market - 10/43 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Mar

[Weekend Poll] Is "Google Play" A Smart Rebranding Or Bad Miscalculation?

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Polls

Last Updated: March 18th, 2012

This is the latest in our Weekend Poll series. For last week's, see How Much Built In Storage Do You Need In A Tablet?

Earlier this week, Google revealed a sweeping revamp to their content offerings when they rebranded them as, collectively, Google Play. Though David argued that the rebranding was as a whole a good thing, the general consensus from those who have an opinion (and are voicing it via social media and public forums) is pretty negative. "Play" makes a lot more sense from a general marketing and sales standpoint (it removes "Android" from the equation, which makes it easier for people to understand that the services are not exclusive to the OS).

Mar

[Update: Modern Combat 3 Added] Deal Alert: Google Launches "Play Our Favorites" $0.49 App Promotion, Tons Of Awesome Apps And Games Included

Posted by David Ruddock in Apps/Games, Deals, News

To celebrate the launch of Google Play (and the death of the Market brand) and thank developers and Android users across the world, Google has launched a brand-new sale promotion for a number of features apps and games called "Play Our Favorites."

Here's a link (limited to certain countries only, sorry guys). So far, the included apps are:

World of Goo
Jamie's 20 Minute Meals
Shadowgun
Osmos HD
TuneIn Radio Pro
I Just Forgot - Little Critter
Sprinkle
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit
Asphalt 6: Adrenaline
Dead Space
Business Calendar
SoundHound
mSecure - Password Manager
NFL Flick Quarterback
NOVA 2
Quell Reflect
Endomondo Sports Tracker Pro
Flick Golf Extreme
They need To Be Fed
Paper Camera
ZOOKEEPER DX
SwiftKey X
Camera ZOOM FX
It's Tyrannosaurus Rex!

Mar

13 Best Android 3.0+ Apps For Tablets From The Last 3 Weeks (2/17/12 - 3/9/12)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Best Apps/Games/LWPs Of The Week, Games, News, Tablets

Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous 3 weeks or so.

This edition focuses only on new tablet apps or ones that added tablet support. Regular apps are coming soon. Games are here.

Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the AppBrain widgets, which include ratings and pricing info.

Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here.

For Tablets

OnLive Desktop

Android Police review: Fascinating: OnLive Unveils OnLive Desktop - A Free, Instantly Available Windows 7 Cloud Instance For Tablets, Complete With MS Office, Media Streaming, And More [Hands-On]

I was quite impressed with OnLive's new Desktop tablet app (did I say that right?), which spins up an instance of Windows 7 Cloud edition - you guessed it, in the cloud, complete with full Office productivity programs and a few other nice things.

Mar

GO Weather Widget Released, Brings Beautiful, Simple Weather To Your GO Launcher EX Home Screen

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Applications, News

The GO team is, by now, pretty well known - and for good reason. They offer an unbelievable number of ways to overhaul your phone - such as GO SMS Pro, GO Contacts, and GO Keyboard - not to mention dozens of themes for all of their apps. But they are perhaps most well known for GO Launcher EX, and the tons of widgets (and more!) Now, they've released a new one to go with the Launcher: GO Weather Widget.

Three widget sizes are offered (as shown in the left image above): 4x2, 4x1, and 1x1.

Mar

[Webdev Hotness] Adobe Releases Shadow, A Tool For Synchronized Browsing And Remote Debugging Between Your Desktop And Multiple Android Devices

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Development, News

Adobe has unveiled Shadow, a new way for front-end web developers that aims to make designing and testing your website layouts on multiple screen sizes an absolute breeze. Shadow is actually a collection of tools consisting of:

a desktop program for Windows or Mac
a Chrome extension
an Android or iOS app

Once you install the two desktop components on your computer and the mobile apps on all your development devices, you simply pair each one via a simple pin into a single network of sorts, and voila - say hello to synchronized browsing and refreshing in Chrome. Just load up a website you're working on in a Chrome tab on your computer, and it'll instantly appear on all paired devices.

Mar

Editorial: Why Google Play Isn't A Bad Name, And How It Represents A New Age For Google As A Company

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Editorials

I have heard an absolute heap of unpleasantness about the rebranding of the Android Market today. Google Play is childish. It's unprofessional. It makes Google look less than serious about its content business. The logo is weird. The name is ambiguous - play what? It reminds people of Sony products. There are endless gripes and, let's face it, there always will be when a company rebrands a popular product.

Tomorrow, countless analysts and "experts" will weigh in on whether the move was a good one, hawking over Google's stock price like a cardiograph readout. Some will say it was terrible - what was Google thinking abandoning the Android branding of their content hub?

Mar

The Android Market Is Now Google Play - Integrating Apps, Games, Books, Music, And Movies

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Apps/Games, News

Goodbye, Android Market, hello, Google Play. Just moments ago, Google let loose the re-branded Android content hub. What's new? Actually, not all that much (yet).

The change in name is largely an exercise in product consolidation. Google Books, Google Music, Google Movies, and the Android Market are all now under the "Google Play" banner, in an attempt to bring all of Google's content services to one place.

Aside from the UI refresh, there's really nothing new going on so far as we can tell. Google plans to roll out an updated version of the Market (Play) to Android 2.2+ devices in the coming days, as well as to discontinue the Market branding.

Mar

Big News For Big Apps: Android App Size Limit Bumped Up From 50MB To 4GB

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Google, News

In the past, Android apps have been limited to a 50MB file size. App developers who needed to add extra data, as is the case with most big games, would have to have a secondary, self-hosted download after the user first launched the game. Today, that changes with Google introducing support for up to 4GB of "expansion files". While APKs must still be under 50MB, Google will host two 2GB files that include extra data for developers' apps. Nice!

This will solve a lot of problems for a lot of people, not the least of whom are developers. Since Google is doing the hosting, it's no longer necessary for a game developer to host hundreds of megabytes, or even gigabytes of data on their own servers.

Mar

28 Best New Android Games From The Last 2 Weeks (2/18/12 - 3/5/12)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Best Apps/Games/LWPs Of The Week, Games, News

Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.

This edition focuses only on new games. The app roundup is coming up soon.

Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the AppBrain widgets, which include ratings and pricing info.

Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here.

Featured App

EasyMoney

Today's roundup is sponsored by Handy Apps' EasyMoney. EasyMoney is a popular personal finance manager for Android, which has already been downloaded over 500,000 times.

Mar

Kairosoft Releases "Dungeon Village" In Typical 16-Bit Fashion, But With New Quasi-RPG Goodness

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

If you've ever taken a look at the top Android games (or if you just follow Android news closely), you've almost certainly heard of Kairosoft before. They're the developer behind major hits like Game Dev Story and Grand Prix story. Now the company is back with a new title: Dungeon Village.

The game looks quite similar to the other titles, but they seem to think it has a bit of an RPG flair to it (though we can't figure out how):

Build a heroic hamlet that warriors and merchants can call home!

Welcome to an epic RPG world in which the town you build can grow from humble hamlet into a mecca for the land's most ambitious adventurers!