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Sep

[Hands-On] TV Show Favs Is The First And Last App You Need To Keep Track Of All Your Shows

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, Reviews

In the modern world, watching TV shows isn't what it used to be. Back in the old days (or the present for some), shows simply existed at a certain time and you tuned in when they aired, and then they were cancelled and then you never heard from them again. Today, though, it's not uncommon for most viewers to discover a show a few seasons in and then find their way through the backlog of episodes. It can get overwhelming when you need to sort through which shows are still on, which shows you've seen, and how many more episodes you have to go.

Aug

Hands-On: How CyanogenMod 10 Fixed My EVO 4G LTE

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Development, EVO 4G LTE (Jewel), Jelly Bean 4.1

You likely noticed our coverage regarding the arrival of official CyanogenMod (experimental) nightly builds for, among other devices, HTC's EVO 4G LTE. As someone who's lived with the EVO LTE for several months now, this was big news.

Normally, we steer clear of covering the majority of custom ROMs, as development for many Android devices runs at a fast and furious pace, and coverage can quickly become dated. The improvements CyanogenMod 10 offers, though, especially over Sense on the EVO LTE, are certainly worth coverage. In this post, we'll take a quick look at CM10 for the EVO, how it changes the device's overall experience, and why, if your EVO is not running Jelly Bean yet, you're missing out.

Aug

Script Kitty Automates Execution Of Scripts On Remote Servers Through SSH, Belongs In Every Admin's Toolbox [Hands-On]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Script Kitty has actually been around for a while, but after receiving its 2.0 update last week, it's now a serious contender for one of those must-have apps (at least for anyone with an ssh-enabled server). I downloaded and set it up in a matter of a few minutes (including generating an RSA key for key-based auth and adding said key to a few Linux servers), and now have a stupid easy way of doing certain things very quickly without having to even resort to ConnectBot.

What is Script Kitty?

Here's the gist: if you have repetitive tasks, such as checking available disk space or quickly restarting apache on all your servers, Script Kitty is the app for the job.

Jul

Word Lens Finally Comes To Android, And It Works Surprisingly Well As Long As You Aren't Epileptic [Hands-On]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News, Videos

I first saw Word Lens for iOS on TechCrunch back in 2010 and instantly fell in love with the concept - just point the camera at foreign words, and all of them get translated in front of your very eyes, live. Amazing, isn't it? If you haven't seen this promo video yet, watch it first:

Every month since, I searched the Play Store for Word Lens, hoping its developers brought it to our favorite OS, but found nothing. Eventually, during my trip to Spain, I started using CamDictionary, which did a decent job but was too cumbersome to use and lacked many words in the dictionary.

Jun

Initial Hands-On With The Google Nexus 7: The Bar Has Been Set For Cheap Tablets

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Jelly Bean 4.1, Nexus 7, Videos

Today at Google I/O, I got some hands-on time with the brand-spanking-new Nexus 7 tablet. We've been pretty sure it's coming for a while now. Now that it's been officially unveiled, along with the newest version of Android, everybody and their gadget-loving grandma is chomping at the bit to see if the hype has been worthwhile.

In a word, yes, it has. Mostly. While my time with the Nexus 7 was limited, Android tablets are a sort of beast that are rather easy to evaluate quickly, mostly because they're all pretty similar. Now, the Nexus 7 is by no means a normal Android tablet, it's much better than that.

Jun

Updated Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Spends Some Time In Front Of The Camera, Shows Off Its New Innards

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Galaxy Note 10.1 (GT-N8000 / N8010 / N8013), News, Videos

When we got our first look at Samsung's Note 10.1 with S-Pen at Mobile World Congress back in February, it was packing a 1.4GHz (presumably Exynos) dual-core processor and oversized S-Pen. And, unlike its little brother, it was also lacking a place to store the S-Pen in the tablet. A few weeks after that, rumors began surfacing that Samsung had taken the Note 10 back to the lab to swap the dual-core processor for a quad-core variant, as well as add a place to store the S-Pen into the chassis of the device.

At an event back in late May, Samsung unveiled the new Note 10.1, complete with 1.4GHz quad-core processor and a storage slot for the S-Pen.

May

Full Hands-On With Samsung's S Voice From The Galaxy S III

Posted by Ron Amadeo in Galaxy S III, Leaks, News, Samsung

Last Updated: July 4th, 2012

S Voice is Samsung's entry into the fledgling "virtual assistant" market currently occupied by Siri, Evi, Speaktoit Assistant, Vlingo, and a handful of others. The Galaxy S III rom leaked earlier today, and while most of the stuff in it is broken and completely useless without the version of Touchwiz it's meant to run on, S Voice is a perfect combination of being interesting AND working. So we're going to take a look at it on my Galaxy Nexus, which is currently running vanilla (well, AOKP) 4.0.4.

S Voice is only meant to run on the GSIII's Touchwiz build, so I expect lots of force closes.

May

Closer Look And Hands-On With The Samsung Galaxy S III - The Most Interesting Phone Of The Year So Far, And We're Only Just Scratching The Surface

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Galaxy S III, Samsung, Videos

Last Updated: June 16th, 2012

The Galaxy S III, announced at a highly anticipated event last week, immediately impressed me with its advanced software. Samsung has stuffed the SGS III with so many features that my mind explodes every time I try to remember all of them - and what you saw during the unveiling is only half the story. There's more, a lot more, which is why the S III is going to be the most interesting Android phone to play with and review this year.

On the hardware front, "the next Galaxy" is quite beefy, and the only letdowns for me were the likely lack of LTE in the quad-core version and the looks.

May

CTIA 2012: Hands-On With Kyocera Hydro And Rise [Video, Photos]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Hydro, Kyocera, News, Rise, Videos

Since Kyocera was one of the only companies actually announcing something new at CTIA this year (this conference seems to get less and less relevant each year), I stopped by their booth to play around with the newborns - the waterpoof Hydro and the QWERTY Rise.

Both of these devices are definitely low- to mid-range, if you can really call a 2nd gen single-core Snapdragon mid-range anymore (no, you can't). They share all the same specs and features - the only differences are slightly modified looks, and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard on the Rise. Because of the addition of this keyboard, it also loses its waterproof features.

May

CTIA 2012: Hands-On With Verizon's Upcoming HTC Droid Incredible 4G [Video, Photos]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in HTC, Incredible 4G, News, Verizon Wireless, Videos

While Big Red may not be getting an HTC One series device just yet, the finally official Incredible 4G is actually very close. Announced yesterday just in time for CTIA, the Incredible 4G, along with most of its specs, was leaked by Android Police back in early April and briefly showed up two weeks later at DroidDoes.com. Yesterday, Verizon threw together a nice unofficial shindig for the press where we could finally check out the Incredible 4G in person. Read on for my impressions.

The Incredible 4G is basically One S' little brother - it's smaller (4" vs 4.3"), slightly clocked down (1.2GHz vs 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 'Krait'), has smaller internal storage capacity (8GB vs 16GB), an S-LCD instead of a Super AMOLED screen, and contains only a subset of ImageSense called Video Pic (it lets you snap photos while taking a video, which we show off below).