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May

27 Best (And 2 WTF) New Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (4/25/13 - 5/6/13)

Posted by Jeremiah Rice in Applications, Best Apps/Games/LWPs Of The Week, News, Roundups

Last Updated: May 13th, 2013

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.

This is the app roundup. The game roundup from this week can be found here.

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

3CX Mobile Device Manager

Today's roundup is brought to you by 3CX Mobile Device Manager. The app is designed as an employee, device, and inventory tracking service, allowing employers to take a fast and accurate look at where all their mobile devices are at any given time.

May

T-Mobile Releasing Minor Update For Galaxy S4 On May 7th (M919UVUAMDB)

Posted by Kyle Wiggers in Galaxy S4, News, T-Mobile

Though it's been little more than a week since the Galaxy S4 hit T-Mobile airwaves, the carrier's showing the newest member of its smartphone family some love with an incremental update. Rolling out OTA and via Samsung's Kies software, the focus of the patch (version M919UVUAMDB) seems to be on T-Mobile's pre-installed applications, rather than the system software as a whole.

The Visual Voicemail and ISIS apps are set to receive "improvements," whatever that means. Still, it's good to see T-Mobile minimizing bloat while trying to maintain a good user experience so soon after the Galaxy S4's release. The effort is even more impressive when you consider that the GS4 isn't even available on a particular carrier yet.

May

Feedly Updated To Version 15, Taking Focus On Bug Fixes, Better Support For Comics

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

In a post to the official blog a few days ago, Feedly announced a new beta – version 15 – which quickly found itself released to the Play Store. The service, which has greeted over three million new users since the announcement of Google Reader's impending doom, promises a painless transition to its own backend solution once Reader closes officially in July. While said backend may not have taken hold yet, the developers have been hard at work making the app itself better and better in response to its users.

Its most recent update takes focus mainly on bug fixes and UX issues, but adds at least one neat feature – better support for comics.

May

Create A Killer Retro LCD Android Theme With A Few Quick Downloads

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in News

Readers of a certain age will remember the way LCD screens looked back in the early 90s. We'd never heard of color LCDs – that would have been witchcraft plain and simple. LCDs were dingy little grayscale things that you saw on clocks and mediocre handheld games. Still, there's nothing like some nostalgia in this age of pocket-sized supercomputers, right? MyColorScreen user z3u5 posted a classic LCD theme for custom Android launchers recently, and it's a seriously cool effect.

This theme can be applied in various launchers like Nova, ssLauncher, and Go Launcher. You'll need to download the resource packs from MyColorScreen and apply the theme and backgrounds in your launcher.

May

AT&T Will Sell 32GB Samsung Galaxy S4 Starting May 10th, $249.99 On Contract

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in AT&T, Galaxy S4, News, Samsung

If you've been eyeing up the 16GB Galaxy S4 but just haven't been able to pull the trigger, AT&T's newest announcement might be of interest to you. The 32GB variant of the GS4 will be on sale this Friday, May 10th. It's the same phone in every other way, though.

Starting 5/10 get the 32GB Samsung #GalaxyS4 for $249.99 w/2-yr agmt & qual plans. Fees apply. Offer reqs at soc.att.com/11bWMO1

— AT&T (@ATT) May 6, 2013

Many excited buyers were shocked to see how bad the Samsung bloatware problem had become when firing up the 16GB GS4 in recent weeks. Nearly half of the storage is taken up by the operating system and included apps.

May

[Updated] Bluetooth Filing Reveals LG LS980 Running Android 4.2 - Is This The Snapdragon 800-Powered Sprint Optimus G 2?

Posted by David Ruddock in News, Optimus G Pro, Rumors, Sprint

Update: Turns out this probably isn't the Optimus G Pro - it looks a heck of a lot more like what is being collectively dubbed the Optimus G 2. It seems an official Sprint page with build.prop info for the LS980 has been dug up (by our commenters), and it reveals a few tasty tidbits -namely, confirming Android 4.2[.2], and an MSM8974 chipset. That's no Snapdragon 600 - that's a Snapdragon 800. That processor isn't even out yet, so whatever phone this is, it's still a ways off. Our guess is the successor to the Optimus G.

While Bluetooth organization filings aren't always the most reliable way to identify a particular upcoming device, we're fairly confident in a filing that was made yesterday for a certain piece of LG hardware: the LS980.

May

Starz Releases Trio Of Video Streaming Apps: STARZ Play, ENCORE Play, and MOVIEPLEX Play

Posted by Bertel King, Jr. in Applications, News

Are you tired of seeing Starz on your television screen? Do you want to watch Starz as you sit on your back porch? Wouldn't it be great to have your favorite Starz content available on the go? If you feel this way, thank your lucky Starz, because the Play Store has just been hit by a trio of video streaming apps that allow you to see Starz wherever your heart desires.

The Starz trio includes STARZ Play ...

ENCORE Play...

And MOVIEPLEX Play.

As you've probably noticed, the interface is largely consistent across the three apps.

May

Intel's New 'Silvermont' Architecture Will Offer Three Times The Peak Performance In Atom Processors, One Fifth The Power Consumption

Posted by Bertel King, Jr. in News

Most smartphone manufacturers have chosen to ignore Intel's mobile offerings in favor of ARM chips, but Intel is hoping to change their minds with its latest microarchitecture. Today Intel unveiled Silvermont, which reportedly will result in new mobile chips with three times the performance of current-gen Intel Atom processors. Alternatively, Silvermont will enable Intel's next-gen Merrifield smartphone chips to achieve the same performance levels as Clover Trail+ with one-fifth of the power consumption.

Want more specifics? Other advertised features of Silvermont include:

A new out-of-order execution engine enables best-in-class, single-threaded performance.
A new multi-core and system fabric architecture scalable up to eight cores and enabling greater performance for higher bandwidth, lower latency and more efficient out-of-order support for a more balanced and responsive system.

May

[Great Deal] 'Changelog Droid' Free For 24 Hours With Coupon Code ($1.87 Off)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Deals, News

Changelog Droid, an app that not only shows changelogs of applications you have installed all in one convenient place but also monitors apps that you haven't installed and keeps history of changes over time, is on sale for 24 hours. And by sale I mean it'll cost you about free fifty. I've played around with the app for the last half an hour and found it to be very polished, pleasant to use, and, more importantly, actually handy. It even has a DashClock extension.

Since the Play Store doesn't allow apps to switch from free to paid, the developer is using the next best method - a coupon code.

May

[Initial Impressions] Google Glass Explorer Edition - I Feel Like Tony Stark [Video]

Posted by Ron Amadeo in Glass, News

My Google Glass unit has finally arrived. I've had a few days to play with Google's fancy new heads-up display, so it's probably time for some first impressions. A full review will be coming at some point.

One of the most striking things about Glass is just how well put together the whole package is. Everything about the design, from the hardware, to the typography, to the cool little whoosh noises it makes just oozes polish. What's here is certainly not finished, but even in this state it is easily the slickest product Google has ever produced. Glass feels like the culmination of the new, design-focused Google.