11
May
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Have you got a shiny new HTC One in your pocket, but the company's lackluster advertising has only made you more aware of your hatred for Sense 5? Do you long for stock Android, but crave power user features? Does your heart know no fear of voided warranties? Then today is your lucky day, assuming you're using an international GSM or Sprint model. The CyanogenMod custom ROM is now available in 10.1 (Jelly Bean 4.2) flavor for both versions of the One, albeit only in a test build (pre-nightly) format. Update: The first nightly builds just appeared.

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These builds are so early that even the most daring of our readers might want to hold back on them.

10
May
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As the weekend begins, you know deep down inside what's missing in your life. Happiness, love, and security? Nah, if that's what you were about to say, that's dead wrong. What you need is a big honkin' phone in your pocket running on Big Red's 4G LTE network. Oh, and it can't just be big – it needs to have a full HD screen too. The Droid DNA certainly fits the description, and it just so happens it can be yours for the low price of $19.99 (some restrictions apply, phone will not love you back).

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The Droid DNA is a bridge between the 2012 and 2013 smartphone worlds.

10
May
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Hulu's premium TV service hit 4 million users last week, and to celebrate, they've released an update to their Android app. (Actually, the update probably doesn't have anything to do with that. Forget I mentioned it.) The 2.8 version of Hulu Plus adds some much-needed improvements, particularly for playback and video seeking. The free app (tied to the paid service) is now compatible with a wider range of devices - the Play Store is showing everything from the Galaxy S II to my Nexus 7 running Android 4.2 as compatible.

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The revised app has better playback performance and reduced buffering, a great help to anyone who's trying to catch up with All My Children over 3G.

10
May
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Last Updated: May 13th, 2013

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 title from Crescent Moon, a sequel to a tower defense favorite, unique puzzle and adventure games, and an Xperia Play-optimized version of a popular beat-em-up. Without further ado:

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Fractal Combat

Full-on flight simulators are still a little too much for mobile platforms (because of control issues rather than a lack of power), but arcade flight sims are getting better.

10
May
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Readers, Babel no more. As first reported by a historically credible member of The Verge forums and confirmed today by a Tech Radar source, Google's unified messaging platform will be known as Hangouts when it's officially unveiled, and may launch as soon as Google I/O. Tech Radar's contact provided a screenshot that further lends credence to the new name: nestled among the emoticons and toolbar of the alleged interface, an expanded drop down menu includes particularly conspicuous options referencing "Hangouts," which is the closest thing to a dead giveaway that I can think of.

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Google's efforts to consolidate its Talk, Google+ Hangout, and photo sharing services into a cohesive product have been rumored for the past several months.

10
May
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The 5.5-inch, LTE-toting LG Optimus G Pro is now available for purchase at AT&T. Packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, a 1080p display, and a 3,140mAh battery, the G Pro's no slouch, and, as we found in our review of the Korean version, stands up well against competitors like the Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

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The Optimus G Pro can be picked up for $200 on a 2-year contract, $450 on a 1-year one (an option that makes the least sense financially), or $550 without signing your life away. It's currently in stock both online and at AT&T retail locations, so if you're in the market for a new tab/phone, get to it!

10
May
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The HTC One is pretty great, and HTC has had no problem vividly illustrating its hardware features. Now they've moved on to the software in a pair of 30-second TV spots. The ads are all about BlinkFeed, HTC's proprietary social/news stream, and the centerpiece of the Sense 5 user interface. The commercials get right to the point, showing that other phones make you "dig" for information and content, while the mighty One with BlinkFeed puts everything you want right there on the home screen. Dirt literally falling out of inferior phones makes the point with all the subtlety of a thrown brick.

10
May
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What exactly is the deal with slide-out sidebar navigation? Is it a standard Holo thing? Is it not? 3rd-party developers aren't really sure what to do with it, and even Google-made apps are all over the place. Some apps have sidebar navigation, some don't. The ones that do have it all function a little differently and none of the implementations were actually any good - until now.

Google Earth and Google Shopper were just updated with a new sidebar design, and, well, have you seen them? Google has fixed the biggest problem I have with all the previous designs: unpredictability.

In order to understand what's so great about the new design, we have to talk about what's so crappy about the old designs.

10
May
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In many ways, the proliferation of the Call of Duty generation is just an extension of ye olde Cops and Robbers, traditionally played with cap guns, rubber bands, or NERF darts. The Tech 4 Kids company is trying to bring kids' games full circle with Tek Recon, a series of toy guns. What makes these toys unique is the video game-style smartphone HUD, enabled with a docked phone and an Android or iOS app. The Tek Recon Kickstarter campaign started this morning, and it looks like it won't have any trouble meeting the reasonable $50,000 goal.

Tek Recon functions well enough as a toy gun alone.

10
May
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In an oddly-specific narrative published this morning, AllThingsD reported that sources close to Larry Page and Google Wallet have confirmed that plans for the physical Google Wallet credit card have been cut up, and VP of Wallet Osama Bedier pushed out of the company.

We exclusively reported on the Wallet card last November, when it appeared in a leaked version of the Google Wallet app. You could even initiate the card ordering process, suggesting the project was well on its way to completion. So, we waited. And we waited. And then we waited some more. The Wallet card seemingly went off the radar, and as Ron noted, the "new Google Wallet" sign up page still greets visitors of the Wallet site, like a big "Coming Soon" banner in front of that one restaurant that never seems to actually make progress on those renovations that have been going for like 6 months now.

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