Eric Ravenscraft
Eric is a snarky technophile with a taste for the unusual. When he's not obsessing about Android, you can usually find him obsessing about movies, psychology, or the perfect energy drink. Eric weaves his own special blend of snark, satire, and comedy into all his articles.

14
Feb
diehardtiny

To Celebrate A Good Day To Die Hard, Fox Releases Subpar Game In A Played Out Genre, Fails To Notice Allegory

Posted by in Games, News

We'll do our best to stay away from spoilers for the newly-released Die Hard movie (Happy Valentine's Day!), but the companion endless-runner game Fox just released to the Play Store isn't doing us any favors on that front. The app—which is somewhat shadily referred to as simply "Die Hard", trading on the name of greater movies—takes inspiration from titles like Temple Run. Just, not enough inspiration. (Note: some screenshots are very slightly spoiler-y, so if you're still planning on seeing the movie and you're a purist, you might want to wait to hit up the source link.)

diehard1 diehard2 diehard3

One of the first things you'll notice about this game versus other endless runner titles is that it's in landscape mode.

13
Feb
mediamonkeytiny

MediaMonkey Beta Shows Up In The Play Store, Brings Some Bug Fixes Along With It

Posted by in Applications, News

Back in December, Media Monkey released a beta of the Android version of the media player app that received a level of success on the desktop. It still packs the same ability to tag and run scripts that the original possessed. Now it's arrived on the Play Store, which should make rolling out bug fixes much easier.

mediamonkey1 mediamonkey2 mediamonkey3

Speaking of bug fixes, the most recent set includes ensuring that playback position will be remembered, improving memory utilization and preventing duplicate tracks. Here's the full changelog:

What's in this version:

Build 100:
Added playback position should be remembered
Fixed several situations that result in a freeze
Fixed USB (wired) sync can result in empty MMA db
Fixed DB may not be updated on update of MTP content
Fixed several situations that can result in duplicate tracks
Fixed several cases in which the application fails to terminate correctly
Improved memory utilization
Build 98: Fixes video playback problem on some devices
Build 97: First version published

You can grab the app via the widget below.

13
Feb
search logo

Google Search App Updated, Adds Google Now Widget, Movie Ratings, Real Estate Listings And More

Posted by in Applications, News

Google just pushed an update to its Search app (which, as you know, includes Google Now). Among the new additions are the Google Now widget that we've all been hearing so much about, movie ratings, the ability to pull up movie passes purchased from Fandango, and real estate listings from Zillow when Google thinks you're in the market for a home. Now that's fancy.

fandango ticket nowrealestate1 nowrealestate3

Additionally, the update also adds a music button when a song is playing in voice mode, though that feature is currently limited to the U.S. only. It also adds support for U.S. college sports. We've seen some of this integration before, but now it's official.

13
Feb
slackertiny

Slacker Radio Updates Paid Model, Adds $10/Month All-You-Can-Eat Option To Its Radio Service

Posted by in Applications, News

As if there weren't enough contenders out there for music subscription service, Slacker Radio has updated its business model. You can still get the standard ad-supported radio station features that were always available. However the company has added a Spotify-like buffet option for $10/month. Pony up the dough and you can remove all ads and listen to as many tracks as you want.

The combination is pretty powerful, as one of the biggest complaints over Spotify is its discovery problems. Slacker Radio never really dethroned Pandora, but it did offer some stiff competition. There has been relatively little overlap between radio and subscription services.

12
Feb
pokemontiny

Pokémon TV Arrives On Android, Streams A Rotating Selection Of Episodes For Free

Posted by in Applications, News

There's little doubt that Pokémon is the very best at separating parents from money. Like no franchise ever was. Getting Nintendo to relinquish control of content, though, is a real test. It doesn't generally stream its show for free without good cause. Today, however, it's available across the land. The animated series can now be streamed to Android handsets far and wide.

pokemontv1

pokemontv2 pokemontv3 pokemontv4

Admittedly Pokémon licensing is something I don't understand, but it's pretty powerful that this app has free episodes inside. It's not the complete series, but it's probably enough Pokémon for you and me.  I haven't seen the show since high school, but I knew a reunion was destiny.

12
Feb
swiftkeyflowbetatiny

SwiftKey Flow Beta Updated To 4.0.0.99, Brings A Plethora Of Bug Fixes And Improvements

Posted by in Applications, News

Swiftkey's new Flow beta has been a crowd-favorite since its release. The company behind one of the best Android keyboard replacement apps has pushed a new update that brings a variety of bugfixes—including a bunch of crashes—and improvements such as a nicer-looking installer, a new Turkish layout, and better punctuation prediction for non-English languages.

The beta is currently available for smartphones and tablets. Here's the full changelog:

Changes in this version:

* Fixed crash on changing keyboards
* Fixed force close on clicking update language
* Fixed other crashes
* Resolved majority of non-English punctuation problems
* New look installer to match SwiftKey Flow colors and include an introduction to SwiftKey Flow
* Added Turkish layout
* Chrome Beta should now behave like Chrome
* Snap and tap (correction of words) now compatible with Vietnamese
* Memory usage of settings app reduced
* Improved handling of non-zero length selection in Chrome and Samsung mail client
* Fixed jumping cursor in ExDialler and Samsung calculator
* Microphone key disabled in fields that don’t support voice input
* Fix for keyboard disappearing when phone build installed on tablet sized devices
* Disabled predictions in Kingsoft Office and UC browser to make SK usable in them
* Double space for period turned off by default to prevent accidental period insertion when flowing
* Replaced ‘learnt’ with ‘learned’ in personalization page (US English)
* Turned off slide down from candidate bar to close keyboard when flow is on (to be consistent with the description in the Settings menu)

Known Issues:

* Crashes when looking at the heatmap if you visit immediately after using the alternative symbols layout
* Comma key on Arabic keyboard inserts western comma
* Predictions sometimes blank when switching between languages
* Flowing words sometimes results in surprising capitalizations
* “No SD card” ribbon looks bad on low end devices

Check out the source link for more info.

12
Feb
2013-02-12_12h12_06

Plex Media Center Gets Completely Rewritten From The Ground Up And It's Gorgeous

Posted by in Apps/Games, News

Can we be honest with ourselves? Plex kinda sucks. Hard to blame it, most third-party media centers on Android do at the moment. As a lengthy blog post by the developer points out, part of that has been due to Android's inflexibility and lack of a coherent UI in its history. That's changed over the last couple years and now Plex has been rebuilt from the ground up to be a lot more beautiful and a lot more functional.

The new version has followed the Android Design Guidelines very closely and it shows. While most of us here at Android Police are of the opinion that Holo alone does not make a good UI, the addition is most welcome, given the way the old version looks.

12
Feb
2013-02-12_10h49_14

LG Announces L Series II, Mid-Range To Low-End Phones For All

Posted by in LG, News

While the Nexus 4 may be the LG handset getting everyone's attention, the company does have other market segments to think about. The L SeriesII (so that's what happened to the other letter from the Optimus G) fills that need with a trio of handsets that will debut with the Optimus L7II in Russia next week. The phone comes with a 4.3" 800x480 IPS display, dual-core Qualcomm processor and Jelly Bean 4.1.

lglseriesii1

lglseriesii2 lglseriesii3

Here are the full specs for the L7II:

• Chipset: 1GHz Dual-Core (Qualcomm MSM8225)
• Memory: Up to 4GB eMMC / 768MB RAM / Micro SD
• Display: 4.3-inch WVGA IPS
• Camera: Rear 8.0MP with LED Flash / Front VGA
• OS: Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
• Battery: 2,460mAh
• Size: 121.5 x 66.6 x 9.7 mm / 122.2 x 66.6 x 9.7 mm (Dual-SIM)

Following that initial release, the L3II and L5II (I'm noticing a familiar pattern here) will arrive.

12
Feb
ouyathumb

Ouya Announces Finalists For Its 10-Day Create Competition And Some Of Them Look Fantastic

Posted by in Games, News

We're all eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Ouya and the one question we need to have answered is whether or not the platform will be able to acquire enough interesting games to be worthwhile. One of the ways the company is generating interest and content is with a 10-day developer competition. Keeping in mind that the entire programming process occurred in a little more than a week (and in some cases, less than that) and all the titles are unfinished, here's a look at some of the games that may end up on the console.

Avner

This might just be one of the most visually-polished games to come out so far.

11
Feb
messagegvtiny

'Messaging + Google Voice' (Mostly) Combines Android's Stock Texting App With GV Integration

Posted by in Applications, News

Google Voice is a great service burdened by a lack of support, integration, and easy way to sign up (unless you're on Sprint, of course). Those who do decide to jump the hurdles and either get a brand new number—or port their existing one to Google—will find themselves in an uncomfortable paradise. On the one hand, you can text from your desktop, tablet, or phone completely for free which is awesome. On the other hand, you have to use the Google Voice app, which is not that great. 'Messaging + Google Voice', however aims to alleviate that problem a bit.

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