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Despite the slew of devices released since Summer, the Galaxy S III remains one of the most popular handsets in the Android world right now. If you were looking to get your hands on one without signing a new contract, eBay Daily Deals has both the black and blue international versions for $499 unlocked.
While there is no shortage of security apps on the Play Store, aeGis one stands out a bit for a few reasons. For starters, it's dead simple to use. Set up a specific trigger phrase and you can text your phone to lock the display, remotely wipe, find the address of, or sound an alarm from your phone. There's no web interface, unfortunately, but this app trades the elaborate suite of services of something like Avast for simplicity.
We've heard mixed reports about international availability of the HTC J Butterfly/Droid DNA beyond Japan and the U.S. (respectively). Today, HTC saw fit to announce some new countries. For starters, the device with the retina-melting display will be coming to China as the HTC Butterfly X920e in mid-December. Additionally, a 3G version of the device simply called the Butterfly will be released in international markets.
Ong Bak is a fine series of Thai martial arts movies that received plenty of critical and commercial success both in Thailand and around the world. Naturally, when a film about people kicking things and stuff getting punched makes it big, a game must be sure to follow. That game, Ong Bak Tri, is being built on the Unity3D engine for PC, consoles, and Android. The newly released gameplay trailer looks pretty fantastic for a mobile game.
SoundCloud may not be the most famous app around, but when it comes to sharing a simple audio clip or a song, it's hard to beat. Now, the company's mobile app is getting an overhaul and with it comes a shiny new interface that doesn't suck. The UI upgrade makes use of the action bar, side navigation panel, notification controls and all the other fancy new features that we've grown used to since Ice Cream Sandwich and beyond.
As if the news out of Google couldn't get any hotter today, the company decided to just casually announce that it has over 500 million users with Google+ accounts, 235 million of whom are active "across Google" which means anything from +1ing things in various Google products to "connecting with friends in Search"...whatever that means. The most important stat, though, is 135 million users are active in the stream. That means, if we can assume past definitions are still true, those users either visit plus.google.com or use the mobile app to view content.
There are no shortage of image editors on Android. Even Adobe, which makes the class-leading Photoshop, has a version of its editor on the platform. Today, though, Google gets one of its very own: Snapseed. You may recall this particular piece of software when it was demoed by NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang at CES this year. At the time, it was only available on the iPad where it had won App of the Year in 2011. Shortly thereafter, Google bought the company. Now, the Android version is finally being released.
One of the biggest problems with Google+ has been its inability to create a group wherein all peers are equal. You can create a hashtag that everyone can post to but you can't control the membership of, or a Page that a few moderators can share to, but it's difficult to add users to (for non-public posts, Pages can only add users to circles once they add the Page first). Communities finally fixes this problem by creating public or private groups that anyone within can share to.
Alright, yes. We've spent over a month getting upset because Christmas starts just way too dang early these days. It's December now, though. Is it finally okay to get in the holiday spirit a bit? Cool. Because these Spheros—robotic balls that can be remotely controlled by Android and carry an array of sensors and lights—are beautiful. The company behind the bots choreographed these 28 units to the tune of Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24, as performed by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
Sometimes, it can be a bit arguable what counts as a "low end" phone these days. Even cheap phones are so powerful that calling them anything lower than mid-range can seem insulting. This one, however, makes us pretty comfortable with the moniker. With a 1GHz Snapdragon S1 processor, a 320x480 TFT display, and a 3.2MP rear camera, the Xperia E fills out Sony's budget line just fine.
Getting your hands on Google's latest iconic Android handset seems to just get harder and harder as the holidays approach. Today, T-Mobile has the device back in stock yet again, however, the subsidized price is now bizarrely raised to $400 with a 2-year contract for existing customers. Um, T-Mobile...what?
In times past, there have been concerns about Netflix' ability to continue acquiring rights for streaming video content. The more users the company gets, the more pressure there is to get high-profile content. After the loss of the Starz deal, there was some doubt, but today there is a renewed hope for fans of Netflix and Disney at least: the two just inked a deal that will bring first-run movies from Disney, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Marvel, and Disneynature to the streaming service in 2016. This deal will also make Netflix Disney's exclusive streaming subscription partner. Not bad!
Google I/O Dates Announced: May 15th-17th 2013, Registration Details Will Be Announced February 2013
Is it that time of year already? Time to start planning for Google's annual developer conference! The software giant just announced that I/O 2013 will be taking place May 15th-17th at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco. No word yet on prices for tickets or when you can get your hands on them, but those details should be coming in February of next year.
You remember this little guy? Of course you do. He's freaking cute, how could you not remember? Don't act like you don't want one. Everyone does. However, if you've loved the idea but were holding out for one in white, today's your lucky day. Right now, the useful bugdroid buddy has gone on sale in a new 'Chill' flavor. Perfectly white with a nice silver accent along the neckline. Fantastic.
Under the hood of Google Now, powering all those beautiful cards that pop up when you search for certain things, is Google's Knowledge Graph. In what might be the company's most ambitious project ever, Google aims to categorize and classify all information so that when you search for, say, Jeff Goldbum, the search engine knows you might also be interested in information about Chaos Theory or survival tips for raptor attacks. Today, the company announced an extension to this already-huge product: availability in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, and Italian. Pretty huge.
Facebook Messenger No Longer Requires A Facebook Account, So I Guess It's A Regular SMS App Now, Too
Today, Facebook made an announcement that's probably bigger than it seems at first glance. Now, if you want to use Facebook Messenger, you no longer need to have an account with the social networking giant. This, quite simply, is a really big deal that could easily go overlooked. The app can be used to message contacts via just their phone number, create group conversations, and share photos. Of course, you could do this with Messenger before, as SMS was an available option. The difference now, is that it's open to everyone.
Yes, the Play Store has been plagued by issues. Not the least of which, if you don't live in the U.S. or Canada, you've probably had an even harder time than most getting your hands on Google's newest flagship phone. If you want to get in on the furiously refreshing action, and you happen to live in the UK or Germany, today is your lucky day! Starting at 5PM local time (GMT for UK, CET for Germany... so pretty soon), you can order the device directly from that search engine all your American friends keep saying has a horrible ordering system.
I'm going to do my best to make it through this article without making a Portal 2 reference, but this new SwiftKey feature is not making it easy on me. After recently announcing Flow, the Swype-like gesture input method, someone inside SwiftKey HQ thought to themselves "Well, you know, this is great and all, but man, what's with all this raising-my-finger nonsense? So inefficient!" So now the company is demoing Flow Through Space. It's nearly identical to the familiar method, only it predicts your entire sentence without the need to start fresh with each word.
In the desktop world, there is virtually no end to the number of music and video managers out there. MediaMonkey was one of the not-quite-legendary-but-still-popular options that excelled for its ability to change tags and run custom scripts. Now, users of this program can sync to their phones without going through an extra program with the MediaMonkey for Android beta.
When last we left our heroes XBMC for Android, the group behind the open source multimedia manager had announced that it would be bringing support to the platform soon. Of course "soon" isn't a word that tweakers like to hear, so some enterprising fellows compiled the source code into an APK for your testing pleasure, with all the disclaimers that entails. Today, however, a more official app is being distributed by the team with a hefty 'beta' tag attached.