Sprint’s Employees Will Deliver And Set Up Your New Handset As Part Of The New ‘Direct 2 You’ Service

Sprint has, like every other major U.S. carrier, announced the availability of HTC’s One M9 and Samsung’s Galaxy S6 / S6 Edge flagships on April 10th. That’s not the only announcement this carrier had to share with us on that date, they have also announced the International Value roaming add-on. This service actually lets you use your 2G data connection for free in some major areas in Latin America, Europe and Japan. You can, of course, pay extra in order to get 3G speeds in those areas. If you’d like to know more about that, read the announcement article we posted a couple of days ago.

That being said, we’re here to talk about Sprint’s new announcement. The carrier has announced an interesting new service called ‘Sprint Direct 2 You’. Sprint is aiming to make purchasing a new phone as painless as possible for their consumers, here’s what Sprint had to say: “With Sprint Direct 2 You, a Sprint-trained expert will bring a Sprint mobile device to a customer’s location, set it up and transfer all of their content, including contacts, pictures, videos and apps, from their old device to a new one. And it’s free!”

How will this work? Well, if you’re qualified for the service, Sprint will send you this offer via text or e-mail to upgrade to a new device. If you’d like to take advantage of the service, you’ll have to contact Sprint’s customer service by calling the number they send your way in the aforementioned text / e-mail. This way you’ll be able to make an appointment in order to take advantage of the service. The Sprint employee will come to your home (or wherever you tell him to basically) in order to set up and activate your phone. He / she will also transfer all your contacts and data from the old phone to the new one and personalize the device per your request. You can also choose if you’d like Sprint to recycle your old device, or turn it for reuse.

Sprint expects that they’ll have to place about 5,000 Sprint Direct 2 You cars in major metropolitan areas by the end of 2015. The rollout of this service starts today in Kansas City metropolitan areas, Sprint’s hometown. The service will be available in the Chicago and Miami markets on April 20, and the national expansion is expected to follow throughout the year.

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from AndroidHeadlines.com | http://www.androidheadlines.com/2015/04/part-direct-2-service-sprint-will-send-employees-deliver-set-new-phone.html

Team Win Recovery Project Now Available For The Samsung Galaxy S6

The Galaxy S6 is the Android phone to beat so far in 2015. That being the case, it's naturally going to be a big part of the modding scene from here on out, as have most of its predecessors. Right on time, Team Win has delivered their much-loved custom Android recovery to Samsung's new flagship. You can download it here.

This particular build of TWRP was tested on the T-Mobile version of the Galaxy S6.

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Team Win Recovery Project Now Available For The Samsung Galaxy S6 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

from Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AndroidPolice/~3/eRvZlcwVdCM/story01.htm

Android Headliner: Is India Becoming The New China Of The Smartphone World

The Chinese market is the largest smartphone market in the world. To put things into perspective, Xiaomi is currently the number one smartphone manufacturer in China, and despite the fact they do business mainly in China and some other Asian countries, they’re currently the third-placed OEM in the world. This should give you an idea how huge the Chinese market truly is. This Asian country is home to many, many smartphone vendors, and the competition is still increasing. That being said, the second biggest market in the world is the Indian one, which is growing at an incredible pace at the moment.

The Indian smartphone market is more or less at the same point the Chinese market was at the end of 2013. The growth rate is incredible and the competition is becoming stronger and stronger by the day. Domestic smartphone vendors are still the most popular ones in India, by far, but the biggest smartphone OEMs in the world are trying to succeed over there. Why? Well, that market has huge potential, and it makes all the sense in the world that almost everyone wants a piece of that pie. Samsung has started re-organizing their business in India recently, Motorola has put more focus on the Indian market in the second half of last year and Xiaomi intends to open up shop over there by the end of the year. These are just a couple of examples for you.

How fast is the Indian smartphone market growing? Well, smartphone shipments have actually quadrupled compared to the two years before that, at least according to IDC. Check out BI Intelligence’s graph below the article in case you’d like to see their growth-rate for yourself, it’s truly staggering. Despite India’s huge growth, China is still in a serious lead as far as shipments go. However, if India manages to keep this up for the long haul, that might change in the future. India is closing this gap, and it will be interesting to see how things will unfold by the end of this year.

Analysts are saying that the growth will continue in India, which makes sense. A lot of smartphone OEMs either entered the Indian market in the last year, or have put a lot more focus on it. There are still quite a few big companies in the business who are still not present in that Asian market, but are planning to offer their devices over there in the near future. Foreign OEMs have to be ready for all sorts of challenges in India though, and it will certainly be interesting to see how they will fare in the coming months / years. You may notice that homegrown OEMs like Micromax, Karbonn and Lava tend to focus on low and mid-range devices a whole lot, why is that? Well, pricing usually plays a bigger part in India than some other markets, although it’s important everywhere of course.

I personally am quite intrigued by Asia as a whole, Chinese OEMs like Xiaomi and Meizu have become very interesting lately and are doing a great job manufacturing devices. They’ve managed to produce a number of premium built, great-looking high-end devices which are really affordable compared to the competition, even when bought through resellers. As far as India goes, Micromax and its subsidiary YU are very interesting as well. It will certainly be an exciting year for those of us who appreciate mobile technology.

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from AndroidHeadlines.com | http://www.androidheadlines.com/2015/04/android-headliner-indias-smartphone-market-growing-incredible-pace-may-even-catch-china-soon.html

Google Apparently Testing Tweaks For Maps Web Interface

YouTube isn't the only Google web property getting some A/B testing right now. Apparently Maps is under the microscope as well, with Google testing a new nav drawer menu and refreshed biking and traffic elements.

The nav drawer icon, as you might expect, is embedded in the search bar, a pattern introduced with the new nav drawer icon and material design.

There's also a "road sign" navigation icon embedded in the same bar.

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Google Apparently Testing Tweaks For Maps Web Interface was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

from Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AndroidPolice/~3/5Tu-9lxLtYw/story01.htm

[Weekend Discussion] Leather, Kevlar, Glass, Metal - Do You Really Care What Your Phone Is Made Of?

Exotic or uncommon materials seem to be all the rage in smartphones right now. Motorola started offering wood backs, then later leather, for its Moto X 2013 and 2014 handsets, respectively. But this wasn't even the first time a phone was offered with some integrated exotic or unorthodox materials. When Apple released the iPhone 4 with a glass rear cover, people flipped - wouldn't it break (yes, it would!), or get scratches (not that much) on it?

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[Weekend Discussion] Leather, Kevlar, Glass, Metal - Do You Really Care What Your Phone Is Made Of? was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

from Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AndroidPolice/~3/6J7731i9KcQ/story01.htm

LastPass gets a material update on Android

The LastPass password manager app for Android got an update this week to incorporate Google’s Material Design philosophy for Android. As part of the announcement of LastPass’s update, the company also announced they were partnering with Samsung to offer a premium upgrade to buyers of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge as part of the Samsung Galaxy Gifts program.

The Material Design update to LastPass includes changes one would expect. There is now a floating button for new actions like adding a site or a secure note. LastPass now uses the “hamburger” menu or a left edge swipe to access the main menu. Within that menu, LastPass now includes a Settings option that has been simplified unless a user wants to dig in deeper for more advanced stuff.

The overall look of the app uses more white space and a simpler color palette. This should make everything easier to read for users. One big change regular users of the app may notice is that it now opens to the Vault instead of to the browser mode. LastPass says this change was implemented in response to the extensive feedback received from customers asking for this.

LastPass included a number of bug fixes and stability improvements as well with this update.

If you are a new owner of a Samsung Galaxy S6 or Galaxy S6 edge and want to give LastPass a try, you can check the Samsung Galaxy Apps store to receive a free Premium upgrade. If you already have a Premium account, the gift from the partnership with Samsung will extend your expiration date.

You can use the Google Play download link below to get the LastPass for Android app if you want to give it a try.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Google Play Download Link

source: LastPass

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Android Game Of The Week: Dragon Hills

Dragon Hills is a great little action game that is small in file size but big in fun. A face value it looks like Dragon Hills is all about riding on the back of a dragon as a princess in search of seeking vengeance, and that is a large part of the gameplay, but there are loads of other elements to consider that make this a fun little title to pass the time that won’t cost you anything to play, and free games are always nice especially when they give the gamer enjoyment.

While Dragon Hills doesn’t seem to bombard you with requests to upgrade items or purchase in game cash using your own hard-earned real-world currency, it does employ an ad system that seems to pop up ads randomly prior to and after game sessions, which is about its only downfall. Other than that one minor detail it’s loads of fun. Controls are simple as this plays out somewhat like an endless runner. Movement is automatic and all you have to do is control when the dragon dives beneath the surface and when he leaps out into the sky to maneuver above ground again, which is handled by long pressing on the screen to make him dive and letting go to make him leap back above ground.

The goal is to see how far you can go in the game before your dragon meets his untimely demise whether at the hand of the knights you’re chasing, random pockets of what appear to be lava beneath the surface, or by traps laid out on the ground. Smashing into things seems to give you points although certain structures will slow you down, and this can be bad for you as speed helps to ensure you can leap over anything damaging to you quick enough. Most of the terrain is destructible which is kind of a nice element, and while mowing down regular enemies is fun, the boss fights make things a little more challenging which helps to keep the game from getting stale. There is also a leveling system in place, so the farther you go and the more points you obtain, you’ll also level up from experience and get gold so you can upgrade your items and weapons, as well as have access to awesome power-ups that can help you become even more powerful.

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from AndroidHeadlines.com | http://www.androidheadlines.com/2015/04/android-game-the-week-dragon-hills.html

Rumor: Leaked Images Of The Oppo R7 Show Up Displaying Edge To Edge Screen

The Oppo R5 was showcased at Mobile World Congress 2015 earlier this year and is one of the world’s thinnest smartphones at just 4.85mm thick. The R5 is based around a 5.2-inch, 1080p resolution AMOLED screen and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor backed up by 2 GB of RAM. However, although the R5 hasn’t been out for long we have already covered the rumors surrounding the next generation model, the R7. We recently reported on the rumours that Oppo are working on the R7, which has appeared going through the Indonesian regulators for approval under the moniker “R7f.” We’ve seen reports that the R7 model will be powered by the new MediaTek MT6795 processor, which is a modern, 64-bit, eight core processor similar in some respects to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 and Samsung Exynos 7420 as used in the Galaxy S6.

To discuss the MediaTek MT6795 processor in a little more detail, this uses eight ARM Cortex-A53 processor cores with a maximum clock speed of up to 2.2 GHz, rather than the more familiar big.LITTLE configuration of combining quad core ARM Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 processors. Although the Cortex-A57 should be a faster processor core, benchmarks show the MT6795 as being comparable with the Snapdragon 810 and Exynos 7420, even if it is arguably more of a mid-range processor!

Today’s purported leak comes from @Cinquetacche and shows a bezel-less design over what looks like a metallic frame, but we cannot say for certain what the material is. Furthermore, the other rumor circulating the Internet is that the new Oppo will have a 20.7MP rear camera but we have no other substantiating information and we don’t know any other specifications at this juncture, but given the high end processor we can also expect a respectable screen of at least 1080p resolution and plenty of memory, at least matching the R5’s 2 GB of RAM. Other rumors include the R7 matching the same sub-5mm thickness as the Oppo R5. We don’t know any likely release dates, prices or other availability regions; there may be other variants of the R7 set to be released around the world with a different letter after the badge.

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from AndroidHeadlines.com | http://www.androidheadlines.com/2015/04/rumor-leaked-images-of-the-oppo-r7-show-up-displaying-edge-to-edge-screen.html