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May

[APK Teardown] Google Glass XE5 - A "Take A Note" And Menu Voice Commands, More Wink Work, And Localization Progress

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, Glass, Google, News

Man, Google Glass moves at the speed of light. This is crazy.

The big XE5 update just hit the interwebs, so that means it's time for a teardown! XE5 is still Android 4.0.4 based, but now we're up to build 4.0.4-665738; the old version was 4.0.4-625737.

The Glass Team is still extraordinarily messy; any new file usually has copies in a million different locations. Basically, everything ships in every APK. Maybe the Glass Team is using extremely bad organization as a form of Teardown obfuscation. (It's not working.)

Take A Note

It looks like note taking is coming to Google Glass!

May

[APK Teardown] Google Glass "XE4" System Dump - Are You A Typophile?

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, Glass

Despite not (yet) having Google Glass, I've managed to get a hold of a system dump, so it's time to have some fun for the day and see if Glass has any (more) hidden goodies for us. It'll also be fun to see just what makes Glass tick, and how the OS is laid out.

APK Teardown is usually at its best when I have a previous version to diff against and, you know, when I've actually used or at least seen the software in question. I don't have any of those benefits for this teardown, so things could get interesting.

Apr

[APK Teardown] Google Games, Anyone? Play Services Is Getting Real-Time And Turn-Based Multiplayer, Invitations, In-Game Chat, Lobbies, Leaderboards, And Achievements!

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, News

Last Updated: April 20th, 2013

We've got a good one for you today. A teardown of MyGlass, yes that's right, the Google Glass companion app, has given us what looks like the entire Google Games Service feature list. You just can't make this stuff up.

The games service probably has nothing to do with Google Glass; Glass can't run complex apps. The Glass team accidentally shipped the full suite of Google Play Services with their new app, which is not normal. This included a never-before-seen backend for an extensive multiplayer gaming service, with just about every gaming feature you could possibly imagine.

Background

To understand just what has happened, and why this is not related to Glass at all, we've got to talk about "GMS." GMS originally stood for "Google Mobile Services"; they changed the name to "Google Play Services," but never changed the acronym.

Apr

[APK Teardown] Google Voice 0.4.2.80 - Something Wants To Read Google Voice’s Settings

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, News

For the first time in a million years, Google Voice got an actual update. While the changelog is, as usual, of no help whatsoever ("Improved the reliability of SMS delivery"), a teardown teases out an eyebrow-raising tidbit: Google Voice’s configuration settings can now be read by other apps.

The GV update comes packing a new service for handing out this info, called “GoogleVoiceConfiguration,” and a new permission, "com.google.android.apps.googlevoice.permission.FETCH_CONFIGURATION."

There’s an explanation of the permission in the strings file:

<string name="google_voice_fetch_configuration_permission_label">Read Google Voice configuration</string>
<string name="google_voice_fetch_configuration_permission_description">Allows applications to read the configuration of Google Voice, including your Google Voice phone number.</string>

That's about it for the cold, hard facts.

Apr

[APK Teardown Exclusive] The HTC Myst Facebook Phone - The Facebook App Is Now A Launcher, Looks Like They're Planning A Play Store Release, Too

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, Exclusives, HTC, News

We've managed to score a system dump of the Facebook phone! There's nothing in it that's too earthshattering, and you could probably guess most of the features, but, since we've got it, we might as well take a look at it.

[This is not an April Fool's joke. I promise.]

Now, this being Facebook, nothing really works unless you sign in. The problem is, all of this is pre-release, so it's set up to only work for Facebook employee accounts. Everything is basically packing unintentional always-on DRM, so screenshots are going to be a little sparse. This is all it will do right now:

Build.Prop Specs

The build.prop file will give us a basic idea of the phone this ROM is meant for, so let's take a look.

Mar

[APK Teardown] Gmail 4.3 - Seven Unused Notification Actions, 'Whoosh Zoom,' And Some Kind Of Half-Working Google+ Integration

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, News

Gmail 4.3 recently hit the streets, bringing with it a long-awaited (by me, at least) ability to archive email directly from the notification panel. It's awesome. But what else did Google sneak into our phones and tablets with this update? Let's find out.

Fair warning: this is going to be one of those teardown sessions that raises more questions than answers, so bring your speculation hat.

Experimental Preferences

Gmail has always had this wacky file in it called "experimental_preferences.xml." I've mostly ignored it, because it has only ever had two relatively-boring things in it: "full text search," which works already; and "Enable drag and drop contact chip," which would let you type a name into the "To:" field and move it to something like "CC:" by dragging it.

Feb

[APK Teardown] Google Maps 6.14.3 - Next Stop: Lane Guidance

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, News

Ok, here's a short and sweet edition of APK Teardown coming your way. Prepare yourself.

What's the one remaining thing a standalone GPS unit can do that Google Maps can't? (Besides work offline) Lane guidance.

Right now, Google Maps would best be described as "Turn guidance." It will tell you when to make a right turn, but that's about it. Lane guidance is a step further: Your next exit is coming up on the right, and a TomTom (pictured) will better prepare you to make the exit by directing you to the right hand lane in advance. This saves you the surprise "turn right" command which suddenly means you need to cut across 40 lanes of traffic.

Feb

[APK Teardown] Google+ 3.5.3 - An "Apps" Main Menu Icon? A "Manage Apps" Settings Section? What Is Going On Here?

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, Features, News

Last Updated: February 26th, 2013

In the recent weeks, Google+ has had 2 pretty low-profile updates. The first one added a notification tray, and the most recent one was supposedly just a bug fix release, but they've both been adding new things, presumably for a coming update. Yes, it's teardown time.

These teardown sessions seems to get more and more mysterious and strange as time goes on, and frankly I'm really not sure what's going on with these updates. I'm just going to lay out the facts first, and I'll throw some theories at you at the end. So put on your investigation hats - this should be fun.

Feb

[APK Teardown] [Update: Art Project Is A Google Site!] Google Search 2.3 - New Features For Flights, And What The Heck Is 'Art Project'?

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, Features

The Google Search app just got updated, so that means it's teardown time! I still rip into every interesting Google update, but I only write an article when I find something interesting. Things have been slim lately, I know, but today there's good news! I found stuff.

Google Search is the hardest app teardown to do. You can never really be sure if what you've found is in the app or not, because everything is so predictive and context heavy. So I'll just aim for "new stuff that's not in the change log." If you find any of this in the actual app, let me know.

Dec

[APK Teardown] The Mysterious Leftovers Special: The Jandycane Logo, Google+'s Coffee Mug Notification, And Lightcycle Instructions

Posted by Ron Amadeo in APK Teardown, Jelly Bean 4.1, Jelly Bean 4.2, News

Normally I rip apart APKs looking for news-worthy items and unreleased features, but I've covered everything that's currently out, so this teardown session is going to be a little different. During my usual digging for features, I've stumbled across a surprising amount of unused files, movie references, and canceled beta assets. I've always thought it was a shame that no one knows about them, so today we'll be exploring all the crazy leftover files that ship on our phones and tablets. If you've ever checked out the deleted scenes section of a DVD, this article will be right up your alley.