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Most over-the-air updates include a few bug fixes, maybe a new bloatware app or two, and are thus not really worth getting excited over. Not so for the latest addition to T-Mobile's customized version of the Sony Xperia Z3. In addition to the long-awaited upgrade to Android 5.0, today's update flips a software switch that enables access to band 12, the 700MHz spectrum that T-Mobile began using for LTE earlier this year. If the prospect of wider, faster LTE for your phone doesn't make you excited for an update, I don't know what will.
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- It looks like Huawei is offering a discount on new phones and of Net10 credit for buying new phones from the US store. Nice.
No doubt about it, the mid-range market is heating up, even in places where unlocked and contract-free phones have typically undersold. This morning Chinese smartphone maker Huawei announced the Ascend P8 Lite, a new offering for the US that has its sights set on competitors like the Moto G. The $250 phone is available right now from Huawei's online store in black or white, and it doesn't look like the company is interested in selling through conventional carriers.
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.
Samsung's latest and most advanced tablet series is the Galaxy Tab S. That's kind of amazing when you consider the company's previous rate of releasing new tablets, and that the Tab S 8.4 and Tab S 10.5 were released almost a year ago. But I suppose it's nice if you happen to have one, so Samsung is more motivated to release faster updates. Today the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 on US Cellular gets its Android 5.0 update.
The OnePlus One is still a great deal in terms of hardware, even more than a year after its release. If you'd like an even better deal, keep an eye on the OnePlus online store this week. According to this page, the One will be $50 off during "flash" sales, at least once per day between today, June 1st and Sunday, June 7th. Times for the start of the sale will vary, and presumably a set number of discounted phones will be sold each day.
We spotted the groundwork for a new "app invite" system when Cody Toombs checked out some of the hidden code in Google Play Services back in April. In a detailed post-Google I/O story on some of the new features in version 7.5, Google Developer Advocate Ian Lake made the feature official. App Invites, basically a method by which developers can directly advertise apps and give users rewards for installing them, are coming soon (if they aren't available to developers already).
Even with a major infusion of horsepower with devices like the NVIDIA SHIELD and Razer Forge TV, the biggest thing holding back the Android TV platform is a scarcity of apps compared to more mature alternatives like Roku. It looks like Google is quickly trying to close the gap: in addition to the announcement of HBO Now (currently exclusive to Apple hardware) at Google I/O, a handful of high-profile and formerly unavailable apps are also making their way to Android TV in the near future.
Have you checked out YouTube's swanky new interface yet? If you have, perhaps you went through the somewhat cumbersome method of enabling it by manually editing cookies with this Chrome extension. That's a bit much for a visual tweak that's hidden in fullscreen anyway, but after people around the web showed an impressive amount of interest in the revised player, it looks like Google went and put in a user-accessible switch instead.
Automatic is an interesting hardware-software combo that makes information from your vehicle accessible on your phone via an SDK and a series of apps. It's an interesting idea (even if the nondescript name makes it nearly impossible to Google for), and thanks to a standard OBD-Bluetooth setup and a relatively decentralized structure, it doesn't require any subscription fees. You do have to buy the adaptor, of course, and it's relatively pricey at $99.95. But right now you can grab a 20% discount.
Amazon's voice-controlled, web-connected life manager thing, the Echo, is about as close as you can get to a conceptual product while still asking people to pay for it. But to its credit, Amazon seems to be constantly improving Echo by expanding its functionality. The latest update makes Echo compatible with Google Calendar (one of the web services offered by Google that Amazon doesn't directly compete with) thanks to a selection of voice commands.
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 several PC and console pilgrims including Hotline Miami, War Thunder, and Always Sometimes Monsters, a new Portal-inspired Zen Pinball table, a mashup of tactic, RPG, and city-building, and standard platformers and puzzlers. Without further ado:
If you're not getting enough intrigue and treachery from HBO's Game of Thrones series on Sunday nights, TellTale is still pumping out new episodes in its licensed adventure game. Episode 4, Sons of Winter, is now available as a $5 in-app purchase for those who have played through the first three portions of the game. There are six episodes in total, so the first "season" of the adventure game should be wrapping up in two or three more months.
If you were distracted by tons of Google I/O coverage or our NVIDIA SHIELD review yesterday, there's a slim chance that you missed the even bigger news: Kung Fury is now on YouTube. Stop reading this and go watch it now. Then come back here and read about the official mobile game for the indie movie, Kung Fury: Street Rage.
At the moment Android does a pretty decent job of managing its memory... but not a very good one of telling you exactly how it does that. The "Running" portion of the Apps menu in Lollipop shows what's being used by your system and your apps, then a list of apps' RAM usage (with numerical readouts only), and that's it. Starting with the Android M Developer Preview, this screen is much more informative, breaking down both the current and recent RAM usage on a per-app basis.
Hey Android TV fans: have you checked out our review of the NVIDIA SHIELD? You should. We worked really hard on it, and it's kind of being blown away by all this Google I/O news. Two things that the SHIELD Android TV can do that the Nexus Player can't are accessing external storage via USB and broadcasting audio over Bluetooth (with the extra remote). But if you flash the Android M developer preview to your Nexus Player, you can access both of those things! Neat!
So you've read our exhaustive review of the NVIDIA SHIELD and decided that it's the Android TV device for you. Whelp, it's available for purchase right now in the US, from both NVIDIA's own store and Amazon.com. The standard 16GB SHIELD is $199.99, but it looks like the SHIELD Pro ($299.99) with its 500GB internal hard drive won't be available until June. According to the NVIDIA Store it's coming on the 3rd, while Amazon says it won't be in stock till the 12th.
The Play Store has a crap-ton of content, much of which you might not want your kids to access. Google is aware of this, and at I/O 2015 the company has announced a new set of tools specifically designed to help parents find age-appropriate content, plus a few extras to help kids engage with the content itself. It's all being introduced to the Play Store under the "Family Star" label and logo.
Mobile electronics use power. And as the software becomes more complex, they use more and more of it. At Google I/O 2015, the company has announced an improvement on the ultra low-power mode found in Lollipop. They're calling it "Doze," for obvious reasons, and it will debut in the M release of Android scheduled to go into a developer preview soon. It should debut in public builds later this year.
[I/O 2015] Chrome Custom Tabs Will Add Easy And Rich Web Content To Any App With Chrome Capabilities
At the Google I/O 2015 keynote address, Google is moving fluidly between broad Android improvements for the upcoming M preview build and more specific improvements for the company's apps and APIs. One of the first reveals was for a new Chrome feature, Chrome Custom Tabs. This is basically a more robust alternative to embedding a web view in an app, adding a minimal and customized window of Google Chrome on top of the active app.