There’s a lot going on right now, so without ado, let’s jumpinto a mid-week grab-bag of Android news.
First up, while there are a lot of people eagerly waiting toget their hands on the new Jelly Bean-powered Nexus 7 tablet, it looks likesome users with the Galaxy Nexus have been moved to the front of the line forthis new version of the Android operating system.
In a posting on Google+, Google announced that anover-the-air Jelly Bean update would start rolling out to the HSPA+ GalaxyNexus over the next few days (unlocked ones, of course – updates for thehandsets tied to carriers will still need to go through a few more steps beforethey’re ready). The posting also announced that the update would also soon beavailable for the Nexus S and the Motorola Xoom.
In less savoury news, a Symantec researcher has noted thatthe company has uncovered a premium-rate Trojan lurking in a pair of apps thathave been on Google Play for around two weeks. So what’s a “premium-rate Trojan”you ask? When you install an infected app, it then sends text messages to a numberwith a “premium rate” attached to it…in other words, it will cost you a lot ofmoney, without you even knowing you’re sending texts out.
Each app was only downloaded less than 100,000 times beforeremoval from Google Play, so according to Symantec the threat level is low. Butas always, this is a good reminder to checkwhat permissions your apps are requesting when you’re installing them – ifit looks dubious, cancel the install.
And lastly, in the “I can’t believe they call that atablet!” department, we have the 21.5-inch Frontier tablet from Kouziro. Itcomes with Ice Cream Sandwich onboard, a bezel that makes it look for all theworld more like a monitor than a tablet, and a kick-stand on the back for whenyou get tired of holding a 21.5-inch tablet in your hand.
According to the spec-breakdown on Cnet, the tablet doesindeed have a lot of similarities to a tablet, but in a lot of ways it reallyseems like the next wave of computing, with our usual desktops and notebooks beingreplaced by Android-powered devices.
While it’s a pretty good guess that the majority of thedevices in the post-PC era will be…uh, less unwieldy, there are probably stillgoing to be times when you want a larger screen that’s kind of portable, butgenerally will stay in one place. Kinda like the niche the monster-sizeddesktop-replacement laptop market used to fill…but lighter and less costly. It’llbe available in July for just under 35,000 yen, which works out to just under$450 Canadian.