Ron Amadeo - 3/19 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Ron Amadeo

Ron loves everything related to technology, design, and Google. He always wants to talk about "the big picture" and what's next for Android, and he's not afraid to get knee-deep in an APK for some details. Expect a good eye for detail, lots of research, and some lamenting about how something isn't designed well enough.

Apr

Front Page Of Play Store 4.0 Redesign Revealed By YouTuber

Posted by Ron Amadeo in News

The final piece of the Play Store 4.0 puzzle was posted on Google+ today. A YouTube employee by the name of Eileen Rivera posted a screen shot of previously-unseen Play Store front page:

The design is a perfect match for the leaked build we got to play with a few weeks ago, and, if you ignore the action bar, a big improvement.

Of particular interest is the new Up button, which features the Play Store logo and a bone in a dog bowl. This is a reference to "Dogfooding" - a term Google uses to denote internal beta testing.

Apr

[APK Teardown] Google Search 2.4 - Time And Location-Based Reminders! Plus Website Update Tracking, Mysterious Help Cards, And More

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, News

Google Search teardowns are always a huge mess, because there's really no way of knowing what is or isn't implemented. I'm up against a scary combination of Now's entirely context-based UI and Voice Actions, which has absolutely no UI. Rather than try and guess at what does or doesn't work, I'll just post everything that Google neglected to add in the change log. If you manage to see something working, send in a screenshot and I'll add it.

If you follow me on Google+, you'll know that APK Teardown has been in a bit of a dry spell lately, but wow, Google has made up for it today - there is a treasure trove of hidden things in this update.

Apr

[APK Teardown Exclusive] The HTC Myst Facebook Phone - The Facebook App Is Now A Launcher, Looks Like They're Planning A Play Store Release, Too

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, Exclusives, HTC, News

We've managed to score a system dump of the Facebook phone! There's nothing in it that's too earthshattering, and you could probably guess most of the features, but, since we've got it, we might as well take a look at it.

[This is not an April Fool's joke. I promise.]

Now, this being Facebook, nothing really works unless you sign in. The problem is, all of this is pre-release, so it's set up to only work for Facebook employee accounts. Everything is basically packing unintentional always-on DRM, so screenshots are going to be a little sparse. This is all it will do right now:

Build.Prop Specs

The build.prop file will give us a basic idea of the phone this ROM is meant for, so let's take a look.

Mar

Hands-On With The Google Play Store 4.0 Leak - A Google Now-Inspired Design With A Horrible Looking Action Bar

Posted by Ron Amadeo in Applications, Google, News

The Google Play redesign is very real.

We've managed to secure a copy and we're going to extract every possible ounce of info out of it.

Sadly, we aren't allowed to distribute it - we have to honor the request of the person who scored us a copy. Sorry! We will tell you everything we can about it, though.

The main screen is, well, broken. That makes navigating the app a little difficult. However with liberal use of the search button and a few tricks it's possible to find your way around. (And yes, the search still blows.)

Browsing For Apps

Ugh.

Mar

Hands-On With Google Keep For Android: Notes, Checklists, Voice Notes, Pictures, Widgets, And Voice Actions Integration

Posted by Ron Amadeo in App Reviews, Applications, News

The Google Keep Android app is out, and it is way more functional than the sparse web site. Allow me to show you around.

There are two different views to Keep, a multi-column view and a single-column view. Multi-column is "pretty typography mode" and single column is all business. You can switch views with the menu button.

There's about a million different ways to take notes: plain text, a checklist, a voice note (which transcribes and saves the audio), or you can take a picture with the camera. Check list items have little draggable handles on them.

Just like Gmail, archiving a note is as easy swiping it away, and, just like Gmail, there's a handy "undo" popup.

Mar

Google Keep, Google's Note-Taking App, Is Live! Again [Update: Android App Too]

Posted by Ron Amadeo in Applications, News

Google Keep has once again popped back into existence. It had previously gone live for about a half hour on St. Patrick's Day before Google took it down. We managed to snag a full set of screenshots before it went down.

Update: Hands-On With Google Keep For Android: Notes, Checklists, Voice Notes, Pictures, Widgets, And Voice Actions Integration

So if you'd like to check out Google's new note-taking app, I suggest you hurry and head on over to https://drive.google.com/keep/. Until we see some kind of official launch post from a Google blog, ~~I don't expect it to be there for long~~.

Mar

[APK Teardown] Gmail 4.3 - Seven Unused Notification Actions, 'Whoosh Zoom,' And Some Kind Of Half-Working Google+ Integration

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, News

Gmail 4.3 recently hit the streets, bringing with it a long-awaited (by me, at least) ability to archive email directly from the notification panel. It's awesome. But what else did Google sneak into our phones and tablets with this update? Let's find out.

Fair warning: this is going to be one of those teardown sessions that raises more questions than answers, so bring your speculation hat.

Experimental Preferences

Gmail has always had this wacky file in it called "experimental_preferences.xml." I've mostly ignored it, because it has only ever had two relatively-boring things in it: "full text search," which works already; and "Enable drag and drop contact chip," which would let you type a name into the "To:" field and move it to something like "CC:" by dragging it.

Mar

Google Keep Is Live! Google Launches A Note-Taking Service [Update: And It's Gone]

Posted by Ron Amadeo in News

Well, that was fast. Earlier today we told you about Google Keep, a note-taking app Google was working on. Now, it seems the desktop version of the site is up and running!

And it's gone. Google Keep is now 404ing. Probably another victim of a spring cleaning. These Google products just don't last as long as they used to!

Well, enjoy the screenshots!

Google Keep works a lot like Google Notebook used to: There's a list of notes, and you can color-code them, save pictures, and make checklists. You can archive notes, which will send them to a section at the bottom of your list.

Mar

'Google Keep' Spotted In Drive Source Code - Is Google Taking Another Shot At A Note-Taking Service?

Posted by Ron Amadeo in News

Earlier this week, Google killed a beloved service of theirs, but now it looks like they might be bringing another one back from the dead in the form of a new note-taking service called "Google Keep." Remember Google Notebook? It's back!

We've got pictures! Google Keep's website went live for a short while and we took a bunch of screenshots. Check them out.

1E100 dug through the Google Drive website's source code and discovered the unreleased app. For starters there's this icon, which was located at www.google.com/images/icons/product/keep-512.png:

It looks like it's a good match with the other Google Drive app icons.

Mar

Introducing 'Google Play News' - A Newspaper Section Is On Its Way To The Play Store

Posted by Ron Amadeo in News

This should be fun! Here's a really early peak at Google's latest content push: it's called "Google Play News," and these bits of News come in "Issues" and "Subscriptions," so we're guessing Google's getting into the newspaper business. "Play News" will be a new, "colored" Play Store section to go along with Apps, Music, Books, Magazines, Movies, and Devices.

Our smoking gun in this case was this piece of JavaScript, (mirror) from the web version of the Play Store. It's a little hard to read, but you should be able to control+f your way to interesting bits of text like this: