After a great deal of toil, the CyanogenMod 10 stable ROM has now been made available for those running the LG Optimus Black, along with owners of the Samsung Galaxy S II and Galaxy S III. In addition, those in ownership of the Samsung-made Google Galaxy Nexus, the ASUS-manufactured Nexus 7 slate and the HTC EVO 4G can also join in the fun; more details below.
The only thing worse than having little or no battery left on a mobile device, I find, is knowing you had ample time to put it right. You thought the one hour charge would be enough to fill up, only to find when you're about to leave that your device's juice levels are still not at their peak. We live in the midst of a "there's an app for that" culture, but such has been the advancement of Cydia over the past few years, that the same can now be said for tweaks. If you're looking for a tweak to help you better manage your battery, well, there's a tweak for that.
Were you looking forward to picking up a brand spanking new Nexus 4 smartphone today? You may have been lucky, but chances are, you probably weren't thanks to sell-outs and ordering issues worldwide.
The HTC Droid DNA is really only a surprise in that we now know when it is going to be made available and what it will be marketed as. For all intents and purposes, we knew pretty much all there was to know about the phone before today's announcement, what with it basically being a Japanese J Butterfly - a phone that went on sale a few weeks ago. Still, it's all official now, so let's take a look.
In the world of Android, launchers are really what define the outlook of your phone, even if not the actual performance (although that, too, varies significantly with your choices in this arena). For that very reason, there’s no shortage of really solid and well-equipped launcher/home replacement apps in Google Play Store, or available choices across the ecosystem anyway. Tencent Technologies’ QQLauncher is nowhere a new addition to this collection, but it deserves a particular mention now, since the developers behind the neat and smooth home replacement have made it available in English (prior availability was only Chinese), much to the delight of general user base.
The problem with running on old software is, you're always likely to be left behind. In order to coerce consumers into updating or upgrading, the newest software is developed first, and anybody left behind is, well, simply left behind. While those on Windows 8 can already enjoy Internet Explorer 10, anybody still straggling on Windows 7 will still be waiting for the new version, and although it's not quite ready for end-user release, a preview version has now been dropped by Microsoft.
When Google announced Android 4.2 last month, a lot of people were left unimpressed, mainly because it was an incremental update and not really something that would cause a lot of bells and whistles. Nevertheless, the update did bring a few fresh additions to the Android ecosphere, including the likes of Notification Quick Settings, Gesture typing (trust me, it’s not Swype), Photo Sphere, improvements to Google Now, Miracast support, multiple user accounts for tablets, and more.
Navigating through apps is probably one of the most important aspects of using software on devices like the iPhone or the Galaxy S III. Being able to move to new interfaces, use the features within the app and then navigating back to where we came from is extremely important, but we sometimes take for granted how this is achieved. Android fans generally appreciate the dedicated back button that exists on devices but iOS fans generally need to rely on developers incorporating the navigation methodologies or hope that an app is built around a navigation controller that automatically applies a back button to go to the previous location.
The coming days and weeks represent an extremely exciting and important time for Google and their manufacturing partners, with the official release of a wave of new Android based devices set to go live imminently. The recently announced LG Nexus 4 smartphone, the Samsung Nexus 10, and the new variants of the already heralded Nexus 7 will be available in the marketplace extremely soon and will no doubt cause a spending spree amongst the Android loving community. To make things a little more exciting, testers are starting to see Android 4.2 Jelly Bean pushed through to their test units of the aforementioned devices.
Wow. That was unexpected. In an interesting development today, Microsoft today announced that President of Windows and Windows Live division Steven Sinofsky is leaving the company with immediate effect. Julie Larson-Green is said to be taking over his place at Microsoft.
