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We've been waiting a long time to see smartphones with screens made from synthetic sapphire, an expensive material that justifies its cost by being nearly impervious to scratches from all but the hardest materials. So far we've seen it on a single Kyocera "tough" phone and not much else, but Chinese manufacturer OPPO is hoping to bring it to a more mainstream device. Say hello to the R1C, a phone that hangs out on the higher portion of the midrange, and is scheduled to hit China later this month.
Spoiler Alert begins on the last, and paradoxically easiest, level in the game, where you defeat the final boss and then rescue the princess in familiar but not quite copyright infringing fashion. At that point you play the game in reverse, going backwards through hundreds of levels that the tiny chili pepper hero has played, but you haven't. It's an odd approach to a platform game, and one that has to be played to be fully understood. In lieu of that, watch the video below.
If you live in the US, you're probably familiar with the AMBER Alert system, which broadcasts information on missing or abducted children on television, radio, and even digital road signs in relevant local areas. The system has been expanded in recent years to include cable television, satellite and Internet radio, and even less precise digital platforms like Google Maps. Today Facebook announced that it will be showing AMBER Alerts to users in affected areas on both the web and mobile.
Capacitive touchscreens are not ideal tools for 3D modeling. Unless you have an active digitizer and stylus, or superhuman patience, or preferably both, the amazing models on display in the screenshots below will probably be unattainable in the new 123D Sculpt+ app. But that doesn't mean it's not fun to try out a tool that, at least on a technical level, has a lot in common with professional 3D modeling programs. The app comes from Autodesk (a company which should know a thing or two on the matter) and it's a free download.
When Google and HTC announced the Nexus 9, they showed it off in the now-standard black, white, and gold "sand" color options. The off-brown color wasn't seen on launch day, though considering the low initial manufacturing runs that Nexus devices seem cursed with, that's not overly surprising. In the small hours of this morning the sand option appeared on the Play Store in the United States - you can pick up a 32GB model now for 9.
If you're a gamer, you probably know XCOM as the recently revived turn-based alien killin' strategy game. It's also been given an official board game, a natural fit for the turn-based combat so heavily featured in the digital version. Until today you needed an iOS device for the mandatory companion app, which handles such fiddly things as player turns and hit percentages - the things your DM used to do on pen and paper. Now it's been given a belated release on Android... not unlike the mobile version of the PC game.
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.
If you're one of the few people in the US who wants a Chromecast for your living room and doesn't yet have one, you might want to check out this Best Buy sale. The already inexpensive dongle has been reduced to $29.99 ($5 off), and it comes with $20 of free Google Play Store credit. Assuming you'll eventually spend twenty bones on the Play Store (and I should hope any regular AP reader would), the effective price is a cool ten bucks.
If you have one of three Samsung devices on Sprint, you might just have an over-the-air update waiting for you in your Settings menu. But don't get too excited: not a one of them brings a new version of Android, or even more than one or two new visible features. The Galaxy S III and Galaxy S5 Sport (AKA the S5 Active) phones and the Galaxy Tab 4 (the 7-inch version) all have tiny additions to their software going out today.
If you're a fan of the direction Samsung has taken with the design of the Galaxy Alpha and Galaxy Note 4, you'll be happy to see the same notes show up in even more hardware. The new Galaxy A7 is a bigger brother to the previously-announced Galaxy A5 and A3, complete with its thin, minimal design and metal bezel and frame. The phone's 5.5-inch screen is the biggest in the series, and it's also in the same ballpark (at least in terms of size) as flagships from both Samsung and its competitors.
Update, January 11th, 2015: Verizon has issued another update alert for the Galaxy Note 4.4.4. This one also updates the phone to 4.4.4 and includes the same changelog, but for some reason the build number is changed to N900VVRUDNK1. Whether or not there was a problem with the original rollout, we can't say, but it appears to be continuing.
Ultra Agents isn't one of LEGO's better-known series - the Marvel and DC superheroes and other licensed sets like the LEGO Movie collection get more love. But as a natural extension of some of the more original building toys from the 80s and 90s, it's a nice change that lets the designers stretch their creativity a bit. LEGO brought Ultra Agents to Android last summer, and now they've brought the sequel as well.
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 stylish avoider game, a sci-fi gamebook, and a unique board game. Without further ado:
Using an unlocked bootloader on your phone or tablet is not safe. Don't do it. Unless you want root permissions, or the ability to backup and restore your software via a custom recovery, or you want to use a ROM that didn't come with your machine. These things don't make an unlocked Android device any safer, but they are pretty good justifications for unlocking your bootloader. If you'd like to have all that unlocked cake and metaphorically eat it too, the BootUnlocker app is your friend. Today it works on the popular OnePlus One as well as the usual Nexus devices.
If you haven't heard of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, usually shortened to EFF, it's sort of like the American Civil Liberties Union for the Internet and other digital issues. The non-profit organization's mission statement says that it "champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development." You'll rarely see a headline-grabbing story where tech intersects public policy that the EFF hasn't at least commented on, if not actively campaigned for or against.
There are only so many ways you can make a game that features side-scrolling and shooting, but developer Nitrome seems to have found another one. In Gunbrick, you play a duck (or a chicken, or possibly just a blonde guy with jaundice, it's never really made clear) who buys and operates a Gunbrick. It's a brick with a gun in it, in case that wasn't obvious.
In recent years the Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) standard hasn't been nearly as ubiquitous as it once was - some manufacturers have switched to other hardware solutions like MicroHDMI ports, some have abandoned hardware video output altogether, and plenty of users have moved on to wireless streaming of one sort or another. But the MHL consortium is hoping to reinvigorate the standard with new hardware and new capabilities. Meet SuperMHL: it's over 8000.
Update, January 7th: the eBay vendor for this listing has added new stock and lowered the price to 9.99. That's a steal for one of last year's best devices. Grab it while you can.
Seven hundred million is a big number. 700 million of almost anything is a lot, but when you're talking about users, it's the kind of number that makes investors and analysts start to drool. It's also the amount of monthly users that popular alternative messaging app WhatsApp now has, at least according to an announcement by CEO Jan Koum. For context, Facebook initialized a purchase of WhatsApp last February (finalized in October) for approximately 22 billion dollars, when the service reportedly had "only" 450 million users.
A messaging service is only useful so long as a certain amount of your contacts use it along with you. So we'll refrain from making jokes at BlackBerry's expense (not a small effort, mind you) or pointing you towards alternatives like Hangouts or WhatsApp. If you use BlackBerry Messenger, and your friends and/or associates do too, pointing out other options isn't going to do much for you. But here's something that will: BBM is getting Android Wear support!