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The Galaxy S III has a capacity of 2100 milliamp hours. As far as battery life goes, it's alright, when compared to other flagship phones from last year. But if you want the absolute best longevity out there, not to mention the best bang for your battery buck, you've got to check out the off-brand expanded model that Reddit found while trawling the depths of Amazon.
As if you needed another reason to hate cell phone contracts. For the last few years, Verizon's upgrade cycle has been 20 months long - that is, you bought a new, discounted phone on-contract, and you could upgrade after 20 months. (Not to be confused with the cellular contract itself, which is a full 2 years/24 months.) According to an official statement from Verizon Wireless, customers now have to wait the full 24 months before upgrading.
Good news, everyone! ...or at least, everyone with an international LG Optimus G and an inclination to try out custom ROM builds. The ubiquitous CyanogenMod ROM is now available for LG's flagship, beginning with nightly CM 10.1 (Android 4.2) builds. CyanogenMod developer Ricardo Cerqueira broke the news on his Google+ account, noting that the new builds are possible thanks to the FreeGee tool expanding to the international (E975) model.
I've been handling a fair bit of the gaming coverage here on Android Police for the last nine months, to say nothing of our regular game roundups. And while I'm still ecstatic that there's such a plethora of variety on the platform, there's definitely a few game elements that are far, far beyond their sell-by date. I'd hate to discourage developers from making games, but consider this: if your mobile game features any of the following bullet points, and (perhaps more importantly) a lack of innovation, you're doing something wrong.
4.99 inches? Small potatoes. 5.5 inches? That's like a baby's toy! In their quest to extend smartphones to every possible dimension, Samsung has announced the GALAXY Mega 5.8 and GALAXY Mega 6.3, with (you guessed it) 5.8" and 6.3" screens, respectively. While these husky and fluffy phones (the Galaxy Note 8.0 probably falls into the dayum category) are styled after the new Galaxy S4, their specifications plant them firmly in the mid-range, bringing gigantic screens to markets that were previously off-limits. Neither phone has the Note's trademark S-Pen stylus.
Some of you who've played The Simpsons: Tapped Out, Electronic Arts' Springfield-themed Sim City clone, may have noticed a lack in features when compared with the slightly older iOS version. Namely, it lacked the ability to sync saved games (towns) over Origin, EA's much-derided social gaming platform and store. The latest update to the Android version adds Origin syncing... while leaving at least some players without a town to sync.
If you don't keep an obsessive eye on video game development, you might not be aware of Unity. It's a 3D game engine that makes it easy to develop games for multiple platforms and multiple rendering engines, including Direct3D, OpenGL, and (on Android and iOS) OpenGL ES. It's not the most powerful or flexible thing around, but a lot of developers rely on the tool. Now they've got an easy way to estimate game performance on different Android hardware, via the Basemark X benchmark from Rightware.
[New Games] Scribblenauts Remix And Batman: Arkham City Lockdown Hit The Amazon Appstore Now, Google Play This Spring
Kindle Fire owners and Amazon Appstore users, you've got two heavyweights added to your gaming catalog
Kindle Fire owners and Amazon Appstore users, you've got two heavyweights added to your gaming catalog. Warner Bros Games has published Scribblenauts Remix and Batman: Arkham City Lockdown to the Appstore, both previously available only on iOS. Of the two, Scribblenauts is probably worth more attention, as the series has garnered critical acclaim on portable consoles, PC, and mobile.
Ma Bell is still markedly behind Verizon when it comes to total LTE coverage in the United States, but they're catching up quickly. Today AT&T 4G LTE service has been activated for Napa and Santa Rosa-Petaluma, California, Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Kalamazoo, Missouri, Orangeburg, South Carolina, and Jackson, Tennessee. The company has also announced expanded markets in New Haven County, Connecticut, Greensboro, North Carolina, Charleston and Walterboro, South Carolina, and the San Francisco Bay area, including parts of San Rafael, Pittsburg, Antioch, Livermore, Brentwood, and Novato.
At the moment, mobile platforms are vastly dominated by the ARM architecture, licensed to pretty much every major chip/phone maker out there. That isn't stopping Intel from pushing forward with its x86 mobile chips. The latest taker for the Atom line is Chinese manufacturer ZTE, with the oh-so-appropriately-named ZTE GEEK. The 5-inch smartphone was announced at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing.
Got a dog bite? Maybe a bee sting? Perhaps you're just feeling sad? Google's got a little mid-week pick-me-up in the form of a sizeable giveaway. To promote the new look of the Play Store and the Google Play Twitter account, they're giving away ten Nexus 10 tablets, seven Nexus 7 tablets, four Nexus 4 phones, and no less than a hundred $10 gift cards to the Google Play Store. Unfortunately for our international readers, the sweepstakes is only for US residents.
The ruggedized smartphone market is small, but not so small that it's ignored. Admirable entries like the Samsung Rugby Smart and the Casio Commando might not have all the bells and whistles of their flagship contemporaries, but they take a licking and keep on ticking. Phone retailer Wirefly decided to put Sprint's Kyocera Torque (Bear Grylls approved!) through its paces via some decidedly extreme tests: a drop from two stories, hibernation in a block of ice, and most dramatically, a trip through a 30-minute washing machine cycle.
"Burner" cellphones, pre-paid phones that are used and discarded, have become a handy way to protect your identity if you find yourself dealing with people you might not otherwise want to meet. Just lately it has become possible to get "disposable" phones without the phone, thanks to apps like Hushed, which provides a limited-use virtual number that can be easily substituted for your real one. Burner is a new competitor in the same vein, happily landing on Android after considerable success on iOS.
30 Best (And 1 LOL) New Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (3/27/13 - 4/8/13)
30 Best (And 1 LOL) New Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
Dungeon crawlers are getting a surprising revival on mobile platforms, and Triniti Interactive has just thrown their surprisingly blocky hat in the ring. Tiny Legends: Heroes is the second entry in their Legends series. This one is focused on strategically managing multiple characters at once (a la Battleheart, among many others) and keeps the distinctive, quasi-retro art style that's help made their other games so popular.
We've become pretty wary of featuring Kickstarter projects here on Android Police - too many have overpromised, under-delivered, or just delayed themselves into oblivion. (I'm looking at you, Star Command.) But this one has too much potential to ignore. A pair of San Mateo engineers have created a MicroSD card reader that plugs right into a MicroUSB port, making it a perfect travel companion for phones or tablets with no expandable storage. The project has been successfully funded after just three days.
There is no joy in Taoyuan this morning, as HTC's first quarter financial results have become public. The Taiwanese company has reported the lowest profit in its 16-year history, with just $2.8 million USD ($85 million Taiwanese dollars) in net income for Q1 2013. It's the sixth quarter in a row that HTC has posted declining profits, and a staggering year-over-year drop of 98%.
The long-running Worms franchise made an ungraceful exit from the Play Store when franchise owner Team 17 Digital deemed Electronic Arts' support unworthy of the brand. Now they're back in Worms 2: Armageddon (a sequel to the XBLA/PSN Worms, and not to be confused with the 1999 Worms Armageddon game) from Team 17 itself. The game is now available on the Play Store... in Canada. And only in Canada. At the moment it's a soft launch for the northern territory, so there's no word on when it will get a wider release.
The old F-Zero and Wipeout series were some of the fastest, prettiest games of their respective times, so it's no surprise that the niche of "hovercraft racer" has made such a disproportionate impact on the racing genre. PixelBite is no stranger to racing themselves, having developed the Reckless series for Android and iOS. Their latest and most ambitious game is Repulze, a hovercraft racer that pushes the boundaries of both speed and graphics on Android.
Want to show off the fancy spherical photography prowess of your Nexus 4, but can't find buddy rocking Android 4.2? SphereShare is here to solve your shutterbug problem so that you can post those omnidirectional masterpieces somewhere other than Google+. The app is dedicated to the PhotoSphere feature, allowing users to upload their own photos for quick and easy sharing, or post them to a public gallery for all the world to see. It's like a very narrow Picasa, minus the editing features.