Have I told you about the sheer variety of launchers available on Android? If you’ve read previous posts by yours truly, I’m sure you’ve already hear me this. There are all sorts of launchers that cater to different user needs. You’ve got ones that promise the best performance, ones that offer the best set of features and ones that claim to offer the best of both. Other launchers are usually ports of customized launchers from OEMs like Samsung, HTC, LG and Motorola.
The fact our mobile devices offer various types of connectivity is a wonderful thing, since it allows us to connect to the web with relative ease, lessening the need to open a notebook or fire-up a desktop computer. The convenience doesn't come without its drawbacks, however, and if, for example, you leave Wi-Fi connected indefinitely, you'll find your battery isn't as accommodating as it perhaps should be.
Last month, we notified you of the soon-to-drop Dark Night Rises game, a supplementary offering to the final edition of Christian Bale's Batman trilogy. The title will release for both Android and iOS, both of which are expected to arrive next Friday, 20th July - a day after the movie hits the cinemas worldwide.
Google has been branching out beyond its famed Maps app for the past couple of years in order to offer its customers a more well-rounded and feature-rich navigation experience. With Apple ousting Google Maps from iOS - a large source of the Web company's revenue - the work Google has put into enhancing its own services has been evident.
Facebook, although the world's number one social network, has failed to capitalize fully on the mobile market, and its apps for each of the respective three big mobile operating systems have left a lot to be desired. Mark Zuckerberg's company is always releasing updates for each platform, and despite usually amending bugs from the previous iterations, always seem to have a multitude of new, prominent performance issues.
The British Broadcasting Service, or BBC, is renowned worldwide for its eloquent, objective news publications, and with this year's Olympic Games being held in London, it was only right the BBC, often referred to as the Beeb, would deliver its own app designed especially for the games.
Android is, by a long shot, the most customizable of the three major mobile operating systems. With most modders and developers congregated over at XDA Developers and RootzWiki, it's one of the most thriving communities of all, allowing Android users to customize and enhance their device's software to the nth degree.
As with Instagram, which was recently bought out by Facebook for a whopping one billion dollars, I often wonder whether the guys over at Rovio could have predicted just how successful their mobile title Angry Birds would grow to become. Beginning on iOS, the title is now available on most platforms facilitating casual gaming, with Microsoft's Xbox 360, the Sony PlayStation 3, and Nindendo's 3DS also soon to join the party, as we revealed yesterday.
One of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean biggest new features – other than the vastly smoother user interface, significantly improved voice actions, more powerful notifications, offline voice typing – is the new predictive keyboard. Just like the 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard, the new keyboard has been ported to older versions of Android for everyone to use. Check it out after the jump.
Using Twitter, perhaps more so than any other social platform, seems perfectly matched to the mobile market. Everything said is within the 140 character limit - fending off those who like to broadcast an unabridged version of their life story, and it has overtaken the RSS reader in allowing users to keep up with the news feeds they really want to follow.
