Android Police

Eric Ravenscraft-

Eric Ravenscraft

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About Eric Ravenscraft

Eric is a freelance writer and an OG 'round these parts. Since leaving Android Police, his work has been in Lifehacker, The New York Times, OneZero, PCMag, and a bunch of other places. Catch him on Twitter and YouTube as LordRavenscraft.

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Is it possible to promise more in a game than "the power of God"? Probably not. That's what Babel Rising 3D, from AMALtd, is offering, though. In this game, the puny mortals of Earth are working to build a tower to the heavens and it's your role to stop them. Because that's how the story goes. You have a cornucopia of disasters, plagues and, well, acts of God, at your disposal.

Here at Android Police, we love floating apps. Love, love, love, love, love 'em. And here's yet another one that we're adding to the list of floating apps we love: Hovernote. It's simply a note app that hovers over whatever you're doing. In a world where it's necessary to launch a full-screen app on a ten inch device to jot down three words, Hovernote is a godsend.

In recent months, we've hardly seen a game more hyped than Imangi's Temple Run. Couple that with the inherent excitement any time Pixar decides to release something, and it's hard not to get a little excited. Temple Run: Brave, despite it's entirely unimaginative name, places Princess Meridia as the centerpiece of this running game that seems to involve little-to-no temples.

If you have an EVO 4G LTE from Sprint, you may want to take a closer look at your unit before your initial 30 14 days are up if you're still within that timeframe. Some users over at XDA are reporting that their devices are experiencing light bleed around the home button when the button is lit up and the display is darkened. If you want to test out your unit, the app Dead Pixel Test can help.

Well, this sure came out of left field. Microsoft has released an official Xbox LIVE app for Android! The app can be used to view and modify your 3D Xbox avatar, track your achievements, connect with Xbox LIVE friends, and even get news and information from the Xbox Spotlight feeds. Color us surprised at how fully featured this app is.

The last time we covered Aviary, the powerful mobile photo editor was limited to being launched as a plugin inside the stock gallery app. Now, Aviary the company has booted Aviary the photo editor from the nest, launching it as a standalone app. Users everywhere rejoice, as they can now find Aviary after installing it.

As our address books become more advanced and we become more and more inundated with information, it can become difficult to keep up with all the people we need to interact with on a regular basis. NextCall augments your address book by letting you rank important contacts, set alerts for when you need to call them, and sort your contacts into business and personal categories.

NFC is one of those odd features that everybody wants in their phone, but few people are sure how they'll use it yet. Payments systems are slow to catch on and Beam functionality requires a friend with an NFC phone and a need to share data that isn't easier to share via the internet. Samsung, who is quick to note it has the largest NFC-enabled userbase, aims to change that with TecTiles: NFC tags that you can program to perform tasks when you place your phone near them.

It's inevitable that, when a new version of iOS or Android gets released, the fanboys will come out of the woodwork to mourn the death of their beloved rival. In most cases, it's best to ignore them. However, in most cases, they also aren't the founder of a major tech publication. As such, it feels like Mr. Geller's premature funeral service for Android deserves its own bit of attention because, in the immortal words of Monty Python, Android isn't quite dead yet.

Songkick is a fantastic service that helps avid concert fans track bands and concerts in their local area based on their music tastes. Well, now, the service is coming to Android with its shiny new app. Songkick can scan your music library, Google Music account, and Last.fm artist to create a custom calendar of all the shows in your area you might like. Smart!

So far, Amazon's Appstore, which competes with Google's own Play Store on Android apps, has been stuck within U.S. borders. A report from All Things D, however, says that may be about to change soon. The online retail company, the site says, is preparing to launch in Europe. No details on when beyond "later this summer" were available.

We already knew that today was the big day for T-Mobile's Galaxy S II to receive Ice Cream Sandwich. T-Mobile has just let on that the rollout will begin tonight at 11pm EST. The update will be done via Kies, so unfortunately the update won't be showing up over the air. Hope you've got a microUSB cable handy.

Who doesn't love a good deal? Today, Amazon and Wirefly are offering another one today to potential or current Verizon customers: a $40 off your bill if you buy or upgrade to a Verizon 4G phone this week. New customers as well as old will get the $40 credit on their next bill, which is a pretty significant chunk of your bill.

Potential Kindle Fire owners, pay attention! Amazon's offering a free $30 voucher code towards the purchase of a Kindle Fire to anyone who asks right now. As a bonus, once you order your Kindle Fire, you'll receive $5 worth of Amazon Instant Video credit. Pretty sweet deal!

There aren't enough 8-bit adventure games in the world. This is just one of those facts of life you learn to deal with growing up. Thankfully, there are still a few devotees to the genre, like Nostatic Software. The developer has released a delightfully colorful 8-bit adventure game about a young girl with the world's most sensitive ears who just wants everyone in the house to be quiet for a bit so she can go to sleep.

MetroPCS Launches The Activa 4G, Huawei's First LTE Android Phone In The U.S.

MetroPCS Launches The Activa 4G, Huawei's First LTE Android Phone In The U.S.

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It may not get the tech world's heart all a-flutter to hear that MetroPCS is launching a Huawei phone, but the world needs budget phones and networks too! The duo is teaming up this time to bring no fewer than four gees to consumers for the first time in a Huawei device. The Activa 4G is a modestly spec'd phone, with a 3.5" HVGA display, a 5 megapixel camera, and running Android 2.3. It's still sad to see phones shipping with Gingerbread, but on budget devices, it's not as unexpected.

Splashtop makes some great remote desktop software. I like Splashtop. So please friends, readers, and developers over at Splashtop, keep in mind my love for the company as a whole when I say the following sentence: Charging users $25 to try out Windows 8 on an Android tablet is an absurd, opportunistic, rip off of an idea. Most disappointingly, it will work for a small minority of users. And their money spends just the same as any other.

Motorola introduces a novel idea with its Atrix phone: a lapdock. The idea was simple. All these Android app can be extremely productive, so why limit them to a single, small screen? Plug your phone into the lapdock, use its frankly-over-powered processor to run a larger screen with a keyboard and trackpad. Well, that's exactly what the ClamBook does. Only it does it way better.

Foursquare's mobile app hit the big five-point-oh today, with a brand new overhaul that's so comprehensive, the What's New section on the Play Store gave up and said "Go check it out for yourself!" The app has gotten a whole new ICS-styled look, which just looks fantastic. In addition, the app has revamped the "Explore" tab that allows you to see what's around you, encouraging more discovery, instead of mindlessly checking in whenever you happen to go to Starbucks.

If there's one downside to the proliferation of touchscreen technology, it's the lack of tactile feedback. Tactus is one of many companies that aims to alleviate this problem. This week, at SID 2012, the company demoed a product that offers disappearing physical touch keys. As seen in the demo video here, these buttons can raise on command and disappear when they're not needed. Which sounds like something out of science fiction.

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