The long-awaited Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) update for Samsung Galaxy S II has started rolling out today.
The update is already available via Kies in several countries (more than just the few mentioned in the press release) and is 216.09 MB in size.
Official press release info:
“Samsung Electronics announced the availability of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) software upgrade for GALAXY SII. The upgrade will begin in European countries including Poland, Hungary, Sweden, as well as Korea today and gradually roll out to other markets”
Chrome for Android (Beta) has been released, but only for Android 4.0+ Ice Cream Sandwich, at least for the time being.
The download is available on the Android Market, but only in certain countries for now.
If you want to try Chrome on your 4.0 device but can’t find it in the Android Market, you can download the APK file and install it manually.
So, I’ve provided a mirror of the APK file for download:
Download the Chrome for Android APK
Please note that it requires a device running Android 4.0 or newer (aka ICS or Ice Cream Sandwich), plus an ARMv7 processor.
At the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco yesterday, the Khronos Group released the official royalty-free version 1.0 of the WebGL specs, alongside free tools to assist in the testing and development of WebGL applications.
WebGL is an open standard made to support 3D graphics directly inside of web browsers, without any plugins. All the browser needs is full HTML 5 support, while WebGL requires OpenGL ES 2.0 support in the hardware, a very widespread driver these days.
[important]At the time of writing, Google Chrome 9.0 is the only browser that supports WebGL in a stable implementation. Firefox, Opera and Safari browsers should all be available with WebGL 1.0 support in their stable versions soon. In the meantime, currently available beta versions already implement support for WebGL.[/important]
In their official press release, Khronos tries to explain how WebGL works and why it should become the standard for 3D inside browsers: “WebGL defines a JavaScript binding to OpenGL® ES 2.0 to allow rich 3D graphics within a browser on any platform supporting the industry-standard OpenGL or OpenGL ES graphics APIs.”
Not quite there yet!
“Support for paid application sales is now expanded to developers in 29 countries, with today’s additions of Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan.
In addition, Android Market users from 32 countries will be able to buy apps, with the addition of Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, and Taiwan. No action is necessary if you have targeted your paid apps to be available to “All Locations” and would like to launch in these additional countries. If you have not selected “All Locations” and would like to target these additional countries, or if you have selected “All Locations” and do not want to launch your apps in these additional buyer countries, please visit the Android Market publisher site regularly over the next two weeks to make the necessary adjustments as the new buyer countries launch.”
The Sony Ericsson “Rachael” is an upcoming Android-based smartphone from Sony Ericsson rumoured to feature a Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, which has awesome performance at clock speeds of 1-1.5 GHz depending on how they implement it. I bet it will be running at 1 GHz though.
The built-in camera sports an 8.1 MP sensor with auto-focus, while 3D-acceleration support boosts the usability of its many promising widgets.
For your mobile YouTube or TommyNation video streaming needs, 3.5G support is of course included with a 7.2Mbps HSDPA radio unit. Now if that doesn’t earn me some commissions…
