Google announced that in June, customers can order the handset through the Google Play store. Instead of the phone running Samsung’s customized TouchWiz software, it will instead run on pure Android, just like the Nexus 4. That means it will get future software updates directly through Google and not Samsung or a network provider.

Of course, some of the newest Samsung features won’t be present on the phone: I wouldn’t expect Samsung’s new camera modes to be there, nor would I expect gestures to work for hands-free scrolling or swiping. Still, in light of no new Nexus hardware, the unlocked handset could appeal to hardcore Android enthusiasts.

So without the release of Android 4.3 at Google I/O, does that mean Android hasn’t improved? Not at all; in fact, Google essentially boosted Android’s software without needing to wait for carriers and handset makers to upgrade the software. How did this happen? A large part of the 3.5 hour Google I/O keynote was dedicated to new Android services and APIs, plus a new application called Hangouts.

The new Hangouts app replaces Google Talk and is Google’s effort to unify its messaging platform. The app supports video calls with up to 10 participants, SMS notifications of incoming chat requests when offline, text chat and works across platforms: You can communication with other users on the web or on iOS devices. Hangouts also highlights a great new feature in Android: Support for synchronized notifications. If you get a notification on one device and take action, the notification won’t appear on other devices or in the Chrome browser.

Google also introduced its music subscription and discovery service called Google Play Music All Access. For a $9.99 monthly fee — $7.99 if you start a 30-day trial by June 30 — you get unlimited access to stream tracks thought the Play Music app and on the web. Human curators surface top songs and albums while music recommendations come from Google’s Knowledge Graph and your Google+ circles.

Gaming got a supercharge in Android as well. Developers can use the new Google Play Games services that allow cross-platform gaming complete with achievements and leaderboards. Game progress can also be saved to the cloud, allowing gamers to pick up where the left off, even from another device.

Android also saw one other big announcement this week, but it didn’t happen at Google I/O. The Bluetooth SIG announced that Android will gain support for Bluetooth Smart and Smart Ready devices in the coming months. That’s likely to be included in an actual Android release as some developers told me that Google will be completely changing the Bluetooth software stack in Android. Regardless, this means widespread support for Bluetooth 4.0 Smart and Smart Ready accessories such as watches, heart rate monitors and other low-powered companion devices.

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I think it’s a very safe bet that we will see a refreshed Nexus and it will indeed have a high-resolution display. And I agree with Kuo that Google will likely move from an Nvidia Tegra 3 chip to a newer Qualcomm Snapdragon as well, although there’s an off-chance that Nvidia’s Tegra 4 is used. But I have two concerns.

One is the price. Today the Nexus 7 starts at an attractive $199 for the base Wi-Fi model. I can’t see Google pricing a base Nexus 7 with 1080p (or better) display at under $249. Between the screen, processor and (likely) additional RAM, a new Nexus 7 could even cost upwards of $299 to start. And that brings up my second concern: Apps.

If a newer Nexus 7 starts at $299, that price is very close to the iPad mini’s $329 cost. Yes, the Nexus would have the much better screen — at least for now — but iOS apps often offer a better experience because they’re specifically made for tablet screens. While there has been some progress with Android tablet apps, I still find many titles aren’t optimized for larger screens or higher-resolution displays. Regardless, I’m looking forward to seeing what Google announces next week in regards to Android tablets.

It’s possible that Google could also bring its Android @Home initiative back to the forefront. My colleague, Janko Roettgers shared some thoughts on the connected home platform Google announced two years ago: We really haven’t heard much since then, but Janko found information that points to official news:

“Android @Home is far from dead. Android enthusiasts recently found traces of Android @Home in the Android 4.2.2 update. And some casual searches on LinkedIn reveal that the company isn’t just maintaining the team, but actively hiring and adding people to the fold. There are industrial designers and software engineers “working on Android@Home cloud services,” managers who’ve been working on “Nexus Q and other fun things to come” and numerous other people listing Android@ Home as their current area of work. A bunch of them have actually been hired in 2013.”

We’ll find later next week if Janko is right. I also expect Google to finally introduce its “X Phone” initiative with Motorola.  A new handset sailed through FCC testing, notes PhoneScoop, that’s Motorola-branded and appears similar to leaked X Phone images from a few weeks ago on 9to5Google.

Little is known about the device or even if Motorola had the product in the pipeline prior to Google buying the company. If the phone does debut at Google I/O, I wouldn’t expect it to take the place of Google’s Nexus phone line. Instead, it would likely complement the Nexus, mainly because the Nexus devices are targeted at developers and heavy-duty enthusiasts.

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The details were found this week by the SamMobile site, which has a good track record for Samsung’s upcoming plans. According to the road map, the 11-inch tablet will use Samsung’s Exynos 5410 chip, which has one high performance quad-core processor for heavy duty tasks and a lesser quad-core processor for lighter tasks. This approach should offer power when apps demand it but be light on battery life due to offloading simpler tasks.

No indication of the screen resolution appeared in the leaked data, but Google’s current Nexus 10 tablet offers a 2560 x 1600 resolution display. At the very least, I’d expect Google to use a 1920 x 1200 resolution screen for a Nexus 11, if not the same as what the Nexus 10 currently offers. The only reason I can think of using a lesser resolution is to keep the price down. The tablet will reportedly also offer a pair of cameras and — in a first for a Nexus device since the original Nexus One in 2010 — a micro SD expansion card slot.

Fans of Android hardware will have to wait until May 15 to see if Google releases a new Nexus, but those looking for a new phone have another choice now. AT&T introduced the LG Optimus G Pro as an exclusive this week. I just received a review unit and my initial impressions are very positive.

I can already say this is the nicest phone hardware LG has designed and built. The device also reminds me of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 that I own: Both have similar screen sizes, for example, although the LG Optimus G Pro is slightly narrower and has a full HD screen. LG’s user interface is also quite nice and polished. I’ll have a full review in the near future, but so far, LG has shown me it can build an Android phone that competes with the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and HTC One.

New hardware is always nice but sometimes it’s better to re-purpose old devices. That’s exactly what I did with an old Nintendo Wii Fit Balance Board thanks to a free Android app called FitScales.

The software lets you wirelessly connect an Android phone to the Balance Board via Bluetooth. When standing on the board, your weight and BMI are sent to your phone, where the data can be automatically synchronized with either a RunKeeper or FitBit account: no need to buy a new Wi-Fi scale!

This post was updated at 7:00 am, May 6, to reflect that Google’s Nexus One had a micro SD slot.

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While there is something undeniably creepy about the Google Now service, I have to admit that it is also very useful — so much so that I couldn’t imagine going on a trip without it. I’m already imagining how it and other kinds of “anticipatory data” services (including Google News updates) might work through Google Glass.

Useful information when you need it

It’s not that Google Now is really all that revolutionary, in the sense of being surprising or magical or having whiz-bang special effects: it just collects a broad range of information about you and your activity from your search history, your calendar, your email, web services you are signed into, and so on, and then uses that to show you information that is relevant to what you are doing or where you happen to be (Google recently introduced it for iOS as well as Android).

In a way, that could be part of the reason Google Now is so appealing — it doesn’t try to impress you, it just works silently in the background, in more or less the way you would expect it to. That in itself is something to be grateful for.

The first time I noticed myself depending on it (or at least noticing how useful it was), came when I was getting ready for my flight to Italy: sliding upwards from the home button on the Nexus 4 showed a series of Google Now “cards,” and the first one said that my flight had been delayed by an hour. Since I was panicking at that point about how much I still had to do before leaving for the airport, that information was incredibly helpful. I could take a bit more time and relax.

Meanwhile, the second Google Now card showed the traffic on the highway and told me that I should probably give myself more time than usual to get to the airport — and when I got closer to the time of my departure, a third card showed my boarding pass information, including boarding time and the gate number (Google Now got that info from my calendar, but it also supports scannable boarding passes for a limited number of airlines).

Not revolutionary, but evolutionary

Again, none of this information was specific to Google Now, or derived magically by Google search trickery: I could have easily found out about my flight being delayed by using a service like FlightStats, or by checking the website for the airline or the airport itself — and I could have checked the traffic on any number of sites. But the point is that doing these things would take time, and I was already pressed for time. Seeing it all displayed in front of me in a simple way, without me having to do anything, was exactly the kind of thing a virtual assistant is good for.

Google Now continued to perform this kind of function while I was travelling (once I got a local SIM card, of course, so that I wouldn’t get robbed by my carrier for roaming charges). It told me that my connecting flight in Munich was on time, which allowed me to prepare for possibly not making my connection — and once I arrived in Italy, it informed me of the weather, the traffic from the airport in Rome, and also showed me photos of nearby sights that I might want to visit.

These latter aspects were also very useful for someone visiting a foreign country: I didn’t have much use for them while I was at home, but they instantly became much more important when I was travelling. Like the flight information or traffic, I could have found that content myself by doing a web search — but it was much handier to have it displayed for me automatically. And I started to imagine what it might be like to simply look at something like the Colosseum with Google Glass and have information about it appear in front of my eyes. Geeky? Yes. But also hugely useful.

The privacy tradeoff is worth it

The part that clearly disturbs some people about Google Now is the data collection that is involved in making it work: the tracking of your web searches, your calendar appointments, your location via GPS, the photos you have posted, the flights you are preparing to take, and so on. There’s no question that this is invasive — and some users will undoubtedly decide that it’s not worth the tradeoff, and choose to keep the information to themselves. I think the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Are there ways Google could use this information that I might not like? Of course there are. But I trust that Google is aware enough of the dangers — both legal and commercial — of engaging in that kind of behavior that they will avoid it. While some may choose to see Google’s ambitions in this area as evil, I think the company’s goal remains the same: to provide services that encourage users to spend more time on the internet and produce more data that improves Google’s search and/or advertising algorithms. And I am okay with that.

In return for providing some anonymized data and behavior patterns, I get access to a personalized assistant that is not only more unobtrusive than any human version would be, but is also faster and completely free. That’s a pretty good bargain.

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The SamMobile blog, which has a better than average track record for such leaks, reported on Monday that the Nexus 11 appears on Samsung’s 2013 tablet roadmap. Samsung currently makes the Nexus 10 tablet and it also built the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S smartphones. As the biggest seller of Android hardware, Samsung is Google’s key partner of late. Then again, the two have a complicated relationship as Samsung’s Galaxy line is becoming synonymous with the Android brand to many.

So what does the leaked roadmap say about a new Nexus tablet? Not much but enough to give prospective Nexus 10 buyers a reason to pause: The rumored tablet is expected to be the first octa-core tablet to market, running on Samsung’s 8-core Exynos 5410 chip. Don’t get too hung up on the eight cores though; they’re not all high performing processors. Instead, four are cutting edge Cortex-A15 cores for heavy duty activities while the other quartet are Cortex-A7 cores to offload lighter tasks and save on power consumption.

The 11-inch display is expected to be a Super PLS TFT screen and I’d expect it to be at least 1920 x 1080 resolution, if not the same 2560 x 1600 resolution used on the current Nexus 10. A pair of cameras should grace the slate — 8 megapixels on the back and 2 megapixels on the front — while a feature unique to Nexus devices may finally appear as well: micro SD expansion.

A lesser version of the tablet is reportedly planned as well: Samsung may create a Galaxy Tab 11 with similar specifications. That device would certainly use Samsung’s TouchWiz software interface and feature set, of course. And if the roadmap is accurate, Samsung will opt for a standard dual-core Exynos 5250 chip; likely to keep costs down.

Could the Nexus 11 be legit? I’d say the odds are quite good although I don’t know if we need a larger Android tablet on the market. Then again, might a Chrome OS tablet be a possibility? If so, then an 11- inch slate might be sized just right, especially with a docking keyboard.

We’ll find out for sure at Google I/O, where we’ll be reporting live.

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HTC’s One will include an LTE radio for fast mobile broadband and run on Google’s Android Jelly Bean software. The company is also including several of its own software features: BlinkFeed streams news, social networking updates and other information; Sense TV provides video content guides and uses an infrared sensor turning the One into a remote control; customized home screens are available, similar to prior versions of HTC’s sense software.

The flagship phone doesn’t yet have a price tag as that will come from carriers — likely next month — but will be available in both a 32- and 64 GB option. Other internal specs include a 1.7 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 chipset, 2 GB of memory, NFC radio and integrated 2300 mAh battery.

Speaking of Snapdragons, Qualcomm’s chip may power the Samsung Galaxy S4 phone. Samsung has yet to introduce the revised Galaxy but online benchmarks and other evidence point to the company opting for a Snapdragon over its own Exynos chip. Reports indicate the same Snapdragon 600 found in the HTC One will be inside the Galaxy S4, due to heat issues when testing the Samsung 8-core Exynos chip.

This wouldn’t be the first time Samsung chose a competitors chip to power its own smartphones however. The US version of the Galaxy S III also used a Snapdragon chip, mainly because at the time of launch, Samsung hadn’t yet integrated LTE support in the Exynos silicon. In some sense, Samsung is lucky that it has a secondary option for chipsets, else its flagship phone could face delays. We’ll get the story for sure within the next few weeks as Samsung is expected to hold a launch event for the new Galaxy smartphone on or around March 14.

We don’t, however, have to wait to see Ubuntu on a smartphone: This week, Canonical released instructions on how to install a preview of the alternative platform on Google’s Nexus line of tablets and phones. You’ll end up wiping out your Android system if you do this, but Canonical provided the handy links to Google’s own factory images for all Nexus devices, making it easy to reinstall Android.

I haven’t taken the Ubuntu plunge on my Galaxy Nexus yet, but expect to next week. From all accounts I’ve read so far, the Ubuntu interface is intuitive, but the software is still rough around the edges. There are still quite a few features and functions not ready yet although the Nexus phones will still be able to make calls and connect to both Wi-Fi and mobile broadband networks.

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Yes, Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux has run on tablets before, but the upcoming version is the first to be engineered specifically with touch in mind. The idea is to have one code base running across all screens (more on that later), and a developer preview will come out on Thursday that can be installed not only on Google’s Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets, but also on the Nexus 4 and Galaxy Nexus handsets.

We’ve already seen what the mobile version will look like, and now we know how it will look on tablets. In that form factor, it’s got several features worth mentioning, including voice-control for the heads-up display (HUD), multiple user accounts with full encryption, and the ability to multitask tablet and phone apps at the same time and on the same screen. The tablet can also be used as a thin client in the same way as an Ubuntu desktop can.

Here’s what Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth had to say in a statement, and a video too:

“Multi-tasking productivity meets elegance and rigorous security in our tablet experience… Our family of interfaces now scales across all screens, so your phone can provide tablet, PC and TV experiences when you dock it. That’s unique to Ubuntu and it’s the future of personal computing.”

Unified code

Now, about that single code base. Over the weekend, KDE developer Aaron Seigo launched what was by open-source standards a broadside against Canonical, accusing the London-based firm of “duping” developers by claiming to be using the same code for all versions, but not doing so in practice.

Canonical responded yesterday by insisting the code really would be one-size-fits-all when it’s complete. It went on to say this would hopefully happen by the end of this year, and that the first public release of “the full unified code base” would be in Ubuntu 14.04, in April 2014.

In other words, what you can install on your Nexus this week is far away from being being the finished product.

Enterprise focus

This is partly a consumer play, hence the TV iteration. However, the features Canonical mentioned today should appeal to enterprises, some of which are running Ubuntu on the server and, in the case of a few, on the desktop too.

In general, businesses currently use Microsoft on the desktop, with Apple’s iPad serving as the tablet of choice. If — and it’s a big if — Canonical can find manufacturers to actually make Ubuntu phones and tablets, the idea of developing once across all these form factors will be extremely attractive, particularly with a big question mark hanging over Windows 8′s place in the enterprise.

Of course, by spring 2014 there’s a good chance that Microsoft will have released an obligatory service pack (or ‘Blue’ release, or whatever it will be called) that clears up the OS’s various quirks, effectively giving corporate customers the all-clear to dive in. And it’s quite possible that Windows 8 will also prove to be the consumer success that Microsoft hopes it will be.

But if Windows 8′s enterprise appeal turns out to be more Vista than XP, business customers won’t have many familiar options to fall back on, leaving Canonical in a good position.

A lot can happen in a year.

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The enthusiast site notes that there are new notifications for application downloads that show the estimated time remaining; previously, Android would show the percentage of the download effort. The Quick Settings, introduced with Android 4.2, will gain more functionality in Android 4.2.2. Instead of just being shortcuts to certain settings, a long press will act as a toggle. That should help to quickly enable or disable the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios. Certain notification sounds are also updated and some users have reported that Bluetooth connectivity has been improved.

We’ll see if Google announced any additional features or functions that made the cut, once the official word on the software update appears. Since this is just a minor “point” release to Android 4.2.1, I don’t expect much more to be seen on my Galaxy Nexus once the update arrives. The new features should also be available for other Nexus devices including the Nexus 4 phone and both the Nexus 7 and 10 tablets.

I’d expect a bigger Android upgrade later this year, either at Google’s I/O developer event in May or, more likely, in the second half of the year alongside a new Nexus flagship phone.

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Perhaps the biggest fix in the software is an update to the Bluetooth stack. An early impression of the Galaxy Nexus after the update shows more stability when the phone is paired to an automobile. My hope is that the software update adds song metadata as well so that Bluetooth-compatible car radios can show more song information — an Android issue that was logged several years ago.

My own Galaxy Nexus doesn’t have the update yet. That’s typical, however, as Google stages Android updates for its Nexus devices.

I may take advantage of the steps at Android Police to manually install it; I’ve done that with prior Android updates and it’s a relatively simple process. If you have a Galaxy Nexus, you can follow the same steps. Nexus 10 tablet owners can manually get the update file  from XDA-Developers here, which was pointed out by Liliputing.

Although there are tons of Android devices to choose from, direct Android updates from Google have me continuing to buy and use Nexus devices. The lone exception of late is my Galaxy Note 2 purchase. Even though Nexus phones and tablets may comparably lack a super display, ability to expand memory or a slower processor than what’s currently available, the vastly better software support is a huge feature that shouldn’t be overlooked.

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