Cody Toombs
Senior Reviewer
Contributing since February, 2013
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1511articles
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About Cody Toombs
Cody has been writing with Android Police for ten years. While best known for the hundreds of APK Teardowns and breaking news on many of Google’s new products and services, he also covers deeper technical topics about the inner workings of Android, app development, and security. Cody is a software engineer and consultant with two decades of experience developing mobile and enterprise applications. In addition to writing, Cody is a regular podcaster and has made appearances on CNN, All About Android, and Tech News Today. Cody is also an active photographer and videographer, occasional gamer, and an all-around decent human.
What tech products or categories are you most passionate about?
Cameras and smartphones for photography. New technologies are bringing a lot of interesting things capabilities to the worlds of photography and video.
What was your first phone and what do you remember about it?
My true first phone was some old Motorola candybar phone from before the days of smartphones. I started on smartphones with the Cingular 2125 (a rebrand of the HTC Faraday, I think?)
Latest Articles
Owners of the HTC One on AT&T have been patiently waiting for their update to KitKat since Friday's announcement that it had passed technical approval. According to AT&T's blog, the OTA just started rolling out to big blue customers earlier today. In addition to all of the Android 4.4 goodness, this update boasts improvements to the user interface, phone app, caller ID, BlinkFeed, and the long awaited update to Sense 5.5.
When it comes right down to it, there’s a pretty short list of things everybody simply expects a cell phone to be able to do well: making and receiving calls and text messages. We must be able to trust that our phones aren’t failing at the most basic types of communication. Unfortunately, some people have found that the Nexus 5 can’t always be trusted to let them know when somebody is calling or texting them.
Qualcomm Knocks A Cool $100 Off Its Price For The Toq Smartwatch [Update: Amazon Too]
If you've been eyeing the Qualcomm Toq, but $350 was a bit much for your taste, it might be time to take another look. Qualcomm just dropped the price of its smartwatch by a Benjamin, leaving it at a more palatable 0 with free shipping. This puts the full-color wearable at a mere $1 above the price of its closest competitor, the black & white-only Pebble Steel.
Developer PSA: Play Store Policies Mandate Clean App Descriptions Free Of References To Other Apps, Even Your Own
Developer PSA: Play Store Policies Mandate Clean App Descriptions Free Of References To Other Apps, Even Your Own
While recently re-examining the Google Play Store policies, we took another look at the rules against keyword spam and what the company suggests for app descriptions. Developers are advised to stay away from classic spam techniques like repetitive keywords, exceedingly long descriptions, and unrelated keywords or references. Publishers will often use these tactics in an attempt to sneak their apps into unrelated search results. One of the most interesting of these recommendations comes at the tail end of the page where Google advises against referencing other apps you've published.
TestFlight Beta Testing And Deployment Service Is Dropping Android Support March 21st [Update: TestFlight Acquired By Apple]
If you've ever written an iOS or Android app, or if you've been part of a beta testing group, there's a chance that you've run into TestFlight. The service provides software to help with deploying beta apps to users and collect usage statistics and bug reports for developers. One year ago today, the company announced its plans to expand beyond the iOS world and begin serving Android developers, as well. What followed was a short private beta that ended in May. Despite an apparently successful launch, Testflight is officially dropping support for Android on March 21, 2014.
Google Currents Is Officially Dead With Latest Update, Transitions Users To Play Newsstand And Disappears For Good
We've known the day was coming for a while. The Currents app has finally hit the end of the road. An update to version 2.3 is rolling out through the Play Store that officially closes up shop and points users in the direction of Google Play Newsstand. Subscriptions are automatically transferred over to Newsstand and the old Currents app disables itself after users tap through for the first time.
External Blues: Google Has Brought Big Changes To SD Cards In KitKat, And Even Samsung Is Implementing Them
In recent years, Google hasn’t exactly been known as particularly hospitable toward SD cards with regard to its Android operating system. This theme is most often associated with the Nexus line of devices - the Nexus One was the only such handset to ever offer expandable storage. But despite arguments from Dan Morrill and Matias Duarte suggesting this stance is about keeping the Android interface simple and file picker-free, people still want more space. Google is apparently firming up its position on expandable storage even further, though, and in a way that limits flexibility and changes how we can use it.
A brand new OTA began rolling out to the 2013 Nexus 7 LTE just two days ago, and today those changes finally appeared in AOSP. As is the tradition, Al Sutton built a list of changes and posted them to his site. Every bug fix and tweak from KOT49H (4.4.2_r1) to KVT49L (4.4.2_r2) is included. There isn't a lot to look at, but if you're interested in what's new, you can find the developer changelog here.
[For Developers] Google Play Services 4.2 Includes New Client API Model, Consolidates Connections Under One Object
The recent release of Google Play Services 4.2 brought with it some exciting additions like the official Cast API and significantly improved support for Google Drive. One of the lesser publicized additions is the official launch of GoogleApiClient, a new component intended to simplify setting up and managing connections to Google's assorted API endpoints. Additionally, there is now support for queuing up read-only queries and a choice of executing calls synchronously or asynchronously.
[Bug Watch: Fun Edition] Web Play Store Displays Wrong Category Number For Apps With Over 1 Billion Installs, A Single Bit To Blame
If you're idly cruising the Play Store on the web, checking out the most downloaded apps ever, you might stumble onto a little glitch when an install count crosses 1 billion. That's right, billion... We're talking 9 zeros, folks! Hitting this illustrious mark will result in an install range that reads 1,000,000,000 - 705,032,704. Not only does tradition tell us that the larger number should come second, but that is an exceptionally specific amount.
PSA: App Downloads From The Play Store Are Failing With Error 403 For Some, Best To Wait It Out [Updated]
Update [2/12]: It looks like the glitch is over with. Several people are reporting that downloads are working again and everything has returned to normal.
[Bug Watch] Duplicate Entries And Unsupported Devices Appearing As Casting Targets With Google Play Services 4.2.39 [Update: Partially Fixed]
The Google Cast SDK is only just escaping its confines as a developer preview, so it’s not surprising to see a few bugs turning up in some odd places. A couple of simple, but potentially telling glitches started appearing after Google Play Services 4.2 began rolling out a few days ago. This latest update is causing the list of Cast targets to fill with incompatible DLNA-enabled devices and duplicate Chromecasts.
[Update: Winners] TimePIN Secures Your Phone With A Code Updated Every Minute, Easily Fools Thieves And Pranksters, Win One Of Ten Pro Licenses
Any decent bank heist movie always has one common hurdle for the would-be thieves: a regularly changing access code to the vault, and only one person knows what it is. Haven't you ever wanted that kind of security on your phone? This is now possible with TimePIN, a light-weight app that changes the access code to your lockscreen every minute.
EverythingMe Launcher Exits Beta, Improves Smart Folders And Adds Cards [Hands-On]
EverythingMe Launcher Exits Beta, Improves Smart Folders And Adds Cards [Hands-On]
You remember Everything.me, right? About a year ago it popped up in the Play Store as a homescreen replacement built around search. It aimed to deliver a smarter, context-based experience by generating suggestions using automatically generated themes and suggestions for apps and websites. The project even drew the attention of Mozilla and ultimately became the interface of Firefox OS. Today, Everything.me leaves beta and changes its name ever so slightly to EverythingMe.
[Bug Watch] Some Android Devices Having Major Connection Problems With 5 GHz Wi-Fi Access Points
Wi-Fi is a staple among most smartphone users. While we tend to talk more about cellular data, it's really just there to sustain us as we travel from one access point to another. We aren't just demanding more data at higher speeds, we're connecting more devices than ever before. The inevitable overcrowding of the 2.4 GHz brought about the expansion into the 5 GHz range. Unfortunately, many Nexus devices (and at least a few others) are having trouble making and maintaining connections to this higher frequency band.
Recent AOSP Commit Indicates ART Likely To Replace Dalvik In Upcoming Release Of Android
It was only 3 months ago when we first met the brand new Android Runtime, dubbed ART. In that time it has gained a substantial following by enthusiasts throughout the Android community. Given its "preview" status and warnings from the Android team that ART wasn't ready for the general population, it appeared unlikely that it would officially take the place of Dalvik anytime soon. However, a new commit to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is strong evidence that ART may become the default runtime in the next version of Android.
We often take mobile web browsing for granted, but sometimes the simplest of problems can turn it into a miserable experience. One of the early improvements to Android’s built-in web browser was a neat little feature that allowed text to re-wrap based on zoom level. It’s an obvious function, something that seems natural for reading more than a few words on a small screen. Unfortunately, a significant change in Android 4.4 resulted in the loss of this incredibly convenient capability for most web browsers and several applications. Not only does this affect browsers that rely on the built-in layout engine, it also applies to every app that relies on an embedded WebView.
Google Launches Developer Preview Of Chrome Apps For Android And iOS, App Submissions Start Immediately
We've known for a while that Google had plans to bring Chrome apps to Android, the first tangible sign of that project appearing early last month. Today, the first developer preview of Chrome Apps for Mobile went live on GitHub. Now developers can construct apps based on web standards (HTML, CSS, and Javascript) and run them just like any native application built from the Android (or iOS) SDK. These apps don't run inside of a browser or require an Internet connection; plus they can be submitted to the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store.
[New App] Stack Exchange Hits The Play Store With Support For Over 120 Communities Including Stack Overflow And Server Fault
If you've never heard of Stack Exchange, you're missing out on some of the best Q&A-style sites on the Internet. Each site is a community built to encourage people to ask and answer questions. Reputation and badges can be earned by giving good answers and comments. With over 120 communities (and growing), there are sites dedicated to programming, server management, gaming, travel, and even anime. The one thing that has been missing was a good mobile application. That changes today with the official launch of Stack Exchange on Android.
Shortly after the new Android Runtime made its grand entrance, I ran a pretty exhaustive (and exhausting) series of performance benchmarks that showed ART wasn't really ready to blow us away. At the time, I opted to avoid the topic of battery life because it is so difficult to test accurately and with unbiased, meaningful results. As it turns out, that was dumb. Yup, so many of you have asked, I finally had no choice but to dive in and run a battery of tests on...well, the battery.