The arcade scene here in the United States is but a fraction of what it was back in its heyday, but that doesn’t mean that the love for those classic games has just evaporated. Capcom’s CPS2 arcade board has attained legend status in certain retro gaming circles because of its catalog of instant classics, and a developer named Cpasjuste has just given those games a new lease on life with a new CPS2 emulator for Android.

Before we go any further, know that I’m not here to debate the legality of possessing ROMs — it’s been a sticking point for the emulation community for years. Suffice it to say that CPSEmu was capable of running every retro shooter and beat-em-up I loaded onto my Galaxy Nexus (purely for testing purposes) without so much as a hiccup. Your mileage may vary there though, as some people have noted some issues with crashing on devices like the Asus Transformer.

If you do decide to indulge your inner arcade junkie, just know that getting a feel for the controls will take a little getting used to. The arrows on the d-pad seem thin and easy to miss while in the heat of battle, while the on-screen action buttons are just a bit too small for my tastes.

Of course, as useful as CPSEmu is, it doesn’t do much to make you feel like you’re slinging quarters in a poorly-lit arcade of yore. Those of you looking for a more authentic experience while playing Super Street Fighter II on your Android tab may want to turn down the lights and crank up one of these amazing Arcade Ambience tracks — it’ll be 1993 again before you know it.

Developer Cpasjuste has made the emulator available for free on the xda forums, but feel free to show your support for his work by buying the app from the Android Market for a hair under $4.

Like most hacks, this discovery of a way to find an Android phone’s Google Wallet PIN requires a lot of initial access but is disturbing nonetheless. Google knows about the hack and is repairing it. Discovered by Joshua Rubin of Zvelo, the hack is one of the most interesting attacks on Google Wallet so far.

In short, this hack allows access to credit card data and purchase history and could, in theory, allow a hacker to use a Google Wallet freely in the wild. However, it does require the hacker to have unfettered root access to the phone. Using a small program, the exploit simply brute-forces a file found in the phone, thereby revealing the PIN and unlocking the wallet.

Again, the hack requires a rooted Android phone – a state that is trivial to achieve if your phone is stolen – and a bit of know how. Rubin recommends:

Google recommends that anyone with Google Wallet call their toll-free support line at 855-492-5538 to ask that their prepaid card be disabled. They also recommend setting a lock screen.

UPDATE – Google responded, reminding folks that they don’t support Google Wallet on rooted phones and that:

In addition to the updated “Explore” feature that rolled out to Foursquare’s Android and iPhone applications this week, the social discovery service also added a special feature to its Android app that sort of flew under the radar: support for NFC.

NFC, or near field communication, allows devices to exchange data over short distances, typically with a wave or a tap. In Foursquare’s Android update, NFC support has been added for the app’s Venue, Lists and Me pages.

On Android, NFC support has been rebranded for marketing purposes, and is called “Android Beam.” The touch-to-share functionality lets NFC-enabled Android phones share information between each other, including contacts, web pages, and videos, for example. Any Android developer can also use the NFC APIs provided by the mobile operating system to add specialized NFC actions to their own apps.

With the Foursquare update, Android 4.0 users with NFC phones can now share their lists and the venues they’ve visited with a friend just by tapping phones. Users can now tap phones to initiate friend requests or tap their phone against an NFC tag or poster to check in.

Unfortunately, the functionality is currently limited to phones that have both an NFC chip built in and run Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0). At this point, that means the Galaxy Nexus is pretty much your only option. (But that’s why you got that phone, right? You wanted to use the latest technology first. Well, here you go.)

The question remaining is why would Foursquare bother to push out an update that impacts such a small niche of the current Android user base?

In an Untether.tv interview with Holger Luedorf, VP of Mobile and International at Foursquare, he talked about why Foursquare added NFC to its app.

“The good news is the technology is already there,” he says. Plus,”going forward, some of the other platforms will be NFC-enabled.” (Please mean iOS!)

But it’s also about making the Android experience the best for its users, Luedorf said.

“The user experience is great. You just hold your phone against the tap [point]. The checkin screen automatically pops up with the right venue. You’re basically shaving very valuable seconds off the checkin process,” he says.

“We try to leverage the native experiences and APIs that are available through the platform as those usually drive the best user experience,” Luedorf continued. “We’re trying to leverage this because we feel that pinpointing someone down to a location through an NFC chip definitely has some value.”

Hat tip: NFCWorld

There’s no shortage of Android swag floating around out there — Android-themed watch anyone? — but this thing is probably one of the more useful gifts for the Android devotee in your life. Take it from me: of all the AC adapters floating around TechCrunch’s New Jersey headquarters (a.k.a my home), none are quite as charming as Andru here.

Aside from being able to charge your gadgets with aplomb (at which point his beady eyes light up), relentless fidgeters like me can also spin his little arms around. And when Andru isn’t in use, feel free to give him a pair of legs by slipping on that bright green prong cover.

Really, what better way to pledge your allegiance to Google than by making sure the power that runs into your Android device first runs though a small green robot?

Alright, so Andru isn’t exactly the first Android-themed charger we’ve seen, but it certainly seems to be a nicer option than some of the alternatives. Those of you who feel the compulsive urge to fill your home or workspace with geeky tchotchkes can pick up an Andru from Gen for $25, which is still probably less than a bog-standard microUSB charger at your local big box store.

I used to scowl when I saw people walking down the street with eyes locked on their phones, but necessity has gotten me in the habit of doing it too. Thanks to a new app called Transparent Screen though, now I can do it free from the fear of falling into an open manhole or into a large fountain.

No, that’s not a hastily Photoshopped image you see here, that’s more or less exactly what you’ll see when the app is running. I say “more or less” because while all of the Android UI goes translucent upon launch, you’re afforded with quite a bit of a control over how dramatic the effect is. It’s in your best interest to get familiar with the settings if you plan on using Transparent Screen for a while too, because you’ll soon have some choices to make.

If you’re a fan of texting while sprinting for example (which I don’t condone, for the record), crank the camera resolution down to keep that forward view going as smoothly possible. Alternately, crank it up you’re more a fan of slow, meandering walks while you tweet about the wonders of nature.

The big issue, as Android Police points out, is that you’d be hard-pressed to find a configuration that works well while bouncing between your favorite apps. Still, that’s a pretty minor concern — Transparent Screen seems like an app best used occasionally, when you absolutely have to fire off a message while on the move. Sure, there’s nothing that says you can’t have it running nonstop, just be prepared to watch your remaining battery life disappear in front of your eyes.

Interested? Mosey on over to the Android Market, where Transparent Screen can be had for the low, low price of free.

There has been much debate about what the post-PC era is, when it will arrive, or whether it’s already here. But key pieces of new data, emerging last week, are making the case that we crossed the imaginary line from the “PC” era to the “post-PC” era at the end of 2011. According to analysts at Canalys, two major computing milestones were achieved at the end of this year: smartphone shipments outpaced PCs for the first time ever, and Apple became the world’s largest PC maker, if you count iPads as PCs (as well you should).

Combined, what these numbers tell us is that the post-PC era is happening now. Right now. And maybe we need to think about how we define “PC.”

In Q4 2011, vendors shipped 158.5 million smartphones, up 57% on the 101.2 million units shipped in Q4 2010. For the year, there were 487.7 million units shipped, up 63% on the 299.7 million units shipped in 2010. Meanwhile, the global PC market grew just 15% in 2011 to 414.6 million units. The smartphones have won.

The funny thing about that PC shipments number is that, on its own, it doesn’t paint the most accurate picture of today’s PC landscape. There weren’t 414.6 million desktop, notebook and netbook computers shipped in 2011 – those were at 112.4 million, 209.6 million and 29.4 million, respectively. The 414.6 million number includes 63.2 million in “pad” shipments, Canalys’s preferred term for tablets. That means 15% of the “PC” shipments in 2011 were tablets, largely Apple’s iPad. In Q4, tablets were 22% of the total PC shipments. And the tablet segment of the market grew 274.2% year-over-year.

Also in Q4 2011, Apple became the leading worldwide “PC” vendor (if you count the iPad as a PC) with 15 million iPads and 5 million Macs shipped, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped in Q4. It overtook HP (now #2), Acer, Dell and Lenovo in the process.

Overall, the PC market grew 16% year-over-year, Canalys noted last month. Without tablets, it declined 0.4%.

Of course, there’s still the question of whether or not tablets should be broken out into their own computing category, positioned against the traditional “PCs” when tracking device shipments. For what’s it worth, I think it’s fine to count tablets as PCs – after all, PC means “personal computer,” not “machine running Windows.” The fact that we still equate the word with a desktop, monitor, keyboard and mouse combo is a testament to the empire Microsoft built, and is now losing.

Case in point: netbook shipments dropped 25.3% from 2010 to 2011. Desktops grew a paltry 2.3% and notebooks grew just 7.5%. This is end of the “PC” era in action. While the 209.6 million notebook shipments still make that the largest category of “PCs,” the growth trends here, if sustained, dictate that’s its only a matter of time before the shift to tablets becomes even more pronounced.

Think about it: what’s the first “PC” you’re going to buy for your kid, as a new member to the post-PC computing generation? If you respond “notebook,” I’d say you’re lying. That kid is getting an iPad, even if they end up stealing yours. If not an iPad, then they’re getting a phone.

And smartphones are PCs, too. The most affordable ones.

This past quarter, smartphone shipments overtook PCs, a hugely important milestone that speaks volumes about the state of modern-day computing. The computer-in-your-pocket has moved from being “a niche product segment at the high-end of the mobile phone market to becoming a truly mass-market proposition,” explains Canalys of the change.

In Q4, Apple broke records by shipping 37 million iPhones – the most ever shipped by a single vendor in a quarter. Previously, Nokia held the record with 28.3 million phones shipped in Q4 2010. What a difference a year makes.

But Canalys cautioned that it expects to see smartphone market growth slow in 2012, as vendors exercise “greater cost control and discipline” to focus on profitability. This is the only discordant note to the report. Smartphone growth slowing? No offense to the analysts, but I’ll believe that one when I see it. Just watching Apple’s sales alone, it’s clear you can’t underestimate its power to deliver record-breaking numbers. In addition, just because vendors like HTC and Motorola are going to launch fewer smartphone models in 2012, that doesn’t (necessarily) mean they’ll sell fewer overall phones. If anything, the companies are hoping that their increased focus on “hero” devices will help them increase sales.

One thing is clear, however: that post-PC era everyone’s been talking about since the day the phrase slipped off Steve Jobs’ lips has arrived. We’re living it. Anyone who wastes their time debating its existence (tablets are PCs! phones are PCs!) is arguing semantics. The shift itself, whatever you want to call it, is happening.

So perhaps “post-PC” isn’t the best terminology. If everything’s a PC, then maybe what we’ve achieved is something more akin to “PCs Everywhere.” Not as catchy, though.

Photo credit top: Lokesh Dhakar, flickr; bottom: agirregabiria, flickr

According to new research from the NPD Group, Apple passed LG and Samsung to become the top-selling U.S. handset brand in Q4 2011. Combined, the three available models of the iPhone (iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS) accounted for 43% of the U.S. smartphone market.

Android, however, continued to see larger market share at 48%.

Together, iPhone and Android accounted for over 90% of U.S. smartphone sales, leaving little room for any up-and-comer like Windows Phone, or even the declining brand that is RIM’s BlackBerry.

Android’s market share may continue to grow, too, given that more first-time smartphone buyers were choosing Android over iPhone this past quarter, the firm found. Based on NPD Group’s monthly Smartphone Track service, 57% of first-time smartphone buyers went with an Android device compared with just 34% who purchased iPhones.

NPD suggests that the reason for these consumers’ Android preference has to do more with availability – Android has “wide carrier support,” the report says. Also helpful is Android’s large app selection and its support of LTE at Verizon.

The overall portion of handset sales that were smartphones also climbed in Q4 2011, now accounting for 68% of the total U.S. phone market. That’s an increase of 18% from Q2 2010, said NPD. The average cost per smartphone, however, hasn’t seen as much movement, down from $149 in Q4 2010 to $143 in Q4 2011.

Not surprisingly, Apple’s record-breaking quarter (its fiscal Q1, running September 25-December 31), led to the iPhone 4S coming out on top as the best-selling handset in Q4. It also earned the top three slots among the top five handsets for the time period:

1. Apple iPhone 4S
2. Apple iPhone 4
3. Apple iPhone 3GS
4. Samsung Galaxy S II
5. Samsung Galaxy S 4G

Ross Rubin, executive director, Connected Intelligence for The NPD Group, said that consumers were attracted to the iPhone 4S’s ”faster processor, improved camera and the Siri speech-driven agent.”

“The iPhone 4S outsold the iPhone 4 by 75%, and outsold the iPhone 3GS, available for free on AT&T, five to one,” Rubin noted.

Today, Rdio is releasing a brand new application for Android phones chock-full of fresh features, which is awesome. Mainly because it gives me an excuse to write up a related rant I would have published at some point anyway.

But let’s get the new Android app part out of the way first:

“The new app offers intuitive navigation with one-click access to features previously available on Rdio for Android, along with several new enhancements and key features including collection, playlists, new releases, top charts, recommendations, and support for Android Ice Cream Sandwich’s new remote control client.

Now Android users not only have easy access to Rdio’s catalog of more than 12 million songs, they can also take advantage of Rdio’s rich social features and extensive music discovery options.”

Great. Swell. Cool. If you’re an Android phone user. Which I’m not, at least not anymore.

A few months ago I started using Nokia’s Lumia 800 as my primary smartphone. One of the apps I really need on any platform happens to be Rdio, which I gladly pay for every month. There has been an official WP7 Rdio app since November 2010, so no problem. At least, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Instead, it’s a major source of daily frustration. You see, the Rdio app for Windows Phone has one fatal flaw: it doesn’t actually play music. It also doesn’t go out to buy my groceries for me, nor does it clip my toe nails, but the point is that I have a right to be flabbergasted by its lack of music playing ability. You know, because I pay the company for being able to play music on my phone.

Not for crashing apps. Not for playlists, albums and songs that never load. Not for ‘black screens of death’ while I’m discovering new music. Not for half-assed offline syncing features.

Browsing the company’s help forums, it seems I’m not the only one who’s frustrated by the extremely poor quality of Rdio’s Windows Phone app (with some people even taking to canceling their subscriptions as a result of their justifiable dissatisfaction).

For months, Rdio employees have been promising complainers that the issues will be resolved on those very forums, but so far these promises have not been kept. I mean, they’re still asking users to restart their devices to see if that fixes the problem. Well, it doesn’t.

Rdio folks, please just look at those ratings and user reviews on WP Marketplace, and be ashamed.

Look, I get it. I’m in the minority as a Windows Phone user, and there’s no critical mass in sight yet. You have every right to focus your development efforts on apps for iOS and Android, given that most of your users likely use devices that run those operating systems. It’s a sensible thing to do.

The thing is, I’m a paying customer. I fork over $9.99 a month to access my Rdio account on the Web, my Sonos system and my phone. That phone happens to be a Windows Phone device, which you built an app for, which you’re actively advertising on your website. Yet, it’s helplessly broken.

The Spotify app for Windows Phone, meanwhile, works perfectly.

There’s absolutely no reason for me to put up with this, and I’m close to canceling my subscription over this. Not really because your Windows Phone app has issues, which is understandable, but because you’ve demonstrated clearly that you do not care about repairing them and giving your paying customers any reasonable indication of how to fix it themselves, or when a problem-fixing update will finally make its way to the Marketplace.

My view is this: either you develop an app for a mobile platform and proudly commit to enhancing and supporting it over time, and fixing problems that may arise within a reasonable timeframe, or you stay away from that platform entirely. I don’t know or care if Nokia or Microsoft paid you to build the app, but you should hang your heads in shame for offering it to users in its current state.

Rant over, for now. But hey, at least the new Android app apparently rocks, right?

All the major map apps like Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Mapquest have walking directions as a standard feature, but the folks at Lumatic don’t think they are good enough. It is creating mobile maps designed for pedestrians, cyclists, and people who use public transit. Originally a TechStars company called Omniar, serial entrepreneur Scott Rafer (MyBlogLog, Lookery, Mashery) joined as CEO a year ago.

He recently raised a seed round of $800,000 from Joi Ito’s Neoteny Labs, 500 Startups, Chamath Palihapitiya, Allen Morgan, Ted Rheingold, and other angels.

Lumatic has an Android app which works right now only in San Francisco. When it gives you directions, it chooses routes which are optimal for walking, cycling or public transport. As you walk through the streets, the app displays a street-view with photos and arrows pointing in the right direction.

The app is built on top of Open Street Map , but the user experience is centered heavily on using photography, landmarks, and visual cues to help people navigate cities. Fighting Google Maps in this category is going to be a tough slog, but if the app can gain a following there plenty of money in local commerce and advertising to make it a worthwhile pursuit.

The amount of stuff we trust to fly in and out of our smartphones is astounding. Just look at what happened when a couple of reporters got access to an unwitting (and rather unlucky) Apple employee’s iMessages alone — within days, they learned more about him than most people know about their closest friends.

Now, imagine all the stuff that could fly in and out of a government official’s phone, or that of a highly-ranked member of the military. Forget saucy texts and booty pictures — we’re talking about state secrets, here.

Looking to keep their secrets underwraps while on the go, the U.S government is working on a build of Android custom-tailored to meet their security requirements.

Word of the project comes from CNN, who notes that U.S. officials/soldiers aren’t currently allowed to send any classified data over their smartphones. If they need to transmit anything that might sink ships (so to speak), they currently need to find a secured (generally meaning hardwired) line hooked to an approved device.

Here’s the gist of the project:

• A limited number of soldiers will get the phones first, then federal agencies, then possibly contractors
• The U.S. won’t be building their own hardware — that’d be too expensive. Instead, they’ll be buying commercially available devices and reflashing them.
• They hoped to be able to offer iOS devices, but it’s not going to happen. CNN notes that federal officials met with Apple to request that they share their source — as you’d probably guess, Apple wasn’t too cool with that idea.
• Surprisingly, users of the handsets will be able to install new applications, though the handsets will put a specific emphasis on exactly what information the application can access and what it’s currently sending. Seems unlikely that they’d give these things full Android Market access, though — that’d be rather silly.
• The project is being funded by DARPA, with the NSA evaluating it as they go (while working on a version of their own, curiously.)

Most of the project’s details are still underwraps, but this is all still rather interesting. What hardware might they use? If DARPA makes any substantial security improvements to Android’s kernel, might that work make it back to the official branch? Might this work eventually be monetized (remember, Siri was born as a DARPA project) and offered to enterprises looking for a locked-down version of Android — and what does that mean for RIM/BlackBerry?

Dropbox has no shortage of fans or users these days — their stellar wins at the Crunchies are proof of that — and now the cloud storage service is leaning on them to test an experimental new build of the Dropbox Android app.

While the thrill of being on the bleeding edge is probably enough for some people to take the plunge, the real meat of the experimental build comes in the form of the new auto upload feature for photos and videos. It’s pretty much exactly what the name implies: as soon as you snap a photo or take a video with your Android device, it automatically gets uploaded to your account. And in usual Dropbox fashion, it just works.

I was actually a bit surprised to see how well the feature worked right out of the gate. Once you breeze through the app’s new splash screens and start taking pictures, it takes only seconds for your shots to start trickling into your account. The 180MB file size limit has been given the axe too, so that Oscar-worthy film you’re putting together on your Galaxy S II should make the transition just fine too.

So what’s in it for you, aside from the ability to immediately shove your media into the cloud? More free storage, that’s what.

For every 500 MB of photos or videos that gets uploaded, another 500 MB will be added to your Dropbox account. Provided you stick with the process long enough, you’ll eventually walk away with 5GB more space than you had coming into it. Not bad Dropbox, not bad at all.

Dropbox just kicked off a similar campaign on their forums to test their slew of desktop clients, but motivated users shouldn’t bother trying to double-dip in attempt to snag 10 GB of storage. If you’re content to do a spot of beta testing in exchange for some nifty features, feel free to download the .apk right here.

Android malware has been an issue over the past year. Granted, most of the numbers we see out of security software companies are inflated — including malicious apps from third-party sources and ignoring small download figures — but that’s not to say that we can just brush that dirt off our shoulders.

Google knows this, and has for a while. Despite the fact that downloads of malicious apps are down 40 percent between the first and second half of 2011, seeing that 14,000, 30,000, or even 260,000 devices have been affected by this or that malicious app requires action. That said, Google is adding a new security layer to the Android Market: codenamed Bouncer.

Originally, the Android market implemented three different methods for ridding the market of malware: sandboxing, permissions, and malware removal. Sandboxing keeps one app from infiltrating another, with one very important exception: permissions. Google sees its permissions system as a layer of security in and of itself, but permissions can actually be seen as a vulnerability. In some cases, the reasons behind the permissions a developer asks for aren’t immediately obvious to the user, and it can be tough to check everything, especially to the novice user.

Past that, Google’s always been good about removing malware from the market as soon as the company becomes aware of it, and in some cases, has even remotely wiped affected devices of malicious apps. The tool is a useful one to say the least, but it’s not enough.

Bouncer adds another level of security to the platform, automatically scanning new and existing apps for known bits of malicious code. Google has actually been scanning apps whenever new malicious code is discovered, but Bouncer will automate the process, scanning for known spyware and trojans, too. Bouncer runs every new application on Google’s cloud infrastructure and simulates how it’ll run on a device. That way, Google can see straight away whether an app is misbehaving and flag it accordingly.

Another smart feature is that Bouncer isn’t 100 percent automated. Once something is flagged, there’s a manual process for confirming the app is indeed malicious, reducing the risk of false positives.

To be quite honest, the Android platform is way more secure than most people think. I spoke with Android VP of engineering Hiroshi Lockheimer, and he seems to feel the same way. “There’s this impression that Android is a huge target for malware, and I really don’t think that’s the case,” said Lockheimer. Google polices the Market, scans for known malicious code (though most instances of flagging in the past have been from users notifying Google), and is quick to act when an issue pops up. But where the platform has fallen short (in one respect), is the developer registration process.

Becoming an Android developer is as easy as pie. I actually did it myself just to see how easy it is, and it literally takes five minutes and $25. After clicking accept a few times, you’re good to go. In fact, developers can register under pseudonyms if they’d like.

From a certain perspective, this is amazing. It allows young entrepreneurs to offer a product to millions of users for a very low cost, lowering the bar for developers who can’t afford to jump through Apple’s hoops. At the same time, it makes it easy for malware writers to get the ball rolling.

Sophos blogger Vanja Svajcer said it best:

The requirements for becoming an Android developer that can publish apps to the Android Market are far too relaxed. The cost of becoming a developer and being banned by Google is much lower than the money that can be earned by publishing malicious apps. The attacks on the Android Market will continue as long as the developer requirements stay too relaxed.

With Bouncer, Google is recognizing this issue without making things difficult on developers. Devs will still be able to submit an app and see it in search results within minutes — Bouncer’s scanning process only takes seconds — and they’ll still be able to register for $25 and a few clicks on “Accept.”

But… now that Bouncer is in place, previous offenders will have a much more difficult time sneaking back on to the platform by registering under a new name. According to Google’s blog post, the search giant will be “analyzing new developer accounts to help prevent malicious and repeat-offending developers from coming back.”

This is what I believe will make the biggest difference when it comes to the threat of Android malware, and I’m more than thrilled that the company is making it a priority moving forward.

While sitting at the Crunchies last night something became quite apparent: almost all the big guys — even the ones who were stubborn about it — are currently available on Android.

And what do you know? They won at the Crunchies!

Interestingly enough former Google CEO Eric Schmidt made a bold comment about the future of Android apps just a month ago at LeWeb, stating that the platform would be preferred among developers in the next six months.

Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume, and volume is favored by the open approach Google is taking. There are so many manufacturers working so hard to distribute Android phones globally. Whether you like ICS or not, and again I like it a great deal, you will want to develop for that platform, and perhaps even first. Think of it as a transition over the next 6 months.

To say that developers will launch on Android first is still a bit of a leap. Developers tend to prefer building for iOS (likely since iOS apps generate more revenue) and if we look at the most popular apps available today, almost all of them launched on iOS before Android.

Now, the Crunchies doesn’t necessarily determine the success or lack thereof at a company, but that’s not to say it isn’t a great indicator. I mean, it’s you guys, the users, who vote for the winners and who else to tell the tech world what works and what doesn’t.

A couple mobile apps that have made quite a splash are still holding out on Android: Instagram and Flipboard.

Update: This post originally discussed Square, but it is, in fact, already on Android. My apologies for that.

Flipboard and Instagram seem concerned with presenting a unified UI experience across platforms. Since both apps focus so much on the UI experience, a migration to Android would be difficult if both companies want to maintain their high-quality status in the UI department. I hate to say it, but let’s face it, Android apps are uglier than iOS apps.

The point is that these apps — exclusively available on the iOS platform — came in second in their respective categories. Meanwhile, apps like Google+ stole the crown from Instagram for best social app, and Evernote stole the top spot from Flipboard for best mobile app.

Google+ beating out Instagram speaks volumes, mainly because Instagram’s marketing strategy that integrates Facebook and Twitter is killer. Even though Google+ is a Google property, the search giant still saw fit to put the application on the iOS platform. Meanwhile, Instagram taunts Android users through Facebook and Twitter, showing off awesome pictures easily shared, and then offering nothing for them after a search through the Android Market.

Dropbox, which won best overall startup, was loved by many well before it hit Android. In fact, it launched on the iPhone in 2009 and didn’t make the transition over to Android until May of 2010. In January, just months before the Android app went live, Dropbox boasted over 4 million users coming off of a 2009 Crunchies win for best internet application. After a little over a year on the new platform, the company reported it had reached 25 million users. More users means more voters.

Evernote had around 2 million users at the time it launched an Android app, in December of 2009. By May 2010, the company had extended that to 3 million, then to 4 million in August, and jumped to 5 million users in November. By June 6 in 2011, the company boasted over 10 million users. Flipboard, runner up for the best mobile application category, still isn’t on the Android platform and reported 5 million+ users in December 2011. Granted, Evernote took a bullish approach entering the mobile space launching on as many platforms as possible, not just iOS and Android. But Flipboard did the exact opposite, and has forced people to either buy an Apple device or use Google Currents.

Just from the results of last night’s Crunchies awards, it’s clear that Eric Schmidt was right. With 700,000 activations daily, Android simply can’t be ignored any longer.

I really wish this whole post could be about Google taking a big step forward in the field of wearable tech with the introduction of a new Android-powered wrist device, but their new Android watch is simply a watch with Android logos on it.

So what if it can’t display text messages, connect to a phone via Bluetooth, or play Angry Birds on your wrist — it’s a completely serviceable timepiece and it’s a fraction of the price of an actual Android-powered watch. The watches themselves are from Modify, and sticking to their usual MO, they allow you to swap the actual clock itself into different wristbands.

Still, I don’t think there’s such thing as too much swag, and it already looks like a fair number of people are pledging their mobile OS allegiance with their wallets. The Google Store already out of the large watches, and there are only ten more meant for people with tiny wrists at time of writing. If the disappointment is too much to bear though (and you don’t feel like waiting for new stock to come in), you could always try and ease your pain by buying a Chrome watch instead.

Ever since I saw this mesmerizing commercial for the wood-clad (and unfortunately named) Touch Wood, I’ve been a sucker for phones of a more organic persuasion. While the Touch Wood ultimately never saw the light of day outside of its native Japan, another wooden smartphone is preparing to take the proverbial stage.

The ADzero, as it’s known, began its life as a concept design from a Middlesex University student named Kieron-Scott Woodhouse. The design has since attracted the attention of a few parties in China, who have begun to financially back production of the once China-only device. Details abouts specs are light at this point — all that’s been revealed so far is that it’s an Android device that’s roughly half the weight of an iPhone, and features an interesting camera flash that’s built directly into the wood frame.

Now I’m no design guru myself, but the concept of a device swathed in actual wood seems terribly charming. Most smartphones are made of extruded plastics with the inclusion of some metal trim as desired, while wood has its flaws it can also bring something needed to the smartphone experience: character. With every phone being sculpted out of a separate bit of bamboo, no two devices would ever be the same.

Hopefully the specialized build of Android that the ADzero runs takes the wooden motif and runs with it — I’m not a fan of most custom UIs in general, but it’s still fun to see what different manufacturers and developers feel needs improvements.

Don’t start marking up those calendars yet though. While it seems as though the ADzero will launch later this year, there’s no official timeline to lean on. I can almost guarantee that the ADzero will remain a curiosity confined to specialty stores and boutiques, but it hopefully won’t be long before we can take it for a spin.

Zlango, a goofy but fun icon-based text messaging app, just hit one million U.S. users on the Android platform only four months after launching. Backed by Accel and Benchmark Capital, the app originally arrived in the U.S. market in October 2011, following the opening of its San Francisco-based offices. In total, Zlango now boasts over 5 million users worldwide, the company reports.

The fact that Zlango is achieving this level of popularity on Android in such a short timeframe, is indicative of the type of apps Android users still seem to prefer – apps that replace Android’s core components. In Zlango’s case, the app offers an admittedly silly take on the concept of text messaging, offering packs of icons that let you replace words with emoticons and pictograms. It clearly seems aimed at a younger audience, because, let’s face it – no self-respecting 30-year old is going to send out picture messages like this. But that fact, too, is interesting. Many of Android’s success stories to date have been ports of popular iPhone apps, general purposes apps (like Any.DO) or utilities – not those aimed at such a specific, younger demographic.

For comparison purposes, Any.DO reached half a million downloads in just 30 days. Meanwhile, Evernote’s Skitch app for Android, an arguably more well-known brand, saw 3.5 million downloads in just 3 and half months post-launch. So hitting a million in four months, while not quite on those levels, is still indicative of some relatively decent traction. Even more so given its limited appeal to older users.

Zlango now supports over 25 languages, is available in over 20 countries, and has delivered more than 9 billion Zlango icons worldwide. It’s currently seeing the most traction in Europe, Asia and the U.S. The app, which is also available for BlackBerry, Nokia and J2ME, is available here on the Android Market.

NEC did it again: about 11 months after unveiling the world’s slimmest smartphone at that time, the company is ready to release another super-thin Android phone with a set of impressive specs (via Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo). Dubbed MEDIAS ES N-05D [JP], the handset will hit Japanese stores in February or March this year.

NEC rolled out quite a few Medias-branded Android phones in recent months, but this model is just 6.7mm thin and has the best specs.

Here are the main features:

• Android 2.3.6
• waterproof body
• 4.3-inch LCD with 720×1280 resolution
• 8.1MP CMOS camera with NEC’s Exmor R for mobile engine
• dual-core MSM8260 CPU (1.5GHz)
• 1GB RAM
• 4GB internal memory
• Bluetooth 4.0
• Wi-Fi
• NFC e-wallet function
• infrared connection
• digital TV tuner
• microSD card slot, microUSB slot
• 1400mAh battery
• connectivity to Casio’s G-SHOCK GB-6900 watch
• size: 130×67×6.7mm, weight: 110g

The MEDIAS ES N-05D might reach markets outside Japan at some point in the future, but there is no official word from NEC yet.

Via IT Media [JP]

Android adoption is growing rapidly in Japan, with local handset manufacturers doing everything they can in order to meet the demands of customers in all segments of the population. One particularly attractive target group seems to be women, given how many Japanese companies say they design Android phones specifically for female users.

Here are three recent examples.

First, Sharp has designed a weird “chocolate bar”-type handset that Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo plans to roll out on Valentine’s Day.

The so-called “Q-pot.Phone SH-04D” [JP] comes with Android 2.3, a 3.7-inch LCD with 540×960 resolution, NFC e-wallet function, Wi-Fi, and an 8MP CMOS camera.

Here are some accessories owners can get:

Second, Japanese carrier SoftBank rolled out Kyocera’s HONEY BEE 101K [JP] today, another handset designed with female customers in mind.

This model features Android 2.3, a 3.5-inch LCD with 800×480 resolution, a 5.1MP CMOS camera, a MP5225 dual-core CPU with 1.2GHz, 2GB ROM, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.

Third, Disney Mobile has come up with the DM012SH, a Android 2.3 handset (made by Sharp). It comes with a 4-inch LCD with 960×540 resolution, an 8MP CMOS camera, NFC e-wallet function, infrared, digital TV tuner, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi, and a microSDHC slot.

Disney Mobile, a Japanese MVNO, is planning to offer the DM012SH (pre-installed with a special Disney UI, Disney apps, wallpapers, etc.) next month. Every buyer will get one the cases below for free:

As a gamer with admittedly poor impulse control, the newly-released Steam app for iOS and Android has me very worried. On the one hand, it seems like an ideal way to to keep tabs on the popular gaming service on the go.

On the other though, I could easily see myself going overboard on buying games I don’t need when I should be pretending to be a productive member of society.

The Steam app sports a set of features that should be familiar to many a PC gamer, including gaming news feeds and the ability to browse the extensive catalog. It’s also very geared toward communication, as it allows you to keep in touch with your fellow Steam buddies by poking through their profiles or kicking off a mobile chat session.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have no Steam friends, so the biggest threat that the new Steam app poses to people like me is that it provides up-to-date information about games on sale, which means that my loved ones will soon notice that I’m spending more time checking to see if Cave Story+ is on sale than, y’know, interacting with them.

Yes, I know I have a problem.

My only consolation is that the app is usable by people who have been invited to the beta, so I’ll be safe from the allure of buying cheap games from the park for at least a little while longer. If you’re lucky enough to be among the select few with beta access, the app is already live in the Android and iOS app stores. Download away, but please don’t tell me what I’m missing out on.

Earlier this morning, we looked at the findings from analytics provider Distimo‘s latest report, which examined what happens when mobile apps go on sale. (Spoiler: when priced correctly, revenue goes way up). The second part of the report looked at the ranking gains that occur when an app achieves “featured” status in a mobile app store like iTunes or the Android Market.

Developers often don’t know their app is being featured until they see the large, unexplained jumps in download numbers in their preferred app analytics service. The effect can be remarkable. In the iPhone App Store, for example, a featured app sees an average jump in its ranking of some 15 spots or so, during the first three days. Some apps gain significantly more, while others see much less action. (Distimo looked at Q4 data for the top 100 most popular apps to determine these findings).

In the iPad App Store and Android Market, featured apps see even higher gains than on iPhone. iPad apps’ average gain was +27 during the first three days, while featured Android apps (i.e., “Staff Picks”) were boosted up +42 spots.

Below, the chart shows the proportion of apps that gained more than 50 ranks, more than 25 ranks and those that lost ranks after being featured (oddly, that can happen), again, during the first three days.

But not all apps immediately feel the effects of their featured status. In fact, one-third of the featured iPhone apps Distimo examined did not gain in the first three days of being featured. Given that apps are, in general, only featured for seven days in all three major app stores, these first few days are critical.

During the full seven days that apps are featured, the average gains are +65 spots for Android, +15 for iPhone and +28 for iPad apps.

Distimo cautions that even though the differences between platforms seem spectacular, the app’s overall position matters, too. For example, a jump from 10 to 5 would means a substantial uptake in downloads, but going from 50 to 45 wouldn’t matter as much.

To depict this visually, the graph below shows the relative rank gains. (A rank change from 3 to 2 is an increase of 50%, while the change from 50 to 25 is 100%. All figures are 7-day averages).

The chart shows that approximately half the apps that have been featured in the Android Market have an increase over 100% while one-third of featured iPad apps gained more than 200%. (Ranks were as follows: iPad up 252%, iPhone up 137%, and Android up 172%).

Also interesting is what happens when the featured period ends. Using an average from the following five days after being featured, Distimo found that the boost was still having an overall positive effect. On average, iPad apps were up +145%, iPhone apps were up +75% and Android apps were up +828% during this “post-featured” time period.

Note that this report only looked at the top 100 most popular apps in any category – the gains in less popular apps could be quite different.