Tag Archives: Google

Google Maps for Apple iOS has huge consequences

I am not the first one to notice something significant. Google launched their Maps app with navigation and other cool features for Apple iOS devices.

The app has been a hit as it become the most popular free app on the Apple App Store.

People love the user interface which is incidentally much better than what they offer on their own Android platform.

Google Maps for iOS came just days after the launch of the much improved Gmail app which also generated very positive reviews.

Both of these apps have managed to prove something that should worry Apple. Google is now making apps that look and feel better than Apple’s own apps on their own iOS platform.

In fact, Google tends to make better apps for iOS platform compared to their own Android platform!

Apple has always been known as the company that gets software right. They have proven it time and again with their OS X and iOS updates. But things are going downwards for the last couple of months. Failure of Apple Maps can be attributed to the weak mapping database of Apple. But success of apps that replace Apple’s own apps on iOS should worry them immensely.

The company previously avoided such situations by blocking apps that replaced Apple’s own apps on the iOS devices. They have been quite liberal in the recent times and it has become a solid case of embarrassment for them. Startups like Sparrow (acquired by Google) and Mailbox are coming up with exceptional apps that are getting rave reviews from iPhone users around the world.

If Apple cannot wow their fans with their own apps, I wonder how long they can compete just on the basis of hardware alone!

Samsung might be making yet another Nexus branded smartphone

Google usually announces their new Nexus branded smartphone during last quarter of the year. October has just begun and we should be hearing about the next Nexus in the coming days.

However, a video online showcasing the actual Google’s Nexus website might have already indicated what is in store for the fans of the Nexus brand.

If we are to believe the images in the video, Google is expected to launch two new devices:

The first one is pretty obvious. A larger version of their massively successful Nexus 7 Tablet. A 10” edition should be launched in the coming days and is likely to be named Google Nexus 10.

The other device is sort of a disappointment. It looks very similar to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone but has some major differences. The positioning of the front facing camera and the smaller bezel indicates that we are getting an enhanced edition of the same model.

We assume Google would launch it as Galaxy Nexus II. It is expected to be powered by a faster processor and more RAM. We might even see more powerful camera units in this update. Smaller bezel means that we might have a slightly larger display.

I am not a fan of Android devices made by Samsung. Build quality is rather poor and they have already made the last two Nexus smartphones. A third one would be a shocker considering the rumors in the market.

I was expecting Sony or LG to get a chance this time around. Maybe even Motorola considering they are now owned by Google. But this video surely indicates that we are getting another Samsung device.

There is another element to this story. All the Nexus branded devices have launched with a new edition of the Android platform. Nexus One launched with Froyo. Nexus S arrived with Gingerbread. Galaxy Nexus had Ice Cream Sandwich. Nexus 7 featured Jelly Bean.

We are yet to hear anything about the next Android update likely to be named Key Lime Pie. I do not expect Google to release another update of Android so soon after the arrival of Jelly Bean.

This is probably the reason why Google is not going with a new manufacturer and would just launch a tablet and a smartphone with minor enhancements. And both of these devices should come with Jelly Bean only.

Dear Google, I am not a number!

I know I am not the first person to complain about this but this is getting sort of annoying.

Google+ started offering nicer URLs to a limited number of users a while ago. That was nice. Allowing celebrities and personalities and brands to block their choice of trademarks and names.

However, I have not heard anything about this since then. There was a small announcement that they were rolling out this feature to more people.

Even that was a while ago. It has been more than a month and I still cannot get Google.com/+Sushubh.

I mean what is the big deal. How many active Sushubhs are there online? How many of them are as active online as I am? I have this name on practically all social platforms online. Should not be a problem right?

I have also been a very ‘loyal’ user of Google+. Just like Chrome helped me get rid of the mess Firefox was (is), Google+ helped me get rid of the freak show Facebook is.

I have been using it probably longer than most celebrities and personalities who have already received their vanity urls. Being a loyal user does not matter. Being popular does, I guess.

From what I hear, Google trusts you more if you are in circles of more than 1000 people. Now, I am not popular enough to have 1000 fans. What is my option?

I guess I would get my chance once they open it for everyone. Everyone as in someone who has just enabled Google+ on their Google Account.

Dropbox is beating Google at their own game when it comes to Android Sync

Google and Dropbox both offering syncing facility on their Android mobile apps. But Dropbox has managed to outdo Google comprehensively with this functionality making Google+ Instant Sync feature utterly useless for me.

Here are some of the core reasons.

Dropbox does not require you to turn on Sync on your phone. It connects and syncs the photos and videos on the phone automatically. You can set it to do it only on wireless internet connections and that’s what it would do.

Google+ requires you to configure the feature and turn on Sync to start the syncing process. This is a headache because that turns on sync on multiple apps which you might need at that very moment.

Dropbox backs up the original photos along with videos. Google+ resizes photos to 2048px.

Dropbox syncs these photos and videos to your computer if you have their desktop app running. Google+ does not offer anything in this regard. Getting the same photos to your computer is a painful process. If Google had added this feature to their Google Drive app, it would have made things whole lot simpler.

With Dropbox, I can take a screenshot or a photo on my phone and it would be on my computer to use within a couple of seconds. This is pretty amazing. Windows Phone 8 would offer something very similar with SkyDrive. Google still does not get it.

The biggest problem here is that Google+ photo/video storage has no connection with Google Drive. Instead of having a single storage point, Google actually has three different platforms right now: Google Picasa, Google Music and of course Google Drive. I plan to do another rant post on why these three services needs to be merged together!

Google needs to make Google+ supportive of slow data connections

I love Google+ but it is hard to use the service’s mobile app on the move because it is simply horrible when your data connectivity is horrible.

Compared to Twitter and even Facebook, Google+ is a lot more data intensive. Almost all the shares are dominated by an image embed.

This means that the app essentially fails if you are stuck on an EDGE quality connection.

The problem is magnified if you are trying to post something. I have literally stopped posting photos on the move nowadays because the user experience is horrible.

Instagram (even PicPlz) does not have the same issue. Largely because they handle photo uploads more gracefully. Instagram I believe starts uploading a copy of the photo as soon as it is taken. By the time you are done entering a text description, it is all set to post it online. PicPlz handled it using a queue system which uploaded the photos along with all the details in the background. This meant you could quickly share a bunch of photos on the move without waiting for the individual photos to upload.

Google needs to fix this problem with Google+ if they want this app to become popular in countries like India. The whole app needs to have a background queuing mechanism. As of now, it basically halts during the image upload process.

Views on Google’s handling of Motorola Mobility

Google now owns Motorola Mobility and we are finally seeing some good stuff coming out of the company.

Motorola has announced four new models in the recent weeks. The latest being Motorola Razr I powered by a 2GHz processor from Intel!

Other improvements are also noticeable. Motorola seems to have moved to a UI layer that is very close to stock Android though it still has customized elements.

One major disappointment is that all of these four models are powered by Android Ice Cream Sandwich edition even though Jelly Bean was announced months ago.

I assume that all of these four models were conceptualized and development work started before the acquisition deal was complete. It would be interesting to see what kind of products they are working on today now that they are completely owned by Google and has a CEO from Google’s own management team.

Google is also expected to announce a new Nexus device later this year. Rumors claim that we would get multiple Nexus devices this year. Earlier we heard about five different models from five different manufacturers (Samsung, HTC, Sony, Motorola and LG). I am hearing that LG and Sony would be getting the honors this time around. Motorola had their Xoom which was a Google supported model but was sold without the Nexus branding. Asus got the Nexus 7 Tablet which had the Google Nexus branding. Sony and LG are the only two major players who are yet to get Google supported devices until now.

I expect Motorola Mobility to catchup with the competition next year. Google would want to ensure that Motorola has products that can compete against the best in the market. Samsung of course tends to have the best performing Android devices in the market at any given time. HTC could turn out to be the biggest loser here and they could switch focus to Windows Phone 8 platform next year.

One thing is for sure… Google has saved Motorola Mobility by acquiring them. They were doing awful on their own. Launching outdated devices. Delaying release of Android updates for their own models. They have literally disappeared from the Indian market as a result.

One thing I really want Google to do is to Googlify Motorola’s website. It is still the same mess it was before the acquisition. It is time for a change. We need a more user friendly website with minimalistic user interface. Somewhat similar to what Google has done with their own Nexus website!

Some thoughts about the new Nokia Windows Phone 8 devices

Nokia announced their new Windows Phone 8 powered devices last night. Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 would be their latest offerings in the smartphone market.

I have to admit that they are doing good work with their WP phones. The design is unique. They bundle a lot of exclusive apps which are pretty cool. They have done some good work with the camera and the touchscreen technology.

The company blundered of course by not announcing any definitive launch plan. Pricing was also not revealed. We have no idea when these models would arrive in India and at what prices. Nokia for example has not even bothered to launch Lumia 900 in India because it simply would have failed to compete against the competing devices powered by Android.

However…

Both the models announced yesterday are fairly high end which means that we are looking in the price range of Rs. 25-35k if not more. This price segment is totally dominated by high end Android devices from Samsung and HTC.

I know a couple of people who might go for either of these two devices because they are bored of their current Android devices. Apple iPhone users are of course going to stay away. But for someone like me who is pretty tied up with the Google ecosystem, WP8 and Lumia devices are simply not an option.

For one, it requires me to start using Microsoft powered services like Hotmail/Outlook, SkyDrive and of course Bing. Secondly, it is not as flexible as Android when it comes to storage management and installation of apps.

Another problem is that Google has pretty much stayed away from Windows Phone platform. There are no apps for Google Maps or Google Drive or even Google+. WP8 might change that and we might finally see Google launching apps for this platform. But their apps would not be as powerful as the integrated apps offered by Microsoft. User experience is going to remain third grade.

I see absolutely no reason to think about discarding Android as my choice of Android platform even though I am sick of the lack of options I have when it comes to Android devices.

Another thing…

Windows 8 of course changes a lot of things. Microsoft services are tightly integrated in Windows 8 which might push me to start using them once I upgrade. Windows Phone 8 is also likely to feature deep integration with Windows 8 which might make life easier for managing the phone itself.

One good example is integration of SkyDrive… Photos taken on the phone are synced in real-time with the computer through this platform. Google on the other hand has nothing comparable. Dropbox does an incredible job of offering a similar functionality!

Microsoft has an amazing opportunity with both of these platforms when they arrive in the market later this year. Google would have to watch out for this combined ecosystem because it threatens their massively successful Android project. They would have to ensure that they have apps connected to their own services optimized for Windows 8 especially the modern user interface otherwise known as Metro.

Something about customized Android user experiences

HTC, Samsung, Sony along with almost every Android based device manufacturer have their own version of skins that power their products.

These companies claim that they offer these customized skins to differentiate their products from the competition in the market.

The problem with this is that there are hardly any devices available in the market that comes loaded with stock Android. I mean most Android users out there would probably have not experienced the stock Android user interface at all because it has become such a rare breed.

Google Nexus branded devices have them along with few models made by unknown companies. Apart from that, stock Android is a rare commodity.

I mean how would you like it if your Windows OS based laptop from Dell or HP comes with a heavily customized windows manager? I do not see laptop manufacturers feeling the need to differentiate their products from the competition!

This makes is sad actually. These companies offer messed up customizations on their devices in the name of differentiating themselves from the competition. Why not offer stock Android devices to achieve the same!

There are so many benefits to stick with stock Android on your devices… It makes it easy for the manufacturer to release updates. It keeps the system requirement of the product lower. And best of all, Android ICS/JB looks beautiful. In my personal opinion, none of the third party skins look as pretty as the stock Android user interface!

HTC, LG and Sony are currently struggling in the Android market. Samsung and Apple have pretty much cornered 90% of the smartphone market out there. If these companies start offering stock Android devices with good internal hardware, I can safely say they are going to attract a lot of new customers.

I find it very ironical that HTC actually believe that customers go for their devices because of the Sense experience. Personally, I replaced my One X with Galaxy Nexus to get rid of the Sense experience.

Popularity of custom ROMs further proves that people are sick and tired of these customized layouts on their phones.

These customized skins are doing nothing but hurting the whole Android ecosystem. Users switching from one company’s device to another would have to relearn everything just because they get a totally different user interface. Samsung/HTC believes that this would ensure that consumers stick with their brand in the future. That does not really happen. People go for the device that offers them the best value for money deal in most cases.

Google is pretty handicapped in this situation. Android is relatively an open platform. Companies are free to customize it on their own devices. There are few restrictions but they are only to get access to the official Google apps. I do not believe Google can do much about it. They did what they could which was to come up with a user experience that would so good that customized skins look amateurish in comparison!

Insanity Rediscovered

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