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May

Samsung Premiere 2013 Event To Reveal New Android And Windows Devices On June 20th In London

Posted by Jeremiah Rice in News, Samsung

Samsung just won't let anybody catch their breath when it comes to hardware releases. Just a few weeks after the worldwide release of the Galaxy S4, the company has posted public information for a new press event, explicitly declaring that new Galaxy and ATIV devices will be on display. Galaxy is of course Samsung's everything, everywhere brand for Android, and for those not in the know, ATIV is their newer generation of Windows products. The Samsung Premiere event is set for Thursday, June 20th, at the Earl's Court Exhibition Centre in London.

Gentlemen, start your speculation. There are any number of new Android products that might be revealed, but for my money, a new generation of the 10-inch Galaxy Tab is right at the top of the list (the underwhelming 7-inch version of the Galaxy Tab 3 has already been shown).

May

Verizon's Motorola DROID RAZR M And DROID RAZR HD Now Available In Blue

Posted by Jeremiah Rice in Motorola, News, RAZR HD / RAZR MAXX HD, RAZR M, Verizon Wireless

Blue makes a lot of things better - berries, rhapsodies, alternative percussion groups. Whether or not Motorola's RAZRs look better with an azure paint job is something we'll leave up to you. Verizon is now selling blue versions of both the mid-range DROID RAZR M and the flagship DROID RAZR HD, though the latter is more of a trim than a full paint job. Both versions were spotted by notable tipster @evleaks about three week ago. The blue RAZRs are available for purchase online now, and should be in Verizon retail stores starting today.

The DROID RAZR M seems to get the lion's share of the paint job here.

May

[New App] Original Opera Mobile For Android Re-Released For Those Who Appreciate The Classics

Posted by Jeremiah Rice in Applications, News

Opera spent a lot of time and money getting their act together with the spiffy new Webkit version of Opera Mobile. But their users are a hard-to-please bunch, and apparently some weren't completely sold on the new design. So the older version of Opera Mobile is back in the Play Store, sporting the title "Opera Mobile Classic," for one last tour of the browser circuit. It's free, as always, and comes with the original's comparatively wide featureset. It appears to be compatible with devices running Gingerbread and up, and possibly more.

The newer version of Opera is faster and objectively better in just about every respect, but old users might be missing the original syncing via Opera Link, Speed Dial, text rendering, and a more (ahem) familiar user interface.

May

Serious Privacy Flaw In Facebook Pages Manager For Android Exposes Private Pictures For Everyone To See [Updated]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Last Updated: May 27th, 2013

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Facebook has a privacy hole that exposes private information to the public. And it's a serious one, this time in Facebook Pages Manager for Android, which has been installed over 5 million times since January of this year. Let me explain.

Update 5/26/13 11:30pm PT: Rory from Facebook Security has informed me that the company is looking into the issue and "will try to get a fix up soon."

Update 5/27/13 06:28pm PT: Facebook patched the issue.

The Flaw

Yesterday, Android Police reader Joann MacDonald tipped us off to a critical bug in the aforementioned application created by Facebook to help Facebook Page admins manage their Pages.

May

Rumor: Redesigned Gmail App with 'Smartlabels' Feature Supposedly Launching This Wednesday, Very Sloppy Promotional Images Included

Posted by Ron Amadeo in News, Rumors

About 2 days ago, an anonymous tipster emailed TNW, Android Police, and probably a few other sites with screenshots of an alleged Gmail redesign that would automatically categorize your emails into separate inboxes. We didn't run the pictures because they seemed pretty sloppy, and often didn't conform to the way Gmail works. Now though, now we're seeing confirmation from ryan_socio, who has been a pretty solid source in the past, so they've officially graduated to post-worthy. Here they are:

^{Top Left: Android | Top Right: iOS | Bottom: Desktop Web}

The initial batch of these images that went out had horribly distorted colors, which really didn't help their credibility.

May

The End Of 'Curiosity' – Peter Molyneux Reveals Prize For Chipping Away The Cube's Last Layer

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Games, News

Curiosity, which we deemed "the most absurd, ambiguous, and tedious game of all time" at its launch, was a game with a simple premise: tap on your screen forever, until a huge, huge cube finally dissolves into nothing. Players were aided in this quest by other players and various powerups.

Today, it was announced that the game has ended, and the winner, who was promised a "life changing" revelation at the end of it all, has received just that. Or Peter Molyneux's definition of it, anyway. In two tweets, Molyneux announced the winner, and what ended up being "inside the cube," which was the following video.

May

DashClock Widget Developer Switches To New Beta Testing Technique, Helps Us See How It Works

Posted by Cody Toombs in Applications, News

If you're running Android 4.2, odds are pretty good that you have also installed Roman Nurik's popular lock screen widget, DashClock Widget. Now, thanks to the new method of running beta tests in the Play Store, you can also try out the latest features and improvements before they officially launch. By joining this program, test versions pop up as if they were regular updates.

The setup process is quick and painless. Simply perform these 3 steps:

Join the DashClock Widget Community on Google+ (note: some people have been having trouble joining communities this weekend as the Join Community button doesn't seem to do anything, but what seems to work is searching for a community name and joining it then).

May

[Weekend Poll] Is The White Nexus 4 On Your "Want" List?

Posted by David Ruddock in Polls

The elusive white Nexus 4 has popped up on our radar on more than one occasion in the past, but as of yesterday, things got really real. And by real, I mean heavily augmented, stylized, and touched-up in Photoshop. We were provided some press photos of the device, leading us to believe that this baby (this baby being a pearly-white Nexus 4) is coming. The rumored released date, according to AndroidAndMe, is June 10th. Oddly, our tipster indicated that the phone is listed as running Android 4.2, though that doesn't exactly seem likely, given we know 4.3 is a thing and probably on the way soon enough.

May

BSkyB's Sky Apps, Twitter Account Hacked By Syrian Electronic Army [Updated]

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

Last Updated: May 28th, 2013

Syrian Electronic Army, a hacking group responsible for several visible attacks in the last few weeks, has evidently taken control of BSkyB's Sky apps in the Play Store, replacing the promo headers with SEA's logo, and the app descriptions with "Syrian Electronic Army Was Here."

In a tweet earlier, BSkyB's Twitter account (which we now know was also compromised) warned its users to uninstall all Sky apps, as they "were hacked and replaced." Indeed, BSkyB's apk files were replaced by the hacking group.

UPDATE: All Sky's Android apps were hacked and replaced... please uninstall it, And we will let you know when it will be available

— Sky Help Team (@SkyHelpTeam) May 26, 2013

Syrian Electronic Army, the group behind the infiltration, is also responsible for attacks on the Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Human Rights Watch, Financial Times, the Onion and many others (including Twitter accounts belonging to ITV and BBC Weather), and are "enemies of Anonymous," according to an interview reported on Vice.

May

Exclusive: Press Images Of The White Nexus 4 (LG E960W) Leak Out

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Exclusives, Google, Leaks, LG, News, Nexus 4

As we already know, the white Nexus 4 is very much real. Months after first showing up on the web, it re-appeared at Google I/O in all its glory, with June 10th tipped as a possible launch date by AndroidAndMe's co-founder Taylor Wimberly. Alongside it, according to Taylor, Android 4.3 would be unveiled as well.

While I can't confirm the date (even if the information was correct at the time of I/O, plans can change for any reason), what I can show you today are some of the press images of the white Nexus 4, model number E960W (the original Nexus 4 is E960).