If you were a hardworking software developer building popular and well-selling apps, you would be pretty frustrated, to say the least, if you realized one day that you are getting underpaid for your work, right? That is pretty much what is going on at camp Android right now – a number of software developers are reporting that the amount of money they are being paid through Google Checkout for their software does not match the number of times their apps have been purchased from the Android Market.

The issue was brought up about two weeks ago and it seems like Google is well aware of it. However, a solution to the problem is still nowhere in sight even though the company has promised to take care of it in a timely manner. What is causing all the troubles is not exactly clear just now, but it looks like Google Checkout is not processing all orders correctly resulting in a number of downloads being marked as shipped, yet the respective developer account does not get credited for that. Nevertheless, it has been confirmed that all developers who got underpaid will have their account balances fixed and will get reimbursed for the missing amount of money.

source: Android Market Forums via Electronista

The whole injunction against Samsung for violating Apple’s intellectual property in design patents with its Galaxy Tab 10.1 has leaked now, and Apple is apparently using design drawings of its own tablets, in order to demonstrate the alleged similarities.

The pan-European ban of Samsung’s latest and greatest tablet excludes the Netherlands, but the trial there is going on right now, and might result in the slate being banned everywhere in the EU. The German law allows this, even without notifying the other side about the proceedings, but if the plaintiff doesn’t have a strong enough case, they might end up paying damages for the incurred loss of revenue.

The injunction document explicitly asks for a ban on “using, in particular, manufacturing, offering (including advertising), introducing into the market, importing, exporting and/or possessing for the said purposes” of Samsung’s gizmo, pictures of which are placed next to Apple design drawings in the motion as illustrated below:

The Dusseldorf court decision comes at a time when the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was preparing an assault on the European market, and a promo about it has been spotted at the big consumer electronics retailer MediaMarkt already, which you can see on the right here.

Forrester Research even raised its prediction for non-iPad tablet sales from 20% to 30% of the market in Europe this year, unlike the US, where the iPad hold 80%.

The analysts attribute this to the fact that Apple doesn’t have as big of a retail presence in Europe as in the US, and, also, the European carriers had started offering pretty enticing bundles, where the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is deeply subsidized if you purchase with a carrier contract.

source: FOSSPatents & Moconews

The rise of McDonald’s burgers has been slow but steady – the franchise took nearly half a century to sell a hundred billion burgers. But today’s mental staple food – apps – don’t have that time. With a smartphone in nearly every pocket have they managed to outpace our need for burgers? Well, not that those two are somehow interchangeable, but this infographic does well in illustrating what a brilliant job Apple and Google have done in distributing apps as both are well on track of delivering its 100 billionth application.

While now the app download count stands at some 15 billion for Apple, a milestone proudly announced by the company a couple of weeks ago, the rate at which users download application is only speeding up. Actually, if it follows the envisioned pattern, in a mere five years and a half since its launch the App Store may reach McDonald’s 100 billion mark.

You might wonder where does that leave Android and rightly so. The platform has been enjoying booming popularity as it covers devices from the low-end to high-end, and subsequently app downloads are growing even faster there. The time span expected for it to reach the same milestone is just 3.5 years. Bottomline seems to be that you could only eat so many burgers, while app gluttony with a 100 billion apps might seem insatiable. Have you found your app downloads growing with time?

source: TheAtlantic

Oh, the horror! Following the patent bickering with Apple, Samsung has been banned from selling its Galaxy Tab line in the EU for now by a German court. Netherlands is the only country where it will be legal to sell Samsung’s best Android slate across the European Union.

A similar thing happened in Australia recently, where the first reports actually pegged Samsung as voluntarily stopping the sales and marketing of the Galaxy Tab 10.1, until the courts issue a statement on Apple’s claims.

Samsung’s Director of PR Kim Titus reacted immediately:

“Samsung is disappointed with the court’s decision and we intend to act immediately to defend our intellectual property rights through the ongoing legal proceedings in Germany and will continue to actively defend these rights throughout the world.

The request for injunction was filed with no notice to Samsung, and the order was issued without any hearing or presentation of evidence from Samsung.

We will take all necessary measures to ensure Samsung’s innovative mobile communications devices are available to customers in Europe and around the world.

This decision by the court in Germany in no way influences other legal proceedings filed with the courts in Europe and elsewhere.”, he comments.

The case is being reviewed in the Regional Court of Dusseldorf, a place where everyone uses iPhones. We kid, but due to its decisions being valid across the European Union, the ban only spares the Netherlands for some reason – in every other EU country the Samsung distributors will have to place a hold on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales campaigns.

source: Reuters

Those New York Mets fans among our loyal readers should know that they are not imagining things. Perhaps you thought that you have seen so much of the Motorola DROID Bionic lately that the image of the phone is permanently seared into your eyes. The truth here is that with a Verizon store at Field Level in Citi Field, there are pictures of the Motorola DROID Bionic all over the ballpark.

What you are seeing in the picture below is a sign on a wall at the stadium that promotes the Verizon location at Citi Field, home to the Mets. And what phone is pictured? Why, it’s none other than the Motorola DROID Bionic, even though the phone has not yet officially been introduced. And who is staring back at us from the DROID Bionic’s 4.3 inch qHD screen? It’s the Big Apple’s favorite baseball headed character, Mr. Met.

We wonder how many of the nearly 25,000 in attendance at the game spotted the ads and noticed that it was the Motorola DROID Bionic that was pictured. It is just another sign that we are getting close to the launch of the long awaited device. When it comes to the DROID Bionic, it’s time for Verizon to “Play Ball!”

source: AndroidCentral

Mr. Met stars in a promotional ad for the Motorola DROID Bionic

Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha spoke Tuesday at the Oppenheimer Annual Technology & Communications Conference. Jha made some news with his comments. Speaking about the mythical Motorola DROID Bionic, Jha says the long awaited beast is important, but not the only device in Motorola’s lineup. That could be a tip of the hat to some of the manufacturer’s recent launches like the Motorola PHOTON 4G and the Motorola DROID 3. Or, perhaps it foreshadows a quad-core Ice Cream Sandwich powered monster far beyond our thought capabilities at the current moment, that will be presented at next year’s CES.

Motorola’s tablet offerings are going to have “much more aggressive form factors” in the second half of this year with cheaper models offering Wi-Fi only connectivity and bringing features for the enterprise user. Jha also told the attendees that his company will have less fragmentation with a more streamlined world-wide branding in order to save big bucks on advertising and promotion. Sounding as though he would act immediately to implement a new marketing campaign, Jha wants to copy Samsung’s brand strategy. For example, the Galaxy line is known around the globe and encompasses different phone and tablet models. Jha wants to be able to have a number of global launches among carriers world wide and then use a singular ad and marketing campaign to drive sales. The CEO said that,”You will see with global launches, much greater consistency.” It all brings new meaning to Motorola’s announcement the other day about the company registering some domain names with the word “Kore” used in all of them. There was some speculation that Kore could be the title of Motorola’s successor to the Xoom tablet, but in light of Jha’s comments, it could have an entirely different meaning.

The Motorola DROID was the first Android handset with 2.0 aboard, and that helped drive sales which helped spawn Androidmania. But what about being the first with Ice Cream Sandwich? The CEO said, “It depends. I would say by and large I would like to be the first. But there are times when being the first to launch has greater schedule uncertainty. You are taking more chances with new innovation in the beginning and sometimes that has negative impact. By and large, largely it’s a very positive thing.”

source: DroidLife

Oh messaging, it has seriously become one of the most dominant forms of communication in our age, but seeing that Facebook is known for keeping people together, it’s only inevitable to see them concoct some sort of messaging app.

Of course, you can message friends by using the various Facebook apps out there, but you’re generally limited to interacting with one specific individual at a time. Well, that’s where their brand new Messenger app comes to mind as it simplifies how messaging is accomplished – while making the task of contacting multiple people very simple.

Specifically, the Messenger app delivers messages through notifications and texts – meaning, there’s more of a chance that they’ll see the message right away. Not only are you given a threaded conversation view, but you can chit chat with multiple contacts as well, which means that everyone included in the conversation will be aware of what’s being talked about.

Additionally, it features the ability for you to coordinate your plans more effectively seeing that locations can be attached to conversations – thus, keeping everyone in the loop if your plans on going out change constantly. Not only that, but you can even attach photos to reduce the hassle of sending it individually to everyone.

For those drooling at the chance of checking out the new app, it’s available for both iPhone and Android right now, however, there’s no word about any additional platforms getting it.

source: Facebook Blog

A source for BGR is saying that Google, possibly feeling the heat from an expected late September/early October launch of the Apple iPhone 5, is planning on moving up the release of Ice Cream Sandwich and the early devices that will be powered by the latest Android build. One possibility is that a next-gen model of the Nexus line will be the first or among the first handsets to rollout with the latest Android build.

While at this point everything pertaining to an Ice Cream Sandwich launch is mere speculation, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a launch of an early Ice Cream Sandwich device on Verizon since the carrier will have a large number of ready made buyers with all of those Motorola DROID owners coming up to the 2 year anniversary of their purchase. And of course, Verizon will presumably be one of the carriers that will be offering the Apple iPhone 5 when it is launched. Google will want to re-up those Motorola DROID owners with expiring contracts before they get a gander of what the next iPhone might bring.

source: BGR

As far back as May, we managed to hear about the HTC Bliss being pegged as a handset that’s specifically catered for women, but up until now, we’re heard very little else in regards to its hardware and software.

Some might have wondered what the HTC Bliss will be packing under the hood, but it appears as though it’s along the lines of a mid-range handset. According to rumors, the handset will feature an 800MHz Qualcomm MSM7×30 CPU with an Adreno 205 GP, which should go well with the Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread experience it’s set to offer.

Interestingly enough, it might be one of the very first devices to feature HTC Sense 3.5, which is something that’s rather peculiar considering that the latest one available is Sense 3.0. Already, we’ve seen devices like the HTC EVO 3D and Sensation 4G showing off the latest Sense experience. However, what separates them from the HTC Bliss is the fact that they’re powered by some beefy hardware – whereas the Bliss isn’t the fastest thing on the block.

Knowing that, it’ll be interesting to see how HTC pulls the whole thing off – especially when Sense 3.0 is one graphically intensive customized Android experience already.

via Pocketnow

Not to be forgotten amongst the heap of newer Honeycomb tablets that are on the market, the 3D video recording capable T-Mobile G-Slate is more than likely to start receiving its Honeycomb 3.1 tasting tomorrow; August 10th.

Actually, LG says that they’ll be rolling it out some time today, but device owners would more than likely see it come in tomorrow – especially when it’s being rolled out in waves. Either way, it’s expected to arrive over the course of the next few days for the majority of people.

As we all know, Android 3.1 Honeycomb isn’t a dramatic upgrade, but rather, T-Mobile G-Slate owners will find the host of improvements to be more than satisfactory in the near term. In fact, it features some UI refinements, connectivity for USB accessories, the recent apps list is now scrollable to see all opened apps, certain core widgets are resizable, support for external keyboard, and some updates to some of the preloaded apps.

Taking into account that it was one of the very first Honeycomb tablets to arrive on the scene, the update surely did take some time to come to fruition, but it’s nonetheless nice to see it finally here.

source: LG via TmoNews