Brian O'Toole
Contributing since August, 2010
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173articles
About Brian O'Toole
Having learnt his writing techniques reading e-Books of Sherlock Holmes, Brian now spends his time /kicking, lurking, SSHing and encoding.
Latest Articles
GitHub Releases Awesome App For Android, Lets You Keep Up With Your Projects On The Go
One of the key aspects of Android is its open-source nature, and one of the biggest players in the open-source community is GitHub. What better way to
One of the key aspects of Android is its open-source nature, and one of the biggest players in the open-source community is GitHub. What better way to tie that all together than for GitHub to release an Android app? Probably none.
Google Announces Mobile App Analytics, Lets You See The Who, Why, And Where Of Your Mobile App Users
In the second half of a double Google Analytics whammy, Google has introduced new features for mobile developers and marketers in the Analytics dashboard.
In the second half of a double Google Analytics whammy, Google has introduced new features for mobile developers and marketers in the Analytics dashboard. While Google's other announcement, an Analytics mobile app, made our site's founder combustible with joy, this announcement is sure to bring cheer to those with products already in the Play store. These new features give insight into how Android users discover apps, along with their usage patterns, in order to enable developers and marketers to increase their products' reach and improve their performance.
FishLabs, Developer Of Galaxy On Fire, Releases Sports Car Challenge, Promising Detailed Graphics And Prestigious Marques
It's been just over a year since FishLabs released its Tegra HD-exclusive title Galaxy on Fire 2, which provided both impressive graphics and a surprising
It's been just over a year since FishLabs released its Tegra HD-exclusive title Galaxy on Fire 2, which provided both impressive graphics and a surprising amount of depth. Now we have a slightly less futuristic-weaponry, slightly more glossy-metal title to check out, with FishLabs' newest creation, Sports Car Challenge. As you'd expect from the title, this game features a decent selection of the shiniest and fastest four-wheeled polygons around.
Back at CES in January we got a first glance at Sony's latest flagship phone, the Xperia Ion. In our time with it, the device made an impression with its 720P display and 12 megapixel camera. As expected, this device is finally showing up on AT&T with an announcement today of the device's availability later this month.
The "freemium" music streaming service Spotify has had great success on the desktop and on iOS, but its Android offering has always been rather lacking, with an extremely dated-looking application that did no justice to the greatness of the service itself. Back in April, Spotify made its first motions towards bringing the app up to speed with a public beta of a rather pretty Holo-themed application for Android 4.0, and now that beta has borne fruit.
As promised by LG back in May, its top of the line quad-core Optimus 4X HD is now seeing release in Europe. First seen at MWC in February, this is set to take on the Samsung Galaxy S III and HTC One X for the favor of powerhouse-craving phone shoppers throughout the continent. The device is now available for purchase from Amazon DE in either black or white, both close to the €500 mark.In case the specs have slipped your mind, here's a quick refresher:
Over at Computex Taipei, the usual array of bizarre and/or nifty gadgets you'd expect at a technology trade show are out in numbers. Coming to the attention of The Verge's Sean Hollister was a demo by Scandinavian company Senseye, with its intriguing eye tracking-based control and navigation system. As you might expect, a camera simply follows the motion of your eyes and moves the cursor to their focal point. To the obvious amusement of Halfbrick Studios, the Senseye was demonstrated on a large screen playing Fruit Ninja.
Sony may have disappointed by backing out of bringing Ice Cream Sandwich to its PlayStation-certified Xperia Play, but there are still several other Xperia devices out there due an upgrade to Android 4.0. Having recently dealt with the Xperia Arc and Neo, next up is the pint-sized pocket slider, the Xperia Mini Pro. As you might expect, this will include Sony's usual UI customizations, but considering the Xperia Mini Pro's rather unique form factor such additions may be welcome in this case. With many of its QWERTY brethren such as the Droid 4 or Captivate Glide still awaiting Ice Cream Sandwich updates, this makes the Xperia Mini Pro a rare device indeed.
A key aspect of the power of smartphones is the variety of functions they provide to the user. Data, GPS, Voice, Video, are all found in almost every Android phone on the market. With today's release of on{X} ("on-ex"), Microsoft hopes to exploit this convergence of functionality in a way that is less reliant on the user for input and more aware of its surroundings. By gathering information from the host of sensors available to the operating system, it's quite possible for your phone to determine its location and context and respond accordingly, without intervention by the user. Armed with their trademark lower-case, sans-serif, Holo-breaking Metro style convention, on{X} is Tasker for the everyman.
One of the most prominent new features on the Galaxy Nexus, and Ice Cream Sandwich, is that the soft-keys are displayed right on the screen. While the notion is a sound one, there will always be those who miss some of the legacy features left behind. In this case, those would be the Menu and Search keys, stalwarts of Android's interface paradigm since its release with the G1. What was once four buttons - Home, Menu, Back, Search* - has been whittled down to just Home and Back, along with the introduction of the new multitasking-purposed App Switcher button. This combination was seen previously in Android 3.0 Honeycomb, but is about to encounter widespread use on upcoming phones**.
Update: Things have gone from "Looks like a weird software bug" to "Damn, this could well be a serious hardware issue". As some users had been suggesting, the problem does indeed link to use of 2G. However, it turns out that the issue can be replicated by the use of 2G even on another, proximate phone. As you can see in the video demonstration by kongzs7 below, the volume rocker keys' sensors are set off even when the phone is only at the bootloader.
A new device being rooted may raise few eyebrows nowadays, but for those of you looking for a nice cheap little tablet, the Nook Tablet has taken the first step to becoming yet another hobbyist's favorite. Given the enormous popularity of the Nook Color before it, this bodes well for the future of the Nook Tablet. However, with the release of the $200 Amazon Kindle Fire, no longer is the $250 Nook Tablet alone in American cheap-tablet market, so this development may well help to convince would-be buyers. Over at XDA-Developers, poster Indirect has tested the proven zergRush method on their own Nook Tablet, as well as created a batch file for Windows users to help automate the process.
A phone with model name SHV-E120L recently passed through the FCC. Despite our initial excitement that it could be the Galaxy Nexus (née Prime), it turned out to be none other than the Samsung Galaxy S II HD LTE, king of lengthy titles.
It looks like the touchscreen isn't the only piece of hardware on the Sensation that works when it wants to. Posted today on XDA-Developers, Sensation owner zmfl recounted his experience with the audio signal coming and going on his phone, and having received confirmation of the issue from other members there, enterprisingly figured out the cause of the problem and its solution.
Originally Posted October 12th.
Earlier this week, the OTA update to Android 2.3.4 finally began rolling out to HTC Sensations around Europe. Our unit received the update yesterday, and quite by accident we discovered that - besides being able to make voice/video calls in GTalk - we also had a new ability to take screenshots untethered from a computer.
Samsung's original Galaxy S was undoubtedly a great success for the company. One could say it was their first serious smartphone, and its core was widely dispersed around the globe, appearing as the i9000 in Europe and Asia, and - perhaps more familiarly - the AT&T Captivate, Sprint Epic 4G, T-Mobile Vibrant, and Verizon Fascinate in the USA. While we have yet to see firm plans for a repeat of this four-pronged attack with the successor to the Galaxy S, the Galaxy S II i9100 (aka the Samsung "It's Over 9000!") is already widely available throughout the rest of the world and is making waves while at it. Let's take a look at this shiny new handset.