Latest Articles
Graphic designers know the pain of saving a project and accidentally writing over their only copy of an original photo. Last week Snapseed users knew that pain too, because at least a few of them were experiencing a frustrating bug that did the same thing. While the bug wasn't widespread (we couldn't replicate it on our own phones, for example), multiple Reddit users said that sending a photo to Snapseed via the Share menu could either delete or overwrite the original non-edited photo.
Blizzard has been blowing GPAs, sinking careers, and ruining marriages with World of Warcraft for over a decade now. It's an enviable achievement. Though the biggest MMO game in the world has declined in recent years, the latest expansion hopes to add enough new and interesting content to bring old players back and maybe even snag a few new ones. One of the biggest new features is support for an official companion app, so addicts no longer need to rely on a PC to get their WoW fix.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
The Vulkan graphics API is a big deal for mobile developers, since its direct GPU access allows for complex graphics to be rendered with a considerably lower hit to the processor, and thus a lower overhead on the hardware and battery life. A few devices like the SHIELD family and Samsung's 7 series already supported Vulkan several months ago, but Nougat now features full support for all updated Android 7.0 devices. Developer Super Evil Megacorp, which turned heads last year with its Vainglory mobile MOBA, now has a beta version that uses the Vulkan API.
OnePlus phone owners can probably agree that the company needs to work on faster OS updates. (It's a safe bet: pretty much everyone can agree on that, including Nexus owners.) OnePlus is trying. To that end, the company has announced that its two disparate Android software builds will be merged into one: Oxygen OS and Hydrogen OS. I'll pause for a moment to allow the chemistry nerds to make an H2O joke before we continue.
Niantic might not technically be part of Google anymore, but it looks like at least a few people at the old stomping grounds are keeping up with the AR development team's progress. Reddit user GoldLeader272 noticed a juicy new addition to the activity selector in the Timeline feature of Google Maps yesterday: users can now indicate that they were "catching Pokémon," i.e. playing Pokémon GO on their phones. Users can even update Timeline activities on the Android app: go to "Your timeline," tap on the travel (car, walking, bus, cycling, etc.) icon, and then edit it to "catching Pokémon." Neat.
Does a calendar app need a voice control function? Samsung seems to think that it does. That's the premise behind JifiCal, the company's latest published app in the Play Store. It's essentially a voice control add-on for a phone's built-in calendar. So what makes it better than, say, Google Now's voice control system (especially since the actual voice recognition in JifiCal is using Google's own servers)? According to the app description, the special sauce here is the natural language processing.
S Note is the included app for Samsung's Note series that enables, well, notation. It's designed to be used with the S Pen stylus for a variety of quick notes and drawings. It features most of the things that you'd expect from a notation tool, but since it's such a signature part of the differentiating hardware, Samsung seems interested in making a beta version of the app available to its users. The beta app is up on the Play Store now - head to this address to opt-in to the program, then this address to download it.
It's not often that we see an Android game released just for Android TV, aside from the various exclusives that NVIDIA has acquired for its SHIELD set-top box. Hotlap Heroes eschews smartphones and tablets and insists that players experience its old-fashioned racing action on a full-sized television. The 3D racing game, a rookie effort on the Play Store from developer Team Pea, is $3.99 with no in-app purchases.
Google bought photo editor Snapseed a little less than four years ago, and the developers have been steadily improving the app and adding new features since then. The latest version is 2.9, which started rolling out to new users yesterday and just hit the publicly-accessible Play Store a few hours ago. There's nothing mind-blowing in the updated version, but a handful of new features will make long-time users happy (and might get rid of one of the other photo apps you rely on concurrently).
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
We're at an interesting crossroads in Android hardware. Manufacturers are switching from MicroUSB for power and wired data to the newer, more capable USB-C standard. But the rush to provide mobile users with hundreds of millions of new cables and chargers creates, well, a rush. We've already seen some USB-C cables and other hardware that have been substandard, sometimes with disastrous results. So civic-minded geeks, including independent researcher Nathan K., have been looking into the performance and power output of popular cables.
The idea of a smartphone that magically turns into a full PC has been something of a pipedream for a while now. Motorola tried it with its Atrix laptop dock, Canonical is trying something similar with its Ubuntu Unity phone OS that can dock into a monitor. Even Microsoft is giving it a go with Windows Phone devices that can dock into a slimmed-down ARM Windows environment. The latest attempt with an Android base comes from "Maru OS," the brainchild of developer Preetam D'Souza.
Okay, so the G5's modular design hasn't set the world on fire in quite the manner that LG probably hoped it would. But aside from some of the foibles of its unique form factor, it's still a high-end flagship device with some of the latest specs and a great camera. And if you chop the original retail price down, it turns into a pretty good deal. Such is the case with this eBay listing, which is selling the international model of the G5 for just 9.99.
There's a new paradigm in strategy games. Whereas the old guard in real-time titles like Starcraft, Age of Empires, and Command & Conquer tended to get more complex with each release, the point of Auralux and its imitators is to boil strategy down to its purest components. It does so by making offense, defense, and resource gathering all more or less the same game mechanic, in the tradition of Galactic Conquest (AKA Galcon). Now the sequel to Auralux is out, and it's looking pretty great.
Maserati, Italian manufacturer of cars for people who want something more expensive than a Jaguar but not quite as pricey as a Lambo, has been on the official Android Auto support for a while now. But before this week, there hasn't been any actual availability from the company. Three models were added to the official Auto list on Thursday: the Levante crossover and the Ghibli and Quattroporte sedans. Only the Granturismo coupe is not getting access.
Google is an American company, as in the United States of America. That means that sometimes - okay, a lot of times - its new programs and promotions are first and often only available to Americans. But today our neighbors to the north finally get something that we don't. And it's pretty sweet: twenty bucks of free credit in the Play Store for owners of the Chromecast 2015 and/or the newer Chromecast Audio! That's better than a free Tim Horton's run.
Vector Unit has cultivated a reputation as one of the most consistently solid developers on Android, so a new release from them is always a good thing. But when it's a new entry in the Riptide GP series, then it's time to call the boss and tell him you're (cough, cough) "sick." Riptide GP: Renegade is the third installment, and SHIELD Android TV owners can play it right now, only a few days after the PC and console release. A wider mobile release is coming later.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
At this point we're just waiting for Google to release Android 7.0 (and the new Nexus devices that come with it) to the masses. The company never gives exact dates for this kind of thing, though a vague "fall" pattern generally leads us to expect new Android hardware and software sometime between August and October. According to the official support forum for Telus, an exclusively Canadian cell carrier, Nougat updates will be coming in less than a week.