Artem Russakovskii
Contributing since March, 2010
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1398articles
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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
Well, well, well, what do we have here? Why, it's the Android 3.1 update for the ASUS Transformer that we were all expecting early next week. The 220MB package conveniently showed up on the web earlier this morning, bringing joy to Transformer owners who are reporting successful updates without any issues.
Remember the stunning MyWater live wallpaper that was ripped out of the Transformer a month ago, complete with ice cubes floating in water that shifts around when you tilt your tablet? Here it is:
After spending almost a year with my EVO 4G in what was essentially rooted stock condition (Fresh ROM, based on stock Sense, minus bloatware), I finally got frustrated to the point that I was ready to make the jump to CyanogenMod and see just how much better the fully unlocked stock Android experience with CM improvements is.
Ever since the Android web Market was launched, one of my main gripes with its UI (let's not talk about content discovery here) was screenshot navigation. There were 2 basic problems - you could not click Next or Previous as those buttons did not exist, and the only way to close a screenshot close-up was by finding and clicking a tiny X button.
Ladies and gentlemen, minutes ago HTC announced that they have been listening to us all along and will reverse their stance on locking bootloaders! The statement comes directly from the CEO Peter Chou and reads:
It's no secret that Minecraft, a simple, yet amazingly addictive and immersive game, is coming to Android - we've been hearing about it for months. It's also no secret that the first version, exclusive to Xperia Play, will be unveiled at E3 in just a few weeks - the conference is scheduled for June 7th-9th.
To help aspiring Android developers get off the ground and develop our next dream app, Android Police has partnered with O'Reilly Media, one of the largest technical book publishers, to give away a multitude of Android books to our readers. Each week or so for the next few months, we'll be giving away a different O'Reilly Android book, asking for nothing but a minute of your time in return.
Some call Tasker the most versatile application ever created for Android, and I'm inclined to side with them. The app can automate hundreds of actions and bundle them together in powerful scripts that do exactly what you want them to do (see our Tasker review). Want to silence your phone at night and then restore the ringer to a predefined volume in the morning? No problem. How about popping up a menu of music apps when you plug in your headphones? You got it.
Just so you're not worried that the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet with its single proprietary 30-pin connector (according to Wikipedia, it's not the standard PDMI port) is going to be crippled in the HDMI, USB, storage, and keyboard department, the company unveiled a whole host of [rather expensive] accessories that should satisfy even the most needy ones among you.
Thumb Keyboard, a multi-layout keyboard compatible with both phones and tablets, is, in my opinion, the absolute best single piece of software you can grace your precious tablet with (see our review for more details).
If you liked my speedy QR code tips before, you're going to love the tip I have for you today. Ever since the Android web Market was launched, I found myself loading the homepage just to make a search approximately 17 million times a day, give or take a few. As you know, the web Market homepage is quite heavy, so loading it just to make a search, especially while tethering on a slow connection, was starting to get kind of annoying.
Firefox for Android has come a long way since the project hatched as "Fennec" many months ago - there is no doubt about that. What started as a bloated, slow, and buggy pile of crap (really, it was bad), is now one of the greatest browsers Android has to offer (add-ons ftw!). Don't get me wrong - it's still lacking quite a few features - notably, Flash support, faster font redraw on zooming, better startup times, etc., but Mozilla knows this and is working hard on the next version - 5.0.
Our first giant giveaway was a huge success, with lots of excited entries received from many countries around the world in the 2 weeks it was running. In the end, one lucky winner - Keef from the UK - walked away with a free XOOM Wi-Fi, excited beyond belief. While we could only pick one winner for that giveaway, I promised that more would be coming, one more awesome than the other.Today, I'm glad to announce our 2nd giant giveaway, also sponsored by NVIDIA, with the grand prize of the T-Mobile LG G-Slate 3D tablet with a street price of $750-800 (Amazon 0, T-Mobile 0). This tablet packs even more features than the XOOM and has 3G/4G connectivity built-in.This G-Slate features:
Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous week or so.
What a week for Samsung Galaxy S family device owners! First, the Captivate was officially added to the list of devices supported by CyanogenMod, the largest Android ROM community in the world, and now not 1 but 3 more phones are following suit - the Galaxy S, the T-Mobile Vibrant, and the Sprint Nexus S 4G (crespo4g).
The refreshed version of the original and very popular Motorola Droid X - the dual-core Droid X2 with a hi-res qHD screen - is up online at VerizonWireless.com for $199.99 on a 2-year contract a whole week earlier than you will be seeing it in brick and mortar stores. With free overnight shipping, you can rock Verizon's newest and, ironically, first dual-core Android phone by tomorrow (Bionic who?).
While browsing some new arrivals this afternoon, I noticed that Qik, one of the large players in the mobile video chat business, today released an app called Qik for Samsung, clearly targeted at users of Samsung Android devices. Qik has been releasing apps customized to certain classes of devices, or even individual ones, for as long as I can remember, starting with the EVO 4G last year, so seeing yet another variant doesn't surprise me (see Qik for Sprint, Qik for T-Mobile, and Qik for Atrix).
Like clockwork, the thumb-hungry Xperia Play from Sony Ericsson went up on VZW's site, ready for some early pre-order action. It will set you back $199.99 on a 2-year contract and should ship out May 25th to be in your hands by May 26th, all for free.
HTC is continuing to release devices with signed locked bootloaders, as we found out today after taking a look at the latest HTC Sensation system dump. The upcoming HTC Sensation is one of the most powerful and desirable devices coming up, alongside the Galaxy S2, but while the latter's bootloader is unlocked, the one in the Sensation is protected via HTC's private key.
Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous week or so.