David Ruddock
Contributing since June, 2010
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3358articles
Page 72
About David Ruddock
David is the former Editor-in-Chief of Android Police and now the EIC of Esper.io. He's been an Android user since the early days - his first smartphone was a Google Nexus One! David graduated from the University of California, Davis where he received his bachelor's degree, and also attended the Pepperdine University School of Law.
Latest Articles
The Google Shopping Express app was updated to v2.0 yesterday, though the changes to the app aren't quite what you'd expect for a leading digit bump. The single greatest change to the app would seem to be the addition of notifications, which now allow you to be notified about delivery information for your orders, a key feature the service had been lacking until now.
If you've been eagerly awaiting the Android 4.4.3 update for your T-Mobile One M8, wait no more: it has arrived. The update brings a slightly newer version of Android, security fixes, wireless optimizations, and updates to several stock HTC applications. If you're not able to pull the update over the air, XDA user sapplegater has uploaded the OTA to Mega.
In a world where Facebook has become so ubiquitous that even hating on Facebook has in and of itself become a tired cultural phenomena, talking about Facebook at all anymore is sort of like lamenting the quality of food at McDonalds - it's there whether you like it or not, so it's probably best to just not say anything at all.
You've probably been hearing a lot about a disease known as ALS in the last few days, and how CEOs of various tech companies are dumping buckets of chilly H2O on themselves in some misguided attempt to cure said ailment.
The latest IDC numbers for smartphone shipments are out, and once again it looks like Android just keeps on moving up. Year over year, Android has gained around 5% in overall market share by number of phones shipped, jumping to 84.7% of all smartphone shipments for Q2 2014. Total Android phone shipments for Q2 rose 33.3% year over year, at 191.5 million units.
If you've received the OnePlus One XNPH30O OTA update, you might have noticed your battery life was severely reduced since installing it. You're not the only one - the CyanogenMod issue tracker for the One has a thread with well over 100 comments on the subject at this point.
I wrote a review of the G3 just about two months ago, and at the time, I really enjoyed it. While the model I was provided was designed for Korea, it worked on AT&T's LTE network and generally provided a steady wireless experience. I found Wi-Fi connectivity was a bit spotty, though, and there were occasional network hiccups that are to be expected of a piece of hardware not specifically certified for a particular carrier.
I know, US only polls do exclude a lot of our most loyal followers, but today's poll is about taking a head count in a turbulent time for the US wireless industry. Dan Hesse was just ousted as CEO of Sprint, and the carrier's parent company SoftBank has allegedly ended its plans for a takeover-merger of competitor T-Mobile. T-Mobile is also poised to surpass Sprint as America's #3 wireless carrier by postpaid subscribers, with CEO John Legere predicting it will happen before the year is out.
Do you remember going to the arcade as a kid (... or an adult) and playing Crazy Taxi? The awesome soundtrack, the absurd physics? The almost unbelievable number of taxi drivers with unbuttoned shirts? Those were the good old days, and you paid for them - maybe $0.50 a pop for a ride in the Crazy Taxi seat.
T-Mobile, hot on the heels of rejecting a $15 billion buyout from Iliad and an apparently abandoned takeover by Sprint, has announced today that it's now the US's #1 prepaid wireless provider by subscriber volume.
Managing your Dropbox space on Windows or Mac isn't a terribly difficult affair - the platforms have tons of 3rd party disk usage analysis utilities and management tools that will happily do all sorts of things to keep your usage in check. Managing Dropbox on the go, though, is a bit harder. Because Dropbox doesn't sync directly to your device, you need an app that can hook directly into your Dropbox account and analyze the contents remotely.
If you're a Google Shopping Express user, you may have recently received an email requesting that you participate in a survey about the service. Among the questions were many about pricing, including one which displayed the following chart detailing plan pricing options for the quasi-beta delivery system. The survey asks, essentially, if you'd be OK with this sort of cost structure - $90 per year (or $8 a month) for unlimited free "regular" and alcohol deliveries over $15, and $8 per order (rather than per store) of refrigerated goods under $150.
Earlier today, someone decided to post to the Android issue tracker complaining about the lack of multiuser support for smartphones. Within a few hours, a developer at Google responded and closed the issue, remarking that "the development team has implemented this feature and it will be available as a part of the next public build." Sounds pretty definitive to us.
Update: Bloomberg is reporting Dan Hesse will step down and be replaced in an announcement tomorrow, during which the plan to end pursuit of T-Mobile will also be discussed.
Have you been holding out for a Galaxy S5 of a slightly more interesting hue than black, white, or gold? If so, Best Buy's got you potentially covered with the new "electric blue" S5 that comes in August 17th here in the US. This color has been available internationally for some time, but it looks like Best Buy managed to wrangle an America-exclusive with Samsung to stock this more aquatic-toned variant of its best-selling handset.
If you've purchased an app or game on the Play Store recently and gone to see if you could return it, you may have noticed something a bit odd: you could still do so outside of the alleged 15 minute return window. In fact, that now seems to be the case for many paid apps and games, despite no published changes in the store's refund policies.
To the excitement of many, Google has finally made the Google Now Launcher available for all Android devices running Android 4.1 or later.
Google+, for all the criticism it has garnered from the "hip" tech crowd, has been an incredibly important product for the search giant since its unveiling back in 2011. Remember when you had to get an invite to join Google+? How far we've come.