Whether you love or loathe Facebook Home for Android, its impact on the social networking scene cannot be denied. It's been a hot topic ever since the Menlo Park company sent out invitations to the 'new home on Android' event, and today, it appears as though the launcher has been tweaked to bring official support for the HTC One. Hitherto, anybody trying to install Facebook Home on the HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S4 would have been met with a "not supported" message, but while the latter appears still to be prompting users with the same pop-up, the HTC One seems to be installing without incident.
Carmageddon was hugely popular back in the 1990s, though perhaps due to its controversial nature more than anything else. The automobile combat game spawned many copycats, but Carmageddon still holds a special place in our hearts.
BlueStacks, the company behind a series of apps allowing consumers to run Android apps on a variety of platforms, is about to stake a claim to the apparently lucrative microconsole gaming market, rivaling products such as the Kickstarter phenomenon that is the OUYA gaming console. Having seen just how quickly BlueStacks Android App Player has become a household name thanks to its ability to facilitate the running of Android titles on OS X, Windows and others, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the company looked to expand, and having seen how much hype the OUYA has generated in its short, crowd-funded life, has come up with an alternative device in the form of the GamePop.
The majority of the technology conference talk might be currently centered around Apple's WWDC 2013, and the goodies that it might bring, but we shouldn't be forgetting about the annual Google I/O event that begins on May 15th. To celebrate the fact that the doors of the Moscone will be imminently opening, Google has pushed out some fairly significant updates to the official I/O conference app for Android devices.
A couple of days back, we learned that nightly builds of CyanogenMod 10.1 for Galaxy S4 had become available to those owning the aforementioned mighty device. Such has been the work ethic of the CyanogenMod team, that today, CM10.1 has gotten release candidate for select devices. As long-time users will know, the release candidate is the version dropped prior to the final release, and so provided no major issues are found here, it's fair to presume that an official, final release of CM10.1 may not be too far off.
Facebook's first foray into the Android modding world, Facebook Home for Android, has caused something of a stir in the smartphone world. It has led some people to rave about an otherwise mediocre handset in the HTC First, and it has even caused one jailbreak tweak to be launched that brings Home-liked Chat Heads to iOS.
Although many of us treat our smartphones and tablets as consumption devices for gaming, watching movies and reading books, they are also vital hubs of information, reference and productivity. When planning the day ahead, it's always nice to be able to check the weather at a glance, but often, I find, apps and widgets don't always update as they should, and even if they do seem to be in sync with the present time, they only offer vague coverage of the surrounding town or city.
It's no secret that Apple and Samsung are far from the best of friends. In fact, it's fair to say that they don't like each other at all, one bit, which is probably why Samsung's entire advertising campaign for any new smartphone seems to revolve around bashing the iPhone more than bigging up the latest and greatest from South Korea, see the latest Galaxy S4 TV ads, for example.
We've all heard of drop tests, and there have even been cases of people blending new technology in the past. It's something of a right of passage for new smartphones especially, with the humble drop test not just offering entertainment for those who like to destroy things, but also a real world example of how a phone may survive if dropped whilst out and about.
The Galaxy S4 may have only just been released by Samsung, but already, the Korean outfit appears to be planning a whole host of spin-off versions of its flagship handset. As with last year's release of the S III, which eventually spawned a multitude of different variants, Samsung is looking to widen the appeal of the Galaxy S4 with a sparse line-up. Following in the footsteps of the already-speculated Galaxy S4 Mini and a further, waterproof / dustproof model, SamMobile reports that the company is preparing a Galaxy S4 Zoom, complete with a 16-megapixel camera.
