Aaron Gingrich
Contributing since June, 2010
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711articles
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About Aaron Gingrich
Aaron is a geek who has always had a passion for technology. When not working or writing, he can be found spending time with his family, playing a game, or watching a movie.
Latest Articles
There's little denying that Apple rules the smartphone world. The company sells just one phone model, yet that sole model constitutes 8.8% - or roughly 1 in 11 - of all worldwide smartphone sales and 73% of profits. iOS is the second most popular smartphone OS in the US after Android with 31.4% of the market (Android has 50.8%). Windows Phone 7, on the other hand, has just 4% of the US smartphone market, yet it's Microsoft that we have to worry about. We're witnessing a Kansas City Shuffle; while everybody is looking left, Microsoft is going right.
Amazon Mobile For Android Updated, Brings New Sorting/Filtering Options, Revamped Navigation, Wish Lists, And More
Amazon Mobile For Android Updated
Everyone loves Amazon, and thankfully for Android owners, their app has always been pretty solid. Thanks to an update to version 1.6 that was pushed to the Play store last night, it's now even better:
Back in February and shortly before MWC, developer Scalado unveiled an app called Remove. Put simply, the app allowed you to remove unwanted objects from images - for example, if your significant other is posing in front of the Louvre, you can remove other tourists from the picture. It works by taking multiple photos of the scene, then determining which ones moved through, and removing them at a touch.
Frisbee Rush is undoubtedly one of the most original games we've seen in ages. The story is simple - the city has been invaded by aliens, and only you and your awesome frisbee-wielding abilities can stop them - but the mechanics are anything but. See, your phone is only the controller; the game is played on your TV or PC.
According to the always sometimes occasionally reliable FOSS patents, Apple made a conscious decision to allow Samsung to launch the Galaxy S III on time... so that the case could go to trial sooner. Apple had the option of filing a temporary restraining order to potentially stop the shipment of the SGSIII, but doing so would've been a risk for a few reasons.
Look, I'll admit it up front: 9 times out of 10, when I buy accessories, I buy cheap and generic. A $5 phone pouch is just as good as a $30 one, right? I always thought I was getting the same product without paying for a fancy name stamped on it, a nicer package, and some more marketing. But between my cheap, universal car mount (which, while adjustable, never quite seems to hold any device quite as snugly as I'd like) or my universal arm band (which has required some cutting and doctoring with every new phone I get), one would think I'd know by now that you get what you pay for when it comes to accessories.
I'm not much of a case person. I was never very clumsy with my gadgets and didn't think the added bulk was a worthy trade-off for the added protection, especially in the day and age of ultra-durable plastics and Gorilla Glass screens. But on both fronts, that's changing; it's a lot harder to guarantee the safety of my gadgets when I've got kids (we're both likely to drop things) and there are some very sleek cases on the market. Enter the $20 Spigen Ultra Thin Air case for the One X.
Over a year ago, Adult Swim released their first Android game, Robot Unicorn Attack. Now they're back with another ridiculous(ly awesome?) game called Monsters Ate My Condo. Unfortunately there's no video footage of the gameplay, but I think the Play Store banner probably sums it up well:
EA Announces Need For Speed Most Wanted Coming To Android October 30
EA Announces Need For Speed Most Wanted Coming To Android October 30
EA has a tried-and-true formula for the Need For Speed (NFS) series: fast cars, good graphics, a cheesy story, and some good old arcade-style racing. Thus it's no surprise that the latest NFS title, Most Wanted (a follow up to the 2008 original) features just that - and as always, it looks like a properly good time:
Nearly two months ago, I reviewed the new SanDisk 64GB class 6 microSDXC (the XC stands for "eXtreme Capacity") card, and came away hugely impressed. Something the size of my pinky fingernail that can store 16 compressed 1080p BluRays, and outperforms my class 10 16GB card? Yes please.
If you've been paying even the slightest bit of attention to the tech world for the past year or two, you're probably well aware that Android has more or less taken over the smartphone scene. Way back in June of 2010, Google revealed that 160,000 Android devices were being activated per day - at the time, that was more than double the combined total of iPhone, Mac, and iPad activations. According to comScore, Android had already conquered 28.7% of the market in December of 2010. In March of 2011 - just a few short months later - comScore's numbers showed market share had leapt to 34.7%.
It's not every day that I get excited when I look at a UI demo, largely because they tend to end up being vaporware. But it's hard to ignore a revolutionary UI when one comes along - and that's exactly what Chameleon is:
We've all seen the hilarious eCards that pop up on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and reddit (over and over and over...), but you may not know that they come from Someecards. The company has an iOS app, but otherwise the only way to get the hilarious goods right to your mobile device was to visit the site directly. Not anymore, as the company released an Android app a few weeks ago to little fanfare.
Way back in October, Artem and I got into a debate about the quality of Android's gaming scene. I was of the opinion that there were good gaming titles - not an abundance, but enough quality titles to keep me happy. Artem, on the other hand, was of the opinion that there were virtually no good games on Android. So we put it to you, our readers. The result: gaming on Android was good, not great.
As much as I complain about how ridiculous the monthly price of a good wireless plan is, I have to admit it does have its upsides. For AT&T and Verizon especially, that means that when they take in those huge profits, they pay part of it back out in the form of network upgrades and advancements. That's a big chunk of why their 4G (LTE) rollouts are ahead of the other two carriers, and part of why they're ahead of their European counterparts (the other big part, at least compared to Europe, is spectrum).