Google Nexus 5 unvieled!

Google officially announced its latest flagship phone, the Nexus 5, during a press event today in San Francisco. The device will run the latest Android 4.4 KitKat operating system, and like its predecessor, it will be manufactured by LG.

However, the handset features several key changes, like a bigger 4.95-inch screen, a faster Snapdragon 800 processor, and most notably LTE support. It will be available unlocked at the Google Play Store for $349 (16GB) and $399 (32GB) starting today.

The handset measures 5.43 inches tall, 2.72 inches wide, and 0.34 inch thick, but weighs even less than the previous generation, at 4.59 ounces. Sporting the biggest screen yet in relation to past Nexuses, it has a 4.95-inch Corning Gorilla Glass 3 display. Keeping up with its competitors like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One, the Nexus 5's touch screen has a 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution and 445ppi. In contrast, the previous Nexus had a 1,280x768-pixel resolution with just 320 ppi.

Under the hood is a 2.3Ghz quad-core Snapdragon 800 and 2GB of RAM, pushing pixels to a glorious 5-inch 1080p display. LG has also seen fit to include wireless charging again, so you won't have to wear out that micro-USB port keeping the 2,300 mAh battery juiced, you can use it to power a TV over Slimport instead. You'll also find LTE, Bluetooth 4.0, dual-band 802.11ac WiFi and NFC on board - basically if there is a method of connecting to another device, the Nexus 5 has it.

 Credit : Cnet

"Now you have one version of the Android operating system that can ship across all versions of smartphones in 2014," Sundar Pichai, head of the Android and Chrome teams.

With Android KitKat, Google claims to have made the experience much more engaging. Google says, the new immersive mode in Android 4.4 automatically hides everything except what you want to see. Also with the new Hangouts app, all SMS and MMS messages will be together in the same place, alongside other conversations and video calls.

"It is a cutting-edge operating system meant to run on cutting-edge phones, but it can run on older phones as well," Pichai said.

Android KitKat 4.4 is here!

Google finally revealed the full details for Android 4.4 KitKat, the next version of its mobile operating system. But instead of delivering a raft of flashy new features to advance the mobile OS arms race, KitKat's most notable promise is to really fix the age-old Android problem of fragmentation.

The new mobile OS is based on efficiency that brings smartphones to "the next billion people," according to Android Senior VP Sundar Pichai. Google's own apps use less memory, and the interface will automatically scale back to fit on devices with only 512MB of RAM.

Most immediately obvious are a handful of design tweaks to the OS, which make Android cleaner and simpler than ever before. The status and notification bar are now translucent, and they disappear completely when you're in a fullscreen app; there's less chrome across the entire OS, and more space on the Nexus 5's five-inch display for whatever you're doing. There's a new launcher, a new condensed version of Google's Roboto font, and a generally lighter and cleaner look to Android. It's not nearly as stark a change as iOS 7 was, and generally speaking KitKat still looks a lot like Jelly Bean, but the design directions feel very similar.

Much of the interface has been streamlined. There's now a camera shortcut and more immersive "now playing" content on the lock screen, and there's an option to rearrange home screens. The navigation interface disappears when you're inside of supporting apps, giving back real estate on devices without hardware keys. The dialer and Hangouts make it easy to search for nearby addresses; fans of self-expression will be glad to hear that emoji icons are available in the keyboard. New frameworks bring both AirPrint-like wireless printing and support for third-party cloud storage in the Gallery app. Behind the scenes, Google is improving battery life through sensor batching, which cuts back on data requests. Developers can write apps that support infrared control, pedometer-like step counting and a carrier-independent NFC payment architecture.

Hangouts is one of the key features of Android 4.4, far more integrated into the operating system than ever before. Where there was once a Messages icon, there is now only Hangouts — the app was just updated to integrate SMS, and work better for voice calling, and it's now part of the way you'll talk to other people on Android. Texting, instant messaging, even voice and video calling, are all now done through Hangouts – it's like a combination of FaceTime and iMessage into a single application. If you don't want to use Hangouts, of course, you can select your own default texting app in KitKat.

There's built-in support for step detector and step counter sensors, so your phone can act as a pedometer without requiring apps developers to build fancy algorithms in order to detect when you're taking a step. The new Nexus 5 has those sensors built in. There's also a new API for IR blasters, so manufacturers can more easily build smartphones and tablets that can control your television and home theatre equipment, and a new screen recording utilty that can let you capture a video of what you're doing with your smartphone and store it as an MP4 file.

KitKat also puts a stronger emphasis on Google's main business, search. Voice search is going hands-free through keyword activation, and it will ask questions if it needs clarification. The speech recognition engine is about 25 percent more accurate, according to Google.

Android 4.4, KitKat, which comes on Nexus 5, will also soon be available on Nexus 4, 7, 10, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One Google Play edition devices in the coming weeks, and hopefully everyone else in the not-to-distant future.

For more details : http://www.android.com/versions/kit-kat-4-4/

Google stock crosses $1000 mark

Credit : Reuters

(Reuters) - Google Inc (GOOG.O) shares jumped past $1,000 on Friday as investors bet on the Internet company's continued dominance of the mobile and video advertising businesses despite aggressive competition from Facebook Inc (FB.O) and Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O).

Shortly after the markets opened Friday, Google Inc. shares jumped 14 percent to $1,015.46 and closed a day heavy trading at $1,011.41. The gains marked Google’s biggest one-day jump in more than five years.

At the $1,000 mark, Google shares were up 41% from the beginning of the year, and the company's market value reached $334 billion, still shy of leader Apple's $461 billion.

The company’s next big update could come in the form of Android 4.4 KitKat and the Nexus 5, which are expected any day now.