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Google is serious about revamping Android to look more modern, but most of the apps we spend our days in are still stuck in the past. With a little friendly encouragement, maybe developers can make the transition more quickly. Google has posted a checklist of material design elements on the Android developers blog, and it's quite extensive.
We've known Google Fit was coming for a while now, and there have even been some tantalizing leaks, but now the official app has arrived. Google Fit is a hub for all the fitness data being fed into Google's platform. It's compatible with just about any device under the sun, and looks pretty nice. It'll look best on Lollipop, though.
The market seems to have settled on $10 per month as a reasonable price for unlimited streaming music, which is a pretty good deal when you think about it. If you miss the supposed high fidelity of a real CD, you're pretty much out of luck—unless you use Tidal. This service costs $20 per month for lossless tunes, but there's now an Android app, so at least you have the option.
Here's one for our beloved UK-based readers—the new Moto X is on sale with a pretty reasonable discount on your side of the Atlantic, but you'll have to act fast. Until tomorrow, October 29th at noon, you can get the Moto X for £359.99 (£60 off).
Apple's platform has long been the king when it comes to music performance and production apps, but that might be changing. Algoriddim has developed a version of the popular djay 2 turntable app for Android, and you can buy it today. Not only that, but Algoriddim says it has managed to deal with Android's famous audio latency issues in this app, making it suitable for all your turntable needs.
Pushbullet continues its unending march into the future, unfazed by the shifting standards of UI design. This app is already getting up to speed with a Material look in the latest version, but that's not all.
Using multiple devices is still very clunky, even with synchronization features like those offered by Google. A startup called Nextbit is looking to change that with a product called Baton. The goal is to make switching from one device to another completely seamless, and it's coming to CyanogenMod soon as a private beta.
Good news if you make a lot of short calls overseas. Google had started offering the first minute of Hangouts calls to 25 countries at no charge. It only lasts through the end of 2014, but that's still not a bad deal.
Do you ever wish you could just break into song? No? Okay, that doesn't actually surprise me, but Sony wants to put a microphone app on your phone so you can sing into it whenever the need arises. Yes, it's the new SingStar app, which plugs into the PS3 and new PS4 versions of the game.
You might remember Robin Labs—it's the company behind that Yahoo voice assistant app and the possibly deadly Android-powered rear-view mirror. Now Robin Labs has launched a kind of real product called Less.Mail, but it's invite only and still in the early stages. Less.Mail is an app that leverages artificial intelligence to manage your email by voice.
3DMark came out a while back to give your Android device's GPU a rating, and now Futuremark's other benchmarking tool has arrived in the Play Store. PCMark will analyze the overall performance of your phone or tablet, rather than focusing on individual components. At the end you get a number. Is that number useful? Maybe.
It's getting to be the time of year when developers drop sales on us left and right, and a few are already getting into the habit. There are two franchises of games on sale, and a couple other neat apps are along for the ride.
The newest Android Wear update has started rolling out to the Samsung Gear Live after hitting G Watch and Moto 360 devices in the last few days. The update comes with version number 4.4W.2 and makes a handful of tweaks to the OS, not the least of which is the option to hide notification cards on the watch face.
After all the Lollipop craziness over the last week or so, you're probably looking to relax and stop obsessing over when you're going to get that lovely update. Okay, maybe you're still freaking out, but try to calm down anyway. Here, look at these apps and games that are on sale.
To get any serious modding done with an Android device, you need a custom recovery like TWRP. It's sort of a rite of passage for every new phone to get its own official build of TWRP, and today is the Note 4's big day. TWRP is now available for this device, but not for all variants just yet.
No Lollipop? No problem. You can get some slick new Material Design themes for your keyboard in the SwiftKey store to make your phone feel a little more modern. Okay, I guess it is still a bummer that you don't have Lollipop yet, but that's not SwiftKey's fault. How about you just enjoy the themes?
Games with a compelling story and good voice acting are few and far between on mobile devices, but République appears to be one of them. After getting funded on Kickstarter a few years ago, this game is finally available on Android. It was previously on iOS, where it's gotten positive reviews.
Android includes tools to follow the state of your battery, but not Android Wear. Seems like an oversight on Google's part, but developers are trying to fill in the gaps. The first such app showed up just recently, but now there's a new Wear battery tracker from the developer of the fantastic Wear Mini Launcher. Wear Battery Stats can be used on the phone or watch to see how the battery has been doing and identify potential issues.
It has been a little quiet on the app front today, but it is in fact Update Wednesday. There's a new version of Hangouts available for download right now, and it has at least one useful tweak. Presumably there are also some bug fixes and other under-the-hood changes.