October 2010 Archives

Oct

Updated, More Polished, Standalone YouTube App Hits The Android Market, And It Is Awesome

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Google is on a serious roll lately - after releasing standalone Gmail, Maps, Navigation, Street View, and Car Home apps, today the company continued to decouple its applications from the core of the Android OS with the release of the standalone YouTube app.

Not only is the app now updateable using the Market, which means we'll get updates faster and without requiring OTAs, but it also comes with a shiny new UI, ability to vote, view and leave comments, and play videos in portrait mode. Check out the screenshots I took below and hit up the direct Market download link.

Oct

T-Mobile G2 Overclocked To 1.42GHz, "Basically Blows Every Retail Android Phone Out Of The Water" - Here's How To Do It

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Dev, G2 (Vision), HTC, Mods, T-Mobile

This article deals with a couple of advanced topics. If you’re unfamiliar with some of the terms, hit up our primers here:

The G2 may have a next-gen MSM7X30 processor, but unfortunately, HTC and T-Mobile have decided to clock it at a paltry 800MHz.

Oct

EA Acquires Chillingo For $20 Million - Chillingo To Give A Damn About Android Again?

Posted by Andrew Huff in Apps/Games, Games, News

It was rumored earlier this morning that Chillingo, publishers of the massively popular games Angry Birds by Rovio and Cut The Rope by Zeptolab, would be acquired by a major company. It has been confirmed that a deal has been struck and Chillingo has been acquired by EA for $20 million in cash and possibly more.

While full details of the transaction haven't been released yet, there were probably some other bonuses involved as $20 million is far below Chillingo's estimated worth of $80 to $200 million. Recently they published Cut The Rope which sold over 1 million copies in a single day.

Oct

App Developer Posts His Experiences And Thoughts On Android Market And Apple App Store: Android Market Is Alright, But...

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Apps/Games, Dev, News

Benoit Essiambre, the developer behind iOS and Android apps Speed Bones, Speed Muscles, and Speed Anatomy, recently compared his experience with the Android Market to that of the Apple App Store. Particularly, he discussed ease-of-use, support, and perhaps most importantly, profitability. His thoughts as a developer: the Android Market has a perk or two, but overall it still falls short of the Apple App Store.

His first point: Canada only received paid market support just a few weeks ago. In fact, he created Speed Bones nearly two years ago, before realizing that the Market didn't yet support paid Canadian apps.

Oct

Super-Awesome Interactive Live Wallpaper: 3D Active Blocks

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Applications, Apps/Games, Mods, News

Last Updated: October 29th, 2010

Given how popular live wallpaper (LWP) posts are, it's surprising that - with the exception of the Dancing Droid LWP - we haven't really had a big one since we found the R2-D2 set back in early September. Consider the dry spell over: meet the newest post-worthy LWP, 3D Active Blocks. The work of XDA-Devs member mmone3, the premise is simple: it takes pictures (either preset or pictures from your gallery) and breaks them into blocks; the blocks then break up, move, and transform (via various effects) into other pictures.

But the effect is cooler than that: the wallpaper is actually interactive, reacting to touch.

Oct

Bug In Angry Birds Lets You Unlock All Locked Worlds

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Games, News, Off-Topic, Tips

Have you ever wanted to peek ahead to those locked worlds in Angry Birds that are unavailable before fully completing the previous ones? A bug (or an Easter egg) in the Android version of the game lets you do just that, a reddit user braaaiins found. I tried it just a few minutes ago with 100% success.

Of course, many would argue that you should be going in order and playing the way Rovio meant for you to play, and I'd agree with them. However, there will always be people who would also find this unlock useful (lost game progress, new phone, angrybirdyism, etc), so I'll just put this here, and you can quietly walk away.

Oct

myTouch 4G ROM Already Up And Running On Nexus One, AndroidCentral Go Hands-On

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Dev, HTC, myTouch 4G (Glacier), News, Nexus One (Passion)

As is traditional following the leak of a new ROM dump, developers have already set to work porting the novel Android flavour to other devices. As he did with the Desire HD ROM, XDA-developers' eVil D: has stepped forward to provide a working port of yesterday's HTC Glacier/myTouch 4G ROM to the Nexus One. Cautioning that he "may or may not support this", eVil D: goes on to describe the semi-functional state that the port is currently in:

What works:
Wifi
Radio
Bluetooth
What doesn't work:
camera/camcorder
videos
Wifi UMA calling = bootloop (you've been warned!)
Requirements:
Common Sense (this is a VERY EARLY build)
SDEXT (512mb) partition *Use clockworkmod or RA 1.9.0+

AndroidCentral got the ROM running on their own Nexus One, and their screenshots provide a good insight into the "Espresso" Sense UI of the myTouch 4G itself.

Oct

Verizon Announces Samsung Galaxy Tab Plans: Nov. 11th Release, $600 Off-Contract

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Galaxy Tab, News, Verizon Wireless

After an agonizing wait, we now know Verizon's plans for the Tab, right from the source itself. The tablet will be available three weeks from now, on the 11th of November, and the full retail price is to be $599.99 - although VZW has not disclosed any on-contract price. An optional $20/mo 1 GB tariff is alluded to but it is unclear whether or not this will bring with it a discount to the Tab's sticker price. If the MiFi iPad plan is any indication, this $20 monthly option may be a rolling 30 day contract without any device subsidy, but that is wait-and-see right now.

Oct

T-Mobile's HSPA+ "Not Ready In All Areas"

Posted by Brad Ganley in G2 (Vision), T-Mobile

Allen Kiehl over at AndroidSpin has recently posted a pretty unbelievable tale about his experience with network issues on his G2 and what T-Mobile recommends he do about them. The story starts out pretty commonplace: he was experience network issues such as dropped calls, not receiving calls or text messages at all, and a finicky data connection. All of these are symptoms of a bad device, right? Wrong.

What happened next blew both Allen and myself away. T-Mobile recommended he swap it out for an entirely different device or leave their network. Here is what they told him exactly:

I would recommend that you take advantage of the buyer's remorse program as we do not have an ETA when the issue will be resolved.

Oct

ZeptoLab, The Maker Of The Top iOS Game Cut The Rope, Promises An Android Version

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Games, News

Merely four days ago, @AndroidPolice (that's our Twitter account) tweeted out the following message:

"Cut The Rope" for iPhone is dubbed the next Angry Birds. Can we have that on Android please, @ZeptoLab? http://youtu.be/-1gf5UdYHwg

I don't know if ZeptoLab, the developer of this top paid iPhone game, was really listening or the timing was just right, but it seems to have answered our prayers with the following statement: