Monday, April 30, 2012

Android Central

Android Central

Sprint Galaxy Nexus unboxing and hands-on

Posted: 29 Apr 2012 03:38 PM PDT

It's been many months in coming, but the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is finally available on Sprint. For all intents and purposes, it's the same Galaxy Nexus we've come to know and love over the past five months or so. Same 4.65-inch Super AMOLED display at 720x1280 resolution. Same 32GB of storage. Same 1GB of memory. And, like the other versions of the Galaxy Nexus, it's running the latest version of Android, aka Ice Cream Sandwich. (For those of you who worry about such things, it's running the latest version, Android 4.0.4, out of the box.) It's also got the same 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with zero shutter lag. Huzzah.

The big seller here, of course, is that the Galaxy Nexus is one of Sprint's first LTE-enabled phones. That's the good news. The bad news is that Sprint hasn't yet turned on its LTE network. So it's 3G-only for now. But once that switch is flipped, we're expecting to see some impressive data speeds. Oh, and because we're talking Sprint here, it's also got Google Wallet built in from the outset. So there's that. 

Check out our official unboxing and initial hands-on above. 

More: Sprint Galaxy Nexus Forums

Meon makes its way to Android!

Posted: 29 Apr 2012 02:31 PM PDT

Meon for Android

Those of you old enough to remember Windows Mobile no doubt played Meon at some point. The idea's simple enough — you use light to free the cute little Meons from whatever it is that's keeping them trapped. The game starts out simple, but pretty soon you'll be bouncing light off mirrors and changing colors with prisms to the point that you're not sure what started where, or where it's going to end up. It's strangely addicting.

The Android version is faithful to the original. Our only real complaint is that it doesn't really take advantage of the larger screen sizes.

Meon Lite gives you access to the first 32 levels, though chances are if you're anything like us, you'll spring 99 cents to get all 120 levels in the full version. We've got download links after the break.

Download: Meon Lite (free), Meon full (99 cents)

ASUS Transformer Prime and Acer Iconia Tab A510 winners

Posted: 29 Apr 2012 01:27 PM PDT

Contest winners

The random number generator has spoken, and it's time to announce the winners of the Tegra 3 tablets from NVIDIA and Phosphor Games. The contest was a great way to kick off the launch of Dark Meadow: The Pact, which is one of the most stunning mobile games we've ever played thanks to the 4-PLUS-1 science of the Tegra 3, and the genius developers at Phosphor games. Without further ado, here's your winners.

I'll be contacting each of you via the e-mail you used to register for the site to get the shipping information. Enjoy those killer tablets, and be sure to check out Dark Meadow: The Pact and the rest of the games and apps in the TergaZone.

From the Editor's Desk: London calling, inside man and Nexus done right

Posted: 29 Apr 2012 06:21 AM PDT

From the Editor's Desk

It's another working weekend. Time for some quick hits:

  • If I wasn't over the Samsung Galaxy S3 fakes, leaks and fake leaks, I certainly am now. Alex and I will be at the event on Thursday. I can wait till then.
  • Speaking of heading overseas, I used MaxRoam in Barcelona this year and am using it again this week in the UK. 500MB for $13? (Which is more than even I can use in two days.) Sold.
  • And that's just the start of the travel. Coming up next week we've got the CTIA conference in New Orleans.
  • If you haven't seen Jean-Baptist Queru's latest Q&A on updates to Ice Cream Sandwich and how Sony's gotten updates out the door in about 5 months. That's due in no small part, JBQ says, to the amount of code that Sony's contributed back to the Android Open Source Project. Remember the early days of Sony Ericsson and the Xperia X10, which launched in the age of Eclair with Android 1.6 Donut, and finally got updated a year later. Things certainly have changed.
  • Something that hasn't changed? Carrier approval times. JBQ rightly points out that carriers often are the bottleneck in getting updates released, which does seem a little insane in the Nexus world. But neither is it new. If the carrier's selling the phone, it's going to go through (I'd assume) the same rigorous (read: slow) testing process as any other phone. Verizon's been, shall we say, fastidious, long before Android even existed. It's funny to see blogs set their hair on fire over this one.
  • I hesitate to even write about these sorts of Q&As. They're a rare glimpse into the inside workings of things and are best read in their entirety, straight from the source. It pains me to see blogs pick and choose the juicy parts for publication. ("OMG Verizon is sooooooo slow." Thanks for that insight.) It's pretty rare that we get a relatively unfiltered and unfettered look at how things work, with actual opinion from the folks who make the donuts instead of PR-speak and lawyered releases, and even more incredible that folks like JBQ stick around to answer questions. Let's not spoil it and waste the opportunity.
  • I'm pretty excited about Google once again selling devices. I'm still curious as to how it's going to handle the problems it ran into the first time — namely customer service, though it does have a dedicated page for orders and returns questions. But this is the way Nexus devices were meant to be sold and maintained (meaning updated). Forget the carrier. (And, yes. That means CDMA gets shut out again. Them's the breaks.) And if you didn't notice, note how Google's calling it a "Devices" store and not a "Phone" store. If that's not a flashing neon sign that tablets are coming, I don't know what is. (And I'm willing to bet it's going to go beyond tablets, as well.) The important part is that I should once again be able to say "You want updates the day they're pushed? Get a Nexus." — and do so without looking like an idiot.
  • The site redesign is coming along well. (Major props to our designers and coders, whose work you enjoy every day but whose names you never get to see.) We're still tweaking things, and as I've said before, this is only the beginning. If you've got feedback, leave it here.

TTFN. We'll see you from London this week, and NOLA the next.

Twitter for Android gets another minor update

Posted: 28 Apr 2012 05:08 PM PDT

Twitter for Android

Twitter for Android has a small update in the Google Play store this evening, bringing it to version 3.2.1. The change log is short -- crashes for users that use the app in Dutch, Finnish, and Hungarian have been fixed, and the Indonesian language has been added. Grab the update from the Google Play store or hit the link after the break.

Thanks, Ben!

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Posted by at 5:54 AM

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