Outlook for iOS and Android Review

Even if you're obsessive about checking email on your phone, there's a good chance you do little more than read and quickly respond to messages on the go. Microsoft's new dedicated Outlook app for iOS and Android aims to change that.

Based on the framework of Acompli, an all-inclusive email app recently acquired by Microsoft, the mobile version of Outlook is designed to put your most important messages front and center, with useful quick controls that let you organize your inbox and respond to invites with a few taps.

Sporting a user-friendly interface and deep integration with cloud storage services like Dropbox and iCloud, you just might find it worthwhile to ditch your phone's default mail app for the all-new Outlook.

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What Google's Unpatched Android Flaws Mean for You

Google caused a stir in the information-security industry this month by publicly disclosing flaws in the software of its rivals Apple and Microsoft. But now Google is itself taking heat for leaving two flaws in its own Android mobile operating system unpatched.

The first flaw, in the WebView component of Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and older, will stay unpatched for "practical" reasons. The second, in Android's implementation of the Wi-Fi Direct protocol, may eventually receive a patch, but Google insists the bug is a low priority since it isn't as severe as its critics make it out to be. 

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Update Nexus 4 to Android 5.0.2 Lollipop via Barebones ROM with LTE, HD voice and improved battery

Barebones is a new custom ROM available for the fourth-generation Nexus smartphone codenamed Mako. It provides an efficient and minimal groundwork for Nexus 4 users to customise their device the way they want to. The ROM is compiled from updated sources and modified to be as lightweight as possible.

The ROM optimises the battery life of the smartphone, enables LTE, HD voice and contains working Android RunTime. Also, most of the stock apps, live wallpapers, and bloatwares are removed by this ROM.

Head over to the XDA source thread to know more about the ROM which features newer Android Lollipop version 5.0.2. 

If you want to update your Nexus 4 to Android 5.0.2 using the ROM, check out the followinginstallation guide. 

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One Of Google's Earliest Android Employees Explains Where It Loses To The iPhone

The Android versus iOS rivalry has been ongoing for nearly 10 years.

As of Q3 2014, Android owned more than 80% of the smartphone market around the world, but that's split between the dozens of different companies that produce Android phones. About 12% of devices around the world run on iOS, but that money goes straight back to Apple.

There's no clear answer as to which one is winning, but a few mobile executives recently provided some insight to The Information as to how developers view the mobile ecosystem.

Tom Moss, CEO and co-founder of a service called Nextbit that helps you sync data between Android devices, said he doesn't believe Android is offering anything different that makes it more appealing than iOS.

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Android KitKat eats up 39% of market; Lollipop still off radar

Android phone makers and carriers are filling up more devices with KitKat. Lollipop? Not so much.

In its latest Android Developers Dashboardposted earlier this week, Google revealed a 39.1 percent market share for Android 4.4 KitKat. Specifically, that percentage reflects the Android devices that visited the Google Play store during the seven days ending January 5.

Launched in October 2013, KitKat has been climbing the charts lately. The 39.1 percent share showed a steady rise from 33.9 percent a month ago, 30.2 percent the prior month and 25 percent in early September.

That's good news for people craving KitKat. But what about Android users who want a taste of Lollipop, the latest version of Google's mobile OS? Google has promoted Lollipop with a brand new design concept known as Material that offers animations and other visual effects. But where is it?

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Almost Nobody Is Using The Latest Version Of Android

Almost nobody is using Google’s latest and most ambitious update to its Android operating system. Based on the company’s latest numbers charted for us by BI Intelligence, less than 0.1% of all Android devices are running the latest version, called Lollipop. It doesn't even appear on the chart, because we don't show distributions with less than 0.1% adoption.

Most Android users are still on Android Jelly Bean (46% of devices), followed by KitKat (39.1%), the most recent version of Android that came out before Lollipop. Android suffers from a ton of "fragmentation" — that is, many different versions of the software out at the same time — because Google gives third parties like hardware makers and carriers lots of leeway on what they can do with the platform. It’s difficult to roll out new updates since each new software edition must pass through so many different channels before it reaches the end user. Unfortunately, this makes it hard for developers trying to build Android apps — which version do they build for?

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