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Not one hundred dollars, not ten dollars, not one dollar, one cent. That's right, the LTE-packing Droid Bionic can be yours for a penny from Amazon Wireless if you're a switcher. Current Verizon customers have to pay the full $220. The usual hooks apply, it's a penny only on a 2 year contract.
Nothing excites me more than a new app for my poor, neglected tablet. Today, Astro is joining the party with version 3.0 of their venerable file manager. The new Astro sports a completely redesigned UI and icons, and drag and drop support. Look how pretty:
Hey GTV fans: Fantastic news! The final version of the Google TV SDK went live today - Google TV is still alive! This is a follow up to the preview build released in August.
Finally it's T-Mobile's turn to take a swing at the Samsung Galaxy S II, almost six months after the rest of the world. No adjective soup for this variant; its official name is, plainly, the "T-Mobile Galaxy S II." Formerly known as the "Hercules," this is the misfit in the GSII family. In its heart pumps a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, instead of the normal Samsung Exynos. So it's not just a carbon copy of all those other GSIIs. My initial impressions were posted a few days ago, and since then I've had some time to see if this thing was really worth the wait.
The FedEx man brought me a lovely little gift yesterday: The T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II. This is the last stateside arrival of the Galaxy S II family. The review will take a bit to get out the door, so until then I figured I'd whet your appetite with some initial impressions.
Sprint announced today it will be switching 4G technologies from WiMax to LTE. The LTE network should go live in mid 2012 and and have a "full rollout" by 2013. Sprint eventually hopes to double current amount of 4G customers with its LTE rollout.
The Keyboard App Shootout is back! In today's crosshairs: Swiftkey X.
Myriad is continuing their quest to make Android apps run on just about everything with the release of Alien Dalvik 2.0. The latest operation system in their crosshairs is none other than iOS -- specifically the iPad branch of iOS. That's right, Android apps on an iPad.
According to Kaspersky, seller of the $10 Kaspersky antivirus app for Android, Android viruses are getting worse. Well, not really worse, just different. The latest attack vector comes in the form of malicious QR Codes. When you scan a QR code, your phone turns those funky squares into a URL. Just like any other form of URL obfuscation (eg, shorteners), that URL can go to a naughty place. Said naughty place could give you a virus.
Do you like Backbreaker Football? Would you like to do that, but with skates and a big stick? Well today the makers of Backbreaker Football have released Icebreaker Hockey. "Crushing checks, slick moves, and super-addictive gameplay" awaits -- should you choose to download. It also has Xperia PLAY support, achievements, online leader boards, and unlockable items. If you've got a device running 2.1 and up, give it a shot.
If you're the type of person who likes Madden, yet somehow managed to not purchase it four weeks into the season, I've got good news! From October 1st-3rd, Verizon customers can download Madden NFL 12 for the low, low price of "free." How you download it is a little bizarre, so listen up: You call -- that's right, call -- **MADDEN. That's "[Star] [Star] 623336", and somehow that will start the download. The instructions aren't very specific. Whoever wrote the press release decided obvious football puns were more important than clarity. The press release mentions something about "VCast Apps," so don't be surprised if you are asked to download yet another app store. It's worth it for the $6.99 saving, though, isn't it?
With Ice Cream Sandwich on the horizon, we at AP thought it would be a good idea to give you a roundup of what Google's been cooking up in Building 44. We actually know a good deal about the future of Android; I'm talking real, solid facts. These are features Android engineers have demoed or talked about, and acquisitions Google has made related to Android technology. We even have pretty clear timelines for most of them. A quick note before we get started: most of these videos are like, an hour long -- you're only expected to watch about 30 seconds of them, so pause whenever it gets boring. Anyway, let's get started!
Greetings, dear reader! Tell me, how happy are you with your current keyboard? Autocorrect got you down? Looking for something a little different? Well, AP is here to help. Crack those knuckles and wipe down that screen, 'cause we're doing a keyboard shootout.
Logitech is bringing its Harmony remote tech to Android in the form of the Logitech Harmony Link. For those that don't know, Harmony is all about controlling your home theater setup with as little effort as possible - imagine a universal remote mashed up with a computer and you're getting there. A hundred bucks gets you a Wi-Fi equipped IR blaster box and an app. The box receives commands from your phone over the Wi-Fi connection, and can relay that to up to 8 IR devices in your home theater setup. The Wi-Fi connection means you don't need line of sight to control the TV anymore, so if you want to turn off the TV from the bathroom, you can do that.
Some users are reporting a +0.0.2 update to the Android Market. So far we don't know if anything big has changed. The tiny version increment suggest bug fixes only, but you never know...
The carriers continue screwing us in lockstep. Sprint is once again making its service less appealing (and more in line with the rest of the quadopoly) by putting a 5GB cap on its Mobile Hotspot plans. As always with capped data, overage fees are now here to keep you up at night. Going over the 5GB cap will tack 5¢ per MB onto your bill, which means the homepage of AP is going to cost you around $0.30. We're like an old timey newspaper.
Did you recently do something horrible to your Droid Bionic? Tired of staring at that red Motorola logo? This freshly released recovery file will have your bionic running like new in no time.
Ice Cream Sandwich will be the first phone version of Android to support virtual buttons. It seems like a lot of people don’t "get" the whole idea behind them. If used correctly, virtual buttons will be way better than the painted on Back/Home/Menu/Search we have now. So I figured I would lay out the benefits for everyone and hopefully start a nice discussion.