PDA Reviews & News - Smartphone Reviews & News

Android App Review: Slacker Radio

September 1st, 2010

Miles

If you use your phone as a media player, you’re probably familiar with Pandora radio, but you might not have heard of Slacker. The concept behind the two apps is similar: provide users with an online radio station suited directly to their tastes. The execution, however is a little different.

Like Pandora, Slacker lets you create a station based on an artist, and from there, you can choose to block songs, or “like” them so that they’ll play more frequently. When you’re setting up a custom station, Slacker really shines.

You can “like” multiple artists and songs right from the start in order to get a station more closely tuned to what you’re looking for. Unfortunately, to take advantage of all of these customization options, you’ll need to set your station up through your PC. Still, while you’re listening, you can “like” a song, and it will be put into heavy rotation.

You can have Slacker cache your favorite stations whenever your phone is connected to Wifi so that you won’t have to worry about streaming issues if you find yourself in an area with low signal strength.

You can also set it to cache stations over your 3G connection, but the process tends to be data heavy, so we don’t recommend it.

The biggest difference between Pandora and Slacker is the music selection. If you’re interested in listening to a lot of foreign music, then you’re probably going to want to stick with Pandora.

Slacker just doesn’t have the international circuit covered very well. What they do have, is a great selection of Indie and Punk Rock that you won’t find on Pandora. If you’re into more mainstream genres like pop, and rock, you’re probably going to be happy with either service.

It’s hard not to recommend Slacker. It’s got a solid feature set, and a great music selection. The free version seems a little more ad heavy than some other online radio stations, but a subscription only costs $5/month if the ads are really getting you down.

The caching feature is particularly useful to users that might be taking their phone into a gym where reception might not be great, and the ability to block and like songs means you can build a strong station.

The Slacker app is free, and available now on the Android Market.

Froyo For Droid X Leaked onto the Internet

August 31st, 2010

Miles

Android 2.2 (better known as Froyo) has been rumored to be on the way very soon for the Droid X for a few weeks now. It would seem those rumors are true, as what appears to be a legit version of Froyo has leaked onto the internet.

Most of the time, leaked Android updates require a rooted phone to be installed. This time, that’s not the case. This update can be installed by rooted, and non-rooted Droid X’s alike.

Installing the update is a fairly simple process. First thing’s first, you’ll need the update. You can download it here. Once you have the update, place it on your phone’s SD card. Don’t put it in a folder, just leave it on the root of your SD card.

Next, you’ll have to boot your phone into recovery mode. Do this by turning the phone off, and holding the home, and power keys at the same time. Hold those buttons until you see a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in it. At that point, release the home and power buttons, and tap the search button once.

Once you’re in recovery mode, use the volume up and down keys to scroll down to the option that says “apply sdcard update.zip”. Once you run the update, the phone will spend some time applying the update, and eventually, if all went according to plan, it’ll give you a success message.

Scroll back up to the reboot option, and reboot the phone. You should now have a brand new copy of Android 2.2 on your Droid X.

The new update brings a few interesting features with it. For starters, Flash 10.1 is built right into the update, so you won’t have to worry about grabbing it from the market.

Froyo actually helps the Droid X to run a little faster, so you should also see some subtle speed improvements. There are a few other tweaks that come with this update, including a reorganized Gallery that lets you organize your photos by folder rather than showing you all of them at once, and an improved interface for the video camera.

this update seems to be completely stable, and it looks like it might very well be the final build due to be released by Verizon “soon”. In other words, if you’re not brave enough to download the update and go through the process described above, you probably won’t be waiting too long to get your hands on all the

Froyo goodness your Droid X has to offer.

Firefox On It’s Way To Android Phones

August 30th, 2010

Miles

The mobile version of Chrome built into the Android OS is a pretty solid browser. On the desktop side of things, Firefox still reigns supreme over all of the other browsers (though Chrome is starting to come into it’s own). If you’ve been waiting for Mozilla to bring Firefox to your Android phone, your wait is almost over.

The alpha version of Fennec, the mobile version of Firefox, is going to be available in just a few weeks. Sometime this fall, the beta version of Fennec is expected to hit, and from there, it’s only a matter of time until the full version is released to the public.

No concrete dates have been announced for any of these milestones, but hey, a vague road map is better than no road map at all, right?

Now that we have some idea of when to expect Fennec, let’s look at what to expect from Fennec. The miniature version of Firefox is actually going to include some robust features. Firefox sync is going to be built right in.

That means you’ll be able to share tabs, bookmarks and history between your phone and your computer without installing any add ons or additional software. Fennec will also include the “find on site’ feature, which allows you to find a specific word or phrase on the site you’e looking at.

If you have a hardware keyboard, you’ll be able to access the feature by hitting ctrl + F the same way you would on a computer. If not, the feature will be accessible through the site menu. You’ll also be able to share links easily using Twitter, Facebook, email, or Google Reader.

Fennec will also support some multitouch gestures. Pinch zooming will be included, as will several other gestures. Two specific gestures they’ve announced will enable quick browsing to the top, or bottom of a page.

We’re pretty excited about Fennec. It sounds like the dev team is very in tune with what Android users want, and they plan to deliver a feature rich browser that will make surfing the internet from your phone a simple process.

We would have liked to get a more specific timeline, but hey, at least we know we’ll be browsing with the beta version before the year ends. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait much longer than that for the final build.

Xbox Live On Windows Phone 7

August 29th, 2010

Miles

For years now, Microsoft has had a lot to say about the future of Xbox Live on mobile phones, but nothing concrete has ever come of it… until now. Microsoft recently fired off a lot of new information about how Xbox Live will work on Windows Phone 7, and we have to admit, we’re intrigued.

Let’s start with the obvious. Xbox Live for Windows Phone 7 will bring some high quality games to mobile phones everywhere. Some of the launch titles include Guitar Hero 5, Hexic Rush, and Uno, all of which have had highly successful console versions. games on Windows Phone 7 will include achievements, leaderboards, and even a demo version so you can try the game before you buy it.

The overall experience appears very similar to what you’d find on the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, at least in the beginning, multiplayer functionality will be limited. Some games will include turn based multiplaer, but that’s about it. Microsoft is confident that this will change over time.

Gaming isn’t the only use for Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7. Just like it’s console counterpart, the mobile version of XBL will allow you to customize your avatar, view your achievements, and compare achievements with your friends. You’ll also be able to see exactly what your friends are up to, and send them messages right from your phone.

These features are all great, but we still can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed. Microsoft has been talking about Live Anywhere for a long long time now, and for years, we’ve been hearing about features like these, and some even more interesting features not included in XBL for WP7.

In fact, back in 2006, Microsoft showed off a demo of an in game car being sent from an Xbox 360, to a mobile phone, to a computer running Vista, and then back to the Xbox 360.

The car was even edited on the mobile phone to change it’s appearance. At the time, the implication Microsoft was making was that these features were just around the corner. They even went as far as to show off live demos of these features to members of the press.

Xbox Live for Windows Phone 7 looks like a rock solid service with all the features you’d expect it to have. Still, we’re left wondering what happened to all of the big cross platform promises Microsoft made in past years.

We’d love to be able to send in game content back and forth to our friends through our phone, and ultimately send it back to our 360, but it looks like Microsoft has left those plans behind in favor of a more simple Xbox Live experience.

Adobe Air On It’s Way To Android Phones

August 28th, 2010

Miles

Adobe Air has been powering some pretty strong desktop applications for some time now, and the development platform is making it’s way to Android phones very soon. How soon? Well, according to Adobe, sometime in Q4.

Adobe Air currently powers some popular desktop apps like Tweetdeck and GMDesk. Essentially, Air makes it easy for developers to integrate online functionality with a desktop app, and that functionality will soon be coming to Android phones.

Air is a good fit for mobile devices. It allows the app on the phone to do the heavy lifting, while keeping the necessary information to be downloaded from the internet to a minimum. In other words, Air apps for your phone would be extremely well suited to mobile internet connections.

Adobe Air isn’t going to be for everyone. You’ll need an Android device that meets the minimum specs in order to take advantage of all that air has to offer.

Froyo enabled phones with an ARMv7 (or better) processor with a vector co-processor, and OpenGL ES will support Adobe Air, while other devices will be left in the dust.

While those requirements might sound strict, chances are your phone meets them. In fact, any phone that runs Flash 10.1 should be able to handle Adobe Air 2.5 upon it’s release.

Adobe Air apps will have access to all of your phone’s important features, including GPS, microphone, camera, and accelerometer. Air will also include hardware GPU acceleration, and multitouch input.

With all of these powerful features available, Adobe Air developers will have the opportunity to create some powerful mobile apps for Android phones. We’re expecting to see a slew of powerful games and apps hit alongside the release of Adobe Air 2.5.

As platforms like Adobe Flash, and Adobe Air become available to mobile developers, the quality and quantity of mobile apps is only going to increase. With Flash, and Air support, the Android OS is shaping up to be more robust than the competition.

With over 200,000 Android devices activated each day, the Android OS has overtaken the iOS in terms of popularity. The one key difference for a while now has been that more apps sell on Apple’s App Store, then on the Android App Market. With both Flash, and Air support coming to most Android devices, we’re expecting that to change quickly.