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When Samsung and LG began selling their Android Wear watches, it seems they made a small oversight: the only way to get the proprietary POGO pin charging docks was to buy the watch. That left customers who had lost or damaged the chargers with no way to get their devices charged again. LG made good on the problem by adding a G Watch Charger to the Play Store back in August, and now Samsung has followed up for the Gear Live as well.
Sony's relationship with "pure" Android is an interesting one. As a company they generally make it easy to root or otherwise modify their phones or tablets, with a few notable qualifiers. The AOSP for Xperia project, which provides the basic tools for building standard Android ROMs on popular devices, is also one way that Sony stays relevant for those who buy phones with the intent to add aftermarket software. Today it gets two new flagship options, the older Xperia Z1 and Z2.
After Star Wars, Marvel, and The Walking Dead, it seems like just about any property is fair game for Zen Studios' expanding pinball franchise. The latest addition is South Park, Comedy Central's foul-mouthed animated show now in its 18th season. As usual with Zen Pinball expansions, you can get the two new 3D tables as either a stand-alone paid app or as in-app purchase expansions to the original game. The separate app is $4, or each table is $2, so it works out the same.
If you were a fan of "sim management" games in the early 2000s, you probably played at least one version of RollerCoaster Tycoon. Next year Atari will revive the franchise with RollerCoaster Tycoon World on the PC, but for now the official fourth installment of the series is oddly limited to mobile, arriving about six months late on Android. RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 uses the same basic structure of the original 1999 game, albeit with remixed limits and annoyances for the free-to-play format.
NVIDIA has generally been among the best manufacturers when it comes to timely Android updates. With semi-monthly software updates to the original SHIELD Portable and SHIELD Tablet, complete with bug fixes and feature improvements, there wasn't really any doubt that the company's new Tegra K1-powered flagship would be getting a Lollipop upgrade. Even so, NVIDIA went and made it official with the tweet below.
Are you super-anxious to get your hands on Android L, now that it's been officially revealed as version 5.0 with the Lollipop name? Well tough noogies - it looks like we'll have to wait for the releases of the new Nexus 6 phone and Nexus 9 tablet before the older Nexus and Google Play Edition devices get their updates. But if you have a Nexus 5 or a Wi-Fi Nexus 7, you've already got the Android L Developer Preview builds as an option.
The Nexus 6 looks to be Google's most widely-released phone ever, at least in the context of United States carriers. While the company has taken an "unlocked first" approach to carrier partnerships since the ill-fated Verizon Galaxy Nexus, it has offered at least some of the traditional phone sales on the Nexus 5. For the new Motorola Nexus 6, every major American carrier will have a phone option, though whether that means there's one phone that will work with all or there will be multiple versions, we can't say at the moment.
Someone at the unconventional indie carrier Republic Wireless is a big fan of Motorola. In addition to carrying both the high-end Moto X and the budget-oriented Moto G (both from 2013), the company is now offering the low-end Moto E in its limited lineup of customized phone hardware, as promised. Interested customers can pick one up from the company's online store for . White and black colors are available.
AT&T Continues Its Niche Hardware Streak With The ASUS PadFone X Mini, Coming October 24th For $200 Prepaid
AT&T shows off the ASUS PadFone X Mini.
Some Americans waited literally years for the weird and wonderful PadFone series to show up on a local carrier... and were finally unsurprised to see AT&T be the only one to bite. (Seriously, between all that Amazon and HTC hardware, AT&T seems like the only American carrier willing to take a little risk.) Now AT&T and ASUS are teaming up again for the slightly smaller version of the phone-tablet docking concept, the PadFone X Mini.
Here's the thing about customization on Android, or any other interface for that matter: it's time-consuming. Whenever I try out a new launcher, I end up testing every option and toggle just to see if I like it, which inevitably means bouncing back and forth between the homescreen and the Settings menu for the launcher to see the results. It takes forever, which is why I've generally given up on fun things like themes and icon packs.
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.
Pay $29 for a ticket to the top of 30 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, and you can expect to see a few things: excellent views of downtown and Central Park, a few tidbits of NBC broadcasting history, some kid trying to surreptitiously drop pennies off the roof. But one thing you might not expect to see is a contextual ad for Google's latest search campaign unobtrusively hanging out on one of the coin-op binoculars.
In the Android Police teardown of the latest Google Play Services support app posted yesterday, Cody Toombs noted that the "Nearby Players" feature we've been spotting for a few weeks seems ready to go. And lo and behold, several users have seen the feature become active on their phones, heading to Google+ and our own tips box to spread the joy around. Check your own app to see if it's enabled, though the distribution seems somewhat random - we're seeing reports from players in Mexico and Italy at the moment.
As we've noted before, Facer is pretty cool: it's a way to make or load custom watch faces and easily apply them to your Android Wear device. While the Facer app has its own built-in gallery of submitted watch faces, FaceRepo is an impressively varied alternative that allows you to browse watch faces on the web. User-submitted designs are split into round and square watch faces for the Moto 360 and G Watch/Gear Live, respectively. They should work with future models as well.
Xposed GEL Settings, or XGELS, is an Xposed Framework module that aims to make the default Google Now launcher (AKA the Google Experience Launcher) just as customizable as alternatives like Nova. The latest update adds a handful of new options for customization nuts, including tweaks to the icon display on the homescreen and app drawer. You can download XGELS via the Play Store, but you'll need a rooted device and the Xposed Framework (sideload) to make it work.
Fun fact: Microsoft was working on "smart watches" a solid decade before the current craze. Microsoft partnered with Fossil and a few other watch makers to release SPOT Watches, which received information updates via FM radio broadcasts. I don't want to say that SPOT watches were terrible, and I don't have to, because this Cnet review does it for me. Maybe Microsoft is trying to capture the not-so-glorious days of early 2000s smartwatches, because the company's research division has just posted an experimental keyboard for Android Wear.
Look, $200+ is a lot to pay for a watch, especially when you've been wearing the same $30 Timex Ironman from Target for the last fifteen years. If you've been on the fence on the first generation of Android Wear devices, waiting for a good deal on at least one of them, then your time is now. Best Buy is selling the LG G Watch for 9.99, a full $80 off of the list price.
The SuperSU root permissions manager is probably one of the most widely-distributed power user tools on Android at this point, though it won't be breaking the Top Ten lists in the Play Store any time soon. Developer Chainfire has issued an update to version 2.13, which includes a huge list of additional and adjusted features. As far as usability is concerned, the biggest change is probably the fact that the app is now available on the Amazon Appstore. Kindle Fire modders, this means easy updates for you.
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 minimalist "multiplayer" twitch game, a sci-fi tower defense game, a strangely violent take on Angry Birds, and another Tin Man game book. Without further ado:
Sometimes you've just got to sit back and marvel at the ingenuity of some Android developers. While Motorola was busy putting expensive infrared sensors all over the front of the new Moto X to enable a few gesture controls, developer OnTheGo Platforms was adding it in with something that just about every smartphone already has. Behold, BrainWave, an app that lets you play, pause, and navigate your music like a frickin' Jedi.