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360-degree video is So Hot Right Now. Between the launch of Daydream, expanded support in apps like YouTube, and a continuing interest in headsets like Gear VR and the Oculus Rift, video creators wouldn't be unwise to dip a toe into this particular pool. (If only wearables had stayed so hot.) Samsung's consumer-grade 360-degree camera, creatively called the Gear 360, is currently on sale for $50 off at Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H Photo. That brings the price down to $299.99.
There are more than a few racing games available on Android, but more technical racing simulators are a bit hard to come by. That's probably because mobile controls and hardware limitations don't appeal to developers (or players) hungry for painstaking accuracy. But today we get a new racing sim, from Codemasters no less - the developer of such franchises as GRID and Dirt, among many others. F1 2016, originally released on the PC and consoles in August, now has a full Android version on the Play Store for $10.
Though the open-world crafting phenomenon doesn't really have an end, any more than a big box of assorted LEGOs has some final way to assemble it, Minecraft does have an endgame. The original PC release was expanded with a "final" level and boss in 2012, but the Microsoft-branded Windows 10 version and the Pocket Edition on Android haven't had access to it so far. According to Mojang's developer blog, The End is nigh, and it has a gameplay trailer.
Blizzard's Warcraft setting used to be pretty straight high fantasy - elves, orcs, dwarves, various flavors of monsters. but after a couple of decades of strategy games and MMO action, the World has developed its own flavor. Much like Terry Pratchett's Discworld, Azeroth is sort of fluid: its fantasy tropes can be teased and prodded into more or less any genre of storytelling, so long as you don't object to seeing the occasional zombie or minotaur in your high-stakes heist plot.
We've seen a few tablets designed specifically for children, though "designed" can sometimes be a bit of stretch. Nabi's hardware is kid-focused from the ground up, but Amazon and Samsung (two of the biggest tablet makers on the planet, by volume) just add a software skin and an impact-absorbing case to an existing product. In that context, Verizon's newly-announced GizmoTab is an interesting offering: not only is it one of the rare tablet designs meant uniquely for children, it also has surprisingly solid hardware underneath all that padding.
Normally we see Verizon post a service alert on its website well before any of its customers receive a new software update on their devices. Today the company seems to be breaking that long habit, but the affected users aren't complaining. According to posts on the dedicated sub-Reddit and XDA forum, the Verizon version of LG's modular G5 is being updated to Android 7.0 starting today. Huzzah, tally ho, three cheers, et cetera.
In 1961 a musical called How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying made light of the growing corporate culture in America. Half a century later, those same corporations are seen by many as a necessary evil, a soulless machine that runs on the lives of its employees. It's appropriate, then, that Human Resource Machine is more or less the opposite of How To Succeed in Business: instead of starting in the mailroom and becoming the CEO in a fun-filled week of singing and dancing, you play a literal human machine whose behavior is programmed like a computer, and who spends decades in service to a company that has nothing but contempt for you.
Republic Wireless, the mobile virtual network operator that was doing hybrid Wi-Fi service before it was cool, is now an independent republic. The company received a $30 million capital investment from its parent corporation Bandwidth, according to The Verge, which allowed it to become its own separate entity. The Republic Wireless blog says that aside from a necessary change in names on customers' Terms of Service agreements, no significant changes to the service or business model are planned.
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- Sony officially confirmed the initial Nougat rollout on its mobile blog, adding the Xperia XZ model along with the X Performance. Also there's this neat video showing some of the new features:
It's been a few months since Android 7.0 hit the AOSP code repository, and this is about the time of year that owners of non-Nexus (non-Pixel, now) flagships start to ask why their upgrades are taking so long. Well if your flagship just happens to be the latest high-powered Sony smartphone, you're in luck. The Xperia X Performance is receiving its Nougat update starting today, according to XperiaBlog. For the record, that's just a little over three months of waiting for the upgrade - not bad by current Android standards.
Eager to get a slice of the growing cord-cutter pie, AT&T and DirecTV announced their own web-based premium TV service earlier this week. DIRECTV NOW officially launches today, so it's good to see that the service gets Android support immediately. The app is free and works with phones and tablets running Android 4.4 or higher. Sadly it's not compatible with Android TV, though Chromecast streaming is available on all videos.
4K video, content with resolutions at roughly quadruple that of standard 1080p, is all the rage right now. We're finally seeing 4K-res televisions and computer monitors that are at least moderately affordable, and five will get you ten that some mainstream phone manufacturer next year will brag that it's crammed a 4K screen into a 5.5" form factor. YouTube is way ahead of the curve on this one: they've been offering 4K video uploads and playback on compatible hardware since 2010. Now they're expanding that capability to live streaming videos.
It's the most wonderful time of the year... the time when it's almost over. But it's also that turn in the calendar when a couple of billion people look forward to celebrating Christmas, and the youngest portions of that subset start improving their behavior in an avaricious desire for more presents. Google's taking part in its yearly ritual too, indulging whimsical parents and obsessive-compulsive children with its Santa Claus countdown-slash-tracker app.
So far the focus in the new wave of headset-based virtual reality content seems to be video games, simulations, 360-degree videos and the like, but as it turns out, conventional 2D video content is easy to adapt into an immersive (if not groundbreaking) experience. Google itself offers all the content on YouTube in Daydream flavor, and now HBO is following suit. The premium cable channel has published a Daydream-compatible version of its online component, HBO GO, in the Play Store as an unreleased app.
Welcome to the latest entry in our Bonus Round series, wherein we tell you all about the new Android games of the day that we couldn't get to during our regular news rounds. Consider this a quick update for the dedicated gamers who can't wait for our bi-weekly roundups, and don't want to wade through a whole day's worth of news just to get their pixelated fix. Today we've got a complex battleship defense game, a mobile runner tie-in for a Steam title, an adventure game in the Warhammer 40K universe, a unique twitch game, and a demo for a stylish puzzler. Without further ado:
For the uninitiated, the Home Run Derby is an annual competition for Major League Baseball players celebrating the sport's most explosive play. The MLB already publishes an official game based on the yearly contest, a full 3D affair with licensed player likenesses and $100 in-app purchases, for Android phones and tablets. But it looks like they've decided to join the early ranks of developers officially supporting the Daydream VR system.
Starz, the premium cable channel that offers movies and original series, now works with Spotify, the premium streaming music service. Which is... odd. An updated version of the Starz Android app now includes integrated streaming tracks from Spotify, all of which are either original music or soundtrack selections from those Starz series and movies. Apparently there are "more than 3,500" selections that are at least tangentially related to the Starz catalog.
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Dear Starbucks: thank you for existing. Not for your overpriced smoothie-coffee or your approachable yuppie atmosphere. No, thank you for being a Wi-Fi-soaked escape from my rural family's home during the holidays - T-Mobile service is still crappy out there. And while I'm extending some holiday thanks, I might as well give a shout-out to Visa, which is giving Starbucks customers of free credit via the Starbucks app. That's approximately 2.5 Frappuccinos.
Here's an update that really should have happened a bit sooner. VNC Viewer is the official VNC client from RealVNC, the company that makes and maintains the Virtual Network Client protocol for remote computer access. Said company also makes VNC Connect, which is actually the latest version of the premium server/client program for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and other operating systems. Version 6.0 was rebranded earlier this month, and today the Android app is compatible with the updated software. It only took almost four weeks... which isn't great for a mission critical program.
Horror comes in many flavors... just don't tell that to whoever's filming the seventh Paranormal Activity movie on some Hollywood lot right now. Case in point: Steam's horror section is a cavalcade of creepiness, with games like the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise sitting alongside Amnesia and The Evil Within. And lest you think it's only possible to scare in three dimensions, there's also DISTRAINT, an indie 2D side-scroller that's dripping with horror themes. The game popped up on Steam last year, but now it's available in the Play Store for free.
DJI, purveyor of premium-brand drones to the poor and the gentry, has a new app on the Play Store. It's a companion app for the recent entries in the company's lineup, mostly focused on the built-in still and video cameras. The app has a livestreaming function (but not remote control) and editing built in. But something odd is going on here: why is version four of the GO app getting a separate listing on the Play Store, despite the fact that both of them are free? The older app mentions support for Inspire, Phantom, and Matrice 100 drones, while the new one drops the Matrice in favor of the Mavic Pro.