Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
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Today's roundup is sponsored by Handy Apps and their newest app Photo Locker. If the developer's name sounds familiar, it's because they made other popular apps, like EasyMoney and Tasks N Todos.
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Well, would you look at that. The new Motorola Atrix HD "4G" officially went on sale just today, and Best Buy has already chopped off fully half of its reasonable asking price. You can pick up the 4.5-inch, 1.5Ghz dual-core ICS phone for just $49.99 online. The sober black ("titanium") version is in stock, but the white version going for the same price is not.
Each and every day we inch closer to a final release of CM9. While we're all excited for CM9 to hit the stable channel, we all know what that really means: we're one step closer to CM10 nightlies and Jelly Bean goodness across the board. In fact, a few devices have already gotten an early taste of what CM10 will be like.
As excited as we all are for CM10, though, those who are currently running CM9 will be glad to know that RC2 was released late last night. As expected, this basically just brings stability improvements and bugfixes, but it also adds support for a handful of new devices:
As noted above, RC2 for the Galaxy S III is for the version of the device with the Exynos processor only.
With the level of anticipation surrounding Jelly Bean and CyanogenMod 10, pretty much any news of a working build is good news. Today, test/preview builds of CM10 have surfaced for Motorola's Xoom as well as the ASUS Transformer and Transformer Prime (tf101 and 201).
Of course, since these are preview builds, they aren't perfectly stable. It's also worth noting that unofficial builds carry no guarantee of support or update.
That being said, the Transformer builds are surprisingly functional with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound, camera, video acceleration, some dock functionality, and most sensors functional. GPS and light sensor functionality isn't quite there yet, but most of the device's critical functionality is present.
Users of Motorola's Atrix 2 who have been yearning for a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich on their devices have something to be excited about today – earlier this morning, an official ICS OTA update was leaked, or rather discovered using CheeseCake, a tool that essentially allows individuals to check specialized Moto servers for updates, meaning no company personnel need be involved in the leak. Here's a quick explanation from our contact Manoj:
Almost all Motorola based Android distros are fist put through a planning then development stage. During the planning stage, the smartphone is assessed as to analyze whether or not the phone is capable for an update.
It's nothing new to see Amazon Wireless undercutting the brick and mortar mobile phone shops, but this slew of newly announced deals is fairly good. Some of the top selling phones, several of them still brand new, are on sale for anyone signing up as a new customer.
The Motorola Droid Razr is the oldest phone among the bunch, having come out late last year. It is also the only Verizon deal being offered; although $0.01 isn't bad. Anyone willing to jump to Sprint is in for a treat, as Amazon is selling the HTC Evo 4G LTE for $79.99, down from $129.99.
Verizon has taken some flack lately for being the only US carrier to lock the bootloader. Workarounds have been implemented, but Samsung's taken it a step further by announcing a developer version of the device. Today they...well, they haven't quite made good on that promise, but they have created a landing page for the device on their site that announces the 32GB Pebble Blue version will be "coming soon".
It doesn't look like pre-orders are available yet, although we know the device will retail for $599 when it finally launches. Previously, Verizon had tried to claim that Samsung was responsible for the locked bootloader, but since virtually every other version of the device did not have a locked bootloader, and now Samsung is going out of its way to get an unlocked version in the hands of its customers, it's a little tough to stomach that idea.
The Android Police Week In Review is back! And that shouldn't be surprising, because it's Sunday. Unless you have amnesia. Or you're just reading it for the first time. I'm going to guess the latter is probably a little more common. And whether you're an amnesiac or a first-timer, you can catch a lot of these stories on our podcast, too.
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When you try to think of companies that have a motivation to sue over smartphone patents involving Android, Fujifilm may very well be close to the bottom of the list, but you'd be wrong. The company has recently filed a lawsuit against Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility for infringing four of its patents.
The brouhaha began back in April 2011 (for those counting, that's a solid four months before Google even announced its acquisition of the company). Fujifilm claims that several Motorola phones infringe on one or all of the following patents which include, in dramatically oversimplified terms for the layman:
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