Facebook for Android goes native, Now twice as fast

Facebook for Android has always  struggled with performance issues and particularly laggy scrolling due to its dependence on web views instead of native code. The company has now finally rolled out a native build of the app for Android which promises to double the performance of the application. The application is expected to be twice as fast at looking at photos and opening up the timeline.

Launch timings to have been worked at according to Phillip Fung, a Facebook engineer. The popular social network has decided to keep the interface the same while making extensive under-the-hood changes to create a solid foundation for the app moving forward. There’s much improved memory efficiency and garbage collection to ensure that the performance is right in line with the updated iOS application which shipped a few months ago. Facebook has built its own scrolling engine and is using it instead of the one built into Android. The update will go live later today on the Play Store and should show up on your devices as well.

Eric Schmidt: Android is winning the war with iOS pretty clearly

In an interview with Bloomberg yesterday, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt said Android is quite clearly winning its war against iOS. Schmidt compared the rivalry between Android and iOS in the mobile OS space to the Microsoft versus Apple debacle 20 years ago.

This is a huge platform change; this is of the scale of 20 years ago -- Microsoft versus Apple. We're winning that war pretty clearly now.

He also added that now new users are activating more than 1.3 million Android devices a day. In the third quarter alone, Android took 72 percent of the market, while Apple's iOS managed just 14 percent.

"The core strategy is to make a bigger pie," Schmidt said. "We will end up with a not perfectly controlled and not perfectly managed bigger pie by virtue of open systems."

Sony Xperia V goes on sale in Russia

The Sony Xperia V, a water-proof version of the international Sony Xperia T flagship has gone on sale in Russia today.

The smartphone's initial pricing is pretty steep, though. It will set you back 24999 Russian rubles (around $815/€623/£505) off contract, though.

The black Xperia V can be ordered online right now and shipped to your doorstep tomorrow. The phone will also arrive in the brick and mortar stores of the seller starting December 16.

The white Xperia V is still on pre-order with no word on when it will beging shipping.

The Xperia V was already delayed in France and is expected to launch with Jelly Bean in January. It also has launched as Xperia VL and Xperia AX in Japan.

The smartphone runs on a dual-core Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon chipset with two 1.5 GHz Krait CPU cores, the Adreno 225 GPU, 1 GB worth of RAM and a 4.3" 720 x 1280 screen at the front.