Michael Crider
Contributing since December, 2013
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3608articles
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About Michael Crider
Michael is a born Texan and a former graphic designer. He's been covering technology in general and Android in particular since 2011. His interests include folk music, football, science fiction, and salsa verde, in no particular order. He wrote a novel called Good Intentions: A Supervillain Story, and it's available on Amazon.
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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.
The dream of the 1990s was a paperless office, a digital wonderland where no one would ever have to change a toner cartridge again. That, um, didn't work out - for the love of Pete, some of you still have fax machines. For all those annoying times when the old dead tree world intersects with your online life, Adobe has created Fill & Sign, an app that lets you easily digitize and automatically fill in paperwork. Yes, you can even put your signature in there.
[Bonus Round] To Be Or Not To Be, 16bit Trader, Space Chicks, And Doodle Army 2
To Be Or Not To Be, 16bit Trader, Space Chicks, And Doodle Army 2
Welcome to the latest entry in our Bonus Round series, wherein we tell you all about the new Android games of the day that we couldn't get to during our regular news rounds. Consider this a quick update for the dedicated gamers who can't wait for our bi-weekly roundups, and don't want to wade through a whole day's worth of news just to get their pixelated fix. Today we've got a new take on Shakespeare, an updated "pirate math" game, an interestingly diverse endless runner, and long-overdue MOBA. Without further ado:
Have you noticed anything new when you open the primary Google Now interface? Probably - Google seems to be adding more stuff all the time, including support for integration with third-party apps. Over the last few weeks we've been getting tips about a new Calendar card, an agenda view for upcoming busy days, from a variety of Android Police readers. The rollout on this one seems particularly slow - don't be surprised if you don't see it for several weeks more.
Before Android 5.0, the Android power menu (reached by pressing and holding the physical power button) included options for an airplane mode and setting the ringer to on, vibrate, or silent. And that was just the AOSP implementation: some manufacturer skins, custom ROMs, and root tools added extras like a screenshot button, a reboot menu, and other goodies. But with Android 5.0, we get... this.
Cricket. Cricket. That's the one like baseball, but with the flat bats and a circular field and a ton of players and black tea afterwards, right? I apologize - as an American it's hard for me to concentrate on sports that don't involve constant concussions and commercial breaks every two minutes. But I am reliably informed that Cricket is enjoyed in Britain and all the places that used to be Britain (except this one). For all of those people, the International Cricket Council has teamed up with the UK arm of Indian publisher Reliance Big Entertainment to offer an official World Cup fantasy app.
Tactical military strategy and RPGs make a natural fit for mobile platforms, especially tablets, thanks to a top-down battlefield and gameplay that's helped along by precision movement. Android already has a small but impressive collection of tactical strategy options, including notable PC/console games like XCOM and more niche options like Ambition of the Slimes. Now Android strategy fans can play Frozen Synapse Prime, a well-received remake of the original Frozen Synapse, for $5.
The makers of SiriusXM's Android client, an Internet version of the notable satellite radio streams, seem to take positive delight in ignoring Android design guidelines. Before today, the app looked like a lazy port of the iOS version... and the iOS version wasn't exactly a looker to start with.
Borderlands is a super-popular series of intense, multiplayer-focused first-person shooter games. So it's odd, very odd, that the most exciting thing to happen to the series since the original game came out in 2009... is a single-player, offline, point-and-click adventure title. That's right, TellTale's Tales From The Borderlands adventure series is awesome, and its stand-alone story is more engaging than pretty much all of Gearbox's existing sci-fi lore combined. In my opinion, of course. Episode 2 is available on Android today.
When your watch and your phone are connected, the ability for one to find the other seems like a natural feature to add. Oddly, Android Wear hasn't been able to do that so far, at least not without third-party apps adding it in. Google is correcting this oversight today with a new update to the Android Device Manager system. With ADM installed on your phone, you can issue an "OK Google, find my phone" voice command to your Wear device to make it ring out like a mildly annoyed baby.
You knew it was coming. With the Moto 360 being easily the most exciting Android Wear device from the initial video almost exactly a year ago, and then being something of a disappointment upon release thanks to its ancient chipset and not-really-360-degree "round" screen, a follow-up was inevitable. It looks like an executive from Lenovo (the new owners of Motorola Mobility) may have let the cat out of the bag on the company's next Android Wear smartwatch.
OnePlus never met a product it couldn't portend in the most annoying way possible. So it is with the company's new "game changer," a device teased (where else?) on the official OnePlus forum. A representative says it's not a tablet or a smartwatch, and offers three teaser images to try and whet the appetites of potentially new and repeat customers. Let's have a look, shall we?
Some graphical benchmarks are meant to be fairly boring but reliable tests of visual output - the reliable Quadrant benchmark from Aurora Softworks is a good example. Others create an intense graphical test by making a fully-realized 3D environment, essentially a tech demo that's meant to be a digital ruler for the performance of competing components or devices. 3DMark's Android benchmark, with its space battle cutscene, is one of these tests.
The DROID Turbo is a beast of a phone, combining the over-the-top specs of the Nexus 6 with the more manageable size of the Moto X and throwing in a huge battery for good measure. The only downer is that it's available exclusively from Verizon... which doesn't have the best track record for Android updates. Despite the fact that the Moto X 2014 has been running Lollipop since November, even on Verizon, and the de-branded Moto Maxx for international markets also has Lollipop, the DROID Turbo is still forlornly running KitKat.
Or your mom, or grandparents, or siblings or children, whatever. The point is that TeamViewer thinks that there's a market for remote support on Android TV. The QuickSupport app allows users to remotely view and control an Android device from a standard PC - it's essentially the reverse of a conventional remote desktop app. And now it works on your TV! How 'bout that.
The Nexus 6 is a pretty fantastic piece of Android hardware. The Nexus 9 is... a tablet that runs Lollipop. And even some hardcore Android fans have yet to be sold on Android Wear. But if you're in the market for any of those devices right now, you want to get them from the new Google Store, at least if you live in the United States. Google is offering of free Play Store credit with a new purchase of the N6, N9, or any Android Wear device.
Owners of the OnePlus One tend to be among the most dedicated (read: rabid) Android fans out there - they have to be, since it still takes no small amount of legwork to actually buy the phone. That being the case, those owners have waited a long time for the final, official update to Android 5.0. They won't have to wait much longer: an official OnePlus representative told members of the company forum that the updates will begin on March 27th, just a little over a week from now.
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.
Does your new phone feel hot? I mean really, really hot, perhaps because it uses a mobile processor that's running much hotter than some of its contemporaries? Maybe it could use an infusion of conceptual tech from Fujitsu. The manufacturer and OEM supplier is currently showing off its "thin cooling device for compact electronics" (catchy!), a liquid cooling solution designed for high-performance mobile chipsets. That's not astounding in and of itself; what is impressive is that they've made it only one millimeter thin.
Remember those rumblings of overheating problems with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 mobile processor? I think it's safe to say that they've been confirmed. Dutch enthusiast site Tweakers used a thermal camera to test the temperature of various high-end phones while running the intense GFXBench benchmark application. They found that the new HTC One M9, powered by the top-of-the-line Snapdragon 810, could reach temperatures as high as 55.4 degrees Celsius (131.7 degrees Fahrenheit).