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

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Mid-Range HTC One A9 Reported to Launch in November, Features 5″ FHD Display and Snapdragon 617

The retired leakster @evleaks is back at it, detailing specs and release information for HTC’s upcoming One A9 smartphone, aka Hima Aero. The device, according to Evan, will feature a 5″ FHD AMOLED display, Snapdragon 617 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, 13MP rear-facing camera, 4 UltraPixel front-facing camera, and metal build.

Evan claims that the One A9 will hit the market sometime in November, coming 6 different colors for buyers to choose from. However, if the One A9 hits carriers, it is likely that only a few of the color options will be available to purchase.

Other specifications include a 2,150mAh battery, microSD slot, and a fingerprint reader.

While it is certainly no flagship device, could we see the One A9 keep HTC afloat for a bit until the next One “M” device is launched in 2016?

Via: @evleaks

OnePlus 2 Unboxing and Re-Tour…

We aren’t going to get into why we finally have a OnePlus 2 in house a month late, but hey, we have a OnePlus 2 in house. Good times. So yeah, we thought that a quick unboxing would get this review process kickstarted and to also show you that we haven’t completely written off this phone and do plan to review it. After all, it is still important in the grand scheme of Android things for the time being.

As a recap, this phone was announced back in July on a day where we spent a solid couple of hours getting to know it. It starts at $329, but most will probably fork out $389 if they decide to buy it because 64GB of storage is indeed much better than 16GB of storage. It has a 5.5-inch 1080p display, fingerprint sensor, Snapdragon 810 processor, 4GB RAM (16GB model has 3GB), 13MP camera on the back, 5MP camera on the front, USB Type-C port, and a 3300mAh battery. It does not have NFC or fast charging or wireless charging or an SD card slot.

You will also need an invite in order to buy one. I think it’s safe to say that many of you want no part of OnePlus’ 5 million person wait list for invites.

The phone and the company who makes it have been surrounded by controversy for 2 years now, so this should make for an interesting review.

Let’s get to it.

Reminder: Last Chance to Enter the Double Nexus Giveaway, Win a Nexus 6 and 9

If you have not already done so, you have one day remaining to enter the Double Nexus Giveaway over on the DL Deals Store. One winner will walk away with a brand new Nexus 6 smartphone and Nexus 9 tablet.

The giveaway is completely free to enter, with all you needing to provide is an email address. To earn additional entries, you can share the giveaway on Twitter. The more people you get to enter, the more entries you receive in the drawing.

Follow the link below, and best of luck.

How to Win

Submit your email address and click ENTER NOW (Make sure it’s valid as this is where we’ll contact the winner)
After entering your email address above, share on Twitter for additional entries. The more your friends and followers enter, the more entries you receive. Good luck!
Be sure to register with a valid email address so we can contact you if you win
Limit one registration per person – registering more than one email address will result in disqualification from this giveaway

Enter Here

Snapchat Brings Selfie Lenses and Paid Replays in Latest Update

Apparently desperate for money, Snapchat now allows you to pay real money to replay snaps received from other users. That’s right! When you send those nudes, thinking they will be gone forever after viewed a single time, the recipient can now see it quite a few more times, as long as they pay for it.

For 3 replays, usable on any snap received, the price is set at $0.99. 10 replays is $2.99, and 20 replays is $4.99. It would be neat if Snapchat allowed senders to select whether a snap is acceptable for replays or not, but hey, it’s their service.

On top of paid replays, those who get a kick out of taking selfies can enjoy new “lenses,” like the one modeled above by our very own Ron Offringa. Isn’t he handsome? Besides puking rainbows, there are plenty of other lenses to choose from. To use them, tap on your face while snapping a selfie and choose whichever you feel is appropriate.

Go grab the update, if you dare.

Play Link

Nova Launcher Beta Update Normalizes Odd Icon Sizes, Adds Marshmallow Search Bar

An update rolling out now to Nova Launcher Beta attempts to make your desktops look much more uniform should you have an icon or two that stick out in weird, shapely ways. It also includes a new Marshmallow-esque grayscale search bar, incase (like most of us) you aren’t a fan of that colorful disaster that Google pushed out a few weeks back.

With the new “Normalize Icon Size” feature, Nova Launcher tries to make all of your icons look like they belong together by scaling down large icons to Material Design guidelines. If you are an icon addict, you can probably already visualize how useful this feature will be.

As for the search bar, you can find the new grey scale option in your Desktop>Persistent Search Bar options.

The beta is live now. If you aren’t a part of the beta program, hit up that source link to join.

What’s New

4.1.0-beta1 Sept 15
Normalize Icon Size – Nova Settings – Look and Feel – Normalize icon size
Marshmallow, and Marshmallow grayscale style search bar – Nova Settings – Desktop – Persistent Search Bar, or Long-press in empty space – Widgets – Nova Launcher – Quick Search Bar
Runtime permissions on Marshmallow
Optimizations and bug fixes

Play Link

Via: Nova Launcher Beta

Report: Samsung to Launch “Foldable” Smartphone in 2016

According to a source on Weibo, Samsung will look to launch Project Valley, its platform for foldable smartphones, next year in January. Claimed by the source, Samsung is currently testing two models of the device, one with a Snapdragon 620 processor, and another with the top-tier Snapdragon 820 processor. Other specs could include 3GB of RAM, built-in battery (non-removable), and microSD slot.

The idea of a foldable smartphone is not new, as countless design renders and concepts have been published over the years, but it has taken quite some time for display and component technology to catch up to our imagination. It is not yet known if Samsung intends to announce foldable display technology, or the device will merely feature two separate displays, attached by a type of hinge mechanism. Regardless, the idea is neat, but we have yet to see if it translates well to real-world usage.

Back in June of this year, LG was showing off their bendable displays at the Society for Information Display (SID) conference in San Jose, but that technology still seemed to be in quite the early stages.

January is only a few short months away, so are you interested in seeing what Samsung can cook up in their labs?

Via: G for Games | Weibo

IMAGE

Spotify Running Now Available for Android Devices

Spotify’s tempo-matching extension, Spotify Running, is now hitting Android devices. The Running portion of the app allows users to select a tempo for a workout/run, with Spotify creating a playlist of music to accompany you.

Spotify Running will create the playlist from music you like, which it already knows thanks to your listening habits. This means you won’t need to worry about Lady Gaga popping up if all you listen to is Hip Hop or Hardcore Metal. Of course, Spotify offers its own recommendations as moods, such as “Epic” and “Burn.”

Spotify states that the update is hitting device today, so be on the lookout for an update on Google Play.

Play Link

Via: Spotify

I’ve Spent a Week With the Moto X Pure: Ask Me Questions.

The Moto X Pure Edition has been up for pre-order for a good two weeks now, but I can tell that some of you are hesitant to pull the trigger before reading more reviews, including ours. That makes complete sense, especially since you can only buy this phone for $400 (or more) yet can’t actually get your hands on it ahead of time. Tough to make an investment like that in something you can’t physically touch.

So, because I know that you may be itching to pull the trigger, but don’t want to just yet without seeing some feedback or reviews about specific topics, I thought we would open up an “ask me anything” type of session here for a couple of hours. Even though our review won’t be ready until the end of this week at the earliest, I have spent the last six or so days with the phone and have a pretty good feel for it in case you are curious about anything in particular.

For the next hour or two, feel free to ask Moto X Pure Edition questions and I will do my best to answer them.

Ready?

Deal: Jawbone UP3 is Just $119 Today Only ($60 Off)

The Jawbone UP3 is discounted today through Amazon by $60, dropping it to just $119. That’s a heck of a deal for a fitness tracker that not only looks great compared to others, but isn’t a giant nuisance to your wrist as it tracks your heart rate, sleep, steps, calories, etc.

I’ve used a handful of fitness trackers over the years and have found myself settling into Jawbone’s UP line. I’m currently using an UP2, but am actually thinking of taking Amazon up on this deal because the UP3 offers heart rate tracking.

Amazon Link

Wondering why I have settled into Jawbone? Their software is the best. It interacts so well with third party apps like Nest, MyFitnessPal, Runkeeper, Withings, and other lifestyle or fitness services, that your life tracking almost happens automatically on their platform. Not only that, but they just added automatic sleep tracking and passive heart rate monitoring.

In the end, the UP bands are also the best looking and are incredible thin when compared to Fitbit and Nike options. That’s not to say that Jawbone’s UP bands are perfect (they are far from it), but they seem to have the best overall package, at least to me.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 Features New X12 LTE Modem Capable of 600Mbps Download Speeds

Along with their announcement for Quick Charge 3.0, Qualcomm also announced last night additional news related to the modem inside the new Snapdragon 820. Not only will the 820 be Qualcomm’s most powerful mobile processor ever, but they put the most advanced modem they’ve ever designed in it. We are talking about an X12 LTE modem that is capable of producing download speeds up to 600Mbps and upload speeds around 150Mbps.

This new X12 modem is 33% faster than the X10 LTE modem inside the Snapdragon 810, which makes sense since the X12 falls in the LTE Cat.12 arena, as opposed to the X10’s Cat.9 capabilities. The new modem also supports 802.11ac 2×2 MU-MIMO, “which fundamentally changes how Wi-Fi works, Snapdragon 820 can support Wi-Fi speeds that are two-to-three times faster in crowded areas.” It even will support 802.11ad WiFi (yes, ad is an upgrade over ac), the latest advancement in WiFi tech.

Finally, the Snapdragon 820’s X12 LTE modem also allows it to smartly/automatically choose between LTE and WiFi depending on signal quality and internet reachability. This is important for the future of calls, where we are seeing VoLTE and HD video calls start to work there way into mainstream carriers. The tech behind the X12 modem allows these hand-offs to happen without your calls dropping, of course.

There is a whole bunch of other information related to the 820 and its new modem at the source link below. If you like to geek out on download speeds and modem hand-offs, be sure to check it out.

Via: Qualcomm

Verizon’s go90 Beta Available for Download, but Don’t Bother

Verizon’s go90 video streaming application, that the company has been hyping up forever, is now in the wild thanks to a beta release. The app’s goal is to create a social experience around video genres, such as Sports, Comedy, News, and other various topics. However, Verizon must have forgotten there are already a ton of other services available that do the same thing.

When booting up go90, you sign up (email, birthday, username, etc), select a few genres you are interested in, then to get you started, the app automatically follows people and channels you may find interesting. From what I saw, go90 is the worst kind of mix between Facebook’s New Feed and the dark side of YouTube. All of the videos found on go90 could be found somewhere else, such as prank videos and sports clips, and the social aspect of the service does not seem all too inviting.

The beta is downloadable by all, no Verizon account needed. While trying it out for a day may be fun, I get the sense that go90 won’t be at the top of the Google Play download charts anytime soon.

Try it for yourself, if you have nothing better to do.

Download Link

Via: go90

Cheers Craig!

HTC Hosts a Bunch of “Hot” Deals Like 40% Off Nexus 9, 50% Off RE Camera

For the rest of today (up until 11:59PM PT), HTC is hosting a a bunch of “Hot” deals on a handful of its products. You’ll find the One M9 at 25% off, plus it still comes with a $100 Google Play credit. The Nexus 9 is 40% off, while accessories, including the RE Camera, are 50% off.

Again, the deals run through tonight at 11:59PM Pacific. If you need anything, be quick about it.

HTC Hot Deals Link

An Update on Activating Moto X Pure Editions at Verizon

A week ago, just as Moto X Pure Edition orders were arriving on doorsteps, Verizon confirmed to us that they were ready for Motorola’s new unlocked phone and that stores would be able to activate them. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case just yet for many of you who are attempting to get the phone activated on Big Red’s network.

We reached back out to Verizon to see if they could provide an update on the status of the situation and were told that the phone is indeed certified and supported, but there is some sort of issue that they are working to resolve with Motorola in order to get the activation process up and working.

The short statement is below.

“Moto X Pure Edition is certified and supported for activation on Verizon’s network. We are working with Motorola to resolve the activation issue by Friday Sept. 18.”

My guess is that IMEIs for the Moto X Pure Edition from Motorola haven’t been loaded into Verizon’s systems yet and that’s why phones can’t be activated. While I don’t know the process for making that happen, it seems like something that can happen quickly if the parties involved make it happen.

Verizon says they hope to resolve it by Friday. For everyone’s sake, I hope it’s even quicker – people have brand new phones they want to use.

APK BRO™ - Download APK Android Apps

Sponsors

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Mid-Range HTC One A9 Reported to Launch in November, Features 5″ FHD Display and Snapdragon 617

Via: @evleaks

Related Stories

OnePlus 2 Unboxing and Re-Tour…

Related Stories

Reminder: Last Chance to Enter the Double Nexus Giveaway, Win a Nexus 6 and 9

Related Stories

Snapchat Brings Selfie Lenses and Paid Replays in Latest Update

Related Stories

Nova Launcher Beta Update Normalizes Odd Icon Sizes, Adds Marshmallow Search Bar

Via: Nova Launcher Beta

Related Stories

Report: Samsung to Launch “Foldable” Smartphone in 2016

Via: G for Games | Weibo

IMAGE

Related Stories

Spotify Running Now Available for Android Devices

Via: Spotify

Related Stories

I’ve Spent a Week With the Moto X Pure: Ask Me Questions.

Related Stories

Deal: Jawbone UP3 is Just $119 Today Only ($60 Off)

Related Stories

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 Features New X12 LTE Modem Capable of 600Mbps Download Speeds

Via: Qualcomm

Related Stories

Verizon’s go90 Beta Available for Download, but Don’t Bother

Via: go90

Cheers Craig!

Related Stories

HTC Hosts a Bunch of “Hot” Deals Like 40% Off Nexus 9, 50% Off RE Camera

Related Stories

An Update on Activating Moto X Pure Editions at Verizon

Related Stories

Related Articles

Samsung Galaxy S4 Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials

Topic Panda