s new in Gingerbread from a users perspective you can read the Android 2.3 User’s Guide.

Lucky us they are planning a release before the holidays, if I wasn’t so pleased with my Omnia 7 I would surely have tried to get my hands on one!

 

Nexus S - The Specs

A 4 Inch curved Super AMOLED screen(WVGA 800*480), sporting 235ppi and an anti-fingerprint coating

1GHz Hummingbird(Cortex A8) Processor

16GB iNAND flash memory (non replaceable, no SD card!)

5MP back facing camera (2560×1920) with flash and auto focus

720p Video recording capabilities

H.264, H.263 MPEG4 video recording

Front facing camera of VGA quality(640*480)

802.11 b/g/n WiFi

Bluetooth 2.1

63mm * 123,9mm * 10,88mm

Haptic feedback vibration

Three-axis gyroscope

Accelerometer

Digital compass

Proximity sensor

Light sensor

1500mAH battery

Talk time up to 6 hours on 3G and about 18 days of standby on 3G.

A comparison of Nexus S, Nexus One and HTC Desire from the Google phone gallery.

 

Pricing and Release date

UK: BPS 549,95 - 20 Dec at Carphone Warehouse

US: USD 529 - 16 Dec

Nexus S rumors buzzing of Gingerbread

Tech site Engadget have published a theory of theirs regarding the speculated next gen Google phone – Nexus S.

The theory says that the anticipated Nexus S is nothing but the Samsung GT-i9020. The 9020 series said to be closely tied to the Galaxy S series, the leaked device photos tell the same tale as well.

The rumors says it will be shipped with Android 2.3, code name Gingerbread, all so very fitting for this time of year. Let’s hope Google and Samsung goes official with the news before Christmas so that we got something more to be jolly about.

During the the process of Oracle buying SUN not a lot of SUN people have been very outspoken.

In what's probably the first really outspoken interview eWeek manages to get a chat with James Gosling, the father of Java. You can find it here.

And during JavaOne, The Basement Coder's managed to get Gosling to agree doing a podcast with them. The background noise is pretty bad as it's recorded in a cafe during lunch hours. But if you can listen through the clip it's got some interesting stuff in it. You can find the podcast here.

Gosling is not holding back in these interviews and is dishing crap out to Oracle, IBM, Google and a few more. Nothing really concrete about what Oracle's has in store for Java came out unfortunately, most likely because he's not privy to that information, as it turns out he wasn't really in the loop after Oracle took over.

One good quote regarding Oracle and Java was: “There’s only so much damage Oracle can do, because so much of their business depends on Java. It’s in their best interest to treat it well.”

Bodes well for Java I think...

Today the latest version of Google Maps for Android was released. New in v4.3 is restaurant reviews, schedules for public transit and possibility to share your location with your Google contacts by sending a Google Latitude request.

The restaurant review seems like a really nice feature. It shows a snapshot of peoples thoughts of the place in a nice handy overview page with color coded bars. It shows the amount of stars the place has, and the latest comments that visitors made.

This version is available for Android v1.6 and information on how to get it can be found here, if you are browsing this from your Android phone you can get it here.

During the week at Google I/O a lot of news were released about the next version of Android, named Froyo.

Some of the new features are in Froyo are:

• Automatic application updates
• Possibility to install apps to an SD card
• JIT compiler upgrades, promising 2x-5x speed boost
• Java-script engine updates, enhancing performance by 2x-3x times
• Tethering and portable hot spot capability
• Adobe Flash and Air support
• API for Cloud-To-Device push notifications
• App data backup API
• Application crash report details presented to developers on their Android market publisher account

Android 2.2 Official Video

Seems Ballmer isn't just happy sitting by the sideline regarding the Bing Google race.

According to some sources of Financial Times, Microsoft is offering to pay certain web publishers to "de-index" their sites from Google.

It seems like flinging sand in the sand box, but in the long run maybe this could lead to web content suddenly having a monetary value. For this generation with the "information wants to be free" creed, web publishers aren't making ends meet, and with paper copy sales dwindling, maybe this is a bright light in the tunnel for news papers.