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

Feb

NVIDIA Reveals Project Kal-El: A Quad-Core CPU For Mobile Devices, Coming To Tablets By August 2011, Phones By Christmas

Posted by Zak Stinson in News, Videos

NVIDIA has been the talk of Barcelona for the past couple of days. Many of the premier devices announced at Mobile World Congress, such as the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the LG Optimus Pad, have been packing the new dual-core Tegra 2 chipset. Hot on the heels of these hardware announcements, NVIDIA just revealed the quad-core successor of the Tegra 2 to the world (which may or may not end up being called Tegra 3).

Dubbed "Project Kal-El", this mean little chipset is said to bring five times the processing power of the Tegra 2. In addition to the 4 CPU cores, Kal-El includes not 1 and not even 4, but 12 (!) GPU cores.

Feb

Rumor: Nexus One Gingerbread OTA By End Of This Week Or Early Next? We'll Believe It When We See It

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Gingerbread 2.3, HTC, News, Nexus One (Passion)

HTC Nexus One, the predecessor to the Gingerbread-sporting Samsung Nexus S, has been teased with the Android 2.3 over-the-air upgrade ever since Gingerbread was released. At the time, we anxiously waited for the upgrade that seemed to be imminent, but weeks flew by without any news. Then, Google said it was coming "in the next few weeks," but months slowly churned, and thousands of Nexus Ones owners are still GBreadless.

How many times can you cry wolf before people stop listening to you? I don't know, but I hope this is the last time - Mobile Crunch reports that multiple sources, including Googlers on location at MWC in Barcelona, claim the 2.3 OTA is coming to our precious N1s by the week's end or early next week at the latest.

Feb

Support Page For Samsung Captivate Froyo Upgrade Secretly Goes Up - Update Imminent?

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in AT&T, Captivate, Froyo 2.2, News, Samsung

Update: Just like that, the page has been pulled! Hopefully we'll still see the update soon - it'd be embarrassing to have this drama drag on any longer.

Looks like Kies Mini is the path Samsung has decided to take with the Galaxy S Froyo updates (at least in the US) - first, the Vibrant got its 2.2 fix via the Windows-only software, and now it appears that the Captivate will soon join the club. That's right: according to a recently published page on Samsung's own support site, Android 2.2 for the Captivate will roll out via Kies Mini rather than a standard OTA method.

Feb

PSA: XFINITY App Exposes Your Comcast Username & Password In System Log

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Applications, Apps/Games, News

Before you panic, you should know that this isn't a huge deal, and Comcast is aware of the situation and has promised a fix "within a week or two." There, feel better? Good, because if you use the XFINITY app, any other app that has permission to read logs can read your Comcast username and password (aLogCat, for example).

The details, courtesy of aBSuRDiST, who discovered the issue:

My system log shows <userName>MYUSERNAME@comcast.net</userName> and <password>MYPASSWORD</password> on a line that starts with "D/HTTPManager". I read the log using aLogcat (app available in the market). Open aLogcat, press menu and filter for "password".

Feb

Flipplr Demoed At MWC: A Homescreen Designed For Quick Info Access

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Applications, News

There's certainly no shortage of homescreen replacements for Android, but who's to say that we can't have one more? And you've got to admit, this concept app - Fipplr - looks really nice, and doesn't appear to fall short in terms of functionality, either.

Fipplr includes widgets for multiple apps, including Flickr, Twitter, and Google Latitude, although they aren't exactly the widgets we are used to. These widgets display quick information, and a quick swipe to the right will bring up an expanded view of the widget. On the right side of the homescreen are the launcher icons, which - while unmistakably similar to Windows Phone 7 - still look great.

Feb

Confirmed: Netflix App Available Exclusively On Future Qualcomm-Based Smartphones, Starting With The LG Revolution

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Applications, LG, News, Revolution, Verizon Wireless

Last Updated: February 16th, 2011

Want Netflix on your current Android device? Too bad - as LG and Qualcomm told Engadget, the Netflix app will not be available on existing Android hardware (at least not officially).

Apparently, future Qualcomm CPUs will include additional DRM libraries that no current smartphone processor has, making the decision slightly more understandable (though still extremely disappointing). There's still no word on exactly what processors will support Netflix, but we do know that the LG Revolution will be compatible with it - meaning that the app works with single-core chips.

Disappointing news? Sure, but if it's any comfort, the app does look pretty sweet - check out Engadget's hands-on video:

Source: Engadget

Feb

32 Best (And 2 WTF) New Android Apps And Games From Last Week (2/9/11 - 2/15/11)

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

Last Updated: April 13th, 2011

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.

Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the AppBrain widgets, which include ratings and pricing info.

Looking for the previous week's roundup? Find it here: 26 Best (And 7 WTF) New Android Apps, Games, And Live Wallpapers From Last Week (2/1/11 – 2/8/11)

Apps

Androidify

Android Police coverage: Google’s Newest Android App, Androidify, Lets You Create Your Own Android Avatar [Hands-On]

The picture on the left is what I quickly threw together for Android Police.

Feb

Feeling Suicidal? Karoshi By YoYo Games Now In The Android Market

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News, Videos

Another game hit that was previously available only as a Flash game on PCs is now on Android, and its premise may surprise you. Mr. Karoshi, who happens to be an "overworked Japanese salaryman" is feeling suicidal. Your job? Finish him off.

The puzzle game features dark humor (no kidding?), 50 levels, a mini game, and is actually quite a bit of fun. Check out the trailer below - it shows off the Karoshi quite well:

Download Karoshi

QR code for https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yoyogames.droidkaroshi

Source: Android Market

Feb

Android Movie Studio For Honeycomb Unveiled At MWC By Eric Schmidt, Looks Awesome

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

Right now at MWC, Eric Schmidt is showing off a brand-new, Google-developed Android app: Movie Studio. The app, as the name may suggest, is a video editor. It's designed specifically for Honeycomb tablets, and as a video editor, that sort of makes sense. It's pretty rough trying to edit video on a smaller screen, though not impossible (which is to say, I imagine an XDA port for phones will happen as soon as an APK gets leaked).

Movie Studio will contain most of the features you'd expect in a competitive (*cough* iMovie *cough*) video editing app: transitions, audio import, splicing, A/V timeline, and multi-format export and sharing options.

Feb

[Hands-On] Make Your Clock Widget: Because Everyone Should Have A Totally Customized Clock

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Applications, Apps/Games, Development, News

The open-endedness - particularly, the customizability - of Android is exactly what makes me love it so much. And Make Your Clock Widget is a perfect example of that, offering seemingly infinite possibilities for what you can create. Don't believe me? Take a look at the sample screenshots:

Intrigued, I took a few minutes to play with it, and came away hugely impressed (note: I didn't include a picture of my final clock because... well, I made a goofy clock just playing around with the app.)