Flipboard has just released another update for its somewhat recently debuted Android app. The incredibly simple news reader has become even more simple now and allows all the newbies to find their way through the app with ease.

The update includes easier navigation and walk-through tutorials. Oh, and your general bug fixes and UI tweaks that are usually all-too-difficult to actually locate.

Head over to Google Play if you’re after the update/download.

From the very beginning of Google Plus, I’ve been a very big fan. As a recipient of one of the beta invites back in July 2011, I’ve tried to be as active as possible on Google+. I’ve recently taken to being a more active member on Google+ and am rediscovering the joys of the new social medium. I’d have to say Google hit the sweet spot between Facebook and Twitter here. I’m just hoping that Lachlan Rayner was right and Google Plus’ ‘win’ is truly inevitable and we’ll be seeing more people and activity of Google+ as time rolls on.

As such, we’re going to start the first of our Google+ Hangouts! As it is our first official hangout, we’d …

Welcome to this week in Android! This is our summary of the last week in Android. We report on the highs, the lows, the manufacturers, the carriers and especially everything out there for Australians!

Without further ado, what’s news this week in Android Australia?

Australia:

• We took a look inside Samsung’s upcoming Australia retail store!
• We gave away an Androstick to one of our readers. Congratulation Andrew C.!
• It turns out that Coles’ PendoPad cannot actually access the Google Play Store, ridiculous.
• Never miss your favourite shows again with IceTV for Android.

The Community:

•  Community member gurgle wrote on the JellyTime CyanogenMod for the HTC Desire HD.
• We held a poll this week to see what OS

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We reported last week that Samsung is currently working on a retail store in Australia. We didn’t know what to expect on the insides and we were thinking they’d do something similar to what was done in Canada. However, we couldn’t just leave this one with hopes and dreams. Myself and Greg Jacobson did some recon work on the ground and got a few sneaky photos of the insides.

You can’t see too much just at the moment, but it does look like they’ve got a white, minimalistic store on the horizon. There’s in-store steps and quite a lot of work going on behind the scenes. There’s stones on the floor which look quite similar to Apple’s and  check it …

Telstra has just tweeted in a response to Mobile Nova that the next update in  line for the HTC One XL is the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update, scheduled “in the next couple of months.”

The Telstra rep also stated that the Android 4.0.4 update which is rolling out around the world should be coming to the One XL. However, the Jelly Bean update is the only one in the schedule at the moment. The 4.0.4 update comes with Sense 4.1, which gives you the ability to move the hideous menu button to a new position. You are given the choice to override the multi-tasking capacitive button and make it act as the menu button.

@mobilenova I’d imagine so,

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The guys over at The Verge picked up on something quite interesting. It looks like the successor to the Sony Tablet S has had some key images leak, and boy does this thing look sexy.

As a big fan of the original Sony Tablet S’ shape and feel, it makes me happy that Sony has kept to a similar concept. It’s thinner, looks to be more powerful (running a quad-core Tegra 3 SoC) and is running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

You still need to take this all with a grain of salt, but everything seems to be leading to this being the true next device. Sony has ditched the non-labelled tablet scheme and is placing the XPERIA branding …

It seems as though Telstra has really caught onto the benefits of being as transparent as possible with Android updates. After yesterday announcing their earnings and reports for the 2012 financial year, Telstra have also launched a brand new page for device updates. Well, its not so much a page but more so a forum post – which in my opinion doesn’t work as well.

The post outlines all of Telstra’s phones (Android or not), when they expect the update to be approved and when the roll-out should begin. Telstra also gives us a bit more info with current notes on the updates and what the current status is – quite handy if you ask me.

If you’d like to …

A big thanks to the guys over at Gizmodo for doing what we simply could not – decipher Telstra’s absurdly large financial report. We’ve gone through their stats and got the key figures on what is useful for your/our ears.

2011/2012 was one of Telstra’s biggest years to date, which is really quite something in the current financial climate of the world.

The Users:

Telstra has added 1.56 million new mobile subscribers in the last year, bringing them to a grand total of 13.8 million. Which, for those of you who don’t know, is approximately 63% of Australia’s total population. Yes, many of us have multiple connections but most of us simply don’t. This is a huge number and …

Got an HTC Rhyme and are on the Optus network? Well, today is your lucky day. Optus has just approved an ICS roll-out for HTC’s mid-range phone. It has been quite a great week of ICS updates and Optus and HTC have just taken it once step further.

Now that Optus has given their thumbs up for the update it is up to HTC to push the update out to all your Rhymers. So, get ready and the update will be swinging out very shortly.

Soak up the last few moments of Gingerbread on your HTC Rhyme and get ready for some Ice Cream Sandwich goodness.

As always, let us know if you if you get the update and how …

When Coles Mobile announced that they were selling the PendoPad for $149 we were quite excited by its prospects. Not as a high-end device and a be-all and end-all tablet for everyone, but rather as a cheap ICS running tablet that you could hand to your children without fearing losing hard-earned money.

However, it has come to our attention that the new PendoPads in fact do not come with Google Play installed and are completely unable to ever have it running.

One of our readers went out and purchased a PendoPad, only to then find out (the hard way) that Google Play and most Google apps are simply not supported. Not even that, you can’t even manually install the GPlay …

Android has grown quarter by quarter by a 15% point increase, jumping up to 68.1% of the total smartphone market share. This is a huge milestone for our favourite OS and really puts it ahead of the lowly iOS figures. Apple’s closed-source OS dropped from a stable 23% to 16.9% over the same time period.

Who’s to thank, though? It appears as though Samsung’s incredible sales over the last few months are what have really pushed Android to this extreme height. We recently reported that Samsung has claimed nearly $6 billion in profit for Q2 2012 and sold over 10 million Galaxy S IIIs. Wow, just wow.

What’s really quite astounding is that just one year ago Symbian commanded 16.9% …

Samsung has today announced that the Galaxy Note 10.1 will be launching globally in August, in both the WiFi and 3G variants.

For those of you who have been staving off the iPad for a quad-core Galaxy Note 10.1 then this is the time to get excited.

It is running the quad-core Exynos 4, weighs 600 grams (so is quite light) and is packing 2GB of RAM.

There’s also an official YouTube video that has been doing its rounds today and showing up on almost every tech publication worldwide. It demonstrates pretty much everything the Note 10.1 can do and boy does it look great. It’s got great multi-tasking features, great S Pen functionality and really interesting features that just …