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[Bonus Round] Blip Blup, What's The Phrase Free, And Gameloft's Epic

Jeremiah Rice — Thu, 23 May 2013 01:34:19 +0000

Welcome to the latest entry in our Bonus Round series, wherein we tell you all about the new Android games of the day that we couldn't get to during our regular news rounds. Consider this a quick update for the dedicated gamers who can't wait for our bi-weekly roundups, and don't want to wade through a whole day's worth of news just to get their pixelated fix. Today we've got a new puzzle game from noted developer ustwo, Zynga's latest attempt to enslave minions via word games, and another licensed title from Gameloft. Without further ado:

Blip Blup

Developer ustwo has cultivated a reputation for simple, unique titles, and Blip Blup is no exception.

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[Bonus Round] Blip Blup, What's The Phrase Free, And Gameloft's Epic was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

[How-To] Root The Verizon Galaxy S4 With No Device Wipe Necessary

Ryan Whitwam — Thu, 23 May 2013 01:29:37 +0000

Give the community enough time and almost any device can be cracked open, no matter how determined a carrier or OEM is to keep it locked down. The Verizon Galaxy S4 has proven a tough nut to crack, but a new root method is much less convoluted than previous ones. Just flash a kernel, run some tools, flash again, and you're done! Well, it's a little more involved than that, but not much. Here's how you do it.

First up, grab the necessary tools:

Samsung Official USB Drivers - Link
ODIN v3.07 - Link
VRUAMD2 Pre-release Kernel - Link
VRUAMDK Stock Kernel - Link
Motochopper Root Exploit Tool – Link

ODIN is a tool used for flashing firmware and kernels on Samsung devices.

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[How-To] Root The Verizon Galaxy S4 With No Device Wipe Necessary was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

[New App] Glide Instant Video Messaging Now Available On Android, Currently In Beta

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:53:55 +0000

Love using Skype and Hangouts but have friends or family that are rarely available to video chat? Glide is an attempt to solve that problem by taking an asynchronous approach to instant messaging. Here's the concept: conversationalists can login with their Facebook credentials, join a chat room, and respond to one another with videos up to 42 seconds in length. Videos are stored in the cloud, available for playback either immediately or some time after their initial posting. There isn't any message limit and data retention is currently unlimited – you won't see your videos disappear in the foreseeable future.

Glide, which launched on iOS early this year, is the brainchild of Israeli company Glide Talk.

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[New App] Glide Instant Video Messaging Now Available On Android, Currently In Beta was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

[New App] Cloudee (From The Makers Of Boxee) Makes It Easy To Share Videos With Limited Groups

Jeremiah Rice — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:51:22 +0000

Remember Boxee? It was a great little DIY set-top streamer, and it might still be, if Roku wasn't so cheap. The company's latest endeavor is a cloud video sharing service, cleverly called Cloudee, and the Android app just landed. You might think that the functions in a cloud-based video upload service are eclipsed by YouTube, and for most situations you'd be right. But Cloudee focuses on sharing videos with specific individuals or groups, and it does so very well, with an interface that's easy on the eyes.

There's nothing too complicated here: take a video, open the app, and upload it to Cloudee's servers.

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[New App] Cloudee (From The Makers Of Boxee) Makes It Easy To Share Videos With Limited Groups was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Men's Room Mayhem Awards Players For Leaving One Urinal Empty Between Patrons, As It Should

Bertel King, Jr. — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:58:00 +0000

Most men seem to understand the unspoken rules of bathroom etiquette. They get in, they do the deed, and they get out with as little awkward contact as necessary. But there's always that one guy who messes things up - that jerk who walks in and stands at the urinal next to yours when there was clearly another free one available. It's too late to educate that guy, but hopefully the next one will play Men's Room Mayhem before he makes the same mistake.

Ripstone's latest game puts gamers in the shoes of a bathroom janitor tasked with making sure the whizzers that walk in aim their tackle in the right direction.

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Men's Room Mayhem Awards Players For Leaving One Urinal Empty Between Patrons, As It Should was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

PSA: Photos Shared Via Google Hangouts Will Spam Your Google+ Photos Account, But Some Of You Might Like That

Bertel King, Jr. — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:58:00 +0000

If you hadn't noticed already, any pictures shared with or by your friends during a Google Hangouts chat will automatically sync up with Google+ Photos, organized into albums by conversation. These images are uploaded even if automatic back up is disabled inside the Google+ app. New albums can be found under the "Albums" tab and are titled Hangout: [Your Name] ● [Contact's Name] unless you explicitly gave your hangout a title, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding them.

I imagine this feature will provide peace of mind to people who hold mission-critical conversations via Google Hangouts. As for me, I'm afraid it will just be spammy.

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PSA: Photos Shared Via Google Hangouts Will Spam Your Google+ Photos Account, But Some Of You Might Like That was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Google Play Magazines Updated To V2.0, Now Uses Card UI In The Magazine Library And New Slide-Out Navigation

Cameron Summerson — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:52:00 +0000

Google is going a little nuts with the card UI updates today – first Drive, and now Play Magazines. Today's update brings Google's magazine-reader to version 2.0, and makes it overall easier to use and nicer to look at – both welcome additions to an already-good app. Besides the new Card UI that replaced the terrible rolodex style called StackView, Magazines followed suit and adopted the new slide-out navigation drawer that we first saw in Google Earth and Shopper.

Other than the pretty factor, this version contains some "bug fixes"... and not much else. Of course, considering the app is designed purely for reading/looking at, aesthetics are key, so that makes sense.

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Google Play Magazines Updated To V2.0, Now Uses Card UI In The Magazine Library And New Slide-Out Navigation was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Cricket's Samsung Galaxy S4 Is Coming June 7th For $600, Or $54.99 Plus Payments

Jeremiah Rice — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:14:33 +0000

Cricket Wireless wants you to know that they'll have the Samsung Galaxy S4, just like the big boys. They just don't have it yet. In a press release issued today, Cricket revealed its own special version of the Galaxy S4 (which is exactly like all the other LTE Galaxy S4 models), and it will be available to customers in-store, online, and at authorized resellers on June 7th. The cost for Cricket's unsubsidized phone is a wallet-searing $599.99, but those who are short on green can put $54.99 down and pay it off over a couple of years.

Cricket's S4 uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor, not Samsung's own Exynos octa-core, thanks to its LTE chipset requirement.

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Cricket's Samsung Galaxy S4 Is Coming June 7th For $600, Or $54.99 Plus Payments was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Google Drive Gets A Big Update To v1.2, Brings New Interface, Optical Character Recognition, And More

Cameron Summerson — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:29:00 +0000

Google Drive just got a nice big update out of nowhere, which, first and foremost, brings it up to speed with the card UI – a feature that works really well on an app like Drive. Past that, there's a new "scan" option, which uses your device's camera to grab snapshots of things like receipts, and coverts them to searchable PDFs using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology. The future is a fantastic place.

Spreadsheet editing also got a little less crappy and a little more feature-rich, as you can now adjust font types and sizes, as well as cell text colors and alignment.

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Google Drive Gets A Big Update To v1.2, Brings New Interface, Optical Character Recognition, And More was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Chainfire Releases Modified CF-Auto-Root And SuperSU For Qualcomm Versions Of The Galaxy S4

Jeremiah Rice — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:28:00 +0000

In case you hadn't heard, Samsung is making a little extra effort to secure the Galaxy S4 via tougher software kernels, which aren't susceptible to some of the more common root methods from previous Galaxy models. But where there's a will, there's a way, and noted Android developer/modder Chainfire has found a way around the security on the stock kernel for the Galaxy S4 i9505 - that's the Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered LTE variant, and the model sold for AT&T and T-Mobile in the United States.

This root exploit works via a newly-modified version of the CF-Auto-Root tool and the popular SuperSU permission manager app.

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Chainfire Releases Modified CF-Auto-Root And SuperSU For Qualcomm Versions Of The Galaxy S4 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.