30
Oct
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ARM Announces Cortex-A50 Series – 64-Bit Processors 'Set To Drive The Next Era In Mobile And Enterprise'

Posted by in Android OS, News

At ARM TechCon today, the titular purveyor of semiconductors announced its Cortex-A50 series, dubbed "the world's most energy-efficient 64-bit processors." Based on the ARMv8 architecture, the line will launch with the Cortex-A53 and A57 processors, allowing not only for significantly more energy-efficient processing, but SoC scalability that makes the line applicable to devices from smartphones to high-performance servers. The A57 is geared toward high-performance, while the A53 is lauded by ARM as its most power-efficient. Both chips also support 32-bit and 64-bit ARM code, and according to ARM, the A53 can live up to the performance of the Cortex A9 at 60% the die area.

12
Oct
perfmon

[New App] Chainfire's 'PerfMon' Is A Floating Performance Monitor With A Unique CPU Metric

Posted by in Applications, News

We all know how useful floating apps can be, so an always-on-top performance monitor makes perfect sense for power users and developers. One such project just hit the Play Store from developer Chainfire, who has already brought us several other useful tools, like CFBench, SuperSU, and FAAPT.

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Simply called Perfmon, this is a floating application that can output certain metrics for monitoring purposes: foreground app, CPU, disk I/O, and network I/O. What makes this app unique, however is its CPU metric called CPU capacity usage. According to Chainfire, it "will take the CPU usage and scale it to what it would be if all cores were running at full capacity."

For example: if you have a 1.6ghz quad-core running a light app, it could be using 10% CPU with only one of the four cores active, and that core running at 200mhz.

28
Jun
currents

Google Currents Updated To Version 1.5.1, Now Features Improved UI, Enhanced Performance, And More

Posted by in Applications, News

Google Currents has always been a pretty impressive app - arguably the best Android news aggregator around town. Especially praised has been its beautiful UI; however, that didn't stop Google from looking at what it had and making it even better.

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Indeed, the app just hit version 1.5.1, and the UI has been updated to "Android standards." Notably, the top navigation bar now features "auto hide" and "touch-to-show" controls, and it includes the library/trending toggle that was previously located elsewhere. Additionally, Google has enhanced the app's performance and made the usual bug fixes.

If you have already have Currents, you can download the update from the Play Store now; if for some reason you don't have it installed yet, all the info you need is below.

31
May
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Facebook For Android Updated To 1.9.4 With Performance Improvements And Bug Fixes

Posted by in Applications, News

Facebook's Android team pushed out an incremental update v1.9.4 today with "improved performance and various bug fixes." Just what those improvements and bug fixes are will remain a mystery - the only useful part of such changelogs is we know what they didn't do in this release.

So, what did those who updated think of increased performance?

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Business as usual then - got it.

Facebook on my Epic Touch has never seemed particularly slow UI-wise, but pulling data takes uncomfortably long even on Wi-Fi. If the Facebook app ever got to Spotify's level of fast, I'm sure its rating would start quickly rising from the measly 3.6.

18
Apr
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[For Developers] ADT 20/SDK Tools r20 Previews Are Here - Brand New Property Editor(!), NDK Support, Performance Improvements, Bug Fixes Galore

Posted by in Development, News

As an Android developer, I like to keep tabs on the tools I use every day, especially ones as important as ADT for Eclipse and SDK Tools. As was the case several times before, the Android team in charge of both of them posted previews of upcoming releases of ADT 20 and SDK Tools r20, available for manual download ahead of the final releases.

Yup, you heard me correctly - 20, not 18 or 19. Even though the previous major release was 17, 18 followed up shortly after with some minor changes, and 19, even more minor, wasn't even posted to the downloads page (see here for the reason).

12
Apr
dolphintiny

Dolphin Browser HD Updated To Version 8.0, Brings A Redesigned Menu Bar, Add-On Sidebar, And Better Performance

Posted by in Applications, News

Dolphin Browser has always been one of the better browser alternatives on Android, and with version 8.0, it's about to get a bit better. In addition to a nice even version number, the update adds a menu bar along the bottom of the browser, an improved Add-on sidebar that's not confusing to look at, and a shiny new Dolphin button for easy access to the Dolphin Sonar and Gesture features.

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The new menu bar is more than a little reminiscent of Android's Action Bar, however this one is still only triggered when you press the menu button, so it's not quite as handy.

01
Dec
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[New Game] Inertia Escape Velocity Is A Side-Scroller That Will Infuriate And Confuse You In The Greatest Way Possible

Posted by in Apps/Games, Game Reviews, Games, News, Reviews

If there's one thing we love here at Android Police more than anything, it's puppies. That usually doesn't come into play here, though, so we often deal with our very close second favorite thing: Amazingly playable, gorgeously rendered, ingeniously designed games. I just so happen to have one of those right here.

Inertia Escape Velocity is a game in which you play a futuristic scavenger collecting what I can only assume are generic, mass produced future-machine parts. Oh, yeah, you can also turn off gravity. I've been playing the game for 15 minutes now, so I'm pretty much a pro and feel like I owe it to you to show you some video of me playing the game.

30
Nov
ASUS-Transformer-Prime

ASUS' Transformer Prime Shows Up On Nenamark, Blows All Other Tablets Out Of The Water

Posted by in Android OS, Eee Pad Transformer Prime, News, Tablets

Giving would-be Transformer Prime owners one more thing to drool over, the first Tegra 3 tablet has made an appearance on Nenamark's site, alongside just about every other Android device in existence. For those not in the know, Nenamark is a graphics performance benchmark for Android, and maintains a great reputation for accuracy.

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As you can see, the Transformer Prime's nearest tablet competitor is Samsung's GT-P6210, aka the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus. The original Transformer tablet is far down the list, making it clear that the Transformer Prime is an absolute beast in terms of graphics performance.

Of course, benchmarks don't always translate perfectly into real-life performance, but until we have our full review published, check out our hands-on look at the Transformer Prime to find out what kind of impression this slender tablet makes.

09
Nov
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ARM Unveils New Mali-T658 GPU, Promising Ten Times Better Graphic Performance Over Current-Gen Chips

Posted by in News

With the Mali-T400 running on the Galaxy SII, and the Mali-604 still in production, ARM is still racing ahead, releasing details surrounding the Mali-T658 GPU today - yet another next-gen chip that will support up to eight cores.

The T-658 is poised to improve on ARM’s T-604, allowing up to ten times the graphic performance of the current-gen T-400 chip (and 4 times the computing power), as well as enabling nice compatibility with ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture, which allows the set to switch dynamically between chips to achieve stunning power efficiency and performance under strain.

While the T-658 sounds awesome, and manufacturers such as Samsung and LG have already shown interest, we aren’t likely to see it for a couple of years yet.

08
Nov
15-Galaxy-Tab-7-Plus

Hands-On: The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus Is An Exynos-Packing, Benchmark-Decimating Speed Demon

Posted by in Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News, Samsung, Tablets

Earlier today, I received my review unit Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, Samsung's latest addition to the Tab family of products. Now, you probably thought, upon hearing about this little device, "gee, this is just another scaled-down version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 - boring." But you thought wrong - very wrong.

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The Tab 7.0 Plus has a little hardware secret in its diminutive package, and that secret's name is Exynos. I noticed from the moment I powered it up that the 7.0 Plus was no ordinary Honeycomb device - home screen swiping was unusually graceful, even with Samsung's TouchWiz UX overlay.

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