Liam Spradlin - 32/99 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Besides being an avid Android fan and blogger, Liam is a photographer with a degree in both Anthropology and Sociology. He can usually be found reading through blogs, taking photos, or studying ancient pottery. Liam has been known to leave on international trips at a moment's notice, and can't resist a new challenge.

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Sep

Latest Android Distribution Stats Now Available – Jelly Bean Reaches 1.2%, Gingerbread Still Dominates At 57.5%

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Android OS, Gingerbread 2.3, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, Jelly Bean 4.1, News

With the end of another month, we now have another set of Android platform distribution numbers to look at. Updated today, the stats reveal that Gingerbread is still dominating by quite a large margin, with Ice Cream Sandwich climbing and Jelly Bean making its own gains. Take a look for yourself:

First up is Gingerbread. While its stranglehold on the distribution chart is still going strong, it has dropped off just a little bit since the last cycle, sliding from 60.3% of all devices to 57.5% last month. Ice Cream Sandwich, meanwhile, has climbed from 15.8% to nearly 21%, which definitely sounds promising.

Sep

Quora Brings Well-Designed, Functional Question-And-Answer App To Android

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Android OS, Applications, News

Quora, the popular question-and-answer website, found its way to Android today, releasing an official app that not only brings to the table great features like voice search and a handy widget, but also a user interface specifically designed for Android "from the ground up." Indeed, the app follows Android's design guidelines to the proverbial "T," right down to the app's launcher icon with its ever so slight downward perspective.

Citing the fact that 25% of its traffic comes from mobile usage, Quora's blog post today enthusiastically announces the Android client, describing a few of the features that "really make Quora shine on Android." Among them are integrated search with voice recognition, optional push notifications, a convenient home screen widget, and an adaptable interface that supports both landscape and portrait mode.

Sep

Eric Schmidt Reveals New Activation Numbers – 1.3 Million Android Devices Activated Each Day

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Android OS, News

Eric Schmidt has just left the stage at Motorola's "On Display" event in New York. Before leaving, though, he divulged some interesting new Android-related numbers.

First among them was the latest figure for "activations per day," which tracks the total number of new Android devices activated each and every day. You may remember Andy Rubin revealing that number to be around 900,000 while quashing rumors back in June, but according to Schmidt, the total number of daily activations has now topped 1.3 million. That's 1,300,000 – an undoubtedly impressive number.

Out of that 1.3 million devices per day, Schmidt noted that 70,000 were tablets.

Sep

Google Wins Multi-User Face Unlock Patent, Further Teases Our Multi-User Dreams

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Android OS, Google, News

Today it was learned, through a US Patent and Trademark Office filing, that Google has been granted a patent concerning the logging in of multiple users by facial recognition.

Typically, the granting of yet another tech patent wouldn't be extraordinarily interesting news. But given the fact that Google's latest patent relates to multiple user support, and the fact that code meant for multiple user support has been sitting right under our noses in AOSP for some time now, patent number 8,261,090 is definitely worth discussing.

Without quoting the entire 17,000 word filing, patent '090 essentially covers methods that allow a "computing device" to recognize one or more users' identities based on facial recognition, and then give them access to resources specifically assigned to them.

Sep

Download: CyanogenMod 10 Messaging App With Quick Message, Notification Shade Quick Reply

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, Jelly Bean 4.1

CyanogenMod's recent improvements to CM10's messaging app – Quick Message pop-ups and "Quick Reply" functionality in the notification shade – are now available for download in apk form.

If you missed our initial coverage of CM10's latest enhancements to the messaging app (thanks to David von Tonder), here's the short version: the default messaging app in recent CM10 builds includes a feature called Quick Message that, upon receipt of a new SMS message, triggers a handy popup notification that allows users to quickly type up a reply, swipe to other new messages, view the message in the messaging app, or simply dismiss the notification.

Sep

CyanogenMod Introduces Quick Message Pop-Ups, Notification Shade 'Quick Reply' Action On The Way

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Android OS, Development, Jelly Bean 4.1, News

A couple of days ago, the CyanogenMod team announced via Google+ a new feature merged to CM's Jelly Bean code branch – Quick Message. In case you missed it, Quick Message is a feature (built by David van Tonder) that displays a pop-up notification upon receipt of a new SMS message, offering the ability to reply from within the pop-up, view the message in Android's Messaging app, swipe to another new message, or close the notification.

Today, van Tonder (along with CyanogenMod) announced even further enhancements to the feature, primarily influenced by user feedback, adding a "Quick reply" option to SMS messages' actionable notifications.

Sep

Rumor: 3G-Connected Nexus 7 May Be On The Horizon, Ready 'In Around Six Weeks'

Posted by Liam Spradlin in ASUS, News, Nexus 7, Rumors

Just days after we learned of an expanded international availability, another interesting bit of news may be on the way for the Nexus 7.

According to Paul O'Brien of MoDaCo, a "very well placed insider" has indicated that a 3G-connected variant of the device is on the horizon, expected to be ready for shipping "in around six weeks."

If you've been holding out on buying the Nexus 7 due to its WiFi-only capability, this may be the news you've been waiting for. MoDaCo's source didn't divulge any pricing, availability, or carrier-related details, though the source did indicate that 3G connectivity would constitute the only hardware change to the device.

Aug

[New App] Autodesk ForceEffect Motion – Create Fully Articulated, Movable Mechanical Designs From Your Mobile Device

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

Autodesk, the company behind AutoCAD and hugely impressive Android apps like Design Review, Buzzsaw, and Sketchbook, brought another awesome app to the table recently with ForceEffect Motion.

Improving on the original ForceEffect for Android, ForceEffect Motion offers the same quick, smooth freehand sketching, construction, and constraining capabilities but with the added ability to simulate motion, allowing users to create complete mechanical system designs on mobile devices, using tools like Autodesk 360 to then share and collaborate for a continued workflow that doesn't have to miss a beat.

Autodesk's ForceEffect Motion is also incredibly versatile. Users can create functional mechanical joints from welded to pinned, sliding, collar, and crossing, mechanical supports, utilize animation and functional drag, create working actuators (motors and linear), and save and load files from the Autodesk Cloud.

Aug

Official RetailMeNot Coupons App Hits The Play Store – Search (And Use) An Endless Library Of Coupons On The Go

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

RetailMeNot, the incredibly popular coupon site, has just come to the mobile world, hitting the Play Store with WhaleShark Media's official RetailMeNot Coupons app. The app, as you may expect, functions much like its online counterpart, with added functionality to make navigation and use on a mobile device an absolute breeze.

As described in the promo video above, the RetailMeNot app not only comes with a full feature set, but is extremely easy to use. With a stylized yet guidelines-adherent UI and a unique system whereby users can shop from within the app's embedded browser, RetailMeNot makes it almost too easy to search for coupons, deals, and other means of avoiding retail prices.

Aug

Tokyo District Court Delivers Win To Samsung, Dismissing Apple Patent Claims And Call For ¥100 Million Damages

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Legal, News, Samsung

A court in Tokyo returned a favorable ruling for Samsung Friday, finding that Samsung's mobile devices were not in violation of an Apple patent related to inter-device media transfer.

This news comes one week after Samsung lost in what was (and continues to be) one of the most compelling trials tech has seen in a long time, with a San Jose jury ruling that Sammy owed Apple over $1 billion in damages over various trade dress and patent claims levied by Apple. By contrast, the jury awarded no damages to Samsung, finding that Apple didn't violate any of Samsung's patents and that all of Apple's patents retained validity.