Huawei now number 3 device manufacturer: New report on mobile usage
February 8, 2018, by Martin Clancy
The latest Mobile Intelligence report released by DeviceAtlas shines a light on trends and developments in the device market, based on usage of different devices around the world. The report shows Huawei is now the third biggest device manufacturer after Samsung and Apple, a finding mirrored by IDC in their latest shipments data which puts... Read More
The Physical Web is dead, long live the physical web
February 2, 2018, by Martin Clancy
Launched in 2014 Google’s Physical Web project promised much, but seems to have died a quiet death over the last few months. This post takes a look at what the technology promised, and the speed bumps it hit along the way that may ultimately prove to have derailed it. Everything is a tap away Google’s... Read More
2017: Year in review
December 20, 2017, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue
As we close in on 2018, it’s that time of year again when we reflect on what’s happened. 2017 has turned out to be another great year for the web. 2017: The year of the PWA There were lots of PWA good-news stories in 2017. We saw PWAs start to be distributed in platform app... Read More
Windows Phone: A history
December 20, 2017, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue
In October 2017 Microsoft announced that Windows Phone would no longer be developed. This was on the cards for some time, due to poor sales and low adoption, and even despite developer incentives, Microsoft failed to gain the level of developer interest needed to bring its ecosystem to critical mass. To mark this sad demise... Read More
Cryptomining digs deep into our batteries
December 19, 2017, by Mike Eichler
Many websites have recently started using their visitors’ browsers to mine cryptocurrency. A lot of these are of the shadier persuasion, but there are advocates who claim that website mining is the future of monetization. “Your users run the miner directly in their Browser and mine XMR [Monero cryptocurrency] for you in turn for an... Read More
Your most frequent visitors don’t benefit from your AMP pages
November 29, 2017, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue
With the most common AMP configuration, your most frequent visitors will get a worse experience than drive-by, random visitors. How can this be? Default AMP setup The most common, default, setup for AMP pages is to deploy them alongside your existing non-AMP site. You add a <link rel="amphtml" ...> tag to your existing pages that... Read More
Safari service workers and other PWA good news stories
November 1, 2017, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue
It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on the state of Progressive Web Apps, there’s much to talk about. Here’s a whirlwind update of the major PWA news over the past few months. 1. Service workers support in Safari Probably the biggest news in PWA land is that during August the status of Service... Read More
iPhone X notch advice for web developers
October 9, 2017, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue
We’ve arrived at a new era of edge-to-edge, bezel-less phone screens. The trend toward smaller bezels has been coming for some time now, but a (perhaps unexpected) side-effect is the notch! The Essential notch While most people may be aware of the new iPhone X’s sensor housing, aka notch, it’s less well known that Apple... Read More
The mobile video revolution: are you ready?
September 20, 2017, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue
Ever since the first TV made its debut in the mid 1920s, the human race has been having a love affair with moving pictures. Since then we’ve witnessed an evolution from linear, tune-in-or-miss-out programming, to video-on-demand, to live-streaming. And now video’s taking over the internet. Would anyone have believed you if, in the 1920s, you... Read More
What are the most common RAM specs for smartphones?
September 6, 2017, by Pawel Piejko
While 2GB of RAM is enough for iOS to work smoothly, Android devices need more memory. If you’re stuck with an older Android phone with less than 2 gigs of RAM, you are likely to experience OS hiccups even during typical daily tasks. According to the most recent statistics from DeviceAtlas, this is the reality... Read More
