Artem Russakovskii
Artem is a die-hard Android fan, passionate tech blogger, obsessive-compulsive editor, bug hunting programmer, and the founder of Android Police.
Most of the time, you will find Artem either hacking away at code or thinking of the next 15 blog posts.

23
May
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Last Updated: May 25th, 2011

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.

However, the Tasker "task" that brandall from xda created today takes the cake when it comes to complexity and functionality.

23
May
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Last Updated: May 25th, 2011

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.

Since over 5000 Google I/O attendees already received and inspected every inch of their 10.1s, you may have already seen a flood of complaints regarding the absence of any kind of standard connectors, be it USB, HDMI, or SD.

21
May
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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).

The split-key design allows for comfortable typing without having to reach too far, and the number of bells and whistles keeps increasing with every release. Different designs for each orientation, multiple themes, multiple size customizations, a multitude of layouts (phone standard, phone split, 5", 7", and 10"), 34 languages... I can go on and on.

I've tried the stock keyboard, SwiftKey Tablet, and the Samsung keyboard, but none of them come even close to Thumb Keyboard.

21
May
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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.

In an effort to save both time and clicks (hello, Carpal Tunnel), I've created a much handier way of firing up a search with only a few strokes and without the need for any tools outside of Firefox or Chrome.

20
May
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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.

In order to test out new (but potentially buggy) builds, the company decided to introduce a separate Beta app into the Market today.

20
May
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Last Updated: July 18th, 2011

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 $800, T-Mobile $750).

19
May
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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.

This is part 2 of this week's roundup and is dedicated entirely to apps. For part 1 dedicated to games and LWPs, see 26 Best New Android Games And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (5/5/11 – 5/18/11).

Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the AppBrain widgets, which include ratings and pricing info.

Looking for the previous week's roundups? Find them here:

Featured App

Today’s roundup is sponsored by XIMAD and their game Kung Fu Tic Tac Toe.

19
May
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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 news hit yesterday, but since no downloadable builds were available from the CM mirror network until late last night, we decided to wait until they're up.

Of course, support for these Android 2.3.4 "Gingerbread" (GRJ22) releases is right now limited to said nightly builds of CyanogenMod 7, which will graduate to release candidates and stables releases when the time is right and all but non-serious bugs have been ironed out.

19
May
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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?).

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The Droid X2 features a dual-core 1GHz processor, a 4.3" qHD display, an 8MP camera with 720p recording (no 1080p :-[), HDMI with mirror capabilities, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, DLNA, 8GB internal memory, and 8GB microSD.

18
May
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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).

What is not clear is exactly what is optimized for Samsung devices compared to the regular Qik app and whether higher resolution video is available, so I'm going to leave it to you, Samsung device owners, to figure out and report back.