Archos G9 Tablets To Get Android 4.0 In Early 2012

As reported on The Verge, the Archos G9 tablets will be getting the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update in early 2012. I'm looking forward to this as the proud owner of an Archos 80 G9.

Source: The Verge

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions. Will Archos be the first manufacturer to release an update to ICS for their existing tablets?

Bing For Android [Not Reviewed], Fail!

I was going to review Bing for Android, Microsoft's search engine's app for Android. I can't do the review and this post will explain why.

I would love to install the Bing app on one of my many devices...

I tried searching for the Bing application on my current main Android device (a ZTE Skate also known as the BAP) and it would not appear on the Android Market. Having had no luck finding it, I swapped phone and used my Samsung Galaxy Pro. No luck with that device either. Thinking all this was very strange, I then picked up my Archos 80 G9 Honeycomb tablet and searched for Bing in the Android Market. I was relieved to fing "Bing - Microsoft Corporation" but when in the Android Market description page was faced with this:

"This item is not available with your operator."

I was quite annoyed by this. I logged onto market.android.com on my laptop and found the Bing application. When trying to select a device to install the application to I was faced by a list of 11 devices the application is not compatible with.

"This app is incompatible with all of your devices." Bing Fail!

So that's how what was going to be my review of the Bing app for Android turned into another blog post about Microsoft failure. I hope this is covered in the Linux Outlaws' Microwatch segment next week because it is really worthy of it in my opinion.

Microsoft have seen some sense (HTC pun not intended) and decided to get their search engine onto the fastest growing and soon to be dominant smartphone/tablet platform (mostly open source too!). They are not doing too well if their app is not compatible on my 11 devices which range from low-end low-res screens to high-res tablets.

I look forward to Microsoft sorting this out and being able to review the Bing app for Android at some point in the future...

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.

Archos 80 G9 With Apple iPad 2

Today I snapped a few shots of the Archos 80 G9 with Picc0110's Apple iPad 2 to give the readers of the Todoleo Tech Blog a better idea of its size next to Apple's current tablet.

Granted the iPad 2 is made of better materials and has an exceptional industrial design. The Archos 80 G9 has much more built in functionality, expandibility, a more open OS and comes in at less than half the price of the entry level iPad 2. I'll be writing more about the Archos 80 G9 soon.

As usual, fell free to leave comments and/or questions below.

How I'm Transferring Music To My Honeycomb Tablet [Linux]

In Linux some devices just don't work as they are designed to on other operating systems. I experienced one of these situations last week when an Archos 80 G9 was delivered to me and I was wanting to transfer some music over to it. I could have used a network share, but I still like being able to plug things in to my ageing Linux laptop and drag and drop files over.

The Archos 80 G9

On the specifications of The Archos 80 G9, in the system requirements for Linux it mentions "MTP Tool". A quick Google search and a Wikipedia click later I had learnt that MTP stands for Media Transfer Protocol, and is an extra series of packages that allow your favourite Linux distro to recognise and read/write to external media player devices. In the Synaptic Package Manager I found a useful package called gMTP. It works great on my Lubuntu machine.

The gMTP UI

Using the application is easy peasy, it is simply a drag and drop experience. While I type this post, I'm transferring my Jennifer Paige discography over to my Honeycomb tablet in the background...

Thanks to Darran Kartaschew and all those who worked on and made gMTP available.

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.