Google Creative Labs releases ‘Meter’ live wallpaper that displays real-time phone stats
Google Creative Labs has just released another of their so-called “Android Experiments”, this time however, instead of an app, they created a live wallpaper that displays real-time info of your smartphone’s stats. This includes signal strength, notification count, and battery life, and uses colorful and cool-looking geometric shapes that adaptively change.
Meter is just like any other wallpaper, however unlike most of them, it provides you with useful info about your phone stats. Meter is applied just like any other live wallpaper, however you will have to allow notification access for full functionality. The wallpaper switches between three different wallpapers that display a different stat randomly every time you lock your device. There is a battery wallpaper that has a circle inside a larger one which gradually shrinks as your battery drains. A signal design which is an inverted triangle that fills up as your WiFi signal strength increases. Finally, bars in a square across the middle of the screen represent the number of notifications you currently have. All three wallpapers have a minimalistic and clean design, and use your smartphone’s accelerometer to move around as your phone moves.
Via: AndroidPolice
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Disney removes many popular games from the Play Store
Disney has removed many popular games from the Play Store. Disney says that by removing these games it will allow them to focus on building new and more engaging games for the future.
Some games may possibly be left in the Play Store, but will not be updated ever again. They have removed many games from iOS and Windows Phone 8 too, but the removed Android games are:
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Disney Bola Soccer
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Disney Hidden Worlds
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Disney Infinity: Action!
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Gravity Falls Mystery Shack Attack
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Lost Light
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STAR WARS™: Assault Team
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STAR WARS™: Tiny Death Star
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The Great Piggy Bank Adventure
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Toy Story: Smash It!
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Where’s My Water? Featuring XYY
Disney also wants you to know that “Disney Interactive is not responsible for providing refunds or credits for any virtual items, in-game currency, or other items that may no longer be available once a game is shut down.”
Source: Disney
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Sony has announced which Xperia devices will be getting Android Marshmallow
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Sony has traditionally been quite quick at announcing availability of its software updates, and its made sure to do it again this time around, announcing which Xperia devices will be getting Android Marshmallow. According to Sony, this list includes:
- Xperia Z5,
- Xperia Z5 Compact,
- Xperia Z5 Premium,
- Xperia Z4 Tablet,
- Xperia Z3+,
- Xperia Z3,
- Xperia Z3 Compact,
- Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact,
- Xperia Z2,
- Xperia Z2 Tablet,
- Xperia M5,
- Xperia C5 Ultra,
- Xperia M4 Aqua,
- Xperia C4.
The most notable omission from the list is the just-over-2-year-old Xperia Z1 which received Android Lollipop, but it looks like it’s the end of the road for support of this device. Naturally, this means that the original Xperia Z1 Compact has also dropped off the list – it looks like Sony is following its 2 year support regime to the tee. Apart from promising that it will be available at some point, Sony hasn’t put a date on its update announcement, but presumably this will be announced at a later date.
What do you think about which Xperia devices will be getting Android Marshmallow? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Sony Mobile via Android Police
The post Sony has announced which Xperia devices will be getting Android Marshmallow appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
Twitter Moments have just been released, not to be confused with Facebook Moments
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So apparently ‘moments’ are a thing. Facebook has had something called “Moments” for some time now, but it looks like Twitter has a similar, but different, idea that collates relevant tweets about certain events together. It’s not clear if the curation of these Moments is via an algorithm or someone who actually exists, but these Twitter Moments are supposed to be the “best of what’s happening on Twitter in an instant”. To get to it, if you use Twitter on Android, iOS or desktop and are in the US, you should see a new lightning tab titled “Moments” – from here, you’ll be able to scroll through relevant tweets or other Moments to see the day’s happenings. In fact, Twitter has some dot points on how it thinks you should use Moments:
- When you click into a Moment, you’re taken to an introduction with a title and description.
- Start swiping to dive right into the story, with immersive full-bleed images and autoplaying videos, Vines, and GIFs.
- A single tap gives you a fuller view of the Tweet, which you can favorite, Retweet, and more. A double tap lets you instantly favorite the Tweet.
- The progress bar at the bottom indicates how much more each Moment has to offer.
- Swiping up or down dismisses the Moment and takes you back to the guide.
- At the end of a Moment, click the share button to Tweet your thoughts, and send it out to your followers.
It’s a nice idea, but obviously not nice enough to release to the whole world right now. What do you think about Twitter Moments? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Twitter via Droid-life
The post Twitter Moments have just been released, not to be confused with Facebook Moments appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
New live wallpaper app, Meter, from Google Creative Labs offers real-time statistics from your device
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The Google Creative Labs team has delivered us all a few interesting apps over the last year or so. They brought us Photowall for Chromecast, Tunnel Vision and Lip Swap. Many of them are all a bit off the wall, but show some cool things that can be created. The latest creation to grace the Play Store from the team is an app called Meter.
Meter takes the live wallpaper concept and makes it a bit more useful in an abstract and colorful way. The wallpaper will display three status options on the background: Battery, Wi-Fi / Signal and notifications. Each of the three with cycle through on every unlock of your device. Assuming you enable all three of course.
The code for the app is open sourced so other developers can take it and make even more real-time live wallpapers for the public, or personal, use. One could set it up to display app usage or just missed calls.
The video above is of the battery meter application. The ball is mostly for play, but the smaller it gets, the less power you have available on your device. Same goes for the triangle, the signal level plays well with the gyroscope to give you something to goof off with when sitting idle.
This data-driven live wallpaper displays the battery level, wireless signal and number of notifications of your device in a simple visualization. It cycles through three visualizations with every unlock, and each wallpaper can be manipulated by tilting and moving the device. This simple ambient display creates a peripheral awareness of your phone’s status over the course of a day.
Feel free to direct yourself to the Play Store to pick up the free app and give it a whirl. You can also check out more about the experiment, get the code and find other cool things in the works at androidexperiments.com
http://playboard.me/widgets/pb-app-box/1/pb_load_app_box.js
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Synaptics will bring pressure-sensitive screens to Android phones
Right now, the only way to get a pressure-sensitive screen in a smartphone is to snag an iPhone 6s or wait patiently for the Force Touch version of Huawei’s Mate S. You won’t have to be quite so picky in the near future, though: Synaptics has unveiled ClearForce technology that brings pressure sensitivity to many phones (read: Android). The tech enables the kind of finger-savvy features you’ve already seen in the iPhone and Mate S, such as contextual menus and photo zooming, as well as extra tricks like scrolling and choosing special keyboard characters. Synaptics isn’t saying just which phone makers like the concept, but “leading” brands should launch their ClearForce devices sometime in the first quarter of 2016.
Via: 9to5Google
Source: Synaptics
Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to neutrino ‘flavor’ change
The Nobel Prize for Physics has previously been awarded to scientists for things like the study of the Higgs Boson particle and for complicated work that deals with graphene. This year is no different with Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald coming across a discovery that has the power to change our current understanding of the universe. The two scientists are being awarded the prize for working out that neutrinos have mass. In case you’re not down with physics-lingo, a neutrino is a subatomic particle that travels at (almost) the speed of light and passes through almost anything without effect. In fact, billions of neutrinos are passing through your body as you read this.
In order to detect these quick moving, impossible to distinguish particles, giant tanks of purified water are built underground and on a rare occasion when a neutrino collides with an atoms nucleus, it produces a dim streak of light. Neutrino’s come in three ‘flavors’ (although they don’t carry a taste, just like Domino’s pizza) called electron, tau and muon. It was previously thought that these subatomic particles had no mass and therefore couldn’t change flavors but at a neutrino detector called Super Kamiokande in Japan, it collected evidence that these particles can oscillate, and therefore, change states.
Super-Kamiokande, a detector built 1,000 metres below the Earth’s surface detecting atmospheric neutrinos #NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/WMErqjhKf6
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 6, 2015
[Image credit: Getty Images/Brand X]
Via: IEEE Spectrum
Source: Nobel Prize
Sharp RoBoHoN: a cute humanoid robot smartphone you will want to buy
Sharp’s newly announced RoBoHoN seems like a gadget coming straight out of those April Fool’s Day pranks. And so after giving myself a few slaps in the face and checking multiple calendars, I realized it was just October 6th and kept looking around for more signs of this being some kind of joke… only to find out there were none.
The RoBoHoN seems to be real, and it may be the closest thing to an actual “android”, at least in the consumer market. It’s a bipedal, humanoid robot that works as a smartphone and digital assistant. Of course, it can be used for mundane tasks like making calls and sending emails, but the robot can do much more. All while looking amazingly cute.
As you can see in the video, setting alarms, scheduling reminders and calling cabs is only a phrase away with the RoBoHoN. The system can intelligently recognize your voice and act in accordance. It’s also possible for the unit to use its camera for taking pictures, and the best part is that it needs no camera man. This little robot can move around, so it does it all on its own!
Oh, and about moving around – RoBoHoN can walk, squat and more. This makes its built-in projector an awesome tool, as the android can intelligently point its content at any surface or wall with a few commands.
If all of that was not enough, you also get a tiny 2-inch QVGA (320×240) display for when voice commands are just not enough. Of course, the idea is not to use this as a full fledged smartphone, which is why so little importance was focused on the display. It’s all about that human-like interaction.
The RoBoHoN measures about 19.5 cm in eight and weighs in at about 390 grams. It’s no small product, but it is still mobile, as it does sport 3G, LTE and WiFi antennas. Packed inside you will also find a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC.
And while Sharp made no mention of it, the device does seem to run Android. It’s home and back UI buttons look identical to those in Android, and the notification bar is reminiscent of Google’s mobile OS. It would be a heavily modified version, though.
Don’t you all just want to buy this thing right away?! My poor little heart continues to melt as I realize I probably have no need for this thing. But then again, that has never stopped me in the past. Those interested will have to wait until the first half of 2016, which is when the official release is scheduled to be. There’s no mention of a price point… or global availability. Be sure we will let you know as soon as we learn more, though.
Twitter’s Project Lightning debuts as Moments
Millions of people around the world use Twitter as their source of news. But today, with the introduction of Moments, Twitter actually wants to serve you curated news about what is happening in real-time. This is Twitter’s way of being a creative storyteller.
Please allow Twitter to explain how Moments works:
Tapping on the new lightning bolt tab on your phone opens a list of Moments that matter now. As new stories emerge throughout the day, we continue to update this list. Looking for more? You can also swipe through to topics including “Entertainment” and “Sports” to find more stories from the past few days.
Twitter’s Moments are mostly put together by the company’s own curation team; however, there are multiple partners to provide Moments in their own ways. Bleacher Report, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, FOX News, Getty Images, Mashable, MLB, NASA, The New York Times, Vogue, and the Washington Post are all among Twitter’s partners creating Moments that include images, GIFs, Vines, or videos.
Check out the Moment for the ongoing MLB American League Wild Card Game:
MLB wild-card: Astros vs. Yankees
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Based on the performance of Moments over time, Twitter may not need to second-guess moving on from a Flipboard purchase. It very well may have an in-house solution to deliver events to users without being mixed in with other topics.
Moments is live right now for users of Twitter on Android, iOS, and web devices in the United States. People outside of the United States can still interact with a Moment if it is packed into a tweet, direct message, or embedded location. Twitter says that Moments’ features are heading to additional locations in the coming weeks and months.
Source: Twitter
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Verizon bumps the LG G3 up to Android 5.1.1
Right now, owners of the LG G3 on Verizon’s network are noticing a software update that raises the handset’s version to Android 5.1.1, build VS98535B. The update is sized at 353MB and Verizon has not yet detailed other items, if any, that are included.
Via: Droid Life
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