Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
This is the app roundup. The game roundup from last week can be found here.
Today's roundup is brought to you by PassWallet (formerly Password Wallet) by HandyApps. Passwords are hard, thanks to the thousands of logins required for modern digital living.
Today, Facebook announced the Facebook Home suite that we've been hearing so much about. Well, to be more accurate, we've been hearing that Facebook is going to build its own phone and fork Android and create its own special social OS and that it would be the end of Google and that civilization will crash around us and we'll all wear monkey pelts and "Like" statuses by hurling spears through our enemies. Or something. Well, as it turns out, the world didn't end, Android is still whole, and Zuckerberg even thinks the idea of forking an entire OS to make an app is silly.
comScore just dropped some new U.S. market share numbers on us and if you like drama, you're going to love this one. According to the analytics company, for the three month period ending in February 2013, Android's share actually dropped 2%, while Apple's rose 3.9%. Before you panic, though, no, this isn't the end of the world.
Since comScore actually gives us the total number of smartphone subscribers in the country (by its count), we can use that percentage to get an idea of just how many total users a platform gained or lost. There were 133.7m total smartphone users in February, versus 123.3m in November.
Go ahead and file this one in the Super Cool Tech category. A Russian blog, Rozetked.ru, posted video of a Galaxy S2 running two copies of Android at the same time. The three-and-a-half minute video takes us through a demo switching between a pair of ROMs while playing music from both, proving that the hardware resources can be shared. After the audio segment, we are shown decently high frame rates on a 3D benchmarking app and Angry Birds. According to the team behind the project, running two concurrent instances of Android only takes about 10% off of battery life while the impact on system speed is negligible.
It's time for us to come clean. We've been collectively living a lie, Android fans. Hiding our deepest desires and hoping they go away. Praying that maybe, Duarte willing, that we'll get something that's close enough that we'll be satisfied. But no more! Today, we shed the façade and embrace the truth: all we really want is a clean, simple UI that's not cluttered by drawers, widgets, or icons in shapes other than rounded squares. Oh yes, and slide-to-unlock. Glorious slide-to-unlock. Well, now we can have it with the Screen Locker plugin for Espier Launcher.
The plugin is an addition to the Espier Launcher that gives you the look and feel of the OS you've always dreamed of.
The Kindle Fire HD is, at the moment, the best Android tablet that's not really an Android tablet but is still kind of an Android tablet. The LTE model, while pricier than the others, is handy for those that still need to download on the go. Now, AT&T is going to start selling the connected model for $399.
As a temporary introductory offer, AT&T has a "deal" that allows customers to sign a 2-year contract in exchange for $150 off. Unless you know for absolutely certain that you'll need to use mobile data on that Kindle Fire HD every single month for the next two years, though, you might be better off just paying for your device.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
This edition focuses only on new games. The app roundup is coming up soon.
Today's roundup is presented by Strategy & Tactics: WW II from HeroCraft. You could be forgiven for thinking that this turn-based strategy game looks a lot like Risk, but instead of Napoleonic struggles, the digital adaptation takes the battlefield to WWII-era Europe.
April Fool's 2013 is here (at least in some time zones), and the Internet has already given birth to a few early pranks. We will spend the next two days second-guessing every piece of written content, getting rickrolled, and generally feeling the way members of bomb squads do on their missions.And we will hate love every minute of it.
So, let's take a look at the best Android, mobile, and Google-related jokes that hit the web this year.
*** This page will be continuously updated ***
Facebook is throwing an Android event at its headquarters in Menlo Park in exactly a week - on April 4th at 10am Pacific to be precise. We've just gotten our invite, and from the looks of it, so has the majority of the Android and tech press. Needless to say, Facebook wants as many eyes as possible on whatever it's about to announce, be it a new Facebook-heavy phone, another app, or maybe even a full-fledged Android-based Facebook OS not tied to specific hardware.
Judging by the "Come see our new home on Android" motto, I highly doubt it's going to be a single app or an app update.
Yesterday, we finally decided to get to the bottom of Google Keep's new font, Roboto Slab. Shortly before that, however, we had an internal discussion about Keep's strange UI/UX. The app is beautiful – there's no denying that – but weird when considered alongside Google's other in-house apps. What's more, I'm of the opinion that the app isn't just a one-off in terms of design – I think that Keep, along with a few other hints, could give us some insight into what we'll see in the next version of Android (which we might see in May at Google I/O).
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