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Photoshop and other Adobe programs are big, complicated, and expensive, the domain of professional graphic designers and photographers. Not everyone can handle them - not even their toned-down "Elements" versions - but Adobe would very much like for everyone to still give them some money. To that end, the company has introduced a concept for what it calls "intelligent digital assistant photo editing." It's a voice-controlled photo editor, and it's kind of insane - check the video below to see what I mean.
If you went to middle school at the same time as me, you might remember Yu-Gi-Oh. It's that show about a kid with an alien starfish attached to his brain that makes him hallucinate about ancient Egyptian playing cards destroying the world. (That's how I remember it, anyway.) Amazingly the twenty-year-old franchise is still around, and quite a lot of people seem to be continuing to play the associated Magic: The Gathering-inspired card game - enough that Konami, otherwise more or less uninterested in non-Pachinko games, has released a new mobile version.
Adobe's current Android strategy seems to be publishing as many small, single-purpose tools as possible to augment the workflow of artists and designers using its main Creative Cloud programs on a desktop computer. Capture CC is a tool for adding things like custom colors, brushes, shapes, and other Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign assets via a mobile camera. The Android app launched in October of 2015, and apparently Adobe didn't think anyone with an Android tablet really needed that functionality until now.
We've spotted some new icon-based interface changes in Google Now over the last few months, first with a few circles, then with more contextual multicolored icons. The latest shift seems to be all in on the latter: multiple Android Police users have told us that they've seen the new icon-focused UI in their copy of the app, complete with more icons than ever before. As an intentional way to direct users to Google's various utility searches, it seems to be fairly functional.
Someone at Ubisoft really loves horses. Possibly to a creepy and/or illegal-in-most-jurisdictions degree. In 2014 the publisher released a mobile version of Howrse, a sort of horse-themed management/pirate math game. Then in 2015 they brought us Horse Haven Adventures, which may or may not be about a demonic princess riding the mythical Mares of Diomedes across a defeated and despoiled Earth. Now they're back with Horse Adventure: Tale of Estria, a third horse-themed game seemingly unconnected to the other two.
Remember Google Voice? Google's first stab at a voice-over-IP system is still up and running, though much of its functionality has been absorbed or augmented by the SMS and calling functions of Hangouts. It's a bit dusty in the Voice closet - the desktop web version of the service looks like a relic, and the Android app has only received a couple of maintenance updates in the last year and a half. But users who still rely on Google Voice as their primary phone number (like me!) have reason to be hopeful that the service hasn't been completely abandoned.
New rule for 2017: every payment system must work everywhere, or at least be offered for every possible merchant. That seems to be the direction that Samsung would like to take, as a new Korean language site for the company has mentioned a different version of its digital payment system, dubbed "Samsung Pay Mini." This payment system would work with any cooperating online merchant, opening up Samsung Pay beyond standard brick-and-mortar transactions, and giving Samsung a lucrative slice of those transaction fees.
T-Mobile's allegedly revolutionary ONE Unlimited plan has been met with a lot of skepticism thanks to its oxymoronic limitations on streaming video and tethering, plus new tiers of service that undermine the idea of a "single" data plan for everyone. Even so, CEO John Legere said that the company is "doubling down" on the ONE plan. In his typical bombastic and profanity-laden style, Legere announced that starting January 22nd, T-Mobile will only offer the ONE Unlimited plan to new post-paid customers. That's $70 for talk, text, and "unlimited" data for the first line, $120 for two lines, and $20 for each line after. That includes a $5 discount for auto-paying customers.
Google's shiny new Pixel phones and the slightly older Nexus 5X and 6P, and the Pixel C tablet have had access to the latest and most tasty flavor of Nougat for a month now, but the Nexus 6 (from 2014, if we're keeping score) has been puttering along on the more outdated 7.0 build. As promised, the 7.1.1 update is now available for Nexus 6 owners in both full system image and over-the-air update form - though of course, it may be a while before you see the actual OTA roll out to your phone.
NVIDIA's GeForce NOW game streaming service gets new games and a new price model, coming to PCs soon
GeForce Now, NVIDIA's PC game streaming service, is currently limited to the original SHIELD Portable, the SHIELD Tablet, and the SHIELD TV. Starting in March that's going to change: the company is expanding access to all standard PCs running Windows and Mac OS, via a regular download client. GeForce Now will finally be the successor to "cloud" gaming services like OnLive. According to the PR material, any PC - including those without an NIVIDA-branded graphics card - will be able to connect to the GeForce Now service. It's a big deal if you want to play advanced PC games on something like a Macbook or a Surface.
NVIDIA's yearly CES bash just wrapped up, and once again there's a new SHIELD coming for gamers. Well, "new" in a very limited sense. The new version of the Android TV-powered set top box looks nearly identical to the SHIELD TV that's been available since the summer of 2015. It's 40% smaller than the original - closer in size to competitors like Roku - but inside is the same Tegra X1 system that we're familiar with. (Which is still some of the most powerful "mobile" silicon around.) The big change, as hinted by the leak last month, is in the controller.
Please don't give Capcom any money for its official Mega Man Android ports. The company hasn't earned any. You'd think that almost 30-year-old games, designed to run on a console with less computational power than the average DVD player, could be ported to Android with relative ease. You would be wrong. All six of the original Nintendo Entertainment System Mega Man games are now on the Play Store for two bucks a pop, and they're just as good as that trailer indicated they would be. So, they suck.
At the moment there are two approaches to staying connected to your digital world while driving: a dedicated vehicle system with a permanent screen, or a phone in a car dock. (Or you could just be a dangerous jerk and use your phone in your hands while you're driving, I suppose.) JBL would like to offer a more elegant alternative: the Smartbase. This gadget combines a phone dock, wireless charger, and an external speaker for hands-free calls. Even better, it works with existing voice control and safety services - Google Now on Android and Siri on iOS.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
Wileyfox is a tiny phone manufacturer based in Britain that focuses on solid budget and mid-range designs, with low profit margins partially enabled thanks to a partnership with Cyanogen Inc. for the phones' Android software. That partnership doesn't seem to be long for this world, after it was announced that Cyanogen is more or less shutting down its full Android development team. That leaves Wileyfox customers (among many others) in something of a lurch. According to a few Reddit posts, the company is actively looking into alternatives.
Duolingo is one of the most popular apps on the Play Store, but oddly, its social features have been a bit on the light side up to now. The latest update to the language learning service aims to alleviate that with Duolingo Clubs. The feature is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: users (or "players" as Duolingo likes to call them) can congregate into social clubs to keep track of each other's use of the app and progress though the guided, game-style courses.
All's fair in love and war and high-stakes international B2B sales. Wait, that's not true: there's actually quite a lot of regulation on that last bit. Just ask the Korean Fair Trade Commission, which presented American chipmaking giant Qualcomm with a gigantic fine for unfair business practices on Wednesday. According to the KFTC, Qualcomm abused its dominant business position to force its manufacturing partners to pay exorbitant patent licensing fees when selling its widely-used mobile modem chips.
I don't know much about baskets-the-ball - sorry fans, Cameron would probably write this article if he was still around. But I have to admit that the NBA has something interesting with InPlay, its latest official mobile app. InPlay automatically detects whatever game happens to be playing on TV in the background via the microphone, no matter what teams or which channel. But that's only the first cool part of the experience.
Our cup of holiday discounts runneth over. Last week the Google Play Store offered movie rentals for just 99¢ with a promo code (among other discounts). As is its wont, Amazon has now matched that deal with a similar offer on its Amazon Video platform: enter the code "MOVIE99" at checkout and your rental will cost just under a buck. It's good for one (and only one) movie, but there's no reason you can't use both the Google and Amazon discounts for a $2 double feature.
Runner games aren't exactly thin on the ground on the Play Store - we've essentially stopped covering them unless they offer something new and unique to players. Geometry Dash isn't exactly groundbreaking in terms of its actual structure, but the execution of its rhythm-based gameplay and the polish of the levels have earned it a small but dedicated fanbase. The latest entry in the series, Geometry Dash World, definitely deserves some attention.