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The titular beach bum in Beach God doesn't have a name, but he looks like a Chad. I'm going to call him Chad. Chad is hoping to impress the voluptuous ladies strolling past his tiki bar, using the time-honored technique of flexing his biceps and pectorals. His motivation might not be entirely lust-driven, because if just one of the ladies passes him when he's not flexing, he literally dies of embarrassment.
A lot of smartphone apps are just mobile translations of a standard computer program or website - useful, but they don't really take advantage of the strengths of mobile platforms beyond the interface. Here's an app that "gets" the way people use their phones, and tricks you into expanding your vocabulary. In a good way.
Well I'll be gosh-darned. The Rufus Cuff, a super-sized smartwatch-smartphone hybrid powered by Android, has met and surpassed its ambitious 0,000 crowdfunding goal. It appears that at least a thousand people or so are excited enough by the prospect of a gigantic touchscreen wrist communicator to lay their money down. I'm going to assume that at least 800 of them are extremely dedicated Turanga Leela cosplayers.
In two months, hundreds of thousands of people will be flocking to cities all over Brazil for the 20th FIFA World Cup. Since getting around in an unfamiliar metropolis can be a bit of a hassle (looking at you, Barcelona), Google has expanded its public transit information for the relevant Brazilian cities. When World Cup fans get to Brazil, they'll be able to look up bus and train info for all twelve cities with scheduled games.
Look, this story is about 450 words long. But you don't have time for all that. Here's the skinny: if you fancy yourself a fan of strategy games, and if you've got a reasonably powerful Android machine with about 4GB of free space, aaaaand you don't mind paying ten bucks for a mobile version of a game that was fifty bucks when it debuted two years ago, then you should go buy XCOM: Enemy Unknown right now.
Better late than never, right? Though the first update for Sprint's variant of the Samsung Galaxy S5 isn't a hugely important one, at least according to its own changelog, some users over at XDA were eagerly awaiting it. It appears that at least some users are now getting the update. In the nature of these things, it may take a bit of time to get around to all the S5 owners on Sprint.
The Galaxy S4 Zoom, Samsung's strange combination of a standard Android phone and a point-and-shoot camera, was a bit of an odd duck. But it seems to have sold enough units that Samsung intends to release a new model, if only to continue their strategy of covering every possible cell phone niche. Photos posted on Baidu show what's claimed to be the "Galaxy K," which certainly seems to be an updated version of the S4 Zoom.
If you entered Google's new lottery system for I/O 2014, go check your email account. Odds are pretty good that you've got an email, or that you will receive one shortly. Several Google+ users are showing off their fancy invitations. Those who have "won" the right to purchase their $900 tickets have already been charged via their Google Wallet accounts.
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.
For better or worse, manufacturer apps tend to be exclusive to their own phones or tablets in the Android world. Not so with Windows programs, or at least, not usually. Samsung's SideSync program, an automated backup, remote desktop, and file transfer system, was previously limited to Samsung's own ATIV line of Windows laptops and tablets. But with the update to version 3.0, the company has removed that restriction - you should now be able to use SideSync with a Samsung Android device and any Windows machine.
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 Lego game that's even cuter than ordinary Lego games, a Worms clone with some options, and an interesting mix of real-time strategy and lane defense. Without further ado:
For anyone who likes a nice structured itinerary for their weekend Vegas bender, TripIt is a handy app that combines flight, public transit, hotel, and restaurant info in to a tight little scheduling interface. And to make said interface even more tight, TripIt has revised the UI in the latest build. Well, at least some of the UI - from what we can tell, you'll only see the spiffy new blue-tinted screens if you're using a phone. Tablets default to the older UI, which admittedly seems to make a better use of the larger screen.
Now footloose and fancy free, or at least self-employed and unencumbered, Koushik "Koush" Dutta is expanding his popular AllCast streaming app to Amazon's new Fire TV set-top box. Unlike the Chromecast, Xbox, Roku, Apple TV, and various other gadgets with relatively open streaming profiles, the Fire TV needs a separate app to receive content from your phone or tablet. Just install AllCast on both and you should be good to go for local video and audio streaming.
One of the more far-reaching Android Police stories this year was our exclusive write-up of Virus Shield, an impressively popular anti-virus app that managed to make it to the top of the Play Store's sales charts in less than a week, despite the fact that it did absolutely nothing. After digging into the app's code, Artem Russakovskii and various Android Police readers found that it was nothing more than a few images and a toggle. Virus Shield racked up more than 10,000 downloads at $3.99 a pop, and the app was removed from the Play Store hours after our story was published.
OnePlus has been amazingly and infuriatingly evasive when it comes to their much-hyped One phone, bordering on "bloody cheeky" with their series of faux-viral specification and schedule reveals. Perhaps one of their hardware or marketing partners got as fed up with waiting as we are, because a full set of convincing photos and renders has been leaked via a Chinese forum.
[Interview] Koushik "Koush" Dutta On Leaving Cyanogen, Inc. And His Return To ClockworkMod
Koushik Dutta, better known as "Koush" to the Android power user community, was one of the original Cyanogen, Inc. employees when the company incorporated last year. But he's been giving Android users some great stuff for much longer than that: most people's first exposure to his work comes from ClockworkMod, still one of the most widely-used custom recoveries available, not to mention various tools like ROM Manager, ClockworkMod Tether, and DeskSMS. Lately he's been expanding into more general apps like Helium Backup and AllCast.
One of the more inflammatory stories in the world of gaming over the last few months has been the rise of casual game publisher King and its emphatic defense of its "Candy Crush Saga" intellectual property. After applying for trademarks on the terms "Candy" and "Saga" for video game and clothing applications, King opposed the trademark application of the PC Viking-themed RPG The Banner Saga.
Update: One commenter noticed that the new colors of the DROID MAXX have 16GB of storage, not 32GB like the original matte version. For shame, Verizon/Moto, especially since the MAXX has no microSD card slot. Thanks, Jason Stanton!
So. Sprint. About that KitKat 4.4.3 update you mentioned for the Nexus 5. You haven't seen it lying around anywhere, have you? Because we certainly haven't. And neither have any of our readers.
The ladies and gents at Dropbox have big dreams - look no further than their recent expansion into email and photo gallery apps for evidence of that fact. And like any company with high aspirations, they're snapping up technology and the associated talent at a fast pace. In the last 18 months the company has bought e-readers, photo tools, and even a Craigslist-style marketplace. Today they've announced the acquisition of two more apps and the companies that make them.