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You might have missed it in the tidal wave of news when the Nexus 5 was released, but Google also posted two new colors of the Nexus 7 zip case in the storefront. They were both listed as 'coming soon,' but now they're live.
Teknision, Maker Of Chameleon Launcher Has Been Acquired By A Company You've Probably Never Heard Of
The Chameleon Launcher turned some heads when it more than doubled its goal on Kickstarter last year. The final product wasn't quite as amazing as we hoped it would be, but Teknision did at least deliver the app to Google Play. It appears that Teknision is moving on now – it has been acquired by a company called Synacor. Never heard of it? Don't feel bad – you are not alone.
AT&T is continuing to push its LTE network into more places as it races to catch Verizon, which got a head start in the LTE era. Today Ma Bell has announced 14 new markets with 4G LTE access. Is your town among them? Only one way to find out.
The Android lockscreen has been slowly evolving over the years, and it's got a respectable feature set these days. But sometimes rethinking a feature can provide a better overall experience. Cover is a new beta lockscreen alternative that tries to learn where you are and what you're most likely to need access to, then put it right there on the lockscreen. It's a compelling approach, but how is it?
Google has been fiddling with the way lockscreen media controls should work since Ice Cream Sandwich, and they've gotten yet another makeover in KitKat. When a supported app like Google Play Music, Netflix, or Play Movies is running in the background (Chromecast-only in the last two instances) you get a full screen display of the artwork associated with the content on the lockscreen. It offers some new functionality too.
One of the many footnotes that came with the announcement of Android 4.4 KitKat was the inclusion of native screen recording. This was pitched as a tool for developers to easily make video demos of apps, but we at Android Police were obviously pretty pleased as well. Google was a bit vague about how the functionality would be accessible, except to point to the developer tools. Now that the Nexus 5 is in the wild, we can take it for a spin and see what this feature can do.
Google finally unveiled KitKat last week, but you may have noticed something was missing. Yes, there was no news on the so-called Google Experience Launcher. Earlier leaks led us to suspect that Google's homescreen experience was coming to more Android devices, but the big day came and went with no mention. Recent revelations about how the Android 4.4 homescreen works breathe new life into the possibility of a more Googley experience for all.
Perhaps you've got a new Nexus 5 speeding toward your door or already in your hands. Well, you're going to need some apps to fill it up, right? It just so happens we've found some stuff on sale. Sometimes life is convenient like that.
Now that KitKat is finally out in the world, we're finding all sorts of little tweaks that make the new OS nicer to use. Google didn't give this particular feature a big headline on the Android site, but maybe it should have. Android 4.4 now lets you access your notifications from any full-screen app. This is a feature Samsung has included in TouchWiz for a while, so it's not entirely new to the world of Android.
If you're still rocking a DROID RAZR M on Verizon, get ready for a little OTA update action. This phone may be last year's news, but it's not forgotten. Well, at least not completely. No, it's not getting an update to 4.2 (let alone something newer). Instead, this is mostly a maintenance update.
When you need to get access to a remote computer quickly, TeamViewer is a popular solution. The app has long had a solid feature set, but the newly released update has a lot more goodies. And of course, it's still free for personal use.
It's not just HTC's latest and greatest that's getting some update love these days. The international HTC One SV is finally getting that rumored update to Android 4.2.2, and it's packing Sense 5.0. It's not a small update, so make sure you've got some WiFi handy.
Google has been talking up Snapseed and it's enhanced HDR mode in recent blog posts and events, but the Gallery-based photo editor is getting a boost in Android 4.4 as well. This new editor will be shipping with KitKat, but it's also part of AOSP.
Google kicked off the Nexus program back in early 2010 with the Nexus One. It was a fine phone for the time, but it's vastly different than the most recent iterations of the Nexus flagship. That's illustrated quite well by this quick GIF.
As we're still basking in the afterglow of a big Android announcement, Google is back to the same old stuff. The developer dashboard has been updated with the freshest Android distribution numbers. This time Jelly Bean has hit a milestone just as it became the "old" version of Android.
It's been a busy 24 hours since Android 4.4 KitKat and the Nexus 5 were announced. You probably stayed up all night reading the news and furiously refreshing the UPS tracking page to see if your phone shipped yet. Well, relax. You have to come down from that KitKat high sometime, and what better way than with some nice, inexpensive apps and games?
Google is finally paying attention to the phone app in Android 4.4 by adding smart organization of contacts, enhanced search, and a new card-based UI. However, there might be something more dastardly hiding in the dialer code. Google might be preparing to roll out ads of some sort to the Android dialer.
The goodies from Android 4.4 continue to trickle out even before the Nexus 5 reaches buyers. This time it's the updated Google Keyboard (v2.0), and you can install it right now over top of the old version. This updated keyboard adds a feature that will be familiar to anyone who has spent time with SwiftKey recently.
Update: After some flip-flopping, it seems that all configurations of the Nexus 5 are no longer showing out of stock. The bad news – Google is really just indicating multiple week wait times for each version rather than saying it's out of stock. It's 3-4 weeks for the 16GB variants and the white 32GB. The black 32GB is backordered 2-3 weeks right now. Hopefully you got your order in!
HTC Says All US Versions Of The One Will Have KitKat in 90 Days, Google Play Edition in Just 15 Days
We're used to seeing huge waits for carrier-branded devices to receive updates to the latest and greatest version of Android. Actually, sometimes they don't arrive until the next version has been announced. HTC is trying to set a new standard, apparently. After pushing 4.3 out to most of the HTC One variants, it is pledging to get 4.4 rolled out to all devices in the US within 90 days. The Google Play edition One? It will be updated in just 15 days.