One of the biggest reasons I, and a lot of other Android users, would want to root their smartphones and tablets, and install a custom recovery, is the ability to take nandroid backups. The stock Android recovery console allows you to only either wipe data/factory reset, or to install legitimate, signed ZIP updates for the Android operating system. Custom recoveries offer you so much more, one of which is the ability to back up all the partitions – system, data, cache et al – which lets you restore the device to the state it was originally in.
Being able to use a keyboard of your choice, and not just by aesthetics, but a completely unique package with a distinct feature set of its own, is one of the biggest freedoms of owning and using an Android device. I have used both the iPhone and iPad as my daily drivers, and while iOS boasts one of the best touch-based character entry mechanisms in the market, there’s still a lot to wish for in the stock iOS keyboard. Even with a jailbroken device, you don’t get a really staggering number of choices, and definitely nothing close to what Google’s droid has to offer. Android simply leaves iOS biting the dust on this front.
Flashing new ROMs every now and then is something that’s almost a must for any Android owner that wants to modify their device in any way, and if you’re using custom ROMs, this phenomenon is going to be even more frequent. Developers continually release newer versions of their offerings at a very fast pace, and more often than not, you may find yourself flashing a new ROM every other day. While all of this is both exciting and rewarding, you may at times run into some problems with the firmware that you’re trying, ultimately resulting in the need to go back to a stock one. Samsung devices here have a clear advantage over the rest of the crowd, in that they have Odin3 – the magical tool that lets you download stock Samsung ROMs and flash them to your Android phone with ease. While other manufacturers do prefer offering something similar, Odin3 remains, by far, the easiest to use.
Some developers in the Android community had been inspecting the internal CSC file of their Galaxy Note 2 smartphone in order to find out what possible features and handy little shortcuts Samsung had decided to prevent users from gaining access to in different localities on the phone. In an extension of that work it seems that the same developers have dedicated a little bit more time to the cause and have provided a list of modifications that can be made to the system CSC file in order to enable a few hidden and secret features that lie dormant on the international Galaxy Note 2.
Ever since Temple Run took the casual gaming world by storm, there has been a marked spike in the number of similar, running-based titles. TheEndApp, Agent Dash, and PITFALL! are prime examples of titles which have enjoyed great success by adopting the tried-and-tested motif, the latter of which has finally debuted over at the Play Store. PITFALL!, as many veteran gamers will be more than aware, is a classic in its own right, and having left millions of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users hooked on its challenging levels, those on Android can now lose themselves in the immersing world of PITFALL!
Thanks to the release of the iPhone 5 back in September, Apple has captured a 53 percent of the smartphone market in the United States - the very first time it has passed the 50 percent barrier. The number crunching was carried out by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, and its most recent sales data figures show the Cupertino company's market share has increased dramatically on the 37 percent recorded at the same period of last year, and takes into consideration the 12-week period ending on November 25th.
Flipboard is lauded in the mobile industry as a prime example of how the touch interface can make the gathering and reading of content as pleasurable as possible. The app flows like a magazine both aesthetically and functionally, and while Apple's iPad has been supported from the get-go, Flipboard has dragged its heels in bringing support for those on a wide selection of Android tablets. Today, however, the wait is over, and having only recently launched a series of new features for its iOS app, Flipboard has now been tailored to those wielding a tablet of the Google software variety.
A MacBook Pro, Air or iMac may come pre-installed with the latest version of OS X, but it hasn't always been the case. Once upon a time, when buying a new Macintosh computer, users would have been opting to let their computing needs be handled by the old Macintosh operating system that may have served its purpose at the time and formed the foundation for what we have today. But it was in no way as functional or as aesthetically pleasing as OS X Lion or Mountain Lion. We have seen in the past that some people do love that nostalgic trip down memory lane and now that is possible with the Mini vMac emulator software for Android on the Play Store.
Microsoft may be planning to bring its revered Office productivity suite to a bunch of new devices in the near future, but hitherto, a service by the name of CloudOn has allowed consumers to use the software on their mobile devices. Today, CloudOn has been updated to version 3.0, and among the refinements in usability, it now boasts support for the iPhone, iPad mini, as well as the Google / ASUS Nexus 7.
A couple of days ago, we learned a new software vulnerability within Samsung's hardware courtesy of a member of the thriving XDA-Developer forums, and at the time, it was classed as a kernel level exploit providing the perfect breeding ground for malicious apps to access physical memory of devices affected. Today, Samsung has stepped out and confirmed the existence of the vulnerability, stating its intent to address the situation as a matter of urgency.
