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Dec

How To: Unleash The Power Of The Viewsonic G Tablet And Turn It Into The Best Performing Tablet On The Market

Posted by Josh Cooter in gTablet (SMB-A1002), Tablets, Tips & Tutorials, Viewsonic

Like so many of you out there, I have been holding out for an Android tablet that would be well worth my saved pennies, one that I could be proud to stack up against the uppity iPad owners that loiter around the local Starbucks. I'll be the first to admit that this year has been disappointing to say the least – cancelled devices, resistive touch screens, underpowered hardware, and carrier only options have plagued the community thus far, and even while optimistic for 2011, it was clear that I needed a tablet now.

Let me save you the trouble of scouring the internet in search of a tablet.

Dec

Upset Android Developers Demand Better Service From Google After Recent Android Market Payment Issues

Posted by Ian G. Clifton in Apps/Games, News

On December 4th, Google user judez reported on the Android Market support forum that for six hours straight, all of his Android Market sales were showing up as "payment declined." The issue continued through December 5th and 6th with over one hundred responses from other developers. Other threads were started reporting the same issue as well. Take a look at the problem:

The screenshot, posted by khriskooper on the second page of that thread, shows just how ridiculous the issue became. Developers were reporting anywhere from 50-90% of payments being declined, with the most significantly affected sellers being outside of the United States with the purchasers in the United States.

Dec

OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe) Ported To Android, Available In Market

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Games, News

Anyone who grew up in the 90's may remember Transport Tycoon - a game similar to Sim City 2000 and Roller Coaster Tycoon (Chris Sawyer, who created TTC, also created RCT). The objective of the game is fairly simple by today's standards: control a transport company to make more profit than your rivals. Fans of the original should be happy to hear that the OpenTTD project has been ported to Android, and this time around, there's even multiplayer support.

The bad news is that it's still an early release, so it's not without kinks. A fair number of users can't get the app to run at all, and some users have also had trouble getting sound to work.

Dec

[Quick Hands-On] Comcast Xfinity App Now Live In The Android Market

Posted by Stephen Tenerowicz in Applications, News

Just as promised, Comcast has finally brought their Xfinity application to the Android Market (and it's about time). We haven't spent more than a few minutes with it, but that's enough to provide at least preliminary impressions.

At first glance, the app is very attractive and appears to be pretty functional, including its own Comcast mail client, voicemail inbox, TV listings, and a DVR Manager (which takes up to 24 hours to set up). In addition to this, it contains a listing of all On Demand shows, but no On Demand playback is available at the moment. While fully featured, the TV listings portion of the app is very laggy and slow.

Dec

LG Optimus U Coming To US Cellular On December 13th For $0.00 With New Contract

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in News, Optimus U, US Cellular

Last Updated: December 19th, 2010

While free Android phones are nothing new, it's a rare day when we see the gift coming directly from the carrier itself, especially on the device's launch day. However, that's exactly what US Cellular is doing with the Optimus U - come December 13th, the carrier will be touting the latest entry in the Optimus One series of phones for exactly $0.00 after an $80 mail-in-rebate and on a new two-year contract. Its specs are more or less the same as its Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile-bound brethren:

Android 2.2 with Swype pre-installed
WiFi connectivity
3.2-inch HVGA (320x480) display
3.2 MP camera
2GB microSD card out of the box with support for cards of up to 32GB in capacity

US Cellular's coverage isn't exactly the best in the industry, and the Optimus One phones are hardly the cream of the crop, but you've got to give the Optimus U this: it's free, it isn't a year old, and it has Froyo's mobile hotspot capabilities built-in.

Dec

MoDaCo's Paul O'Brien Releases Gingerbread Launcher For Android 2.2, Now Available In Market

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Applications, Development, Gingerbread 2.3, News

Our (OK, mainly Brian's) man Paul O'Brien of MoDaCo has been hard at work porting the Gingerbread launcher to Froyo (Android 2.2). What's different? Well, frankly... not a lot.

The major differences are that there's a bit more green and that the app drawer fades in/out. In my minute or two with it, that's about all I noticed, and really, that's all you can ask for at this point. That said, if you're using vanilla Froyo now, there's really no downside to using the Gingerbread launcher.

Nothing revolutionary, but given the amount of fervor over Gingerbread, the launcher and the keyboard may be just enough to whet your appetite and hold you over until some official releases start rolling out.

Dec

New HTC Knight / EVO Shift 4G Photos Show Off World's Ugliest Phone Cases, Confirm 4G

Posted by David Ruddock in EVO Shift 4G (Speedy), Knight, News, Sprint

Last Updated: January 4th, 2011

We haven't heard much about the HTC Knight (or EVO Shift 4G, as it may be called) lately, but HTCPedia Shop recently came into possession of some photos of the device - albeit wearing some aesthetically questionable cases.

The phone itself, though, actually looks very slick. Clearly, design points were taken from the EVO 4G, which in my opinion remains the best-looking Android device on the market. As has been previously reported, the Shift 4G will be graced with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, HTC Sense, what appears to be a 3.7" screen, and Sprint's fabulous (if you live in an area with coverage) 4G - as can be seen by the WiMax logo in the pictures.

Dec

Launcher Pro v0.8.2 Brings Virtual Homescreen Looping, Recent Apps Dock Popup

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Launcher Pro, one of the greatest Android homescreen replacements (Sense who?), received an update today with 2 excellent new features: virtual homescreen looping and a Recent Apps dock popup.

The virtual looping feature enables scrolling past the leftmost or rightmost homescreens with a quick bounce-to-the-opposite-end effect. While Fede implemented it this way instead of an endless scroll for technical reasons, I think it's visually a lot better and clearer, as you will still know when you've reached the end and won't feel lost in your own homescreen forest.

Joining SMS, missed calls, and bookmarks, the 2nd feature is a new swipe gesture dock popup called Recent Apps.

Dec

Watch Andy Rubin's Honeycomb Android Tablet Demo From D: Dive Into Mobile

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Google, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Motorola, News, Videos

Last night, Andy Rubin appeared at AllThingsD's D: Dive Into Mobile conference and, to everyone's surprise, demoed not a Gingerbread, but a Honeycomb Motorola tablet, which ran on a next generation dual-core processor. If you want to read more about the demo, head over to our report from yesterday; however, if you want to jump right into action and see the demo in all its glory, AllThingsD just posted a full 9-minute video of Andy's interview for everyone's enjoyment.

The new Google Maps, the absence of hardware buttons (which make it impossible to "hold it wrong"), and the very much refined Honeycomb interface are all there:

Source: AllThingsD

Dec

NFC In Gingerbread Is Crippled - It's One-Way-Only, And Not The Way We Want

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Gingerbread 2.3, Google, News, Nexus S (Crespo/Soju), Samsung

Last Updated: February 9th, 2011

Update 2/9/11: Writing/transmitting via NFC is now possible thanks to the 2.3.3 update.

One thing that was very much anticipated in the Nexus S and Gingerbread in general was NFC (Near Field Communication) support, which is a feature we've never seen before on an Android device. In fact, the vast majority of us took it to mean that it will allow you to use your phone as a credit card, which would indeed be very exciting and insanely cool. Unfortunately, that's not the case here; rather, the technology will allow the Nexus S (and other NFC-capable Android phones) to act as a glorified barcode scanner of sorts.