January 2011 Archives

Jan

Leaked Samsung MWC Schedule Shows Galaxy S 2, Tab 2 Presentations Planned

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Galaxy S II, Galaxy Tab 2, News, Samsung

It looks like a bit of an oopsie has resulted in Samsung's official Mobile World Congress (MWC) schedule leaking out. The details of the slip aren't available and aren't especially important, because this looks and sounds legitimate - especially since it (sort of) reinforces rumblings we've heard before.

Surprisingly, we have absolutely no idea what kind of hardware to expect. What I do know, though, is that if The S 2 ends up being this... boy, will my face ever be red. But hey - I still feel fairly safe in saying it won't be. (I hope.)

[Source: ...

Jan

Worms Now Available In Market, Productivity Takes Another Massive Hit World-Wide

Posted by Brad Ganley in Apps/Games, Games, News

Worms, the much-anticipated game by EA Mobile, is now available in the Android market for $2.99. Between this and Angry Birds, you're never going to get any work done.

Worms is a turn-based strategy game centering around your battle worms duking it out with other battle worms. You get all the classic weapons from the original Worms, as well as the hilarious dialogue and animation. The game looks great and gameplay is buttery-smooth on my Evo. If you like bugs, crazy weapons, and/or explosions, this is the game for you.

You can grab it from the market by scanning ...

Jan

Easter Eggs And Developer Humor In Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" APIs: Tron Bee, Rez, fyiWillBeAdvancedByHostKThx()

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News, Off-Topic

Last Updated: January 28th, 2011

The Android team sure has a sense of humor. Previously, in the Froyo SDK, besides tons of awesome code, they've also added a function called wtf() (What a Terrible Failure) and an even more hilarious isUserAMonkey() that returns true if the user interface is currently being messed with by a monkey.

Examining the Honeycomb SDK docs released earlier today, armed with a hint from Roman Nurik, I found the following gem: fyiWillBeAdvancedByHostKThx(). The docs are not online yet, but if you've downloaded the SDK, you can find this function at android-sdk/docs/reference/android/widget/

AdapterViewAnimator.html#fyiWillBeAdvancedByHostKThx(). What it does doesn't matter (it's ...

Jan

Abra-Kadabra! HTC Thunderbolt To Allow For Simultaneous Voice and Data On Verizon 3G!

Posted by Stephen Tenerowicz in HTC, News, Thunderbolt (Mecha), Verizon Wireless

With training for the HTC Thunderbolt starting today, a few Thunderbolt goodies surfaced. According to the leaked screenshot, the HTC Thunderbolt will be able to handle both voice and data simultaneously on Verizon 3G. As many of you probably already know, Verizon's CDMA network was incapable of producing this in the past (voice and data use separate channels on CDMA), but apparently HTC and Big Red have done some magic and figured out a way on this new 4G device.

For those who can’t see the text in the watermark in the image above:

There is functionality in the Thunderbolt

...

Jan

Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha: Atrix 4G, 3G XOOM Coming At The End Of February; Droid Bionic, LTE XOOM In Q2

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Atrix 4G (Olympus), Droid Bionic, Motorola, News, XOOM

You could say Motorola's earnings call ended on a high note - the company's CEO, Sanjay Jha, told analysts that the Atrix 4G will be launching at the end of February, as will the 3G version of the XOOM. That doesn't quite line up with the rumors we've been hearing about a February 17th release, and Jha later added that the XOOM might even be bumped to a release in March if things don't go according to plan. Bummer.

As for the Droid Bionic and the LTE-capable version of the XOOM, Sanjay said those devices should arrive at ...

Jan

For Developers: SDK Tools r9 Now Lets You Edit Properties Of Existing Virtual Devices (AVDs). Finally!

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Dev, News

Ah, what a breath of fresh air. After today's SDK Tools r9 and ADT 9.0.0 update that I talked about earlier this morning, I noticed another new feature in the SDK Manager that has been requested for years. As if the near-instant AVD restart support due to the new snapshotting was not enough of a present, developers can now edit properties of existing AVDs!

Before this update, once you've created an AVD, the AVD Manager did not let you touch any of its properties, forcing you to create a brand new virtual device for any tweaks. This was a ...

Jan

Task Identifier Tells You Your Apps' Secrets

Posted by Brad Ganley in App Reviews, Applications, Apps/Games, News, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

XDA user x2kjosh got curious about what exactly his phone was doing at any given time, as I'm sure we all have at some point. Your GPS icon randomly showing up in the task bar is a perfect example: What the hell is it doing there? What app is getting my location? Obviously tired of all the questions, Josh wrote a handy little app called Task Identifier.

The idea of it is simple: Notify the user whenever an app is loaded into memory. It's a pretty straightforward concept, but it is actually really interesting to use. It's hard to explain, ...

Jan

Xperia Play Prototype Previewed, So Far Only Plays PSX Games

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Games, News, Xperia Play (Zeus, PlayStation Phone)

Engadget was lucky enough to get its hands on a prototype of Sony's much-anticipated PlayStation Phone (believed to launch as the Xperia Play), and while not everything on the unit they got was finalized (Wi-Fi was completely broken), it does give us a pretty good idea of what to expect when the phone officially launches.

First, we have some of the most important specs:

4.0" 854 x 480 LCD display
Single-core 1 GHz processor (believed to be Qualcomm) with Adreno 205 GPU
512 MB RAM
Android 2.3 with Timescape UI
5 megapixel camera

That single-core processor might seem disappointing with ...

Jan

For Developers: Google Releases ADT For Eclipse v9.0.0 And SDK Tools r9, Now Offers Near-Instant AVD Restarts [Hands-On]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Android OS, Dev, News, Tips

If you are a developer, you will want to fire up SDK Manager right now and perform an update. Besides the Honeycomb SDK preview that we'll talk about separately, Google also unleashed the next version of Android Development Tools, or simply ADT, for Eclipse as well as SDK Tools r9. I've been using ADT versions 9.0.0 preview 1, 2, and 3 for a number of weeks now, and I can tell you that 9.0.0 is a huge step up to where a serious set of development tools needs to be.

What's New?

Numerous improvements to the Visual Layout Editor, "go ...

Jan

Android 3.0 Honeycomb Gets Huge Feature Breakdown, Preview SDK Released

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Dev, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

The Android Developers Blog just announced the availability of a "preview" of the upcoming Android 3.0 SDK. Developers can start getting their Honeycomb on immediately, as the preview is available via the Android SDK and AVD manager as part of the Android SDK.

But even more exciting is the fact that the Android Developers page has been updated with a plethora of information regarding Honeycomb and its features. Where to begin?

What You Can See

The brief breakdown of Honeycomb's new elements according to Google:

New "holographic" UI
Bottom "system bar" for global status and notifications
Action bar for in-application

...

Jan

Four New Phones Join Samsung's Galaxy Family: The Ace, Fit, Gio, And mini

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Devices By Manufacturer, Galaxy Ace, Galaxy Fit, Galaxy Gio, Galaxy Mini, News, Samsung

Last Updated: October 10th, 2011

Samsung is well-known for its ubiquity in the feature-phone market, and it's starting to look like they'll be employing the same assault-on-all-sides approach with Android phones too. As if they aren't struggling already to keep their phones up to date, Sammy is now digging a deeper hole with today's announcement of four budget-oriented devices set to prop up the rather premium Galaxy S.

Galaxy mini

Starting from the bottom, we have the Galaxy mini, intended to be a "first smartphone" for those crazy, hip youths you keep reading about. Not quite sure where the fun springs from in a ...

Jan

Android Market Fails To Live Up To Google's Expectations, Improvements Needed

Posted by Abhiroop Basu in Android OS, Apps/Games, Dev, News

In the past year the Android platform has exploded with a number of new smartphones and tablets launching as well as significant growth in the number of apps available in the Android Market. Despite its success, Google is "not happy" with lacklustre sales of paid apps in the Market, says Eric Chu, Android's platform manager. Speaking from the Inside Social Apps conference held in San Francisco earlier this week, Chu went on to give a very broad outline of Google's plan for the Android Market in 2011.

First and foremost for Android in the new year is the in-app payment ...

Jan

Amazon UK Releases Android App

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

The UK branch of one of the largest retailers in the world - Amazon.com - came out with an Android app today, dedicated to the UK market. The app is very similar to the U.S. version and offers convenience and speed of a locally installed application over browsing amazon.co.uk and having to keep track of your logins. Barcode scanning, 1-click ordering, prime membership, wish lists, recommendations, customer reviews, order tracking and modification are all supported.

If you're in the UK, you can download the Amazon UK app by scanning or clicking the following QR code:

Note: The app is ...

Jan

Kongregate Makes A Few Tweaks To Its App, Submits It To The Android Market Once More

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Applications, News

Having your app unceremoniously pulled from the Market just a few short hours after it launches can certainly be discouraging, but the developers behind Kongregate Arcade didn't let that stop them from trying again.

Indeed, Kongregate Arcade has returned to the Android Market, albeit with a few tweaks intended to please Google. Most importantly, the app no longer downloads game data to users' SD cards; instead, the information is stored in the standard browser cache (Kongregate Arcade is actually a WebKit-based browser with some heavy modifications). Additionally, the address bar is visible when the app is loading a game (though ...

Jan

Release Dates For Dell Streak 7, G-Slate, And Galaxy S 4G Confirmed; Streak 7 To Cost $299

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Optimus Pad / G-Slate, Streak 7, T-Mobile

Thanks to a leaked slide, some rumored release dates for upcoming T-Mobile 4G devices have been cemented. First up is Dell's Streak 7, which is set to debut on February 2; that will be followed by the Galaxy S 4G on February 23, while the Honeycomb-sporting G-Slate won't be launching until March 23.

Also leaked were two promos for the Streak 7 that nail down an on-contract (presumably) price of $299 - a pretty good deal for two cores and 7 inches of screen real-estate. T-Mobile's 4G lineup isn't lacking for tablets, but a refreshed Galaxy S handset probably ...