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Earlier today, Comcast dropped its 2nd mobile app for Android into the Android Market, the direction of which puzzled even me - and I work for a Comcast-owned company. The new app, XFINITY TV, is clearly targeted at TV viewers, while the previous app called XFINITY Mobile was a more general application for address book management, SmartZone email, Digital Voice, and... TV, DVR, and On Demand.
A couple of weeks ago, EA released Bejeweled 2 to the Android Market, and many Bejeweled fans jumped on it like bees on honey. Most found the game in the Market just fine for $2.99, but others were stumped when they saw a whopping $7.99 price tag.
CNN is not the only news organization with a tablet-optimized Honeycomb app - USA Today today (ooh, 2x "today"s in a row, it must be your lucky day) jumped on the same bandwagon with their own take on what a tablet news app should be like. News, Money, Sports, Life, Tech, Travel, Photos, and Weather sections are available, and... well, there is not much else to say about this - it's a news app on a larger screen. You can find the download links towards the bottom of the page.
Earlier this month, along with the CNN app for tablets, Google demoed 2 3D games that utilized both of Tegra 2's CPU cores - Monster Madness and Great Battles. The former of these games, Monster Madness, just quietly crept into the Android Market with a hefty $10 price tag. The price of 2 Starbucks coffees is a bit steep for a game, but not unheard of.
If you remember, during Google's Honeycomb showcase in the beginning of the month, one of the tablet-optimized apps demoed was made by CNN. Considering CNN is one of the Honeycomb/XOOM launch partners, the new app showed up in the Market like clockwork for an easily digestible price of free. For those who need a refresher, here's the video from the presentation again:
You would think that large hardware manufacturers, such as HTC and Motorola, would dedicate at least a few hours to trademark searches before naming their products and investing millions of dollars into promotional efforts for said products. That would be a fair assumption, right? It seems like the answer sometimes is: not exactly.
Lookout Inc's Lookout Mobile Security app is one of the most popular and trusted security apps on the Market, and while the company is going to continue active development of its flagship product, today it is launching Lookout Labs - a separate Android Market developer account dedicated to "pushing the bounds of mobile apps."
Among all the Thunderbolt delay rumors, here comes the latest one from the Roseville Best Buy #129. Their Twitter account, currently followed by 372 people, tweeted a few hours ago that the launch has been delayed further than we were anticipating - till Thursday, March 4th.
It's always fun to poke at Android-related snafus that retailers, especially as big as Best Buy, make in their promotional materials, and today is one of those days.
Even though we thought Costco would be selling the Motorola Atrix 4G for AT&T for $149.99, the mega-warehouse decided to sweeten the deal a bit and dropped the price to $119.99 on a 2-year contract (this includes customers upgrading their existing AT&T phones too).
Google's upcoming I/O conference generated quite a bit of commotion earlier this month when all of the tickets offered to the public sold out within 59 minutes in a messy mash-F5-to-get-through-the-crashing-servers rampage. In fact, it got so ridiculous that at first Android Police ended up with no tickets of our own either (don't worry though, I will still be there to provide coverage).
Anti-virus and anti-malware products by Kaspersky Lab are known as some of the best computer protection solutions for your desktop and notebook, and today the company announced availability of Kaspersky Mobile Security for Android.
So, as you can see, I'm quite excited about AirAttack HD. Now multiply it by 10, and you'll get to the level of my fascination about how polished everything is in this game. Created by Art In Games, AirAttack HD came to Android a few days ago without much fanfare, but didn't have any trouble reserving a spot in our weekly roundup.
Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous week or so.
The most anticipated Verizon phone of the month, the HTC Thunderbolt, just got its first official commercial, complete with lightning, thunderbolt (no kidding), and a guy on the hunt for HTC's newcomer who ran away straight from the Ocean's 11 set. Two things are for sure - rooftops are definitely cooler than barns, and lightning is always a good idea.
One of my most favorite Android games and by far the best tower defense game I've tried is Tower Raiders. Once you try Tower Raiders, you simply can't go back to Robo Defense and other clones (I honestly don't understand why Robo Defense is so popular). Last year, I was traveling to France, and Tower Raiders proved to be hours of incredible fun, making 2-hour lines to museums and long metro rides more than bearable.
Twitter's banhammer of UberMedia's properties - Twidroyd, UberTwitter, and UberCurrent - caused a bit of an uproar and panic on Friday, but both companies quickly issued their statements on the matter. Twitter clarified that UberMedia's apps were violating policies and trademarks, while UberMedia promised to release an update fixing the problems as soon as possible.
The Galaxy S 4G is not the most exciting phone coming out on T-Mobile, but if you've been looking at T-Mobile and eyeing the Samsung Vibrant, then the Galaxy S 4G may be for you. It is essentially a 4G (HSPA+21) capable version of the Vibrant that also comes with a front-facing camera and a mobile HD version of the movie Inception (wait, what?). Sorry, it still ships with Froyo - no word on Gingerbread for any T-Mobile phones other than the Nexus S has been released.
The Atrix 4G hasn't been released yet, but, surely, its system dump just leaked online. The boot animations and the Paper Forest LWP are pretty boring and uninteresting, but the static wallpapers (meaning non-LWP images) are simply amazing.
How terribly boring were the last 2 months with regards to picking yourself up a new Android handset? We've seen hundreds of exciting announcements but practically no products to actually buy - end of December and January always seem to be those kinds of months. However, things are picking up, and one of the first new devices on the market fresh out of the oven is the HTC Inspire 4G for AT&T.