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Adam Jensen, cyborg protagonist of the well-received Deus Ex: Human Revolution and its upcoming sequel Mankind Divided, didn't ask for this. It's something he likes to remind everyone right before he hacks through a locked door, sneaks behind a cybernetic guard, and impales him with an augmented blade-limb. And we didn't ask for Deus Ex GO, a turn-based, board game-style reinterpretation of the series for mobile phones and tablets... but we're glad it's here anyway.
It's 2016. Android is pretty great. We have access to software and hardware that were just pipe dreams a few years ago, and the mild whining that we as a community like to engage in is just that: mild. But bloated, unnecessary software from manufacturers and carriers, which restricts customer choice, adds to update delays, and sometimes even opens up vulnerabilities, remains a thorn in the side of the platform as a whole. How often have we seen otherwise interesting hardware brought down because someone thought it would be a good idea to pay for unverified mobile games with sandwiches?
USA Network's Mr. Robot is all the rage among tech fans, and not just because it's probably the most faithful depiction of real-world hackers ever to hit primetime. The drama surrounding a gigantic, omnipresent, all-knowing international tech company that has access to every part of the digital world has some disturbing parallels in real life. (Cough, cough.) If you can't wait for the next episode to land in your Android TV queue, there's a new game on the Play Store to check out... and it's made by TellTale, fan-favorite developers of story-focused adventure games.
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.
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 have an iOS casual hit, a farming board game, a fast arcade shooter, an oddly mercurial puzzle game, and the spiritual sequel to Logic Dots. Without further ado:
The Xbox 360 controller has been the de facto standard for years (NVIDIA copied it almost exactly for the SHIELD line), and the Xbox One has a refined and streamlined version of that design. So when Microsoft announced that a shiny new revision of the Xbox One controller would not only let you choose your colors and engraving Moto Maker-style, but also include a Bluetooth connection for easy dongle-free pairing with PCs, I couldn't help but get excited. Might Android gamers finally get access to the best controller around without any USB frippery or root-enabled work-arounds?
There are some neat things coming to Chrome in the future, and if you'd like to test them out before everyone else, you're probably already using either the Beta or the Dev version of the Android app. Keep an eye on the former: it's getting some of said features right now. The most interesting addition in version 53 is a new API for quickly checking out on mobile online purchases. It's sort of like the streamlined payment options already offered by PayPal and Visa, but it works with any payment system and it's built into the browser. Check it out in the video below:
In this job I work with a lot of public relations people. Their task is similar to mine, but in the opposite direction: while the responsibility of tech journalists is to present consumers with information that helps them make buying decisions, PR agents are generally instructed to drive sales by getting the news out. There's nothing wrong with the profession itself, and I've known great PR agents and those who are not so great. But I often look across the professional aisle and feel profound sympathy for my counterparts on the corporate side of tech media.
Another year, another round of soccer manager games. The first up for Android this fall is Square-Enix's franchise Championship Manager, or as it's more entertainingly known to players, "Champ Man." This one is named 17, because that's one more than the year we're in right now. As is tradition.
Decisions are the essence of drama. You can have ten thousand explosions go off in every second of your story, but until someone decides what to do about them, nobody will care. The latest mobile game from prolific publisher Devolver Digital gets that: it's an odd mix between a card game and Tinder with a cartoon medieval setting. In Reigns, each tiny decision builds up a procedurally-generated story of your time spent as king.
Itty-bitty bezels are all the rage for high-end smartphones. Samsung's Edge series (which ostensibly includes the Note 7) shrinks them with curved screens, manufacturers like Sharp have crazy designs that smoosh everything down into the bottom of the body, and pretty much everyone is trying to make the edges of their devices as small as possible. But no one has reached the holy grail of this idea: a phone that's basically just a screen on the front. JDI, a Japanese technology supplier, is working on it with their latest design.
It must be nice to have a car with a media system that can be updated - some of us are lucky just to get Bluetooth. Some Hyundai owners can actually upgrade their in-car entertainment systems to give them Android Auto support, and today that list expands by four according to Cnet. Owners of the 2016 Sonata Hybrid (standard and plug-in), 2016 Veloster, and 2015/2016 Azera can now get some sweet, sweet Android Auto action with a download and a bit of legwork.
Pretty much every media company that has so much as a pinky toe dipped into the sports pool wants a bit of that lucrative fantasy market, and since ESPN is (allegedly) nothing but sports, you can bet they're making a go of it. Previously the Disney subsidiary published dedicated fantasy apps for both football (that's the American kind with the big dudes in armor, not the other kind with the little dudes in shorts) and baseball, but now they're consolidated into a single app, and basketball and hockey can come along for the ride.
The latest post to the official Google Maps blog brings some welcome news. A couple of features that have been exclusive to betas of the Android app, not to mention hinted at by our cheeky teardown posts, are now in the public version. Specifically, that handy Wi-Fi-only mode for users on a limited data allotment should now be live for everyone (it was limited to a subset of users before), and the option to save local mapping data to the SD card is now active as well.
Fast, smooth data download speed is kind of important to mobile video, especially now that even mid-range Android phones are rocking 1080p screens. That's part of the reason that Netflix created FAST.com, its own branded alternative to web speed tests like Ookla's SpeedTest.net, back in May. The idea is to make sure you're getting an accurate test across multiple services (there's even a SpeedTest.net link right on the page) and your internet service provider isn't throttling your connection.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
Holy crap, you people really like playing Pokémon. A combination of nostalgia, interesting augmented reality gameplay, straight-up social novelty, and (not least) being a free game has made Niantic's Pokémon GO rocket to 100 million downloads in the Play Store in just a month. Life isn't a race, but if it was, Pokémon GO would be so far ahead of every other game that they'd see it disappearing beneath the horizon.
Calendar apps aren't exactly hard to find on the Play Store. There are pretty ones, functional ones, cross-platform ones designed to work with every service under the sun, and then there's Google Calendar that everyone comes back to when their favorite stops updating. You might think there's nothing new to explore in the space, but you'd be wrong. OneView Calendar manages to put a new spin on a somewhat tired standard by refining it to an impressive degree.
Android's homescreen widgets were one of its signature features when it debuted as an iOS alternative (which is kind of funny in itself), but developers seem to positively thrill in ways to stick them in other places as well. Case in point: Quidgets from Joseph Paul Antonetti. This little app allows users to hide a full-sized homescreen widget up in the Quick Settings menu, making it accessible from any app with a quick swipe. There's only one downside: it's exclusive to Android 7.0 for the time being.
Team Win Recovery Project is the de facto standard for Android custom recoveries. While the open-source project often makes its way to disparate Android phones and tablets by the efforts of interested indie ROM developers, the maintainers of the project work tirelessly to bring official builds out as well. Today no less than seven new devices get the official treatment, and most of them are more niche, low-volume hardware that might not get major attention otherwise.