facebook - 10/13 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Oct

[Keyboard App Shootout Part 2] Swiftkey X Wants To Read Your Mind... And Everything Else You've Ever Written

Posted by Ron Amadeo in Features, Keyboard Shootout, Reviews

The Keyboard App Shootout is back! In today's crosshairs: Swiftkey X.

Swiftkey's driving theory is that, with enough information about you, it can predict what you want to type. Seriously. They even use the phrase "mind-reading" on their website. How do they expect to get to "mind-reading" levels? Well, they basically want to scan everything you've ever written. Swiftkey can mine your text messages, Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, and even your blog's RRS feed for sweet, sweet data about your typing habits. They feed all this data though a "ground-breaking artificial intelligence engine that uses word context and personalized language models to think about words like you do".

Sep

Captain Unobvious Tip: New Facebook For Android Has Swipe-To-Delete For Wall Posts And Comments, Swipe-To-Archive For Messages

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News, Tips & Tutorials

If you belong to the dying breed of people still using Facebook (at least that's what everyone on Google+ seems to think), I think you will find today's tip quite handy, to say the least.

As it turns out, you can actually delete wall posts and comments (on your own wall or ones you created) as well as archive messages all by swiping away the item in question. Both left-to-right and right-to-left gestures seem to work, though left-to-right is a bit more reliable and natural.

Note: The gesture doesn't work everywhere - for example, it didn't work when I tried to swipe away a post by page (Android Police), probably because it still uses the old layout.

Sep

Facebook For Android Updated To v1.7, Brings Pull-To-Refresh, New Sharing & Tagging Options, Photo Swiping, More - Finally Back In The Tablet Market Too

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

Facebook for Android got one step closer to being a viable replacement for its online counterpart today, after receiving an update today that brought several anticipated sharing, privacy, and interface changes.

Users now have access to the same privacy controls for posts as in Facebook's online interface and can tag friends and places as well. The update also brings improved messages and notifications, fixes for performance issues, and a couple of interface changes including redesigned profile and group walls, and a swipe interface for photo browsing. The developers have also added some other subtle enhancements such as pull-to-refresh capabilities iOS users are already so used to.

Aug

[Giant Giveaway #6: Supercharged Edition] Win A Free Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 With A Tegra Zone Power Pack For Doing Close To Nothing!

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Contests / Giveaways, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Samsung

Last Updated: September 5th, 2011

In order to celebrate today's launch of TegraZone.com, the updated Tegra Zone Android app, and the new and really awesome Tegra-optimized game called Sprinkle, for our 6th giant giveaway we've once again partnered with NVIDIA, but this time the main prize - a 16GB Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 - is accompanied by a smashing bonus: the Tegra Zone power pack.

"What goes into this Pack?" you might ask, and I'll tell you. The Tegra Zone power pack consists of:

a Samsung keyboard dock, which retails for about $80 - see our review
a Jawbone JAMBOX bluetooth speaker, which retails for about $200
a $25 AMEX gift card so you can load up your new Tab 10.1 with some apps right away

The winner of the giveaway will receive both the Tab 10.1 and the power pack, so I hope by now the "Supercharged" part of the title is starting to make a bit more sense.

Aug

[New App] 'Pops' Brings Vivid Animated Notifications To Your Android Phone

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

If you've ever received a notification and thought to yourself, "I really wish my phone would play some colorful and fun animation every time I get a message," then there's no doubt that Pops is the app for you.

Calling itself the "ringtone for the smartphone generation," Pops is an app that lets you customize notifications for certain apps, namely Gmail, SMS, Facebook, and Twitter, with full-screen animations. To get a better idea of what it's all about, here is a video showcasing most of its features:

As you can see, Pops is an... interesting idea. It allows you to be more aware of specific events on your phone and adds a certain amount of flare and personality to the activity.

Aug

[Review] If Facebook Messenger Can Keep Sync Instant And Reliable, It Is Worth Your Time

Posted by Matt Demers in App Reviews, Applications

A while ago, I had a chance to review an app called Beluga. At first, it looked like it could be a cross-platform answer to BBM, the popular instant message service that comes standard with all Blackberrys. As a cross-platform solution, it worked well.

However, one of the problems with Beluga was that even though it was good in theory, there wasn't the user base to keep it afloat. You either had to convince your friends to use an untested product, or go back to SMS.

So when Beluga was bought by Facebook earlier this year, all signs pointed to the social networking company moving into Blackberry and Apple's messaging market.

Aug

[Update: Now Available] Facebook Introduces Messenger, A Powerful Mobile Extension To Chat

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Applications, News

It looks like Facebook is putting its purchase of group messaging app Beluga to good use, as it just announced Messenger, a mobile app for Android and iOS that acts as a sort of extension to Chat. In addition to the aforementioned group chat ability, Messenger's goal is also to simplify all your conversations, whether it be through Chat, Messages, email, or text. Photo and location sharing options are also available.

~~Messenger is not yet available, but should be launching today, so we'll make sure to let you know as soon as it hits the Android Market~~. The app is now live in the Market, hit the widget below to grab it.

Jul

[Giant Giveaway #4] Win A Free Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 From Android Police And Thumb Keyboard For Doing Close To Nothing

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Contests / Giveaways, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Samsung

Last Updated: July 28th, 2011

In the past few months, we have been giving away various devices in what I dubbed the "Giant Giveaway" series. Despite having given away 3 tablets (the XOOM, the G-Slate, and the Tab 10.1) already, we're not planning on slowing down; in fact, we're going to accelerate the giveaway process. Rather than keep the giveaways open for 2 weeks, we're going to run them for only about 5-7 days instead, as otherwise our shelves will collapse under the weight of all the goodies and ruin them, and we don't want that, do we?

In the spirit of letting you guys in on the best gadgets the market has to offer, today we are excited to announce that the prize for this week's giveaway will be the 32GB Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Wi-Fi edition (up from the 16GB version in the last giveaway).

Jul

FriendCaster Tab Gets A Complete Facelift, Brings All New Features

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

Even though FriendCaster Tab was "Honeycomb's first Facebook app," when it initially hit the Market it was, in a word, lackluster. It offered basic access to Facebook, but it was missing quite a few of the most commonly used features.

Since then, the dev has been hard at work completely redesigning the app - and the end result landed in the Market today. The updated app is similar to the phone version, but utilizes Fragments in Honeycomb, and it looks quite good. The new interface reminds me of FriendMe, but after messing around with it for just a few minutes, I think I like FriendCaster Tab better.

Jul

[Hands-On] Facebook For Android Updated To v1.6.1, Say Hello To Comment Likes, Liked And Admined Pages, Commenting As Page Admin, And More

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

The Facebook application for Android received a nice little update today, making the earlier 1.6 update feel a bit more complete. In addition to streamlining the new, prettier newsfeed UI (screenshot #1), v1.6.1 brings these to the table:

Comment likes, as promised by the 1.6 beta but never delivered until now (screenshot #2).
Proper page support, with 2 listings - pages you've created and pages you like (screenshot #3).
I'll give you a minute to find how to get there. Alright, 5 minutes. Still can't find it? In the most confusing move imaginable, the new Pages section can be found under Friends > Pages tab.