latest
The facial recognition software built directly into Google Photos is already fantastically accurate, distinguishing your friends and family from even the blurriest of pixels. However, like any AI-driven tool, it's not perfect, and sometimes it just doesn't know who's actually in your pictures. Thanks to our friends over at XDA Developers, we now have our first look at an upcoming manual facial tagging feature that's currently hidden away within Google Photos 4.32.
Android Messages just hit version 3.0. While hitting a new major version number might be an occasion for big things in some apps, this one appears to be a simple incremental step up from version 2.9. While there aren't any immediately obvious changes on the surface of this update, there are some things happening under the hood. It looks like support for KitKat has been dropped with this update, leaving behind about 12% of previously supported Android devices. There are also clues about changes to notifications about pictures and videos, enhanced chat features, and making purchases.
Instagram has always allowed you to add previously-taken pictures and videos to your Story, but the app imposed one limitation - the media had to be less than 24 hours old. I honestly never noticed that, but it seems silly. Instagram now seems to think so too, and has removed that limit from the mobile apps.
Francisco Franco, of franco.Kernel fame and several other root applications, has just released a new media gallery browser for Android: Focus. Designed by our very own Liam Spradlin (#halleliam), Focus brings a big, erm, focus on design, usability, and efficiency. It's decked with Material Design elements and animations, but it still keeps a unique look and approach to image, gif, and video viewing.
A new update to Google's Maps application is out, but the wait for offline navigation must go on. This is a relatively minor version bump, so we're not going to see the big features mentioned at I/O, but that doesn't mean there aren't still some pretty good things in this release. We now get to enjoy a new photo gallery view, car rental bookings will be shown, and there are a few pleasant improvements in Settings.
The Android team has been hard at work replacing old code that hasn't scaled well with newer and more powerful hardware. We've long known that the camera API was destined to see a massive update, but we were missing details like a release date or exactly what was coming. Thanks to the L release, we can finally see what has been in the works for all these many months.
Handy Photo Version 2.0 Brings Redesigned UI, New Features, A Reset Button, On-Screen Instructions, And More
Handy Photo Version 2.0 Brings Redesigned UI, New Features, A Reset Button, On-Screen Instructions, And More
Handy Photo is a mobile photo editor that can seemingly work magic with such features as un-cropping, the ability to remove objects from a photo, and the option to apply any number of its impressive filters. We put version 1.0 of the app through its paces last year and saw a lot of promise. Now Handy Photo is making the jump to the big 2.0, and it's bringing with it a new UI.
Evernote has been around the block for years now, and it's one of the first recommendations you're likely to hear when searching for a solid note-taking app. The latest update doesn't revamp things, but it adds the ability for users to take images and files they would have previously attached to a note and inject them directly into its body instead. The functionality is accessible right from the action bar, and you're free to add multiple images one after the other.
One of the biggest issues with many Android devices is the subpar camera – only recently have manufacturers really started to step up their game and put better hardware in top-end devices. What many users may not realize, however, is that simply trying different software can drastically change the entire camera experience. Sure, the device is still limited by the hardware, but changing the software can definitely help get the most out of any shooter.
One of the advantages to Android's open source nature is that we can poke around in the source code, looking for interesting stuff. This is how we've become aware of some things Google has planned for the stock camera experience. Code from the Android Open Source Project shows that a new camera API has been in development, but it was pulled last month because it wasn't ready for release with KitKat.
Update: All the images posted on Google+ have now been removed. We've still got the veggie image and EXIF info embedded below.
Yesterday, @evleaks scored several press images of the new Nexus 7, which is expected to be revealed by Google on July 24th. Not even a day later, we now have an exclusive gallery of more recent press shots that not only offer several more angles, but also showcase what I believe is the new default Android 4.3 Nexus wallpaper which replaces the Android 4.2 wallpaper seen in the previous pictures.
Exclusive: Press Images Of The White Nexus 4 (LG E960W) Leak Out
As we already know, the white Nexus 4 is very much real. Months after first showing up on the web, it re-appeared at Google I/O in all its glory, with
As we already know, the white Nexus 4 is very much real. Months after first showing up on the web, it re-appeared at Google I/O in all its glory, with June 10th tipped as a possible launch date by AndroidAndMe's co-founder Taylor Wimberly. Alongside it, according to Taylor, Android 4.3 would be unveiled as well.
Google I/O 2013 From Our Perspective: The Photos, Bacon, And Crazy Bartending Robots
Google I/O, one of the most exciting conferences of the year for us, has come and gone. From sleeping several hours a day to juggling about seventeen things
Google I/O, one of the most exciting conferences of the year for us, has come and gone. From sleeping several hours a day to juggling about seventeen things during the live keynote coverage to suddenly finding ourselves within inches of people like Sergey Brin, Sundar Pichai, Lord and Savior Matias Duarte, Hugo Barra, Vic Gundotra, Robert Scoble, Chainfire, Saurik, and other brilliant Googlers, reporters, and developers, the days spent at every I/O are absolutely priceless.
Everyone's favorite image hosting site has just made its way into the Play Store. Of course I'm referring to Imgur, "the simple image sharer." Unfortunately, the app is georestricted to Australia during its beta period, so those of us in the rest of the world will have to wait a bit to get our hands on it.
A few days ago, a pair of apps called RemotePlay and RemotePlayM by new Android developer Piddas21, a subsidiary of Taiwanese Quanta Computer, hit the Play Store ahead of SXSW. The idea is great - media and document sharing in real-time, across multiple platforms, such as Android, iOS, and Windows 8. Want to easily stream a video from your Nexus 4 to your iPad? No problem - it should be as simple as dragging it to a bucket with your iPad's name on it, and voila - you're watching a video on the big screen.
I have a confession to make. I don't care for Evernote. 'Hang him from a gibbet!' I know, but I just prefer Springpad. Which is why I was excited today to see that the newest update brings tablet support for one of the coolest features: Springpad Board. This view allows users to look at all the elements of their notebook—be they text, photos, maps, to-do lists or whatever—as though they are sitting on a table. You can slide and move them around as you will. It's a lovely interface.
If you have a deep and unbending hatred for Comic Sans, have strong feelings about the use of serifs on signage, or get bent out of shape about kerning, you are a font-nerd. It can be tough living in a world full of ugly lettering, but now Android users have an app that can help lessen the pain. Fontly helps you explore the world of typography on the go.
Last week, HTC announced the J Butterfly, a 5" phone with a monster 1080p display (that's 440ppi) mated to a quad-core CPU and 2 GB of RAM. The announcement made it pretty clear that the J Butterfly wasn't coming to the US, but similar devices certainly weren't out of the question.