Android - 152/166 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Sep

The State Of Android Fragmentation: Lookin' Pretty Good, Still Much Better Than iOS Fragmentation

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Android OS, Cupcake 1.5, Donut 1.6, Eclair 2.1, Froyo 2.2, News

It's that time of month again: Android's platform distribution numbers are up for the period ending September 1, and things are looking pretty good. Android 2.1 is up to nearly 41.7% of the market, and 2.2 checks in at 28.7% - between the two, 70% of Android phones are running 2.1 or better.

Android 1.5 and 1.6 still measure at a combined 29.5% of all devices. Obviously, any number above 0 isn't good, but as long as the rate is dropping, we'll take it.

In early August, we found some data from Chitika which suggested that fragmentation is worse in iOS than Android.

Sep

TweetDeck For Android v0.9.8 Arrives, Brings Pie, Candy, Widgets

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

TweetDeck for Android, which got immensely popular ever since its first public release a month ago, just got an update which finally brought the missing and very much anticipated widget support. After updating, you will find not 1, not 2, but 3 different widgets.

Changelog

Here is the changelog:

New "Quick post" widget
New "Column" widget
New "Quick launch bar" widget
All new Add Column interface
Fixed various bugs and improved performance

The Widgets

Check out all of the new widgets in the screenshots I just took:

the top one is TweetDeck Column which turns into a quick view of one of your columns.

Sep

Scoreloop Adds PayPal Payment Solution - Hello Google? You Home?

Posted by Andrew Huff in Apps/Games, Games, News

While we all wait for Google to officially institute PayPal as a payment option in the Android Market, Scoreloop has decided to beat Google to it by including it in their latest update. Developers who use Scoreloop with their games can now use PayPal to offer in-game purchases to gamers.

Freemium

In-game purchasing is the key to many games success, and its implementation is essential if Google would like to lure developers to their platform. This business model, known as Freemium, allows gamers to get the full version of a game that would otherwise be a paid application and in exchange, the developer can offer premium in-game content for a fee.

Sep

The King Lives! Nexus One Developer Phones Back In Stock

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Development, Google, HTC, News, Nexus One (Passion)

The Nexus One died for the general public, sadly, but continued to live on with the help of Google's own ADP (Android Developer Phone) program.

For an unsubsidized but reasonable price of $529, registered Android Market publishers (anyone can be for $25) could purchase this masterpiece, even though it was canned by Google and sold out pretty much everywhere else... until it sold out even as the ADP 3 weeks ago.

Nexus One Stock Update

Developers grew sad but Google got to work and started pestering HTC for more units. Happily, I can tell you that the Nexus One developer phone is available once again, this time with this friendly note:

Please Note: The limit of phone purchases has changed to 10 phones per transaction.

Sep

Camera ZOOM FX Review + Giveaway

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in App Reviews, Applications, Contests / Giveaways, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

When it comes to photo editing on the fly, there are usually two kinds of apps: those intended for mindless fun, and those intended for actual work. Without a doubt, Camera ZOOM FX falls into the latter category, along with its mediocre UI, strange (though not necessarily poor) selection of effects, and (relatively) low price tag. So is it worth a look? A purchase? Read on for the full Android Police review.

The Review

Design

Like I said in the introduction, Camera ZOOM FX's design is not exactly my definition of sexy. The problems begin when you first open the app and discover just how ugly the UI is.

Sep

Unrevoked 3.2 Is Out - Brings 1-Click Froyo Root To EVO 4G, Incredible, Desire, Aria, Eris, Wildfire; NAND Unlock/S-OFF To EVO 4G, Incredible, Desire

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Aria (Liberty), Desire (Bravo/BravoC), Development, Eris, EVO 4G (Supersonic), Froyo 2.2, Incredible, News, Wildfire (Buzz)

This is seriously impressive stuff - the guys from the unrevoked team did it again, and this version 3.2 is definitely their best release yet. Most of the credit, outside of the core unrevoked team, belongs to Sebastian Krahmer for discovering the exploit that works on all supported phones.

This article mentions rooting, Nandroid, and flashing of custom ROMs. If you’re unfamiliar with some of the terms, hit up our primers here:

Unrevoked 3.2 Features

One-click root without reinstalling/reflashing/wiping your existing stock Android OS.

Sep

August Quantcast Numbers: Android Gaining Ground In Mobile Web Battlefield, Stealing Share From Every Other Platform

Posted by Brad Ganley in News

The mobile industry is a very competitive, complicated, fast changing world. The name of the game, though, is simple: get your product out there, get people using it, and do it fast. Quantcast, a company that specializes in the world of internet usage trends, recently released some information showing how well the players in the mobile OS and software game are doing. The information is intriguing, to say the least.

There are several things we can take away from this information, the number one being that Android is definitely stepping its game. In the past year, the number of mobile internet users toting Android devices has increased by 18.6%, bringing Android's consumption share to an impressive 25%.

Sep

Dual-Mode Android HTC Slider Coming To Verizon

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in HTC, News, Verizon Wireless

Thanks to the FCC, we now have pictures and details on a new dual-band Android device for Verizon. It looks pretty similarly-proportioned to Samsung's Epic 4G, and that may not necessarily be a bad thing. The details we have at the moment:

4" Screen
Both CDMA and GSM radios on-board (EV-DO Rev. A, also)
802.11 b/g/n
Slide-out four row QWERTY keyboard
Dark silver body, keyboard backing is bright red with black keys

The device (the "PD42100" - catchy) is also rumored to have a 1.2 GHz CPU. Thus far nobody has been able to confirm or deny that though, so take it with a grain of salt.

Sep

Angry Birds Beta For Android Is Here - Download It From The Market

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Games, News

Angry Birds, one of the top selling games for the iPhone, hit the Anroid Market this morning.

Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds, promised an off-Market beta earlier this week, but got so much positive response that it decided a Lite Beta version in the Market was actually a much better idea. In fact, the Android launch is turning out to be so popular that Rovio's own servers are are too overloaded to handle all the traffic.

Gameplay

The premise behind the game is simple - you use a sling and launch angry, bickering, round birds at pigs cowardly sitting in their forts.

Sep

[Epic Lulz Thursday] Prank Your Friends With Shavester And Watch Them Freak Out

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications

I'm not usually a supporter of apps that don't have much of a purpose, especially the ones that fall under the "pranks" category. Now, I say "usually" because most of the time these apps are pretty stupid (I'm looking at you, iFarts) or not very prank-worthy.

Rarely, however, worthy apps do come out, and the recent Shavester is one of them - it caught my attention due to the freakout potential of turning your merry friends into something like Britney here, except not as happy, if only for just a few seconds.

The premise behind Shavester is very simple:

Step 1: Install the app and start it.