GPS - 4/5 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Apr

Race To The Top - Google Maps Is The First Android App To Ever Pass 50 Million Downloads

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

While Google Maps already made headlines today for omitting the changelog in the latest update, causing hundreds of 1-star comments, it does have a reason to celebrate, which overshadows this snafu by a long shot. The 50,000,000 installation mark, never before achieved by any app in the Market, has been reached, and by none other than Google Maps, making it the most downloaded Android application ever.

It's no surprise - the absolute brilliance of the Maps team helped create a product which wows first-time users, single-handedly lures them over to Android, and keeps innovating time and time again. Who needs a standalone GPS device when you've got Google Maps?

Mar

CyanogenMod 7 RC4 Has Arrived For All Supported CM Devices - Bug Fixes Abound

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Aria (Liberty), Desire (Bravo/BravoC), Desire HD (Ace), Development, Droid (Sholes), EVO 4G (Supersonic), EVO Shift 4G (Speedy), HTC, Legend, Motorola, myTouch Slide (Espresso), Nexus One (Passion), Nexus S (Crespo/Soju), Samsung, Wildfire (Buzz)

CyanogenMod 7 has earned its reputation as the most reliable Gingerbread ROM, even though it hasn't yet entered stable mode. And tonight, the fun goes on - ~~RC4~~ RC3.14159265358979323846264338327, as the CM team so lovingly refers to it, has just been launched for all supported CM devices.

While RC4 doesn't contain any ground-breaking new features, it does bring a number of bug fixes - for example, hardware acceleration has been added to the Nook Color, and EGL has seen a big fix. It isn't perfect yet - kmobs notes that there may be some "lingering GPS issues on the EVO and the N1 call audio bug hasn't been fully fixed" - but it's still worth the update.

Mar

[Review] ZDbox Delivers All Of Those Android Tools You Ordered

Posted by Brad Ganley in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

In the world of Android and, specifically, Android power-users, there are a lot of things you can do and a myriad of tools you can do these things with. One of my favorite things in the world is getting several tools I use regularly consolidated into a single package. If you use your device with any kind of regularity, you know that there are several things you like to know, modify, kill, lock, or enable. Enter ZDbox, a Swiss-army knife of sorts for Android.

ZDbox started its journey in an XDA thread and, over time, developed into a very powerful, polished power-app with a ton of tools and options.

Feb

Notion Ink Adam Tablet Gets A Software Update (No, It's Not Honeycomb)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Adam, News, Notion Ink, Videos

Notion Ink's Adam has been through quite a bit on the long road to last month's launch, including concerns over its legitimacy and policies, ordering snafus, booting problems, and various bugs, but it hasn't stopped the company from steadily working on Adam's second major software patch.

While the first update ended up soft-bricking some devices (preventing them from booting, fixable by full system restore), the second one seems to be safe to apply and contains quite a few fixes and enhancements.

Infamous Greg from Notion Ink Fan does a great job highlighting some of the bugs and demonstrating the fixes in the following videos.

Jan

The Coolest Android Gadget At CES 2011: Recon's Android-Powered, GPS-Enabled, Camera-Streaming Snow Goggles [Video]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Devices By Manufacturer, Froyo 2.2, News, Videos

I've been roaming the booths of CES for 3 days now, and I think I've seen almost everything even remotely related to Android that was worth seeing. One company, Recon Instruments, has been on my mind since the beginning, however, and I'm really glad I finally made it to their booth today.

Their current product, called Transcend, is a full snow goggles solution incorporating a little color LCD screen in the bottom right corner. This screen is small but it gets magnified optically to show a whole array of information, such as your current speed, temperature, altitude, time, vertical odometer, and the trail map overlaid on top of Google Maps (among other things).

Jan

Mavizon's Mavia 3G-Enabled Gizmo Plugs Into Your Car, Acts As A LoJack, Texts Your Family, Diagnoses Your Check Engine Light [Video]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News, Videos

Walking around CES Unveiled on the first day of CES 2011, I ran into a little company called Mavizon Tech, showcasing their product with a beautiful name Mavia. I you've never heard of Mavizon, don't feel bad - they don't have many consumer-facing products just yet, but it's all about to change when Mavia hits the market later this year.

What is Mavia? It's a little gizmo box that plugs into your car's diagnostics port and sits there, drawing the power from the aforementioned port. Inside the Mavia - a GPS module and a 3G radio that is able to broadcast a signal anywhere there is 3G reception (I forgot whether they use T-Mobile or AT&T, but it's one of those).

Jan

Android + PacMan + Google Maps = PacMap

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Apps/Games, News, Videos

Last Updated: January 11th, 2011

Yesterday, we received an email tip about a new app called PacMap, which blends virtual/augmented reality, Google Maps, and... PacMan. Unsure of what to make or think of this potentially dangerous, but extremely original and interesting concept, I decided to test the waters last night by submitting the app to reddit. This morning, it was #1 in /r/android, which shows that thinking outside the box is always welcomed. Oh, and did I mention that PacMap is open source? Bravo, Stefan Wagner (that's PacMap's developer).

The goal of the game is described by the author himself as follows:

Your goal is to eat all the dots.

Dec

Motorola Gets Back Into The Low-End Android Game - First Pictures Of The Cliq 2 Leak Out

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in CLIQ 2, Motorola, News, T-Mobile

While Motorola's certainly got a few exciting devices in its pipeline - the dual-core Olympus and the Honeycomb tablet both look extremely intriguing - it looks like the company also plans to launch something considerably less high-end: the sequel to its first Android phone ever, the Cliq.

Cell Phone Signal was sent the above pictures of the Cliq 2, formerly known as the Begonia. As you can see, it features a relatively nondescript profile - not too bulky; not amazingly thin - as well as a honeycomb-like keyboard design. However, I wouldn't get my hopes up for Honeycomb on this phone if I were you - MOTOBLUR is clearly visible in the first two images, and Cell Phone Signal was also told that a January 19th release is likely, as is an official announcement at CES 2011.

Dec

Modus Operandi: Like Tasker, But With Less Options And 100% More Free

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Applications, Apps/Games, News

As far as apps go, few are more useful and versatile than Tasker. Despite the comparatively high price (for an app, anyway) of $6.30, there's probably a reason why its average rating is an impressive 4.7/5 stars. Still, that price is high enough to turn some users away, despite the serious lack of alternatives. Fortunately, that gap was filled a few days ago, when an app called Modus Operandi hit the Market.

Its nature is very similar to Tasker, but as the app is still fairly new (on version 0.3, as of writing), it offers less features. Then again, it's also significantly simpler as a result.

Nov

Samsung Captivate And Vibrant Finally Get GPS "Fix" Via GPSSamsungRestore App

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Apps/Games, AT&T, Captivate, News, Samsung

The Galaxy S phones are, without a doubt, among the best Android phones out there, but for some time now, the handsets have been plagued by one potential showstopper - malfunctioning GPS capabilities. Worry not, though - in addition to an update that rolled out a few months ago, Samsung has developed an app called GPSSamsungRestore which is now available from the Android Market for all users of AT&T's Captivate and T-Mobile's Vibrant. So what does it do? It undoes any modifications to the GPS and basically reverts it to its original state. While it remains to be seen how reverting the GPS to its original, broken state fixes it, I suppose it can't hurt to give it a shot if you're a Captivate or Vibrant owner.