APK BRO™ - Download APK Android Apps: 09/03/15

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Manual Camera Updated to Include Effects, Burst Mode, RAW Support for Galaxy S6

The Manual Camera application received an update on Google Play today, the camera app we recommend to anyone who is looking for a more comprehensive take on mobile photography. With the update, users of the Galaxy S6 can take advantage of RAW support, bringing big time editing capability to photographers.

In addition, anyone with a Lollipop-running device can take advantage of new effects to place on photos, a burst mode, the ability to change picture resolutions, built-in image previews, and more.

The developers of the app state that the added features were the most highly requested by users, so here’s to giving the people what they want.

The app costs $2.99 currently on Google Play, so if you think you can step up your mobile photography game, get on it.

Play Link ($2.99)

Chrome 45 Will Finally Address the Browser’s Notorious Battery Draining Issues

Chrome is the most popular desktop browser, at least here in the US. But while it’s popular and powerful and fast (mostly) and has apps and extensions and syncs between devices and all that, it’s not exactly efficient or good when it comes to your battery life. I’m talking about on laptops, of course, because desktops don’t have batteries. Reports (and complaints) about how good Chrome is at sucking your battery dry before you want it to have not gone unnoticed by Google, thankfully.

Today, the company announced Chrome 45, which focuses on making your favorite browser “use less memory and power.”

Features like Chrome’s “continue where you left off” are now smarter and more efficient, by prioritizing which tabs restore from most to least recently viewed. Chrome 45 will also detect if your computer is starting to run out of resources and will then stop restoring tabs to hopefully help save memory. In another memory usage reducing move, Chrome can now detect which pages aren’t busy with tasks and will use the “free time to aggressively clean up old, unused memory.” Google says this change alone has reduced website memory usage by 10%.

As for power consumption, a new setting that auto-pauses Flash content that’s not “central to a website,” can make your battery last up to 15% longer depending on the operating system. Over the next few weeks, Google plans to turn this feature on by default.

This may not be Android-related right now, but Google is always looking to improve efficiency with Chrome on all of its platforms.

Via: Chrome Blog

IFTTT Brings DO Button Support for Android Wear Users

IFTTT’s DO Button, a button on your phone that performs select functions, is now available to users of Android Wear. To be more specific, users of the DO Button, can set at-home temperatures with Nest, changing lighting moods with Philips Hue lightbulbs, perform actions with apps, and much more. Now, with support for Android Wear, all of these automated tasks can be done straight from your smartwatch.

The DO Button is still controlled by recipes you create. For example, inside the DO Button app, you set certain actions to happen through various “channels.” If you have used IFTTT and the DO Button before, you will easily get the hang of it. If you are new the world of smartphone automation apps, don’t worry, it’s not a harsh learning curve. Just give yourself 15 minutes to get situated.

The update is now live on Google Play for Android Wear owners.

What’s New

Introducing DO Button for Android Wear – Designed for simplicity and ease of use, DO for Android Wear places the control of hundreds of apps right on your wrist.
New Channels include – Adafruit, Amazon Cloud Drive, Camio, dondeEsta Family, iSecurity+, Wattio, Wolfram Data Drop
A few wrinkles were ironed out

Play Link

NVIDIA Pushes Updates to SHIELD and SHIELD Portable

NVIDIA is pushing updates out to the SHIELD Portable and SHIELD Android TV set-top box, both of which are quite minor. For Portable owners, this update will treat you to a button functionality change, with the NVIDIA button now going to the SHIELD Hub app instead of performing a Voice Search. In addition, the Start/Play button now behaves as it did when your device was on Kit Kat.

For SHIELD set-top box owners, the update simply brings optimizations for new apps and games launched, such as WWE Network, Fox Sports Go, CBS Sports, and This War is Mine.

Check the changlogs below, then go grab those updates.

SHIELD Portable Changelog

Updates NVIDIA button functionality from voice search to SHIELD Hub
Start/Play button now behaves the same as in Kit Kat
Security updates

SHIELD Android TV Changelog

Optimizes SHIELD for newly released apps and games

Via: NVIDIA [2]

T-Mobile Video Calling Arrives Today, Starts With Note 5 and S6 Edge+ Via Updates

This morning, T-Mobile announced Video Calling for select handsets when on LTE connections. T-Mobile Video Calling joins the Uncarrier’s movement towards deploying every next-gen calling feature they can, like VoLTE and their new Advanced Messaging.

With T-Mobile Video Calling, you don’t need to install an app or configure anything, as the service is built-in to your phone’s stock dialer. Think of it like Verizon’s Advanced Calling 1.0, that takes over your dialer and contacts, showing you when you can and can’t place video calls to people. If you can place or a receive a video call to/from someone, you will see options with a video icon (see image above – greyed out icon means not available).

The new Video Calling feature currently only works between T-Mobile customers, but they claim to be working with others to make it possible across wireless networks. Good luck with that, Legere! All of those friends of yours in the industry at other carriers…

I should also point out that Video Calling on T-Mobile does use your high-speed data allotment for the month unless you are on WiFi. Yes, I said does there. Hopefully, you don’t plan to use these often, as I can’t imagine these being light on the data usage.

For now, thanks to software updates rolling out today, the Galaxy Note 5 (N920TUVU1BOH4) and Galaxy S6 Edge+ (G928TUVU1BOH4) are the only devices that can take advantage of T-Mobile Video Calling. The Galaxy S6 and regular Galaxy S6 Edge will get updates next week enabling the feature. By the end of the year, T-Mobile will add an additional three devices to the crew.

Notes for each phone’s update can be found at links below.

Via: T-Mobile [2] [3]

Cerberus Free Lifetime Licenses Forget What “Lifetime” Means, Company Now Wants You to Pay

About a week ago, Android anti-theft specialist, Cerberus, started notifying users who received a free lifetime license during a previous promotional period, that they would no longer be able to keep those free lifetime subscriptions. Last night, they must have unloaded a wave of additional notifications to free lifetime folks, because our inbox got filled up in the early evening with, “WTF, have you seen this from Cerberus? How can they do this?”

Well, the short answer is – they need money. The long answer is the email below.

The basics are this. Cerberus, probably in an attempt to make a name for itself and get you to install its anti-theft Android app during its early days, offered a whole bunch of free lifetime licenses to its premium set of services. Fast forward a couple of years, and they now realize that that was a terrible idea and that they need their userbase to actually pay them if they want to stay in business. So, they decided that they would end all of those free lifetime subscriptions after 3 years and ask that users pay them going forward.

See for yourself.

Is this a dirty move? I wouldn’t classify it as “dirty” as much as I would call it unfortunate, shortsighted, or “Holy shit, you need to fire anyone in charge of your business or finance departments.” I get that companies need to make money to provide their services, but not realizing that by offering up thousands and thousands of free “lifetime” licenses, that you would soon be struggling to fund your business is a pretty terrible misstep. How could you not see this happening?

So anyway, without taking too much time to vent about an anti-theft company and their struggles after making terrible business decisions to get a jump on competition, let’s talk about what happens now.

If you had a lifetime subscription that is no longer lifetime, Cerberus will send you an email telling you as much. That email will also tell you when your lifetime subscription ends and then try to explain to you how important their anti-theft features are to your life in hopes that you will then pay for a license. But not only that, they want you to know that if you don’t pay for a license today, be prepared (assuming you care and want to keep using their services) to pay even more in the future! Yep, if you don’t pay today, you will probably have to pay a monthly or subscription fee before long.

Is it off base for me to wonder how long before they apologize and start asking paid license users to pay a monthly subscription?

Show Off Your Moto Maker Creations: Moto X Pure and Moto 360

Pre-orders for the Moto X Pure Edition and the new Moto 360 (2nd gen) both went live yesterday around noon Pacific. We can tell that tons of you took to Motorola’s site to customize at least one of the devices on Moto Maker, because you killed their checkout system for a good hour or two. It’s probably safe to say that Motorola wasn’t expecting that much action.

Since these two devices seem to have more hype surrounding them than anything else at the moment, we thought we would see if you all wanted to share your Moto Maker creations. The Moto 360 has some 400 combinations to choose from and the Moto X Pure probably has even more than that. And even though we ordered ours already, we are always looking for inspiration for next purchases from the DL community.

So, what’d you go with?

If you haven’t yet customized one, even for fun, feel free to do so at the links below.

Motorola Links: Moto X Pure Edition | Moto 360 (2nd gen)

Thursday Poll: Pick a Smartwatch, Any Smartwatch.

Three round smartwatches stole headlines this week, all of which will be available at some point over the next few weeks. We have the new Moto 360 (2nd gen), Huawei Watch, and Samsung’s Gear S2 and S2 Classic. All look pretty fantastic, but each are different in their own way. Moto wants you to customize the hell out of theirs, while Huawei has given you options, but wants you to think of its watch as a high-end premium device. Samsung, well, it’s positioning itself somewhere in the middle, though it seems to have realized all that was wrong with previous watches and fixed them this time around, making watches that are worth considering.

We spent time with all of them over the last couple of weeks. Tim went hands-on with the Huawei Watch here. I also did my thing with the new Moto 360 here, and the Gear S2s here.

I’d have to say that if I were choosing one today, I’d probably go Huawei Watch. The combination of the premium experience, design, and choice has won me over. But that doesn’t mean I’m not super excited to spend ample time with the new Moto 360 and Gear S2. Decisions will be made here shortly, once our reviews are ready.

What about you? If you were picking a smartwatch today, which way would you go?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Samsung Pay Comes to Gear S2 in November

Samsung included NFC in the new Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic for one reason – mobile payments. They confirmed today that each watch would become a part of its Samsung Pay mobile payments system this November, which is only a month or so after the watches become available to the public.

This is a big deal because the only other watch that currently does mobile payments is the Apple Watch. None of the Android Wear devices have NFC or can make mobile payments just yet.

Keep in mind that the Samsung Pay and NFC payment feature will only work if you are paired with a Samsung Galaxy device that has Samsung Pay. You won’t be able to pair this with say, a Nexus 6, and then make NFC payments because that phone doesn’t have access to Samsung Pay.

Still, watch payments on Android! It’s a start.

Samsung Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic Hands-on!

Earlier in the week, Samsung made the Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic official, saying that they weren’t ready to announce exact launch timing or price, but that they would be on hand at IFA for media consumption. With IFA in full swing, Samsung invited us to take the watches for a spin and get back to you all with our findings.

As a recap, the Samsung Gear S2 (and its brother, the Gear S2 Classic) features a 1.2-inch Circular Super AMOLED display (360×360), 1.0GHz dual core CPU, 512MB RAM, 4GB storage, heart rate sensor, NFC, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a 250mAh that supposedly lasts anywhere from 2-3 days. The watch runs Samsung’s Tizen OS, as well, instead of Android Wear.

The regular Gear S2 is rounded and sleek, with a minimalist futuristic vibe to its dark grey or white exteriors. The Gear S2 Classic is much more like a classic watch, with lugs and a somewhat fluted or rigid bezel. The Gear S2 comes with a rubber or silicon band that I actually didn’t find to be all that nice, whereas the Classic includes a classier leather band. Thankfully, you can swap bands pretty easily.

Each watch features a rotating bezel for navigation that is quite fun to use. They have touchscreens as well, but I just found it fun to rotate and rotate and rotate into widgets or apps because the bezel has this really nice, soft clicking to it as it rotates. I’ll need more time with it to decide if a rotating bezel is better for navigating a small screen than my finger, but so far I’m kind of buying in.

Speaking of apps, this watch – like the Apple Watch – is all about apps. While Android Wear may focus more of its efforts on glance-able information, Samsung seems to want you to actually use apps from within the watch. There’s nothing wrong with that approach, assuming developers can build out unique and simplified experiences.

Oh, and did I mention that these watches will work with almost any Android phone? That’s right, Samsung is ditching that Galaxy phone requirement for these in hopes that they can sell to Nexus, Motorola, LG, etc. owners. That’s awesome news!

In the video below, you should get a good feel for each watch, but you also get comparisons of each to the Moto 360 and Apple Watch.

Enjoy!

Samsung’s Gear S2 Will Work With Any Android Phone, Not Locked to Galaxy Devices

You know how you all passed on every single one of Samsung’s previous smartwatch attempts because they required you to own a top tier Galaxy smartphone? OK, that’s not why you passed. You passed because they were garbage. But, let’s say they weren’t garbage – you probably would have passed on them because you may not have owned a Galaxy smartphone. That stupid requirement from Samsung is about to change with their new watch, the Gear S2. Samsung has seen the open light and is making this watch (and the Gear S2 Classic) available to all Android devices upon launch (at least 1.5GB RAM and Android 4.4).

We still don’t know exactly when it will launch or for how much, but when it does, your Nexus, Moto, LG, or other Android device will be able to pair with them, just like you do any other Bluetooth device.

Samsung told us that the experience may vary slightly from phone to phone, but that you should expect most of the experience you would get had you paired with a Galaxy phone. Well, you won’t get the NFC-mobile-payment side of it, because that’s a Samsung Pay exclusive, which is also an exclusive to select Galaxy devices at this time. Other than that, it should be a fully capable smartwatch experience with 2-3 day battery life and a sleek design.

This news change any of your opinions on the Gear S2? Maybe our hands-on with it will.

Watch Samsung’s Gear S2 Showcase Live From IFA!

At 10AM Pacific (1PM Eastern), Samsung will take another stage at IFA in Berlin to further present to the world the Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic smartwatches. Samsung first talked about these devices back at the Galaxy Note 5 launch, then officially announced them at the beginning of this week. But today, they will show them off, in action, and probably provide additional details about each that weren’t a part of Monday’s press release.

The showcase is being streamed live to the world, so if you have some free time here in about 45 minutes, feel free to watch along.

We went ahead and embedded the video for you below.

Google Intros Updated Street View App for Google Maps Users

Today, Google introduced an updated Street View application for both Android and iOS. For users on iOS, the new Street View app will replace the Photo Sphere Camera app, but on Android, it will simply be an update for existing Street View users in Google Maps.

With the updated application, users can view Photo Sphere galleries from across the world, and even upload their own panoramic and Photo Sphere shots instantly to Google Maps. If you visit a beautiful place or go on an insane hike, your content can now be viewed by others, giving them a taste of what they can expect at that location.

Of course, the basic Street View functionality remains intact, allowing you to see exactly what is outside of almost any address in the world. It’s always surprising to see where Google’s cars have been, whether it be in the streets of Brazil, or down your own block in the hometown.

Everyone, go grab the update.

Play Link

Via: Google Maps

Verizon’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge Get Updates to Android 5.1.1

Verizon began pushing updates to its Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge variants yesterday in the form of Android 5.1.1. The updates fix a bunch of bugs, but also introduce things like options for turning off the parallax wallpaper effect on the home screen, live wallpaper options for the lock screen, quick exposure adjusting in the camera when you focus on an object, and Chinese language support.

The updates should be rolling out any minute, if you haven’t seen them yet.

The update for the S6 will arrive as software version VRU3BOG5, while the S6 Edge will get VRU3BOG5.

To check for updates, head into Settings>About phone>Software updates.

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Thursday, September 3, 2015

Manual Camera Updated to Include Effects, Burst Mode, RAW Support for Galaxy S6

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Chrome 45 Will Finally Address the Browser’s Notorious Battery Draining Issues

Via: Chrome Blog

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IFTTT Brings DO Button Support for Android Wear Users

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NVIDIA Pushes Updates to SHIELD and SHIELD Portable

Via: NVIDIA [2]

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T-Mobile Video Calling Arrives Today, Starts With Note 5 and S6 Edge+ Via Updates

Via: T-Mobile [2] [3]

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Cerberus Free Lifetime Licenses Forget What “Lifetime” Means, Company Now Wants You to Pay

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Thursday Poll: Pick a Smartwatch, Any Smartwatch.

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Via: Verizon [2]

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