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Sony has recently been among the friendlier companies for custom ROM developers, but their devices still had a major hitch. They could not be booted from recovery, which meant third-party software had to modify the build system and if things went wrong, it was a lot more difficult to fix. To address this issue, Sony will begin releasing new bootloaders to allow booting from recovery.
While it was once a pretty popular service both for their web interface and Android app, Grooveshark is calling it quits. This isn't a big surprise since their claim to fame was basically just disregarding the legal need to get the rights to music that users streamed and uploaded. Most recently in the news for having their app's Chromecast support revoked, Grooveshark hasn't been in the Play Store since 2012. Those were about that whole failure to license problem too, which was Grooveshark's ultimate undoing.
The announcement of Samsung's new Galaxy Tab A didn't generate much excitement because of its not-so-low-end price. However, you can now grab it more cheaply at Best Buy. You will receive $100 for trading in a working tablet so long as you also purchase the Tab A, which starts at $230. There are a few caveats to look out for, though.
Livescribe announced at CES that they would be bringing Android support to their market-leading smartpen and now that time has come. They have released two apps, each carrying the "preview" label, to the Play Store. The apps will work with existing Livescribe 3 pens, which originally only had mobile software support on iOS. Also as promised in their announcement, the apps boast a material design that just screams, "I am not an iOS port."
Repeating a promotion offered last year, T-Mobile is giving a big gift to their baseball fan subscribers. MLB's excellent At Bat app has pretty desirable premium features, but they come at a steep price of $20. For T-Mobile subscribers, those premium features are going to be free.
When HTC released the latest in the One series, the biggest change was the 20MP camera. And while we have covered some of the ways that camera hasn't exactly delivered, HTC has continued sending updates to their new flagship with improvements. The latest of these is not a firmware update, but rather an update to the camera app through the Play Store. It brings raw support, something HTC promised when they announced the phone. Ability to access raw files could potentially salvage the camera if some of the issues we've seen are the effect of poor post-processing.
The people who brought you HDHomeRun, a set of cable tuners that allow you to watch television on devices other than your base TV, are now close to bringing a DVR to market. With over $100,000 pledged on Kickstarter, they have now reached their funding goal to release this new, more practical product.
It was just over a year ago that we first caught wind of Android Wear. At the same time, we were introduced to the G Watch, which would be the first Wear device—released alongside the Samsung Gear Live—to be sold to the general public. Now, with the addition of the G Watch Urbane and a permanent price drop for the G Watch R, the original G Watch is headed out of the Google Store.
On the heels of the LG G Watch Urbane's arrival to the Google Store, the G Watch R gets a nice discount. Originally sold at $299, you can now get it for $249. This is a good deal; just several weeks ago we told you about an offer where you could get the G Watch R for $269. The price puts it at a fair distance from the newer Urbane, which is starting at $349.
Facebook Messenger is adding a feature that, if you didn't use it, you would expect to already have. With today's addition of video chat capability, it has parity with the desktop chat interface that has long supported this. As a server-side switch, you should have this available so long as you are using a reasonably new version of the app.
Sol Republic has quickly carved out a place in the consumer audio market since their founding in 2011, so it was just a matter of time before they would offer a set of Bluetooth in-ear headphones. Shadow is their initial take on the category and I’ve been testing it out for the better part of two weeks. My overall take is that Shadow is exactly what I expected from Sol Republic: good looking, well built, solid albeit consumer-oriented audio, and fairly priced.
While Microsoft's wide release of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint for tablet users was more than welcome, there were more than a few strings attached. Most notably, it was incompatible with Android 5.0+, making the newest devices unable to use them. The other major hangup was the lack of support for x86 processors, which basically means all Intel SoCs, a popular choice in the midrange tablet market. Microsoft is now working on a semi-private beta that adds support for both of those groups.
At this point, there is no real shortage of "smart" launchers in the Android ecosystem. Of course, we have to put "smart" in quotation marks, because there still is a void in terms of truly good products trying to do that. So when I tell you that Bento is a new entrant in this bustling market of context-aware launchers, you shouldn't ask, "do we need another one?" You should ask, "is this the one that will really do a great job?"
I'm sure you've already heard, but today there are changes coming of biblical proportions. Wait, you didn't hear about Mobilegeddon? This is indeed the term being applied to a Google search algorithm update being applied today that will rank mobile-optimized sites higher in searches from phones. The big drama about this is that, well, Google is very powerful and changes to their ranking systems have a habit of being destructive to affected sites. Mobilegeddon gets a name due in large part to the fact that it's the rare algorithm change that Google has detailed and warned about in advance of its rollout, having set a date back in February.
The latest update for Google+ brings changes you probably won't notice unless you head to a community, in which case you will really notice. The main focus of the v5.3 version is a revamped UI for communities, which certainly makes things really pop. Here's a quick before-and-after look:
Are you a new owner of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and have expandable storage withdrawal? Maybe things aren't so bad, since Best Buy is running a killer deal on a tiny flash drive that will plug straight into your phone. Of course, the main negative to a microUSB device would be the difficulty getting files onto it, but there's an easy way to deal with that: this one also has a standard USB plugin.
Back in 2011 when Amazon released its App Store, we cited the ability to try apps out in your browser before downloading as one of its top features. Later, you could also do that on phones and tablets. Well, things have changed. First, after an announcement made today, you will no longer be able to do this with apps from Amazon's store. Second, you probably won't miss it too much.
When Google searching on a small screen, the part of the result that shows you a page URL isn't always very helpful. Anything but the top-level domain will probably be truncated. Especially within familiar sites, the mixture of page title and shortened URL may leave you unclear what part of the website you will navigate to once you click. Google is making a subtle change to clear things up. Let's jump straight to the example images:
It's that time again when Chrome's beta channel updates to give those of us who can't wait for the fun stuff a chance to test things out in a pretty stable environment. The latest iteration, v43, isn't exactly groundbreaking but ships several meaningful changes.
Have you, active LinkedIn user, ever wished there was a more efficient way to rebroadcast the stuff your employer posts? If so, then you will be very happy to hear about Elevate, a new service that aims to help you do just that. Marketed primarily to our corporate overlords, Elevate is a specialized interface for LinkedIn that gives regular users a feed of highly-curated content that is geared toward their employer's needs along with some nifty analytics tools.