News - 845/946 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Oct

EVAC From Hexage Arrives - You Want This Game. Now [First Look]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Game Reviews, Games, News, Reviews, Videos

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

It's not every day that I shoot videos of Android games (in fact, this is my first one ever) but when I saw EVAC HD hit the Market yesterday, I felt the need to do it. It wasn't even the graphics, which, by the way, are awesome, it wasn't the gameplay, which is also good - it was the music and the sounds that captivated me. I have only one way to describe them - "magical".

If you asked me what EVAC was, I would probably say it's PacMan. On crack. Hexage took the good old game, added powerups, special abilities, humor, knockout graphics and sounds, and produced something, while still similar, but at the same time completely new.

Oct

Archos Gen. 8 Android Tablets Soon To Get Froyo Update [Video]

Posted by Brian O'Toole in 101, 28, 32, 43, 70, ARCHOS, Devices By Manufacturer, News

While they may not quite have the buzz that Samsung's Galaxy Tab is generating, there has been still been plenty of interest in Archos's 2010 line of Android tablets - particularly among those who like to hold on to their money. Archos's pricing has traditionally been one of the hardware's most attractive points, and this year's "Generation 8" is no exception.

^{L-to-R: Archos 101, 70, 43, 32, 28 - aka Generation 8}

Now Archos is adding another feather to the Gen. 8 cap, with news that the line should be receiving an update to Android 2.2 within the next few weeks.

Oct

QuickDesk Pro Now Available In The Market: Landscape Support Included

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Applications, Apps/Games, News

We're big fans of Faruq Rasid's QuickDesk utility around here. Well, hot off the presses we have news of a "Pro" version hitting the market. Along with drag-up-to-kill for applications running in the QuickPanel drawer, QuickDesk 0.4 Pro also brings support for landscape orientation. Rather than rearranging your portrait layout, the landscape implementation offers a whole new screen where you can fit 6 x 3 icons in the widescreen aspect.

^{I'm the only person invited to that particular party :(}

This is of course a great boon to owners of landscape phones such as the Droid, Epic 4G, or T-mobile G2, but it is also useful for portrait phone owners as it offers you a secondary space to place widgets that you might only want to check every once in a while, like news headlines or schedules.

Oct

Deal Alert: T-Mobile's Samsung Vibrant $0.01 Again On Amazon, This Time Including Upgrades For Existing Customers

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News, Samsung, T-Mobile, Vibrant

T-Mobile's Samsung Vibrant is still a pretty hot phone, but with the release of the G2 and the upcoming myTouch 4G, Amazon decided to throw a blowout sale for only 1 penny again, just like it did back in August.

This time, however, existing customers upgrading their handsets and extending their contracts are no longer left in the dust. As always, no taxes or shipping fees are involved. But you already knew that, didn't you - it's Amazon after all.

And I still remember the time when $150 was considered a good deal...

Oct

Rovio Launches Pre-orders For An Angry Birds Plush Toy Collection [Bonus: Angry Birds Halloween Pics]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News, Off-Topic

Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, one of the most successful franchises to hit mobile gaming, is slowly starting to spread into our daily lives outside of our mobile devices. No, I'm not talking about all the Halloween awesomeness that we've been seeing today:

I am talking about the official Angry Birds plush toys that just dropped for pre-order. These furry little things are produced by Commonwealth Toys and come in 5 different versions. They cost $14.99 a pop, measure 8" in size, and will be ready to ship by December, just in time for New Years and Christmas gift giving.

Oct

id Software's Rage Mobile To Receive An Android Port: Droids VS Zombies At 60 FPS?

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Games, News

If there's one thing about Android that's really been coming along lately, it's gaming. We've already seen great games like MiniSquadron!, Angry Birds, and Reckless Racing make good impressions, and now we have another cause to celebrate. Following on from the news of an imminent Cut The Rope release for Android, we have this illuminating tweet from id Software co-founder John Carmack, confirming what has been the wish of many since way back in August:

Just in case you don't know who this John Carmack fella is, his Wikipedia entry states:

Carmack was the lead programmer of the id computer games Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, their sequels and the Commander Keen series of games.

Oct

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, X10 Mini, And X10 Mini Pro To Start Receiving Update To Android 2.1 In November

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Android OS, Eclair 2.1, News, Xperia X10 (es209ra), Xperia X10 Mini / Mini Pro (Robyn / Mimmi)

Try to contain your excitement, here: Sony-Ericsson will begin rolling out an the update to Android 2.1 (Éclair) for the Xperia X10, X10 Mini, and X10 Mini Pro devices starting November 1. As sarcastic as we are about being updated to an already out-of-date version, it's still a huge step up from the current Android 1.6. Major features of the updates:

Xperia X10:
• HD video recording with continuous auto-focus for high quality videos
• Upgrade of the Android platform to Android 2.1
• New back up and restore application, with extended content back up
• 5 homescreens for apps, widgets, shortcuts and folders
• Social phonebook which automatically syncs contact pictures from Facebook and shows when your friends are online

Xperia X10 mini and X10 mini pro:
• Improved Bluetooth functionality with support for sending and receiving pictures, contacts and more
• New backup and restore application with extended content back up
• Automatic synchronization of your contact pictures between Facebook and your phone book
• Improved ways of handling pictures, audio, text and numbers in your messages
• Upgrade of the Android platform to Android platform 2.1

Android 2.1 brings a slew of benefits on its own, so their "Upgrade of the Android platform to Android 2.1" entails an awful lot of changes on its own.

Oct

NPD: 28% Of Smartphones Sold In Q1 2010 Were Android

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Android OS, News

Finally, some empirical evidence that illustrates what we've known for some time now: Android is growing like gangbusters. In fact, 28% of smartphones sold in Q1 2010 were Android, compared to 21% for iOS. RIM still holds the top spot with 36%, but that's a drop of roughly 12% in the past year - while iOS has fallen approximately 10% itself. In the same period, Android increased over 20%.

In fact, it seems like Android grew at the expense of just about everyone else - excluding a minor 1-2% increase in "other". And as Android continues to expand across the line of devices - from smartphones to ultra-cheap featurephones - it's likely that the overall number of Android devices will continue to grow.

Oct

Acer Liquid Metal Announced For The UK, Seems Rather Solid

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Acer, Devices By Manufacturer, Liquid Metal, News

Last Updated: November 15th, 2010

While all you Americans slept, Acer took the wraps off its latest Android handset, the Liquid Metal, over here in Europe. Sporting Acer's custom Breeze UI, the Liquid Metal runs Android 2.2 atop an 800 MHz processor. The MSM7230 CPU is a whopping 32 MHz higher than the 768 MHz of the original Liquid's QSD8250 Snapdragon, but this 800 MHz core is the same Scorpion processor that powers the rather lovely T-Mobile G2. If the G2's performance is any indication, this processor is no slouch (particularly when overclocked), so things are looking quite nice indeed for the Liquid Metal in terms of smoothness of operation.

Oct

Google Maps 4.6 Goes Up, Android Market Goes Down...

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Applications, News

As you may have noticed over the last couple of days, the Android Market hasn't been doing too well. Downloads have started, and then failed, failed to start, started to fail, and just generally failed in every imaginable way. There once was a time when clearing such-and-such cache would fix this sporadic issue, but it seems that even this black magic no longer suffices. Threads have been popping up all over the Android-tinted corners of the 'net with people unable to download anything from the Market.

This happens to coincide nicely with a Google Maps 4.6 update, which is said to bring some new and improved search features.