11
Aug
android_logo

Exclusive Leak: First Android Ice Cream Sandwich Screenshots, Plus More ICS Details

Posted by in Android OS, Exclusives, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, News
Last Updated: June 5th, 2012

No, it's not a joke, prank, or some cruel attempt to make you click things. This is for real. The first screenshots of Android Ice Cream Sandwich have been leaked to us as well as RootzWiki (who have two different screenshots featuring the launcher and app drawer we aren't showing here - so check them out). We're not going to build this up - you want the goods. Here's Ice Cream Sandwich running on a Nexus S:

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What can we learn from these? Well, the big stuff is obviously all the UI changes - namely, blue: everywhere. But you can see that the notification bar has been totally revamped for the first time since Éclair.

16
Jul
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Creative Contest: Win This Rugged Otterbox Defender Case For The Motorola XOOM (MSRP $90)

Posted by in Contests / Giveaways, Motorola, XOOM
Last Updated: July 26th, 2011

The Prize

Motorola XOOM owners, listen up. Rather than keeping my XOOM protected with the very rugged Defender case from Otterbox that I reviewed last month, I'm going to give it away to one of you, as you probably need it more than me.

Otterbox is one of the top brands in the case business, and I'm sure this $90 shell that can withstand a nuclear attack will find a nice home.

wm_IMG_9274 wm_IMG_9238 wm_IMG_9222

How To Enter

This contest is now over. We have selected the winner - see if it's you here.

To make this a little more interesting and fun, especially for those who don't like social giveaways (Twitter, Facebook, etc), to enter this contest:

  1. Take a photo of your XOOM and include some reference to Android Police anywhere in the same photo.

22
Jun
sony-ericsson-xperia-ray-ac

Two New Sony Phones: Meet The Xperia Ray And Xperia Active - With Maria Sharapova

Posted by in News, Xperia Active (Satsuma), Xperia Ray (Urushi, ST18i)
Last Updated: August 20th, 2012

Update: Now with video goodness. In fact, you can watch Maria Sharapova (don't get too excited) talk about the Xperia Active. And hey, she knows about active lifestyle phones, because she's sporty.

Catch the other videos about the Ray (here, and here) and the Active (here). You know, if you want. Also, the word "lifestyle" was definitely used in describing the design of the Ray. I felt queasy.

Today at CommunicAsia (we've never heard of it, either) Sony-Ericsson announced two additions to the Android-powered Xperia line of smartphones: the Ray and Active. Both phones are niche sort of "lifestyle" devices, and will probably be marketed more heavily in Japan than the rest of the world.

13
Jun
milestone3-10

DROID 3 Gets In-Depth Hands-On: Pentile Display And Puny Amounts Of RAM Included

Posted by in Droid 3, Motorola, News

The DROID 3, like the DROID 2, has been pretty lax about showing itself off prior to any sort of official announcement from Motorola. Today, the DROID 3 has been all but fully revealed by a member over at XDA China. Two things from that post immediately caught our attention: a qHD Pentile display, and 512MB of RAM. Both of them should make you queasy.

We aren't big fans of Moto's Pentile qHD displays, particularly as it appeared on the DROID X2. If your vision is good, and you hold your phone at a normal distance from your face (read: about one foot - not three), Pentile looks like crap - there's little argument.

30
May
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[New App] Brilliant! DropSnap Instantly Syncs Newly Taken Photos To Dropbox

Posted by in Applications, News
Last Updated: February 8th, 2012

Photo syncing is not a novel idea at all - there are countless solutions that do it on a regular basis, but instant photo uploading the moment it is taken is something I've been looking forward to for a long time. And now it's here, thanks to Chris Soyars, aka ctso - one of the senior CyanogenMod developers.

Chris's new app, DropSnap, has a very simple purpose - get your photos synced up to the cloud the moment you take them. I'm not exaggerating - it really is that fast (of course, depending on your data connection). For example, on Wi-Fi, freshly snapped pictures were synced to Dropbox and back to my computer before I could open my mouth and say "Android rocks".

23
May
tablet-teaser-2-545x391

ASUS Is Making a Tablet Phone Combination Thing, To Be Unveiled At Computex

Posted by in ASUS, News

With its Transformer tablet selling like hot cakes, ASUS is probably feeling pretty good about its Android product division right now. Next on the hardware manufacturer's list? A tablet phone sort of... thing. Is it going to be another Dell Streak mini-tablet mega-phone? I don't think so, though these are the images we've got of it so far:

tablet-teaser-1-545x363 tablet-teaser-2-545x391

 tablet-teaser-3-545x176

The image on the top right is most intriguing to me. It appears as though we're seeing the back of the device, but in the center, it looks like something is plugged in or docked into the chassis. My guess is that we're seeing a gutless tablet, with display and battery, with a phone that docks into it to power the the device.

23
Feb
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Photoshop Fail - Best Buy's Asus Windows 7 Tablet Runs Android, Looks Like Eclair

Posted by in Off-Topic

It's always fun to poke at Android-related snafus that retailers, especially as big as Best Buy, make in their promotional materials, and today is one of those days.

Android Police reader Marc forwarded us an email from Best Buy Canada sent to Canadian customers yesterday that shows this impressive Asus Tablet PC, powered by Windows 7. Except, it has an Andy peaking out from behind and is clearly running a build of Android (it's not Honeycomb or Gingerbread by the looks of things and resembles Éclair).

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Surely, that's probably incomplete information and this tablet exists in 2 flavors or dual boots Android and Windows, right?

20
Oct
active_blocks

Super-Awesome Interactive Live Wallpaper: 3D Active Blocks

Posted by in Applications, Apps/Games, Development, News
Last Updated: October 29th, 2010

Given how popular live wallpaper (LWP) posts are, it's surprising that - with the exception of the Dancing Droid LWP - we haven't really had a big one since we found the R2-D2 set back in early September. Consider the dry spell over: meet the newest post-worthy LWP, 3D Active Blocks. The work of XDA-Devs member mmone3, the premise is simple: it takes pictures (either preset or pictures from your gallery) and breaks them into blocks; the blocks then break up, move, and transform (via various effects) into other pictures.

active_blocks image

But the effect is cooler than that: the wallpaper is actually interactive, reacting to touch.

18
Aug
android_scanner

App Roundup: 5 Apps That Turn Your Android Phone Into A Portable Document Scanner

Posted by in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews
Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Using a camera to “scan” documents to a digital format is nothing new. There are a number of PC applications available that help users turn photographed pages into PDFs or other document formats. Android enthusiasts can now enjoy the same functionality, as higher resolution cameras on mobile devices have finally allowed this application category to reach maturity. This roundup will cover 5 apps you can use to turn your Android device into a portable document scanner.

Keep in mind with all of these applications, lighting conditions and the surface on which a document or book is placed will have an effect on the quality of each “scan.” You will have the best results if you place the documents as flat as possible on a dark, solid color surface in a well lit area.

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