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League of Legends: Wild Rift finally gets a US release date for the upcoming open beta
The North American open beta starts on March 29
Back in May, we highlighted a rumor that League of Legends might come to Android courtesy of Tencent, a company that just so happens to own Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends. It has now been revealed that Riot has been very busy having recently announced three new games for mobile themed around the LoL franchise. In this article, I'm going to be talking about League of Legends: Wild Rift, a redesigned 5v5 MOBA slated for release on mobile and consoles in 2020. So if you're eagerly anticipating the arrival of Wild Rift, I'm happy to report that it's already available for pre-registration on the Google Play Store.
A rotary cellphone is what you need to cure your mobile addiction
Engineer Justine Haupt wanted "an excuse for not texting"
With the rise of digital wellbeing awareness, there are no shortage of apps and tools to help you quell your smartphone addiction. A certain amount of willpower is still required, however, so astronomy instrumentation engineer Justine Haupt decided to take things one step further. You can't very well waste all your time on Instagram or Twitter if your phone only has a small ePaper screen and a rotary dial.
Some phones have more groundbreaking features than others. For instance, LG's latest flagship is capable of authenticating your palm using its camera, Pixels can take incredibly sharp-looking pictures in poor lighting conditions, and the Huawei P30 has an impressive 10x lossless zoom.
Lenovo has a history of not being fully honest when it comes to announcing phones. Last year, the company was criticized for teasing a bezel and notch-less phone, only for the real phone to have a notch and significant bezels. This time, Lenovo showed off renders for its in-development fodable Razr phone to press in China — except it was a fan-made mockup used without permission.
On Google Maps, there are three map type options: Default; Terrain, which shows an approximation of the land's texture; and Satellite, which features real-life aerial imagery. In a series of tweets over the weekend, Maps co-creator Bret Taylor explained how the Maps team prevented Satellite view from shipping with a very silly name: Bird Mode.
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- Ars Technica has finally confirmed our suspicions, soundly rejecting the idea that the site is working with Samsung on this HDR10+ project and reasserting the theory that Samsung got confused over the Ars Pro subscription service.
We all had a good laugh when Samsung announced its partnership with the knockoff "Supreme Italia" brand earlier this month. Interestingly, it seems like Samsung is making botching its partners' brands and logos somewhat of a trend. In a blog post announcing the expansion of its HDR10+ ecosystem, Samsung prominently features fellow news publication Ars Technica's logo alongside big names like Qualcomm, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, and more.
The notch on the Pixel 3 XL is probably one of the most derided smartphone features in history, or, judging by our comments section, the worst thing to ever happen in the history of the universe. A wonderfully apt bug experienced by a small number of users manifests itself as an additional notch on the right side of the display, and it could hardly be funnier.
Huawei's not very good at honest advertising. Remember when it photoshopped the bezels out of its P8 and P8max marketing photos? Or when it used a $4,500 DSLR to take P9 "camera samples"? The company has gotten caught in yet another act of deception, this time in an impossibly hilarious manner thanks to a slip-up from an actress involved.
Seven months have passed since we published the last installment of the AP Files. In that time, the Android world has seen some pretty interesting additions. Way too many flagships, including the latest from ASUS, Huawei, LG, and OnePlus, are being leaked/revealed with notches (thanks, Apple). Android P made its debut in developer preview form, and it looks like Google may be adding gesture navigation as well. LG unveiled the successor to the V30, the nicely-named V30S ThinQ, which is just a V30 with more RAM and some AI features you'll play with once and never touch again.
Like many flagship phones, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL aren't cheap. But while companies like Samsung and Apple try to make you feel a little better about your $700-1000 purchase by including a pair of earphones in the box, Google doesn't. However, some seemingly preproduction packaging that one guy got inside his Verizon Pixel 2's box indicates that Google had at least been seriously considering it.
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- We've been informed of this relevant SMBC comic relating to the issue Google has with rounding. It's pretty funny. Thanks, August.
Google does a lot of things right, but sometimes, it's the most minute errors that we take notice of. Specifically, Google Assistant, Google Home, and Google Search seem to have some problems with rounding when converting from pounds/ounces to kilograms. And since Home actually speaks responses, it makes for one pretty funny video.
Welcome back to the Android Police Files, your #1 source for the brilliant stuff that the AP staff receives in our mailboxes. Since we last convened, a lot has happened. The latest version of Android shares a name with a branded product for the first time since 4.4 KitKat. The Galaxy Note8 was released, and it doesn't catch fire. And most recently, a Canadian 17-year old and his "youth leadership coach" tried to pass a Chinese ODM's phone off as their own and crowdsource it on Indiegogo.
The Huawei Watch 2 Classic's regular price of $369.99 puts it at the higher end of the Android Wear market. However, its price is somewhat justifiable - it looks good, has a high-resolution AMOLED display, the latest Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor, more RAM than its competitors, a large battery, GPS, and NFC. It's expensive because it has high-quality components. So what does the Porsche Design Huawei Watch 2 bring to the table for the extra $555?
Samsung has been on a power trip since the launch of the Galaxy S8/S8+. On both of those phones is a fourth (or third, depending if you consider the volume rocker to be one or two) button that is a shortcut to Bixby, Sammy's new "personal assistant." Not understanding the will of some people, the giant Korean OEM decided to block the ability to remap the function of that button. Clever developers found a workaround, which Samsung recently blocked for some versions of the S8/S8+. And now, those clever devs have figured out another workaround for the crackdown.
It's been over half a year since the last installment of the AP Files was published, and the world has undergone some drastic changes. There's a squeezable phone. Bezel-less phones now dominate the world. And the newest LG phones haven't had any major reports of bootlooping. I'm sorry, I had to.
Remember those crazy expensive apps that only existed for you to show off how rich you are to your friends (and to make developers some quick cash from chumps)? The $999.99 'I Am Rich' iOS app from back in '08 comes to mind, but it turns out that those apps still exist on the Play Store. PENITAX, a Slovakia-based 'developer,' has just made all three of his lackluster $399.99 apps free for a limited time on the Play Store.
Microsoft is getting ready for a big Windows 10 Mobile push after more than five years of toiling in vain on Windows Phone. In hopes of encouraging Android users to jump ship, Microsoft has released AppCompare, an app that tells you if the apps you have installed on your Android device are available on Windows Phone. If this sounds familiar, that's because Microsoft already tried this, and it didn't go well.
Does the Tegra K1 in your Nexus 9 run a little toasty? Well, it's got nothing on NVIDIA's latest mobile chip design win, which is literally an oven. I'm sorry, NVIDIA, but the jokes basically write themselves here.
Now that the hustle and bustle of Mobile World Congress 2015 is behind us, we have time to address some of the comments and emails we've received over the past several months.
Following on the success of the original xkcd Phone (which featured a blend of Android and iOS, a side-facing camera, and the ability to scream when falling), a successor has arrived that offers some of the best tech that 2014 has to offer.