Posts Tagged ‘Android’

Hands-on: BlueStacks Android Player brings mobile apps to Windows

Posted on October 11th, 2011 • Filed under Learn • No Comments

Earlier this year, a startup called BlueStacks announced that it was developing a native x86 Android runtime for the Windows operating system. The company finally released the product for public alpha testing this morning. As BlueStacks promised, the software allows users to run Android mobile applications on a Windows computer without compromising performance.

Although the software still has the kind of rough edges that one would expect from an alpha release, it represents an impressive technical feat and could offer value in a number of different contexts. We tried out the BlueStacks Android Player ourselves and tested it with several different Android applications.

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First 7-inch Android Honeycomb tablet hits stores this weekend

Posted on August 12th, 2011 • Filed under Learn • No Comments

The first 7-inch Honeycomb tablet, Acer’s Iconia Tab A100, is finally landing in stores this weekend. Running Android “Honeycomb” 3.2, the tablet was announced all the way back in January and due out in the first half of the year, but its release was delayed several times.

The A100 is powered by a Tegra 2 dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. The 7-inch screen has a resolution of 1024×600 at a 16:9 aspect ratio, and the tablet is Flash-equipped and can play 1080p video via an external monitor.

Physically, the tablet weighs 0.92 pounds and is just under half an inch thick, and its shape makes it “comfortable to grasp and thumb type,” according to This is my next. The A100 has a 1530 mAh battery that gets a meager 4.5 hours of 720p video playback, a 5-megapixel camera on the back, and a 2-megapixel one on the front.

In the press release, Acer targets moms and families specifically, promoting the A100′s facility with tasks like calendaring and e-mail. But the appealing price of the A100 suits its modest bracket: the 8GB WiFi model will be priced at $329.99 and the 16GB model at $349.99.

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Android 2.2 demolishes iOS4 in JavaScript benchmarks

Posted on July 7th, 2010 • Filed under Uncategorized • No Comments

Google’s Android mobile operating system got some significant performance improvements in version 2.2, codenamed Froyo. A high-performance JIT was introduced in Android’s Dalvik runtime environment and the browser got some very deep optimizations. These enhancements make Android’s performance more competitive than ever.

In our recent review of Android 2.2, we conducted some tests on the Nexus One to measure the extent of the JavaScript performance improvements. SunSpider and V8 benchmarks show that JavaScript execution in Froyo’s Web browser is almost three times faster than in the previous version of the platform.

We compared these findings with that of our tests of Apple’s mobile Safari browser on the iPhone 4. The results show that the Android device delivers significantly faster JavaScript execution than the iPhone, scoring over three times better on V8 and almost twice as fast on SunSpider. Apple has some work to do it if wants mobile Safari to retake the crown as the fastest mobile browser.

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Week in tech: Windows 8 details, bad capacitors, and Android 3.0

Posted on July 4th, 2010 • Filed under Uncategorized • No Comments

Is there ever a dull week in tech? The last seven days saw nothing less than our first serious leaks about Windows 8 features, the launch of Hulu Plus, Android 3.0 details, and damning allegations about Dell and its failure-prone hardware.

Windows 8 leak: an App Store for Windows, IE9 beta in August: Slides describing Microsoft’s plans and ambitions for the Windows 8 hardware and software ecosystem have been leaked. In the documents, the company outlines its plans for performance improvements and a Windows Store for third-party software sales.

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