Android 4.0 is finally getting out on phones and tablets according to Google’s dashboard. Surprisingly, the next version, Jelly Bean, is gaining adoption quickly too. Google’s Wallet now supports more credit and debit cards while T-Mobile’s Galaxy Note blurs the lines between smartphone and tablet.
The Google Wallet mobile payment service hasn’t yet taken off, partly because of limitations. Wallet originally launched on a single smartphone — Sprint’s Nexus S — hasn’t been embraced by other carriers and was limited to a single credit card option. Wallet works well for payments in places that accept it and with some changes this week, more people could be using it in the near future.
Android 4.0 is seeing more usage, as well. For that matter, so is Android 4.1, which only launched last month. Google’s dashboard that shows the version number of Android devices hitting the Google Play store was updated this week. The number of phones and tablets running Android 4.0 nearly doubled to from the prior month, accounting for 15.9 percent of the total Android population visiting the Play store. Jelly Bean, or Android 4.1 quickly went from zero to 0.8 percent; impressive considering how few devices run the software.
Part of the reason for this boost is because handset makers are finally upgrading older devices to Android 4.0, which debuted in October of last year. That’s good news for consumers due to the improved look and feel of the platform over the old Android 2.3 software; now more than 18 months old. The other factor is Google’s Nexus 7 tablet which ships with Jelly Bean. No official sales figures have been revealed yet, but based on Jelly Bean already nearing one percent of devices in under a month, combined with Nexus 7 orders held up due to demand, Google looks to have a hit tablet of its own.
That leads to the definition of a tablet, which the Samsung Galaxy Note may meet. The 5.3-inch phone is often called a “phablet” due to being both smartphone and small tablet. Although the device hit the market months ago, T-Mobile has just picked it up and I got an early look. As you can see by my video overview, the Galaxy Note — mostly unchanged from the AT&T version although it ships with Android 4.0 — is big but thin, a solid performer and likely a two-handed device for most people.
Timing could be important for this device’s launch as Samsung has confirmed it will be announcing a successor device later this month. The Galaxy Note II is rumored to have an even larger 5.5-inch screen; not surprising to me as I believe tablets will replace smartphones for most within the next several years.
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The top seller this year may already be Samsung’s Galaxy S III, which only launched in late May. This week, Samsung announced 10 million sales of its flagship phone and that surely helped the company’s overall handset sales figure. Samsung hit record profits — $4.5 billion — in the second quarter of 2012 and according to IDC estimates, sold 50.2 million handsets during that time period.
Of course, there’s room for other smartphones in the market too; this week one new phone was announced, while another was leaked. Sprint announced a 4G LTE update to the original Motorola Photon Q, coming in the near future. At 960 x 540 resolution, the 4.3-inch screen won’t have the most dense pixel count, but nearly all other components are appealing: A 1.5 GHz dual-core processor;, Android 4.0.4; 8 megapixel camera; five-row keyboard; and world phone capabilities with support for CDMA, EVDO, GSM and LTE.