media - 3/3 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Jun

[Review] Sonos Controller For Android And Sonos S5 Wireless Speaker System: So-So Performance In A Svelte Package

Posted by Brian O'Toole in App Reviews, Applications, Devices By Manufacturer, Other Reviews, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Introduction

Sonos is a company well-known in the tech industry for their line of wireless speaker systems, designed to let you sling music around your house without the hassle of complex setup processes or routing wires through ceilings and walls. To mark the launch of their Sonos Controller for Android application, Sonos generously loaned me a full multi-room system consisting of two Sonos S5 speaker units and a wireless ZoneBridge router. Given the buzz surrounding Sonos's products, it seemed best to review the system as a whole, viewing the application and hardware as a complete set. Read on to see how it all stacked up.

Jan

Editorial: Five Things Android Tablets Will Need In Order To Succeed

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Editorials, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Tablets

Introduction

If there's one thing CES told us about the upcoming twelve months in technology, it's that 2011 will be the year of Android tablets. And with noteworthy entries such as the Motorola XOOM, ASUS' lineup, and the T-Mobile G-Slate, it looks like the tablets' quality might be just as high as their quantity - at least hardware-wise.

But what about the software? After all, isn't a device's OS what makes or breaks it? And even if the tablets are good, will consumers care? Let's take a look at the top five areas Android tablets will need to succeed in.

Dec

Millennial Media November Report: Android Continuing To Grow, Dominating Ad Revenue & Developers

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

Another month, another report from advertiser Millennial Media. As usual, it's best to start this off by pointing out that these results are based on ad impressions across Millennial's network, and thus should be considered a sample. With that out of the way, let's take a peek.

The two most significant things that stand out to me are that Android is now tied with iOS for the largest smartphone OS, and Android accounts for a whopping 54% of ad revenue on the network, versus 39% for iOS. Pretty damn impressive.

Among application publishers who are adding support to new platforms, Android is the fastest growing, though that is something that is probably common sense if you really think about it (given that iOS already has a very large developer following).

Nov

Millennial Media Report Shows Android Continuing To Take Over

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in News

Millennial Media has released their Mobile Mix for October, and at first sight, the results are fairly impressive. Before diving in, though, it's important to note that the statistics are based on ad clicks, rather than a population sample. However, that doesn't mean they don't help express the overall trends, so with that in mind, let's take a quick look at the highlights.

· This month, for the first time, Android tied with iOS as the largest Smartphone OS on our network, with an 8% increase month-over-month and 37% impression share on our network.

· Apple, the leading device manufacturer on our network for the last thirteen months and accounted for a 25% share of impressions on our network in October.

Nov

Audiogalaxy Vs Subsonic - Fight! What's Your Favorite Android Music Streaming App? [Reviews, Poll]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

In our last week's poll, we asked you your thoughts on the best overall Android music player, and over 1500 of you responded, clearly putting PowerAMP ahead of the competition, followed by Winamp. PowerAMP released the full version shortly after and still occupies the #1 spot for playing local music in my book.

However, rightfully so, some of you noted that there are some players out there specializing on remote media streaming, and by that I don't mean Shoutcast streams - I mean streaming your own music collections. Google's music service may one day supposedly join the party, as we saw demoed at Google I/O earlier this year, but right now, that solution does not yet exist.

Oct

Behold PowerAMP - The Most Gorgeous Player On The Android Platform, With Preamp And Equalizer Support

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News, Videos

There is no shortage of media applications for Android - in fact, Winamp that came out last week was the most serious and robust media offering I've seen so far. However, when it comes to strictly the media player functionality, even Winamp can't touch what I'm about to show you - a new beta app called PowerAMP.

PowerAMP is an Android media player developed by a cool Russian dude by the name of Maxim Petrov (Max MP). Its most notable features are, in my opinion, the gorgeous interface, support for both equalizer and preamp, and very fast file scanning speed.

Here are the features at a glance, courtesy of owziee from xda:

-MP3, MP4/M4A,loseless ALAC,FLAC, OGG, WAV, TTA, WMA
-Has own codecs
-Widget
-Choose music from SD card
-Tags, lyrics
-Skins, 2 in beta version
-Fast scan of files ( in 1 second 1000files, depends on phone speed)
-EQ
-Preamp

Unfortunately, genre support is yet again missing, but hopefully Max will add them in the next update.

Oct

Samsung's Galaxy Player 50 Runs Android, Shows Up In An Ad, Goes Up For Preorder

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Galaxy Player 50, News, Samsung

Back in September, Samsung announced 4 new media players, one of which was of particular interest to us - the Galaxy Player 50. Out of the bunch, the Galaxy Player 50 was the only device running Android - it's what iPod Touch is to an iPhone, a Galaxy S phone without a ~~chromosome~~ phone.

What we have here today is Samsung's official video ad showcasing the player's capabilities, using a hilariously crooked finger, as Wired commenters pointed out. Seriously, once you see the finger, it's the only thing you can look at - I even had to rewind and re-watch to see the player itself:

The player sports the following specs, some of which, like the camera, are quite measly:

WiFi (obviously)
3.2 inch screen
Android Market access
FM Radio
GPS
DLNA support
Comes in 8GB and 16GB flavors
2MP camera (ouch)
Android 2.1

The Galaxy Player 50 is currently up for presale in France for €200 (8GB) and €250 (16GB).

Sep

Android Police Samsung Galaxy Tab Press Event Report - Galaxy Tab, Media Hub, Details, Hands-On

Posted by Brett Gmoser in AT&T, Devices By Manufacturer, Galaxy Tab, News, Samsung, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless

Rain, shine, or literally freakin' tornado in the part of the country which isn’t supposed to have such weather, Android Police is there. As promised, I attended the press event thrown by Samsung on Thursday, during which they were to announce their "latest Android-powered device" as well as their new Media Hub service.

While the fact that Samsung was to announce a tablet device was officially a secret, we all pretty much knew the mystery device was going to be the Galaxy Tab.

Samsung also took the occasion to announce the launch of their new website, which went live the day of the event.

Aug

Rockbox For Android Now Semi-Functional

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Applications, News

Last Updated: August 1st, 2012

The popular, open-source media player firmware Rockbox has recently been made available for Android. Rather than run as an operating system, Rockbox operates as a standalone application that you can install as usual with an APK. Development is still on-going, but Rockbox dev kugel has a few pre-compiled APKs hosted for you to try out if you’re interested.

Download:

240 x 320 320 x 480 480 x 800

These builds are unofficial and are purely for demonstrative purposes, but they seem to work pretty nicely. Currently the navigation/control interaction method is touchscreen only, and screen rotation is not supported - Rockbox will only run in Portrait orientation.

Aug

Samsung Unleashes Galaxy S Phone Accessories: Desktop, Car Docks, and Spare Battery Charger; Teases WMG160 HD Media Streaming Device For The US

Posted by David Ruddock in Galaxy S, News

It’s hard to say if it called for a full-blown press release, but Samsung today issued a statement announcing the availability of official Samsung-branded accessories for Galaxy S devices in the US.

What kind of goodies can users expect? Well, as the title suggests, Samsung has produced some very shiny photos of a desktop dock, a car dock/charger, and a spare battery charging system (they’ve apparently caught on that many Android users go through multiple batteries in the course of a day). You can see them in all their glossy black plastic glory below: