Thursday 19 December 2013

Android Phone Fans

Android Phone Fans

Vine officially arrives for Gingerbread devices, leaves out one critical feature…

Posted: 19 Dec 2013 06:41 PM PST

Vine for Android 1.3.1 update

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Gingerbread still accounts for almost a quarter of active Android devices still in the wild. This is something Vine has taken into consideration with their latest update, now available on Google Play. While Vine finally welcomes Gingerbread users into the fold, it comes with a pretty big caveat.

Apparently due to hardware limitations found in most Gingerbread devices, the app doesn’t actually allow users to record/upload their own content, merely view it from their devices for a good time. Something tells us — no matter how many disclaimers the put in the app — this isn’t going to go over very well with Android users still running Gingerbread hardware.

We can’t help but wonder if it would have been a better idea to continuing blocking Gingerbread users, or make a completely new app (titled Vine Viewer or something along those lines) rather than offer a severely handicapped experience. What do you guys think?

Download on Google Play: Vine for Android

Riptide GP2 and Beach Buggy Blitz updated with KitKat’s new immersive mode

Posted: 19 Dec 2013 04:30 PM PST

Riptide GP2 KtiKat update

One of the coolest new features introduced in Android 4.4 KitKat was the all new “immersive mode” for games apps. For those unfamiliar, normally playing a game on a device using virtual buttons (instead of physical capacitive buttons) meant you’d lose some screen real estate to have the nav bar always present (where the home, back, and multitasking buttons are). With immersive mode, developers now have the option to hide the status and nav bars in their apps, allowing for a — you guessed it — fully immersive, fullscreen experience.

Beach Buggy Blitz KitKat update

Developer Vector Unit has officially updated 2 of their biggest titles in the Play Store with the new KitKat feature, games you’ve no doubt played before: Riptide GP2 and Beach Buggy Blitz. Now, when firing up either game on your Nexus 5 or Moto X (eventually the LG G2), the nav and status bars will disappear, only to return when performing a swipe from the top or right bezel.

It’s a little touch but one that makes for a better HD experience, and we applaud Vector Unit for putting in the work. Now get out there and try these newly updated titles for yourself.

Download on Google Play: Riptide GP2 | Beach Buggy Blitz

You might soon be able to upload songs to Google Play Music using the browser

Posted: 19 Dec 2013 03:09 PM PST

google-play-music-albums-2

I can’t be alone in saying that Google could offer up a better way to manage song uploads in Google Play Music. The desktop client is decent and all, but the dated interface and slow upload speeds leave a lot to be desired up against many other Google services.

Thankfully it sounds like we won’t have to put up with that for much longer. A sleuthing soul went through the Google Play Music source code one day, and happened to find the following string not being used on the site itself:

Drag songs or folders here to add music to your library. Or, if you prefer, select from your computer.

That makes it sound like Google is readying a feature that will allow you to upload your music using a web browser instead of a desktop client. While the desktop client may be more suitable for large uploads, having a browser alternative would allow Google to have one consistent interface for uploading music no matter which platform you’re on.

There’s no indication as to when they’ll look to introduce these new features, but if they’re reading the website’s source code we can’t imagine it’ll take long to see them go live.

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas hits the Google Play Store to a ton of 1-star reviews

Posted: 19 Dec 2013 01:04 PM PST

san andreas

Last week, we were extremely excited to learn that Grand Theft Auto San Andreas would be entering the Google Play Store this week. Well, this week is here, and the game is, in fact, sitting in the Google Play Store (for a whopping $6.99, might I add). We thought we’d be greeted with tons of gleeful reviews from anxious customers waiting to relive the glory days of CJ and the Grove Street Family.

That didn’t happen. Instead, a ton of folks have left one-star reviews for varying issues. The most common issue seems to be with the game not recognizing that you have a legitimately purchased copy, informing folks that they may not have purchased the game and refusing to download the extra files needed to play.

With that, we have to recommend that you hold off on buying this until Rockstar can figure out what’s going on. We’ve dropped a line into the fine folks at the New York-based company to see if they’re aware about what’s going on, and to see if a fix will be on its way before too long. If you want to take the chance anyway then be sure to find it here in the Google Play Store.

Shopped at Target this holiday season? Company breach means you should check your finances

Posted: 19 Dec 2013 12:02 PM PST

Oh noes. Some unfortunate news has come out of Target this morning, with the big retailer informing everyone of a company-wide breach. It seems some no-good hackers got access to payment information for over 40 million shoppers who stepped into a Target store between the dates of November 27th and December 15, 2013 (which might have been you if you were looking for a great deal on Android phones or tablets during the big shopping season).

Target Logo, Sunnyvale

Target notes that they began investigating the incident as soon as they found out, and that they’ve thrown every resource that they have behind trying to rectify the situation. That includes contacting relevant authorities and all financial institutions.

While Target emphasizes that the breach only affected customers who shopped in their stores, we’d still keep an eye on bank statements if you shopped online. You can never be too safe in these situations, folks. So what’s going to happen from here?

  • If Target finds that more sensitive identity-based information was accessed, they might offer free identity protection services.
  • Target says they have closed the security hole and are continuing to investigate to make sure things are peachy clean (things should be relatively safe otherwise), but you should continue to monitor your accounts.
  • You’ll want to check Target’s information page about this incident for any specific actions you might need to take based on your place of residence to make sure anything that happens as a result of this doesn’t affect your credit report.

Beyond all that, they say everything should be back to normal and assures us that folks can continue to shop with confidence. Whether or not you’re actually confident enough to do that is a personal decision to make for you and you alone. Be sure to head to the source link for more information.

[via Target]

CyanogenMod Inc secures another $22 million in funding

Posted: 19 Dec 2013 09:18 AM PST

CyanogenMod thumb

The folks at CyanogenMod Inc have announced another major milestone in the company’s short history. They have secured $22 million in Series B funding from investors excited about the future of the company.

Some might wonder how so much buzz could surround a small company that got its roots in making custom ROMs, but recent murmurings reveal that it’s much bigger than flashable goods.

For starters, ex-vice president of Oppo Pete Lau’s new company OnePlus is rumored to be the driving force behind the official CyanogenMod phone (which is unofficially official, in a way, because they’ve yet to actually announce anything). And, in case you haven’t heard, they seem to have gotten into the business of selling accessories recently.

A round of funding as successful as this one is nothing to sneeze at, so it’ll be interesting to see what the team looks to achieve in the months to come.

They already let us in on the fact that they’ll be looking to expand their engineer, design and product teams, as well as participating in community events as an official sponsor and committing to the “open” cause. Let’s hope they’ll have more exciting moves to announce once the calendar hits 2014 in just a couple of weeks.

“Huge” Press 1.5 update brings immersive mode, night theme and more

Posted: 19 Dec 2013 08:49 AM PST

Press, one of our absolute favorite RSS reading apps for Android, has gotten a “huge” upgrade to version 1.5. It brings with it some very useful new features, and a good helping of new gestures to make it easier to wade through your endless timeline of news. Here’s the quick skinny:

  • Immersive mode for KitKat devices — go full screen, in case you need an extra line of text or two.
  • A night theme — because, you know, reading in the dark is totally a thing.
  • UI polish — it already looked good, and now it looks even better.
  • New gestures — swipe left, right and every other direction to get to everything you need. Includes ability to quickly mark as read and mark all articles above/below as read
  • One-click saving to Pocket and Instapaper

You can see all these new gestures in action in the various Vine videos posted on the developer’s blog, but if you’re a Press user there’s no good reason you shouldn’t head to the Play Store right now and try it for yourself. Not a Press user? It just might be the best $3 you’ve ever spent if you’ve been searching for a good RSS app.

Verizon confirms KitKat for DROID phones today

Posted: 19 Dec 2013 07:30 AM PST

android-kitkat

Earlier this morning, we were tipped off to news that Motorola would begin the soak test upgrade for Motorola DROID Mini, DROID MAXX and DROID Ultra users. The company didn’t give us any clue as to what the upgrade would be after their last snafu, but our KitKat senses have been tingling ever since we heard an upgrade was coming.

Now, Verizon has taken all the mystery (and fun) out of it by announcing that it’s KitKat on Twitter. Verizon noted that the upgrade is going out in phases, which means not everyone will be seeing it right away. We imagine the aforementioned soak test gang will be the absolute first in line, though if the upgrade to KitKat on the Moto X is anything to go by it might not be a long wait for the rest.

We’ll be feverishly checking for the upgrade, but if you happen to grab it before we can be sure to let us know in the comments section below. It might be a good idea for you to get on WiFi and charge your battery before giving it a go.

Android tablets under $40? Sure, here you go

Posted: 19 Dec 2013 05:37 AM PST

When you think about giving someone an Android tablet as a gift, you might automatically assume you’ll have to spend hundreds of dollars to find what you need. While those hundred dollar tablets are certainly worth their skin, some people just might not have that kind of dough to throw around, especially if they have half a dozen people to take care of as far as gifts go this holiday season.

Datawind recently announced plans to bring one such tablet to the United States, with the London-based firm bringing a full-featured tablet for just $38. It’ll be named the UbiState C7, a 7-inch 480 x 800 Android 4.0 tablet with a 1GHz single-core processor and just 4GB of internal storage. Not a looker by any stretch of the imagination, but if you want to enable friends and family with cheap and easy access to the internet, this is probably the way to go.

trio lite

Don’t want to wait? Good news — you won’t have to! Big Lots is already doing Datawind one better by selling this 4.3-inch “tablet” for just $30. We’d consider it more of a personal media player at this size. The Trio Stealth Lite apparently comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, a 1.2GHz processor, 4GB of internal storage, a rear-facing camera, and more. You’ll have to head to your local Big Lots store if you want in on it, but that might be a small price to pay if all you’re looking for is a cheap device for basic needs.

Motorola DROID Ultra, Mini, and Maxx soak test going out today

Posted: 19 Dec 2013 04:31 AM PST

motorola-droid-2013-2

Word around the water cooler is that Motorola’s aforementioned soak test for the Motorola DROID Mini, Motorola DROID Ultra and Motorola DROID Maxx will be going out over-the-air at some point today. The email delivering that good news went out to soak test participants at some point last night.

Mum is still the word on what this will be, but tons of folks are keeping their fingers crossed that it will be the same Android 4.4 KitKat upgrade we’ve seen roll out for the Moto X.

Motorola’s changed the game with getting KitKat out for their phones so fast, with the company initially beating several Nexus devices to the punch. While we imagined their DROID phones were going to take a while longer — Verizon’s a hard customer to please, after all — this was still a lot sooner than we expected.

If successful, this soak test will turn into a wide spread rollout for all owners of these three devices, though we won’t get too ahead of ourselves about that just yet — there’s no telling what sort of dangers lurk around the corner. We’ll be updating this post whenever things start rolling out. Be sure to let us know if you’re seeing it in the comments section below.

[Thanks, anon!]

Grab the OUYA for $10 off at Amazon [DEAL]

Posted: 19 Dec 2013 04:17 AM PST

ouya-featured-LARGE

Need a little something to nudge you toward buying an OUYA this holiday season? Amazon’s got you covered with $10 off the gaming box, giving you an affordable Android-based gaming experience for just $90 (8GB, but expandable using USB storage).

OUYA features NVIDIA’s quad-core Tegra 3 processor and 1GB of RAM, and comes with a unique wireless controller that features a touchpad on the front. It’s no secret that OUYA is getting a bit dated. While the Tegra 3 chipset was mighty good for its time, it has since been outclassed by the Tegra 4 silicon NVIDIA’s currently focusing on (and we won’t even mention the extremely powerful Qualcomm chipsets on the way).

OUYA’s biggest challenge since knocking it out of the park on Kickstarter has been garnering enough interest from developers to keep the quality games rolling in. The team has worked quite hard to get a couple of high quality exclusive titles worked up for it, but a vast majority of the console’s content can already be found in places like the Google Play Store for tons more devices.

It’s especially difficult once you consider the fact that the PS4 and Xbox One have come out and sold millions within their first few weeks of availability. It would appear that OUYA is the forgotten step child in this big gaming family.

All that aside, if all you’re looking for is an open, developer-friendly gaming box for your sizable television set then this could be worth the trouble. Head to Amazon if you want to take advantage.
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