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While Android TV doesn't enjoy the wide support that Chromecast gets, and its current app catalog can't hold a candle to competitors that have been in the market for much longer like Roku, it's slowly and surely getting better. The latest major network to offer an official Android TV app is PBS, the United States' government-funded Public Broadcasting Service. The free app is available to download on Android TV units now.
You dang kids. Going to "country" concerts in your Honda Civics, smoking your pot behind the port-a-potties. Back in my day* we had real country music, Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins. Not this twangy-pop garbage that pretends that all you have to do to be country is throw on jeans and a cowboy hat, while you wait for NBC to cast you as a celebrity judge on The Voice. Daggum rotten little sdfggggggggggggg...
Amazon has been slowly but steadily improving its official Music app for years. The latest update, which is christened version 5.0, adds quite a few features. Most notable among them is the ability to download music from your personal library and/or Amazon Prime Music directly to your phone or tablet's MicroSD card, assuming you have one. That should be especially useful for users with budget phones, which tend to rely on expandable storage and ignore the fact that many apps don't access it in the first place.
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 unique radial puzzle game, a zombie-killing side-scroller, an interesting touch-based dungeon crawler, an old-school hack-and-slash platformer, and a Walking Dead tactical game. Without further ado:
Hi. I'm Michael. I look at a lot of Google Play Store listings, and Artem and I usually pick out more than a hundred apps and games every month to be featured in our weekly roundups here at Android Police. After doing this week in and week out for a couple of years, there are some observations I'd like to share with developers on how to make your game stand out of the crowd. With us, as with consumers in general, you might only get a few seconds to grab the attention of potential players before they move on - it's important to make the most of them.
Before we start, let's get one thing out of the way: there's no practical application for the apps demonstrated below, at least not in the way they're being used. You can't seriously play a game meant for a 20-button controller on a screen smaller than two inches across, even if your fingers are tiny enough to hit the virtual buttons. This is the work of an enthusiast gamer and Android fan. It doesn't have to make sense.
When you think of the intersection between America Online and email, you probably think of the phrase "you've got mail," septuagenarians forwarding politically-charged but factually lacking messages, and/or Meg Ryan. But AOL Mail is still going strong, and it looks like the company is actually trying to branch out into mobile software. Take Alto Mail, for example: it's a new stand-alone mail client just published in the Play Store alongside more antiquated options like AIM and AOL On.
At the moment pixelated faux-retro graphics are all the rage, partly because they're trendy, partly because they don't require lots of hardware resources to implement, and (let's be honest) partly because they're easier for developers to create than high-resolution 2D sprites. So occasionally it's nice to see a game like In Between, which bucks the trend with both characters and backgrounds that are completely unique and drawn by hand. Check out the trailer below to see what I mean:
Amazon really likes to package a bunch of regularly paid apps and give them away for free, seemingly at every opportunity. The latest batch is ostensibly in honor of Halloween, though a lot of the paid apps being offered don't really have any connection with the holiday. We don't mind - anyone who's been keeping up with these promotions has built up quite a little library of freebies by now. You can see the full collection here.
Nope, Apple Music still isn't available on Android (though it's being actively tested). Instead, the second Android app that Cupertino has officially published is in support of the hardware half of its Beats acquisition. It's a companion and pairing app for the Beats Pill+, the latest revision of Beats' portable Bluetooth speaker. That's it. That's all. There isn't any more.
Are you looking for something creepy to set the mood while you wait for the sun to go down on Halloween? Alternately, are you looking for something to do while you wait for your hangover to go away on Sunday morning? Sanitarium, a game originally released for the PC way back in 1998 and now revived by the mobile port experts at DotEmu, should fit the bill. It's been published to the Play Store with impeccable timing, and you can pick it up now for $3.99 with no ads or in-app purchases.
You can't swing a severed limb around on the Play Store without hitting half a dozen zombie games, and first person shooters (even high-end variants like Unkilled) aren't exactly thin on the ground. But you might want to give Dead Effect 2, the sequel to a 2013 science fiction-horror shooter, a second look anyway. While the premise isn't exactly original, falling somewhere between Alien and Dead Space, the sheer variety and polish makes it worth consideration from Android gamers.
I can't decide if John Legere is trying to be a consumer's champion, or if he just really likes pissing off less bombastic executives. In between skywriting over Verizon's New Jersey head office and planning a tenth "Uncarrier" event, the outspoken CEO has just starred in yet another YouTube video designed to win potential customers and antagonize the competition. This one's titled "The Scarriers," and it's a Halloween-themed dig at some of the more outlandish stories about Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon.
Here's a gaming announcement that came out of nowhere: Titanfall, one of the biggest new first person shooters to appear on gaming PCs and consoles last year, will get a mobile release. The Guardian reports that Titanfall developer Respawn Entertainment (made up mostly of ex-Call of Duty developers) and Nexon (a developer that focuses on full-sized PC games that use the freemium model) will both invest in newbie mobile developer Particle City, with the aim to create "several mobile games based on Titanfall."
The PRIV is BlackBerry's first true Android device. It's something that we, and a considerable portion of die-hard BlackBerry customers, have been looking forward to for a long time. But there are a couple of things that might make potential buyers trepidatious: one, a relatively high price tag of $699, and two, well, it's BlackBerry's first entry on a new software platform. So what are the highlights, aside from the obvious slide-out QWERTY keyboard? BlackBerry would like to show you. The video below is a highlight reel of what makes the PRIV different from other Android flagship phones.
Newegg is one of the primary go-to online retailers for American tech enthusiasts, but no one ever accused the website of being pretty. The same can be said for the official Android app, but it's looking a little better these days. The latest app update, version 4.0, completely revamps the user interface into something much cleaner and more readable. Compare the older screenshots to the newest ones on the Play Store:
Gamers have been alternately salivating and sweating at the prospect of Nintendo games coming to Android and iOS. News has been scarce since the initial announcement of a partnership between Nintendo and mobile publisher DeNA earlier this year, but Nintendo's president Tatsumi Kimishima announced details of the first game yesterday at a press briefing in Japan. Wired reports that the first title will be Miitomo, an extension of the Mii gaming-social platform Nintendo has been building and expanding since the launch of the Wii console in 2006.
Just last week Cody Toombs spotted the building blocks for a drawing function in Google's Keep notes app, and now it's live. The latest version of the APK, 3.2.435, makes it active and visible. You can wait for Google to get around to delivering it via the Play Store, or you can skip the line and download it from APK Mirror below.
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.
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- Oh, 600613, you 1337 h4x0r. Take a look at the max limits in some countries:
Most apps on the Play Store are free, and those that are paid usually cost somewhere between one and five dollars. The top price for applications and in-app purchases in the US version of the Play Store before today was $200 (which usually wasn't actually seen except for IAPs for freemium games). Last night, the Play Store developer support page for paid apps was updated, and in nearly every territory where paid apps are supported, the top limit was increased by two to three times. Developers can now set apps or in-app purchases to as much as $400.