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Aug

Google Voice Search Now Available In Thirteen New Languages

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Android OS, Applications, Google, News

In a post to its official blog that's sure to excite users across the globe, Google has just announced that Voice Search is now available in thirteen new languages. The list of newly included languages, which range from Basque to Swedish, brings the total number of supported tongues up to 42.

In the post, Product Manager Bertrand Damiba explains just what it takes to add a new language to Voice Search – first and foremost, Google must collect "hundreds of thousands of utterances" from volunteers to bring speech recognition up to par.

While this sounds easy enough, Google engineers also face challenges in adding support for new languages – Damiba explains that languages that don't follow predictable pronunciation rules (like Swedish) require that Google recruit native speakers to pronounce thousands of individual words.

Aug

TeamViewer Releases QuickSupport For Android – Remotely Control Your Samsung Device From Mac, Windows, Or Linux

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

TeamViewer, the company behind a widely popular collaboration/remote support software solution, has brought to market a new app specifically aimed at Samsung devices, releasing QuickSupport to Google's Play Store today.

The app is essentially a remote control app meant just for Samsung devices – it allows access to Samsung mobile devices from Mac, Linux, or Windows computers running TeamViewer's software. While TeamViewer already has an Android app, this is the first app under the TV name allowing control of a mobile device from a computer and not vice versa.

For those wondering just how many practical applications this may have, TeamViewer spells out some possibilities ranging from IT departments resolving employee issues with Samsung devices to simply performing basic tasks like editing SMS messages and checking emails on your phone from your computer.

Jul

Nexus Q App Updated To Support Devices Running 2.3.3 And Later, YouTube App Gains Q Compatibility

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

The Nexus Q, unveiled at this year's I/O conference to a somewhat unsure audience, is a device that looks to unify your living room's media experience, allowing the streaming of all your Play Store content to connected speakers and TVs, while also allowing for remote control from your (or your friends') Android devices.

One of the Nexus Q's main claims to fame is that it allows anyone in the room to connect and share Play Store content quickly and easily. Until today, however, Google's Nexus Q app was incompatible with devices not running Android's latest iteration – 4.1 Jelly Bean.

Today's update fixed that, though, opening compatibility to all devices running 2.3.3 Gingerbread and later.

Jul

Official CyanogenMod 9 Nightlies Arrive For The Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 And Tab 2 10.1

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Android OS, Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, News

With everyone anticipating the introduction of fabled CM10 builds, the CyanogenMod team is still hard at work bringing official CM9 support to even more devices. The latest additions to the list are the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (p3100, 3110, and 3113) and Tab 2 10.1 (p5100, 5110, 5113), each with their own nightlies ready for download and flashing.

It's worth noting, of course, that since these devices are just receiving their first nightlies, you may run into a bug here or there. But that's part of the fun of staying on the cutting edge of CM support, right? To grab your device's nightly build, just hit the appropriate link below.

Jul

Sprint Had This To Say About AOSP Support For Galaxy Nexus

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Development, Galaxy Nexus, Jelly Bean 4.1, News, Samsung, Sprint

Last Updated: October 22nd, 2012

OK, OK, that's actually Linus Torvalds expressing his feelings about NVIDIA, but there's no better way to articulate the continued frustration with the complete lack of Sprint Galaxy Nexus support in AOSP. Verizon is [almost] there. Sprint, however, is not. Try finding it (hint: its codename is toroplus) - specifically, the CDMA/LTE binaries.

If you still have doubts about the above notion so eloquently conveyed by Linus' gesture, Jean-Baptiste Queru's comment confirms:

As far as toroplus, the situation is unchanged: there are no plans to support it as a target device for custom AOSP builds.
JBQ

Sprint and Samsung, it's time to pony up those drivers.

Jul

Verizon Galaxy Nexus Is Closer Than Ever To Full AOSP Support - But It's Not There Yet

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Development, Galaxy Nexus, Jelly Bean 4.1, News, Samsung, Verizon Wireless

Earlier today, the Jelly Bean source code rolled into AOSP (Android Open Source Project). This is a big deal - one we've been waiting for since the great Google I/O unveiling. What does it mean exactly?

It means that ROMs that are built from AOSP, like CyanogenMod, can now start integrating the Jelly Bean code and release the first true JB nightlies. Not broken ports from the Galaxy Nexus builds - real ROMs. They can also work out bugs because they can see the source code.

Manufacturers can now start working on updating their devices to the actual Jelly Bean release - remember, Google was still working on the final touches to JB when they released the preview, so even OEMs didn't have what rolled out today.

Jul

Nexus S 4G Now "Fully Supported In AOSP, With No Restrictions"

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Nexus S 4G (Crespo4g)

In a post to the Android Building group earlier today, Jean-Baptiste Queru announced that Samsung's Nexus S 4G has officially and fully been brought into the AOSP fold. The device is now fully supported by AOSP, meaning its CDMA – and WiMax – binaries can now be "properly" distributed. Here's the full text of the announcement:

We've been able to resolve the issues around Nexus S 4G, and we can now properly distribute its CDMA and WiMAX binaries. That allows Nexus S 4G to work with AOSP just as well as Nexus S.
As a result, we now consider Nexus S 4G to be fully supported in AOSP, with no restrictions.

Jun

Adobe Will Not Support Flash On Android 4.1, Unsupported Devices Won't Be Able To Download It From The Play Store After August 15th

Posted by John Thompson in Jelly Bean 4.1, News

In November, Adobe announced that it would be discontinuing its development of Flash for Android, and it looks like that day has finally arrived.

In a post on their blog, the company has explained that devices which have been certified to run Flash will still continue to do so, and updates will be made available just for those devices. Any devices that have not been certified to run Flash will be unable to install or update it from the Play Store from August 15th.

According to the post, any device that has been certified to run Flash by Adobe will have come with the plug-in pre-installed, so if you had to install Flash manually through the Play Store, it means that you are running it on an uncertified device.

May

VLC For Android Gets Unofficial Hourly Alpha Builds, Courtesy Of A Generous Developer

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Applications, News

VLC is one of those tools that's in every geek's toolbox. The video player that supports every video format known to man still doesn't have an official, finished Android version, though. In the meantime, however, developer cvpcs, has done us all the courtesy of setting up an hourly build server for the alpha of VLC for Android.

The builds come in both NEON and non-NEON flavors. So, folks with older phones, or devices with the Tegra 2, for example, should probably download the non-NEON version. Newer devices packing the likes of the T3, S4, and modern Exynos SoCs can enjoy the NEON version.

May

[Updated x2] Titanium Backup Adds Google Drive Backup Option

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

After the long-awaited launch of Google Drive, it was only a matter of time before users began seeing integration with Android apps. While there's no official Android API for Google Drive just yet, many devs suspected that Drive's Java API would work just fine, despite a confusing statement on Google's developer site:

Warning: Apps will not have any API access to files unless the app has been installed in Chrome Web Store. To test an app during development, you must first create a listing and install it.

Putting that idea to the test, popular (and extremely versatile) backup solution Titanium Backup has made use of the cloud service's Java API to bring Drive backup options to users in a recently released update.