Artem Russakovskii
Contributing since March, 2010
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1398articles
About Artem Russakovskii
Artem is a die-hard Android fan, passionate tech blogger, obsessive-compulsive editor, bug hunting programmer, and the founder of Android Police and APK Mirror. Most of the time, you will find Artem either hacking away at code or thinking of the next 15 blog posts.
Latest Articles
Android Police stands with the people of Ukraine
A personal plea to donate to their cause
The editors, staff, and contributors of Android Police condemn the actions of Russia and the invasion of Ukraine. Separately from the humanitarian crisis — the deaths of innocent civilians, including pets and children, and the destruction of public buildings, homes, and even hospitals — we have a personal stake in the safety of the Ukrainian people. Or, at least, I do.
Quick, Rapid, Fast, and Power Delivery charging explained
All the ways to quickly charge your phone
You've probably heard of quick charging, adaptive fast charging, rapid charging, USB power delivery charging, and Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0/3.0/4.0 before - or at least one or two of these things. What you may not know is that all but one of them are actually basically the same thing, based on the same licensed technology from Qualcomm known as Quick Charge. More recently, Qualcomm's technology has slowly been supplanted by the likes of USB Power Delivery, the standard for charging governed by the USB-IF, the body behind USB itself. Additionally, new proprietary standards from companies like Oppo, OnePlus, and Huawei have split off from both Qualcomm and the USB-IF, further increasing the amount of charging confusion out there in the market. Let's try and clear all that up, shall we?
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- Google has just published a support page to address the reported issue. The company assures pre-order customers that their units won't be affected, and the defect should be limited to the batches given out at Made by Google events, which presumably includes 4,000 Home Minis distributed at the donut pop-up events as well as the ones from the October 4th press event.
When the first home assistants were announced, I was excited. A device I could wake up with a simple hotword that would answer my questions, set reminders, turn on the TV, and dim the lights, all without me having to get off the couch, sounded fantastic. Amazon's Echo and Echo Dot, Google's Home, and a myriad others, most recently the Home Mini, have invaded our kitchens, living rooms, and bedrooms. Heck, I put one in the bathroom.
[Copy All The Things!] You Can Now Copy Changelogs And App Descriptions Using Android Play Store App
Earlier today, Kirill Grouchnikov, the face behind the Play Store Android app, detailed a set of relatively substantial design tweaks and RTL language support destined for an upcoming update. Unfortunately, the APK uploaded to APK Mirror shortly after did not seem to have the majority of these changes live just yet, but Kirill, who also announced his departure from the Google Play team, managed to sneak in one last parting gift.
Any time we talk about a service that lets you watch other people play games, some folks who still don't seem to understand the appeal behind watching games as opposed to playing them inevitably show up in the comments. There is a reason Amazon acquired Twitch for close to $1bln and Google's recently released YouTube Gaming app has already racked up over 100,000 downloads.
Earlier today, Verizon (and very likely Verizon Wireless in the near future) changed its logo. Someone asked John Legere about it, and, as usual, T-Mobile's CEO did not disappoint:
@@#!%@# @#!~^%# @#%@#$@#% @#! @$%@# @@@#$% @*&4^$ @#^!@#. #$^@ #@#. ^%@#^ *@#%*#$*&& &*%^#&*$&^&# #& &$#*@*@#$ ^#$^@#$^ #%^@#$^#$$# &&^O*&%& ^&&*@&*& &&@#&%.
In the highly anticipated 5th season of Game of Thrones, Hodor will be noticeably absent. Now we know why. According to the appendices of George R.R. Martin's masterpiece, Hodor has been busy learning Android development.
A few hours ago, we spotted no less than five mentions of "Android 5.1" on Google's Indonesian Android One page. Considering that 5.1 is quite a jump from 5.0.2, and something like 5.0.3 seemed more likely as the next bug fixer, we were cautious to suggest it may have been a mistake or a very persistent typo.
Update 10/17/14: Play Store 5.0.32, a small bump over 5.0.31, is now available for download.
Update: It's live.
I think everyone knows by now that Motorola had to make a few sacrifices with the Moto 360, one of which I personally still notice every time I wear it - the flat tire look. The small blacked out area on the bottom of the watch contains the ambient sensor and a few other components that didn't fit elsewhere in this design, at least in the amount of time the company had to deliver the first iteration to consumers.
The black leather Moto 360 is currently up on the U.S. Play Store, though it probably won't last long. After going out of stock pretty much immediately at launch several days ago, it is already listed as shipping September 22nd, a full two weeks from now. The gray leather variant remains out of stock.
Releasing the L preview was an important leap forward for Android as an ecosystem, but, outside of a single almost meaningless update, we're probably not going to see any new builds up until the final L release. I can sort of see why the Android team doesn't want to put out builds with incremental fixes, saving all the improvements for a grand finale unveiling, so in the meantime, any glimpse at their progress is very interesting to us as well as developers working on porting their apps to adhere to the new Material Design guidelines.
Earlier this week, the following crane lift project notice was posted around the famous Android statue lawn next to building 44 on Google's Mountain View campus:
The OnePlus One is receiving another OTA today - one I'm probably more excited about than any other OTA the company has released so far. Mostly because unlocking the phone and using apps has deteriorated into a constant battle with an unresponsive and very moody touchscreen. Supposedly, this update should resolve this pretty major flaw, along with a few other things which I've detailed below, including the poor battery life we covered recently.
There is a really annoying bug in Android that makes your Home and Recents buttons disappear and prevents the notification shade from working. It only happens after flashing an OS update without wiping, but since I've now run into this issue at least 3 times after updating my Nexus devices, and it's a pain to find any info on how to fix it online, it's time for a quick post.