Ron Amadeo - 4/19 - 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.

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:

To read Google Play News, you must have a supported Android phone or tablet

Please sign in to get this News edition.

Mar

Hands-On With The Galaxy S4 - A Minor Refresh Of The Galaxy S III

Posted by Ron Amadeo in Galaxy S4, Samsung

I'm at Radio City Music Hall checking out the Samsung Galaxy S4. Tell me, have you seen the Galaxy S3? Then you've pretty much seen the GS4. There have been a few cosmetic tweaks, and a spec bump, but it's mostly a "Galaxy S 3S."

The screen is probably the biggest upgrade. It's been fitted with a 5-inch, 1080p AMOLED display, and it looks gorgeous. The viewing angles are perfect. As usual with AMOLED, the colors are hyper-saturated, but we're all used to that by now. Sadly this is still Pentile, but the pixels are so tiny I couldn't tell.

Feb

Silently Installing Itself On A Device Near You: The Green 'Google Settings' Icon - It's Just Google Play Services 3.0

Posted by Ron Amadeo in News

Do not freak out. Yes, a big green icon has magically popped up in your app drawer; no, it isn't bad; and yes, it is pretty much useless.

If you caught the announcement of Google Play Services 3.0, aka "Google+ Sign-In," you're already halfway up to speed on this. Google Play Services is an APK that many of Google's apps rely on to hook into Google+ and, just like the Play Store, Google has the ability to silently update it. Recently, they started rolling out an update for it, and along with a bunch of new app integration stuff, it came packing this superfluous "Google Settings" app.

Feb

[APK Teardown] Google Maps 6.14.3 - Next Stop: Lane Guidance

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, News

Ok, here's a short and sweet edition of APK Teardown coming your way. Prepare yourself.

What's the one remaining thing a standalone GPS unit can do that Google Maps can't? (Besides work offline) Lane guidance.

Right now, Google Maps would best be described as "Turn guidance." It will tell you when to make a right turn, but that's about it. Lane guidance is a step further: Your next exit is coming up on the right, and a TomTom (pictured) will better prepare you to make the exit by directing you to the right hand lane in advance. This saves you the surprise "turn right" command which suddenly means you need to cut across 40 lanes of traffic.

Feb

Hands-On With The HTC One - Great Build Quality, Great Screen, Odd Buttons [Video]

Posted by Ron Amadeo in HTC, News, One

Greetings from New York! I’m here at HTC’s press event checking out the HTC One. Yes, that’s just the HTC One, the phone previously known as the M7 is all grown up and sporting the plainest version of HTC's "One" branding yet (which we are totally in favor of - Hopefully the carriers leave it alone).

But who cares about the name, what is the actual device like? We'll I've had a limited amount of time with it, but so far I like it.

Design

HTC is touting an all-aluminum, no-gap construction, and in person it's very nice. You can't get an exact feel for how it is to hold because they've got them anchored down to the tables, but it seems like it's very well constructed.

Feb

[Live Blog] HTC's 'One' Press Event In New York

Posted by Ron Amadeo in HTC, News, One

Live from New York! It's AP at HTC's mysterious press conference. Rumor has is they may announce a new phone. Check out the live feed below for up to the second news and pictures!

Feb

Getting To Know Android 4.2.2 - Many Extremely Tiny Changes, And An Android@Home Sighting!

Posted by Ron Amadeo in Features, Getting To Know Android, Jelly Bean 4.2, News

Android 4.2.2 is out, which means it's time for another edition of Getting To Know Android, the series where I impress/frighten everyone with my borderline-mental-disorder powers of observation. Fair warning: These are going to be very minor changes. If Google moved a pixel, you're going to hear about it.

We already covered the big stuff like the ADB whitelist, the new download notification, Quick Settings toggles, and sounds, so we'll skip those for this article.

As usual for GTKA, the old version, 4.2.1, is on the left, and the new version, 4.2.2, is on the right. This edition promises to be pretty screenshot-heavy, so I hope your internet connection is feeling up to it.

Feb

[APK Teardown] Google+ 3.5.3 - An "Apps" Main Menu Icon? A "Manage Apps" Settings Section? What Is Going On Here?

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, Features, News

Last Updated: February 26th, 2013

In the recent weeks, Google+ has had 2 pretty low-profile updates. The first one added a notification tray, and the most recent one was supposedly just a bug fix release, but they've both been adding new things, presumably for a coming update. Yes, it's teardown time.

These teardown sessions seems to get more and more mysterious and strange as time goes on, and frankly I'm really not sure what's going on with these updates. I'm just going to lay out the facts first, and I'll throw some theories at you at the end. So put on your investigation hats - this should be fun.

Feb

[APK Teardown] [Update: Art Project Is A Google Site!] Google Search 2.3 - New Features For Flights, And What The Heck Is 'Art Project'?

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, Features

The Google Search app just got updated, so that means it's teardown time! I still rip into every interesting Google update, but I only write an article when I find something interesting. Things have been slim lately, I know, but today there's good news! I found stuff.

Google Search is the hardest app teardown to do. You can never really be sure if what you've found is in the app or not, because everything is so predictive and context heavy. So I'll just aim for "new stuff that's not in the change log." If you find any of this in the actual app, let me know.