Latest Articles
If you want insurance for your device on AT&T and you bought the phone or tablet over a month ago, you're normally in trouble. For a limited time, though, you can get their insurance regardless of the date you bought the device. Until March 31, AT&T is allowing open enrollment on any of their three insurance plans:
Google is cancelling the upcoming iteration of Pwnium, the competition they have sponsored regularly over the past several years. Pwnium has been very useful for Google in protecting Chrome and Chrome OS, because the entire event is about finding holes in the Chromium project. Why did they cancel it, then? For the sake of security!
Have you ever used Google+ on a mobile browser? It has never been very fun. Trying to share something or make sense of a link was no better. However, after over a year without noticeable improvements for mobile browsers, it has finally gotten a revamp. In fact, it's arguably a better experience than the current Google+ app for Android.
The SHIELD tablet's 2.2 update that came out a week ago brought with it an annoying bug for many users: bright colors suddenly looked very dull. Well, today a fix is going out that should solve that issue. That is a pretty quick turnaround time, considering NVIDIA probably didn't know about the problem until the original update went out.
We are rapidly approaching that fun time of year when the largest Android smartphone manufacturers unveil their newest flagships. That means we're already in the silly season of rumors and leaks. Isn't it interesting to follow all the developments on, say, the HTC One M9? The M7 was great, the M8 was better...it's understandably hard to wait for official information about the 2015 iteration. However, whatever you do, do not look at product images from case manufacturers like Spigen to learn what the next phone will look like.
Patient HTC One owners in Europe should finally be getting their Lollipop updates any moment now. The OS will still be running HTC's Sense 6 skin, so the change won't be quite so drastic as it is on AOSP ROMs. The download will be 804.8MB, so be prepared for the necessary space and time to download.
After several weeks of rumors, Google has announced their partnership with Softcard. The purpose of this venture is to combine forces with Google Wallet, which has been around since 2011 but never enjoyed wide usage. With Apple Pay having recently entered the fray, Google apparently felt the time is now to get their service back on the map. Buying their competitor Softcard's technology, though, is just the beginning.
A developer has done the (almost) unthinkable: gotten an Android Wear watch to work with an Apple iPhone. More specifically, it's a Moto 360 and an iPhone 6. Maybe more surprising is that he did not need to jailbreak the iPhone to do it, even though his happens to be. It's not exactly clear how much he needed to modify the watch, but he's obviously loaded custom software onto it. Here's a proof-of-concept video:
Just about a week after the public release of the Xposed Framework for Lollipop devices, we are now privy to one of the best and most popular modules, GravityBox. And, like the framework, the developer of GravityBox is calling this version an alpha release. Still, those of you with Nexus devices are going to be very excited about this one.
Samsung loves hype, and it's that time of year for a flagship launch. We don't always report on teasers, because they so often don't give us much information. Still, we can put the many teasers for Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S6 together and get something worthwhile out of it.
This might be the best new Android 5.1 feature yet. Lollipop brought with it so-called heads up notifications, where the entire notification appears at the top of your screen momentarily when it first arrives. The problem was that you had only three options:
You can get a very popular book for a really, really low price on Google Play today. And by low price, I mean it's totally free. The book, which inspired the movie, is number two of the three-part series by Suzanne Collins that follows Katniss Everdeen's adventure in the dystopic future.
If you have ever been traveling and wanted to know where the best place to get gas is, you might know that this can be kind of difficult at times. Gas station X might be near you as you search for options, but is it on your route? Or, you don't want to stop just yet, making that problem even more complicated. Well, Google Now has added a card to help with that.
In a document posted to their corporate website, Netflix sought to describe their long-term plans. The piece reads like a fascinating mixture of investor relations propaganda and fantasy or media theory. While it touches on all kinds of different aspects of their business and the changing environment it exists in, perhaps the most intriguing part has to do with how they are describing their ideal content catalog.
Wallet has to be pretty frustrating for Google. They beat Apple to the punch by quite a long time, but the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus basically introduced the lay public to mobile payments. How did this happen? Insert the tired cliches about Apple's control over hardware and software here. More interesting is what Google will do, considering how much they still have to gain by getting more adoption of their Apple Pay competitor.
Despite its appearance on Android One devices, we've had complete radio silence from Google about Android 5.1. Still, as long as it is in the wild, we're going to keep hearing about it. In this case, we have found out that the animation associated with toggling the auto-rotate feature has come back in 5.1 after disappearing in 5.0. Take a look.
Read update
Bubblesoft, the developers of the popular BubbleUPnP app, have published a server equivalent for Android. Previously, you could run a BubbleUPnP Server on Windows, Mac, Linux, Raspberry Pi, or a NAS. Then you could use the player app on Android to access or share your local media. Now your Android devices can also be used as a server, but with several important caveats. At least if you know where to find the app.
Google has come out unscathed from a lawsuit in which consumers accused the company of anti-competitive practices. The basic allegation was that Google requires manufacturers to use a Google version of Android and that the way they place their own apps at the forefront has increased prices and prevented potential rivals from emerging. The main issue is the stipulation that Google's search be default in order to preload Play Services on Android devices.
See that email in the featured image of this post? It's junk. Several developers have received this and rightfully felt very nervous, but it is simply a scheme to get you to turn over your Google credentials to scammers. It isn't the cleverest phishing expedition we've ever seen, but it certainly is better than most. First of all, it is not filled with the kind of typographical and grammatical errors you often see. Also, the biggest giveaway of what is going on is obscured when viewing from Gmail.
Spotimote for Spotify. Does that sound like an app created by Spotify to you? Do you think it is Spotify? Well, Spotify's complaint thinks that you'll make that mistake. In reaction, the app's developer changed the name to just Spotimote. Also, look at this post's thumbnail; do you see that and feel like Spotify must have made that graphic? Again, that's what Spotify claims you'll think.