Welcome to the Android Police Podcast, Episode 61.
Don't forget - the Android Police Podcast's live broadcast is every Thursday at 5PM PST (www.androidpolice.com/podcast). The unedited video version of the podcast can be found here - and will likely include various verbal expletives, technical snafus, tangents, and probably a good 5-10 minutes of pre-podcast banter as we prepare. Watch at your own risk!
https://soundcloud.com/androidpolice/androidpolice-podcast-ep61
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The Cast
- Matthew Smith, Host
- Bob Severns, Editor, A/V
- David Ruddock, Co-host
- Cameron Summerson, Co-host
- Eric Ravenscraft, Co-host
- Ron Amadeo, Co-host
THE OUTLINE
Code Google
- There are nearly a billion Android devices activated. Next, the world!
- Samsung is gonna sell a Galaxy S4 with stock Android for $650 on the Play Store. In case plastic, LTE, and a micro SD card slot are worth $350 extra to you.
- Google Play Games brings achievements, game sync, and leaderboards to your device without an OS upgrade. The not-so-subtle implication is that Play Services is more important than Android and Google will thank you to stop talking about slow updates.
- Hangouts doesn't really unify anything yet, but it is pretty neat if you like sharing pictures more than you like making phone calls from your desktop.
- Hangouts had quite a few problems at launch, though. Several of them are resolved now, but historians will refer back to this chronicle for future snarky remarks about botched Google launches.
- Meanwhile, Play Music finally brings a subscription service, and it's two bucks cheaper than Spotify if you get in now.
- You kinda want to get in now. The app isn't immediately easy, but it's well worth taking the time to get used to it.
- Voice Search gets reminders, which ought to be enough to keep your attention, but there's other cool stuff too.
- Oh and Maps is fucking beautiful.
- The Play Store can now sort apps by which ones are designed for tablets. Though the definition of "designed for tablets" is tenuous at best.
- As if Play Music wasn't enough, you can also upload your own books to Play Books and sync them across all your device. Neat!
- The physical Google Wallet card is dead. There's a new Wallet API, though. That's kinda cool. Oh, and you can send money to people with Gmail!
- Developers also got a bunch of new toys for rolling out apps on the Play Store.
- To no one's surprise, leaked internal videos at Microsoft show Microsoft taking extensive liberties with things like "truth" or "accuracy".
Rumor Roundup
- There may be a white Nexus 4 running around with Android 4.3. Maybe.
The Hotsheet
- The NVIDIA Shield gets a price and pre-order date. The price: expensive. The date: one of two possible days depending maybe kinda.
App Updates
- Blackberry is finally bringing BBM to Android and iOS now that you've finally given up and switched to another messaging app.