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Oct

Samsung's Mobile President: The Galaxy Nexus Was Designed With Patents In Mind

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Galaxy Nexus, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, News, Samsung

It seems that these days, Samsung must constantly be on alert for new entries in the ever-growing list of patent disputes with Apple. Sensing this, Samsung's Mobile President, Shin Jong-kyun (who we heard from at last night's presentation) took a moment to stress the fact that the Galaxy Nexus was designed with patents in mind - specifically, it was designed to avoid trouble with Apple. While it is a rectangular device with a touch screen, not much else seems to put it in danger.

What's interesting is that Shin decided to speak to the subject at all. Gizmodo reports that Samsung's Mobile President "claims that no 'known' Apple patent was used in the Galaxy Nexus."

I find it somewhat curious that Shin would specify this regarding the Galaxy Nexus - does this suggest that patents were knowingly violated in the past?

Oct

Ice Cream Sandwich Feature Closer Look - Redesigned Lock Screen And Virtual Button Bar

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, News

Adding to the heap of shiny new features brought to us in Ice Cream Sandwich, we've got a new lock screen, and of course the fabled virtual button bar.

The redesigned lock screen allows for simple unlocking, or unlocking to the camera app instantly (which, by the way, has zero shutter lag). That's not all it has to offer, though. Users can now swipe down the notification bar to get a peek at what's happening without unlocking their phone. Additionally, the time indicator in the upper right corner is now gone, eliminating the redundancy found in previous iterations of Android.

Next up is the virtual button bar, a feature that has been rumored since the very dawn of Ice Cream Sandwich rumors.

Oct

[Monthly Home Screen Challenge, October 2011] Post Your Android Home Screen, Win An Android Police Shirt

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Development, Home Screen Challenge

Last Updated: January 3rd, 2012

Creating an aesthetically pleasing home screen for your phone or tablet has become an art in itself, and an entire ecosystem packed with widgets, themes, wallpapers, launchers, and custom ROMs has built up to support it. Sometimes, it can be tough to find a winning combination of elements to create a beautiful and enduring home screen that provides both form and function.

For this reason, we have decided to open up a call for gorgeous, well-decorated home screens of all shapes and sizes. Each month we will select the very best home screen configuration(s) and completely break it down into its component parts, providing you with all the necessary information to create your own awesome home screen.

Oct

The Winner Of The Creative Banner Design Contest And The Owner Of A Brand New Lenovo IdeaPad K1 Is...

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Contests / Giveaways, IdeaPad K1

Last Updated: November 23rd, 2011

As you guys should already know, from time to time we mix things up a bit and run creative giveaways that give the most talented of our readers a real chance to win something big. Remember the 404 page design (also see this), which happens to be my favorite contest so far?

The banner design contest was created to run in a similar vein, and now that we've finally had enough time to sort through all the submission (there were over 150 links to look through), we decided to award the prize, a brand new Lenovo IdeaPad K1 Tegra 2 tablet, generously provided by NVIDIA, to...

Sep

Editorial: Why On-Screen Virtual Buttons In Android Ice Cream Sandwich Will Be Great

Posted by Ron Amadeo in Android OS, Editorials, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0

Last Updated: June 29th, 2012

Ice Cream Sandwich will be the first phone version of Android to support virtual buttons. It seems like a lot of people don’t "get" the whole idea behind them. If used correctly, virtual buttons will be way better than the painted on Back/Home/Menu/Search we have now. So I figured I would lay out the benefits for everyone and hopefully start a nice discussion.

For starters, virtual buttons are much better UI

They can change orientation with the phone so they are always in the same place.
Situational buttons (like Menu and Search) can disappear when they are unusable. You’ll no longer have to guess if Menu will do something.

Sep

Creative Contest: Design Our New Banner, Win A 32GB Lenovo IdeaPad K1 Honeycomb Tablet

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Contests / Giveaways, IdeaPad K1, Lenovo

Last Updated: October 3rd, 2011

Out of all the giveaway/contests we do here at AP, my favorites always end up being the creative kinds because they always leave us with long-lasting memories and give a chance to truly talented people who put in work into their entries. Such were the photo, the Twitter design, t-shirt design, and most recently the 404 page design giveaways (the last one being my favorite).

The Contest

It's now time to launch another creative giveaway because 1) everyone likes free stuff and 2) we need banners.

Good banners. Creative banners. Banners we won't be embarrassed to give our partners and fans to put on their sites.

Aug

Here Are The 20 Best "404 Page Not Found" Contest Design Entries - Vote For Your Favorites

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Contests / Giveaways, G2x (p999), LG, Polls

Last Updated: September 3rd, 2011

Taking a break from our regular social giveaways, last week we announced a creative contest to see which one of our readers can come up with the most creative 404 Page Not Found page for the site and in exchange win a brand new T-Mobile G2x Tegra-powered phone from NVIDIA.

Throughout the contest, I found myself absolutely blown away by some of your submissions, finding it harder and harder to decide who presented the best design. Now that I've sorted all 140 or so entries and selected the 20 best ones, I'm going to let all of you help us decide instead.

May

[Awesome] Shirts By Droidarmy - This Is The Army You'll Want To Join

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News, Off-Topic

We love Android shirts. Really. To the point of considering wearing something like this.

So when Malc Foy emailed us a tip about a group of like-minded artists working on a series of mashup Android characters, we had to check it out.

It's called Droidarmy and so far contains over 20 designs, about a third of which I suddenly want to wear. Here they all are:

My Favorites

Here are some of my favorites:

Droidbird

Droidberg - though I already own this one.

Darth

DroidBorg

Bonus

I actually like this shirt the most, but for some reason it's not tagged as Androidarmy.

Apr

Autodesk-expands-power-of-Windows-7-certified-AutoCAD-2011-with-new-features-for-conceptual-design-and-drafting-productivity-02

AutoDesk To Bring AutoCAD To Android On April 20

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

If you're a designer, architect, or construction contractor (or know someone who is) then there's a good chance that you've heard of AutoCAD. For those that haven't - AutoCAD is software made for 2D/3D design and drafting - and now it's coming to Android. There has been a version available for iOS under the name AutoCAD WS for some time now, and with the increasing number of requests for an Android version, AutoDesk decided that it was time to oblige.

The mobile versions of the AutoCAD software is not meant for exclusive use, though - it's more of a "lite" version.

Jan

Amazing Android Phone Concept With 3 Flexible AMOLED Screens Blends Reality With Fantasy [Video]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News, Videos

I have a soft spot for well done demoes, even if they exist only in concept form, and today's design by Kristian Ulrich Larsen fits right into this category (did you really expect anything else from a designer with such an awesome name?).

If you liked Mozilla's Seabird concept, you're going to love the Flip Phone, which features 3 flexible, curved AMOLED screens connected by "soft steel mesh hinges," which allow this device to morph into multiple configurations, each offering something different to its user. It has a keyboard (and a pretty sexy one at that) and a camera. Who needs a dedicated kickstand when it can stand on its own?