Android - page 30

We Apple users get teased for the lack of buttons on our devices. Jony Ive continues he and the late Steve’s joint crusade against the button. The thing is, it’s a crusade against the unnecessary button, which is why we’ll always have a home button on our iPhones, a kind of ejector seat for when things go wrong.

Android, on the other hand, has no such qualms about bad, user-unfriendly design. Which is why it has fallen to two Kickstarterers to go out and make a button for Android devices, which often lack physical switches of any kind [1].

Imo Messenger, the messaging service that now boasts over 10 million users worldwide, has today received a nice new update on Android and iOS. In addition to free video calling on both platforms, the new release adds the ability to share broadcasts to your favorite social networks on iOS, and makes the app a universal release with support for both iPhone and iPad.

Developer Inq Mobile has just announced a new version of a content discovery app, Material, now available for iOS users as well as those on Android. It’s a free app that aims to sort through millions of sites to find stuff you’ve already showed an interest in, via Twitter and Facebook.

Material grabs all of the sites you’ve linked to, shared, and re-tweeted to deliver a personalized, magazine-style collection of the online ephemera that you’re already checking out, but all in one place.

The app has been on Android for a while now, and has just come to iOS with a newly re-designed app for the iPhone, dropping updates twice a day to your chosen device.

There’s a nifty image editing feature inside Instagram for iPhone that helps you quickly straighten out wonky images before you upload them. It’s fast, and it seems to do a great job of straightening out your photo without any manual tweaking.

That’s thanks to Instagram’s intelligent correction technology, which uses data captured by your iPhone’s internal sensors to establish the orientation of your device when your image was taken.

While the iPhone 5C will certainly be cheaper than Apple’s high-end iPhone 5S, it’s likely to be too expensive still for many in emerging markets. But smartphone clone specialists Goophone already have an Android-powered alternative in the pipeline that will sell for just $100 in China.

Called the “i5C,” the device looks almost identical to the real iPhone 5C based on the leaks we’ve seen. Just don’t expect a Retina display.

I don’t think I’ve ever downloaded an app that comes with an instruction manual, but it seems BlackBerry felt the need to create one for its upcoming BBM releases for Android and iOS. We’re expecting the apps themselves to arrive any day now, but the user guides have been leaked and they are already available for reading online.

One of the more intriguing digital media platforms is Narr8, a Moscow-based startup that offers a platform with which to publish or enjoy multimedia creations crafted with a hodgepodge of animation, text, images and sound; think motion comics with added audio punch.

The app has been available for a while on the iPad, but has just now been given Universal App treatment, making it available on the iPhone too — though how the app’s experience translates onto the iPhone’s smaller screen is an interesting question.

Twitter’s video sharing app, Vine, has been overshadowed by the addition of video to Instagram, but that hasn’t stopped millions of people from signing up for Vine. Vine announced this afternoon that it just hit 40 million registered users today — a huge jump from the 13 million users it announced in June.

The launch of Vine’s Android app in June is likely one of the main contributors to the recent boost, but Twitter hasn’t said how many of its users are on Android, or how are even active., but with amazing videos like this, it looks like Vine might be hard to kill.

Source: Twitter

Dragon Age and its sequel (cleverly named Dragon Age 2) have provided PC and console gamers with deep, solid role playing set in an original fantasy world with engaging characters and a wide array of choices to make in storytelling and combat.

While the overarching story is what makes these games work so very well, the combat system, especially in the first game, is unique and compelling to play.

That makes the announcement of a new spinoff of the well-reviewed series, coming to Google Play and iTunes this fall, pretty darn spiffy, as Heroes of Dragon Age seems to focus solely on combat.

Plants vs. Zombies 2 hasn’t even been available to download from the U.S. App Store for a full week yet, and it has already seen over 16 million downloads, making it the “biggest mobile game launch” in EA’s history. It’s no wonder the company is already planning a new “Far Future” update that will bring new content to the free-to-play title.

Google has updated its Google Maps apps for Android and iOS to add real-time incident reports from the Waze community. This means that when Waze users — or “Wazers” as they like to be called — report accidents, construction, road closures, and other delays, the alerts will be displayed inside Google Maps as well as Waze.

Barnes & Noble’s efforts to become America’s next great tablet maker haven’t really gone too well, so the company announced today that it’s ready to try something new: iOS apps.

This morning, Barnes & Noble announced it’s bringing the Nook Video service to iOS, Android and Roku devices, giving users access to a wide range of TV shows and movie just incase offerings from iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, HBO Go, Amazon Prime Video, WatchABC, WatchESPN, MaxGO, Showtime Anytime, and Crackle just aren’t enough to get the fix for your media addiction. 

The good people at Motorola will probably clock me in the head with a Droid Maxx battery for saying this, but shouldn’t Google open-source Moto X technology?

As a longtime iPhone user, I’ve gone through my share of cases. There are a ton of great ones out there (including the FLAK case, currently available at a discount through Cult of Mac Deals), some of which work better in certain situations than others. That’s why I’ve always had a variety of them around – and it’s something I’d suggest more iPhone users do.

There are several reasons to keep a few iPhone cases handy, but the main reason I keep a selection of them around is simple: versatility.

Shadowgun: DeadZone, the award-winning multiplayer shooter that has attracted millions of players on Android and iOS, is now available to download on your Mac.

Like its mobile counterparts, the desktop version is completely free, and you can even sign into the same account you’ve already been playing with — so all the characters and weapons you’ve upgraded will be available to you right away.

We first heard that Samsung may be planning to announce its new “Galaxy Gear” smartwatch at its September 4 Galaxy Note III event earlier this month, but the rumor just got even stronger after it was confirmed by Bloomberg’s reliable sources.

They claim that the South Korean electronics giant will unveil a “wristwatch-like smartphone” powered by Android that will go head-to-head with the new Sony SmartWatch 2, and a potentially competing product from Apple, one of Samsung’s biggest rivals.

Dots is a ridiculously fun, simple game that has taken iPhone and iPad owners by storm (and reduced my fingertips down to bleeding little nubs). In fact, the game has been downloaded more than 5 million times and played almost a billion times in less than four months.

Wouldn’t you like to get that on Android and Kindle Fire? Sure you would. Good news! It’s coming to Google Play today. And a new game mode is coming to all devices, including iPhones.

Even without taking into account the unique, astonishing way it wirelessly connects with a smartphone, the Vaavud wind meter is pretty neat little gadget.

It will measure wind speeds up to 25 meters/second (the Vaavud is Danish, hence the metric measurements and strange name), can share recorded data with the world through its free app—and it’s been tested for accuracy in a wind tunnel.

But the real stunner about the Vaavud is that it doesn’t use Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or any other power-draining wireless radio to connect. Instead, it uses magnets.

After Google announced Hangouts at Google I/O back in June, we suspected that Google+ Messenger’s days were numbered — and we were right. In a new Google+ update rolling out now on Android, Google is killing Google+ Messenger for good, while the iOS version will get the chop at a later date.

It had to happen eventually, but now that it has, it feels weird: smartphones are now officially outselling dumb feature phones internationally for the first time ever. And what made it happen? Cheap Android phones.

Steve Cheney is a pretty smart guy, with a serious background in technology and mobile marketing, both as a former TechCrunch author and the current head of business development for iOS and Android chat app, GroupMe.

Cheney’s written a fairly strong analysis of the current Apple/Android war for supremacy and, as he sees it, there’s a clear advantage for Apple in the actual mobile device arena. Cheney calls it “bang per watt,” and he attributes Apple’s dominance here to the vise-like grip the Cupertino company has on the vertical integration of hardware and software.

Pocket Casts is arguably the finest podcast client on Android, and it’s pretty terrific on iOS, too. But it’s about to get even better. With the upcoming Pocket Casts 4 update, we’ll see a brand new user interface based on iOS 7’s new design, iPad support, cross-platform syncing for subscriptions, playlists, and play states, and lots more.

Brooklyn-based Pyle Audio has been making speakers and other audio paraphernalia for the last 50 years (if you haven’t heard of Pyle, it’s probably because they seem to spend comparatively little time or effort on marketing; just look at their website).

Pyle has a lot going on—home, car and even motorcycyle/bicycle audio are some of the pies the company has its fingers in. The company has also makes a bewildering array of waterproof audio toys, like headphones and Bluetooth speakers. While that’s nothing new, their latest gadget is a little more unusual: The SurfSound-Play is a waterproof phone case equipped with its own mini speaker.

Although it was a great idea, this notion of a cheap Android game console, the Ouya left a lot to be desired at launch. The hardware had some obvious deficiencies, like controller dead spots, but more importantly, the game library at launch was practically non-existent.

Right now, it looks like the Ouya is a dud: a great idea that just didn’t have a chance because it couldn’t get a push. But you know who might be able to take that same idea and get developers to treat it more seriously? Amazon. And they’re working to do just that.

Android’s share of the worldwide smartphone market increased yet again during the second quarter of 2013, while the iPhone suffered a slight dip, according to the latest figures from IDC. But Research Manager Ramon Llamas is confident that Apple’s smartphone will recapture more users later this year when the Cupertino company launches the iPhone 5S.