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Here's a little exercise for you: think of your favorite board game. Now add hulking space marines, chainsaw swords, and elaborate baroque spaceships. Try to imagine any possible way that this is not awesome. Monopoly would go faster if you could fill all that mortgage nonsense with epic infantry battles, and someone might actually play backgammon if you could call in an orbital strike. Until that wonderful day arrives, we have Talisman: The Horus Heresy, a re-working of Talisman within the popular sci-fi setting of Warhammer 40,000.
You've heard of Jason Statham, right? That generically rugged-looking guy who shows up in about 50% of the action B-movies in any given summer to sound British and punch people in the face? Well apparently the rugged-punching-British demographic is one that LG would like to win, because they've hired him to promote the G5 in an upcoming series of commercials. They said so in a press release. Yes, a press release for a commercial. Welcome to the 2016 mobile market.
Remember that sweet 25% discount on the Pixel C tablet for "developers?" (Don't worry, you don't actually have to be a developer.) Originally it was only available to buyers in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, but as of today it's been updated to apply to a handful of new counties. Customers in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland can now take 25% off of the local currency price.
If you route all of your voice calls through data-only web tools like Hangouts, you may want to keep an eye on T-Mobile. According to an internal leak posted by Tmo News, the "uncarrier" will offer a surprisingly wide array of data-only options starting later this week. While these plans are still under the "Simple Choice" label, they're considerably cheaper than the existing options thanks to omitting voice services. The plans do include the now-standard unlimited texting, whether you need it or not.
If you listen to a lot of podcasts, you probably spend at least ten hours or more every week getting through them. A common feature of podcast playback tools is the option to speed up playback, allowing at least some users to get through these almost entirely spoken-word programs more quickly. Popular Android podcast manager Stitcher now includes this option... but oddly, only for devices running Android 6.0 or later. The tool can speed up playback to 1.25x, 1.5x, or 2x (which is insanely fast). It can also slow playback by half.
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.
Anyone who's been hanging around Android Police knows that AirDroid is one of our very favorite tools. And a big part of what makes it so great is that the developers are constantly improving both the core file transfer functions and adding brand new stuff more or less constantly. The latest additional goodie is a photo backup system, more or less like the ones featured in Dropbox or Google Drive and their imitators, but minus the online cloud storage element.
Years and years after Samsung, HTC, and Motorola started plopping bloated skins on top of stock Android, manufacturers are still trying to create semi-artificial market differentiation with their shiny software toys. While manufacturer skins have gotten more tolerable as of late (thanks in no small part to the way they've also become much more resource efficient), it's still vaguely annoying that all these companies feel the need to spend vast amounts of time and effort completely overhauling something that already works pretty well.
Today is Easter Sunday in many countries, and though humble tech bloggers don't really get fancy luxuries like "vacations" or "religious holidays" or "time to sleep," it seems appropriate to point out an Android Easter egg that's apparently been lying in wait for quite a while. The folks at Ausdroid spotted this one, a simple nod to British sitcom The IT Crowd (also known as "that show that's kind of like The Big Bang Theory without all the sucking").
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 new Kairosoft management game, two different space shooters, a casual soccer title, an unconventional tower defense game, a rope-swinging endless runner, and a zombie game (of course). Without further ado:
YouTube Music, the app built specifically for the YouTube Red music subscription service, is still somewhat in its infancy. There's plenty of room for improvement, and version 1.16 adds a couple of small but notable changes to better the listening experience. First, the standard Watch page (the one with the actual video on it) now has a "More from..." button, with the ellipses replaced with the relevant artist for each video. It allows users to find more music from that specific artist. Makes sense. To see the button you may need to expand the viewer in portrait mode.
Web-accessible cameras don't need much in terms of bells and whistles, but that doesn't mean you can't have them all the same. That seems to be the development direction behind TinyCam, one of the most popular IP camera viewers on the Play Store. The latest update adds some API strings that make it more compatible with the experimental multi-window mode everyone's raving about in Android N. That should be extremely handy for watching your front door and browsing Android Police at the same time.
The Onewheel typifies a brand new generation of personal transportation devices. They're the kind that make you go "huh, that's kind of interesting," then you look at a limited specification sheet and a sky-high price tag and decide to stick to your rusty bicycle. (It costs $1500 for the base model, if you're wondering.) But apparently there's something more than excess and capacitors built into that thing, because now it has an official Android app for management.
Don't let the information-rich but ultimately sterile presentation fool you. Google's latest 360-degree video, which offers a virtual tour of the company's The Dalles, Oregon data center facility, is porn. Okay, so it's porn for people with incredibly specific tastes. People whose blood starts to boil at the sight of thousands of rack-mounted severs. People who are aroused by a bajillion miles of meticulously organized fiber optic cable. People who get excited at the sight of intense biometric security. But porn nonetheless.
For all its flaws, mobile gaming is kind of a big deal. Even world-class gaming hardware and software companies like Sony would be ill-advised to ignore it. And they aren't: today Sony announced that it's forming a new first-party development company called ForwardWorks, which will work exclusively on game development for mobile. Presumably that means Android games (since Sony manufactures Android hardware and leverages it with its PlayStation brand) and iOS games (since it would be foolish to ignore that potential revenue).
The LG Watch Urbane 2 was exciting when it was announced, since it was the first Android Wear device capable of working as a stand-alone mobile gadget with a built-in LTE connection. Then it wasn't, because LG delayed the launch after an unspecified (but apparently quite serious) hardware defect. Now the launch is back on: AT&T announced its pre-order plans earlier this week, and now it's Verizon's turn. The carrier is taking pre-orders now, with watches shipping (and presumably ready at retail) on April 1st. No foolin'.
Baseball games tend to veer on the side of "simulator" sports titles - they've been getting progressively more complex, and more technically taxing, since the 16-bit days when players stopped looking like a collection of squares. The latest high-profile game to hit NVIDIA's SHIELD Android TV device bucks that trend with a setup tuned for quick play that emphasizes fun over everything else. Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings combines cartoony visuals and an unlicensed feel with surprisingly deep physics and a ton of options. It's available on the Play Store now for the high price of $20, and unfortunately, it's only compatible with the SHIELD TV.
Here's a free tip, would-be criminals: don't tag yourself in photos of an active crime and then post said photos to social media. It's a 21st century problem for those whose leisure activities are just a little bit more than the law will allow, but Motorola has used that interesting situation as a springboard for its latest series of TV ads. The first one, "Photo Opp," is probably the very first time an Old West outlaw has ever been shown with a smartwatch.
Developers, we know you work hard on your apps. So does Google. But they also know that sometimes it's hard to make apps easy to use when you're elbow deep in their design. To that end, the new Accessibility Scanner app allows you to check other apps for potential problems or possible improvements in terms of accessibility. It's a free download in the Play Store, but at the moment it looks like it's limited to Android 6.0 devices.
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- According to this page, the update itself is scheduled to begin tomorrow, March 24th.
A bunch of LG phones have been upgraded to Android 6.0 over the last few weeks, and today it's the Verizon V10's version. According to Verizon's support page, at least: the company says it's now sending the over-the-air update to customers, though of course it could be a few days or even a week or two before it reaches every device. Software version VS99022A adds Marshmallow and... well, not much else. It's just Android 6.0 with LG's software skin on top.