Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Apr

It's Time To Swagger: Android Open Kang Project ROM Reaches 1 Million Users, AOKPush App Created To Celebrate

Posted by Jeremiah Rice in Android OS, Applications, News

Congratulations are in order for the Team Kang, the developers of the Android Open Kang Project. As of yesterday AOKP is only the third community-created ROM to run on 1,000,000 Android devices, behind CyanogenMod and MIUI. The team announced their milestone on the aokp.co blog, noting that with the upcoming release of the first Android 4.2 Milestone build, they'll be shaking up the release process a bit.

Instead of the rather slow numbered build releases, AOKP will be automatically built and distributed from the team's servers every four days. These nightly (quadra-nightly?) builds will be for those who want to live on the bleeding edge of the custom ROM.

Apr

Tip: Use Facebook Home Alongside Another Launcher By Leaving It Enabled, But Not Making It The Default

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News, Tips & Tutorials

When I went hands-on with Facebook's new launcher a few days ago, I stepped away pleased with the overall experience, but felt that it lacked a lot of the features a power user (or even a regular user who does stuff) would like. Still, I found the "lock screen" functionality to be a very pleasant experience – turning my phone on to nothing more than a scrolling photo and the time is very minimal and relaxing. I even made the comment that I wish I could use it as my lockscreen and return to Nova for my actual launcher. Turns out doing just that is actually extremely easy.

Apr

Google Improves Mobile Search With Easier Access To Rotten Tomatoes Ratings, Quick View Badges For Wikipedia

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Google, News

If you use Google Search on a mobile device, but prefer the web interface, then your experience just got a bit better today. For starters, if you search for Rotten Tomatoes, you'll see expandable sub sections with links to areas like movies that are in theaters. According to Google, "many sites" will have similar functionality.

Additionally, for some searches, you'll see a blue "Quick view" badge that you can tap to get easy access to a Wikipedia page on the subject. This is different from the knowledge graph cards in that the button appears next to individual Wiki links no matter where they appear in the results.

Apr

Verizon Announces RAZR M Software Update (Version 98.15.66), Brings Mostly Bug Fixes

Posted by David Ruddock in Device Updates, News, RAZR M

Verizon just announced a new maintenance update for the DROID RAZR M that brings various fixes to the device, including improved Wi-Fi connectivity, voice call volume, and visual voicemail connectivity. The camera's touch-to-focus is now also better, apparently, and the camera itself will take better low-light photos. Expect the update to roll out in the next week or two. You can see the complete changelog in the image below.

The last update to roll out to the RAZR M was Android 4.1, back in November. It'll definitely be interesting to see how quickly Moto updates this handset (and others) to Android 4.2 in the coming year.

Apr

[New App] RoundR Rounds The Corners Of Your Device's Screen, Because Why Not?

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

As an Android site, we try to keep a close eye on newcomers to the Play Store. Sometimes that helps us find new, innovative, and highly useful apps. On the other side of that, it also help us find WTF apps for the roundups. But every once in a while an app shows up that simply baffles the mind, because its existence is so seemingly questionable it's hard to imagine why it's a thing in the first place.

And that's what RoundR is.

Basically, it rounds the corners of your homescreen and all apps. Rounded. Corners. That's it. Because square corners are offensive and rude to some, I guess.

Apr

Sprint MVNO Ting Releases Official Android App - See Your Usage Details, View Your Bill, Call / Text / Data History

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, Apps/Games, News

While I personally had not heard of Ting until today, the Tucows-owned Sprint MVNO operates on a pay-per-usage billing model, providing voice and data service on Sprint's complete network (including LTE). The company launched its first Android app in the Play Store today, designed to help you monitor your Ting account.

The Ting app may not be jam-packed with features, but it is decidedly clean and simple, and there's nothing wrong with that. You can view your data, SMS, and voice usage in detail - including day-by-day breakdowns of your data habits. That kind of fine-grain history usually requires a big, long billing PDF, so this is definitely kind of neat.

Apr

AT&T Announces LG Escape Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) Update, Rollout Starts Today

Posted by David Ruddock in Device Updates, Escape 4G LTE, Jelly Bean 4.1, News

AT&T announced on its official blog that the LG Escape will be receiving an update to Android 4.1, and that said update should be headed to devices starting today. The first release of Jelly Bean includes things like expandable rich notifications, Google Now, and possibly some Project Butter smoothness enhancements (all LG handsets I've seen have them, at least).

AT&T's DriveMode app is also included in the update, so there'll be another piece of carrier bloat (arguably of the less than useless variety) in your app drawer.

AT&T Consumer Blog

Apr

Real Racing 3 For Android Gets Major Update - 2 New Cars, Cross-Platform Cloud Saves, New Events, And More

Posted by David Ruddock in Games, News

Last Updated: April 17th, 2013

After an iOS update a couple weeks back, Real Racing 3 for Android received its first big content pack update on Android yesterday, adding two new vehicles, over 100 new events, a new event type ('Hunter' mode), and cross-platform cloud saving.

This update is causing major issues for some people (myself included), and on multiple devices. If this happens to you, uninstall the game and then re-install. As long as your profile in the game is signed into Facebook, your progress should still be saved. If you never did the Facebook sign-in, you're out of luck for the time being, unless you don't mind having your profile erased.

Apr

Microsoft Outlook.com Android App Gets New UI, Real Features, No Longer Looks Like It Shipped With Donut

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, News

Last Updated: April 17th, 2013

Last November, Microsoft released an Outlook.com 'app' for Android. I say 'app,' because it was only one in the strictest sense of the word. It was functional (barely), but it was also absolutely disgusting to look at, didn't do push email, and generally kind of sucked. The new app appears to suck much less, especially in the visual sense.

It has a completely redesigned don't-call-it-Metro UI look, push email, calendar and contact sync, and conversation view mode. So, it's actually a real, usable email app now. Exciting! Here's the changelog:

What's in this version: No recent changes.

- New look and feel
- Filters for unread and flagged messages
- Conversation threading
- Marking messages as junk

Head to the Play Store to get the update now.

Apr

Gameloft Releases Dungeon Hunter 4 On The Play Store (Yep, It's Still A Free-To-Play)

Posted by David Ruddock in Games, News

If you've not tried Gameloft's Dungeon Hunter franchise, it's definitely worth taking a look at. Dungeon Hunter 2 was the first in the series to be released on Android (and is still only available for select devices on the Gameloft store), and is genuinely one of the most fun titles I've played on mobile. Dungeon Hunter 3, though it went to a free-to-play model, was still extremely entertaining and undeniably well-done (4.5 stars with over 100,000 reviews on the Play Store). Now, the much-awaited Dungeon Hunter 4 has hit the Play Store after landing on iOS last week.

The visuals don't look like a huge upgrade from DH3, but they're still pretty damn good for a mobile game that can handle quite a few character models on screen at once, and let's be realistic - not too many other games in this genre will match DH4 for looks.