One of the most interesting parts of the developer preview of Android 5.0, or L release, or Lollipop (or whatever we're going to call it until Google announces it will finally be called Lamington), was just how many features the new stock Android has absorbed from custom ROMs, third-party apps and manufacturer skins. While this is perfectly acceptable given the open source nature of Android and can be seen as an enriching of the core experience in Android based on what users actually want, it also steps on the toes of a lot of developers in the business of Android ''add-ons''. So will the new stock Android be better than all three?

Android L release date and features

Android L is here, and it's brought a raft of new changes, with Sundar Pichai, head of Android, proclaiming it to be one of the biggest upgrades to Android yet.

It's going to have a radical new design, 5000 new APIs, will be available for developer previews soon, and it's going beyond the mobile form factor. Android L will be contextually aware of its surrounding, plus voice is going to me a major input source.

The experience will also be seamless, so Android L devices communicate properly, although Pichai was at pains to point out the mobile phone will always be the priority.

Release date

Here's what most of you will be wanting to know: when can I get it on my phone? Well, if you're a developer with a Nexus 5 or Nexus 7 then its easy, as it's now available as of June 26 to developers only.

For the rest of the world, it's coming 'this fall', which means that this is very much a preview to appease those that want to get cracking on development, and launching it at Google IO makes sense.

HTC has already been in contact, giving the following statement about it's forthcoming upgrade to Android L:

"HTC is excited about the new features in Android L and we can't wait to share them with our customers. We are committed to updating our flagship HTC One family as fast as possible.

"We will begin rolling out updates to the HTC One (M8) and HTC One (M7) in regions worldwide within 90 days of receiving final software from Google, followed shortly thereafter by other One family members and select devices."

Remember, this doesn't mean the developer preview, but the final version later in the year. So expect Android L on your HTC One M8 and M7 around Christmas.

We'll update you as soon as we find out any more information from the other manufacturers about their plans for Android L release schedules.

Features

Floating notifications

I'm a huge fan of mini apps and popup notifications and the popup feature on instant messengers like Viber, also drop down preview of text messages as they come in. In the developer preview we saw just how cool the ''heads up'' notifications in the next version of Android will be.

Kill switch

I've been following the progress of the legally required kill switch in smartphones for a while now. Google already had Android Device Manager as a default location and remote wiping tool, but now the feature will be a core component of the operating system and not an add-on service. Plenty of other tools are available but it seems unlikely any will work as well as the built-in version.

Lockscreen notifications

 Lock screen notification apps like Dynamic Notifications and Peek are a good example, being able to access and respond to your notifications directly from your lockscreen in stock Android is a great move in my opinion. Add to this the debut of Android Wear and you ll hardly need to unlock your phone again.

Multitasking

Anything that cuts down on endless app switching is going to get lots of attention. The new Rolodex-looking, card-based recent apps setup along with smarter Google Search and dialer predictions are all great things for users.

Privacy settings

privacy settings are a blessing and nothing would go anywhere without Permission Manager and Permissions Observatory. In the upcoming Android release we'll see built-in app privacy settings via Universal Data Controls and ''on-the-spot'' permission requests, so you don't need to add any third-party apps, custom ROMs or settings to take control of your privacy. Is Google just skimming from the great ideas of others?

Power saving mode

With the next version of Android coming with a stock battery saving mode and battery historian for developers (and surely users) to monitor the battery consumption of their apps and optimize (or just plain kill) the power-hungry ones. Will manufacturers let these features seep through to their skins or stick with their own?

Google Fit

Other than being able to get a pedometer on your Nexus 5 there's not much in the way of health integration in the current Android. Google Fit in the next version of Android makes a lot of these third-party options unnecessary and puts up a big challenge to the likes of S Health and LG Health. So who will do it better?

Personal unlocking

Google wants your apps to be able to talk to one another - it used the example of searching for a place, only to have it served up in Google Earth, which is where it originally was being looked at. The idea goes much deeper than that though, to have my phone know when I'm at an unlock-friendly place (like work) or to know that it's me picking up my phone because of my Bluetooth headphones or smartwatch makes it even easier, especially when it's baked into the core system. Just how much of this is for convenience and how much to push wearables?

Performance

Everyone love tweaking things and customizing system settings to get the absolute best performance out of their smartphone. Most nerds have been running ART since it debuted ages ago, but not every app was running properly and it was, of course, a developer option that wasn't quite finished, even if it did speed up your performance significantly. Making ART the default runtime (that can also handle just-in-time compiling of older apps) makes it the perfect solution, it also supports 64-bit processing.

Themes

Many actually likes CyanogenMod's Themer engine and the many different custom launcher themes you can switch things up with. Android tends to look quite disparate due to its open-source nature, so it's not always easy to get a streamlined, harmonious experience. By introducing the Material theme to their own apps, Google is providing a unified example, and Project Polymer makes it easier for developers to create apps in the Material Design language via reusable web components. This should hopefully make the entire ecosystem a lot more stylistically consistent but will it make Android look like iOS?

What do you think of Android 5.0 Lamington?

The iPad was the undisputed king of the consumer high-end tablet market until last year, but new Android-based devices such as the Sony Xperia Z2 and Samsung's Galaxy Tab S are giving Apple a run for its money.

Many other tablet OEMs are looking to introduce high-performance 64-bit tablets. Actions Semiconductor will start providing its first systems on chips (SoC) in late 2014, making it easier for the Chinese company to develop high-end devices.

Actions announced that it has signed a license agreement for the 64-bit ARM Cortex A50 processor family, making it one of China's leading technology design companies delivering an ARM-based 64-bit chip for tablet devices.

"Premium smartphones and tablets have become primary computing devices and that is driving strong demand for 64-bit solutions," Allen Wu, president of ARM Greater China, said in a press release.

Actions Semiconductor is a valued partner and we believe the combination of its expertise in low power SoC development with the ARM Cortex-A50 processor family and ARM POP IP is an exciting way of fulfilling this requirement."

According to the research firm IDC, global high-end tablet market shares for Samsung, Sony, and other vendors are already growing at the expense of Apple. Having access to 64-bit ARM Cortex A50 processors from Actions Semiconductor will enable more manufacturers to develop competing solutions in this lucrative segment of the tablet market.

"We believe this investment in 64-bit architecture reinforces our position as one of the leading design houses in China providing leading-edge, high performance products at attractive price points," Actions CEO Dr. Zhenyu Zhou said in the release. "With the mobile industry rapidly migrating from 32-bit to 64-bit operating systems, we expect our next generation SoCs utilizing this IP will allow us to compete more effectively in both the branded and whitebox segments of the tablet and OTT set top box markets."

IDC is forecasting a slowdown in the overall tablet market, but that will mostly affect the low-end tablets in the seven-inch and eight-inch segments, which face strong competition from large-screen smartphones. Tablets with 10-inch screens and larger will continue to have a strong demand, especially in the Asia Pacific market.

"Worldwide growth will continue, but emerging markets such as Asia Pacific will account for a larger percentage of the worldwide market going forward, and vendors playing in this market must prepare for this eventuality," Tom Mainelli, program vice president for devices and displays at IDC, said in a March press release. "Second, the rise of phablets – smartphones with 5.5-inch and larger screens – are causing many people to second-guess tablet purchases as the larger screens on these phones are often adequate for tasks once reserved for tablets."

California-based skyTran has teamed up with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to construct the world's first public pilot project for skyTran's elevated transit network.

A number of skyTran projects are being planned globally, including in India and the United States, pending the success of the pilot in Israel.

The pilot will be a 400-500 meter (yard) loop built at IAI's campus in central Israel and, if successful, will be followed by a commercial network in Tel Aviv in the coming years, skyTran CEO Jerry Sanders told the media, without disclosing the cost.

SkyTran is a rapid transit system in which lightweight two-person vehicles are suspended from elevated magnetic levitation tracks. The skyTran vehicles in the pilot will cruise at speeds of up to 70 km an hour but that will jump to 240 km an hour at the commercial phase, Sanders said.

Tel Aviv if often gridlocked with commuter traffic as there is no subway and many commuters travel by car.

"Tel Aviv is a world city. It's a destination for people around the world. A center of commerce. Israelis love technology and we don't foresee a problem of people not wanting to use the system. Israel is a perfect test site," Sanders said.

The first components will be pre-assembled at skyTran's headquarters at the NASA Research Park in California. The rest will be constructed locally and the system should be running by the end of 2015, Sanders added.

At the same time his company hopes to finalize preparations for its first ever commuter line, which in the first phase will be about 7 km (2.7 miles) long, consist of three stations, and cost about $50 million to build.

Everything will be automated. Passengers will be able to order a vehicle on their smartphone to meet them at a specific station, and then head directly to their destination, cutting travel time dramatically.

"It can handle 12,000 people an hour per guideway, and that number grows exponentially with each additional guideway," Sanders said. "That is more than a light rail and equal to three lanes of highway."

IAI, Israel's largest defense company, said it would bring to the pilot its expertise in engineering, robotics and control.

More details are surfacing about some changes being made to the next version of Android, like ART becoming the default runtime, followed by the surprise arrival of Android 4.4.4. Today, Google has issued a statement saying that they will incorporate a kill switch to the next version of the OS for smartphones in trying to reduce the theft rate of mobile devices.

Apple was the first to implement this measure which resulted consequently in the company noticing the amount of iPhone theft greatly reducing, seeing as thieves were now not as determined to steal one since all they would be getting was a bricked device. Even in politics, there’s a bill pushing for this to be mandatory for all phones in the US. Not just Google is following suit, but Microsoft as well.

At the moment, all Android devices come with the Android Device Manager feature which can be switched on or off in your phone’s settings, which allows you to track the phone, make it ring, wipe its contents with a reset, among some other features..

We aren’t sure at the moment how this so-called ‘’factory reset protection solution” feature to render a phone totally useless will be added to the existing features, but we will hopefully find out when the Google I/O kicks off.

During the Federal Communications Commission meeting, the Chairman Tom Wheeler said:

“It’s not enough” to offer phone-disabling systems that work only if consumers choose to use them, Wheeler said. “It is time to have an automatic, common solution.”

US Senator Amy Cloubar also supports the idea when she said:

“We’re never going to get to the end of incentives to steal unless the thieves know they’re stealing a brick,” Klobuchar said at the meeting.

Many thinks that having this function is a great idea. If someone steals my phone, I don’t want them to be able to use it at all. Needless to say, wiping it is always a good idea, but rendering it unusable is even better.

Crimes related to iPhones -- robberies, muggings and theft, often involving violence against the victims -- were reaching epidemic proportions both in the United States and abroad, leading Gascon, Schneiderman and the mayor of London to set up the Secure Our Smartphones (S.O.S.) Initiative with the participation of law enforcement agencies.

Robberies and grand larcenies involving Apple products fell 19 percent and 29 percent respectively year over year in New York City from January to May, while the same crimes involving Samsung smartphones, which did not have a kill switch until April, increased by more than 40 percent, according to a report the Initiative released last week.

CTIA, the Wireless Association, which represents carriers, wrote the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in June, arguing that kill switches would brick mobile devices, making them impossible to reactivate or reuse.

CTIA also argued that hackers could spoof a kill command, disabling entire groups of mobile devices owned by an organization such as the U.S. Department of Defense or a law enforcement agency.

CTIA also offered consumers apps for download, which could remotely erase, track and lock stolen devices, although it worked only for 4G/LTE devices.

Why the Industry Hates Kill Switches

Implementing the kill switch "was never a technology problem," said Carl Howe, a vice president of research at the Yankee Group, pointing out that Apple, BlackBerry and others have been able to wipe devices remotely for years.

"Carriers saw a nice revenue stream from phone insurance and replacement phones, and they didn't want to incur the coordination efforts and costs in implementing industry-wide kill switches without some revenue to go with.

What do you think of this new feature for Android devices?

5 reasons as to why you shouldn’t get root access on your device. Rooting does give you a bunch more options with what you can do with your Android device, but what are the downsides to this access?

Security Risks

By gaining root access, you get total control over the entire system. With the right skills and tools, you can read and modify almost any parameter on your device. This is the reason why some apps, as like SuperSU, require root access in order to work properly. However, this type of access is a double edged sword  as with root access nothing is there to prevent malicious applications from wreaking havoc on your system: system files can be corrupted or deleted, personal information can be skimmed,  and you could even soft brick your device.

However, the silver lining to all this is that the user has to allow an application access to root privileges before they can gain the access, so it is always a good idea to do some research on applications that are asking for root permission.

Warranty out the window

Obviously, gaining root access ins’t something that is officially supported by manufacturers, otherwise we’d start seeing device coming already rooted straight from the factory. As such, if you gain root access on your device, you can more than likely kiss your warranty goodbye. Some devices, such as Samsung, even have a flash counter built into them that will keep track of whether or not a user has tampered with the firmware and installed unofficial software and this can be checked even if the phone has been unrooted and locked again.  While there are methods of restoring this back to zero, there are no guarantees that the Warranty department won’t catch on.

It’s not a guarantee that ALL warranty claims will be denied due to rooting your device, but anything having to do with the software side of things (ie: softbricking your device on accident) most likely won’t be approved.

The risk of softbricking your device

The procedure to root a device varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and even from device to device. There is no “official” method for rooting your device. For example, rooting Nexus devices requires you to download a toolset and then use the PC command prompt to gain access while most Samsung devices requires you to use the Odin software on your PC to get the same results. As such, with device specific instructions that often require multiple steps and at least a decent understanding of computers, there is a much larger chance for things to go wrong and possibly rendering your device unusable.

Problems with updates

Another common issue that comes along with rooting your device is that you’ll start seeing that automatic updates to the firmware stop being pushed to you. For example, you’ll no longer have the convenience of seeing updates via Wi-Fi (OTA) and management software such as Samsung KIES will no longer work properly. You’ll still be able to manually update the firmware and flashing it to your device, but it is a relatively cumbersome process to have to do each time a new version of your firmware is released.

A rooted device, now what?

One of the most important thing to consider: when you’ve rooted your device, you gain a ton more access to areas of your device that were previously out of your reach. But with this access, what exactly are you going to do with it? Is there something out there that will get what you want done without needing root access? 

The intention of this article isn’t meant to scare anyone out of rooting their device, but rather highlight some of the risks associated with the process itself.

Are you still going to root your device?

Z Launcher

Nokia is not longer the same Nokia we are used to. After the mobile department was sold to Microsoft, the remaining parts needed to reinvent themselves. What came of this was a highly intelligent launcher in a pre-beta version, the Z Launcher. It has arrived with an interesting new concept in tow.

There are many launchers to choose from, but only a select few are as minimalistic as the Z Launcher. And not only that, Nokia promises intelligent minimalism.

Why is the Z Launcher so unique?

The launcher reduces your home screen to a minimum amount of content that is unlike any other. The top portion of the screen holds basic information such as time and your next appointment from your Calendar app. The display is mainly covered by six shortcuts, which aren’t just to apps but also to special actions (like calls to a certain contact or links to a website). Of course, the apps here are the ones use the most. But how does Z Launcher know what it should show? It learns from user behavior.

Here is where the decisive dynamics come into play, Z Launcher caters different content to different times of the day, which also corresponds to what you are doing on your device most at a specific time. The main overview is never lost, but at the same time you will still have your normal app dock at the bottom part of the display.

Scribble feature

But what happens when you want to use an app or complete an action which isn’t presently on the home screen? The launcher has incorporated a fancy new feature called Scribble, which allows you to draw the first letter of the app/action you are looking for. The launcher then offers the results in list from of what you were possibly looking for. The search is prioritized by the apps for which you search for the most, so for example if Facebook is scribbled most often, then the app will pull this up whenever you draw an F on the screen.

At the moment, the Z Launcher is still in a limited pre-beta version, but it already appears to be quite stable. The app still hasn’t be uploaded on to the Google Play Store, but it can be downloaded from a dedicated Nokia website. There you’ll need to sign up with your Google+ account, download it and you are ready to get Z launcher on your Android smartphone. For the time being, only high end smartphones are supported, and just unrooted devices too, but I’m certain that more will be added in the near future.

video Link 

BBM coming to Windows Phone in July

There’s excellent news today if you’re one of the many owners with a Windows Phone device waiting for the arrival of the BlackBerry Messenger app for your platform. After the previous releases of BBM for Android and iOS, the BBM for Windows Phone release by the end of July has been confirmed.

As BlackBerry's phone sales and overall revenue continue to freefall, the company's push to reimagine itself as a cross-platform business software provider continues.

CEO John Chen provided a more concrete timeline for the instant messaging service's Windows Phone debut.

Many fans of the Windows Phone platform have been hoping for a BBM app arrival for some time, and at the end of February BlackBerry officially stated that the WP version was in the pipeline. In late March BlackBerry CEO John Chen then announced that the BBM Windows Phone app would appear in the company’s fiscal Q2, giving a time frame of between May and July.

Chen narrowed the launch window to the month of July, CrackBerry reports.

BBM, long limited to BlackBerry devices alone, was downloaded more than 10 million times in the first 24 hours it was available for Android and iOS, in October 2013. The app does what you'd expect, allowing users to shoot messages, files, and pictures back and forth, complete with indicators when an message has been read or is in the process of being responded to.

The addition is a boon to Windows Phone, which is reshaping itself into a capable business-focused mobile option while BlackBerry itself tumbles from grace. During this morning's earning call, Chen revealed that phone sales dropped from to 2.6 million devices, down from 3.4 million last quarter and 6.8 million a year ago. The company's still doing all it can to make BlackBerry itself an appealing platform for enterprises, however. Just this week, BlackBerry announced the "BBM Protected" encrypted messaging solution for its eBBM Suite, as well as plans to bring the full Amazon Appstore and its 200,000-plus Android apps to the upcoming BlackBerry 10.3 update.

A specific date has not been given, but at least we know that the app will arrive on the Windows Phone Store by the end of July, and of course it could always appear sooner than that.

It’s not yet known if the BBM Windows Phone app will offer all of the same functionality and features of the Android and iOS versions, but it won’t be too much longer until we find out, or what do you thing?

Let us know by sending your comments.