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One small step for LTE: Nokia plans to bring 4G to the moon this year
E.T. might get a better signal than you do
As you point your phone's camera to the heavens, snapping some totally real shots of the moon, do you ever think about what life might be like up there? When we finally do inhabit the moon, Nokia is making sure you’ll be able to get a signal. During Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March, Nokia principal engineer Luis Maestro Ruiz De Temino told reporters that the company plans to launch a 4G network on the surface of the moon later this year.
The latest high-definition Hubble image makes for a (inter)stellar wallpaper
33 years of images that never cease to amaze
How often do you like to change up your phone's look? You've got no shortage of options for sprucing up your wallpaper, considering how Google regularly includes new community-created wallpapers with Android updates, and third-party wallpaper apps regularly feature new content, too. One of our favorite, and most unexpected sources has involved turning to the heavens for some astronomical wallpapers. Today we're checking out the newest wallpaper-grade shot of the Tarantula Nebula, courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Everything you need to know about Starlink
The only internet service provider powered by SpaceX satellites
Many parts of the world still struggle to maintain or even offer basic internet connectivity in 2022. Those who are connected in these areas must deal with slow speeds and unreliable service. Starlink is bringing next-generation satellite internet to our homes, with initial support coming soon for the best Android phones.
Check out these high-res Webb wallpapers from a galaxy 500 million light years away
Whether you love astronomy or not, galaxies are wallpaper-worthy
Astronomy nerds have been overjoyed by the James Webb Space Telescope’s imagery. It has shown us the sights from our vast universe we never knew existed with impeccable detail and clarity. Us mortals can merely gawk in amazement at the images, and what better way to do that than set the Telescope’s latest capture — the Cartwheel Galaxy — as your smartphone or desktop wallpaper?
Alien Isolation hands-on: A fantastic example of how to properly port a console game to mobile
All 7 DLCs are included, along with controller support and cloud saves
Last month we learned that Feral Interactive would be bringing Alien: Isolation to mobile on December 16th. Well, that's today, and so this popular horror survival game is indeed available on the Google Play Store. Seeing that Feral's Nintendo Switch port of Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation was exceptional, I'm sure many of you are wondering if today's mobile release stacks up, so I've gone ahead and tested the game to report my findings so that everyone can decide whether or not the $15 price tag is justified. Let's dig in.
Chrome 88 disables space bar shortcut for custom search engines, but there's a fix
Rolling out more widely
Read update
Chrome 88 brought some quality of life improvements like better password protection and tab search, but more and more people are noticing an unfortunate regression on the desktop version. For ages, it's been possible to add custom search engines (under chrome://settings/searchEngines), which you can invoke with custom keywords followed by hitting the space bar or tab. You could set up "acom" or "tw" for searching Amazon or Twitter right from your address bar, for example. But now, reports are popping up left and right that the space bar shortcut isn't working anymore. People are forced to use tab, making them relearn a years-old habit. Luckily, there's a way to get back to using space, at least for now.
Most of us aren't likely to get the chance to fly to outer space, much less walk on a planet that isn't Earth, but that hasn't stopped Google from helping us reach the stars from our smart devices. When Google introduced a space exploration feature to Maps in 2017, we all got to see our solar system in ways that simply weren't possible before. This week, a Redditor found that Google has added a fun hyperdrive animation that makes it feel like you're really being teleported to a new planet.
Despite the name, Cosmic Watch isn't just some watch face app. It certainly does tell you the time, but it's much more than that. This app models the solar system and the night sky, helping you to explore the wonders of the cosmos. It just got a big v2.0 update that adds real-time sky views as well as various new display options and data on all the planets of the solar system.
Google's AR Stickers might have fictional spacecraft from Star Wars, but the more dedicated space enthusiasts will probably prefer the NASA-developed Spacecraft AR. As you might be able to deduce from the name, this app brings spacecraft to you via artificial reality, and it's actually pretty good at it.
Space exploration is a tricky business, especially when it comes to maintaining a strong signal to planet Earth. NASA maintains an array of communication facilities worldwide just to download data from deep-space probes. Future interplanetary missions involving multiple landers and rovers need a way to all talk to each other that doesn't involve radio, and that's where Vodafone and Nokia come in.
Yesterday, NASA announced that it (along with international partners) had discovered seven Earth-size planets orbiting a single star. Even more importantly, three of them are located in the star's habitable zone, the range around a star where liquid water is possible. The solar system (named TRAPPIST-1) is unfortunately located 40 light-years away from Earth, so sending a probe or a person there isn't really possible for now.
You'd be forgiven for forgetting that Google used to have an app called Sky Maps on the Play Store. As the title points to, it was a nice digital planetarium that you could carry around your pocket back in the Froyo and Gingerbread days of Android. Like many similar apps, Sky Map used your location and the direction you were pointing your phone at to map the space elements around you, from stars to planets to constellations and more. In January 2012, Google open sourced Sky Map, but development had ceased a while before, in August of 2011.
When you stare into the infinite void of space, salted with stars so vast and distant that they defy the human mind to imagine them, you can't help but wonder at the scope and majesty of the universe. Then you start to wonder how to make some money out of it.
Remember Rogue Squadron? Nintendo 64 and Gamecube owners, past or present, know what I'm talking about. This series of Star Wars games had players fully immersed in intergalactic battles that were stunning for the time. Alongside Star Fox, Nintendo consoles were the place to be for top-notch space shooters.
The rumors of Google buying a stake in SpaceX started percolating a few days ago, and now it's official. Google and Fidelity have invested a total of $1 billion in the private space firm, which gives them about 10% share. SpaceX says the new funding will go toward the development of reusable rocket technology and satellite manufacturing.
Quite a while has past since there's been any Android-related news for Galaxy on Fire fans. The developers of the series that showed many gamers just how beautiful space could be and let them explore it on their mobile devices surprised a few folks when they said that the next entry would deviate from their action-oriented roots and transition into a strategy-focused MMO. Excuse me, make that a free-to-play strategy-focused MMO.
Let me tell you about my life a little over a decade ago. I bought a PC strategy game called Hegemonia (AKA Haegemonia) on a whim in 2002. I played the campaign mode of that game no fewer than four times. It was fantastic. Now it's on Android, and this may be the last you hear from me until early next year. That is, of course, assuming it's still fun to play on Android.
Science fiction buffs are getting very excited about Interstellar, the upcoming movie from director Christopher Nolan (of The Dark Knight and Inception fame). To drum up a little more excitement, Paramount has created and published a mobile game tie-in. Interstellar is a free download for Android 4.0, and unlike a lot of licensed games, it has no in-app purchases... so you can save your money for Coke and popcorn. Unlike even more licensed games, it's got some unique ideas and a solid presentation.
There's a minor movie trope where an inexperienced character sits down at the controls of a complex vehicle, confident in his or her ability to handle the situation. Hilarity, as decreed by the ancient comedic formulas, ensues. ALONE... will make you fell like that poor sap, as a light-speed space capsule blasts across the screen maneuvered by some of the tightest, twitchiest touch controls I've ever seen. ALONE is a $2.47 with no in-app purchases.
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 space puzzler, a space arcade game, a space RPG... and a game about walking silly. Without further ado: