I’ve not posted about the state of Android for over a year. In my last post I see we were on the verge of Gingerbread and I was using a Desire HD, well, much has changed since then!
Shortly after that I moved on to a Samsung Nexus S, which lasted me around 3 or 4 months until I moved on to my first dual core CPU phone, the Samsung Galaxy SII.
What an amazing phone this was. Even better was what it did for our UK Android site hemorrdroids.net. I got the phone on release day and did an unboxing.
Even now, if you search ‘Samsung Galaxy S2 unboxing’ on YouTube, my video is the first (non promoted) video in the results! This meant we had quite an explosion in video views. Possibly fueled by the fact the US didn’t even have access to the phone until much later into the year, the video has now pushed past the 1 million views mark! Rather annoyingly, we couldn’t put Google Ads on it for the first couple of months, so lost out on quite a bit of income. Still, now we are YouTube Partners, we have ads on anything we want, right from the beginning!
The Galaxy SII did me well for around 7 months. I loved this phone, light, thin, powerful, amazing screen, but with the Galaxy Nexus on the horizon, I knew it would be moving on. I spent a couple of weeks with the huge 5.3″ Galaxy Note before picking a Nexus up on launch day before flying out to California.
Being one of the first 100 in the world to buy the Galaxy Nexus, Samsung sent me lots of vouchers. Two VISA gift cards totaling £175, intended for buying books and movies from the Android Market, but accepted pretty much anyway and a £100 Bonusbond card, which I will keep until I need something from John Lewis or Argos. The gift cards came in very hand. I have bought a few books on Google Books and in Kindle form from Amazon, but they also came in handy for buying Christmas presents!
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus itself is an interesting talking point for the Android community. It split many Galaxy SII owners as in theory it perhaps isn’t quite as good hardware as the 7 month old SII, but the new 4.0 OS ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ and the fact it’s a Nexus device has lured many people over. The Nexus S, which Robert now has, got the ICS update only a month after the Galaxy Nexus was released. The SII and others (such as the high power 1.4ghz Note) probably wont get an official update until 4 or 5 months in to 2012.
The Ice Cream Sandwich OS itself is a huge step forward for Google and Android and closes the gap between it and Apple’s iOS. Some time ago Google hired a guy called Matias Duarte from Palm to try and improve Androids User Interface. Many people suggest the great look of ICS is down to Matias and his influence.
This, along with the gorgeous design of the Galaxy Nexus, which has the curves of the Nexus S and the thin and light feel of the SII make it an amazing phone. It’ll certainly keep me going until Samsung Release the Galaxy SIII at some point this year.
Android’s numbers have mushroomed over 2011, it’s no longer the lesser known OS. In my last post, Android had moved to 18% of the phone market and Apple has 15%. Well now according to Comscore, Android has 46.9% of the Smartphone market, compared to 28.7% held by Apple. That’s a pretty dominant position for Android to be in and as ICS finds its way onto more and more devices, Android will possibly continue to grow.
Here’s to a great 2012 for Android!