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.
Since the release of iOS 6, the flaws of the Maps app have stood out like a sore thumb in an operating system which, otherwise, is fairly polished. When it first made its appearance along with the iPhone 5 back in September, people were tripping over themselves to pour scorn on an implementation which was supposed to be the center piece, but following an apology from Apple CEO Tim Cook by means of an open letter, the issue has petered out as consumers have sought alternatives.
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 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.
If there’s one thing that Android makes really good use of, it’s the notification panel. Evolved quite a lot over the new versions, the biggest use I find for the notification drawer (apart from viewing the actual notifications, of course) is quick access to system toggles, which have become so much of a norm that manufacturers are including more and more customized solutions in their stock offerings. Then, there have been AOSP based ROMs like CyanogenMod, MIUI, AOKP etc., that have put as many as 15 toggles in the notification tray, making it almost entirely unnecessary for a casual user to venture inside the Settings menu. With Android 4.2, Google itself seems to have taken a liking to the whole idea, adding versatile quick settings controls in the same drawer. Open source has its advantages, and while your device may not be rocking Android 4.2 yet, you can get a taste of what the toggles feel like, right now.
We live in an age now, whereby if we don't have our smartphones by our side, we feel somewhat naked. Most of us check our devices more than we'd perhaps like to admit, and with notifications coming through from numerous apps at any given time, keeping on top of them all can be something of a headache.
The Nexus 7 from Google has been a real breath of fresh air to the tablet market. Not only does it offer a solid performance on Android Jelly Bean, but its low price has lured in many consumers into grabbing a device they perhaps wouldn't have been able to afford. Google outdid itself by dropping the price of the popular device earlier this week, and while this will no doubt increase general consumer interest and subsequent sales, it has left those who paid the original prices feeling a little underhanded.
Whether you're into Siri, Google Now, Tellme, or Samsung's S Voice, there's little doubt that voice-recognition technology has made great strides in the past year or so. Consumers remain a tad unconvinced, and at present, the standard of voice implementation is certainly not a deal-breaker to most, but like the first grainy VGA cameras we used to see in our mobile phones, we do have a nagging feeling we're soon to become reliant.
If you're constantly messing around and modding your device, you will undoubtedly have hit a snag or two along the way. When you have an issue, but cannot quite decipher what exactly is causing continual crashes, software malfunction or general bugs, things can become very frustrating indeed. In this instance, some - particularly developers - find logcat to be of particular help, as they help ascertain what isn't working, why it isn’t working, the steps that can be taken in order to amend the situation.
