It’s the end of the week and time for another Android Community Weekly. We had an exciting week in the crazy world of Android — and lawsuits — so lets get right to it. A lot happened with legal departments for Samsung, Apple, and a few Android app pirate sites. The Google Play Store had a big week too so lets take a peek below.
Yup, the Apple vs Samsung trial finally ended on Friday, but we’ll be seeing a few appeals and things are far from over. Samsung lost, and they lost big. The court ruled in favor of Apple on all accounts and ordered Samsung pay up damages to the tune of 1.05 billion dollars, that’s billion. Don’t get me started on the broken patent system either! Then in other law related news the Department of Justice and the FBI closed down and seized 3 Android App pirating websites — and surely there will be more to follow.
Google had another exciting week in terms of their market. The Google Play Store finally has gift cards, with them officially rolling out the option this week and allowing sales at Target, RadioShack, Walmart and a few others locations. Then while we’re talking about Google, they updated Google Music with expanding Jelly Bean notifications (awesome) and could be bringing person to person payments and additional carrier support to Google Wallet.
As usual Samsung had another big week, but that is nothing new. They showed us the creation of the Galaxy S III in a neat heartfelt video, then teased everyone about the Galaxy Note 2. Sammy also invited the stunning Kate Upton to their Galaxy Note 10.1 launch event, and last but not least we enjoyed some hands-on with the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 4G LTE.
Then to end things off with a few random bits that were important to us. Motorola confirmed they are lame and won’t be unlocking older devices bootloaders, then a budget friendly Motorola DROID M is headed to Verizon. Lastly Nikon announced their Android-powered camera and we reviewed Archos’ new odd 101 XS tablet. For everything else that mattered to us this week in Android hit the links below. Have a great evening!
