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I'm not going to mince words here: if you don't have a Nexus phone, odds are pretty good that you aren't running Android 6.0. The best that you can say of most manufacturers when it comes to this software cycle is that maybe they're kinda-sorta trying to update last year's flagship phones. Sony has been a little better than most in that regard - they've already updated several phones and tablets from the Z4 and Z5 series, and now even older models are getting in on the action. According to XperiaBlog, the Xperia Z2, Xperia Z3, and Xperia Z3 Compact are being updated to Android 6.0 starting today.
I find most Square-Enix RPGs to be baffling in that somewhat generic anime way: as one reviewer puts it, the stories always seem to revolve around a bunch of teenagers killing Satan with the power of friendship. Throw in perhaps one of the biggest (or at least most complicated) crossovers in media history, and my head starts to spin. So it is with the Kingdom Hearts series of action-RPGs. It's been mixing Squaresoft's Final Fantasy mythos with more or less every Disney animated movie, plus its own impenetrable plots and original characters, since the first game came out on the PS2. Oh, and for some reason all the heroes hit stuff with giant keys.
Android Auto continues to gain momentum as automakers search for a relatively easy and inexpensive way to equip their cars with electronics that work with customers' smartphones. South Korean auto company Kia previously committed to the platform on a handful of its cars, at least according to the official Android Auto website, but that list has been considerably expanded as of the latest update. The latest version lists nearly twenty models that will have Android Auto capability, including several 2014-2016 models that will receive it as an update.
Thanks to enthusiast-focused hardware, low prices, and easy-to-modify software, Xiaomi's phones have become extremely popular among ROM fans in China. (And not for nothing, more than a few of them might want something aside from Xiaomi's heavily-modified Android user interface.) One of the latter low-price phones from the company is the Redmi Note 3, and it now has its own custom recovery from the standard-bearers at Team Win.
The BlackBerry Priv is nice. It really is! As the company's first full Android device it's impressive, and it's a downright godsend for all those users who've been starved for a high-end phone with a physical keyboard since the DROID 4 came out four freakin' years ago. But it's also expensive. At $700 in the US, it's among the priciest phones on the market... and BlackBerry's falling star in the smartphone world means that they can't afford to play at the same level as Samsung and Apple, at least not yet.
Look, Chinese phone manufacturers, we need to have a talk. I know trademarks, copyrights, patents, and all manner of intellectual property are played kind of fast and loose over there. But when even your legitimate companies follow Apple like a bunch of multi-million-dollar ducklings, it's not poking any holes in the old "iPhone clone" argument. Case in point: OPPO's shiny new F1 Plus, a phone that has some fantastic design and hardware and could certainly stand on its own merits... that just happens to look like someone took an iPhone 6 Plus and put it through a photocopier a few dozen times.
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 a first-person casual dungeon crawler, a driving game where you destroy everything with a giant mace, another dungeon crawler with top-down shooter controls, a platform-shooter, a casual shake-sliding game, and one more bonus dungeon crawler. Without further ado:
While it's hardly taking the world by storm, it looks like Android TV is gaining enough of a footing that there are now high-end televisions equipped with Google's entertainment OS being discounted on a regular basis. (Of course, that might simply indicate that no one is buying them. Either way, it means low prices for us.) Today's television deal comes from Sharp, and it's a big-un: the LC-70UE30U, a 70-inch, 4K smart TV. Buydig's eBay outlet has a new model on sale for 99.99, a solid $200 off of the price for most remaining new stock.
Asus scored a big win with its high-end but relatively inexpensive Zenfone 2 design. It looks like the Taiwanese manufacturer is hoping to leverage that into a larger series of handsets, very much as Samsung has done with the Galaxy S. In fact, that's not the only thing the next Zenfone will have in common with the Galaxy S series. Red Dot 21, a a sort of product design showcase organized by the same people behind the Red Dot design awards, has new profiles for the as-yet unseen Zenfone 3 and Zenfone 3 Deluxe. (Note that this isn't an actual award, it just means that someone - presumably Asus itself - posted the profile pages.)
MojoTouch has been releasing some notable classics of the point-and-click adventure genre for the last few years. First came Simon the Sorcerer (and eventually its sequel ), then The Seventh Guest. Now the developer has ported Flight of the Amazon Queen, an Indiana Jones-style adventure parody first released for MS-DOS and the Amiga way back in 1995. You can grab it on the Play Store for $4, and the game has no ads or in-app purchases.
The original Chromecast was a streaming sensation thanks to ease of use and a low price point. The second generation, while generally well-received, still hasn't made its way to all of Google's various international markets. The next countries to get a chance to buy the Chromecast 2015 and its little brother the Chromecast Audio appear to be India and Taiwan. Both countries were recently added to Google's official hardware availability page.
Despite the fact that excitement for endless Angry Birds iterations and spin-offs more or less died over a year ago, the Angry Birds movie is scheduled to hit theaters next month. (Apparently creating a 90-minute CG movie, complete with Hollywood talent, marketing, and distribution, takes a lot longer than making a 2D physics game.) Developer Rovio is pumping up the promotion machine starting with Angry Birds Action!, a 2.5D twist on the classic slingshot formula. At the moment it's soft-launched in New Zealand, but the game should be heading to other territories well before the May movie release.
Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings is now available on NVIDIA's SHIELD Android TV. And boy, are they excited about it. So excited that they've given us a super-duper SHIELD TV package... which NVIDIA then told us we had to give away to our readers. Bummer. But our loss is your gain: you can enter this giveaway for a shot at winning the following prize package.
Amazon's second generation of Alexa-enabled gadgets is ready to go. The Amazon Tap, a smaller, battery-powered version of the Amazon Echo, as well as the Echo Dot, which can use external speakers for its primary function, should both be heading out to those who purchased them after their recent announcement. The latter is only available to Amazon Prime members who order using Amazon's voice service, with a Kindle Fire tablet or Fire TV. The Tap, along with its cover accessories, are both labelled as "in stock" on Amazon's US storefront.Both devices represent an expansion of Amazon's Alexa voice command platform, which is itself a competitor to services like Google Now, Apple's Siri, and Microsoft's Cortana. The Tap offers the music playback functions of the original Echo in a small portable package, minus the always-on listening capabilities (instead you have to tap the microphone button). It includes a pair of omni-directional speakers and Bluetooth connectivity, along with a quoted nine-hour battery life, for $129. The Echo Dot is a pint-sized version of the original Echo, with an always-on microphone but without any speakers, which connects to external sound output via Bluetooth or a standard headphone cable. It has more or less all of the available Alexa functions, including info gathering, ordering from Amazon and partner retailers, connected home features, and more.The Alexa platform is still very much in beta, but Amazon seems to be throwing quite a lot of development and marketing into it, so it's probably not going anywhere soon. The hardware is still a little pricey - savvy buyers might want to wait a few months, since Amazon is fond of exclusive sales on its first-party devices.Source: Amazon
Okay, so Jurassic World didn't exactly live up to the groundbreaking standards of the original movie. That probably doesn't matter to the herds of kids who went to see it just to watch some dinosaurs scaring the crap out of a bunch of puny humans. That being the case, a tie-in with LEGO for toys and games is pretty brilliant. After a substantial delay, you can now play the LEGO video game version of Jurassic World, which also includes bits from the original Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, and that other one with Téa Leoni.
Way back at the Game Developer's Conference just over a year ago, NVIDIA announced the SHIELD Android TV. While the presentation included streaming PC games and NVIDIA's GeForce NOW (formerly GRID) streaming game service, the announcement also focused on full-version PC games that would be getting full Android ports built especially for the SHIELD's high-powered Tegra X1 hardware. We've seen precious little of that - few of the big-name games first announced with the SHIELD have come to fruition aside from Doom 3 and Metal Gear Rising. But today we get perhaps the most impressive game from the original announcement: the latest entry in the Borderlands series.
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Nintendo is taking its sweet time in making its Miitomo app available to us US Americans. But the waiting, in so much as there has been waiting for a glorified Nintendo-only social network, is almost over. After a bit of exclusivity in Japan, the app is set to go live in the United States and "several other countries" on Thursday, March 31st. Want to know which other countries? So do we. Update: the UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Canada.
360-degree photos are cool, and they're gaining popularity quickly, but at the moment there's no easy way to get them into web and app content. Google aims to fix that with VR View, a new open-source system for easily embedding 360-degree photos and videos onto web pages and apps, both on Android and iOS. The new system is open source, allowing for (relatively) simple adaptation into a variety of situations. Google made the announcement on its Developers blog.
Google employees Natalie Hammel and Lorraine Yurshansky, who go by Nat & Lo for their series of informative Google tour videos, are at it again. This time the pair are demonstrating the recent improvements to Google's Text-To-Speech engine (TTS), which many of our readers have already experienced. Since synthesized, human-style voice functions are part of the biggest new trend in usability and gadgets, it's kind of a big deal.