Happy Holidays From... For Android

Google's Android team created this YouTube video to wish Android users a happy holiday but it looks like the Android team had the happiest holiday of all, with Andy Rubin, Google's numbers man announcing that 3.7 million new Android's were activated on the 24th and 25th of December - that's an epic 1.85 million a day, more than doubling the average Android run rate of 700,000 a day.

Looks like there were a lot of happy people on Christmas Day...

Battery Life Is A Difficult Issue

I'm not entirely sure why this should be the case but whenever I hear complaints about the battery life of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus I'm left bewildered. Here you can see a screenshot from my own device demonstrating that after 29 hours away from a charger its just dropped below 40% charge. In my book a potential two day battery life isn't something to complain about.

Similarly with my iPhone 4S, I found that the battery was easily able to get me through a full day away from charge - despite many others complaining of extremely poor battery life.

Why is this the case? I have no idea. My Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios are always enabled, I use Push for everything available and I use automatic brightness to manage the screen. If anything I'd expect worse than average battery performance.

Perhaps its the rigorous three charge/discharge cycles I perform when I receive a new phone. Whatever the case I'm happy for it to continue into the future...

Carriers and OEMs Going After Apple With Android Ads

Here's a new trend that I'm liking - Apple's iPhone getting a kicking for its failings in advertising from US carriers and Samsung. Normally this sort of stuff doesn't fly in the UK but as Apple themselves were guilty of a similar tactic with its "I'm a Mac" adverts a little bit of reciprocation doesn't hurt.

Spotify Really Disappoints

I hate to harp on about this but for a service which is mostly brilliant Spotify has done a frankly pathetic job of its mobile client. On Android and iOS it looks awful and is a nightmare to navigate. As an added bonus its crashes repeatedly on ICS. There's no specific tablet version for either OS and as a result it manages to disappoint pretty much across the board...

On Windows Phone 7 its a different story - it looks fantastic and integrates well with the Metro interface too. Its awfully buggy though and, let's be honest, if you've got Windows Phone 7 you're going to be using the far superior Zune Pass for your music service if you've any sense.

Spotify is pretty much reliant on its mobile client to generate Premium subscriptions. To be relying on a tool that is so bad to keep your business solvent seems pretty crazy to me. Even for Scandinavians...

Alfa Romeo Now Only Making Two Models

The decline of Alfa Romeo under Fiat stewardship continues. Having lost the GT Coupe, Brera and Spider in recent years; with the 166 long dead and looking like it may be never be replaced; variety is one thing you weren't going to find at your Alfa dealership.

Things have gone from bad to worse though - Fiat's pressing need to up production capacity of the ultra-desirable 500 has meant that the 159 production line has been shut down so that the old Alfasud factory can start building little Fiats.

With no guarantees that a replacement will make it to production Alfa is left with the Punto based MiTo and the Giulietta to carry the company until the arrival of the 4C at some time in the future.

Its not how the proud history of Alfa Romeo should be handled, especially just at the point where it has completed its centenary.

Spotify Mobile App Is Bloody Awful

Having made the switch over to the Galaxy Nexus from my HD7 I was no longer able to access WP7's Zune music streaming service. That's no problem, I'll just sign up for a Spotify account. After all it works pretty well on the desktop, so on a mobile device it should be okay.

No such luck. This is a pretty ropey bit of software, both on Android and iOS.

Realistically the only way to use the mobile Spotify client is to create playlists on your desktop and then make them available offline on the device.

Music discovery? Recommendations? Browsing? Just some of the things that are frankly unusable.

To add to the misery Spotify has no tablet app, so the only option there is to use the awful mobile one.

How bad is it? Well let's say that I'm going to start carrying my Windows Phone again just so I can continue using my Zune Pass on it.

Spotify you have less than a month to fix it...

Microsoft's App Strategy Points To WP7 Problems

I'm a big fan of Windows Phone 7, its a mobile OS that is both nice to use and look at. However, Microsoft's strategy of placing its gold standard applications onto competing platforms would suggest that internal battles between business units could rob the fledgling platform of its one chance of battling into the Android/iOS duopoly.

The arrival of Xbox, Bing, OneNote and other tools on the iPhone and iPad mean that the parts of the business responsible for those products have put winning iPhone users above helping its own platform to win. Should the Office division follow suit and produce an iPad version of Office then the Windows Phone division might as well shut up shop.

Its not going to be good news for Microsoft's Windows division either, with Windows 8 being its big play for the tablet market.

Its a tough few years ahead for Microsoft, not being helped by a continued lack of direction within the company....