Google Translate gets more conversational
Google Translate is notorious for spewing out either oddly worded or overly formal results, but the company says it’s getting better thanks to people’s help. Mountain View’s online translator is now more adept at figuring out informal speech — for instance, it can tell if you want to ask “Is everything alright?” when what you’ve typed in has another more literal translation, as you can see below the fold. That’s all made possible by the volunteers who spend time translating phrases and checking the quality of other people’s submissions on the Translate community website. The company promises to incorporate more and more translations over time as its service learns each language better. Hopefully, that means locals won’t look at us funny next time we try to use it overseas.
[Image credit: shutterstock]
Source: Google Translate
The new Nexus 5 (2015) and Android M will debut together, report says
According to recent rumours, we could be looking at a dual launch of the next version of Android operating system, Android M, and a 2015 version of the Nexus 5.
Codenamed the “LG Angler”, the device is expected to be the successor to the widely popular Nexus 5, and more importantly the flagship device for Android M.
The Nexus 5 (2015) is expected to have a 5.2-inch QHD display, 3GB of RAM, and a Snapdragon 810 processor, the aim of which will be to appeal to those users who thought the Nexus 6 was just too big. It’ll most certainly have the new USB Type-C connector, and come with 32GB or 64GB variants, and potentially even an 128GB model.
A release date pegs the Nexus 5 (2015) towards the end of the year, possibly around October time, with pricing unknown at this point.
Google will use the next device in its Nexus lineup to change its design language for a device – much like Samsung did with their Galaxy S6 – that will see a more premium, durable, build quality.
One thing’s for certain – the tech world want an updated Nexus 5!
The post The new Nexus 5 (2015) and Android M will debut together, report says appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Supreme Court won’t touch Google’s fight with Oracle over Android
When Oracle got a second chance at making Google pay for using Java programming kits in Android, the folks in Mountain View raced to the Supreme Court in hopes of stopping that renewed lawsuit dead in its tracks. Unfortunately for Google, that’s not going to happen — the Supreme Court now says that it won’t tackle the case. The move kicks the issue back to a lower court, and denies a once-and-for-all decision on the extent to which companies can copyright their code. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Google will be on the hook for Android, but the company is going to face a tougher fight than it wanted.
[Image credit: CSA Images/Getty Images]
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Software, Mobile, Google
Source: Wall Street Journal
Editor’s Picks: 11 apps we think you should try right now
One of our favorite things to do here at AndroidGuys is to help Android users get the most from their devices. Whether in the form of app reviews, news and rumors, or something else, we aim to please.
Our Editor’s Picks column is designed to help existing Android owners discover apps and games. What you’ll find below are some of the apps that we at AndroidGuys enjoy using ourselves. Some of what follows are new titles while a few are classics we can’t let go of. We understand that we won’t get every single app that crosses our path but we hope to filter things a bit and pass them along to you. Whatever the case we’re certain you will find something fun to play with this week. Let’s get to it!
Nova Launcher
Nova Launcher is one of the few apps that needs no introduction. From changing your stock looking boring icons to fine tuning the system animations, Nova Launcher is best in its category for doing that. Nova Launcher comes in two flavors: free and Prime. The free version does more than enough for basic users but the paid version includes gestures, unread counts, drawer folders and much more. We definitely recommend you try out this launcher.
reddit is fun
With so many different Reddit clients available on the Play Store, reddit is fun, is our go to client of choice. It looks the closest to the actual web version and is extremely easy to navigate through to get to different sub-reddits. If you’re looking for a Reddit client, be sure to check out reddit is fun. There’s also a beta that you can join, so you can be a part of the cutting edge of updates for the application.
Tapet
Tapet is a wallpaper aggregator (static, not live), but only of Material Design styled wallpapers. It is a first of its kind app that automatically generates high-quality wallpapers. You can either select a random wallpaper or let the app generate one for you hourly or daily. You cycle through the variety of wallpapers with a swipe, you can give them and thumbs up or down and it will tune the suggestions to your liking. The images are of high quality, they look great on my QHD screen. You can even download your favorites.
Notific Lockscrn Notifications
Notific is a lockscreen notification app that displays your notification in an intuitive manner when you need it. It will automatically turn the screen on and display your notification in one of the three themes along with quick action buttons if expansion is enabled. If the phone is in pocket, don’t worry. Notific is intelligent enough to understand that and will not turn on the screen. But if you take out the phone from your pocket within 10secs (customizable) it will turn on the screen for you. Notific comes in free and paid version. The paid version includes Blacklist/Whitelist feature.
Next Lock Screen
Next Lock Screen, a Microsoft Garage project, is a time-saving lock screen for busy professionals. Looking for a way to lock your phone but still have quick access to your apps? Next Lock Screen shows you important notifications at a glance and gives you app shortcuts right on your screen, all while keeping your Android lock screen beautiful and organized your way. Overall, this a great replacement for your Stock Android lockscreen.
Polycon – Icon Pack (Beta)
If you are looking for an Materialised icon pack but don’t want to try Moonshine. We introduce you to Polycon icon pack. This new icon pack offers vibrant and creative icons for your device. Polycon uses the Material Design colour palette as well as the Flat Design colour palette, this is why the colours of all the icons blend in so well with one another. The icon pack is still in beta and lot of icons are not available yet. Overall, this is great icon pack even it is still in beta and we definitely recommend you to try out this app.
NextSong – Music Notifications
Want to know what song just started? Want to skip to the next song, but without leaving your current screen? NextSong Pro notifies you via a heads-up notification when you are listening to music and a new song starts playing on your device. You can see the song and artist name, as well as the album art on the notification. You can skip to next or previous songs, and pause and play music. You can also pin the notification, so it becomes a floating music widget!. The free version only notifies you which song is playing at the moment but the pro version will also give you music controls. We highly recommend you to try this neat little handy app.
Bird Climb
If you were ever caught up in the hype that was Flappy Bird then you’ll know just how addictive and maddening games can become. This one, from BoomBit Games, is right in the same wheelhouse. You’re in charge of a bird that continuously flies left and right. It is up to you to tap the screen to give said bird elevation. Be careful, though, there are obstacles on the walls that you need to avoid. As you fly up the board you’ll be able to pick up gems which can be used to purchase additional birds. Go it alone or connect with friends to see who can get the highest marks. Don’t have any friends? Challenge a random opponent.
Shadow Fight 2
Shadow fight 2 is an amazing fighting game having a great storyline and good gameplay. It involves two players fighting in a one on one battle style game. It has several upgrades and power ups and a hoard of weapons and equipment to choose from. Shadow fight 2 contains in app purchases for all the items as well if you feel you need to advance a bit more faster. Overall, it’s one hell of a game which will keep you fixated for hours!
One More Dash
One More Dash is another casual time waster game that worth’s definitely a try. You just have to touch the screen in order to move the dash “ring” from one circle to other. Nice and straightforward, right? It’s not as simple as it sounds. There is time limit for dash ring to stay in the circle, so you have to jump continuously from one circle to another. There are more than 2,000 mission available to complete and there’s plenty you can customize for a more personal touch.
Pot Farm – Grass Roots
Have you ever wanted to grow your own weed(marijuana) farm? The answer is most likely a definite NO, but that doesn’t mean you cannot find hours of entertainment in the game app Pot Farm – Grass Roots. Pot Farm is definitely a time killer app where you can play the game for any amount of time and put it down if something comes to steal your attention. Similar to other farming games, this one is easily just as addictive as you plant seeds, cultivate, harvest and then sell either to other gamers from around the world. This game won’t get you high but it will offer you a ton of fun as Pot Farm already has surpassed over 1 million downloads in the Google Play Store.
The post Editor’s Picks: 11 apps we think you should try right now appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Facebook Lite launches in India and the Philippines
Facebook is one of the largest social media applications on Android and is known to consume a lot of data and while this is acceptable in developed markets, it has hampered users of the social network in developing markets. To solve this, Facebook announced the 2G-friendly Facebook Lite, which is designed specifically for 2G networks and areas with intermittent connectivity.
Facebook Lite has now launched in India and the Philippines and is set to launch in more markets over the coming weeks. While the full Facebook app weighs in at a whopping 250MB in size, Facebook Lite is just 430KB in stature thanks to the social network rolling back the experience to focus on four key services:
- News Feed
- Status Updates
- Push Notifications
- Messages
Ironically, the four services are the core of Facebook’s offering and why many began using the social network before the influx of game requests and Facebook apps. Also included in the new app is access to your photos, pages and groups and you can also use Facebook’s full search feature. The app offers a similar user experience to the full Facebook app but loads faster on 2G networks thanks to Facebook optimising the content on its servers and Facebook have also confirmed that it will support video in the near future.
The best Apps:
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Vijay Shankar, Product Manager for Facebook Lite, said:
“We will get to video soon… In India over 80% of the users are on 2G network. We have worked on improving the apps performance even on spotty connections and across devices from entry-spec devices to high-end ones.
Shankar then went on to add that development of the app has taken over a year and the development team tested the app across Asia and Africa to ensure it worked properly.
“During the development phase, the team behind the app spent a lot of time on the ground traveling across India to test and check performance of the app.”
One of the reasons that rival social network Twitter grew in popularity was that it launched at a time when Facebook introduced apps and games, which resulted in the news feed becoming cluttered and the service consuming significantly more data. Facebook Lite will mean its now possible for users in developing countries to use the app without having to worry about poor connectivity and low allowances.
You can download it from Google Play (if you’re in India or the Philippines) or alternatively, there are APKs available to download from APKMirror.
7 best Android apps for musicians and music makers
The mobile boom brought forth a world of opportunities to creative individuals – especially musicians. Gone are the days when these artists were bound to full studio equipment (which costs fortunes) in order to get anything done. Professional music makers still need those, but our smartphones and tablets are more than capable of taking a quantifiable load of work.
What really makes us grind our teeth here at Android Authority is the fact that Apple has had a foothold on the music industry for a long time (in terms of mobile music making, at least). This is changing, as there is a plethora of Android developers making great apps for musicians, but we need to dig deeper into the platform in order to understand what’s going on.
Apple wasn’t doing amazingly well among musicians only because of its fame and widespread support; Android devices did have a limitation, which proved to be a huge slow-down. iOS has offered audio low-latency for a long time, something Google only implemented with the introduction of Android 5.0 Lollipop, along with multi-channel audio stream mixing and USB audio support.
With these changes in place, and considering Android does own the market in terms of numbers, we are sure to see some great developers getting on board with our favorite mobile OS. In the meantime, we would like to share some great apps any musician and music maker should take a look at.
Guitar Tuner Free (previously known as Guitar Tuna)
This app’s design is great, and I love having it around to tune my instruments. Mostly because it has support for tuning multiple instruments, including guitar, bass and ukulele (my personal favorite). It includes games for learning to play, a metronome and a design that makes it a breeze to use.
Serious musicians will also love that it touts “award-winning audio technology” and “professional accuracy for advanced players”. And with over 5 million downloads, this app sure has its fair amount of popularity.
Lyrically
Even the best of musicians forget lyrics, so it’s always convenient to have a lyric app around, just in case you need it. This application grants access to lyrics for more than a million songs, something considered to be heaven-sent to many cover musicians around. Lyrically can even recognize the music you are playing on your phone and present the right lyrics on the screen.
Pro Metronome
Having trouble syncing to a beat? Metronomes are no longer just tools that need to sit on top of a table. You can carry it around in your pocket, thanks to the power of our smartphones. Pro Metronome was a hit on iOS, and us Android users can also take advantage of it now.
Sure, other tuning apps include metronomes, but this one is far superior. The user can choose between many timing styles. Users can also “access subdivisions, poly-rhythm settings, and create complex patterns with triplets, dotted notes, and non-standard time signatures” if they purchase the Pro version. It’s also more precise than a real, mechanical metronome, as it’s not affected by friction, air resistance and other natural factors.
RecForge Pro
Musicians love their high quality sound recording. Sound needs to be as pristine as possible, and even though mobile is not quite up there with studio standards, I have to say RecForge Pro is about the closest you can get to the real deal.
RecForge Pro is a serious audio recorder. It can record in mp3, ogg or wav, and you can convert audio files between those formats, as well. It has support for storing clips in the cloud, and one can even edit these sound clips before doing anything with them. There’s a wide array of settings and tools for making your sound as perfect as possible.
I will advice that you get a good microphone to use with your handset, as phones usually don’t have the best microphones integrated.
Walk Band
How many times have you gotten inspired during your commute to the city, without an instrument within reach to hear how well your new song ideas work out? After all, music often sounds very different in your mind than it does coming out of an instrument.
Walk Band is meant to be more of a creative music-making app, with multi-track recording and a series of digital instruments you can play around with. That’s all fun, but I use it more as a tool for translating my thoughts into sound waves when on-the-go. Maybe you will find it just as convenient, so give it a go!
DJ Studio 5
Here is one area where Android is still a bit behind, with apps like Traktor DJ putting all their chips on Apple. That’s not to say there aren’t some good DJing Android apps out there, though. One of my favorites is DJ Studio 5. It’s completely free and all they make money on are skins. No ads, no hidden charges, no catch.
DJ Studio 5 is simple enough to welcome beginners, yet it has its good share of more complex features for the advances DJs out there. You at least have to try their unique scratch system and disk physics!
Caustic 3
Sadly, we are far from getting anything similar to Garage Band, which continues to be a great tool even for some serious musicians. With that said, w can also say there are some great apps like Caustic 3 around, which allow us to create music from our mobile devices.
This app’s design is inspired by rack-mount synthesizers, which I say give it an awesome style. You can choose from a wide variety of synthesizers and different sounds. It’s fun and it’s free to use. You will need to pay $9.99 if you want the ability to save or export your projects, though.
Which apps do you use for making music?
Of course, this is all the opinion of one humble musician here. I am sure many of you have found great uses for other apps, and maybe you even have better alternatives to the ones I happen to love. Whatever the case may be, please do share your thoughts on the comments below.
Do you use any of these apps? Which are your favorite applications for making music?
Here’s how Google checks for lag on your Android phone
Yes, Google hates lag on smartphones as much as you do — enough so that the search giant has a robot dedicated to spotting that delay between your finger input and what happens on screen. Meet the Chrome TouchBot, an OptoFidelity-made machine that gauges the touchscreen latency on Android and Chrome OS devices. As you can see in the clip below, the bot’s artificial digit pokes, prods and swipes the display in a series of web-based tests (which you can try yourself) that help pinpoint problems in both code and hardware. This isn’t the only gadget monitoring device lag at Google, but it could be the most important given how much the company’s software revolves around touch. Don’t be surprised if this automaton boosts the responsiveness of Mountain View’s future platforms.
Filed under: Cellphones, Robots, Tablets, Mobile, Google
Source: Francois Beaufort (Google+), Google Git, Appspot
Microsoft plugs OneDrive storage into your Chromecast
In case you needed another way to beam photos and videos to your Chromecast, the Android OneDrive app has you covered. The latest update for Microsoft’s cloud-storage service will take all those gorgeously arranged images from your device running Google’s mobile OS and put ’em on your TV via Mountain VIew’s HDMI wunderstick. Pretty handy, right? Your Galaxy S6 (or any other Android device with the app installed) should see the update shortly if it already hasn’t downloaded. As for iOS users, they’ll likely have to wait a bit longer — the last update only mentions bug fixes and stability improvements.
Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Software, HD, Mobile, Microsoft, Google
Source: Google Play
IFTTT breathes new lease of life into Android Channel
IFTTT for Android just got a whole lot more powerful as the tool that puts the internet to work for you has been refreshed and updated to include a load of additional functionality.
IFTTT has introduced the Android Battery Channel to give controls over extending your battery life by turning certain functions on or off based on a number of triggers. These include recipes such as turning off WiFi when your battery is low, or mute your phone when it is plugged in, or even recording to Google Drive the length of time your battery lasts for.
In addition to the Android Battery Channel is the Android Device Channel to provide recipes for Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and Navigation, as well as various music controls.
Head on over to IFTTT to check them out now.
The post IFTTT breathes new lease of life into Android Channel appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Microsoft plugs OneDrive storage into your Chromecast
In case you needed another way to beam photos and videos to your Chromecast, the Android OneDrive app has you covered. The latest update for Microsoft’s cloud-storage service will take all those gorgeously arranged images from your device running Google’s mobile OS and put ’em on your TV via Mountain VIew’s HDMI wunderstick. Pretty handy, right? Your Galaxy S6 (or any other Android device with the app installed) should see the update shortly if it already hasn’t downloaded. As for iOS users, they’ll likely have to wait a bit longer — the last update only mentions bug fixes and stability improvements.
Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Software, HD, Mobile, Microsoft, Google
Source: Google Play
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