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May

PowerAMP Updated To Build 369, Brings Crossfade, True Gapless Support, Bug Fixes

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

PowerAMP, hands down the best music player in the Android Market, was updated today to include a couple of long-sought features, most notably true gapless playback and crossfading between tracks. Gapless playback is pure joy for people who listen to a lot of mixtapes broken down into individual songs, and crossfading is the icing on the cake, preferred by many music lovers.

Other notable additions include .cue file support, a silence remover, backing up and restoring settings into the cloud (finally someone's implementing this functionality available ever since Froyo!), and a host of bug fixes. Full changelog along with the app widget and download links awaits you below.

May

20 Best New Android Games And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (4/21/11 - 5/4/11)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Best Apps/Games/LWPs Of The Week, Games, News

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 week or so.

Last week, I went for a nice vacation in the Caribbean and because of that, there was no Best Apps issue at all. Instead, I've rolled 2 weeks' worth of stuff into this week aaaaaaand because it's turned out so long, I am splitting it up into multiple posts (apps are coming soon after this, most likely tomorrow).

Additionally, most people preferred the old roundup format instead of the abridged new one I tried in the last roundup, so I'm bringing it back.

May

LiveJournal Is Alive And Kicking, Brings App To Android

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

I'm going to be really honest about this one: I had no idea that anyone still uses LiveJournal. Much to my surprise, though, it has been going strong all this time - it's even ranked #71 in the world according to Alexa. After realizing that tidbit of information, it's not surprising at all that there is now an official LiveJournal App for Android.

For a mobile blogging app, I must say that this one seems quite feature rich: you can post new journal entries and photos, create polls, edit entries, create drafts, and manage settings. From just a quick look, I think that this may be the best on-the-go blogging app that I've seen thus far.

May

Bring It On: PopCap Is Bringing Plants Vs. Zombies To Android Within The Next Two Months

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Games, News

I remember when I first saw Plants vs. Zombies. I believe it was before I had an Android phone (*gasp*) and, even though it originated on the desktop, a friend of mine showed it to me on his iPhone. Once I got my OG Droid, it was one of the first games that I searched for in the Market, but of course it was irritatingly absent. So I waited... and waited... and waited.

Finally all of that waiting has [almost] paid off, because Popcap has officially announced that Plants Vs Zombies would be coming to Android within the next two months!

May

DuckDuckGo Brings Private Searching And Zero Click Results To Android

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

While some apps use a mile long feature list to attract users, there are others that use a very opposite approach. They use simplicity, subtlety, and effectiveness as their calling card. One such app is DuckDuckGo for Android: a search app that bases its entire existence on privacy and efficiency.

On the surface, DuckDuckGo is not unlike other search engines - type in what you're looking for and get your results. Easy peasy. Under the hood, though, is where things work a little bit differently. DuckDuckGo uses crowdsourcing as its go-to method of providing legitimate information. Not only that, but it boasts "real privacy" as one of its flagship features - clearly a shot at Google.

May

Skyhook Joins Forces With MapQuest, Brings More Accurate Navigation To Android

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

Mapquest's navigation app already offers a slew of features that we've come to expect from a worthy GPS app, but it has recently seen an update that brings Skyhook's hybrid positioning engine into the mix. This engine not only uses satellites for global positioning, but it also judges accurate location by using nearby WiFi networks (Google Location does this as well - but Skyhook utilizes their own proprietary magic and claim it's more accurate).

Even though Google and Skyhook haven't always played nice, the addition of the Skyhook engine in Mapquest really does make it a worthy competitor to our beloved Google Navigation (some may say that it already was).

May

[Review] Privacy Blocker Fools Android Apps By Spoofing Your Private Data

Posted by Matt Demers in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Like a lot of users, I'm guilty of mashing the "install" button when I'm in the Marketplace and ignoring those lovely warnings that tell me what permissions apps want to use. This isn't really the best practice to keep, especially in the wake of all this location-tracking madness that's been plaguing both Android and iOS.

While I'm not exactly sheepish about what my location data says about me, not caring about the rights that you have as a user (and the rights that you're letting apps take advantage of) just shows a lack of responsibility. While I'm not saying what Google and Apple did was right, I think it's part of our duty as enlightened tech fans to make sure our best interests are being looked after.

May

European HTC Desire HD And Incredible S Getting Gingerbread... Right Now

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Desire HD (Ace), Gingerbread 2.3, Incredible S (Vivo), News

A couple of months ago, we told you that the HTC Desire HD and Incredible S would be getting an OTA update to Gingerbread, but we didn't know exactly when this would happen. It looks like the wait is over though, because HTC has started rolling out the official OTA update to European users. Unfortunately, there is no official word when the Desire Z will see an update, but we're still expecting it sometime close to the end of the second quarter.

Now there's only one thing left to do: wait. Drop us a line in comments and let us know when this hits your device.

May

Make Free VoIP Calls On Android With The Soon To Be Launched Viber App

Posted by Abhiroop Basu in Applications, News

Viber is a popular VoIP calling app for iPhones that is poised to launch for the Android Market in the next few days. Today, it started offering invites to users to test out its Android offerings. I signed up and was thoroughly impressed with it despite the app still being in beta.

Viber can be set as your default dialing app, so if one of your contacts has Viber installed the call will automatically connect through Viber over your data connection (WiFi or 3G) instead of using your voice minutes. The service also allows you to send and receive text messages.

May

[Unconfirmed] Did Samsung Downgrade Components In The First-Gen Galaxy Tab WiFi?

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Galaxy Tab, News, Rumors, Samsung

We've been able to speak so highly of Samsung lately, considering its timely source code releases and recent device updates, but now this happens. Rumor has it that Sammy has duped owners of the Galaxy Tab WiFi by replacing the CPU with an older version, which in turn required a downgraded graphics processor, too. This is, of course, in comparison to the 3G Galaxy Tab, which was released several months prior to the WiFi version.

The 3G Tab has a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor along side a PowerVR SGX 540 for graphics processing. According to a thread over at the XDA Forums, the WiFi Tab only has a 1GHz OMAP 3630 with a PowerVR SGX 530 handling the graphics.