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

May

Flipboard 2.0 Released, Brings Magazine Creation Tools, Web Interface, And Native Sharing Integration

Posted by Kyle Wiggers in Applications, News

To be perfectly honest, I'm not much of an e-mag guy. I tried Google Currents for a while, but never quite saw the utility of it, and so quickly transitioned back to my beloved Feedly and Google Reader. That's not to say I haven't realized the limitations of RSS many times, though, especially as certain websites I follow look to integrate more multimedia into articles. (Having to use Chrome to listen to audio or video in a weird custom player is really frustrating.) And concededly, apps like Currents look a thousand times better than feeds, which are traditionally text-heavy.

A major update to Flipboard, released today to Google Play, may just get me to reconsider magazine-style news apps.

Mar

Chameleon Launcher 2.0 Brings Phone Optimization, Multiple Home Screens, Widget Enhancements To Kickstarter Backers

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

In a post to its official blog today, the team behind Chameleon Launcher announced version 2.0, which simultaneously hit the Play Store. The update, which is – for now – only available to Kickstarter backers and pre-order customers, brings a handful of popularly requested features. Perhaps the biggest of these is optimization for the small screen. Yes, Chameleon is now specifically optimized to work on your smartphone as well as it does on your tablet.

As part of the optimization (which supports screen resolutions of 720x1280 and up), Chameleon has gained the ability to hold multiple home screens in each context.

Feb

Silence Updates To Version 2.0, Gets New UI, Calendar Integration, Recurring Events, And More

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

Handy volume control app Silence got a nice update today to version 2.0. The update, besides introducing a new (holo) interface, adds a ton of new functionality. So much, in fact, that the app's functionality now overshadows its simple name.

For starters, the update adds Google Calendar integration (for Android 4.0+), and support for recurring events, each with their own volume profile. Users can configure the events to repeat until a given date, and the app can control notification, media, and alarm volumes with individual levels for each. Oh, and Silence can toggle mobile data, though that feature is currently in beta.

Dec

RockPlayer v2 Comes Out Sporting A Brand New UI, Sharing Between Devices, Gesture Control And More

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, News

Forget all those people streaming their movies from the likes of Netflix and Hulu. You like to have a proper collection of video files. You want to own them and watch them wherever you want. RockPlayer, the all-purpose media player app for Android, has been a crowd favorite for just this purpose for a while, even if it's been lacking a bit of luster. Well, today that changes with a huge update to the interface that makes it both prettier and far more functional.

Have a look at the before and after:

^Before

As you can see, the old version is all Gingerbread-y and has a god awful, ugly interface for exploring videos with no indication of what you're about to play besides the name.

Dec

[Update: It's Live] Facebook's Big 2.0 Update Is Coming Today, Ditching The Slow HTML5 Rendering For Native Code

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, News

Last Updated: December 29th, 2012

We've known it's coming for a while and, per today's announcement, it will finally be here soon: Facebook's revamp of its Android app that will bring a proper, native UI as opposed to the mostly HTML5-based web viewer that's been powering the application for so long. The result is photos, the news feed, and timelines will load at least twice as fast, according to the company.

The company touts speed as the big improvement here, and it's sorely needed. For example, garbage collection was optimized to make photos load much quicker. In terms of new features, the company also built a new banner that will allow you to jump to new stories that have appeared in the feed while you're reading, no matter how far down the list you are.

Oct

Skitch Updated To Version 2.0 With Revamped Interface, Improved Evernote Integration, New Markup Tools

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

Skitch, a popular annotation and sharing app, received an update to version 2.0 today with a redesigned interface, a handful of useful markup tools, and improved Evernote integration.

For those unaware, Skitch is an app that allows users to "communicate visually with friends, co-workers, or anyone." Essentially, it can draw in resources like notes, photos, screenshots, or maps, and then add markup to convey ideas or highlight important aspects of the document for later reference or sharing. The app was acquired by Evernote late last year, and today's 2.0 update gives Skitch the "full Evernote treatment."

This not only means a new interface, but full Evernote sync with improved integration (when Evernote is installed), the ability to view and edit Skitch notes made using the app on other platforms, and last but not least, a couple of new editing tools including a pixelator and highlighter.

Sep

Google Play Services Can Now Be Installed Manually From The Play Store

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Android OS, Applications, Google, News

Just after initially unveiling Google Play Services, Google has made the APK installable directly from the Play Store.

For those who missed the announcement, Google Play Services is an APK rolling out automatically to devices running Android 2.2+ that will allow Android apps to easily integrate with Google services like Google+. At present, the app (which is in version 1.0 "Asiago") includes components and relevant client APIs for OAuth 2.0 authentication, Google+ sign-in, and Google+ +1 buttons. Google assures users that "we anticipate more Google services to be continuously added, so be on the lookout for these updates."

The Google Play Services app began rolling out through the Play Store automatically, primarily in order to keep updates to the service independent of carrier or OEM updates.

Aug

Facedroid Updated To Version 2.0 – Gets Visual Overhaul, Groups, "Heaps" Of Bug Fixes

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

Facedroid, Platinum Apps' tablet-centric Facebook client, got a major update today, bringing the app up to version 2.0.

For those who aren't familiar, Facedroid, which was released back in December of 2011, is a powerful Facebook client that looks to replace – and improve upon – Facebook's own mobile experience. The app does everything you'd expect and more, allowing for quick browsing, sharing, and updating, and its 2.0 update brings even more functionality, along with a guidelines-inspired redesign.

Besides the visual overhaul, the 2.0 update adds the ability to view and manage friend "Groups," improved optimization for 7" devices, performance improvements, a new Settings section, and "heaps" of bug fixes.

Aug

Script Kitty Automates Execution Of Scripts On Remote Servers Through SSH, Belongs In Every Admin's Toolbox [Hands-On]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Script Kitty has actually been around for a while, but after receiving its 2.0 update last week, it's now a serious contender for one of those must-have apps (at least for anyone with an ssh-enabled server). I downloaded and set it up in a matter of a few minutes (including generating an RSA key for key-based auth and adding said key to a few Linux servers), and now have a stupid easy way of doing certain things very quickly without having to even resort to ConnectBot.

What is Script Kitty?

Here's the gist: if you have repetitive tasks, such as checking available disk space or quickly restarting apache on all your servers, Script Kitty is the app for the job.

Jun

Google Drive SDK Version 2 Announced With Full Mobile Support For Android, More File Operations

Posted by John Thompson in News

The Google Drive SDK has only been available since April, but there's already a new update on the horizon.

Version 2 of the SDK, which has just been announced by Google, now includes full mobile support for both Android and iOS apps, allowing mobile apps to read and write directly to Google Drive. Android Drive users will also be able to choose from a list of supported applications when opening a file from Drive, allowing them to edit files on the go using either a phone or tablet.

In addition to this, the new API has added a number of methods that were previously unavailable to developers, such as the ability to list and search files, convert between formats and share files with other users.