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Exactly 3 years ago, on November 5th, 2007, Google, along with its partners, publicly announced 2 very important things: the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) and Android. Up until that pivotal moment, the media speculated on the existence of a mysterious gPhone and not many were prepared for something that turned out to be much-much bigger.
As the Android platform celebrated its 2nd birthday last month, I thought now would be a good time to take a step back and look at all the music players available on the Market right now. Only a year ago, there were just a couple of worthy contenders, but now we have a choice of more than a dozen very good and popular apps and a few hundred not so popular ones. It's easy to get lost, isn't it?
If there is one Android tablet I am truly excited about (more than the Galaxy Tab, the ViewPad, etc), it's definitely the 10.1" Tegra 2 based dual-core Notion Ink Adam. The tablet has been in the making for as long as I can remember Android tablets even being mentioned, hitting more snags and delays than Duke Nukem and Crunchpad combined. However, Notion Ink's incredible (simply stunning really - just flip through their blog) attention to detail that can only be rivaled by Apple, in my opinion, will make the wait seem like a negligible price to pay when we are finally able to buy the darn thing.
Today at the Facebook Mobile event, Mark Zuckerberg announced the newest version of the Facebook Android app with support for Places and Groups. We didn't have to wait long, as the update hit the Market mere minutes after the announcement (don't you just love how instantly apps go live in the Android Market, as opposed to some other markets we won't be naming here?).
Yesterday, T-Mobile officially rebranded its new HSPA+ network as "4G" in an effort to gain that extra G that consumers are so obsessed with (relevant: [1] [2]). In order to promote this newly proclaimed largest 4G network in the country along with the myTouch 4G that was released today, the company launched a video campaign that will air on major TV networks and websites.
Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications and games that went live in the Market in the previous week or so.
Can't say we didn't see this one coming - exactly on schedule, Sprint today officially launched its 4G WiMax service in The Big Apple. In addition to NYC, 5 other cities that went live today include Hartford and New Haven in Connecticut, New Brunswick and Trenton in New Jersey, and Tampa in good old Florida.
It's not every day that I shoot videos of Android games (in fact, this is my first one ever) but when I saw EVAC HD hit the Market yesterday, I felt the need to do it. It wasn't even the graphics, which, by the way, are awesome, it wasn't the gameplay, which is also good - it was the music and the sounds that captivated me. I have only one way to describe them - "magical".
T-Mobile's Samsung Vibrant is still a pretty hot phone, but with the release of the G2 and the upcoming myTouch 4G, Amazon decided to throw a blowout sale for only 1 penny again, just like it did back in August.
Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, one of the most successful franchises to hit mobile gaming, is slowly starting to spread into our daily lives outside of our mobile devices. No, I'm not talking about all the Halloween awesomeness that we've been seeing today:
After celebrating CyanogenMod 6.0 hitting the final release version for a multitude of devices, the CM team got right back to work on the next version of the largest Android ROM on the planet. 2 months worth of sleepless nights paid off, as minutes ago, Cyanogen announced a new major milestone - CM 6.1 Release Candidate 1. According to the team, the release is definitely good enough to be a daily driver, and the remaining bugs will be quickly squashed, so go ahead and fearlessly hit up the download links below.
The new myTouch 4G is around the corner, and today Wirefly was the first retailer on the web, from what I could tell, to launch preorders on 3 of the 4 color variants: black, white, and red.
If there is one unique thing the HTC Sense UI brings to the table, it's definitely the clock/date/calendar widget. You know the one I'm talking about:
Last week, the Wall Street Journal posted a public poll asking its readers to pick the best mobile operating system maker. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Palm, RIM/Blackberry, and Other were valid options, with Apple leading at about 55% at the time. Noticing this, Android Police along with reddit and other media publications issued a call to action:
Today's tip is common sense to those Launcher Pro/ADW users who are aware of it and pure bliss to those who aren't. Normally, if you drag an icon on your homescreen to the trashcan, the icon simply gets removed from the given homescreen. However, if you keep holding it over the basket, the action turns into "Drop to uninstall," becoming the fastest way to remove apps that I can think of. To sweeten things up a bit, you can also drag icons into the basket from the launcher, achieving the same murderous effect. It literally takes 1 click to get to the uninstall screen without requiring any extra programs or menu walking.
I'm not sure exactly how recently Google has done this (update: apparently, it's been a few months, thanks Brad), but there is a tab in the mobile search interface called "Android Apps." I'll give you 3 tries to guess what it does.
One of the reasons I love Android is because you can customize the heck out of your experience. Replacing the stock launcher with Launcher Pro is pretty much the first thing I do now when I get a new phone because of the innovations a hard-working, smart, and dedicated engineer (Fede) can bring to the table.
There is no shortage of media applications for Android - in fact, Winamp that came out last week was the most serious and robust media offering I've seen so far. However, when it comes to strictly the media player functionality, even Winamp can't touch what I'm about to show you - a new beta app called PowerAMP.
Last Week's Best New Android Apps And Games (10/18/10 - 10/24/10)
Last Week's Best New Android Apps And Games
Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications and games that went live in the Market in the previous week or so.