3 app alternatives to Instagram Los Angeles Times Pixlr-o-matic – This app is available on iOS and Android. It is a Facebook app, a download for your PC or Mac and also a Web-based offering, so you can tweak photos from your files or straight from your webcam. It offers a broad array of filters and ... See all stories on this topic »
Instagram for Android gets 5 million downloads in one week ... By Michael Crider Guess what: Android users really, really like Instagram. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that lots and lots of people like Instagram, and a lot of them use. Android Community
Security Hole Spotted In Facebook Android SDK, Long Tail Apps ... By Sarah Perez The security vulnerability affected all apps using the Facebook Android SDK, including major apps like Foursquare, and there's no way for end users to know which app developers, outside the big ones, have implemented the fixes needed to ... TechCrunch
Toshiba announces three new Android tablets By Dan Graziano Toshiba on Tuesday announced an expansion of its Excite family of Android tablets. The new Excite slates are equipped with thinner and lighter designs, BGR: The Three Biggest Letters In Tech
Netflix for Android gets an update, sees new volume control UI By Kevin Krause Netflix for Android just received a refresh in the Android Market with a few tweaks that should make using the app a bit easier. A new volume control UI makes. Android Phone Fans
Tumblr updates Android app with a radical new look | VentureBeat By Jennifer Van Grove Hot blog-baker Tumblr has cooked up a zany and colorful update to its Android application. Five-year-old, New York-based Tumblr is the go-to blogging platform for the young and hip. The company now powers more than 51 million blog sites ... VentureBeat
This once a day Google Alert is brought to you by Google.
Buying a high-end mobile phone or tablet nowadays requires shelling out at least $500, unless you sign up for a cumbersome two or three year contract. So, for most people, electronic gadgets are pricey investments that need to be protected. Unfortunately, that involves bulky, ugly cases and bumpers that hide away the elegant lines and exquisite materials of modern devices.
Naturally, the screen is the most exposed part of a smartphone and as a result, we are seeing an exponential increase in sales of screen protectors and phone covers. After all, a scratched screen or chassis is completely unattractive, regardless of how expensive the device was. Protecting your screen is an ongoing investment; depending on your usage and level of clumsiness, you might have to change these “protectors” every 2-3 months.
In an effort to reduce the dependence on such protectors, Japanese company Toray Advanced Film has introduced a “self-healing” film that might make small scratches a distant memory. This revolutionary technology is already available on a few notebook computers, with the company aiming for further expansion to phone and tablet devices.
This self-healing coat of film is made by using wet-coating a self-curing layer on top of a PET (polyethylene terepthalate) film. The PET layer has a maximum thickness of only 125μm, while the self-restoring layer is only 1/10th of that. Toray Advanced Film claims that due to the high viscosity, high elasticity, and cushioning properties of its product, it repairs itself in seconds.
The Japanese haven’t released any information on the type of materials used (competitive edge?), only explaining that they have analysed the mechanism of repairing scratches and then applied it directly in the design of the film, building on existent materials with similar features.
The novelty brought by Toray’s product lays in its speed of regeneration – it’s one of the fastest such materials around, with the upper layer “healing” in less than 10 seconds at room temperatures, and even faster at lower temperatures. The film is also durable in time – the company claims it ran tests over 20,000 times, with the film maintaining its properties. But don’t think that you’ll be able to abuse your phone in any conceivable way. The self-repairing layer is very thin, so if a scratch goes deeper than this layer, it will not repair itself.
This is a very impressive piece of tech, seemingly right out of science fiction. Speaking of sci-fi, we covered a self-healing plastic that repairs itself when exposed to sunlight just a few days ago. These self-healing technologies will, of course, not be very effective against serious damage, at least, not yet. But if you’re one of those users that get a lot of “mysterious” scratches on their phones, they just might be the solution you were waiting for.
What are your thoughts? Is this going to to make device protectors redundant? Would you prefer a self-healing layer protecting your devices? Of course you would…
If you’ve just recently ditched physical keys for a sleek touchscreen phone, typing on imaginary letters on screen can be quite a challenge. Thankfully, Android is all about options, but with so many options laid out in front of you, how do you know which ones to go for? Which ones of the dozens of keyboard apps on the market should you commit to?
For those of you who haven’t quite made that choice, look no further. We’ve rounded up some of the best keyboards that have gotten the love of Android users across the Internet.
Here’s a list of a few keyboards that may suit your needs, in no particular order:
SwiftKey
The first thing you’ll notice when you launch SwiftKey is its gorgeous design but SwiftKey’s true power is its function. SwiftKey relies on predictive text, and suggestions pop up above your keyboard when you type in a word.
SwiftKey takes conversation patterns into account, and not just by the letters you’ve typed. This keyboard can even learn more about your typing habits through Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, and your SMS messages, if you’re comfortable with that.
If you’re a slow typist, then Swype may be for you. Rather than using your thumbs or index fingers for hunt-and-pecking, this app lets you drag your fingers through letters to spell a word. Typing then becomes a one-handed process so you can free up your other hand to do other things.
Even if you miss swiping over a key, Swype usually figures out what word you want. If it doesn’t work out quite right, then Swype offers you a set of options that you can tap to insert. If you need to enter a word that may not exist in the dictionary, tap on Swype’s keys like a normal keyboard. Swype offers haptic feedback, but you can toggle it off and on. There’s unfortunately no way to set for a more gentle vibration.
You can sign up for a beta-version of Swype from its developer’s website. Simply register with an e-mail address accessible via your Android device and receive a link to download Swype.
Smart Keyboard Pro
Smart Keyboard Pro supports control of the keypress vibration and sounds, user configurable swipe gestures, and a number of built-in skins. Though it may look similar to the iPhone’s virtual keyboard, it unfortunately isn’t quite as good.
It is, however, an improvement over the stock Android keyboard. Keypresses are usually detected accurately and text predictions are pretty good, as well. Smart Keyboard Pro offers you a number of advanced settings so you can tweak the keyboard exactly the way you like it. This keyboard uses a QWERTY layout and gives you settings, including a smart dictionary which learns the frequency of words you type to improve suggestions.
Instead of giving you just one option, FlexT9 gives you four in one app. FlexT9 is powered by Dragon that allows you to pick whichever keyboard style fits your mood. Speak to your phone and see your talk turn into text. Trace and glide your finger from one key to the next. Use your finger to draw anything you’d like to type. And, if you’re more old-school, tap away at the keys. FlexT9 gives you all the options you’d ever need, even if it’s a little simple in the aesthetics area.
Last but not the least, Ultra Keyboard comes packed with a ton of features geared towards giving you a better Android experience. A feature filled toolbar allows you to flick through to see all it offers, and to quickly change settings, navigate through text, cut and paste, change dictionaries, change themes and more.
Just like the host of other keyboards we’ve presented, Ultra Keyboard suggests words as you type. Its suggestions box has been designed to be smart, fast, and easy to use. Ultra Keyboard even offers you word replacements, so if you’re in a hurry simply type “brb” and see it transform into “be right back” on the screen.
Ultra Keyboard’s features don’t end there; it comes with a dynamic UI, multi-touch support, secondary characters, word tracing, speech-to-text and translation.
You can purchase Ultra Keyboard from the Google Play store today.
What about you? What do you think is the best keyboard for Android?
Many older devices are a bit limited when it comes to RAM. RAM (Random Access Memory) is where your applications store parts of their program and data during operation. One of the biggest RAM-hogs on stock phones are the customised Home Screens, such as HTC Sense.
If you were to swap out to a homescreen that takes up a fraction of the memory the bloaters do, it would load faster, operate smoothly, and leave far more memory available for other multi-task applications to make good use of.
Without further ado lines, I bring you Lightning Launcher, a homescreen launcher which has one objective – be tiny. The developer even makes the configuration window install as a separate package, so that it isn’t loaded into memory during normal operation.
What it looks like…
The launcher is highly customisable and these screenshots do not give an extremely good representation of that. You can change the whole homescreen from a list into a set of icons and widgets with a few menu selections. Still, these are my two favourite configurations.
"Zune" style on the left, and adjusting padding of an icon on the default homescreen on the right.
Multiple, minimalist themes
There a couple of theme setups included, such as ‘Icons only’, ‘list with icons’, and my favourite – Zune Mode (in the screenshot, left side).
Interestingly, these home-screens can scroll vertically, almost as if you are making a list of your favourite applications. When you eventually run out of space, you can start placing icons below your existing ones, making a scrollable homescreen ‘page’.
Here’s a video of the Lightning Launcher in action:
Widget Support
If you install ‘LLW Any App Widget’ from Google Play (the Launcher can prompt you), then all of the widgets from your applications can be rendered in this minimalistic environment. Though you shouldn’t really be loading up Widgets if your device is low on memory, this is a nice inclusion for people who have larger memory devices that want to enjoy Lightning Launcher.
There are no other homescreen panes either. You get just the one. Once again, if you’re intention is to speed things up, you shouldn’t be running a launcher with multiple panes.
A Rating
If your phone is older and often running low on internal memory, Lightning Launcher may be a godsend. As for people who have plenty of memory to spare, you needn’t use this application as it could never compare to the one you are currently running.
I suppose Lightning Launcher (you can get from here on the Play Store) gets 6/10 when all the viewpoints of smartphone owners are combined. Though it lacks in a lot of features that we take for granted in other launchers, that minimalism is what makes it super-lightweight and fast.
We’ve been running more and more articles on AOKP lately, and many people keep asking what AOKP is. Well, within this article I would like to explain it to you.
The CyanogenMod ROM is based on AOSP (Android Open Source Project). These CM builds often contain a few extra features and tweaks to improve the overall Android experience. Users get to enjoy the stock Android experience and not the skins and additional clutter that manufacturers slap onto Android when distributing devices. CyanogenMod is hugely popular, supporting over 70 devices. I proudly run it on my own Desire HD.
There is a new kid in town, though. AOKP (Android Open Kang Project) started out as a Computer Science College Major’s past-time and has blossomed into a very popular project. Powered by pink unicorns, AOKP is a powerful contender to CyanogenMod. I suppose contender isn’t the best word really, so let’s say friendly rival!
So, what are the differences?
When you take a cursory glance at the ROMs, there doesn’t seem to be any real difference. That is because they are both running the purest Android Ice Cream Sandwich build (with their own additions, of course!).
Scratching the surface (especially in the Settings Menu), reveals the first key difference. Whilst CyanogenMod 9 has moved to filing ROM-specific configurations under their respective settings category, AOKP has carried on with the idea that custom tweaks should be kept in one area – ROM Control! There are far too many tweaks to list, but the number most certainly exceeds that of CyanogenMod 9. As you can see in this screenshot, you have plenty to tinker with.
Although the AOKP ROM has more features than CM 9, this could be because the CM team has a lot more work to do than the AOKP Team. Remember that the CyanogenMod team tries to bring new builds of Android to older devices, so their first objective is to brew a version of Ice Cream Sandwich that can do this. From there, they can start piling on the features.
My personal experience with AOKP
My fun with AOKP has been with Builds 28 through 31 on the Asus Transformer. Though I picked out one or two bugs here and there, I noticed they were gone in the next build that was released. Stability has never been a problem either. Once or twice, my tablet rebooted over the night, but this hasn’t occurred with the newest builds.
As for speed, I’m confident that AOKP is a little faster than CM 9. Only marginally, of course, since they run pretty much the exact same software. Here and there you notice subtle differences, such as when opening the App Drawer or re-launching an application, and AOKP usually wins.
The customization has to be my favourite feature in AOKP though. I can have a line across my nav-bar to represent my battery life, and change my Wi-fi signal rating to be displayed as a percentage rather than an approximate icon. The colour of the clock and transparency of the navigation bar? Weather report integration with the notifications area? All present and accounted for.
Your Experiences
As always, at Android Authority we are keen to know the experiences of our own readers. Have you tried both of these ROMs on a device and have something to say about them? Did one disappoint and the other delight? Let us know in the comments section below!
While Google Wallet is still struggling with security and privacy issues and far from reaching its potential, Starbucks seems to have got the grasp of mobile payments before anybody else. The Seattle-based coffee shop chain disclosed some interesting figures to VentureBeat, concerning its mobile payment program, and, I must say, the numbers are impressive.
More than 42 million mobile payments have been processed at Starbucks locations in the US, Canada, and the UK, over the past 15 months. That's an average of almost 3 million payments every month, but, considering the fact that in December 2011 the total figure was 26 million mobile payments, we get the picture of a service that is growing by the day.
For those of you who haven't yet paid for a freshly ground cup of Starbucks coffee using a mobile phone, here’s the skinny. After downloading the Starbucks for Android app found at this link (free of charge, of course), you need to load money onto a digital Starbucks Card, and then present a 2D barcode to pay at the register. The code is scanned by your barista, and, boom, your check is taken care of in a matter of seconds! The mobile payment service is available on drive-thru windows as well.
It seems that the guys at Starbucks are poised to take things to the next level with their mobile payments program. "You're going to see us as a company that will push the envelope around mobile pay. We want to innovate in that area before others catch up.” Starbucks' chief digital officer, Adam Brotman, told VentureBeat, leaving me wonder about the innovations the coffee company might be working towards.
So, how about it, coffee lovers? (we have a nice list of best apps for coffee lovers, by the way) Have you used Starbucks' innovative mobile payment service until now? And if so, is it actually as easy to use and convenient as it sounds? Also, do you think that there's any more room for innovation in this area? Hit us back with a comment and please let us know!
We all appreciate the effort put in by an increasing number of game developers who have been optimizing classic PC games for mobile devices, such as Painkiller: Purgatory HD or Max Payne. This customization for touchscreen interfaces usually provides the best user experience for gamers. But sometimes, game ports and emulators work just as well, even though they requires a little more work on the part of the user, instead of just downloading the game from the Google Play Store.
If you, like me, are a fan of the classic Doom series, you will love the new port of the game available on the Google Play Store. Since the Doom source code was made available to the public, there have been lots of attempts at porting the game to a mobile device, some successful, while others, not as much. What makes DoomGLES different, is the fact that it is ported to OpenGL, providing highly improved graphics, which make it, according to the developer, “the best looking Doom port on mobile devices.”
Features of this port include:
High resolutions (on high-end phones and tablets)
Real-time dynamic lighting
Particles effects
3D Monsters and objects
Blood projection
Realistic water effects
Xperia Play gamepad buttons support
DoomGLES has received positive reviews across the board, with most users stating that the added visual effects make this the best port of the game around, with smooth, glitch-free gameplay.
You can watch a video of the gameplay here:
If you can’t wait to start killing demons on Mars, you can download this emulator from the Google Play Store for just $2 here, where you will also find installation instructions and the developer’s description.
If you are planning to try out this app, or have already tried it, let us know your experience in the comments section below.
The first generation Aakash Android-based tablet made quite a fuss last year, with people equally praising and criticizing the gadget. On one side, there were the technology enthusiasts that welcomed such a dirt-cheap slate (it was made available for Indian students for just 23 US dollars.) On the other, some called the Aakash unusable, due to several software glitches and the unsurprisingly poor hardware.
The 7-incher will be getting a second generation very soon, and, at least at a first glance, it might actually satisfy more technology users, with several significant software and hardware improvements. Set to start shipping in India in two to three weeks, according to official statements from the manufacturers, the Aakash 2 will cost just 35 dollars. Actually, the tablet is priced around $45, but the Indian government will subsidize device, to promote its use in schools.
While the first-generation Aakash slate came with a resistive touchscreen, the Aakash 2 will sport a 7-inch capacitive multitouch display, which should come with better color reproduction, a crisper image, and with increased responsiveness and accuracy.
The Aakash 2 will come with several improvements under the hood as well, the most important being the 800 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor. The proc is twice as fast as the 366 MHz chip powering the first Aakash, so you can imagine it will make quite a difference for the regular user. Other features include 256 MB of RAM, as well as 2 GB of on-board memory, both these specs being on-par with the original Aakash released last fall.
In terms of software, the Aakash 2 will run Android 2.3 Gingerbread out of the box, with a planned upgrade to 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich set to happen in six to eight weeks after shipping. That should be another huge improvement over the original gadget, but we’ll have to see exactly how will ICS run on such a low-speced tablet.
DataWind, the British company behind Aakash's, has announced that this second edition of the gadget is only a first step towards progress, and that, by the end of the year, we could see a third generation Aakash slate with a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor. According to Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of Datawind, the dual-core tablet could might not cost much more than the Aakash 2, as Cortex A9 processors will be available over the next few months at the “same price range as what Cortex A8 is at today."
As far as I'm concerned, the release of the Aakash 2, as well as the possible launch of a third-generation tablet with a dual-core chipset, is great news, both for technology enthusiasts in India and for gadget lovers from the rest of the world.
Prices are going down, folks, and standards for low-end devices are going up!
Toshiba may not have left a big impression on the tablet market with its past Thrive tablet offerings. This may all change with the announcement of three upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich tablets from Toshiba, all part of the Excite lineup, with one model trying to push the conventional boundaries in terms of size. The three Toshiba Excite tablets will come in 7.7-inch, 10.1-inch, and 13.3-inch variants.
Here's what each tablet packs under the casing. All three strictly WiFi Toshiba Excite tablets come with Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processors, 1GB RAM, 5MP rear camera, and 2MP front camera. The Excite 13 and 10 both have regular SD card and micro HDMI slots, while the Excite 7.7 will have to make do with a microSD card slot.
Toshiba Excite 13
Now, we've heard about three Toshiba Excite tablets before, but we certainly didn't expect to see the big daddy of them all to make an appearance so soon. We're talking about the Excite 13.3 and its humungous 13.3-inch IPS display with an impressive 1600 x 900 resolution. Coming in at 990 grams in weight and 10.1mm in thickness, the extra room helps Toshiba put a larger battery on the Excite 13 tablet for an amazing 13 hour battery life. Afraid of losing use of your arms after a prolong usage of this tablet? Fear not, as the Toshiba Excite 13 will ship with a tablet stand.
Toshiba Excite 10
Don't confuse the Toshiba Excite 10 with its impossibly thinner Toshiba Excite 10 LE cousin. The former sports the same 1280 x 800 resolution on a 10.1-inch display, though IPS is notably missing. Weighing just 600 grams and measuring 8.9mm thin – the Toshiba Excite 10 still packs up to 10 hours of battery life.
Toshiba Excite 7.7
Meanwhile, the Excite 7.7 tablet, with its brilliant AMOLED display, has been on our wish list for months for obvious reasons. The tablet is 7.6mm (!) thin and weighs a meager 380 grams. Coupled with the quad-core Tegra 3 processor, this makes it a more than worthy competitor to Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.7.
Price and Availability
Talking to Ars Technica, Toshiba product marketing manager Young Bae said that the new Excite line is aimed towards a demographic that is concerned more about specs and weight, and less about price. The 32GB model of Toshiba Excite 13 can be had for $650, while the 64GB model will go for $750. As for the 16GB versions of Toshiba Excite 10 and 7.7 – they can be yours for $450 and $500 respectively.
The Toshiba Excite 10 will go on sale in the beginning of May, while both Toshiba Excite 7.7 and 13 will ship in June.
Google is releasing revision number 18 of its Android emulator, which should be a real treat for Android developers of the world in dire need for better tools to build the next big hit in Google Play Store. According to a post made on Android Developers' blog, the latest revision will bring “a dramatic performance upgrade and support for a broader range of hardware features, notably sensors and multi-finger input”.
The most prominent addition to revision 18 of the Android SDK is the built-in GPU support for Android 4.0.3 R2, which allows the emulator to use the computer's GPU for a boost of performance. Additionally, OpenGL ES 2.0 is now supported, making it possible to run OpenGL games inside the emulator.
The latest revision allows you to tether an Android device to the emulator to supply multi-touch input and a host of other sensors. The team, however, said that they are still working to bring Bluetooth and NFC hardware support.
In addition, the R 18 developer tools also offer improved CPU performance for the emulator. “Hardware floating point operation has been available for system images since Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), allowing CPU operations to be emulated roughly twice as quickly,” the team explained. The previous iteration of the software developer kit already provided the Android emulator access to the host CPU.
Hopefully, the new and improved version of the SDK will make Android development even more accessible. Up until now, the Android emulator was barely usable, forcing many developers to buy test devices. The new Android emulator is available for Windows, Mac OS X (Intel), and Linux (i386) and you can download it directly here. If you’re new to the wonderful world of Android apps building, check out our guide right here on how to install the kit.
Let us know if you give the new emulator a try – how big is the difference for you?
The OfficeSuite app allows users to create, view, edit, and share Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents, as well as view PDF files on Android devices. With our increasing dependency on mobile phones and tablets as our go-to devices, OfficeSuite, created by Mobisystems, has slowly emerged as a popular mobile office solution for professionals on-the-go.
The latest iteration of the app, the long awaited OfficeSuite Pro 6, is finally available for download from the Google Play Store. It seems to be well worth the wait, boasting a host of new features and upgrades that include (from the developer description):
Page view for Word and other text documents
Headers and footers in Word docs
Page numbering in text docs
Editing in PowerPoint Slide View for faster slide changing
Object manipulation in Powerpoint – allowing users to move, resize, and rotate
Filters in Excel to efficiently handle data
Significant increase in the number of Excel functions (around 240 unique functions)
Improved cell selection in spreadsheets
SugarSync compatibility
Cursor adjustment in text docs
WordArt support in text docs
Optimized for Android 4.0
The software can handle the most common document formats and also includes a file browser for simple access. You can also manage your remote files, thanks to the newly added compatibility with the SugarSync cloud back up service, along with the previous integration with Google Docs, Box, and DropBox. OfficeSuite is also now optimized for Android 4.0 devices.
You can download a free 30-day trial of OfficeSuite 6 from the Google Play Store here, but if you would like to purchase right away, you can find the Pro version here, for only $14.99. Unfortunately, if you’ve already been using a previous version of OfficeSuite, you will not have access to the free trial, but can upgrade to the latest version for $9.99.
