Android Phone Fans |
- QWERTY-enabled Verizon Samsung Galaxy Stratosphere 2 now available
- Buy SwiftKey for half price this holiday
- Burn off that Thanksgiving dinner with these fun fitness apps
- Falcon Pro for Twitter beta preview
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals
| QWERTY-enabled Verizon Samsung Galaxy Stratosphere 2 now available Posted: 22 Nov 2012 03:22 PM PST In a time filled with Galaxy Note 2s, Galaxy S3s, and Galaxy Tabs galore it may be hard to accept phones lower on Samsung’s totem pole, let alone the entirety of Verizon’s shelves. The Samsung Galaxy Stratosphere 2 seems to have found itself some space, though, as Verizon quietly launched the device in stores and online. Verizon’s asking for $130 after a new two-year contract, and for that you’re getting a phone that actually does well for itself. It features a 4 inch WVGA Super AMOLED dispaly with a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, a 5 megapixel camera with a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, a physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 4G LTE, Ice Cream Sandwich and more.
It’s not a bad phone, it’s just that it’s not Verizon’s best phone. If you were to put the this up against the Galaxy S3 for the same price people would probably choose latter, but its price point will help consumers get over the fact that they’re not getting Samsung’s absolute best. Another reason this phone might capture sales is because it’s one of the few decent phones that have come out with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Those come in rare form these days, and it’s even rarer to see this form factor with such great specs. And perhaps folks haven’t grown fond of that 4.7 inch size that has swept the smartphone landscape as of late. Whatever the reason, though, we would have no qualms if we were to ask you to pull out a respectable smartphone and this is what came out of your pocket. Head to Verizon Wireless if you’re thinking about adding this beaut to your life.
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| Buy SwiftKey for half price this holiday Posted: 22 Nov 2012 02:47 PM PST If you’ve been waiting for another chance to get SwiftKey for phones and tablets at a discounted price today is one of those rare chances. The developer has made the premier Android keyboard app available for sale at half its usual price. Both the phone and tablet versions cost $1.99, and while we’d love it if they’d combine both apps into one money and time-saving package this is a great time to get the two apps for the usual price of one.
SwiftKey has emerged as one of the most popular Android keyboards there are thanks to its innovative predictive text features and its ability to “learn your language” based on your Gmail and social networking accounts. More great upgrades are inbound, too, as SwiftKey Flow will bring a Swype-like texting experience for those who like to glide instead of tap. At $1.99 this isn’t the best sale SwiftKey has ever posted (I distinctively remember getting the apps for $.25 during Google’s Play Store celebration sale) but this is the first sale since then and it’s as good a time as any to see why the world has regarded it as highly as they do. Take a look at it in the Play Store and see if it’ll help you type “Happy Thanksgiving” to your loved ones as swiftly as it promises. Remember that you only have a few days to take advantage so make no delay!
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| Burn off that Thanksgiving dinner with these fun fitness apps Posted: 22 Nov 2012 02:38 PM PST
The dishes are piled in the sink, slim pickings are left on the dinner table, and family members have slunk off to the comfiest available furniture for a little post feast nap. If your Thanksgiving dinner has you popping the button of your pants, here is a selection of fitness apps for your Android device to help you trim down the calories. Burn the Turkey with Noom
We featured the Burn the Turkey widget last year, but given its seasonal appropriateness we would be remiss to not include it in this list. The fun, interactive widget portrays your calorie intake in the form of its namesake bird. As the turkey whittles down to a mere carcass you know you are making progress toward your goal. Burn the Turkey is an easy introduction to Noom Weight Loss Coach, an app which is required to run the widget. From the maker of CardioTrainer, the app intuitively tracks your diet and exercise. Both Noom Weight Loss and CardioTrainer make excellent editions to an arsenal of apps that can utilized in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Move Your Bot!While were talking about the folks at Noom, it’s worth mentioning one last fun fitness app they offer in the Google Play Store. Move Your Bot! turns exercise into a game. The more effort you put out, the more energy your bot gets. Using Facebook you can pit your bot against friends. The most fit bot wins. If that’s you, not only do you get to rub it in your friends’ faces, but you can also feel satisfied with your improved level of fitness. Zombies, Run!
You just stuffed your face with pumpkin pie, but you don’t want to be the next meal for a hoard of flesh-hungry zombies. So run! Zombies, Run! combines fitness training with an augmented reality experience in which the only way to escape from being the zombie equivalent of a stuffed turkey is to run. And we mean strap on some shoes and really run. The story line is fed through headphones as you run around collecting supplies, outpacing zombies, and completing certain tasks. When you get back from your run you can build up your home base with what you have gathered, further protecting against the living dead. It’s like ZombiU, but real life. If there is one downside, it’s the app’s $7.99 pricing. Endomondo Sports Tracker
If zombies aren’t your thing but you still want a fun way to track your activity levels, Endomondo makes a great choice. Record your runs, bike rides, or pretty much any other outdoor activity and share the data with a social network of over 10 million users. The app will read real-time pep talks from friends posting on your Endomondo profile, which might just be the motivation you need to get through a grueling hill climb or distance run. Or, if you choose, you can challenge them head-to-head in a race. Both free and pro versions are available from the Google Play Store. Just the beginning…These apps are a great way to work down that Thanksgiving gut, but they could just be the kick you need to get committed to fitness. With the smell of Christmas goose already in the air, you’ll want to keep them handy for the after the next holiday banquet. Consider it an early start to that New Year’s resolution.
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| Falcon Pro for Twitter beta preview Posted: 22 Nov 2012 09:10 AM PST While some folks may be satisfied with the crop of Twitter apps swirling about the Google Play Store, there are some of us who remain on an eternal search for the perfect client. While perfection is not possible, there comes a point where we’d settle for something quite close. I personally haven’t found any Twitter client that I’m 100% committed to just yet. Boid and Echofon have come close, but they’re still in beta and have their issues. For me, another challenger has stepped into the arena to make this into a triple threat battle. Many of you may be familiar with Falcon, a set of widgets for giving you beautiful and quick access to your Twitter life right on your home screen. While that is great, widgets alone aren’t cutting it for me and the developer feels like a lot of others feel the same way — that’s why they’ve begun work on a full blown Twitter client. Simply called Falcon for Twitter, the app promises to deliver a disruptive Twitter experience in the most beautiful, yet functional way possible.
After just five minutes with the client I fell in love. Mostly every facet of the Twitter experience is represented here, though the overall feature-set wasn’t that fleshed out as it’s in beta and more stuff is being added every day. What I did get to play with was pure bliss, though. The spirit of the Holo UI shines through, and Falcon takes things further than most clients have with excellent typography, smooth transition animations and intuitive controls. It doesn’t hurt that the app already has an excellent tablet UI when you load it up on slates with Android 3.0 and higher. It makes great use of the extra screen real estate by splitting things into two columns — one for timelines and the other for the contents of the tweets themselves. This gives you the ability to preview photos, web pages, videos and more without having to leave the app or be taken to another view within the app. Things like widgets and extensive notification controls are missing, but the former can currently be had with the existing Falcon app and the latter is surely due to the fact that we’re so early in the beta process. For where the client is, though — version 0.3 — there’s a ton of functionality to be had here, very little bugs to deal with and I might dare say that this has supplanted the likes of Tweetcaster and Plume as my go-to Twitter client even in its current form. You can currently download the full-featured beta ad-free using this link, and whenever this thing comes out of beta you’ll be able to get an ad-supported version for free or pay for a full version to get rid of them in the Google Play Store. Be sure to leave all the feedback you can at the XDA thread the developer has made, and keep your ears close to this project as it blossoms into the must-have Twitter app of the Android world.
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| Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals Posted: 22 Nov 2012 05:00 AM PST Happy Thanksgiving, folks! By now you’re probably getting ready to scarf down delicious turkey, pies and everything in between, but don’t forget that tomorrow is the start of a big shopping weekend. Not only is Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, going down, but the money-throwing festivities will extend all the way through Monday (and, in special circumstances, beyond). Folks looking for new smartphones, tablets and apps might want to keep in mind the various deals being offered throughout the weekend from all the major carriers and retailers. Sit back and read through this list of some of the hottest deals you can take advantage of to upgrade your mobile life.
Verizon Wireless
AT&T (in-store)
Sprint (in-store)
T-Mobile (value-plan pricing, post rebate)
US Cellular
How about games from the Google Play Store? You’re going to need something to do on all these phones with their powerful processors and gorgeous displays, so these special Black Friday deals will be there for you to take advantage of as soon as you turn your new device on and sign into the Play Store. Click through to check out each one: Games
And the deals don’t stop there: you’ll want to use some of the following apps to help you track down deals whether it be locally or online. You should be able to find some great gifts for yourself and loved ones with no issue no matter what type of gift it is thanks to the help these apps will provide. Download them to your arsenal and be sure to prepare for your early morning attack. Be sure to give all of these a look, and if you have any more great deals not listed here we’d love to hear about them! Head to the comments section and help some of your comrades save a few dollars by letting us in on some of the juicier deals we may have missed. Also be sure to suggest more apps to help in everyone’s deal-hunting quest. Let the games begin, and enjoy the rest of your holiday!
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