Android Mobiles

Another great development coming from this year’s Mobile World Congress is the launch of Opera Mobile browser to Android. Opera announced in a news release that it will unveil Opera Mobile 10 for Android at Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona. Hopefully, we will see the Opera Mobile to be somewhat similar to the version for Windows Mobile!

Opera will unveil a host of other Opera-powered devices at its exhibit. Check out the following Opera technology, live from MWC:

Opera Mobile 10 beta running on Android handsets

Any of our Phandroid readers fans of the Opera Mobile browser? Have you used it on your past WinMo device and disappointed with your new Android device without Opera? Let us know, we are interested in who prefers the Opera Mobile browser in comparison to the default or Dolphin brower.

One of the developers on the Mozilla Firefox team is a guy named Vladimir Vukićević and he has just made a really interesting post on his blog about Firefox and Android. Basically, they’ve got the FULL FIREFOX browser working on Android and although it has some kinks (which he explains) it seems to be working really well.

Why the full Firefox? Because it’s much more complex and complicated to get running on Android… so if they can do THIS version they can do anything. Not a bad approach.

I like some of the things I had to hear about his experience with Android:

• Porting Firefox/Fennec to Android is progressing at a good clip
• Android has been pretty great to work with so far;
• It’s a bit unusual platform for us due to its Java core, but with the NDK we’re able to bridge things together without many problems.

As for the outlook of completion? Nothing to get too excited about but a product is definitely in-the-works and they’re optimistic:

We’re still a ways  to go before any kind of usable alpha release, but we’re certainly one step closer.  We’ll also be able to accelerate our progress now that we have some of the basic scaffolding in place.  I know I’m looking forward to running Fennec on my Droid, and there are tons of Android devices coming out that should be great platforms for Fennec.

Eagerly awaiting!

[Via Giz]

Google just added the Near Me Now feature to their mobile searches – but only for Android and iPhone users. Now Google Mobile gives you popular image results during your search from your handset. Under the search box, you will now see some of the top popular corresponding images along with a link to “Browse Popular Images”. Following the link will open a categorized list of image searches and related images.

Seems like one more minor improvement but when added with all the other small improvements the growth seems pretty vast. Any ideas as to what Google Mobile will introduce next?

[via Google Mobile Blog]

UPDATE: It appears that February was a bit “optimistic” and Firefox for Android is more likely several months away although progress is being made quickly. To follow progress of the project visit this link.

Good news for those looking to replace the stock Android browser on your device. The first beta version of Firefox for Android (Fennec) will be released in February 2010. Currently, Firefox is among the most popular PC browsers, and my personal favorite. We have seen Fennec operating on the Nokia N900, but now with Firefox for Android the company’s plans go even further.

Mozilla’s Fennec browser for Android OS has been in the works for awhile but with its imminent release (beta version), its time to get psyched!

[via AndroidSpin]