Related stories Google ups challenge to iPad, Kindle with debut of $199 Nexus 7 Android Jelly Bean gets fast response, better notifications, Google Now Google glasses: $1,500, shipping next year Google unveils the Nexus Q social streaming media player Pictures: Day 1 of Google I/O Complete coverage: Google I/O 2012 SAN FRANCISCO — A total …

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Play, Google’s online market for Android apps, movies, music, and books, now lets people purchase movies instead of just rent them. “We’re also adding TV,” announced Chris Yerga, an engineering director for Android, at the Google I/O show today here. “You’ll be able to purchase episodes or entire seasons.” Google has partnerships for the service with …

Now playing: Watch this: Android 4.1 Jelly Bean a sweet Android update 3:32 SAN FRANCISCO — Android 4.1, aka Jelly Bean, gets a more responsive user interface, a much more interactive notification system, better voice transcription, overhauled search, and a major new feature called Google Now that tries to anticipate what a person needs to know at any given moment. …

Squashing any lingering doubts about the arrival of the next version of Android, Google has put up a Jelly Bean sculpture on its campus. The sculpture appears next to others in a collection of alphabetically ordered sweets after which new versions of Google’s mobile operating system is named: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, and Ice Cream Sandwich. The Google …

One area the iPhone has held its own against Android phones I’ve used is the responsiveness of the touch-screen keyboard. But one area where I think Android has shown more innovation better predictive typing. Which is why I was happy to see the release of SwiftKey 3 today. The software one-ups the predictive typing abilities of Android’s built-in keyboard, learning …

Today’s jury verdict that Google’s Android didn’t infringe Oracle Java patents no doubt left many at Google breathing sighs of relief. As Android programming evangelist Tim Bray tweeted, “F***ing A.” Google took this case to the brink, refusing to settle on either Oracle’s copyright or patent infringement charges, and has emerged with minimal scarring so far. Some copyright issues remain …

PARIS — Overhauling Nokia hasn’t just been a matter of slapping a new operating system on older mobile phone hardware. In reality, the company had to rebuild its entire supply chain — the vast network of business partners that build everything that makes up a phone. And a big part of the change: accepting more risk as the company tries …

BARCELONA, Spain–High dynamic range (HDR) photography has largely been the province of photo enthusiasts willing to put up with its hassles, but Dolby Laboratories hopes to bring it to the masses with a semi-proprietary technology called JPEG-HDR. HDR photography began as a way to compensate for cameras’ shortcomings compared to the human eye. The biological image sensor can capture a …

BARCELONA, Spain–I understand the appeal of a bigger screen. You get a genuinely good way to compete with the iPhone, which suits me since I like Android fine. You get better video, bigger maps, more room to read e-mail, and Web pages of much better fidelity. But in the case of the Galaxy Nexus, you also get a phone that’s …

BARCELONA, Spain–H.264 is today’s leader when it comes to mainstream video encoding technologies, but it will have to share the stage in 2013 with a successor called H.265 that can squeeze a video into nearly half the file size. H.264, also known as the Advanced Video Codec (AVC), defines how a video can be compressed for reduced storage requirements and–very …