Ryan Whitwam
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.

07
May
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[New Game] Undead Soccer Is A Solid Casual Game That Must Be The Victim Of A Serious Pricing Error

Posted by in Apps/Games, Games, News

Zombies are cool, and soccer is cool (in the right context). In fact, kicking a super-powered soccer ball at zombies is probably one of the cooler concepts I've heard lately. Undead Soccer from Bulkypix is a casual title that's a little bit first-person shooter, and a little bit sports game. It's also a little bit greedy, but we'll get to that.

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Undead Soccer basically involves flicking soccer balls at the approaching hoard of zombies in order to survive. You tilt the device from left to right to pan around and get the undead in your sights. You just fire away until the zombies eat your brain, then start over.

06
May
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Create A Killer Retro LCD Android Theme With A Few Quick Downloads

Posted by in News

Readers of a certain age will remember the way LCD screens looked back in the early 90s. We'd never heard of color LCDs – that would have been witchcraft plain and simple. LCDs were dingy little grayscale things that you saw on clocks and mediocre handheld games. Still, there's nothing like some nostalgia in this age of pocket-sized supercomputers, right? MyColorScreen user z3u5 posted a classic LCD theme for custom Android launchers recently, and it's a seriously cool effect.

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This theme can be applied in various launchers like Nova, ssLauncher, and Go Launcher. You'll need to download the resource packs from MyColorScreen and apply the theme and backgrounds in your launcher.

06
May
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AT&T Will Sell 32GB Samsung Galaxy S4 Starting May 10th, $249.99 On Contract

Posted by in AT&T, Galaxy S4, News, Samsung

If you've been eyeing up the 16GB Galaxy S4 but just haven't been able to pull the trigger, AT&T's newest announcement might be of interest to you. The 32GB variant of the GS4 will be on sale this Friday, May 10th. It's the same phone in every other way, though.

Many excited buyers were shocked to see how bad the Samsung bloatware problem had become when firing up the 16GB GS4 in recent weeks. Nearly half of the storage is taken up by the operating system and included apps.

03
May
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Action Launcher Updated To Version 1.6 With Easier Shortcut/Widget Placement And Home Screen Locking

Posted by in Applications, Apps/Games, News

Alternative launchers have been on Android since the beginning, and most of them have made their name by taking the stock experience and piling on new features. Action Launcher is a little different. This app shakes up the UI conventions of the Android home screen, and it's really got some good ideas. The new update fixes a few niggling issues with the way apps and widgets are added to the home screen.

Adding new app shortcuts or widgets to Action Launcher before this update was perhaps the most clunky part of the experience. You'd have to open the customization menu and scroll through the list to find the items you wanted.

02
May
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[New App] XonoMail Beta Promises Smart Automatic Organization Of Multiple Email Accounts

Posted by in Applications, Apps/Games, News

The stock Gmail app is one of the best mail experiences on a mobile device, but it can still be nearly impossible to tame particularly active inboxes. XonoMail Beta has just arrived in Google Play, and it promises to keep your email in order without a ton of configuration. Best of all, it's completely free and has no ads while in beta.

XonoMail is based on the open source K-9 Mail project. The official K-9 app doesn't get a lot of attention these days, and it's UI is extraordinarily outdated. XonoMail goes the Holo route (#YOLO) and pulls multiple mail accounts into one place.

02
May
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[New Game] EA Launches Bejeweled Blitz On Android So You Can Match Gems With Friends

Posted by in Apps/Games, Games, News

If you've never played Bejeweled before, you're probably in the minority of human beings in the developed world. This series of puzzle games is a classic and thoroughly addictive in just about every form it's ever taken. After being available on iOS and Facebook for a while, Bejeweled Blitz has reached Android, and it's free to download (you should know what that means by now).

Bejeweled Blitz is based around the tried-and-true matching gameplay with some additional social elements built in. There is also a time limit, hence the "blitz" part. You can play against Facebook friends, or just spam your news feed with Bejeweled updates.

01
May
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HTC Extends $100 Trade-Up Program Again: Purchase Date Moved To May 19th, Redeem By June 19th

Posted by in HTC, News, One

It's no secret that HTC has had some issues getting component suppliers to take it seriously after a few bad years. This has led to delays in getting the much-improved HTC One on store shelves. As such, the Taiwanese company has already extended its $100 trade-in program once, and now it's doing so again. You now have almost another full month to take HTC's free money when you buy the One.

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The previous cut-off date for buying a One was April 26th, but now you have until May 19th. When you have your new device in hand, register with HTC and send in your old device.

01
May
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[New App] Magellan Releases SmartGPS Turn-By-Turn App To Complement Standalone GPS Unit You Probably Won't Buy

Posted by in Applications, Apps/Games, News

GPS veteran Magellan announced the SmartGPS system back at CES, touting its social networking integration and "cloud" stuff. The device has just gone on sale in the US for $249, but along with that comes the SmartGPS app. This is a free download that lets your smartphone talk to the GPS unit. If you don't want to buy a $249 GPS unit that duplicates the functionality of your phone, the app includes additional features for a price.

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The free version of SmartGPS lets you search for destinations and plan trips. It contains a full US and Canadian map with tons of points of interest.

01
May
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WeatherBug App Gets Complete UI Overhaul – No Longer Looks Like A Hot Mess

Posted by in Applications, Apps/Games, News

WeatherBug has been a big name in online weather forecasting for a number of years, and it was one of the first full-featured weather apps on Android. The problem, however, is that the app looked like it was designed by inebriated orangutans. Well, no more. The WeatherBug app has been updated with new features and a streamlined (not ugly) UI.

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The new app has Holo-style tabs up top along with a drop-down for your locations. It also uses the left side slide-out menu system many apps are implementing these days. It still does all the usual weather app things like updating the current conditions, multi-day forecasts, and animated radar maps.

01
May
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Top Android Apps Every Rooted User Should Know About, Part 8: Apps 58-65

Posted by in Applications, Best Apps For Rooted Users Series, Roundups
Last Updated: May 13th, 2013

There are plenty of apps in Google Play these days, but a relatively small proportion are designed to unlock the power of a rooted device. Since it can be easy for these powerful apps to get obscured by the crush of retro, free-to-play, side-scrolling platformer games, we like to aggregate the best root-only apps on occasion. Whether you want to free up some screen real estate, change icons around, or manage your backups, the apps you need are right here.

This article deals with a couple of advanced topics. If you’re unfamiliar with some of the terms, hit up our primers here:

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