Applications - 205/250 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Mar

Want To See Android's Meteoric Rise In A Graph? Appbrain Introduces "Android Stats"

Posted by Will Shanklin in Applications, News

With the recent release of Google's Android Web Market, app discovery site Appbrain's relevance has been threatened and perhaps they see a future in statistical reporting. The website has introduced a new tracking system for the Android Market, which they like to call "Appbrain Android Stats."

The initial offering from Appbrain's new service finds the following:

There are now 150,000 apps available in the Market (this contradicts a report from Business Insider, which claims that there are currently 250,000 apps - we tend to think Apprain's is likely more accurate)
The most popular Android phone among AppBrain users is the Samsung Galaxy S
The most used Android version is Froyo
The category with the most apps is 'Entertainment'

If charts are your thing, Appbrain has those too.

Mar

Number Of Apps In Android Market Rapidly Gaining On Apple's App Store, But Android Tablets Aren't So Lucky

Posted by Will Shanklin in Android OS, Applications, News

If your Apple fanboy friends (surely you have at least one somewhere) like to taunt you with the old "iOS has more apps than Android" spiel, then you may not have to grudgingly agree with them for much longer. Business Insider published data this week that shows the Android Market's number of apps continuing to rapidly approach the amount of apps in Apple's marketplace. While the Market's trailing of the App Store by 100,000 applications would not, at a casual glance, appear to be encouraging, the rate of growth is clearly in Android's favor. In October that same gap was 185,000.

Mar

FullHDMI For EVO App Now In Market, No Longer Requires Custom Kernel

Posted by Will Shanklin in Applications, EVO 4G (Supersonic), News

If you are an owner of an HTC EVO 4G, it's possible that one the contributing factors to your buying the popular smartphone may have been the HDMI output feature. After hearing that it can produce said capabilities, maybe your mind began dreaming up all kinds of situations where showing your phone's display on a TV in HD resolution could be very handy. If so, then chances are you were a little bit deflated as you saw the fine print that only Gallery and YouTube apps would work with this handy feature (is that a yawn I hear?). Today all of that has changed as FullHDMI for HTC EVO, previously in beta and requiring custom kernels, is now in the Market and can utilize most features with any kernel (cue the applause).

Mar

Dolphin HD v4.5 Update Adds Hardware Acceleration Support For Honeycomb Devices, Now Smooth As Butter (Kind Of)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Last Updated: March 13th, 2011

Dolphin HD, one of the most popular Android browsers, has been pretty unusable on large tablet screens due to choppiness and lag caused by the CPU having to work with a much bigger area. For example, when we got a demo unit of the Galaxy Tab, the problem was quite apparent to the point of Dolphin being downright frustrating on relatively complex sites.

Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" came to the rescue with hardware acceleration capabilities, which allowed shifting all the UI processing from the CPU to the GPU. However, since the first Honeycomb tablet, the Motorola XOOM, launched 2 weeks ago, only the stock browser has been offering the benefits of hardware acceleration and allowing for very smooth scrolling, zooming (xooming?), panning, etc, while Dolphin remained as choppy as before.

Mar

Adobe Flash 10.2.155.67 For Android Leaked, Includes Honeycomb Compatibility - Download It Now!

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Applications, Gingerbread 2.3, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless, XOOM

Remember that new version of Flash we reported on this morning? Yeah, well it's still scheduled to roll out on March 18th - one week from today - but thanks to BBCrackman from My Droid World, you can download a leaked copy of version 10.2 now.

Just as promised, it (finally) includes support for Honeycomb, meaning you can now watch South Park, Conan, or any other Flash video on your XOOM. Artem and I briefly played with it on our XOOMs, but unfortunately, we discovered that the experience wasn't without its flaws - video quality wasn't exactly top-notch, some controls were hard to utilize, and no, Hulu still doesn't work.

Mar

New Swype Beta Update Drops - Adds Atrix Support, Fixes Annoyances

Posted by Will Shanklin in Applications, News

Last Updated: March 14th, 2011

The Swype Beta for Android received an update (to version 2.29.71.20084) today and, in addition to tweaking some of the features that users found to be the most annoying, it brings support to some popular Android devices that previously had no official way of getting the popular trace keyboard.

Perhaps the biggest news from this new version is that the following display resolutions are now supported: QVGA, WQVGA, WSVGA, and qHD. Of course the Atrix has a qHD display so it should now be Swype-ready. The addition of WSVGA resolution is a little confusing, as the primary devices in this category are the Galaxy Tab and the Nook Color.

Mar

Want An Invite Code For The Friday Personal Assistant App We Previewed? Come On In, Because We've Got 50 Of Them

Posted by Abhiroop Basu in Applications, News

A few days ago I previewed an interesting analytics app called Friday which catalogues all the events on your phone into an easily digestible format. Friday generated quite a bit of interest, but due to its alpha status, was invite-only, thus not letting any of you without an invite give it a proper try. After discussing the situation with Friday's developers, we managed to convince them to provide Android Police readers with 50 invites.

If you would like an invite to use the Friday app do the following: on the Friday website, enter your email address. On the next page, in the field that says "why do you want to try out Friday?" input: "AP FOLLOWERS".

Mar

The Dream Game Has Arrived: Full Version Of AirAttack HD With 8 Levels Now In The Market

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

A couple of weeks ago, I ran into a new game by Art in Games called AirAttack HD Lite, which was a free preview version of a top-down plane shooter, but with only 2 levels. The game was polished so well that I finished the 2 levels in a heartbeat and was left longing for more. In fact, if you remember, I called AirAttack HD "not your dream game, but the one after that."

Today, the full version is available. 8 levels, 58 enemy types, 2 planes (I was hoping for more, but since they have numerous weapon upgrades, we don't really need more than 2), 8 "huge end level bosses," 4 control methods (touch, relative, tilt, and joypad), and [optional - thank god] support for Tegra processors (THD) all await you behind the download links below.

Mar

[Review] My Taptu: Social Media + News + Eye Candy = Success

Posted by Brad Ganley in App Reviews, Applications, Apps/Games, News, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

If you, like me, are constantly checking what's going on in the world of technology, science, world news, entertainment, gaming, music, and a million other things - on top of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, have I got an app for you. Picture, if you will, an Android app that will aggregate all of these news feeds and your social media streams into a cohesive and, quite frankly, sexy interface. You just imagined My Taptu, my new favorite news reader.

My Taptu's interface is really easy to grasp immediately and adding feeds, modifying the existing feeds, adding your Facebook and Twitter, and sharing all of this information just could not be any easier.

Mar

Digitally Imported (DI.FM) Radio App Lands In The Android Market

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

DI.FM fans, in an announcement on Facebook, your favorite radio station just dropped its Android app (previously available as only an off-Market beta) in the Android Market. Being one of such fans - Digitally Imported Premium is one of the few services I pay for monthly - I can tell you that the app is superb - it's clean, well designed, functional, and not over-bloated with features nobody needs.

Besides the obvious music streaming from all of DI's 37 channels, the app offers an ability to set favorite stations, stream using different bitrates when on Wi-Fi or cellular networks, and an ability to log into Premium to experience higher quality music without commercials.