Apps/Games - 297/391 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Jun

Lodsys Patent Trolling Continues - What Should Android Developers Do, Google?

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Apps/Games, News

Update: Cory Trese's infringement notice was apparently sent to him by mistake - whatever that means. He received a call from Lodsys stating they'd like all the materials they sent returned. What's happened? Who knows, but as someone in our team chat room sarcastically stated - maybe they forgot a zero somewhere.

We received this tweet from Cory Trese yesterday, developer of a game called Star Traders 2, in regard to a settlement offer he received from Lodsys LLC (a patent troll shell corporation):

This isn't a friendly letter. In fact, it's probably downright terrifying as a prospect to most developers, and understandably so.

Jun

Dolphin Browser HD V6.0 Beta Hits The Android Market Alongside The Stable Version

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

In a page taken directly from the Firefox playbook, the team behind Dolphin Browser have thrown the newest beta version of Dolphin HD into the market alongside the current stable version. This allows you to test out all of the upcoming features in Dolphin while they're still bleeding edge, without sacrificing the stability of the current version, as you can have them both installed at the same time.

^{I'm not entirely sure what they were thinking when they chose that font.}

Naturally, the newest beta offers all of the things that you love about Dolphin, along with some added features, like Webzine - a feature that Dolphin claims "changes the way we browse the mobile web."

If you love your software fresh-out-of-the-oven, go ahead and hop over to the Android Market or hit the widget below to grab this all new beta.

Jun

[Update: It's Live!] Peggle Coming Exclusively To The Amazon Appstore June 21st, Free Of Charge - $2.99 Thereafter

Posted by David Ruddock in Apps/Games, Games, News

Update 6/21/11: The game just went live on the Amazon Appstore, go get it!

P.S. Unavailable on the Hero and XOOM but available on the Tab 10.1 and EVO? I can maybe understand the Hero, but the XOOM?..

Update: According to the comments, the game should work on devices listed as unavailable - you just have to buy it in the web version of the Appstore and then download as usual within the Appstore app. Odd stuff.

Phandroid's just been tipped that the absurdly popular puzzle game Peggle will be heading to Android (finally) tomorrow - via the Amazon Appstore.

Jun

Cut The Rope Finally Coming To Android This Friday?

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Games, News

In probably the least subtle unofficial announcement possible, the Cut The Rope developer team (via Twitter) sent us a message with this picture:

Now, whether there is supposed to be an "Amazon" there is unknown. If so, they might want to change the spelling - lest they give Apple some ammunition in its recent litigation. And if it is an Amazon Appstore release, that means it's likely non-US Android users won't be able to access it for a couple of weeks. Bummer.

Still, Cut The Rope has long been promised for Android, and it's good to see the developer team has been hard at work making that happen.

Jun

[Review] Naval Clash Blows The Original 'Battleship' Out Of The Water, Brings Smooth Multiplayer Gameplay to Android

Posted by Matt Demers in Apps/Games, Game Reviews, Games, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

In my youth, one of the games I hated most was Battleship - it was simply too slow for my liking. Spending what seemed like ages trying to seek out hits in a sea of misses only served to bore me out of my mind.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Naval Clash eliminated most of my hate towards the game. At its core, it's a rendition of Battleship that allows you to play against a CPU, friends over Bluetooth, or other players over Naval Battle's multiplayer service. Following the likes of Words With Friends, Naval Clash takes an old formula that "everyone" likes and makes it available on a mobile platform.

Jun

[New Game Review] Stardunk Brings Some Polish To Side-View Basketball Games

Posted by Ian G. Clifton in Game Reviews, Games, News, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Gaming on Android has been accelerating at the same mind-numbing speed as Android hardware, and we have quickly gone from having a limited number of decent titles to having more good games than we can track. In some cases, these games stand out for their amazing new gameplay; in others, they stand out for their high level of polish. Stardunk is one of the latter.

There have been several Android games that let you play a quick game of basketball, essentially just choosing an angle and power, and letting the ball fly. Stardunk is that plus multiplayer competitiveness and customization with a healthy dose of polish.

Jun

Crackle Drops Subscription Fees, Launches Brand New Free TV/Movie-Streaming Android App

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Applications, News

The multimedia situation on Android has been rapidly improving over the last few months, with the introductions of Netflix's official application and Google's own Movie service. Today, it is set to get better still: Crackle, a movie- and TV-watching service launched v2.0 of its Android app with access to a large selection of free movies and TV shows. The service, previously available at $5/month, is now free and supported by ads.

You'll need an Android 2.2+ device with Flash installed (though neither the XOOM nor the Tab 10.1 seem to be supported at this point, so looks like it's phones only for now), but if your handset meets the requirements, you'll be able to stream as many feature-length films and TV shows as you like, provided, of course, that they're in Crackle's catalog.

Jun

36 Best (And 2 WTF) New Android Apps From The Last 2 Weeks (6/3/11 - 6/17/11)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Best Apps/Games/LWPs Of The Week, Games, News

Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.

This is the 2nd part of this week's roundup and is dedicated to apps. For games, see 32 Best New Android Games From The Last 2 Weeks (6/2/11 – 6/16/11).

Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the AppBrain widgets, which include ratings and pricing info.

Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here:

Featured App

Today's roundup is sponsored by Gameview Studios and their game Tap Fish.

Jun

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[Update: It's In The Market Now, Too] Angry Birds Rio Carnival Update Now Available On Amazon Appstore - Adds 15 New Levels

Posted by David Ruddock in Games, News

Surprise, surprise - Rovio's has issued the next major content update to Angry Birds Rio early! The Carnival update is now available on the Amazon Appstore (unfortunately that's the only place you can get it for now).

Here's the basic changelog:

15 levels in new world named Carnival Upheaval
Blue, the Macaw, can now be used alone.
The new hidden fruits are papaya (thanks to everyone who helped us figure this out)

Update: This update is in the Android Market now, too.

Angry Birds Rio

Amazon Appstore Twitter

Jun

Yahoo! Releases Play Music App, Knows What You Want To Hear

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

You know that music thing people like to listen to? Well, Yahoo! seems to think that it may be the way back into users' hearts, as it just released a music-identifying, brain-crawling, news-delivering music player for Android powered by Instinctiv. It's called Yahoo! Play, and it has some basic, run-of-the-mill features, but it also has some... interesting features. Let's take a look.

First up, it has a feature called Identify, which is basically a Shazam or SoundHound clone: it listens to the track in question, then tells you what it is. It does differ from the aforementioned apps in one way, however - it offers continuous mode, where it will scan a series of songs, returning results for each one.