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The 45th Super Bowl is only a week away, and NFL Enterprises decided to help out all attendees by introducing the official Android app. The app features 3D pinch-to-zoop-and-rotate maps of North Texas, parking, events and local info, and a detailed map of the Cowboys Stadium with Steelers and Packers already clearly marked on the field. You can also utilize GPS to find yourself on the map in case you get lost in the crowd.
The G-Slate Honeycomb tablet, announced at CES, was never shown off to the public outside of this weak T-Mobile video which just embedded the official Honeycomb intro into a dark G-Slate frame. Last week, the tablet made a brief and fuzzy appearance in a random Korean music video, seemingly confirming previous rumors of a 3D camera.
Virgin Mobile USA, a no-contract budget mobile U.S. retailer with plans starting at $25/mo for unlimited text/web/data and 300 minutes, has only crossed paths with Android once, with the introduction of Samsung Intercept. However, another contender, LG Optimus V, an equivalent of Optimus S on Sprint, Optimus T on T-Mobile, etc. just popped up at RadioShack.com, before even hitting Virgin's own site, which is expected to happen on February 1st. There have been reports of the device being available in some brick and mortar Virgin Mobile USA stores, but it looks like this RadioShack appearance is the first time it became available online.
HTC Thunderbolt, announced at CES earlier this year, may only seem like it's underpowered compared to the dual-core offerings, but according to a very early unboxing by someone named Michael, it's quite a beast with some very admirable features. I don't know how Michael got his hands on this device so early - perhaps he's a tester, a ninja reviewer, or a VZW employee receiving Thunderbolt training (I'm most likely inclined to side with the latter), but he does spill some interesting details that I've summarized below, conveniently mixed in with some specs.
Last year, we reported on a serious vulnerability in all versions of Android, found by a security researcher Thomas Cannon. It allowed a remote attacker to download files off a user's SD card upon visiting a webpage with malicious JavaScript code embedded in it. Google's response was swift, and the fix was rolled out in the public release of Gingerbread at the end of 2010.
Facebook for Android has been notoriously slow to release updates and features in general, and last night's update reaffirmed that the app is nowhere near the top of Facebook's priority list. The Deals feature has been available on iOS since early November of 2010, only reaching Android almost 3 months later. According to the changelog, the Deals functionality is the only addition to the app, so let's take a quick look at how exactly you are going to find said deals.
Well, this didn't take long - the hackers over at NotionInkHacks.com played around with Notion Ink's dual-core Adam Android tablet that finally started shipping last week and already managed to root the device.
Nexus S owners, listen up. If you own Samsung's flagship "Google Experience" device, it's likely you've experienced a random reboot bug that we reported on over 2 weeks ago. The Google bug tracker thread for this issue has been a roller coaster of emotion - after getting filled with a large number of comments, it was declined by a Google employee, only to be reopened shortly after due to a public outcry.
Buried deep in the depths of the Honeycomb SDK that was released yesterday, this Tron-inspired Honeycomb logo, which, as we later found out, was actually part of the Honeycomb Easter egg. Whether this logo is THE Honeycomb logo or not remains to be proven, but it is definitely official, as it came straight from the SDK. Judging by my reddit submission, many of you liked it quite a bit but had ideas of your own of how it could be modified to be more in tune with the Android theme. Here are some of the mods.
The Honeycomb SDK preview, allowing everyone to take a peek and play around with Honeycomb using the Android emulator, was launched yesterday, but after we got past the initial excitement, we found that the emulator itself was dog slow and pretty much unusable. In fact, it was so frustrating to use it that I wanted to punch walls and rip out my hair after 5 minutes with it. And I'm not even going to talk about orientation problems - how the Android team managed to ship the SDK with orientation broken by default (there is a fix for it in the Settings > Display) is beyond me and beyond the scope of this article. We're not the only ones who noticed - Engadget's own hands-on says "Honeycomb's is extremely slow -- nearly to the point of uselessness in this case."
The Android team sure has a sense of humor. Previously, in the Froyo SDK, besides tons of awesome code, they've also added a function called wtf() (What a Terrible Failure) and an even more hilarious isUserAMonkey() that returns true if the user interface is currently being messed with by a monkey.
Ah, what a breath of fresh air. After today's SDK Tools r9 and ADT 9.0.0 update that I talked about earlier this morning, I noticed another new feature in the SDK Manager that has been requested for years. As if the near-instant AVD restart support due to the new snapshotting was not enough of a present, developers can now edit properties of existing AVDs!
If you are a developer, you will want to fire up SDK Manager right now and perform an update. Besides the Honeycomb SDK preview that we'll talk about separately, Google also unleashed the next version of Android Development Tools, or simply ADT, for Eclipse as well as SDK Tools r9. I've been using ADT versions 9.0.0 preview 1, 2, and 3 for a number of weeks now, and I can tell you that 9.0.0 is a huge step up to where a serious set of development tools needs to be.
The UK branch of one of the largest retailers in the world - Amazon.com - came out with an Android app today, dedicated to the UK market. The app is very similar to the U.S. version and offers convenience and speed of a locally installed application over browsing amazon.co.uk and having to keep track of your logins. Barcode scanning, 1-click ordering, prime membership, wish lists, recommendations, customer reviews, order tracking and modification are all supported.
Every year, Google takes over the Moscone Center in San Francisco (a convenient train ride away from me) and hosts a full-blown conference called Google I/O. The usual schedule consists of 2 opening keynotes followed by presentations and demos related to all kinds of Google technologies. Google I/O also gives you an excellent chance to mingle with developers from all over the world, network, and exchange contact information. My favorite part is something called Fireside Chats, where developers from a specific team in Google sit around, talk about their product, and answer questions. Oh, and of course, the swag and t-shirts with secret QR codes.
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. The list this week is MASSIVE - way to go, devs!
It is pretty much accepted now that 2011 will be the year of tablets. Last year, after the iPad kick-started the revolution, we only saw a handful of devices that could challenge the giant. This year at CES, we saw over 100, most of them running - you guessed it - Android. The competition is on, and soon we'll see who makes it out a winner in the tablet war and who will head straight to the junk yard.
It's a brand new week, and the staff here at Android Police has something to be excited about - we're less than 100 tweeps away from 10,000 amazing and supportive followers! You guys lighten up our days and nights with your comments, so we decided to give some back, in the form of a quick contest.
A couple of weeks ago at CES 2011, Sony Ericsson announced its latest Android handset - the sleek and sexy Gingerbread-running Xperia Arc. They've also invited the press, Android Police included, to attend a media breakfast where we ended up spending over an hour of quality time with the new device, documented in great detail here. If you have questions about the Arc, I highly recommend you dive into the above post, as it contains a plethora of useful bits and pieces, all wrapped in a convenient package.
You didn't think Toshiba would let Motorola take jabs at Apple without throwing one of its own, did you?