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It's getting to be the time of year that retailers pull out all the stops and try to make some cash. Amazon in particular needs to make up some ground after that Fire Phone fiasco. Well, you can reap the rewards now with some solid deals on phones from AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. These are on-contract sales, but you can't get too upset about a $1 phone.
The Nexus 6 is a confounding beast. This big phone doesn't have tap to wake functionality, but it does have ambient screen mode. This way of displaying notifications as they come in might be the reason there's no LED notification functionality built in. There is, however, a physical LED.
It's going to take time for all the apps we know and love to transition to material design, but Koush is off and running with a pair of updates today. His Helium and AllCast apps have been tweaked with more material elements and a few bug fixes.
If you have just gotten a Nexus 6 or are waiting for it to appear on your door step, you might want some new apps and games to take it for a spin. Well, you're in luck. There are some great sales on right now, so read on to stock up.
Google added screen casting support to a select few devices earlier this year, but the wide rollout has been very, very slow. Today there are two new devices listed on Google's screen cast support page—The NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet and the LG G Pad 8.3 GPE.
Huawei took a lot of heat when it told North American customers a few weeks ago that the Ascend Mate2 would not be getting the promised KitKat update. The original post was removed after the comments got ugly, and now Huawei is backtracking. After "reassessing" the decision to cancel KitKat on the Mate2, Huawei will go all the way to Lollipop, but not until some time in the first half of 2015.
Latest Chrome Beta Fixes The Floating Window Bug On Certain ROMs [APK Download]
The latest Chrome Beta fixes the floating window bug.
It's not Google's job to account for all the quirks of custom ROMs, but there's been one pervasive bug that has driven some users up a wall in recent weeks. Chrome would render in a bizarre little floating window on ROMs like Paranoid Android. The latest Chrome Beta release fixes that, and you can grab it below.
The newest beta of Chainfire's SuperSU comes with a major improvement—as of v2.27, you no longer need a modified kernel to gain root on Lollipop devices. This is a beta, and as Chainfire says, there's a chance you could break something and get in a bootloop. Still, this is a great development.
Sony was already an experienced veteran of the smartwatch market when Android Wear was announced. Of course, I don't mean that they were experienced selling them—oh, goodness no. Sony sure did make smartwatches, though. When asked if there would be an Android Wear device in Sony's portfolio, the company said it would continue to do its own thing. Well, that didn't last long. The SmartWatch 3 is essentially a beefed up version of Sony's past smartwatches running Android Wear, and that could make it a potent competitor in the burgeoning wearable wars.
Odds are good that when you use a smartphone or tablet, you're touching Gorilla Glass. Since its debut in the original iPhone, Gorilla Glass has gone on to become the de facto standard for hardened glass on screens. Today the company is announcing Gorilla Glass 4, which it says is twice as durable as the competition.
Big Red has just announced a pair of (kind of) budget-friendly tablets with LTE just in time for the holidays. So why not give someone the gift of a two-year mobile data contract? Well, maybe you should ask first. At any rate, you can get the LG G Pad 7.0 and 10.1 for $49.99 and $199.99 with a new contract, but these are temporary promo prices.
The next installment in what may be the best mobile tower defense series has arrived on Android. Kingdom Rush Origins brings back all the game mechanics you know and love, but adds a few tweaks and a ton of new stuff. You would do well to make some time to play—maybe go home "sick."
It's quite possible the only thing you know about The Banner Saga is that King.com of Candy Crush Saga fame threatened to sue over the name of the game. Why? Because "Saga." Dumb, but there's much more to The Banner Saga than a naming dispute. This is a lovingly crafted RPG inspired by Norse mythology with stunning artwork and deep gameplay.
Are you ready for some football?! Oh, it's the other one? Like with kicking and feet and an actual ball? Well, I'm sure most of the world outside America is totally stoked. Football Manager Handheld is one of the premiere soccer/football simulation games, and the 2015 installment is now on Android. It's going to cost you, though.
Do you fret about vast government conspiracies, lizard people running the world, and the all-seeing eye of the NSA? Well, you might have a little problem with paranoia there, but you don't have to be paranoid to see the appeal of Telegram. This is a secure messaging app that has full end-to-end encryption, and with version 2.0, a new material design theme.
We've seen the Keylink pop up a few times at retail and in various rumors. Now it's finally official at $24.99. This Bluetooth dongle goes on your keychain and tethers to your phone so the Moto Connect app can keep tabs on your keys and vice versa.
As is the tradition with tablets, Google launched the Nexus 9 recently as a WiFi-only device. The LTE version would be along later, we were told, but no one knew when. Now with T-Mobile's Nexus 6 announcement, they're throwing in an update on the Nexus 9 with LTE—it'll be out in early December.
The Galaxy Note 4 is Samsung's new baby, but last year's Note 3 is still a fine phone if you're into that whole phablet thing. You can snag an unlocked AT&T Note 3 with 32GB of storage on eBay today for $419.99. It's popped up for less, but those deals were all for the 16GB version.
The Office mobile app just got an update, and for once it's bringing something you might care about. The latest update adds the Dropbox integration that was announced early this month. You can now open, edit, and save documents in Dropbox using the Office app.
A pair of Amazon apps have popped up in the Play Store, but they're both for pieces of hardware you can't get yet. The Amazon Echo app is the companion to Amazon's bizarre connected speaker, and the Fire TV remote app adds functionality to the Fire TV Stick. I would wager the second will get more downloads.