Artem Russakovskii
Contributing since March, 2010
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1398articles
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About Artem Russakovskii
Artem is a die-hard Android fan, passionate tech blogger, obsessive-compulsive editor, bug hunting programmer, and the founder of Android Police and APK Mirror. Most of the time, you will find Artem either hacking away at code or thinking of the next 15 blog posts.
Latest Articles
Yesterday, we saw INQ's Cloud Touch Android handset with deep Facebook integration revealed in all its socially introjected glory in an exclusive TechCrunch demo. Coming to Europe in May of this year and possibly to the U.S. after, the Cloud Touch will be taking aim at text-crazy teenagers and insomniac Facebook users who spend the better halves of their days prowling the depths of the largest social network in the world.
When Gingerbread was launched back in December of last year, we learned that one of its main selling points was Near Field Communication (NFC) support, which allowed for NFC-enabled devices to communicate when placed near each other.
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.
While looking through the recent app list tonight, I noticed that not less than 2 hours ago, American Airlines landed its very own app in the Android Market.
Back in June of 2010, Qualcomm issued a developer challenge to geniuses all over the world to create the best next-generation augmented reality applications using their Augmented Reality SDK for Android. With an impressive $200,000 total prize value, it's no surprise that developers have jumped into challenge head-first.
As promised, Rovio Mobile rolled out an update to the Angry Birds Seasons branch of its extremely popular game, this time with lots of pink, hearts, and love all around. The Valentine's Day edition features 18 new levels as well as some new carefully hidden golden eggs, and will surely knock down today's productivity levels with ripples felt all over the world.
The tickets for Google's upcoming developer conference called I/O are now for sale to the public. They will go fast, so you may want to grab that credit card and start mashing away at the keyboard pronto. Public registration comes after a week of early registration, which was capped at 1500 tickets and ran out very fast. A total of about 5,500 tickets are said to be available, all expected to melt away very fast. So, what are you waiting for? Cough up the $450 and go, go, go!
Update: We're still getting over the fact that Sony Ericsson just aired a slightly longer version of this ad in front of the millions of people watching the Super Bowl - check it out:
Remember the 15-second preview of Motorola's XOOM Super Bowl commercial that was leaked online a few days ago? Guess what - it's Super Bowl Sunday, the ad just aired in front of millions of people, and Moto immediately released the whole thing on YouTube, so that those of us who missed it could inspect just what exactly Moto's creative genius has been up to lately.
The latest Angry Birds update v1.5.1 that hit the Market yesterday introduced a whole bunch of levels, support for lower-end devices, and... a new SMS permission requirement. This not only prevented the update from being installed automatically, but also created quite a bit of user confusion, or even panic, around the reasons why the game would ever need to send or read our text messages.
Notion Ink's Adam has been through quite a bit on the long road to last month's launch, including concerns over its legitimacy and policies, ordering snafus, booting problems, and various bugs, but it hasn't stopped the company from steadily working on Adam's second major software patch.
Google's web-based Android Market announcement earlier this week was by all means no surprise to anyone - we've been waiting for it to arrive ever since its announcement at last year's Google I/O. In the meantime, alternative web-based markets, such as AppBrain.com, have skyrocketed in popularity because they allowed Android users to browse apps and games from their computers rather than being confined to their small phone screens. Even more importantly, alternative web markets had full control over app presentation, which allowed them to develop their own app discovery mechanisms.
Even though Motorola's original CLIQ received a 2.1 upgrade a long time ago, CLIQ XT owners have been patiently (and impatiently) waiting for the good news ever since. Unfortunately, it will never come, as Motorola's official decision, posted on their Android Software Upgrade News, is to forever doom it to 1.5. It is hard to imagine which differences between the original CLIQ and the XT prompted Motorola to refuse the upgrade, because the phones are really very much the same, and the biggest difference between them is the physical keyboard on the CLIQ.
Today has definitely been one of the more exciting days this year, at least in the Android department. Last week, Google sent out invitation for a Honeycomb-related event, where we, of course, were expecting detailed walkthroughs of Android 3.0 and hands-on with the Motorola XOOM.
We can't say we didn't see it coming, considering we saw this preview of the tablet-optimized SwiftKey keyboard during CES, but what SwiftKey is announcing today looks quite a bit different, to say the least.
After yesterday's launch of Optimus V on Virgin Mobile USA for $150, MetroPCS, another prepaid carrier, just followed the same suit and dropped the price of its own Optimus variant, the Optimus M, from $229 to $149.
Whether you believe the rumors about Samsung's Android upgrade plans or not doesn't really matter - the company has proven again and again that when it comes to older devices (read: released more than 3-4 months), your chances of an update drop dramatically. Froyo has been around for over 6 months now, but 3 out of 4 flagship Galaxy S devices in the U.S. (Captivate, Fascinate, Epic 4G) are still sporting outdated and Flashless Eclair builds, while the rest were only just upgraded in the last month or so. And this is just Froyo - let's not even talk about Gingerbread.
Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications and games that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. WTF apps were definitely in abundance this week.
Google I/O, a conference dedicated entirely to Google technologies and hosted in San Francisco's Moscone Center, is fast approaching, and Google today opened up early registration to key developer partners and 2010 I/O attendees. Early reg, available to the first 1500 people who complete it, costs $450 ($100 more than last year). Don't worry though - when it goes public next week, the price is going to stay the same until April 17th, at which point it will go up another $100 to $550 (thanks for the correction, Philip!). Unfortunately, unless you've received a personal invitation, you will not be able to proceed with the early signup and will have to wait until February 7th.
It appears that Motorola's ad campaign for the XOOM is underway, with the following ad released today by ShareMoto. As in the previous, and I would say much more successful Tablet Evolution ad, Apple plays a big part, being compared to the Big Brother from 1984. Motorola then flies some [impressive] specs around and... that's it. No pictures of the XOOM - nothing. If this is indeed their Super Bowl ad they are planning to air during the game this Sunday, I will be very disappointed. You can do better, Moto. You didn't let us touch or play with the tablet at CES - at least let us see it in your own commercials, OK?