Want a better camera on your Android device? Google does, too. For that reason, the company has overhauled the mobile OS’s plumbing. Google has built deep into Android support for two higher-end photography features — raw image formats and burst mode — and could expose those features so that programmers could tap into them, the …

Samsung, Qualcomm, ARM, Broadcom, and a bunch of other technology companies want your computer to see. To that end, they banded together at the Khronos Group to try to standardize some elements of machine vision technology. It’s the kind of thing that could make it easier to write an augmented reality app for a mobile phone or sign-recognition software for …

Google has expanded its bug-bounty program to cover vulnerabilities uncovered in Android. The program began with Chrome and expanded to Google Web sites and other open-source software projects. Under the program, people who find security holes get paid bounties. That often equates to a few hundred dollars, but particularly skilled attacks can mean big money — $50,000 last week for …

Android device owners might be able to take photos in a higher-end raw format in the future, according to details tucked away in the source code for the mobile operating system. As spotted by Ars Technica, Google programmers have been working on a revised camera interface that exposes new features to Android app programmers. Among the features in the “new …

In June, the US Federal Communications Commission certified Google to operate the national database detailing which particular patches of “white space” spectrum were usable for wireless communications. Now, the company has opened a service that lets programs tap into that database, an automation step that Google expects will make it easier to squeeze as many bits as possible into the …

Google’s inexpensive, new Android phones mean the company has a real chance at transforming the wireless industry — something it attempted to do nearly four years ago with the Nexus One. In October, the company released the Nexus 5, a top-end phone built by LG Electronics that has a remarkably low price of $349 for a 16GB model — unlocked …

SmugMug’s Camera Awesome, a well-reviewed iOS app for taking and editing photos, has arrived on Android, too. But it wasn’t easy getting it there. For the SmugMug programmers behind the $3 app, it took three tries wrestling with the difficulties of Android development before Tuesday’s release was possible. The company began developing the two versions at the same time, but …

There are plenty of battery-powered chargers on the market to top up on your smartphone during a long day’s use. But a company called Intelligent Energy hopes to go a step beyond that with a $200 hydrogen fuel cell device called Upp. The device has a detachable cartridge that has 25 amp-hours (25,000mAh) of charge — more than 10 times …

AMSTERDAM — How does a national-scale carrier go from nonexistent to profitable in five years? There’s probably no single, simple path. But in the case of YTL Communications in Malaysia, the answer combines aggressive construction of a 4G network, a government boost for new network operators, and a business that embraces the services that many carriers don’t like. That’s according …

Android 4.4, aka KitKat, comes with an experimental technology called ART designed to speed up Android apps. ART is a replacement for Dalvik, the “runtime” software that has the job of executing Android apps. Dalvik is a virtual machine — essentially a software version of a computer that lets Android apps run on a variety of hardware — that’s closely …