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You read it right - one of the most popular apps on Android, and long-time holo holdout Twitter, has finally updated its look. And it's nice.
Mozilla announced on its official blog this morning that it's teaming up with Samsung to create a brand-new mobile browser engine, dubbed Servo. Its aim is to power browsers for "tomorrow's faster, multi-core, heterogeneous computing architectures" - so the sell is that Servo will be built from the ground up to take advantage of increasingly capable mobile hardware.
Net analytics firm Net Applications has released its latest mobile browser market share data, and the results on the Android side were a bit of a surprise to me: apps based on the stock Android browser are still handily trouncing Chrome for usage. That includes 3rd party solutions like the stock Samsung, HTC, and LG browsers, all of which are based on the stock Android browser.
Though it was originally promised before the end of 2012, Futuremark has finally made good on its plans to bring a version of its highly popular graphics benchmark 3DMark to Android.
The wireless service landscape is undergoing significant changes in the US this year. T-Mobile just launched it's kind-of no contract plans with monthly hardware payments, something no other US carrier offers. Sprint is in the early stages of its LTE rollout, a buyout from Japanese firm Softbank, and the acquisition of Clearwire (which seems more likely with each passing day). AT&T has already gained the #2 LTE spot in the US, but may have turned off a good number of potential Galaxy S4 buyers by pricing the device at $250 on contract, while continuing to push its own shared data plan model. Verizon remains the US LTE coverage king (RootMetrics confirms that), and will be the first US carrier to deploy voice-over-LTE on any wide basis, but its high prices and its competitors playing LTE catch-up may shrink those advantages in the coming year.
[Update: Winners Selected] Win An Xperia Tablet S (W/ Dock) Or A Transformer Pad 300 Bundle
Win An Xperia Tablet S (W/ Dock) Or A Transformer Pad 300 Bundle
If you're a car nut, a paranoid parent, or a small business owner looking to do a little, uh, company vehicle economy analysis, Verizon's teamed up with Delphi to create the Vehicle Diagnostic system. It's actually pretty cool!
Soundfreaq isn't the best-known player in the Bluetooth audio market, but if you haven't checked them out, there's never been a better time to try. The company's new Sound Platform 2 is a heavy-hitting stationary speaker system with a set of pipes that really sing, and a genuinely useful dual-speaker pairing mode (read on for more about that).
[Update: Winners Selected] Win An HTC One X+ Or ASUS MeMo SmartPad From NVIDIA
Win An HTC One X+ Or ASUS MeMo SmartPad From NVIDIA
This is the Android Police 3rd Anniversary Giveaway #4 - check back tomorrow four our final awesome Tegra giveaway!
An active thread at XDA has multiple posters (here, here, and here) claiming that Sprint is cutting off shipments of the Optimus G, and that the device has reached 'end of life' status, meaning it will be discontinued soon. One poster included a photo of an inventory spreadsheet indicating as much:
[Update: Winners Selected] Win An ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity Bundle Or An Excite 10.1 From NVIDIA
The Xperia ZL is the 'little' brother to Sony's recently-unveiled Xperia Z, and to get the most pressing question out of the way immediately: what's the difference between the two? Well, the ZL isn't waterproof (and thus has a different chassis and design), has a hardware camera button, and uses a minutely larger (by 40mAh) battery. That's really it. The display, the chipset, the camera, and the software are all near as makes no difference identical to those on the Z.
If you've not heard of Abalone, it's one of the most amazing - yet simple - board games in decades. It won "Game of the Decade" at the Cannes Games Festival 15 years ago, and has been a massive hit since its debut in 1990. The objective of Abalone is simple: push six of your opponent's marbles off of the board.
The highly popular VNC tool TeamViewer has updated its Android viewer client with a slew of new features, including one users have likely been clamoring for from day one: native touch control.
How does driving a stick-figure car through a soft jelly world in a platformer-meets-racer adventure sound? I was intrigued, as well. Disney's Jelly Car 3 is the third installment in the malleable mashup, and seems to be the most polished yet. There's a brand-new car customization system (note: the customizations don't do anything), a 'ghost racing' mode to compete against the world's best times (or just your friends), and 50 levels to squish your way through.
We're at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference in San Jose this week, and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang revealed new details regarding the future of the Tegra platform: the Logan and Parker chips.
Update 3/18/13: AllThingsD dismissed the now-deleted claim by HTC's Twitter account that the One would not be coming to Big Red as bogus and reiterated that it is, indeed, in the works. As originally reported (see below), it's scheduled to arrive months after other U.S. carriers.