android qvga

Home / All posts

Rovio’s ‘Angry Birds Friends’ Comes To IOS & Android

Posted by Unknown Rabu, 10 April 2013 0 komentar

Rovio on Wednesday announced plans to take its Angry Birds Friends game from Facebook to Android and iOS devices. The announcement marks the first time that Rovio has created a game for Facebook first and then moved it to mobile devices.

Angry Birds Friends has picked up 60 million installs since it debuted on Facebook. The game currently includes more than 15 million monthly active users via the Facebook desktop platform.

Rovio made the announcement during a Facebook mobile event in Helsinki.

The Angry Birds and Bad Piggies developer made the announcement on the same day it announced $195 million in revenues. That revenue shows that 45% of the company’s money is now coming from Rovio’s non-gaming business, specifically revenue from the sale of various merchandising.

The move to take Angry Birds Friends from the Facebook platform to mobile devices matches a recent trend in which the most popular online games are moved to a “free-to-download” model. The idea behind the shift is that users will be more willing to buy in-app purchases on mobile devices.

Facebook Gaming partnerships head Julien Codornoiu tells TechCrunch:

“Rovio I think is very inspired by Supercell, which is absoutely ruling the App Store when it comes to top grossing apps. No one caares about paid as much as they do about grossing.”

Rovio received a lot of attention from Facebook in 2012 with the networks top three games all arriving by way of Angry Birds editions.

It was only 18 months ago that Rovio finally embraced social gaming, launching its first ever Facebook title. Attracting Facebook gamers has never been more important. The social network recently announced that more than 250 million monthly gamers now call the social network home. Moving to social gaming became easier after Facebook and Words With Friends developer Zynga severed their long-standing exclusivity contract.

Are you excited by the move of Angry Birds Friends to the iOS and Android platforms?

Baca Selengkapnya ....

A fresh new look for Google Play

Posted by Unknown Selasa, 09 April 2013 0 komentar

Whether you’re in the mood to listen to Justin Timberlake’s new album, read Harlan Coben’s latest bestseller or discover a new game to play, you want the experience of finding and making your purchase to be quick and easy. Today we’ve started rolling out a redesigned Google Play store on Android phones and tablets that is simple, clean and — most importantly — helps you find great entertainment, fast.

The new design focuses on bigger images that jump off the page. Similarly themed content is grouped together so you can hone in on a magazine to read or an app to try. As you move down the page, new recommendations continue to appear so there is always more to see and explore. We’ve also simplified purchasing so you can breeze through checkout and get to enjoying your movie rental or other content.

The redesigned Google Play store app starts rolling out today for Android phones and tablets running Android 2.2 (Froyo) and above. People around the world should see it over the next few weeks. Get ready for a simpler Google Play.

Posted by Michael Siliski, group product manager for Google Play

Baca Selengkapnya ....

HTC First - Facebook dedicated smartphone

Posted by Unknown Jumat, 05 April 2013 0 komentar

Few weeks of rumors and speculations and here we have - new HTC device, called HTC First and created together with (and for!) Facebook. It's surely not a flagship model, but also not a low-end device.

Actually it has quite nice specifications:

Platform: Android 4.1
Processor: Qualcomm® MSM8930AA 1.4Ghz, dual-core
Memory: 16 GB, 1 GB RAM
GSM 850/900/1800/1900/2100, HSDPA 21/5.76, LTE 4/17
Display: 4.3-inch, HD 720p
Battery: 2000mAh (non-removable)
Main camera: 5 MP camera with auto focus, LED flash, BSI sensor, f/2.0 aperture, 28mm lens, 1080p video recording
Front camera: 1.6 MP camera
Dimensions: 4.96 x 2.56 x 0.35 (in) (LxWxT)
Weight: 4.37 oz

What is special about this device, is very deep Facebook integration. It has its own Facebook launcher instead of HTC Sense launcher. What else?

Cover feed: A constant, fresh stream of photos and updates from your newsfeed, cover feed is always present when you wake up your phone. It lets you stay up-to-date on your friends’ latest activities in real-time, all the time. You can swipe through to see more photos and updates, double tap to “like” a post and comment right from cover feed. To learn more about cover feed, check out this video.
Notifications: Notifications from apps and friends appear right on your home screen. It’s easier to see when you have a missed call, calendar reminder or new message. Open a notification with a double tap or clear them away to see your Cover Feed. To learn more about notifications, check out this video.
Chat Heads: The mobile messenger lets you jump in and out of conversations while you do other things, like watch a video and browse the web. Reply right from chat heads, or move them around if you're not ready to respond. Plus you can send and receive texts and Facebook messages from the same spot. To learn more about chat heads, check out this video.
App Launcher: See your favorite apps and post right to Facebook from the same spot. You choose what’s on your app launcher—press and hold an app then drag it anywhere.
Instagram: HTC First is the only phone that comes with Instagram pre-loaded.

Personally, I'm very curious how this device will work with its custom launcher and what will be customers judgement. I think it has a huge potential. The idea of new custom launcher is more then interesting. Let's take a quick pick how it looks like:

To me, it seems to be very simplified version of Android launcher. It might be a great choice for users who are not expecting their phone to be multimedia all-in-one device, but they want to easily stay in touch with their friends using the most popular social channel. There is also Instagram pre-installed, so sharing your great moments captured with 5 MP back camera will be easy as well. Additionally, it is very likely that the overall system performance in HTC First will be very good. Qualcomm 1.4 GHz dual-core CPU in pair with 1GB of RAM memory will probably bring you smooth user interface experience, considering the fact that device doesn't have pretty heavy HTC Sense on board. So, do you think it is a device for you?

Have any questions or comments? Feel free to share! Also, if you like this article, please use media sharing buttons (Twitter, G+, Facebook) down this post!

Baca Selengkapnya ....

Get Chrome Desktop Alerts For Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & YouTube

Posted by Unknown Rabu, 03 April 2013 0 komentar

A while ago, we reviewed Chime - a Chrome extension that connects with your personal accounts on multiple social networks and gives you notifications for any activity. Chime stands out for two reasons: its gorgeous interface, and the multitude of services that it supports. The Notifications for everything is a Chrome extension that does something similar but supports fewer services and slightly greater customization. Chime kept a historical record of activity in your different account while The Notifications for everything is like the notification system that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube lack. You can select which of the four mentioned services you want to receive notifications for, start receiving desktop notifications for them or simply view them on the extension’s icon.

After installing it, visit The Notifications for everything’s options. In the General tab, you can enable the app to continue running in the background and manage how long a notification remains visible. Next, connect whichever service you want to receive notifications for. For each service, you can choose to get desktop notifications, icon notifications, or both.

You will have to connect each service individually; the extension will access all the required information from your account. You can also disconnect any service at any time.

The notifications are accompanied by the icon of the service they’re from to help make it easier to identify them. Clicking a notification will not take you to the update in question though, which is rather surprising since clicking on a user name or a page that’s linked in the notification will open it in your browser.

Feature wise, Chime and The Notifications for everything are similar but not the same. As we mentioned earlier, Chime is a historical record of your accounts’ activity that you can go back and visit any time. With The Notifications for everything, you are just saved the trouble of having to install a notification extension for each service, and having to check your Facebook notification or Twitter timeline again and again.

The only shortcoming of The Notifications for everything is that it will give you notifications for every bit of activity in an account, or for nothing at all. There might be cases when users just want to receive notifications for messages on Facebook, or Direct Messages on Twitter, and new invitations to connect on LinkedIn. Overall, if you found Chime to be overwhelming with its notifications, The Notifications for everything is a good enough alternative.

Install The Notifications for everything From Chrome Web Store

Baca Selengkapnya ....

A glimpse of Blackberry Z10 on any mobile browser.

Posted by Unknown 0 komentar

BlackBerry Z10 – the latest incarnation of the Canadian phone maker and arguably their last chance of surviving in the smartphone industry – recently crossed the 10 million units sold mark, which is a great achievement for an ailing company. Although BlackBerry has never been as auspicious as Android and iOS – or even Windows Phone – in terms of sales and popularity ever since its decline a few years back, that doesn’t mean the latest revision isn’t any good at all compared to the competition. If you want to take the new OS for a test drive without first paying for the device itself, BlackBerry has now launched a newGlimpse webpage that emulates the OS in form of an interactive demo, and allows you to run it on Android and iOS devices. The web page – as its name implies – gives a you glimpse into some of BlackBerry 10′s awesome new features such as gestures, BlackBerry Hub, BBM, Time Shift Camera, BBM Video, Keyboard and a few others.

You can experience Blackberry 10 Glimpse demo by heading over to the following URL on your device’s browser:

http://blackberry.com/glimpse

Once there, simply tap the ‘Try it’ button to get started. The webpage takes you on an interactive trip of BlackBerry Z10 and its OS, acquainting you with its key features along the way. It mainly focuses on BlackBerry Hub, BlackBerry Keyboard, BBM Video with Screen Share, and an interesting Camera with Time Shift feature. It also demonstrates BlackBerry World – a marketplace where you can download apps and games for the platform.

The demo is split among four sequences, and each sequence takes a bit of loading before jumping to the next. It also occasionally asks you to tap the screen before hopping on the the proceeding page. The Gestures support of the OS seems to be quite promising and it lets you open or close widgets, switch apps or move between different screens. For instance, swiping from the bottom opens up the rather neat app switcher.

BlackBerry Z10 Glimpse_BBM Video Screen share

Then there’s BlackBerry’s long-revered BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) service, which is widely regarded for its intuitive design and convenience in communication with other BBM users. You can also experience the lock screen, the new on screen keyboard that automatically guesses the next word, video chat that supports picture-in-picture, and a few additional tidbits. Lastly, it presents the camera’s Time Shift Mode that automatically adjusts the picture mode according to the type of picture you’re taking.

If you’re an Android or iOS user who hasn’t used BlackBerry before, or someone who has used an earlier incarnation of BlackBerry and is looking forward to trying out the newer incarnation of the OS before buying the Z10, BlackBerry Glimpse provides pretty cool beforehand experiencing of the phone’s interface. The demo can only be played on a mobile device only, and doesn’t support desktop browsers.

Baca Selengkapnya ....

Apple should make a gaming device to conquer the world.

Posted by Unknown 0 komentar

With all of the upcoming consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, the XBox 720,the PlayStation 4 and the Wii U are going to have some more major competition. The $70 billion videogame market is a large pie that Apple intends to get a big piece of. And it is now being rumored that the company will announce its plans for the Apple Joypad at its annual press event in April.

The reveal of Apple’s console could potentially cause great concern for competitors. Apple is known for dominating any market it sets its sights on, such as when the company blew up the smartphone market with the iPhone in 2007, and then taking control of the tablet market with the iPad in 2010. It’s clear that Apple will not settle for mediocrity or even second best. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo fair against the almighty Apple.

Does Apple Want in on the Videogame Market?

Rumors of iOS Game Controller

Though there are existing game controllers that can be used with the iPad 4 and iPhone 5, none of the currently available controllers were created by Apple.

According to PocketGamer, some executives from Apple were spotted at this year’s Game Developers Conference. The rumor is that they were there conversing with game developers in an attempt to gain support for Apple’s new iOS game controller.

Even before the iPhone 5 launched, there were stories about the company developing a physical game controller for the iPhone. Although there has yet to be a reveal of the new device, PocketGamer recently reported this confirmation. “Long rumoured – and hoped for – GDC 2013 has finally provided confirmation that Apple will release its own dedicated game controller. Of course, there’s no official word yet, but Apple has been active during the conference talking to developers about its plans and ensuring plenty of games will support the joypad at launch.”

Apple and Disney collaborating?

Another report that surfaced this year, hinted at a secret collaboration between Apple and Disney for the creation of Toy Box, and gaming console with numerous mobile and online applications. It has also been said that the console will feature various Pixar and Disney characters that will, for the first time, appear together and interact with each other.

As if Apple isn’t enough of a tech market powerhouse on its own, could teaming up with Disney make them an unstoppable presence in the gaming industry? How do you feel about the rumors, and do you think that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will be able to keep up?

Baca Selengkapnya ....

HTC One variants [update]

Posted by Unknown Selasa, 02 April 2013 0 komentar

Image taken from smart.com.ph

In my article here I was writing about HTC One GSM/LTE (UL) and GSM (U) versions. The question if ROM based on UL firmware can be flashed on U device is still valid, but now we have some more details about these variants.

It turns out, that UL version of HTC One (having both GSM & LTE radio) will be available mostly in the Europe and North America. Model ID (MID) of this version is PN0710000.

U version (GSM radio only) is going mostly to Asian markets. Model ID (MID) of this version is PN0711000. There is also WL variant, which will be the Sprint version of HTC One. I don't know MID number of this version yet.

In the past we had similar situation with slightly different MIDs numbers of the same device. HTC Sensation had PG5813000 and Sensation XE had PG5813001. Both devices can use the same custom ROMs. HTC Desire HD has PD9810000, while Telus variant had PD9814000 and HTC Inspire 4G (U.S. version of HTC Desire HD) had PD9812000. Again, one custom ROM can be flashed on all 3 devices.

There are also some more details that leads to the conclusion, that most probably users with HTC One U variant will be able to use their device with no issues after flashing custom ROM based on UL RUU. This is surely a very good news for both users and custom ROM developers. However, this will probably not enable LTE modem on U devices. So if you want to use LTE and your carrier supports this technology, make sure you will buy HTC One UL.

Have any questions or comments? Feel free to share! Also, if you like this article, please use media sharing buttons (Twitter, G+, Facebook) down this post!

Baca Selengkapnya ....