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Oct

App Developer Posts His Experiences And Thoughts On Android Market And Apple App Store: Android Market Is Alright, But...

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

Benoit Essiambre, the developer behind iOS and Android apps Speed Bones, Speed Muscles, and Speed Anatomy, recently compared his experience with the Android Market to that of the Apple App Store. Particularly, he discussed ease-of-use, support, and perhaps most importantly, profitability. His thoughts as a developer: the Android Market has a perk or two, but overall it still falls short of the Apple App Store.

His first point: Canada only received paid market support just a few weeks ago. In fact, he created Speed Bones nearly two years ago, before realizing that the Market didn't yet support paid Canadian apps.

Oct

Super-Awesome Interactive Live Wallpaper: 3D Active Blocks

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

Last Updated: October 29th, 2010

Given how popular live wallpaper (LWP) posts are, it's surprising that - with the exception of the Dancing Droid LWP - we haven't really had a big one since we found the R2-D2 set back in early September. Consider the dry spell over: meet the newest post-worthy LWP, 3D Active Blocks. The work of XDA-Devs member mmone3, the premise is simple: it takes pictures (either preset or pictures from your gallery) and breaks them into blocks; the blocks then break up, move, and transform (via various effects) into other pictures.

But the effect is cooler than that: the wallpaper is actually interactive, reacting to touch.

Oct

Bug In Angry Birds Lets You Unlock All Locked Worlds

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Games, News, Off-Topic, Tips & Tutorials

Have you ever wanted to peek ahead to those locked worlds in Angry Birds that are unavailable before fully completing the previous ones? A bug (or an Easter egg) in the Android version of the game lets you do just that, a reddit user braaaiins found. I tried it just a few minutes ago with 100% success.

Of course, many would argue that you should be going in order and playing the way Rovio meant for you to play, and I'd agree with them. However, there will always be people who would also find this unlock useful (lost game progress, new phone, angrybirdyism, etc), so I'll just put this here, and you can quietly walk away.

Oct

myTouch 4G ROM Already Up And Running On Nexus One, AndroidCentral Go Hands-On

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Development, HTC, myTouch 4G (Glacier), News, Nexus One (Passion)

As is traditional following the leak of a new ROM dump, developers have already set to work porting the novel Android flavour to other devices. As he did with the Desire HD ROM, XDA-developers' eVil D: has stepped forward to provide a working port of yesterday's HTC Glacier/myTouch 4G ROM to the Nexus One. Cautioning that he "may or may not support this", eVil D: goes on to describe the semi-functional state that the port is currently in:

What works:
Wifi
Radio
Bluetooth

What doesn't work:
camera/camcorder
videos
Wifi UMA calling = bootloop (you've been warned!)

Requirements:
Common Sense (this is a VERY EARLY build)
SDEXT (512mb) partition *Use clockworkmod or RA 1.9.0+

AndroidCentral got the ROM running on their own Nexus One, and their screenshots provide a good insight into the "Espresso" Sense UI of the myTouch 4G itself.

Oct

Verizon Announces Samsung Galaxy Tab Plans: Nov. 11th Release, $600 Off-Contract

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Galaxy Tab, News, Verizon Wireless

After an agonizing wait, we now know Verizon's plans for the Tab, right from the source itself. The tablet will be available three weeks from now, on the 11th of November, and the full retail price is to be $599.99 - although VZW has not disclosed any on-contract price. An optional $20/mo 1 GB tariff is alluded to but it is unclear whether or not this will bring with it a discount to the Tab's sticker price. If the MiFi iPad plan is any indication, this $20 monthly option may be a rolling 30 day contract without any device subsidy, but that is wait-and-see right now.

Oct

T-Mobile's HSPA+ "Not Ready In All Areas"

Posted by Brad Ganley in G2 (Vision), T-Mobile

Allen Kiehl over at AndroidSpin has recently posted a pretty unbelievable tale about his experience with network issues on his G2 and what T-Mobile recommends he do about them. The story starts out pretty commonplace: he was experience network issues such as dropped calls, not receiving calls or text messages at all, and a finicky data connection. All of these are symptoms of a bad device, right? Wrong.

What happened next blew both Allen and myself away. T-Mobile recommended he swap it out for an entirely different device or leave their network. Here is what they told him exactly:

I would recommend that you take advantage of the buyer's remorse program as we do not have an ETA when the issue will be resolved.

Oct

ZeptoLab, The Maker Of The Top iOS Game Cut The Rope, Promises An Android Version

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Games, News

Merely four days ago, @AndroidPolice (that's our Twitter account) tweeted out the following message:

"Cut The Rope" for iPhone is dubbed the next Angry Birds. Can we have that on Android please, @ZeptoLab? http://youtu.be/-1gf5UdYHwg

I don't know if ZeptoLab, the developer of this top paid iPhone game, was really listening or the timing was just right, but it seems to have answered our prayers with the following statement:

We plan to develop an Android version too, but it's still hard to give a release date.

Extremely vague, yes, but a little bit of patience never hurt anyone, right?

Oct

Coming Soon To CyanogenMod: Drunk Mode

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, News, Off-Topic

Remember when a new piece of code hit Gmail Labs called Mail Goggles - the one that made you do a few math problems before emailing somebody at pre-determined time-frames (such as late at night on the weekends)? Today, Brian was browsing the CyanogenMod (CM) Gerrit and noticed a new series of code - similar to Mail Goggles - has been added: Drunk Mode.

As I'm not a developer, I haven't the slightest idea how it works (and Brian is "in drunk mode" himself) - but I'd guess the "professional" in the description provides something of a hint. Also noteworthy: it has yet to be officially approved, although Cyanogen himself seems to be on-board with it, saying "This is hilarious and awesome, and I would take this feature..."

Now if only they could figure out something to prevent beer goggles....

Oct

HTC Desire HD Stricken With Proximity Sensor Issues?

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Desire HD (Ace), HTC, News

You may envy those who have their hands on a Desire HD already, but early-adoption is rose-like with its obligatory thorns attached. Many owners on XDA-Developers are reporting issues with their phone's screen when making and receiving calls. Outbound calls appear to deactivate the screen permanently and render the phone entirely unresponsive, save for a battery-pull and fresh boot. Receipt of calls conversely keeps the screen on and active, even when pressed against your ear.

The issue seems to be tied to the light-sensor , with some users noticing their device not experiencing the aforementioned problems in brightly-lit conditions. It seems like a buggy software implementation which should be quite easily fixed with an OTA, but it is unfortunate to see the device shipping with this misbehaviour included.

Oct

HTC's Rumoured Tablet Now Coming In Q2 2011 With Gingerbread On-Board?

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Devices By Manufacturer, HTC, News

Samsung may have its Android tablet out and about in Europe, but it looks like the other large Android manufacturers - Motorola and HTC - are just getting themselves into gear. Last month, DigiTimes reported some dubious rumours that Pegatron (a division of ASUS) had won the contract to manufacture HTC's tablet device with the following description:

HTC reportedly will launch a tablet PC using Nvidia's Tegra 2 platform and Google's Android operating system. The device will feature a multi-touch panel with a resolution of 1280×720, a 32GB solid state drive (SSD), 2GB of memory and several functions such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.