- 5,049,018
REGISTERED - 56,354
ONLINE NOW
Many grew up with The Little Engine That Could, a tale about the power of optimism and hard work. The goal is to spread hope through the metaphor of a little blue engine that defied all odds despite what others say. To keep motivated, the little engine chants, “I think I can; I think I can; I think I can.”
Open Source: a philosophy, or pragmatic methodology that promotes free redistribution and access to an end product’s design and implementation details.
From it’s beginnings with the Palm Pre in 2009, webOS has always been a unique animal in the mobile device . . . READ ON »
Legend has it that Admiral Yamamoto made the following statement shortly after Japan’s 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” While the validity of the statement has never been verified, the principle remains that you should be careful that the enemy you try to tease and poke is not a lion ready to devour you. I have seen a lion first-hand in the wild, and their tails will swat at the flies with nary a concern in the world, but piss them off . . . READ ON »
It is no secret that Android is dominating the marketplace, with the latest results from Gartner bearing this out. Android’s share of the smartphone market at the end of the 2Q 2012 was 64%, an increase of 47% over 2Q 2011. And with Google activating over 1,000,000 devices each day, this comes as no surprise. What is mildly surprising is that Apple’s market share grew only .6% (yes, you read that right) over the same time frame, topping out at a whopping 18.8%. With the iPhone 4, and its subsequent underwhelming successor Siri iPhone 4S, being released during that . . . READ ON »
Augmented reality is a term so many of us have heard, yet know so little about. When you ask someone what augmented reality is, their first reaction is usually to describe an application on their mobile device. Google touts its Project Glass as the next big thing in augmented reality and an innovation in the field. Even Apple has has a patent for “Peripheral treatment for head-mounted displays.” Yet with all of these happenings, no one has really sat down and explained what augmented reality is or why it can change the world.
What Exactly is Augmented Reality?
The first . . . READ ON »
The Amazon Kindle Fire is a device like no other. Touted by Amazon as a low-priced iPad killer, it has carved out quite a niche for itself in the seven months since its release. Looking back to November of last year, it seemed like no single Android tablet would ever be able to pull significant market share from Apple’s flagship tablet. Yet not only has the Fire succeeded in doing just that, but it has managed to create a very dedicated following here on XDA. Let’s take a look at what’s been going on.
Development
Root for the Kindle Fire . . . READ ON »
If you’ve spent any amount of time on XDA, you’ve heard of XDA Recognized Developer Cyanogen or the nearly ubiquitous CyanogenMod. In fact, chances are that at you’ve either run CyanogenMod on one of your devices at some point in the past, or you’re running it (or a kanged version) now. In many ways, CyanogenMod represented all that was good about Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and proceeded to go where the carriers and manufacturers were unwilling to take their devices. Along the way, Cyanogen inspired developers everywhere to reach for what was previously lacking in the Android community.
Cyanogen . . . READ ON »
I’ve seen too many “perfect phone” articles from people who really have no idea what they are talking about. I’m going to use this white-space to dispel some ill-conceived myths that uninformed people have generated, as well as list several entirely mandatory features for the “perfect device.” I believe you, the reader, will find my list of “perfect device” features to be entirely reasonable, and I intend to show that some of the desired features are really only a matter of configuration / manufacturer limitation.
Wireless charging at 6ft. — IMPOSSIBLE(for consumer devices): You will not see this technology. In . . . READ ON »
The Oracle and Google debate is back in the news now that their battle in court is finally here. A simple Google, or Yahoo!, or Bing—which ever you prefer—search will lead you to many different experts commenting on the story. In fact one commenter has been ousted as a consultant for Oracle. “Independent” Analyst and Case Commenter Florian Mueller has disclosed a consulting relationship with Oracle. Mueller claims that he won’t have any special access or gain any inside knowledge of the case, and that all of his continued analysis of the Oracle vs Google trail will be based . . . READ ON »
Augmented reality - a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.
We have been tempted in the movies over the years with augmented reality via heads-up-displays (HUDs), from Terminator to Minority Report, and yet it hasn’t really made the leap from the Silver Screen to real life. Even apps like Layar attempt to bring it to your fingertips. The idea is that we live in a world where information is always around us just waiting to be visualized.
Google X Labs has now . . . READ ON »
A few days ago some users of certain Samsung Galaxy devices began to notice that within the pending updates in the Play Store (that name still feels wrong), was a strange app that they had not installed and the description of which was entirely in Russian. The application was entitled МТС Мобильная Почта, and has since been removed. What’s more, users were unable to actually find this app on their device to uninstall it. Understandably those affected were somewhat concerned about this, fearing that they had fallen victim to some kind of malware. Thankfully it wasn’t, and the MTC application . . . READ ON »
Here on XDA-Developers, we tend to cater to everyone’s needs and wants. From the most experienced developer to the newest user, who literally just picked up his/her smartphone exactly 25 minutes ago and is curious about what it can do, anyone can find something that will get them hooked on xda and smartphone modding. The latter of the two groups normally tends to either be too busy to try and sit down and read or simply is not interested on how things work, only caring about the final outcome (I can haz root?!). Funny enough, half of these people will . . . READ ON »
The center of most modern development is Open-Source.
Open-Source is a huge selling point, allowing the user to potentially be on equal or greater knowledge-footing than product support. Open-Source allows the end user to read and write the same software that comes on the device. Open-Source also gives us the tools we need to modify our devices.
Lets take a look back at the beginnings of Open-Source, back in the 70′s. When Richard Stallman’s (Founder of GNU) printer jammed, it gave no warning. The printer was a networked printer, and it took an hour to print. When a user would . . . READ ON »
It’s undeniable that Android is blessed with a huge selection of high quality applications. “Fart Machines” and “Love Calculators” aside, there is a multitude of incredibly well developed apps out there. Developing is not easy, and the people that do this spend a huge amount of time pouring their heart and soul into these applications and understandably they often wish to charge a fee for their hard work.
While some developers view their work as a hobby or secondary income, it is how many of them make their living. They depend on the income from their hard work to pay . . . READ ON »
YouTube
Follow
Like
Google+
