Google Map updated 5.5 for android Improved Check-ins, Ratings and Latitude location history

Google offer a growing number of in-house developed apps for their Android smartphone platform and they know that we, as users, expect a solid experience. We mentioned the improvements that came to the recent update of Google Goggles and now it’s Maps’ turn, for the second time this month.

Google Maps version 5.5 rather than adding features, improves on its existing repertoire. For a start ‘check in’ and ‘rate and review’ buttons have appeared on any Places pages you might pull up. This basically gives you better integration of Latitude and its location logging, alongside quick review access, for when you want to make or break ‘that place you were just at’.

Other amendments include the ability to more easily change your work and home locations for when you want to track how much time you’ve spent at either from your location history. Finally (assuming you’re in one of the 440-odd cities covered by the application), Maps’ transit station pages have undergone a redesign to include upcoming scheduled departure times from various platforms and connecting lines information.

Download Google Maps 5.5 for Android here to try out the new check-in and rating buttons, update your Latitude Location History home/work address, check out a transit station in a nearby city, or just make sure you have the latest version of Google Maps for Android. This update requires an Android OS 1.6+ device anywhere Google Maps is currently available. Learn more in our help center.

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Netflix Android Application, expand for support three more phones

Netflix just got itself a little update in the Android Market. First and foremost, new phones are officially supported, with the LG Revolution, Motorola Droid and Casio G'zOne Commando getting access. That brings the total number of supported devices eight, including the Droid Incredible, Nexus One, EVO 4G, T-Mobile G2 and Samsung Nexus S.
There also are a few bugfixes, including:

• Fixed application failure on startup when phone's embedded storage space is almost full.
• Removed check that prevented attempt to playback on unsupported devices.

And we've noticed that the volume's not as low as it used to be, so that's nice, too. If you've got one of the supported phones, get your download on in the Android Market. We've got links after the break.

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Verizon bonanza: Droid X2, Revolution, Trophy, and Xperia Play hit Big Red today

Verizon is seriously diversifying its portfolio today with the official in-store launch of four new smartphones. Three of them roll up in Android gear, though they all have major selling points beyond Google's software. LG's Revolution is the sole LTE-capable handset of the bunch, bringing with it a 4.3-inch screen and pre-installed Netflix for $250. The Droid X2 undercuts it on price, at $200, but doubles the core count with its Tegra 2 processor and ramps up resolution to qHD (960 x 540). Gaming aficionados can spend the same amount on the Xperia Play from Sony Ericsson, which offers a slideout gamepad and unique PlayStation Certified status. Bringing up the rear is HTC's well-traveled Trophy, a 3.8-inch Windows Phone that accepts it's a little late to the party and therefore slices $50 off its asking price, with a $150 levy before the obligatory two-year contract. What say you -- buy, try, or keep waiting?

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Experience console quality gaming graphics on your Android phone, enter SHADOWGUN

The gaming scene on Android is becoming better by the day but so far most of the titles are ports of iOS versions. However, this new upcoming game will be an Android exclusive and will leverage the capabilities of the latest dual-core chipsets as well as the upcoming quad-core solutions.

SHADOWGUN is a third-person tactical combat game developed by MADFINGER Games, the same people who created Samurai II: Vengeance. The game will be optimized for the current dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processors as well as the upcoming quad-core Tegra (Kal-El) processors and there will be a separate version for each.
Here’s a short description of the game straight from the horse’s mouth:

Authored with the Unity development platform, SHADOWGUN combines tactical combat with third person harrowing action, ushering in a new visual standard for handheld gaming. SHADOWGUN puts players into the role of John Slade, a professional bounty hunter in the year 2350. Slade’s mission: hunt down Dr. Edgar Simon, renowned geneticist and former employee of the trans-galactic corporation Toltech Enterprises. Players must lead “shadowgun” John Slade as he infiltrates Dr. Simon’s mountain fortress and fights his personal army of mutants, cyborgs, and genetically-enhanced humanoids. Using state-of-the-art weaponry, ships, and the assistance of S.A.R.A.—Slade’s personal android assistant. The story is written by award winning author Micah Nathan who has joined the MadFinger team as executive creative consultant for SHADOWGUN.

No release date has been mentioned yet. The game will be available for smartphones as well as tablets that run on NVIDIA Tegra platform and will be available on the Tegra Zone and the Android Market.

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New details on the QWERTY slider Motorola DROID 3 for Verizon

The DROID 3 is another Motorola upcoming smartphone that keeps leaking ahead of its official announcement. We first met it this March along with the already available DROID X2 and the still unannounced Tagra.

Today an anonymous tipster revealed a few more details about the DROID 3.
First and most important it appears that the DROID 3 won’t be an LTE-capable device. Despite Verizon’s aggressive promotion of its LTE network, it seems the DROID 3 won’t join the elite group of LTE smartphones in its portfolio.
The other spicy info concerns the DROID 3 chipset – according to the tipster it should be either NVIDIA Tegra2 or the TI OMAP4430 one, both featuring dual-core processors.
Finally we have some info on the camera department – the smartphone will supposedly pack an 8 megapixel snapper at the back and a 1.3 megapixel front camera for video calls.
We already know from the previous leaks the DROID 3 packs a 4-inch qHD screen, 5-row sliding-out QWERTY keyboard, HDMI port and Android 2.3 Gingerbread ticking inside.
Motorola DROID 3 is supposed to hit Verizon’s stores in June, so I guess its announcement should happen in the next few weeks.


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Rooted Androids not welcome in Google Movie Rental

You rooted your Android, huh? Well, you can leave the popcorn here, there’s no Movie Rental for you. The Google Movie Rental service launched at Google I/O and lets you rent a movie (for around $2) and watch it on your droid smartphone (or PC or tablet if you want).

However it will not be working on rooted devices due to copyright violation concerns.
If you try to watch a movie through Google Movie Rental on your rooted Android you’ll get Error 49. The support page states that:

You’ll receive this “Error 49″ message if you attempt to play a movie on a rooted device. Rooted devices are currently unsupported due to requirements related to copyright protection.

 I’m guessing this is done to stop apps that can just copy the rented movie and let you keep it forever (and share it with others). It’s not an unreasonable concern but it clashes with Android’s open nature – many have rooted their device just to customize it to their liking.
But movie companies are not exactly known for risking their movies get pirated, so we’ll have to wait and see how this pans out. For now though, if you’ve rooted your droid you can’t use Movie Rental – you can try Netflix though.


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Does Hardware in Smartphones Matter?

Silly question. Of course it matters, otherwise we would not be getting 1080p phones and 3D-capable devices with the ability to run applications our PCs ran four or five years ago.

But how much attention do you have to pay to the hardware in smartphones that are on carrier shelves today?

I consider myself a moderate geek and always enjoyed comparing hardware specs and being at the bleeding edge of computer hardware, at least as far as my budget reasoning permitted. That has changed somewhat over the past years, perhaps as a result of the general commoditization of hardware (and growing age.) However, I noticed that I was paying much more attention lately to smartphone hardware, especially as the first dual-core phones arrived.

That was an enlightening moment by any measure. Faster hardware is not necessarily better hardware and it may not matter at all in the grand scheme of smartphone usage.

Several months ago, I purchased an HTC-built G2 phone with an 800 MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. The phone had issues, especially on the battery side, which barely lasted 4 hours under heavy use, but it was a decent phone otherwise. The only performance issue I ever noticed was a boot time of more than 1 minute. Now a phone geek, I could not wait to get my hands on a dual-core phone to see how app performance would improve. So I got a LG-built G2x phone, which uses Nvidia's 1 GHz dual-core Tegra processor. The effect: Boot time is down to less than 20 seconds and Firefox is blazingly fast in JavaScript benchmarks (about 3 times faster than the G2 in Sunspider), but I would still call it the worst phone I ever owned (just behind the RIM Blackberry Pearl).

The touchscreen is less sensitive and a nightmare in games that require accuracy. Application stability is even worse as the default Android browser takes leisurely pauses now and then, the core phone app crashes frequently during dialing and I have gotten used to the fact that my G2X reboots itself three or four times a day. I would love to get by G2 from my girlfriend back, but since she has seen the G2X, my chances aren't that good. I am not going to bash the G2X, even if my criticism is admittedly harsh. This may be a lemon and I am waiting for a replacement device.

The important observation is that the hardware may be, in the current competitive smartphone landscape, a nice-to-have feature, even if you are shelling a lot of money for your gadget and expect the very best from it. The true value of your phone, however, may not be so much single-core or dual-core at this time. It is platform integration. Apple is, conceivably, leading this discipline since it has only one two devices (excluding tablets) that are fine-tuned to work with its software platform. Just like its desktops and notebooks, Apple is recreating an overall experience - and experience that is tough to match by an Android or Windows Phone manufacturer. HTC or LG will never understand Android as well as Apple understands iOS.

A few weeks ago, I was called by a friend who had trouble with his new entry-level Android phone. He was tired of his iPhone, thought it was overkill and did not want to pay AT&T's high carrier fees anymore. However, that opinion changed quickly - he got an Android phone with a 3" screen and learned that Android on a 3 inch screen is a pain in the you-know-what to use. It had a horrible graphics engine and a build quality that suggested Yugo may have returned as a phone. Yes, he should have looked closer before he bought the phone, but it reminded of my LG and the overall lack of dedication to build a device that just makes sense from a usability view.

You can look a fragmentation from different angles - you can defend the Android model and you can attack it in various ways. But you can't lose your attention to detail and it seems that Google has given phone developers too much freedom in creating new devices. Perhaps it is time to pull back a bit and make sure that tougher standards have been met and better phones are being rolled out to market. Inferior hardware can quickly kill a product image, especially the perception of quality. Microsoft has made its fair share of experience here.

Hardware that works in sync with the overall platform makes it clear that faster and newer chips do not necessarily enhance the user experience.

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Is the Toshiba “Thrive” Android Honeycomb tablet just around the corner?

We’ve spoken of Toshiba’s upcoming 10.1″ Android tab on numerous occasions before. It made an appearance at CES and we caught that back in January, specs popped up from BestBuy in early April and a scheduled release was slated for June in Japan.

Now, however it would seem that the Toshiba tab in question might be finally making its way across to the US and not only that, it gets a new name too.
The Japanese market will get their first taste of the Toshiba tab under the guise of the not-so-catchy Regza AT300, doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, right? Although there’s been no official announcement, it looks like elsewhere in the world we’ll be getting our hands on the Toshiba Thrive instead (better than previous possibilities such as the ANT300 and the Antares, thankfully). The source of a name change in the works comes from a 1, 2, punch of clues scattered across the net.
Firstly, Toshiba registered ‘Thrive’ under a trademark mid-April this year, followed by a placeholder page on Toshiba’s US site, currently populated with information based on their Satellite E305 Notebook. Alongside this, Twitter lit up with a number of tweets from a host of actors all talking about shooting a new Toshiba ad, one mentioning the Thrive by name and even suggesting the ad has something to do with zombies, weirdest thing!

The Thrive looks to be a pretty decent slate with a 1280×800, 10.1″ display, an NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core processor, a front facing 2MP camera and a 5MP on the back, a host of ports, including HDMI out, and of course. Wi-Fi. Toshiba already have a feature site for what most certainly looks to be the Thrive (although they don’t mention it by name) which you can check it out here for more shots, features, specs and so on.
Predicted price looks to be in the vicinity of $730, if the Japanese Regza AT300 is anything to go by and the feature site still just says “coming soon”, but until the Thrive gets an official announcement, a true release date and price are still up in the air.


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Angry Birds Rio Beach Volley update is out for Android

Angry Birds Rio is the third installment of the popular game by Rovio. iOS users already got an update to Rio with some Beach Volley action, but now it’s Android users turn.

The update is out for Android and it started off with the Amazon app store at first, but has quickly moved on to the stock Android Market.
As usual the game is free for droid users (unlike us iPhone users, frown) and you can get it here. Or just go on the Android Market through your phone and do it from there.
The game itself is based on a beach and this time you get to knock monkeys off trees. Why not check out the gameplay video for a better idea.





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Take Android Dolphin Browser HD v5.0 Beta for a test drive right now

The next version of the popular web browser for Android was so far available for to a select lucky individuals for testing. But not any more, the v5.0 Beta1 has now become publicly available for everyone to download and try it out for themselves.

The latest version of the Dolphin Browser HD has some useful new additions to its extensive features list. Here’s the list of all the new changes that you can expect from the updated version.



Improved UI
The new version has updated user interface that is more refined and visually appealing.

Speed dial
You now have speed dial functionality in the new tab page, just like in Opera Mobile and Opera Mini web browser. Dolphin Browser HD also shows you the most visited sites below the speed dial for quick access.

Bookmarks sidebar
The bookmarks sidebar feature lets you access the bookmarks, browsing history and most visited sites with a quick press of the bottom left corner of your phone’s display. A quick menu also gives you access to additional functionality.

Sub-folder support

You can now create sub-folders within the bookmarks folder.

Speed and stability improvement
The latest beta has stability updates which improve upon the private beta that was released earlier. The browser speed has also been improved.
To download the latest beta of the Dolphin Browser HD v5.0, click on the source link below.


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Popular SPB Wallet app crosses over to Android, finally [VIDEO]

If you’ve ever used SPB Wallet on you iPhone, Symbian or Windows phone you know very well what it is. In case you haven’t, SPB Wallet is a safe app, which can tend to your private information, such as passwords, credit cards, codes, account logins and everything else you hold dear and wish have always with you, but stored safely in an encrypted form.

The SPB Wallet app even offers cloud syncing with your Gmail account in case you ever lose your phone or need the information on another platform (computer or phone). The app basically has you covered in any foreseeable occasion when you need your personal data with you.

Here are the main features to the SPB Wallet as pitched by SPB themselves:
• Strong security with 256-bit AES encryption
• Automatic wallet lockup (optional)
• Real card data representation
• Customizable cards and templates
• Online templates gallery with 25,000+ most popular cards, and option to order customized cards for FREE
• Smart card fields to call/SMS/email/etc
• Password generator for random passwords that are highly secure
• Quick card search
• Cloud sync with Gmail account
As for the UI of the app itself, it features a simple and easy to use design. When you start off in the app you get the option to create your own personal wallet. From there on you can start creating your credit cards, adding their sensitive information like bank code, pin code, security code, etc. You even have the choice to enter the number of the bank and can choose from thousands of templates for the card itself (you know, so it can look exactly as real plastic one).

The feature I most like is the Gmail sync feature. It means that when you setup an account to sync with (your Gmail account, duh), it uploads a backup of your data online within an encrypted file. The beauty is that even if someone gets to it, they can’t easily open and view it because of the password encryption.
Also if first have the app on iOS and then make the move to Android, you can sync all your sensitive information to the new platform, without the need to enter it all over again.
The app is available at the Android Market and can be yours for about €2.
We even have a SPB Wallet video for you guys to check out. As you’ll see, the interface looks pretty similar to the iPhone’s. The only major difference is that you enter your wallet password with a custom SPB keyboard. Even though we acknowledge there are security reasons for it (on Android all third-party keyboards can potentially double as key loggers), we still find its layout rather clunky – it’s not QWERTY – and entering a strong password that contains letters, numbers and special characters is a royal pain as all three are on separate tabs.
Anyway, enjoy the video…

Press Release

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