Eric Ravenscraft - 36/103 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

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.

Follow @ocentertainment

Dec

CM Team Member Releases aeGis Open Source Security App - Remotely Lock, Wipe, Locate Or Alarm Your Phone With A Text

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, News

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.

What's even cooler is this app is entirely open source. Built by a member of the CyanogenMod team as a side project, the entire codebase is available on Github here.

Dec

HTC Butterfly Coming To China As X920e, Plus A 3G Version Being Released Internationally

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in HTC, News

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.

The Chinese version of the device will launch on China Unicom for ¥4,799 (roughly USD$770) and will come in three colors: brown, red, and white. It will carry the same specs as the other variants around the world:

1.5GHz Quad-core Snapdragon processor
5" SLCD3 1080p display
2GB of RAM
16GB storage
2020mAh battery

Outside of China, the device will launch internationally simply as the HTC Butterfly.

Dec

Ong Bak Tri The Video Game Trailer Shows Off That Unity3D Engine With Some Flair

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Games, News

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.

Of course, the trailer seems to be showing gameplay that involves quick time events requiring a user to press a colored button that looks like they correspond to an Xbox 360 controller, so it's a little unclear if we can expect the graphics to look as nice on mobile as they do in this trailer.

Dec

SoundCloud App Updates With A Slick New UI, Improved Search, And The Ability To Repost

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, News

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.

The update also brings improvements to the search features that should help you track down public audio (like our podcast!) more easily.

Dec

Google+ Is The 'Fastest Growing Network Thingy Ever': 500m Users Upgraded, 235m Active Across Web, 135m In The Stream

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Google, News

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.

In other words, it's time to stop pretending that Google+ is a ghost town.

Dec

Snapseed, The Image Editor That Google Bought After It Won iPad App Of The Year, Is Now On Android

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, Google, News

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.

^{This video is a bit older and shows off the iOS version, but you get the idea.}

Dec

These 28 Android-Powered Spheros Dance The Dance Of Their Robotic People To The Sounds Of The Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Android OS, News

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.

For the unaware, the song is a mashup of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen and Carol of the Bells, originally recorded by Savatage on the album Dead Winter Dead.

Dec

Sony Announces Xperia E And E Dual, Low-End Jelly Bean Handsets, Optional Dual-SIM

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in News, Sony

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.

Optionally, the Xperia E Dual has the option for dual SIM card slots, which is great for business users, and those who need to work with multiple networks. And, in what must be a treat for anyone looking to buy on this end of the handset market, the regular E ships with Jelly Bean, while the E Dual will receive the upgrade soon.

Dec

[Update] Nexus 4 Returns To T-Mobile Yet Again, Only Now The Subsidized Price Is $400? What?

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in News, Nexus 4, T-Mobile

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?

This is still $100 off the "Suggested retail" price, which hasn't changed, but it's still $50 more expensive than buying it from Google outright. It's unclear if this is a mistake on T-Mobile's part, or if the company has been forced to raise the price for economic reasons. It's also possible that existing T-Mobile customers can get a lower price depending on the state of their contract, but this requires a log in to see.