08
Nov
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It's been but a few weeks since Opera's announcement of Opera Mobile for Android at their Up North Web conference, and now the browser is out there navigating the maze of tubes that is the Internet. While they didn't quite meet their "within the month (October)" promise, we can forgive them for wanting to polish things a little further.

However, glancing at Opera Mobile for the first time, your look might be one of the askance variety; "What's this? It looks just like Opera Mini!". While this is true, the real differentiation in the Mobile version versus the Mini version is beneath the hood.

31
Oct
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Modder’s Column, formerly known as Modder’s Monday, is a column dedicated to rooting, hacking, and other forms of modifying Android and is written by Jaroslav Stekl, a man who spends his days coding, hacking, hiking, and of course, writing for Android Police.

A few editions back, I described several ways to customize your Android device. As you may recall, one of my main points was changing up the status bar using apps such as Date Status Bar, Memory Status, Status Toggle, and Battery Percentage. The last of those four apps in particular has one big issue: it places another icon in your status bar.

14
Oct
flash-fail-superhero[6]

Adobe's Flash Player for Android has topped a million downloads on the Market. Someone break out the special occasion custom label champagne. I really don't mean to be crass about Flash - but I can't help it.

Flash is the single most overhyped piece of software available for Android today, there's little in the way of getting around that statement. What has led me to such a conclusion? If the website of a restaurant I'm looking at on Yelp (an awesome piece of Android software) runs on a Flash interface, I just close the window. I have a Nexus One, it has Flash, and it runs CyanogenMod 6.

05
Oct
snap20101005_011709_wm

After months and months of waiting for a voice-enabled Skype to be out on Android and giving Verizon users an evil eye for that exclusive deal Skype signed with the largest US carrier, I am here to tell you that less than 2 hours ago, Skype officially hit the Market. This time, the long-awaited app is no longer restricted to Verizon, so download away (Android 2.1+ required)!

Update: the official Skype blog post is now live, including an intro video. It also acknowledges problems with Galaxy S phones.

Download

Without further ado, fire up that download and then read on for the details.

02
Oct
carhome in dock

With yesterday's release of the popular Car Home app directly into the Market, Google continued carrying on its mission to decouple Android applications previously integrated into the core of the Android OS. If you remember, the company did the same to Gmail last week, and Maps, Navigation, and Street View before that.

Have you been waiting to have one touch access to Pandora while driving or perhaps change that boring stock black background? The new Car Home allows users to add any application shortcuts to its dashboard as well as change the wallpaper. Excellent.

Another new feature is the ability to fire up Car Home when your handset connects to specific Bluetooth devices, such as your car's hands-free or your earpiece.

15
Sep
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We told you it was coming today, and indeed here it is - Fruit Ninja, one of the most popular iOS games just entered the Android world, powered by OpenFeint.

Download

You can download the game for $0.99 by clicking or scanning the barcode below:

QR code for https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.halfbrick.fruitninja

A Few Notes

  • it is quite big - almost 14MB, but it doesn't yet support apps2sd in Froyo. I'm sure that is coming later
  • the graphics, physics, UI - everything is very well done. It's a direct port from the iOS version using the NDK (Native Development Kit) - not a Java rewritten version
  • in my opinion, the copycats, such as Ninja Kaka and Fruit Pirate are nowhere near as good
  • the new Arcade mode is coming soon - for now it's only available on iOS

Screenshots

snap20100915_090902 snap20100915_090917  snap20100915_091209 snap20100915_091213 snap20100915_091223 snap20100915_091246 snap20100915_091253 snap20100915_091309 snap20100915_091317 snap20100915_091321 snap20100915_091328 snap20100915_091338 snap20100915_091559 snap20100915_091625

snap20100915_091348 image image

03
Sep
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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.

13
Aug
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Last Updated: August 15th, 2010

This file could make your phone permanently unusable (“bricked”). This update is ONLY for UK Dell Streak phones with the version _21 baseband (O2 phones). Do NOT flash this on a US Streak. As with all unofficial updates, flashing this is done at your own risk.

So you’ve read all about what features are coming in the Streak’s Eclair update, and the planned September release window. Well, some enterprising members over at the MoDaCo Android forum have managed to catch a pre-release version of the 2.1 update, purportedly a newer version than that tested in the original Engadget post.  There’s also an XDA thread on the update

DOWNLOAD: Dell Streak 2.1 Pre-Release For UK Streaks ONLY with version _21 baseband

The leak seems to only work on O2 UK models (serial XXX_21), so those with the factory unlocked SKU are currently out of luck.

12
Aug
tweetdeck

We leaked an early build of the TweetDeck for Android app yesterday, but now it seems the real deal is available to TweetDeck users. To obtain the beta, you must have a TweetDeck account (or create one), sign up here. The instructions for downloading and installing TweetDeck for Android, below (You still need to be signed up for the Beta Preview for the app to work):

Hi there!

Thank you for your interest in Android TweetDeck. We've been hard at work developing the next generation Deck experience and we're excited to give you a sneak peak.

Please use the TweetDeck account you signed up for the beta test with inside the Android application.

11
Aug
unrevokedforever

This tool does appear to do a permanent NAND unlock, irreversibly voiding your phone’s warranty, proceed with caution.[/note]

This night keeps getting better and better. The unrevoked team just announced the release of their anticipated Unrevoked Forever tool. What does it do? While the summary provided by unrevoked is a far better explanation, I’ll keep it short and sweet: once you install unrevoked forever, your phone can flash unsigned updates, no matter what, forever. At the moment, “your phone” must be an EVO 4G or an HTC Incredible and run the specified baseband versions as shown below.

Your phone must be rooted and running a custom recovery to apply the unrevoked forever update.zip.