If you thought SwiftKey for Android was already smart and intuitive, you’ll be excited to know the company has just finished working on a product which it claims is even smarter. SwiftKey Neural Alpha has made its way to the Google Play Store, and instead of using word frequency calculators (n-gram model) to predict your next words, it’s more contextually aware of the sentence you’re typing…
Hangouts 4.0 hasn’t been around that long, but according to a tip from Derek Ross, version 5.0 will be launching imminently with a handful of important improvements. Most of the improvements seem to center around speed and efficiency. Ross posted the following list of features to his Google+ profile, suggesting we might see some visual differences as well as performance improvements:
Visual changes include a new Hangouts splash screen as well as making the ‘signed in as’ pop-up white, giving it a cleaner look. What’s more, GIFs now work for the first time, so you’ll be able to annoy your friends and contacts with animated pictures, if you like.
We’re not sure when the update is going to drop, but the last couple of points are a good indication that it’s coming very soon. The Dogfood icon being removed suggests that internal testing is completed and that it’s ready for public use.
Last week we told you that a teardown of the latest version of Google Photos revealed some interesting new features: album collaboration, people labeling, Chromecast support, and more. Now we’ve learned thanks to a new report that Google is planning to make these exact three features official at its Nexus and Chromecast event tomorrow…
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Earlier this year, a release of Google’s app for Android hinted at future ability to use voice search and commands without an internet connection. Offline voice commands could be used for a number of functions, and are now already be up and running for some Android users with the latest Google app installed…
UPDATE: One of our readers, with experience of using Betabound commented the following: “Centercode, who runs Betabound, has been around for over a decade running software/hardware betas. I have been through numerous tests with them. I understand the skepticism but this is a legit company.” Perhaps then, we can be a little less skeptical of the beta test.
Apple shocked the tech world back in June when it announced that its music streaming service, Apple Music, would be making its way cross-platform. Up until now, the company has kept all of its mobile products in-house, and hasn’t offered anything on the Google Play Store except for the ‘Move to iOS’ app, and we all know how that turned out. In an unusual move, it looks like Apple may have signed up a third party to get early beta testers onboard its first media app for Android.
Members of Betabound.com have received emails inviting them to apply to test Apple’s music app for Android. Little detail is given in the email, except a short paragraph and a linked questionnaire which hopeful testers have to fill in. Betabound, a Centercode company, proudly labels the test as an exclusive.
We’re excited to invite you to come test Apple Music for Android. If you’re a current Android user that would like to join the beta for the new music streaming service, you won’t want to miss this opportunity. To learn more and apply, click the link below. Best of luck! The Betabound team.
There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. First off, Apple tends to manage its beta testing in-house, even to the point of offering a public beta of iOS 9 to anyone and everyone who wanted to try it before launch. Why then would it go with a third party company, especially one which is seemingly so unknown? It definitely seems weird. Perhaps the Android community’s response to its last app prompted the Cupertino-based tech giant to try a much quieter launch of Apple Music for Android. Perhaps it only wants a small number of testers onboard, and so isn’t announcing anything. Perhaps, it’s just a way for Betabound to get their name out there and isn’t a genuine beta test.
Google released version 1.5 of Google Photos for Android last week, and there weren’t any notable user-facing features. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any additions at all in the new app — these updates very often lay the groundwork for features set to launch in the near future. Cody Toombs pulled this update apart himself, revealing that Photos is preparing for quite a few new additions including album collaboration, people labeling, Chromecast support, and more…
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Since the rise of science fiction movies, we’ve dreamed of being able to communicate to people through our wrists. In almost every case of wrist-worn gadgetry, fictional or real, that dream is met by voice dictation, or video calling. We don’t get excited by the prospect of typing in long messages to people using a tiny onscreen keyboard. Despite several attempts by tech companies in the past, it just hasn’t caught on. So it’s a little baffling when a company decides to release an app for smartwatches with the keyboard as its primary input method. I went hands on with Messages for Android Wear to find out if it was any good…
Google is rolling out an update to its self-titled app for Android, bringing it up to version 5.3. It’s available to download for free for anyone running Android 4.4 or later, bringing a fresh look to the standard Google Launcher. For those running Android ‘M’ Dev Preview 3, the update also brings one of Marshmallow‘s most exciting features: Now on Tap…
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Spotify Running, which originally launched on iOS a whole 4 months ago, has finally made it to Android. From today, Android users will be able to fire up the Spotify app, open the Running feature, and have the music streaming service find music that matches tempo with the pace of their jog…
It’s yet another example of Android support getting put on the back burner, but at least it’s here, right?
As per the official Spotify blog:
Since the launch of Spotify Running, millions of you have laced up and hit the road together with the best musical motivation out there.
Today we’re thrilled to be bringing the same great experience to our Android users.
With Spotify Running, we’ve combined the best music on the planet with recommendations based on your listening history, multiple-genre playlists as well as original running compositions.
Simply select your tempo and start running. We’ll match the perfect music in time to your step to help you go the extra mile.
Spotify Running has been available in the beta version of the Spotify app on Android for a few months now — it’s somewhat odd that it took that long for the feature to be graduated to the full version of the app. Nonetheless, users of the main Spotify app should start seeing the feature roll out today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fZBqV_yMq4
In celebration of its 20th birthday, eBay has launched a brand new mobile app with a new focus on selling and a more attractive and intuitive user interface. eBay describes the app as having a “more browsable design” with much easier access to features like top deals, promotions and events. What’s more, the seller dashboard has been refreshed to offer a more personalized look at how well you’re doing and give you relevant tools, tips and guides on how to improve.
Focused on creating more vibrancy in our marketplace, we’ve elevated selling within eBay 4.0, and have designed a more personalized experience based on a seller’s level and activity. The new app offers more information to help first-time and new sellers be successful, and a new dashboard for more regular sellers with at-a-glance activity updates. We are passionate about creating a great experience for our buyers and enabling the continued success for our sellers.
eBay 4.0 offers a new Activity feed giving consumers personalized updates on the objects and goods that are important to them. Alongside that is the new Shop tab, with a bespoke feed of items tailored for each individual user. eBay 4.0 will be available to download from the Google Play Store from today.
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LinkedIn, the popular social network for connecting business people, has announced that its messaging experience is getting a serious design overhaul from today. Unlike the previous inbox, messages will no longer follow a traditional email format. Instead, it’s turned towards a messaging app design similar to Facebook Messenger.
LinkedIn has built everything from scratch, from the ground up with a cleaner, streamlined look with a brand new chat-style user interface. You can chat with contacts individually or send group messages, and conversations are organized around the people who are important to you. What’s more, you’ll be able to send documents, images, stickers, emojis and GIFs in your messages.
Starting today, we are rolling out a new messaging experience on LinkedIn that offers an easier and more lightweight way to have professional conversations with your connections. We know many of you have been asking for this ability and we’ve taken a thoughtful approach to reflect the evolving ways professionals are communicating with one another today, as well as, the different ways our members are interacting with each other across our international markets.
From today, the new messaging experience will by rolling out to English-speaking LinkedIn members across the globe on iOS, Android and on the web. If you have LinkedIn installed on your Android smartphone, check the Play Store for updates and you should find one waiting for you over the coming days or weeks.
To coincide with the launch of its brand new OnHub wireless router, Google has released the companion app on the Play Store. The app is notable for several reasons. Firstly, it reveals some of the setup details and secondly, the router management options look so ridiculously simple, they almost seem too good to be true.
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It looks like Google has been working behind the scenes to make searching for apps a much more intuitive and better-looking experience on Android. As spotted by the folks at Android Police, if you go searching for apps from the default search feature in Android, you’ll now get a very attractive, Material-themed grid of apps. Although it doesn’t work for every single term, simply search for anything followed by ‘apps’ and it’ll bring up a grid of downloadable options from the Google Play Store.
Last night, Vine announced that it’s bringing greater music controls to its popular video-looping app on Android. While users have always had the ability to include audio of any kind in their Vines, this new update makes it far more precise. The biggest update is a feature called ‘Snap to Beat’ which enables users to more easily create a seamless loop, or perfect loop where you can’t tell the beginning of the audio from the end.
To get Snap to Beat working for you, choose a song by tapping on the music note in the ‘Details’ screen. Snap to Beat automatically identifies how much of the song to use to make a seamless loop, then trims the video to fit that music clip. If you don’t want it happening auto-magically, you can switch off Snap to Beat and edit the audio manually yourself. This gives the user complete control over how much sound to include in the Vine, and which part of the video it should play over.
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As a part of Vine’s new-found focus on music, there’s also a new audio discovery tool within the app. First up is a new ‘Featured Tracks’ section which you can explore when you create a new Vine and tap on the music note to add a song. What’s more, you can use Vine to detect what you’re listening to while watching other Vines. If a musical note icon appears beneath a Vine, tap on it, and it’ll show you the name of the track, and the name of the artist performing.
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The Music on Vine updates will be rolling out to Android from today and will be available to download from the Play Store for free.
Pocket is one of the most popular read-it-later apps available on Android, and the service is about to get better (or perhaps worse depending on your viewpoint), with the public launch of recommendations. The feature has been tested in beta for some time, and is now officially out in the wild and will be available to users on Android, iOS and on the web. Pocket describes it as “high-quality content without the noise”.
Recommendations takes the absolute best content being saved across Pocket and tailors it to your own saving and reading habits. The result is a feed that’s completely unique and personalized to you, and is filled with the most interesting articles and videos you might have missed otherwise.
Instead of being a collation of the most viewed web pages from the web, recommendations are based on how popular stories are with people with your interests. Since they’re already curated by humans, the company hopes that helps tune out the noise. For instance, if you happen to save a lot of technology articles to read later in Pocket, you’ll be served up tech-based recommendations. What’s more, if you find a recommendation you don’t like, just press the ‘X’ and remove it from your feed.
Recommendations are currently available in English only currently, but the company states that it is working on a wider roll out in more languages. You can download Pocket 6.0 for Android from the Google Play Store for free.
As part of its Android M announcement, Google showed off its Now on Tap feature which will allow you to get contextual information within any app or screen just by pressing the home button for a few seconds. With Marshmallow not set to hit the public until later this year, it gave Microsoft a chance to beat Google to it. And it has done just that in its latest Bing app for Android.
Google finally announced the name to its upcoming mobile operating system a couple of days back. Android 6.0 will officially be dubbed ‘Marshmallow‘, and the developer preview is available to download for developers with Nexus phones. If you don’t have a Nexus phone, you’ll be glad to know you can still get a small taster of what it’s like to use Marshmallow by downloading the Google Now Launcher used in the latest beta software.
Google pushed an update to its Android Auto app today refreshing the home screen to bring bigger, easier to see cards, particularly when using navigation and playing music. Previously, all stacked cards were of equal height. Now, the top activity card is double the height of any of the cards below. Being bigger not only makes them easier to see, but also easier to interact with on the touch screen.
As well as the updated user interface, there are a few bug fixes and performance improvements. You can download the fresh update right now from the Google Play Store. It’s a free update and requires Android 5.0 or later to work. Obviously, you’ll also need a car with a compatible built-in system, or a compatible after-market system.
You can find out more about Android Auto, including compatible vehicles, over at android.com/auto.
Yesterday, Bethesda finally launched the long-awaited Fallout Shelter for Android and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. In this video, I take you on a brief walkthrough and tour of the initial game stages and how to play. If you haven’t already, you can download the game for free from the Google Play Store right now.
After what seems like an age waiting with anticipation, Fallout Shelter has finally been released for Android. The popular title landed on the Play Store this morning and is available to download for free.
Fallout Shelter’s basic concept is to build yourself a subterranean paradise in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. When I say paradise, I mean a vault where your responsibility is to build, repopulate and defend your world from attacks. Not exactly as glamorous as The SIMs, but perhaps more enjoyable for that very reason. As per the Play Store description:
BUILD THE PERFECT VAULT
Create a brighter future…underground! Select from a variety of modern-day rooms to turn an excavation beneath 2,000 feet of bedrock into the very picture of Vault Life.OVERSEE A THRIVING COMMUNITY
Get to know your Dwellers and lead them to happiness. Find their ideal jobs and watch them flourish. Provide them with outfits, weapons, and training to improve their abilities.PROSPER
A well-run Vault requires a variety of Dwellers with a mix of skills. Build a Radio Room to attract new Dwellers. Or, take an active role in their personal lives; play matchmaker and watch the sparks fly!EXPLORE THE WASTELAND
Send Dwellers above ground to explore the blasted surface left behind and seek adventure, handy survival loot, or unspeakable death. Find new armor and weapons, gain experience, and earn Caps. But don’t let them die!PROTECT YOUR VAULT
From time to time, idyllic Vault life may be disrupted by the dangers of post-nuclear life. Prepare your Dwellers to protect against threats from the outside…and within.Vault-Tec has provided the tools, but the rest is up to you. What are you waiting for? Get started building your Vault today for FREE.
If you want to try it out, be sure you’re running at least Android 4.1 or later and then head on over to the Play Store. It’s free, and supported by in-app purchases ranging from $1-$20.
Hitman creators, Square Enix are about to launch their next mobile title for Android. Lara Croft GO will hit the Google Play Store on August 27 and will feature similar gameplay to the popular Hitman GO title. The developers promise beautiful graphics and challenging stages:
Square Enix Montréal today announced that Lara Croft GO™, the follow-up to the hugely successful Hitman GO® mobile game, will release on mobile platforms Aug. 27. The turn-based puzzle game offers a never-before-seen take on the iconic franchise, featuring challenging levels, gorgeous visuals and a mesmerizing soundtrack.
If it’s anything like the Hitman GO title, the Tomb Raider inspired version is going to be frustratingly addictive and could be one of the surprise hits of the year. Hitman GO was incredibly well reviewed. Just browsing through the Play Store listing shows glowing reviews. And — for once — it’s not a freemium game. So let’s hope Lara Croft’s version sticks to that pricing model.
As well as announcing the impending arrival of Tomb Raider GO, Square Enix has joined with Crystal Dynamics to launch an art contest. Artists are being invited to submit their own original Lara Croft GO-inspired artwork between now and August 21. The top 10 entries will be selected by a panel of “experts” and will be showcased during a party at PAX Prime in Seattle on August 28, one day after the game lands on the Play Store. Of these 10 entries, three will be selected to go to auction, with the proceeds going to Child’s Play, a “game industry charity”.
If you want to submit artwork, simply email info@square-enix-montreal.com with the subject line ‘Lara Croft GO Art Contest Submission’, along with your name.
Runtastic, developers of several popular fitness apps, today announced it has been acquired by Adidas for € 220 million. The move, according to a press release from both companies, will help Adidas bolster its efforts in offering connected products and its vision of “the convergence of sport, digital and data in an always connected and always on-demand world.” Or in other words, Adidas now has a strong software component with a large user base to integrate with its digitally enabled sports products including balls, wrist devices, apparel, and shoes.
Adidas already offers several of its own mobile apps that cross over into Runtastic’s territory, such as the miCoach train & run app and the Adidas Go app that integrates with Spotify to offer music matched to a user’s running pace. Runtastic, however, has around 20 mobile apps related to fitness and health and claims around 140 million downloads and 70 million registered users. The company also offers a few hardware products, including a scale and fitness tracking devices, that compliment its fitness apps that integrate with other third-party hardware including Android Wear devices and other wearables.
It’s unclear what Adidas has planned for the company and its apps, but Runtastic will be joining the Adidas teams and building new experiences as part of the brand going forward. What exactly that means for the Runtastic brand and integration with Adidas products remains to be seen.
The rollout of Android Auto, Google’s smartphone-based infotainment system for the road, is in full swing as several automakers and developers are announcing specific cars and apps to support the feature. Audibooks.com is the latest to release an Android Auto-compatible app with the most recent update to their Audio Books app for Android.
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Rovio has finally released the long-awaited official sequel to the original Angry Birds mobile game. Since the first title saw phenomenal success on the iOS App Store, the game has gone on to amazing heights. With several official movie tie-ins, including the popular Star Wars titles, Angry Birds is the ultimate success story of the mobile app world. And now, Angry Birds 2 is available to download.
The game retains the key features, in that you fling birds with a catapult in an attempt to destroy blocks and kill green pigs. However, it does have some new features. Some levels now have multiple stages to complete, and you have to choose which bird to launch next. You can challenge other players and there are even more magic spells too, to help you complete difficult levels. As always, there are plenty of pig bosses to wipe out.
It’s free to download and has the expected in-app purchases. Download the app from the Play Store.
You can watch the official gameplay trailer here, if the embedded player doesn’t work, head on over to the YouTube page:
