Monday, August 6, 2012

Android Central

Android Central

Einstein Brain Trainer review - flex your frontal lobe

Posted: 05 Aug 2012 12:55 PM PDT

Android Central

Einstein Brain Trainer made the port to Google Play not too long ago in an attempt to get players to sharpen their wits with a series of brain teasers. The game keeps close tabs on your progress over time so you can see how much smarter (or stupider) you’re getting over time, and ranks you accordingly. 

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From the Editor's Desk: Gearing up for the fall silly season

Posted: 05 Aug 2012 10:17 AM PDT

Phil Nickinson

​It's been in with the "old" and out with the new for me this week. The Samsung Galaxy S3 review units are going back, and I've put my AT&T SIM back in the HTC One X. It's always a good thing when I pick up a phone after a couple months away and find myself in a familiar place -- and don't want to put the phone down. And that's been the case for me with the One X.

I've had other reason to pick up the One X again -- HTC changed the way it handles the on-screen menu function. Jerry's not crazy about it, but I think it's a decent compromise. I'm probably most in favor of on-screen buttons, like on the Galaxy Nexus or the new Motorola Atrix HD, with HTC's capacitive buttons coming in second. I'm definitely over the physical home button Samsung's still in love with. (And I don't see Sammy killing that off anytime soon.) Oh, and AnandTech got HTC to say that the change in menu options will be rolling out to other Sense-based phones. Makes, erm, sense.

Also making the rounds the past few days has been talk of an HTC One X+, with a 1.7 GHz quad-core processor. A few thoughts on that:

  1. Argh. We're as guilty of it as anyone, but we all really need to stop using the number of cores as a major descriptor for these platforms. 
  2. Same goes for megahertz. If you can tell the difference 200 MHz makes on a reworked architecture, well, more power to you. But most people can't. It's just more mindless repeating of specs.
  3. NVIDIA's Tegra 3 roadmap has been public for some time now. Coming up is Tegra 3+ (aka "Kai"). That'll be followed by "Wayne" and "Gray," and finally by Tegra 3 with the Icera LTE modem. This is all old (but welcome) news.

So, yeah. New stuff is coming. A lot of it, in fact.

And now, a few other thoughts. ...

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How to use Motion gestures on the Galaxy S3

Posted: 05 Aug 2012 08:41 AM PDT

How to use Motion gestures on Galaxy S3

The Galaxy S3 breaks new ground in lots of areas; one of the ways this phone separates itself from the pack is with the use of Motion.

When you first turn on your Samsung Galaxy S III (S3) you may not immediately be aware of all the Motion capabilities as most of them are turned off by default. Once you begin to explore the Settings and menus you will find yourself opened up to quite an array of new ways to use this phone. 

Accelerometers and gyroscopes are not new anymore to mobile phones.  Anyone who as use their phone like a steering wheel in a racing game or taken advantage of a gyroscope in navigation software knows how cool this technology is.  Essentially, when a phone can sense movement and gravity it can do all sorts of things.

Samsung has really raised the bar in this technology with the Galaxy S3. In order to use all these cool new features, we need to know how to turn them on.

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From the Editor's Desk: Gearing up for the fall silly season

Posted: 05 Aug 2012 06:59 AM PDT

​It's been in with the "old" and out with the new for me this week. The Samsung Galaxy S3 review units are going back, and I've put my AT&T SIM back in the HTC One X. It's always a good thing when I pick up a phone after a couple months away and find myself in a familiar place -- and don't want to put the phone down. And that's been the case for me with the One X.

I've had other reason to pick up the One X again -- HTC changed the way it handles the on-screen menu function. Jerry's not crazy about it, but I think it's a decent compromise. I'm probably most in favor of on-screen buttons, like on the Galaxy Nexus or the new Motorola Atrix HD, with HTC's capacitive buttons coming in second. I'm definitely over the physical home button Samsung's still in love with. (And I don't see Sammy killing that off anytime soon.) Oh, and AnandTech got HTC to say that the change in menu options will be rolling out to other Sense-based phones. Makes, erm, sense.

Also making the rounds the past few days has been talk of an HTC One X+, with a 1.7 GHz quad-core processor. A few thoughts on that:

  1. Argh. We're as guilty of it as anyone, but we all really need to stop using the number of cores as a major descriptor for these platforms. 
  2. Same goes for megahertz. If you can tell the difference 200 MHz makes on a reworked architecture, well, more power to you. But most people can't. It's just more mindless repeating of specs.
  3. NVIDIA's Tegra 3 roadmap has been public for some time now. Coming up is Tegra 3+ (aka "Kai"). That'll be followed by "Wayne" and "Gray," and finally by Tegra 3 with the Icera LTE modem. This is all old (but welcome) news.

So, yeah. New stuff is coming. A lot of it, in fact.

And now, a few other thoughts. ...

read more

Editorial: Could there soon be a new fork in the Android road?

Posted: 05 Aug 2012 05:50 AM PDT

Android

Android. The word itself makes each of us think of futuristic mechanical things that evolve quickly and know no bounds in their abilities. It's a good word, and perfect to describe the devices we hold with such high regard around these parts. And like the androids we think of from Hollywood movies or dusty old science fiction novels, our phones and tablets are slowly working their way into every nook and cranny of our life, taking over one step at a time. We embrace it, we benefit from it, and most of all we enjoy it.

But Android is changing. Very few phones are released with stock Android, and the custom versions (don't call them skins) are getting more and more intricate and polished. OEMs are putting a lot of work into the software running on the phones they sell, making them stand out as their own product. Join me after the break, and let's talk about what Android is, what it isn't, and what might happen in the future.

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