Android Police

Eric Ravenscraft-

Eric Ravenscraft

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About Eric Ravenscraft

Eric is a freelance writer and an OG 'round these parts. Since leaving Android Police, his work has been in Lifehacker, The New York Times, OneZero, PCMag, and a bunch of other places. Catch him on Twitter and YouTube as LordRavenscraft.

Latest Articles

In a continued attempt to make Android more viable as an entertainment platform, Google is working on a social gaming app in the same vein as Apple's Game Center, if Business Insider's sources are to be believed. The app would be a huge boon for social gaming on Android. As the platform grows, and gaming along with it, Google risks losing a golden opportunity to be even more deeply embedded within one of the biggest growth markets in mobile.

You guys remember Google TV, right? It's the project that every CEO and their mothers stood on a stage with to declare war on Apple's AppleTV hobby? Yeah, those guys have been pretty quiet since about that platform for a while now. Sony, however, got up the nerve to announce a new Google TV box at a special event in Palo Alto. Where "announce" means "say some words near, without actually talking about."

Tablets have, historically, been less-than-ideal for productivity. Part of the problem is that developers are still trying to catch up to the new world of connected devices. One solution, as CloudOn demonstrates, is to bring together the best options from various platforms and merge them into a fluid product. CloudOn lets you use what appears to be remote access to Word, Excel, and Powerpoint from an Android tablet.

The social landscape of the 3rd millennium can be extremely confusing. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, texting, IM...it can all be a bit much. Sometimes you just want to get away from it all, go to a nice quiet place with someone you care about, curl up together and enjoy some nice alone time. Now, thanks to Pair, you can do that on the go! Pair is a social app that allows you to stay in contact with your significant other and no one else. Sorry, polygamists.

The Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is, by most standards, the best Android tablet available for the price right now. That's what we thought when the tablet was available for $250. Today, though, on eBay's Daily Deals, the tablet is available for $219.99, or about $30 off. If you're in the market for a 7" tablet, the cost of an average night out at the movies is the difference between the Kindle Fire and this full Android 4.0 experience.

The CEO of AT&T's mobile business, Ralph de la Vega, told CNET in an interview that the company is working on family data plans that would give consumers one big pot of data that all devices could share. While minute plans have worked this way for years, since tiered data came along, customers have been waiting on a way to pool their data.

When we last left Kyocera, the company was still trying to convince us that more screens are more better. Today at CTIA, the company best known for creating the company printer you kick at least once a week in the office announced two new phones that are decidedly less gimmicky: the Kyocera Hydro and the Kyocera Rise of the Machines.

Sometimes, we don't want complex games. Sometimes, adding new rules or features to existing genres is a bit overwhelming. Pix'n Love Rush is, in contrast to many games that come out these days, very simple. You're in a side-scrolling platformer world and your goal is to run around collecting things sans dying. Simple enough, right? The game has a colorful retro aesthetic and easy gameplay.

These days, you're not anybody if you don't have an app. Now, Lowe's is somebody. The home improvement warehouse has launched a mobile app that allows you to search for store locations, items, read reviews on products, manage your Lowe's card, and even have some products shipped to you.

Want to hear more about the EVO 4G LTE? Good! Because we have a release date for you! And if you don't like that one, we have another one. According to Wirefly's pre-order FAQ page, this slick beast will be unleashed on May 18th. Sprint's own pre-order confirmations seem to lend some credence to this idea, stating that pre-order will begin to ship as early as May 15th.

An eager, eagle-eyed XDA member spotted a Google ad while searching for "xperia ion" that may be showing AT&T's hand concerning the release date of said device. One of a few ads that appear when searching for the device states that the Xperia Ion is "Coming Exclusively to AT&T in June." Well, that narrows it down a bit!

By now, the One X and Galaxy S III fanboys have set up shop and are ready to wage war. If you're in the One X camp, but you prefer Sprint to AT&T, the EVO 4G LTE is what you're after. Pre-orders have gone live today. Wirefly, however, has a special deal going on today: $50 off the normal $200 price tag.

Gingerbread may have been out for nearly a year and a half now, but did you know there are some phones out there that have been living on nothing but Froyo this whole time? It's sad and it's true. Today, though, one abandoned phone is finding a new home on Gingebread: the CLIQ 2. Finally rolling out the 2.3 update, after launching back in January 2011 with Android 2.2 on board. How quickly these short 16 months roll by.

Building apps can be a tough task. It can be difficult visualizing how the functionality of an app and its UI work together before you have a working model. Prototyper aims to alleviate some of that stress by letting you build what appears to be a functional app, without that messy business of it having to work.

If you're among the minority of users who own an Ice Cream Sandwich device and have a cable subscription that includes access to the HBO/MAX GO services, you can now access your mobile video service on your device. HBO already has an impressive library of shows available on GO, including Game of Thrones and the Sopranos, and MAX GO is the companion Cinemax service that offers 400+ movies for instant streaming.

Happy Star Wars day, everyone! ASUS got you a present: it's firmware updates with a side of source code! You can head to ASUS' site right now and download firmware version V9.4.3.17 for a few countries including the US, as well as version V9.2.3.23 if you're in Japan. Kernel source code for the TF300T is also available, in both x.17 and x.23 flavors for your downloading pleasure.

Now that the cat's finally out of the bag, we've all gotten our fix of Galaxy S III news for the day. Soon, though, we'll be jonesing again. It's inevitable. Knowing this, Samsung has us covered. If you're eager to hear more news about the Galaxy S III, you can head on over to the sign-up page and be put on the list to get more info as the device's launch gets closer.

If you have a Kindle Fire and kindergarteners, Amazon is currently rolling out an update for you. Firmware version 6.3.1 is heading to devices as we speak and brings extra parental controls with it. Now, parents can enable a password on purchases to prevent accidental money drains, block specific content libraries, so your kids don't see your naughty books, and even disable the Silk browser so your children don't discover the internet at large. This alone will save you thousands in psychiatric bills.2012-05-03 16h13_40It's a small update, but if you have little ones, it's important. Especially since tablets and ereaders are more often shared devices. If you have a Kindle Fire, the update should be headed to you shortly, so be prepared.Source: Amazon

It's easy to be overshadowed in the news today by Samsung. Even if you're Samsung. Today, Samsung released the ICS source code for the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and 10.1. We already think the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is the best cheap Android tablet around. With the source code available for this device, as well as its super-sized $400 counterpart, we're looking forward to what the dev community will do with it to make it even better.

Yet another perk to the Galaxy S III (like we needed more), Flipboard, a popular iOS app for aggregating and reading news feeds, is going to be an SGSIII exclusive for a short period, before landing on the Play Store. Just like the iOS reader, you can integrate various news feeds, as well as feeds from your social networks, and control them all with a gesture-based interface.

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