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All the HTC One hubbub in New York and London is for naught if you can't get your hands on the phone. So AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint customers in the United States will be glad to hear that their carriers are already confirmed to get HTC's shiny new flagship. Both AT&T and T-Mobile have reached out to us directly with confirmation, and Sprint is listed in HTC's official press release along with regional carrier Cincinnati Bell. Sprint had a sign-up page available briefly, but it seems to have disappeared. Sorry, Verizon users, you'll just have to make do with the DROID DNA for the time being.
The term "Multiplayer Online Battle Arena" (MOBA) is a relatively new way to refer to an old idea: a multiplayer, somewhat symmetrical game, in which teams of players face off against each other. It's the bread and butter of online shooters and racing games, but up to this point hasn't enjoyed much success on Android, just because mobile controls aren't well-suited to the ultra-twitchy competitions that comprise most of the genre. Developer Overdose Caffeine is trying to change that with Pocket Fleet, a free space-based MOBA.
, Pixowl has launched their iOS hit The Sandbox on the Play Store. It's a free download for anything running Android 2.3 or later. Not to be confused with the open world sandbox genre (Grand Theft Auto and the like), this game is an almost literal sandbox. You're an apprentice deity, with the goal of combining elements into different pixelated constructions. Then go Old Testament and blow it up. Anyone who's ever built a domino tower just to knock it down will understand the appeal here.
Ultima has been around forever. So it's only appropriate that the series' new mobile push incorporate the fact in its title... even if it is a bit on the nose. Ultima Forever: Quest For The Avatar is an upcoming top-down dungeon crawler set in the familiar Ultima universe, complete with online play and a massive amount of game time. According to a Polygon interview with the game's producer, getting to level 15 will take 200 hours, while getting to the end with everything will take closer to 400.
Amazon isn't exactly impartial when it comes to tablets... you may have heard about this little thing called the Kindle Fire. But they aren't ones to let competition get in the way of a little profit, which is why the latest update to their storefront app includes compatibility with a plethora of new Android tablets, including the coveted Nexus 10. Previously it was limited to Android 4.1 tablets with very specific resolutions. The free app is available on the Play Store.
Before now, I thought that zombies had been added to every conceivable genre with the possible exception of farm implement simulator, and that's only a matter of time. But surprisingly, adding undead minions to a game that millions of office workers use to cling to sanity turns out to be fairly interesting. Despite the title, zombies don't replace mines in Zombie Minesweeper, they just add to the explosive fun. Check out the trailer below.
Smartphones have a staggering amount of data they can monitor, and not just in terms of the Internet. Position, orientation, speed, sound, light, g-force, the list goes on - that's why academics are using them as self-contained sensor stations for cool stuff like blasting into space. If you need to monitor data remotely for decidedly less cool reasons (like seeing if your CDL contractor got four tons of gravel to the worksite without stopping at Arby's first) Valarm might be the right service for you.
Alien: Colonial Marines is getting positively face-hugged in the reviews, and Alien Vs Predator: Evolution appears to be weeks or months away. So why not dig into gaming's past for a bit of unofficial space marine action? 1991 Amiga shooter Alien Breed has been re-released on Android in all its top-down, pixelated glory, for the not low at all price of $4.99.
Opera Buys Skyfire In $155 Million Deal, Looks To Improve Mobile Video
Opera Buys Skyfire In $155 Million Deal, Looks To Improve Mobile Video
Opera and Skyfire have a lot in common: specialized use cases, small, dedicated populations of users. That appears to be enough for the desktop browser to swallow the mobile one. Opera Software ASA announced via a press release this morning that it is acquiring Skyfire and its assets, in a deal worth $155 million USD. The sale price includes a mix of cash and stock, $50 million of which will be delivered up front.
When Bump showed up on the smartphone scene, it was something of a novelty, but at the time it delivered file sync and transfer faster and easier than anything else. But with the proliferation of Dropbox, Google Drive and innumerable others, the game has changed. Bump plays a bit of catch-up today with an updated Android and web app, which allows users to send files between PCs (web) and mobile devices with ease.
Sometimes a site or service needs a new approach, or a little fresh paint. This would seem to be the case with Minus, formerly a simple cloud storage provider akin to Dropbox. Yesterday the company unveiled a new look and new direction: location-focused, social sharing of photos. It includes local chat features, with the new tagline "make friends near you." The revised app description sounds like a combination of Instagram and Foursquare. There are filters. There are stickers. There are likes.
Popular cross-platform messenger service WhatsApp is a little behind the times. It's part of the depressingly huge collection of Android apps that ape their iOS counterparts, never aspiring to anything higher. That appears to be close to an end, as the latest beta release of the Android client has a new user interface, and it conforms to the Holo guidelines that the rest of your phone (hopefully) uses. Google+ user Jose Luis de la Torre took some shots of the updated interface. Observe:
Want An HTC One VX for V-Day, for practically nothing? Then head to AT&T's website or Amazon, depending upon which color you prefer. Both have the device on sale for $.01 with a new or extended contract, but AT&T has the red version, while Amazon has the white. The regular subsidized price from both retailers for the phone is $49.99. I'd go with the white ( it looks a little more snazzy) but there's no accounting for taste. It's the cheapest we've seen this model, and both phones come with free shipping.
Around the offices of Android Police, we go through a lot of apps. We're talking hundreds or even thousands every week, to bring you the best in our app and game roundups or (if they're good enough) individual posts. Before every major holiday, we are inundated with more themed applications than we know what to do with. And to be honest, most of them are terrible. But we've found four Valentine's apps that are bearable, even interesting. So put on your white sportcoat and pink carnation and download a few, if the holiday spirit moves you.
International trademark, patent, and copyright law is a bit of a legal minefield, and Apple has proven itself to be among the best in navigating it these last few years. But there is one exception to their otherwise impressive track record: the lucrative South American market of Brazil. While Apple iPhones have been sold in the country for years, Apple has never owned the trademark for the name. A regional phone manufacturer, Gradiente Eletronica, registered the trademark for "iphone" way back in 2000.
It's surprisingly hard to make a mobile game, or at least, a mobile game that's worth playing. Mobile developers are still in their infancy, at least compared with their console and PC counterparts. So when someone manages to release a fun, polished game that works well on smartphones and avoids some of the more glaring pitfalls of the platform, we sit up and take notice. Such is the case with Roller Rally: Snake Pass, an Android port of a popular iOS title from MilkyTea.
Last week we told you about Pebble Notifier, an app that allows Tasker to send updates to the Pebble smartwatch over Bluetooth. Developer Dattas Moonchaser has updated the plugin to a full, independent app: you no longer need Tasker to send updates to your watch. (You'll still need the official Pebble app.) As you probably know, while Tasker is an incredibly powerful piece of software, it's also very difficult to learn and master, so the update should make it useful for a larger percentage of Pebble owners.
The Android Open Kang Project ROM developers are taking longer and longer in between updates, but when they post one, it doesn't disappoint. The third official Jelly Bean 4.2 release includes support for the Acer Iconia Tab A510, the international Galaxy Note II LTE, and T-Mobile's Galaxy S II. (Owners of the international Galaxy S II and the Texas Instruments i9100G variant: check AOKP's website tomorrow for an updated version.) There's also a lot of new features in the build, most of them centered around the user interface.
Good news, basketball fans. Google has been gradually upgrading the Now service to include a wider range of sports teams, and today Division I NCAA basketball teams from all over the US can be manually added to your personal Now results. Go into the Google Now settings page, tap "Sports," and search for your favorite school. Only basketball is supported at the moment - here's hoping that football teams are added before the season starts.
Yes, we know - the Nexus 4 is still thin on the ground basically everywhere. (Americans, both the 8GB and 16GB versions are currently shown as "ships in 2-3 weeks" on the Play Store.) Even so, the LG flagship is the logical showpiece for Google Now, and it's doing some fine service in Google's latest mobile search ad. This one shows off Now's ability to automatically bring up contextual information for your time or location. It seems that Google is also pretty sure that American tourists don't know what sea urchins look like.