Latest Articles
The adoption of Chromecast as a de facto streaming standard was rapid, helped in no small part by the fact that it was the cheapest streaming gadget on the market which was immediately compatible with both major mobile phone systems. But not everyone leaps to support new tech, and old media giants like the National Broadcasting Company have never been accused of being nimble. So it took NBC the better part of three years to support Google's streaming standard, so what - it's not like they're a multi-million dollar entertainment company backed by an international supercorp.
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 Monument Valley-style puzzle game, a two-player board game, a cyberpunk point-and-click adventure, two stylized "retro" games, a Risk-style strategy title, and a SHIELD-only extreme sports sequel. Without further ado:
Saygus, the company that really will have an actual smartphone for sale any day now, they totally promise, has some more promises for you. A press release issued at Mobile World Congress lays out a series of improvements to the crowdfunded V-Squared phone, which should be easy to implement since the phone still isn't finished despite a first quarter manufacturing target. No less than four, count 'em, four new features have been introduced since... last year's Mobile World Congress. The fact that Saygus has missed multiple ship dates between now and then is conspicuously absent from the press release.
The adoption of Google's Play Games collection of APIs and tools has been rapid, and very welcome among Android gamers - it's one of the first things that gets requested when a new title on the Play Store omits it. Now it's a little easier to tell which games support Play Games tools and which ones don't, without having to download them first. Users, including those of us here at Android Police, are starting to see a Play Games logo appear prominently in the Play Store app description of those apps that support the system.
Since the DROID series remains a Verizon exclusive more than six years after the original QWERTY model hit shelves, the DROID Turbo 2 is Verizon's de facto flagship phone, in so much as no one else can use it. So those customers who have spent their money on the modified version of the Moto X will be glad to know that a Marshmallow update is fast approaching. For a lucky few, it's available now: the "soak test," a closed alpha for Motorola firmware, has begun.
Google's "Monotune" Android commercial is pretty cool. The musical analogy is interesting (and it ties in well with Google's "be together, not the same" marketing campaign), but there's an impressive technical aspect to it as well. The producers modified a grand piano so that all 88 keys were turned to middle C, so that pianist Ji-Yong Kim could really play the music using a single note. As cool as that commercial is, they might have taken things a bit too far with the latest promotion: an entire album of music played with that one-note piano.
Remember when Sprint said that it wouldn't be offering the tried and true two-year phone contracts anymore? Yeah, not so much. Fierce Wireless reports that the carrier is once again offering two-year service contracts, and the Sprint Wireless website bears this out. New phones are being sold with a significant discount, up to 100%, in exchange for customers signing a promise not to stop paying for 24 months. Everything old is new again.
Here at Android Police, we monitor a truly insane amount of sites and developers to bring you the latest apps and games fresh from the Play Store. And in serving that duty, sometimes we come across games that don't deserve any attention. More often than not, in fact, and some of the most depressing are games that exploit a beloved TV, movie, or video game license and use it to try and sling the same homogenized crap as ten thousand copycat game developers looking for a quick buck. A lot of these seem to be Candy Crush or Bejeweled clones: we passed over Pac-Man Puzzle Tour just yesterday (Artem literally wrote "ughhhhhh" in the office chat), and Star Trek: Wrath of Gems is such a shameless cash-grab that it makes trekkies spit out their Romulan ale. Neither of these games made it to our bi-weekly game roundup, even in passing.
If you've heard of Leica, then you probably know your way around a nice camera... or at least a very expensive one. The German manufacturer, a private company that's over 150 years old, specializes in extremely well-crafted point-and-shoot and swappable lens cameras, plus lenses for a few other camera makers. With prices that start at around $1000 for the cheapest models and go up to over 20 grand for specialty and professional cameras, they're generally restricted to the most extravagant of luxury buyers or career photographers.
Confession: I haven't touched The Walking Dead franchise since the end of season one of the TV show - there's only so much zombie stuff I can handle. But even so, I know that Michonne (pronounced "Miss-shown") is a fan-favorite badass in both the comic books and the show. TellTale Games, always eager to please with its growing collection of licensed episodic adventure games, is giving those fans what they want with a Michonne mini-series. Episode one is available right now in the Play Store.
There's no shortage of Internet radio options available on the Play Store, but we're still waiting for all of them to get on the bus (so to speak) with Android Auto. Today Deezer, another streaming radio option, gets official support for Android Auto baked into the Android app. It's live in the Play Store now, though it may take a while for the rollout to reach every user. According to the change log, Android Auto support is only available for users who subscribe to Deezer's Premium+ option.
Pour one out for the Xperia Z series. It's served Sony well since 2013, going through a relatively rapid five generations in under three years, plus offshoots like the massive Xperia Z Ultra, the diminutive Xperia Z Compact and its well-regarded descendants, and even a tablet or two. But all things must pass away, and so it is with the Z moniker. Probably. There won't be an Xperia Z6 at any rate, at least according to the statement that the company gave to XperiaBlog.
The new Chromecast Audio is neat. But the box only comes with a 1/8th inch aux cable (AKA a headphone cable), so if you want to use that handy little streaming gadget with anything that doesn't have a standard headphone jack, you'll have to dive into your rat's nest of ancient cables and adapters. Or you could head for Radio Shack, realize that Radio Shack closed two years ago and you never noticed, then head to Best Buy, ask the guy in the blue shirt where the audio cables are, find him again and ask him where the audio cable that you actually want is, then leave the store in defeat when he admits he's out of stock, then finally go home and wait a week for a $5 cable to come in the mail from Amazon.
If you don't know what League of Legends is, then you don't spend enough time on Twitch (which is to say that you spend an entirely appropriate amount of time on Twitch). It's one of the biggest games in the ballooning "MOBA" genre, a combination of multiplayer team-based combat and top-down RPG sensibilities that's thrived on a PC-exclusive, free-to-play model. Thanks to League of Legends' highly competitive and social setup, it's become one of the spectacle events around the new boom in professional-level video game competition.
Read update
At this point, anyone who really cares about getting speedy Android updates knows to avoid using Verizon if possible, with a few exceptions for flagship devices. Those exceptions don't extend to tablets, even high-end ones. Case in point: the Verizon Sony Xperia Tablet Z2 is now getting its Android 5.1.1 update... a year after the software was released, and more than four months after the release of the latest version, Android 6.0. Such is life.
The Galaxy S5 was water-resistant, one of the most hyped features of that particular Samsung generation. The Galaxy S6... wasn't. While the S6 and S6 Edge were huge leaps forward for Samsung in terms of both style and engineering, the loss of water resistance (not to mention expandable storage) was a bummer for some. T-Mobile employee Des would seem to agree, since he took advantage of the Ingress Protection 68 rating on the new Galaxy S7 to unbox the phone underwater. It sure beats the usual blogger's desk, right?
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.
The SHIELD TV is the clear winner among Android TV devices, even if that is a very short field. The high-powered set-top-box gives a better experience than both the Nexus Player and the Razer Forge TV... which remain the only other stand-alone Android TV devices available. Today the SHIELD gets even better, because NVIDIA is pushing out the Marshmallow update to its hardware. NVIDIA updates usually go out all at once, so if you own a SHIELD, you should be able to start the download right now.
Read update
ZTE doesn't want to talk about the Blade V7 phone they have on the slate for Mobile World Congress, at least not yet. A promotional website has a small image and a broken link, but if you put in the URL manually, you can see the newly-announced device in all its golden mid-range glory. The V7 kind of looks like the bastard child of an iPhone and one of HTC's later One devices (sorry, ZTE, but that circle home button and custom icon theme are pretty telling), but it's none the worse for being born out of wedlock. It's hard to go wrong with an all-aluminum body, right?