Ryan Whitwam - 22/29 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Ryan is a freelance tech writer, skeptic, lover of all things electronic, and Android fan. In his spare time he reads golden-age sci-fi and sleeps, but rarely at the same time. His wife tolerates him as few would.

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Sep

[New App] DayFrame From Developer Of HD Widgets Cloud.TV Is A Cool Voice-Enabled Slideshow Dock App

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Applications, News

The newest app from Cloud.TV is out in preview form, and it's already looking quite promising. You might know Cloud.TV from the wildly popular HD Widgets app. This time the dev is tackling dock apps with DayFrame. We've seen various photo frame and dock apps, but the way DayFrame integrates Google voice input is something new.

The app can display photo streams from Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. You will have to add your social accounts if you want personal pics to show up, but a few popular public streams are included at startup so you can get a feel for the app.

Sep

[New App] Foneclay Home Screen Replacements Are Like A Crazy Fever Dream On Your Phone

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Applications, News

Most of the home screen replacements out there are just variations on a theme. There are scrollable panels, icons, and an app drawer. Foneclay is something entirely different. With this app, you can turn your phone into functional, though bizarre art.

The app itself is essentially just a front end for downloading and installing the artistic home screen apps. Tap on one that looks interesting, and you can preview the UI before you download. Each home screen is installed like any other non-Play Store app from system dialogs. Some of the options are more impressive than others, with animations and really cool art.

Aug

Evernote App Updated To Version 4.2, Brings Jelly Bean Notification Enhancements

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Apps/Games, News

If you've ever needed to jot down a quick note on the go, I hope you used Evernote to do it. The Evernote service, and the accompanying app, make it easy to keep all your notes in the cloud. This app has long had great features like audio notes, notebook categorization, and tagging. Now Evernote is getting a little more awesome for anyone running Jelly Bean.

Android 4.1 supports expanded notifications so you can trigger actions right from the drop down. In the case of Evernote, you can share or edit a note by tapping the corresponding buttons.

Aug

Horn For Android Is Finally Out, And It's An Awesome Action-Adventure Game With Great Looks And Brains To Match [Review]

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Games, News, Reviews

When Horn arrived on that other mobile platform a couple weeks ago, it was met with plenty of praise. Now Horn is available on Android, and it still stands out among all categories of games. Horn is built from the ground up with an awareness that it will be played on a touchscreen device, and it shows. From the impressive graphics to the unique story, Horn has a lot to show off. Let's dig in and see if it's a must-have.

The Story

You play as Horn, the blacksmith's apprentice who awakens one day to find everyone in the village has been transformed into mechanical monsters by a curse.

Aug

Motorola RAZR M 4G LTE Pics And Specs Leaked Ahead Of Announcement

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Motorola, RAZR M, Verizon Wireless

Aside from some FCC filings, the Motorola XT907 has been a unknown quantity as we get closer to Moto's September 5th Verizon event. Now the details are in the open, and it's looking like the device will be called the RAZR M 4G LTE (yeah, that's a mouthful). This phone will be a small but welcome bump up from the current generation RAZR devices, but it's no RAZR HD.

On the hardware side, the new RAZR phone will be running on a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8960. That is a chip we see in a lot of devices these days, but it works very well with Qualcomm LTE radios.

Aug

Samsung Owes Apple $1.05 Billion In Damages Following U.S. Trial, Says Jury [Update: Now $1.04 Billion]

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Captivate, Epic 4G, Galaxy Ace, Galaxy S, Galaxy Tab, News, Nexus S 4G (Crespo4g), Samsung, Vibrant

The verdict in the Apple-Samsung legal battle came in much sooner than expected and the news hasn't been good for Samsung. To pull out one of the most relevant details amid all the patents and trade dress claims, the jury has ordered Samsung to pay Apple $1.05 billion in damages. Yikes.

Update: The jury was asked to reconsider Question 4 of the verdict form. After deliberating, the jury's answer was changed to "no" for the Intercept and one other device, and the damages amount officially changed to $1,049,343,540.

Apple was originally seeking an award of $2.45 billion from Samsung, but few thought it would get even remotely that much.

Aug

Adobe Connect Mobile Gets Big Update To Version 2.0, Makes Meetings More Bearable

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Applications, News

Adobe might have had to bow out of the video playback game on Android when Flash failed to catch on, but the company has some other products you might be interested in. Adobe Connect is a service that manages virtual meetings on computers and mobile devices. The app has been lagging behind the competition in the features department for a while now, but the new 2.0 update adds plenty of business-centric goodies.

Adobe Connect allows you to join and initiate meetings wherein you can share PowerPoints, text documents, PDFs, or videos. On mobile devices, you can also share the video stream from the front or rear cameras to the other virtual meeting attendees.

Aug

[Update: Confirmed] T-Mobile's New Unlimited Data Plan Will Actually Be Unlimited

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in News, T-Mobile

Only in the confusing realm of smartphone data plans can 'unlimited' not really mean unlimited. We started to see the big carriers cut back on all-you-can-eat data a few years ago, and T-Mobile was no different. The nation's smallest national carrier relied on vague language and semantics to justify its continued use of the word 'unlimited.' Now it looks like T-Mobile is going to finally offer real unlimited data again.

The new unlimited 4G data plan will be available starting on September 5, and it does away with all the caps and throttling that angered power users. T-Mobile will be charging a downright reasonable rate of $30 per-month for those on the classic plans, and just $20 for anyone on a value plan.

Aug

Sony Xperia S Added To Android Open Source Project As First Experimental Device

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in News, Sony, Xperia S (Nozomi)

The head of Google's Android Open Source Project (AOSP), Jean-Baptiste Queru, made an interesting proposal recently. He added a new device to the AOSP repository, but this is no Nexus variant. Queru created an empty git project for the Sony Xperia S, but he needs the community to get behind the initiative. This will be the first device not designed under Google's supervision to be supported under AOSP, and that could be a big deal.

AOSP has been getting more robust as time drags on. Back in the pre-Froyo days there was only a little usable code posted for hardware targets, but more recent Android releases have included exact source files.

Aug

Martian Seeks Kickstarter Funding For Voice Command Smartwatch

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in News

Ever since the Pebble Smartwatch got millions in funding from Kickstarter, other companies have been coming out of the woodwork in hopes of getting a smartwatch on your wrist. The Martian smartwatch is a slightly different take on the concept, though. These devices would be based mostly on voice commands over Bluetooth.

The video is clearly using a lot of Siri commands, which Android devices won't support. Since this is essentially a fancy Bluetooth device, all the voice commands that work through a regular Bluetooth headset on your phone will be available with Martian. If you've got S Voice or Google Now you should have a fair number of functions, but it's not going to be consistent across devices.