This week in your world of Android: Motorola introduced the amazingly cheap Moto E, the hotly anticipated G3 broke cover, LG teased more G Pads, Samsung put a launch date on the Tab S, HTC revealed the beautiful One Mini 2, and we learned the possible launch date of the Android Silver program.
These are the essential stories, the summary of an entire week in just a few words. It’s Android Weekly.
While its competitors are busy fighting each other at the high-end of the market, Motorola is quietly undermining them with cheap, attractive devices. The Moto E, starting from $129, got everyone talking this week, and that alone should worry incumbents.
Buy the Moto E from Amazon ($129)
Just in case you missed all the leaks, LG began teasing the G3 this week, with a video that all but reveals its design, but stops short from giving hints of the phone’s specs and features.
In the week’s other big LG news, the Korean company will release a bunch of new G Pad tablets. Let’s hope they live up to the original G Pad, one of the nicest tablets of 2013.
More leaks completed the picture of the AMOLED-equipped Galaxy Tab S 8.4 and 10.5, and now we also have a launch date to attach to Samsung’s latest tablets. The Korean giant all but confirmed the Tab S line will debut on June at its Premiere 2014 event.
The HTC One Mini 2 is essentially a slightly smaller One (M8), on the outside at least. Its innards are less exciting, but for some people, looks are more important than personality. Who are we to judge?
Notorious leaker @evleaks just confirmed the worst fears of Nexus fans. There won’t be a “Nexus 6″, he says, and Android Silver devices may only launch in February of 2015. Can you wait that long?
What’s the biggest Android story this week? Tell us in the comments.
Circix is a fun little brain puzzler that makes you connect circuits a certain number of times. For instance, if you see a node that says “2″ then two other nodes connect to that specific node. The challenge isn’t necessarily apparent from the start, but eventually it gets much harder to determine which nodes go where.
Here’s how you play the game. On each level there are the aforementioned nodes. You simply swipe between them to create a connection. You cannot delete connections so if you mess up you have to start over from scratch which sounds like a feature flaw but it’s actually a part of the challenge. You have to get it perfect the first time or start entirely over.
There are three difficulties with the only difference between them being the side of the grid. The harder you go, the larger the grid gets. So if the basic size is too easy, just wait because it does get larger and harder. If you find yourself stuck, you can use a hint to help figure out what to do. You get 10 hints to start with and then you must buy more.
Aside from the game mechanics, Circix also features in app purchases. They include ad removal, a couple of hints packs in case you need a hint, more level packs, and tablet levels if you want them. If you don’t intend on spending a dime, you’ll still have about 200 levels to play with and the ads aren’t all that intrusive.
That’s pretty much it. Like we stated earlier this is a simple, but fun little puzzle game. If you’re waiting for an appointment or taking a bathroom time out then it’s a fun little game to have around to waste a few minutes. It has over 200 levels so it will take a while to beat and there are more levels if you want them for a nominal fee.
Check out the last indie app of the day: Monument Valley
Samsung may be the manufacturing king of Android devices, but even this behemoth suffers from the natural fluctuations in the market. The Korean manufacturer is not looking at a very bright year in tablet sales, forcing them to make preparations for the plummeting numbers.
Partners and suppliers have been notified of lower manufacturing numbers in 2014. The company is expecting to sell under 60 million tablets this year. Though this may appear to be a huge number, it’s much lower than the 70-80 million Sammy expected to sell this year. It’s also abysmal compared to the 100 million units the company aimed for in 2013.
Samsung is not the only one suffering. The industry has been dreaming of the day when tablets would completely replace desktop and laptop computers. Tablets have become very successful as desktop computer replacements, but the industry is not seeing this invasion spread as fast as expected.
Market research firm Gartner believes tablet market share will grow by 38.6% this year. Though tablet market share continues to grow, this number is very alarming if we compare it to last year’s 68% in growth. It’s just not a great time for tablet manufacturers.
While Samsung tablets sell more than any other Android tablets, revenue is not as high as Samsung would like. For example, Samsung sold about 12.8 million tablets during Q1, about 30% less than Apple. They only made about $3,422.7 in revenue, though, less than half what Apple made.
Even if Samsung were to sell as many tablets as Apple, they won’t make the same amount of money.
We can only hope Android tablets become more popular as demand for larger mobile devices rises over personal computers. Samsung, and all other manufacturers, will continue to make worthy devices and it seems Samsung is in the right track.
We all have our preferences. Some of you may prefer other manufacturers, but Samsung’s upcoming tablets are looking promising. The Korean giant is getting ready to hold a Galaxy Premiere event next month, where they will announce multiple tablets. These will come in various sizes, colors and configurations, making sure there is something for everyone in the pool.
It won’t be Samsung’s year, though. Sorry, maybe in 2015!
Flappy Bird is gone, Flappy Bird is coming, Flappy Bird this and that! No matter what happens, Flappy Bird just can’t stay off the news and everyone’s conversations. Developer Dong Nguyen is “fed up” with all the Flappy Bird talk, so he has decided to give us something else to talk about – a new game!
Nguyen showed off his new game on his Twitter feed, displaying an image of a boy jumping between buildings. Not exactly a bird going through tubes, but you can definitely tell it’s going the same direction. No other details were given.
We have a love/hate relationship with Flappy Bird. It’s so hard it’s addictive. How can it be so difficult to flap an 8-bit bird between two tubes? The game turned into an overnight hit, ruining our productivity, consuming our time and making the developer completely miserable.
Developer Dong Nguyen was forced to take the game down, only promising he would consider re-releasing it after “making it better”. After months of silence, Nguyen has spoken up and revealed the game is coming back in August!
Dong Nguyen is a game developer at heart, but he never wanted to make a game that destroyed people’s productivity. He spoke up against his own game’s addiction and took it down for the very same reason, even if it did make him very good cash.
Dong doesn’t feel any differently right now. In fact, he has revealed that his new version of Flappy Bird will be different. It will be less addictive and feature a multiplayer mode. We are not sure exactly what this means, but you can expect this jumping game to follow the same moral standards.
I still have the original Flappy Bird app, so I am good until the new one is released.
In a joint statement this afternoon, Motorola Mobility, which is still owned by Google, and Apple have asked the federal appeals court in Washington to dismiss open patent lawsuits against each other. This puts an end to disputes that go back as far as 2010, but does not include any cross licensing deals.
The statement continues with a brief note the Google and Apple have agreed to work together in some areas of patent reform moving forward.
We are all familiar with the ongoing battles between Apple and most of the manufacturers of Android powered devices. In this case, Motorola accused Apple of infringing several patents back in 2010. Apple returned fire with several of its own. In 2012, a Chicago court dismissed both based on lack of sufficient evidence on either end. Just last month the appeals court allowed the case to re-open.
The decision to drop the cases against each other does not extend beyond that of Motorola Mobility and its devices. The ever popular Samsung vs. Apple cases shall remain for the courts to endure.
There has been no announcement as to why the companies have decided to jointly dismiss the cases in the courts. Speculation includes ideas like, as the judge in Chicago had figured, there still is not enough evidence to work with, or that the devices and patents for the cases are no longer of consequence to current product sales.
It can not be overlooked that Google is in the final stages of selling Motorola Mobility to Lenovo. It is entirely possible that Google has coughed up a couple bucks to appease Apple and make these cases go away. Clearing these lawsuits closes out a major liability that would have been acquired with Motorola Mobility, thus smoothing the way for a clean takeover by new owners Lenovo in the months to come. This may have even been a condition of sale between Google and Lenovo, especially considering the confusion that would come about should Google plan to retain the related Motorola patents in the sale, leaving Motorola no longer in ownership of the patents that it is suing over.
One thing is for certain, we are very pleased to hear that Google and Apple will be working together on some areas of patent reform. We look forward to seeing positive results, producing smarter patents and fewer patent trolls gaming the system in the future.
What do you think, should this be viewed as an alliance between Google and Apple, or is this just a short cease-fire on one small front of the overall patent wars?
Welcome back to another episode of Google Play Weekly! This week we talk about a huge Google Play Store update that included a lot of awesome stuff. Plex supports camera upload now. A research project called Cider has iOS apps running on Android. Half-Life 2 and Portal were released for NVIDIA Shield. PortedAPP lets you run OEM skin apps on any device. Finally, here are five Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week!
[Price: Free with in app purchases]
First up this week is an app called Bright Weather and it’s done by the same developers who brought us the insanely popular Beautiful Widgets. At its core, Bright Weather is just another weather app. You can find weather in your area or around the world, view local forecasts, view radar, and some more unique stuff like a weather almanac. What makes the app nice is the design which includes new background images daily and more interactive elements than usual. It’s free in the Play Store right now.
[Price: Free with in app purchases]
Next up is a run little time waster game called Make It Rain. In this game you swipe up on a pile of money to make money, then you spend it on other things that make you money. Every action in this game only serves to make you more money. Except the FBI spin wheel, which actually just takes away your money. It’s a lot of fun in short runs and it’s definitely something a little different. It’s also free.
[Price: $3.99]
Monument Valley is an optical-illusion based puzzle game that’s both fun to look at and to play. The level design in this title is one of a kind and while the game is pretty short, very few people seem to be regretting spending the $3.99 the game is going for in the Play Store. The music, game play, and art work all seem to seamlessly blend together in a stunning presentation that you can enjoy with your eyes and your ears. If you have $4 to spend, give this one a shot.
[Price: $1.99]
Next up is Per App Modes which is one of the best root apps ever. It was updated to version 2.0 which added bug fixes, performance improvements, a polished up UI, multi-selection support, and many other smaller UI and performance tweaks to make things better. For those who may not know, Per App Modes is a root app that lets you set the maximum and minimum CPU speeds on various apps along with other variables. This can help improve performance on heavy games, save battery on less CPU intensive apps, and give you more control over how your device acts. It’s a $1.99 and if you’re root user, you should go give this one a look.
[Price: Free for a limited time]
Last up this week is an app that’s perfect for travelers called Grab My Charger. The premise for this app is simple. It uses your phone’s GPS and an alarm to make sure that you grab your charger when you leave. It seems useless for normal folks but if you’re traveling, leaving your phone charger behind sucks. So what you do is set the alarm when you plug in your charger and if you leave without it, the app will send you a notification. It’s free for a limited time so check it out now!
