Tag: andorid

On buying the Boox palma 2

I bought the Palma 1st edition and then the 2nd edition.

As most of you know I have a sweet spot for eink/epaper, buying my first ereader in the form of a Sony ereader, moved to the kindle and then the Android based Likebook. During that time I also have a long history with the Pebble smartwatch.

I bought the Palma 1 because it fitted with a need to have a second Android device as a backup and to replace my old Likebook. Just as I bought it, they announced a Android 13 upgrade and I searched for the firmware which seemed to be only available in Asia? Then soon after the Palma 2 was announced with a few tweaks I would use including fingerprint support, better processor and higher microSD levels. Seeing I could pre-order it but also return the Palma 1 for no extra cost; I jumped.

It shipped a month later and I got it last week. Its great just like the last one with a few extras, which I understand most don’t care about.

A few things are strange, including access to authy and a few apps which don’t run as expected. The strange part, is that authy on the Palma 1 worked correctly? I assume it’s a API problem but annoying and reminds me of my plan to move away from authy. Another thing I noticed is keepassx won’t allow the fingerprint access to be saved. I got a feeling this might be the problem?

I’m sure these will be solved over time… fingers crossed.

If it wasn’t for me being able to send the old one back, I wouldn’t upgrade but I got lucky…

Epic games serves up some 1984 on the app stores

 

Epic battle unfolds

Its been a Epic (Pun intended) battle going back and forth for Epic games and the app stores (Apple & Google).

For mobile developers the 30% cut has been a talking point for a long while but the fact you can’t use other payment systems really put the foxes in the hen house. I won’t get into details as there are others which do a much better job. I love this timeline

But I found the Fortnite 1984 trailer absolutely spot on. Pointing directly at Apple and their classic 1984 advert.  Although to be fair like most big companies, Epic isn’t clean in this area but the monopoly & closed doors of the app stores is a big deal. Its very clear Epic games planned the lawsuit, the 1984 and the trigger event in a perfectly planned check move (chess).

Shall we get the popcorn ready for this clash of the titans?

Regardless of what happens, I’m sure mobile developers will massively benefit from Epic pulling the trigger. Of course many other big names have also jumped in behind Epic.

Android App inventor 2 tempting me away from Webstandards

A long time ago , I blogged about Google’s App inventor. then  noticed Google gave it away to MIT who redeveloped it into something more usable. Recently App inventor has been upgraded to version 2 and it has some niffy features, including a live view which shows you the working app on a connected phone.

I’ve have been thinking about creating little apps for personal reason, for example a Tokyo maps app which doesn’t show ads. Its the little things. But something keeps me thinking about using the web standards and instead building a webapp.

I almost added to my new years resolutions…

Develop a webapp which runs on the Mozilla Firefox phone and takes advantage of Ubuntu’s webapp features.

I was slightly inspired by Bristlr not going the standard app way. I was a little deflated by the way Android didn’t have a way to launch straight into the webapp (except as a bookmark it seems).

I prefer to work directly with open webstandards but App inventor is very tempting… Now if I could create webapps using app inventor…