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Today is one of those nice days where Amazon's Free App of the Day is far more than just a single app. Of course, just one of them may make it all worth it. Five Nights at Freddy's 2, the popular survival horror game, is among the free choices and you even get a $1 MP3 credit just for downloading. Yep, even if you don't have the slightest interest in it, you should probably download it and buy yourself a song.The occasion is the Appstore's fourth birthday, so another side benefit is that a single download enters you into a drawing for a $25,000 reward. Further, this is more than free apps of the day - this one will last until March 21st. Amazon values these free apps at $105, so they aren't messing around.
DISH Network has updated their official app with a variety of improvements and new features, making it better both as a streaming video player and as an account management console. Probably the best addition in this update is the ability to support multiple profiles for a single subscriber account, a la Netflix. Each profile will have its own favorites list and recommendations, making family sharing a lot smoother.
In what is becoming a tradition of sorts, Google is not letting an American holiday go by without a corresponding Hangouts Easter egg. When messages contain certain trigger words, users are greeted with corresponding animations to add a little spice to the conversation. Since their debut, we've seen the animated emoji people bring in the new year and celebrate Valentine's Day. Add St. Patrick's Day to the list! I've spotted three different versions so far.
HTC Publishes BoomSound Connect, HTC Connect, And HTC Tasks In The Play Store Ahead Of One M9 Launch
HTC has published a trio of their own apps in the Play Store, each relating to device-specific functions that we will see in the HTC One M9 and probably all devices running Sense 7.0. BoomSound Connect claims to be an app dedicated to managing streams to AllPlay speakers, while the similarly-named Connect serves the same purposes, but for Bluetooth, DLNA, and Miracast streaming of audio and video. HTC Tasks is, well, HTC's tasks app.
We have spotted a real unicorn: an established iOS app has come to Android with a smoothly functioning app that boasts Material Design from the get-go. It's neither a port of their Apple predecessor nor a half-baked effort just to claim cross-platform compatibility. If you're into a relatively minimal interface and an Inbox Zero type of approach to task management, Swipes is worth a look.
If you like some granular control over synced accounts, you probably ran into a little roadblock with Android 5.0. If you wanted to manually sync items in one of your accounts, the button to do that was missing. Well, at least, sort of. In its place was "cancel sync," even though there was nothing to cancel. That should have only been present after initiating a sync manually with the "sync now" option. None of that worked in 5.0. With Android 5.1, though, everything is back to normal.
It seems like portable chargers are getting smaller, cheaper, with a larger capacity all the time. What better example of this phenomenon than this Omaker external battery, which boasts 15,600 mAh and two USB output ports that push 2.1A, the amperage needed to charge tablets and some phones at faster than a snail's pace. The device itself supports 2.1A input too, so it should refuel reasonably quickly once you've drained it.
Because there clearly weren't enough apps that help you count your steps and/or compare them with your friends, HTC has filled the imperceptible void. Fun Fit is a social fitness app where you and your participating Facebook friends (there are sure to be many!) pick "cute avatars" and compete in the time-honored contest of taking the most steps.
Along with site notifications, the latest Chrome Beta v42 has another new feature for improving the web app experience. The ability to add a website to your home screen from Chrome has been there for a while now, but not all web pages are created equal in this regard. These shortcuts work best for fully-fledged web apps and now Chrome will let you know when you have visited a good candidate for home screen placement.
After its debut in December, Google's Device Assist app is getting its first update. The app offers tips and troubleshooting advice for Nexus, Android One, and Google Play Edition devices running Lollipop. You can also use Device Assist as a gateway to live support when it doesn't solve your problems. The v1.1 update adds a greater variety of help cards, small refinements to the interface and user experience, and is available in additional countries.
If the M9 reveal didn't impress you, HTC looks ready to start going after other segments of the market. Through a constellation of leaks and rumors, it seems quite clear that we will soon see a phone called the E9 by HTC that won't be a mere update to last year's E8. Instead, it will be a true phablet that appears nestled somewhere between the high end and mid-range. Here's what you came here for:
App developers of the world, take note: this is how you do a Material Design update. After quietly hammering away this major update in a private beta, the Pocket Casts team has made it public on their stable channel. Already one of the most popular and well-regarded podcast clients on Android, Pocket Casts has paired their new design with a variety of new features and refinements that make the update more than merely cosmetic.
In an update that we can call minor by Mint's standards, the app's interface and navigation have been refined in addition to receiving a new bill reminder option. This feature is actually quite helpful, since it can be hard to keep a multitude of due dates straight in your head.
On the heels of a very similar promotion from AT&T, Sprint has decided to allow any of their subscribers to add phone insurance to their plan throughout the month. Normally, you can only get a device insured within the first 30 days after purchase, so this is a good deal if you dragged your feet back when you first got your phone or LTE-capable tablet.
In only a few short months, the idea of a Google-owned cell carrier has gone from Android fan fiction to impending reality. Since catching first wind of it, we have honed in on more detail and confirmation. Sundar Pichai's talk at Mobile World Congress left us thinking Nova would be rather small in scale, and now it's starting to become clearer how it will shape up. According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Nova will launch with a product lineup of one device: the Nexus 6.
Nestled in the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge presentation was the announcement of a new Samsung Gear VR. They are not christening it with a new name or too much fanfare, but they did want to add refinements and make it compatible with their new flagship(s). Here are a few snaps:
While the entirety of Huawei's presentation at Mobile World Congress was devoted to their intriguing new wearables, today is also the public debut of their new tablet/phablet, the MediaPad X2. The 7" device has an attractive metal construction, full HD screen, and all the connectivity you'd expect out of a high-end phone.
The new Greenify v2.6 beta comes with a variety of interesting changes, including full Xposed support for Lollipop users. If you have been dragging your feet on donating to the developer, you will be happy to learn that two of the best paid features are migrating to the free version as well. While less obvious to the end user, much of the under the hood mechanism has been rewritten to improve performance and facilitate future feature additions.
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If you measure the success of a product release by the element of surprise, Huawei might not score too well. We found official product videos for the new Huawei Watch yesterday, ahead of today's announcement. Huawei's TalkBand devices showed up in ads days ago and in their own wearables app yesterday. If you measure its success by how much attention and anticipation it generates, you might say that Huawei's new wearables have had a smashingly successful release, especially considering their absence from many Western markets until now.
Firefox's stable release channel for Android has bumped up to version 36.0 after spending about a month in beta. The most notable change in this update is a completely revamped tablet interface, which better uses larger screens and makes the app look more like its desktop counterpart.