Android Police

Aaron Gingrich-

Aaron Gingrich

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About Aaron Gingrich

Aaron is a geek who has always had a passion for technology. When not working or writing, he can be found spending time with his family, playing a game, or watching a movie.

Latest Articles

Yesterday, I told you how to use pre-made icons to create a custom Android Phone 7 theme. Today, I'll walk you through how to create your own icons in Adobe Photoshop. I'm going to assume you have at least a basic understanding of Photoshop.

How To: Create A Customized Android Phone 7 Theme - Part 1

How To: Create A Customized Android Phone 7 Theme

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About a month ago, XDA-Devs member newone757 created a really great theme based on the one used in Windows Phone 7 - hence the name, Android Phone 7. He was kind enough to post the image files, a template image, and a short how-to, as well. I've taken the personalization a step further and created icons to fit my needs, and now it's your turn.

Try to contain your excitement, here: Sony-Ericsson will begin rolling out an the update to Android 2.1 (Éclair) for the Xperia X10, X10 Mini, and X10 Mini Pro devices starting November 1. As sarcastic as we are about being updated to an already out-of-date version, it's still a huge step up from the current Android 1.6. Major features of the updates:

Finally, some empirical evidence that illustrates what we've known for some time now: Android is growing like gangbusters. In fact, 28% of smartphones sold in Q1 2010 were Android, compared to 21% for iOS. RIM still holds the top spot with 36%, but that's a drop of roughly 12% in the past year - while iOS has fallen approximately 10% itself. In the same period, Android increased over 20%.

Word on the street is that Droid 2 users are now receiving/pulling a minor update. The official Verizon document on the update reveals a number of improvements:

In what is certainly a grade-A dropping of the ball, it looks like somebody accidentally pulled the trigger on a post at PayPal's Blog before it was time to. We say accidentally because the post read:

Remember that Sony Ericsson PlayStation phone we heard about back in August? Turns out it's not only real, but a prototype is out and about in the wild - and Engadget has landed themselves some surprisingly clear and detailed pictures of the device. Better still, it looks pretty close to the renders we saw in August - surprising, given the track record for Android rumors.

Yesterday, developer and XDA member zehro released his minimalist clock app, clockr. The app is actually a widget - and it really is as simple as it sounds: it's a pure-text clock.

Thanks to @maxisma, AndroidSpin found that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - Force Recon is now available for download via GetJar. The good news: it looks pretty damn fun - it's reminiscent of PaperBoy, but with a lot more shooting and blood. But there's bad news, as well: before you get too excited, you should know that there's a decent chance your device may not be supported. I haven't looked at the supported devices list thoroughly (it's long, I'm lazy), but it looks like you need a trackball to play.

Update: Thanks to commenter Xcom923 (below), I rebooted my phone and have it working! It's freakin' awesome!

Fan of Dance Dance Revolution? Developer Keripo has you covered: on Monday, he released his awesomely named DDR Clone,"Beats, Advanced Rhythm Game."

It's certainly a good time to be in the market for a new flagship Android device, isn't it? Amazon is selling the Motorola Droid 2 for just $.01, and the HTC EVO 4G and Samsung Epic 4G for a cool $100. Lately, Amazon and Costco have been in a price war over the T-Mobile G2; Costco struck first, dropping the upgrade price to just $100 - to which Amazon replied by dropping the new contract price to $80. Now Costco has shot back by lowering their own new contract price to just $50 without any rebate.

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.

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.

Remember when a new piece of code hit Gmail Labs called Mail Goggles - the one that made you do a few math problems before emailing somebody at pre-determined time-frames (such as late at night on the weekends)? Today, Brian was browsing the CyanogenMod (CM) Gerrit and noticed a new series of code - similar to Mail Goggles - has been added: Drunk Mode.

 

Two-for-one on this post: Japanese carrier KDDI revealed this morning that they'll be selling a customized version of Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Tab. On a similar tablet note, it looks like the Advent Vega will be joining the list of budget Android tablets that won't have the market. Turns out we've never covered the Vega either, so I'll provide a few extra details on it. Let's start with the Galaxy Tab: what's custom about it?

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