David Ruddock - 93/142 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

David Ruddock

David's phone is an HTC One X+. He is an avid writer, and enjoys imparting a legal perspective on Android news where it is relevant. He also doesn't usually write such boring sentences.

Follow @rdr0b11

Jan

[Update: Clarification - Roaming Only] Sprint CEO Dan Hesse Admits Sprint Throttles Top 1% Of Data Users

Posted by David Ruddock in Editorials, Sprint

Last Updated: January 7th, 2012

Update: Dow Jones Newswires apparently left out a key piece of information from Hesse's statement on throttling, in an example of truly stellar journalism and attention to detail (unfortunately, we have no audio or video record to verify Hesse's statements). Hesse was discussing throttling of those who are on networks that Sprint has roaming agreements with (which, admittedly, Sprint has a lot of - including with Verizon). While this still makes Sprint's ads technically misleading, the throttling really only applies to those who live in areas where Sprint's data network relies chiefly on roaming - not to those using primarily Sprint towers.

Jan

[Update: It's Gone] Sprint Galaxy Nexus (LTE) Shows Up In Ad On CNET, Possibly Blows Sprint's Biggest CES Announcement

Posted by David Ruddock in 4G, Galaxy Nexus, Sprint

Last Updated: January 7th, 2012

Update: The ad has been removed from CNET, but we've retained a couple images, below. Sounds like someone finally figured out the rather embarrassingly bad mistake they just made.

Well, it looks like someone doing ad-serving for CNET pulled the trigger a little early. If you head over to this CNET page (it may be taken down soon, in fact, it almost certainly will) you'll see an ad for the Sprint Galaxy Nexus, the first 4G LTE phone to hit Sprint's upcoming LTE network. Whoops. It looks 100% legit, and it looks like Sprint is planning on getting it out pretty quick judging by the advertisement:

The people with the big leather chairs and power-ties at Sprint are likely going to be upset about this.

Jan

[The First Annual Android Police Andy Awards] And The Winner Of The "Best New App Of 2011" Award Is...

Posted by David Ruddock in Android Police Andy Awards: 2011, Polls

You made your nominations, and we've selected four of the most popular titles named as "Best New Android App of 2011" for you to vote on. You voted. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

Best New Android App Of 2011: Reader's Choice

And the Andy goes to.... AirDroid - with 50% of the vote, making it (barely) the majority choice.

AirDroid

AirDroid is a dead-simple-to-use browser-based device manager for your Android phone. Via Wi-Fi, it quickly and easily connects you to your device from almost any web browser on your computer, Windows or Mac - no pesky plugins required.

Jan

[Sale Fail] RIM Throws In The Towel And Starts PlayBook Fire Sale, Fails To Make Them Cheap Enough

Posted by David Ruddock in Editorials, News, Off-Topic, Tablets

When the tech world first heard of the BlackBerry tablet, it was greeted with a fair amount of optimism. It was thought that the very daring (for RIM) device could be just what the company needed to get out of its unabashed slump in popularity, particularly in the United States. In addition, rumblings that the device would be able to run Android Market apps (and actually can now) had Android and RIM fans alike excited for the possibilities of cross-platform development.

Image Credit: Liliputing

Unfortunately, consumers never really went after the PlayBook in droves, and sales went from less-than-great to absolutely terrible by Q3 of 2011, at just 150,000 units sold for that 3 month period.

Jan

[Updated: Here Are The 10 Winners!] Nexus New Year's International Ultimate Giveaway: Win One Of Ten (Yes, Ten) Galaxy Nexuses From AVAST And Android Police

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, Contests / Giveaways, Galaxy Nexus

Last Updated: March 6th, 2012

We know, we told you our holiday giveaway series would feature some of our largest contests to date. And it did - we gave away over a dozen tablets and nearly as many phones to our readers. But we thought we'd start the new year off with our biggest giveaway yet (an international one, to boot) - 10 Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphones, courtesy of our amazingly generous friends at AVAST Software.

This contest is now over. There were over 13,500 entries, making it our largest contest ever by a huge margin (unsurprisingly). Apologies for the long wait - it takes a long time to finalize these giveaways, and with CES I had a whole lot of stuff going on at once.

Dec

Best Of The Worst: The 5 Most Bittersweet Moments For Android In 2011

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Editorials

2011 was a great year for Android - Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was announced. The Galaxy Nexus was released. A whole truckload of Android tablets came out. The first 4G LTE smartphones appeared. But there were some significant speed bumps as well. Here are, in no particular order, the five things in the world of Android in the last year that really got our hopes up, but ended up being a little disappointing.

1. HTC ThunderBolt / All Early Verizon 4G LTE Phones

It's really hard to know where to start with the ThunderBolt. It wasn't actually a terrible phone in terms of usability or performance, but the delayed release, abysmal battery life, overheating, and seemingly endless wait for Android 2.3 drew more angst from owners than probably any other device we've ever seen.

Dec

[Update: Working As Intended] ASUS Transformer Prime GPS Performs Very Poorly Without Wi-Fi, Massive XDA Thread Ensues

Posted by David Ruddock in ASUS, Eee Pad Transformer Prime, News, Tablets

Last Updated: January 3rd, 2012

Update 2: ASUS has issued an official statement on the matter and determined that the Prime's GPS is functioning as intended, which for many folks means essentially non-functional.

Please note that this product is not a professional GPS device ... To avoid inconveniencing users who demand a powerful GPS device, we made the decision to remove it from our specification sheet and marketing communications. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

ASUS

That means if you're actually unable to live with your Prime without true GPS, there's not a lot to do but sell it - because ASUS isn't going to (and apparently can't) do anything about it.

Dec

[Updated: Here Are The Winners!] Skin Your Holiday Gift Giveaway Win One Of 50 Amzer Phone Or Tablet Cases For Doing Almost Nothing

Posted by David Ruddock in Contests / Giveaways

Last Updated: January 2nd, 2012

Now that the holiday season has drawn to a close, a lot of you probably have shiny new Android-powered gifts you're struggling to put down for more than 30 seconds. That also means your brand-new toy might not yet have a case - and we're here to help. Our friends at Amzer have graciously provided 50 of their awesome phone cases to help protect your Android device from the many dangers it will face throughout its life.

This contest is now over. Here are our winners, selected at random:

Rajaram Janardhan

haibl

B J Books

Paul

Alex

Robert Walters

Jamey

Ismael

Kurtis Davidson

AdrianP

Chris Mckechnie

Melanie

Tommy Noshitsky

Sahil

Bud Boggy

B Jordan

Marc

Jaime

DoomsDave

sriracha

Joe Ewbank

Farmdogg

Rudy Rivapalacio

Josh White

Anthony Dickerson

Rojas

Zelrick

chris

Andy

Kevin

Daniel

Ankit

Justin J

Sanat Puri

Alex Do

Joseph (jbliv63)

Cristina O'Neill

brgulker

Phil

ricot lominy

Ondrej Holan

ZRod

Eoin

Andy Stetson

Julius

Mike

Joe

Jesta

Tiggerbits

Miles McQueen

Congratulations, guys - all of you will be contacted for your information in the near future!

Dec

Editorial: Samsung To "Review" Possibility Of Galaxy S, Tab Ice Cream Sandwich Upgrades, But Why?

Posted by David Ruddock in Captivate, Editorials, Fascinate, Galaxy S, News, Samsung, Vibrant

After initially deciding it wouldn't update Galaxy S phones to Ice Cream Sandwich last week, Samsung has now (supposedly) given some semi-official lip-service to vocal Galaxy S and OG-Tab owners who have been clamoring for an official update to Ice Cream Sandwich. The English-speaking side of Samsung's media arm hasn't commented on the alleged statement as of yet.

According to a translation of the Korean source articles, Samsung has officially committed to "reviewing" the "possibility" of an Ice Cream Sandwich update for its Galaxy S phones, as well as the original Galaxy Tab. If that's not a concrete statement almost completely assuring that Samsung will, at some point, say something about this topic again, I don't know what is.

Dec

[The First Annual Android Police Andy Awards] And The Winner Of The "Best New Android Game Of 2011" Award Is...

Posted by David Ruddock in Android Police Andy Awards: 2011, Games, Polls

Last Updated: December 31st, 2011

You made your nominations, and we've selected four of the most popular titles named as "Best New Android Game of 2011" for you to vote on. You voted. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

Best New Android Game Of 2011: Reader's Choice

And the Andy goes to.... Shadowgun - by a razor thin 14 votes.

Shadowgun

While it was by the narrowest of margins that Shadowgun won a plurality of the votes (32% - see below), it's not hard to see why - truly amazing graphics, great over the shoulder gameplay, and console-level polish made it clear from the day we first saw screenshots of this game that it was going to do big things.