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

Jan

[1-Day Twitter Contest] Win A $50 Zazzle Gift Certificate In Our 10K Twitter Followers Celebration

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Contests / Giveaways

Last Updated: January 26th, 2011

It's a brand new week, and the staff here at Android Police has something to be excited about - we're less than 100 tweeps away from 10,000 amazing and supportive followers! You guys lighten up our days and nights with your comments, so we decided to give some back, in the form of a quick contest.

To help push through - no, blast through - 10,000 followers, we have acquired a $50 gift certificate to Zazzle.com, one of the top apparel (t-shirts, etc) sites on the Internet, and we are itching to give it out to one of our most loyal Twitter followers.

Jan

Android Police Editors' Best-Of App Picks - Part 1: Music, Messaging, And File Transfers

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, Apps/Games, Editorials, News, Tips & Tutorials

One thing we never grow tired of on Android is the myriad selection of apps available for use in a particular purpose. Be it text messaging, music listening, or file transfers, there's always a solid grouping of well-made apps to choose from. But whose app fits your needs best? Three of us here at Android Police are going to give you our personal favorites in an ongoing rundown series. We'll give you our picks in a wide variety of areas - from home screens to instant messaging. In this week's episode, we'll be looking at music, messaging, and file transfer applications.

Jan

NVIDIA Tegra 3 Will Make PCs Obsolete In 2012

Posted by Abhiroop Basu in Development, News

CES 2011 was an occasion for manufacturers to flood the market with a plethora of Android devices, and powering many of them was NVidia's Tegra 2 chip.

Released late last year, the Tegra 2 chip uses the "system-on-a-chip" design to integrate an ARM CPU (1GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 processor) and a NVidia GPU into one package. This allows faster communication between the cores and the integrated memory controller. Most of the tablets and smartphones, and other unique hybrids, launching in 2011 will be using the Tegra 2 chips.

But, no sooner has the dust settled and NVidia is already planning for the future. A leaked slide from NVidia reveals that the Tegra 2 will soon be replaced by the Tegra 2 3D, which will subsequently be usurped by the "world's first mobile quad-core processor," the Tegra 3.

Jan

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc Shows Up In A Detailed Video Walkthrough, We Wipe Off Drool Yet Again

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News, Sony Ericsson, Videos, Xperia Arc (Anzu, X12)

A couple of weeks ago at CES 2011, Sony Ericsson announced its latest Android handset - the sleek and sexy Gingerbread-running Xperia Arc. They've also invited the press, Android Police included, to attend a media breakfast where we ended up spending over an hour of quality time with the new device, documented in great detail here. If you have questions about the Arc, I highly recommend you dive into the above post, as it contains a plethora of useful bits and pieces, all wrapped in a convenient package.

Though the Arc was promised to land in consumers' hands sometime in Q1 2011 and no review units have been sent out just yet, the writers from an Italian blog HDBlog.it managed to get their hands on both the Misty Silver and Midnight Blue models and give the hardware and the interface a very thorough walkthrough.

Jan

ADW Launcher EX Update Released - Includes Custom Docks, Bug Fixes

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, News

An update to the popular custom launcher ADW EX was released today, and it adds a feature many ADW users have been clamoring for: custom dock backgrounds. While it may sound trivial, some have used the lack of a custom dock option in ADW to declare Launcher Pro the superior app. ADW EX comes with 8 of its own custom docks, though you can use any image from your gallery as a dock background. The update also includes a few additional customization options (you can find the full changelog here).

To get the custom docks, hit the Menu button while on a homescreen, select More, ADWSettings, UI Settings, Main Dock, Dock Background, Custom.

Jan

Motorola XOOM To Launch On February 17th, Confirmed By Internal Best Buy Document

Posted by Abhiroop Basu in Motorola, News, XOOM

An eager reader forwarded an internal Best Buy memo to Engadget which indicates, in no uncertain terms, that the Motorola XOOM tablet is set to launch at Best Buy on February 17th.

A leak from Verizon has confirmed that the unsubsidized price of the XOOM will be $799. However, Best Buy may be retailing the device for an altogether different price.

The XOOM is an important device for both Motorola and Google because it will be the first tablet to run Android 3.0 Honeycomb, an iteration of the Android OS that supports the tablet form factor. Google rubber-stamped their approval over this product when Andy Rubin demoed Honeycomb on the XOOM at AllThingsD's D:Dive Into Mobile.

Jan

HTC EVO 4G: Fix Music Streaming And (Maybe) Boost Your 3G Speeds With A Simple Hack

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, News, Sprint

This morning, I noticed an interesting thread in the EVO subsection of the XDA forums that claimed to be able to fix music streaming (which was broken in some apps after the latest OTA), while boosting 3G speeds by .2 to .6 Mbps. As the process is very simple and easily reversible, I gave it a go - but decided that I was going to use SpeedTest to benchmark the changes. Unfortunately, what I found wasn't what I expected.

Before doing anything, I ran the test three times. Before the fix my average download speed was 938.67 Kbps. After I ran the fix, my speed dropped to an average of 782 Kbps.

Jan

Froyo Update Now Rolling Out To The LG Ally

Posted by Abhiroop Basu in Ally (Aloha), Froyo 2.2, News, Verizon Wireless

A few days ago it was revealed that Verizon would be finally updating the LG Ally to Android 2.2 Froyo. Now, less than a week later, users are reporting that the OTA update for Froyo has been pushed by Verizon.

While it is laudable that Verizon is updating the mid-range LG Ally (unlike certain other manufacturers), Froyo is already an out-dated version of Android thanks to Gingerbread. Nevertheless, this latest update ought to bring some nice improvements to the device, while increasing the number of users running Froyo by just a little bit.

Thanks to Miguel A. for the tip

Jan

Remember The New Toshiba Tablet Site? This Is What Happens If You Visit It On An iOS Device

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News, Thrive / Regza / Antares / AT100, Toshiba

Last Updated: April 16th, 2011

You didn't think Toshiba would let Motorola take jabs at Apple without throwing one of its own, did you?

^{Motorola called the iPad a giant iPhone back in December}

Remember the Toshiba Tablet teaser site we found yesterday? Here is what happens when you visit it from an iOS device:

Such a Shame.

Add this to the list of the interesting places on the internet you can't see on your device. Of course, if you had a Toshiba Tablet you would enjoy the entire internet. Yep, Flash sites too.

Nicely done, Toshiba, besides the fact that, you know, nobody has the said Toshiba Tablet because it hasn't been released or even given a name yet.

Jan

Stylish And Flexible "Typography Wall" Clock/Date/Battery Live Wallpaper Enters Android Market

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Truly stylish clock/date widgets of high quality are hard to come by, so whenever we see one released, we jump on it right away. Today's highlight is Typography Wall that was just released into the Android Market.

Typography Wall is actually a live wallpaper that comes with a variety of configurable elements, by default set up exactly the way you see below. You can use it without any modifications or jump right into changing things, from using your own background to changing transparency, rotation, blinking, positioning, and other aspects of each element. Such powerful customizations are made possible thanks to an absolutely brilliant OwnSkin framework that this LWP uses - in fact, it looks like anyone can create a live wallpaper using this free framework.