Most popular Android apps of 2011

Most popular Android apps of 2011 - If you're aged between 18 and 24, you're probably using YouTube to watch videos, playing social word game Words With Friends and listening to Pandora radio. If you're aged 35 and over, Angry Birds might be more your thing.

But no matter what your age is, you're more than likely using a range of Google-made apps like Gmail, Maps and Search, and social networking app Facebook on your Android device, says market researcher Nielsen in his latest research on smartphone usage in the US.

No matter what your age is, you’re more than likely using a range of Google-made apps like Gmail, Maps and Search, and social networking app Facebook on your Android.

"Facebook's popular app is the most active among Android owners 18-24 and 25-34, who both hover at around 80 percent active reach. Additionally, more than three quarters of users aged 35-44 used the app recently as well," said Nielsen.

Google's social network Google+ was more popular with those aged 25 and above than with younger users but did not make it into the top 15 most-used apps ranking. Google's own video-sharing app YouTube is a popular choice for Android owners with 64 percent of 18-24 year-olds using the app during the last 30 days.

"A preference for media apps with a social dimension (e.g. Words with Friends) among the 18-24 set is also reinforced by their sizable usage of music and video apps (e.g. Pandora) compared to older demographics," noted Nielsen.

Angry Birds is more popular with users aged 35-44 than younger generations. In the last 30 days, 24 percent of those aged 35-44 fired up the app while only 22 percent of 18-24 year-olds and 29 percent of 25-34 year-olds battled against those nasty green pigs.

Angry Birds was popular with iPhone users too this year. Apple announced that application had topped its list of most popular paid iPhone apps for 2011 during the company's annual Rewind recap.

Facebook was also extremely popular with iPhone users and grabbed the first place in Apple's top ten free iPhone apps for the year. Pandora Radio, Words With Friends and Twitter were ranked second, third and tenth respectively. ( indiatimes.com )

Mobile Application Reach, by age, according to Nielsen:

18 - 24 years

1. Android Market
2. Facebook
3. Google Search
4. Gmail
5. Google Maps
6. YouTube
7. Pandora Radio
8. Advanced Task Killer Free
9. Words With Friends
10. Angry Birds
11. Quickoffice
12. The Weather Channel
13. Adobe Reader
14. Amazon AppStore
15. Yahoo! Mail

25 - 34 years

1. Android Market
2. Facebook
3. Gmail
4. Google Maps
5. Google Search
6. YouTube
7. Angry Birds
8. Pandora Radio
9. Quickoffice
10. Advanced Task Killer Free
11. Words With Friends
12. Amazon AppStore
13. Adobe Reader
14. The Weather Channel
15. Yahoo! Mail

35 - 44 years

1. Android Market
2. Facebook
3. Gmail
4. Google Search
5. Google Maps
6. YouTube
7. Angry Birds
8. Quickoffice
9. Advanced Task Killer Free
10. Amazon AppStore
11. Words With Friends
12. Yahoo! Mail
13. Pandora Radio
14. Adobe Reader
15. The Weather Channel

READ MORE - Most popular Android apps of 2011

Android Needs a Heart

Android Needs a Heart - There’s not enough to love about Google’s confusing, overstuffed mobile operating system

In mid-October, a big yellow truck pulled into the Google campus and parked outside Building 44, the home of the Android team. A couple of dozen frenzied Googlers swarmed the vehicle and pulled out its freight: a huge, cartoonish statue of the Android “bug Droid” in the guise of an ice cream sandwich.

The statue marked another milestone for Google’s mobile OS. Every time the Android team releases a new version, Google installs a physical manifestation of the OS’s code name on the lawn outside its office. Android’s code names are all variations on a theme—desserts in alphabetical order. Android 1.5, released in 2009, was the occasion for the first statue, a cupcake. In just two and a half years, Building 44’s lawn has been graced by desserts representing successively better implementations of Android—from donut, through éclair, frozen yogurt, gingerbread, honeycomb, and now Android 4.0, ice cream sandwich.

Even Android 4.0’s most-impressive new features don’t feel like they’re part of a well-thought-out vision

The statues, a typically Google-y employee morale booster, tell a misleading story about Android. There is little that’s fun-loving, quirky, or emotionally engaging at Android’s core. The dessert-themed codenames paint a picture of coherence. But this is Android’s most conspicuous shortcoming, and ice cream sandwich only exacerbates the problem. Google’s OS is the brainiest, most powerful mobile software on the market today. But it’s got no heart, and no apparent theme. An operating system is supposed to be the face of a machine—its purpose is to paint a friendly, easy-to-use visage on an otherwise incomprehensible device. In ice cream sandwich, Google’s designers worked very hard to give Android a facelift. They’ve done some fine work, but Android is still neither very welcoming nor very coherent.

I’ve been using Android 4.0 for almost a week on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, a sleek new phone that Google designed as the flagship device for its latest OS. In many ways, the Galaxy Nexus and Android 4.0 come together to form the most powerful smartphone ever built. I found the phone to be amazingly responsive, and it offers a number of out-of-this-world, next-generation features. For one thing, you can unlock it by face: The first time you use this feature, the phone will study your face for a few minutes; from then on, you just look at your Nexus to start it up. There’s also a feature called Android Beam, which lets you send information to other Android phones over a near-field-communication chip. (You need two NFC-enabled phones running the latest OS to test this feature, so I couldn’t do it.) And Android is pushing deeper into the cloud than all its rivals. When I signed into the phone with my Google account, it had access to all my bookmarks from Chrome, the 30 gigabytes of music I’d previously uploaded to Google Music, and all of the photos I’ve got stored on Picasa’s Web albums. Android’s facility with the cloud isn’t new—this has been a feature since the first version—but it’s still the best reason to use the OS.

Google’s overriding aim, in ice cream sandwich, wasn’t to add new features but to make Android’s current features easier for people to find and use. Virtually every screen has been redesigned, and almost always for the better. Google has refined some of the most basic parts of the OS, including how you get from app to app and how you find features in each app. Ice cream sandwich also features a new system font, Roboto, which Google designed in-house. I loved the font; it made everything in Android easier on my eyes.

Matias Duarte, Android’s chief designer, recently told the Verge’s Joshua Topolsky that Android’s redesign was inspired by a round of in-depth “ethnographic research” into how real people use the OS. The research highlighted a persistent problem with Android: The OS was too complicated. Users suspected that they could do a lot more with their phones if only they could learn how, and the complexity left people feeling empty about their devices. “With Android, people were not responding emotionally, they weren't forming emotional relationships with the product,” Duarte said. “They needed it, but they didn't necessarily love it.”

This sounds like a stupid complaint about a phone, a device that is supposed to help you get stuff done rather than try to be your BFF. But I suspect that what people mean when they say they don’t “love” their phones’ OS is that they don’t understand it. Is Android trying to be elegant, like the iPhone OS? Does it want to be starkly minimalist, like the beautiful Windows Phone? Does it have its own, completely different take on the mobile interface? I can’t tell. Like previous versions of Android, ice cream sandwich doesn’t settle on an aesthetic: As you go from app to app, everything about the design changes. Its phone dialer and settings page are minimalist, all stark lines and colored text on a black background. But the new People app (a contact list) and the calendar have shaded backgrounds, colored text, and cutesy icons.

Android’s problem isn’t just aesthetic. It’s also functional—ice cream sandwich still doesn’t do a great job of showing off all that it can do. Two years ago, I criticized Android for its reliance on hidden menus: In many apps, key functions could only be activated by hitting a button that exposed new buttons. While ice cream sandwich does away with most hidden menus, it adds a bunch of new, confusing interface elements. In Android’s new notifications tab and multitasking pane, for instance, you swipe your finger across an item from left to right to get rid of it. It’s a handy gesture, but it’s not universal. Swipe a contact in the People list and, instead of deleting the contact, you go to a different tab. Swipe an email subject line in your inbox and nothing happens.

Even Android 4.0’s most-impressive new features don’t feel like they’re part of a well-thought-out vision. The facial unlocking worked well—the phone was mostly able to recognize my face. But the feature also felt pointless and gimmicky; Android already offered several other ways to let me unlock my phone, including by sliding an icon, typing in a pin, or setting a password. Why add another way? How is this feature supposed to improve my experience with the phone?

I don’t want to sound too negative: Ice cream sandwich represents a great improvement for much of Android, and I think it’s a credible rival to the iPhone and Windows. But of the three major smartphone operating systems, Android is still by far the most confusing. It’s also the least likely to inspire joy. ( slate.com )

READ MORE - Android Needs a Heart

25 reasons Android should fear iOS right now

25 reasons Android should fear iOS right now — When Apple presented iOS 5 — the latest version of its mobile operating system — we couldn't help but point out how many features and elements it seemed to borrow from other platforms and apps. But as we started examining the software we realized something: The combination of those features with Apple's special touch should have Android — the biggest competitor to iOS — shaking in fear.

Yes, we realize that when it comes to a lot of features — notifications, in particular — it seemed like Apple was playing catch up with Google's baby. But with iOS 5 Apple isn't just catching up — it's leapfrogging Android.

Of course, not everything we're about to list will make everyone's jaw drop as the earth shakes, but, along with the nearly 200 other new features found in iOS 5? They form the most compelling mobile operating system available today.

So let's just look at some of these highlights, so you can see for yourself.

The notification system in iOS 5 is one of the bigger features to be added since iOS 4. It's a well-designed and perfectly integrated scheme of notifications, alerts and popups which revolve around one central drop-down pane — which Apple has dubbed the Notification Center.

New emails, text messages, multimedia messages, reminders, Game Center notifications, mail alerts, Twitter notifications and any other sort of items which could normally trigger a push notification can find their way into the Notification Center. They'll be called to your attention on your iOS lock screen, via a regular pop up alert, or with a small non-intrusive banner which briefly flashes across the top of your screen.

So far this sounds a lot like what you get out of Android, right? But hang on ... there's a reason it's better: Control.

Built straight into iOS is a set of controls which will allow you to arrange the notification system of your dreams. Do you want emails to trigger a banner but not appear on the lock screen? Do you want Twitter alerts to make a sound but not appear anywhere? Should voicemail alerts show up in the Notification Center and on the lock screen and as a banner? No problem!

You can customize the notification system however you want — right down to custom sounds for voicemail alerts, text messages and so on. (Yes, you can finally set custom sounds for those types of alerts.)

Another one of the great little details about iOS 5 is that it has full Twitter integration. You can tweet straight from the Photo app, Safari or just about any other apps. All you need to do is log in with your regular Twitter credentials once, and let iOS prompt you to download the official Twitter app. It'll take care of the rest and present you with new buttons in the appropriate places.

Smile! The Camera and Photo apps have received a tune-up in iOS 5. There's a lock screen shortcut to the camera app — which unfortunately does not appear to work in the first beta version of the operating system — and a pinch-to-zoom feature that you can use while taking a picture. If that's not enough, you can use a volume button as a shutter button and keep your greasy fingers off the screen.

As far as the Photo app goes, there are now some basic image editing features built right in. You can enhance, remove red-eye or crop images right on the spot — without having to open up a third-party app. (Sorry, third-party apps!)

It wouldn't surprise us if many iOS users considered the Mail app one of the most important items on their devices, so we're definitely happy to see that it too has gotten a little bit of an upgrade as well. It now offers rich text formatting, address dragging, indentation control, message flagging, full message searches and S/MIME support on top of the usual assortment of features.

Now Android's not the only one who's got something to fear when it comes to the new iMessage system — Research In Motion should be dreading that BlackBerry Messenger users finally have a solid alternative, provided all their friends jump to iOS too.

iMessage is basically an iOS-only messaging client which allows you to send text, photos, videos, contacts and group broadcasts to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users. It basically is a lot like BlackBerry Messenger, and will show delivery receipts, read receipts, even IM-style typing indicators.

But as a bonus, messages will be pushed to all your devices over Wi-Fi or 3G — and will be encrypted. And you can start a conversation on your iPhone and switch over to your iPad to continue things there without missing a word.

Little ol' Safari has grown up quite a bit with iOS 5. The mobile browser now features an Instapaper-style Reading List feature which allows you to mark and sync articles for later reading, something called Reader which'll format articles to be easier on the eyes, and private browsing for — ahem — the things that you don't want to be saved to your browser history.

There are several other little features in iOS 5 which you might not notice right away, but will quickly learn to love and appreciate.

There's a text expansion tool called Shortcut. It basically allows you to create keywords which will trigger a custom replacement text. Just imagine how much time that can save you when it comes to commonly used phrases such as "Oh, hey! Do you think you can grab some ice cream on the way home?"

And if you don't have a shortcut that applies to a situation, then perhaps a global dictionary will help you make sure that you sound as coherent as possible most of the time.

There's also Photostream, which will sync your photos to the iCloud and download them across all your iOS devices. Pretty handy if you want to edit photos on your iPad, but don't want to fuss around with cables or manually upload images.

Speaking of the iCloud, that's another feature that'll make your life a great deal simpler. You can sync all the important things to it and always have easily accessible copies of your images and documents.

And if that's not wireless enough for you, then take a gander at iTunes Sync. It's just what it sounds like: A way to sync your devices to iTunes over Wi-Fi. Oh, and your iOS device will back itself up — wirelessly — before it syncs, so you'll have daily backups. Believe us, those are more valuable than you might realize.

Of course you'll be able to do more than just back up your device over the air — you'll finally get to update your device over the air as well and you can go entirely PC-free as no connections to iTunes are necessary to activate an iOS device now.

Once you're up and running with iOS 5 in the fall, you'll be able to enjoy all these features along with new default apps such as Reminders and Newsstand which will basically be your one-stop shops for to-do lists and digital magazine consumption respectively.

Sound good? Or are you still rolling your eyes and muttering that that most of these features are available on Android already? If you are, then allow me to remind you about what I said at the beginning of our little exploration of iOS 5: It's a threat to Android not just because of the individual features, but because of the punch they pack when wrapped in a rather gorgeous user interface.

We know where Apple stands for the next year or so. It's your move, Google. ( msnbc )

READ MORE - 25 reasons Android should fear iOS right now

New smartphone privacy alert as Android handsets found to be prone to leaking data

New smartphone privacy alert as Android handsets found to be prone to leaking data - Millions of smartphones which use the Android software promoted by Google are a security risk, it was claimed yesterday.

Researchers found that criminals can tap into the transfer of information between the phones and the internet, gaining access to personal data.

The discovery was made by security experts at the University of Ulm in Germany.

Target: Criminals can tap into the transfer of information between Android phones and the internet, gaining access to personal data

PERSONAL DATA BREACHES

In April this year Sony had to shut down its PlayStation Network for a month after a massive security breach.

The network was shut down on April 20 after it was found that the security breach had affected more than 100 million online accounts.

Most smartphone manufacturers other than Apple use the Android operating system.

Many applications on Android phones interact with Google services by asking for an authentication token – essentially a digital ID card for particular application. The token removes the need to keep logging into a service each time you need to access it.

It is claimed that a hacker monitoring an Android smartphone connected to the internet via a wi-fi network would be able to steal the token.

In theory, the hacker would then use the information to log on to websites using the identity of the phone’s legitimate user.

In a blog posting on their findings, the researchers said: ‘The adversary can gain full access to the calendar, contacts information, or private web albums of the respective Google user.’

Risk: It's claimed that a hacker monitoring an Android smartphone connected to the internet via a Wi-Fi network would be able to see and steal its ID token

PROTECT YOUR ANDROID

1. Use a PIN or password
Ensure that a PIN is required to access your home screen.

2. Keep it up to date
Updates to operating systems include patches for newly-discovered security vulnerabilities.

3. Be careful with apps
Unless you are an information security expert, you should only download apps from the official app stores.

4. Turn off Wifi and Bluetooth
If you aren't using them, you should turn off wireless communications features.

5. Backup your data
Sometimes the only way to be sure the virus is to remove is to completely wipe its memory. You should make regular backups to preserve your contact, message, photos and apps.

They added: ‘An adversary could change the stored e-mail address of the victim’s boss or business partners hoping to receive sensitive or confidential material pertaining to their business.’

The researchers said while they had identified a security loophole there is no evidence, to date, that any hackers are taking advantage of it.

Google has released software updates which are said to address most of the security concerns.

Mark Evans, director at IT services provider, Imerja, said: ‘That such an enormous proportion of Android phones could potentially be leaking users’ personal data is shocking.

‘Mobile devices are increasingly used for business, more so than laptops, and their security is essential to protect organisations against data breach or other ill-intentioned activities.

‘The message to companies is clear; mobile devices must be properly secured. They should be implementing robust and enforceable security policy structures to support effective mobile working, such as encryption.’

Most smartphone manufacturers - other than Apple - use the Android operating system. ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - New smartphone privacy alert as Android handsets found to be prone to leaking data