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- Android Community Weekly : June 4, 2011
- Office Jerk Review [Amazon Appstore Free App of the Day]
- Gameloft Posts Trailer for Upcoming 9mm Game for Android [NSFW]
- Age of Zombies for Android Review [Optimized for Xperia PLAY]
- Panasonic Creates First Mobile Chip Capable of Multi-Gigabit LAN Speeds
- Texas Instruments Announces 1.8 GHz Dual Core Chip
- HTC Sensation 4G Review [T-Mobile]
| Android Community Weekly : June 4, 2011 Posted: 04 Jun 2011 05:18 AM PDT Welcome to another edition of Android Community Weekly! This past Sunday some press photos surfaced with a breaking leak to the Asus Padphone. Later on, as it becomes official, the group AlwaysInnovating accused Asus of copyright infringement. Notion Ink Adam sales open again, and this time the promise of Honeycomb June 27 is there to sweeten the deal.
All the amazing emulators (aka Nesoid, Snesoid, N64oid) of Yong Zhang were pulled from the Android Market Monday. Zhang may have been removed due to violating open source licenses. ViewSonic will be the first Windows 7 tablet manufacturer to run BlueStacks (virtual Android OS) over its OS. If you want a nice tutorial on finding/downloading new games on the Xperia PLAY, Chris Burns posted a nice instructional. The Nexus S may be viewed as old by some, but its single core still proves to outperform its dual-core opponents when overclocked with Morfic’s Trinity kernal. Another mod formulated by the crafty dev hyperX added 1080p 24Mbit/s recording to the Samsung Galaxy S II, and with an even better hack at 30Mbit/s later in the week. The Zinio digital magazine app hit Android devices this week, and will likely carry current volumes of all your favorite magazines. It’s a free download in the market, and if grabbed before June 15 you will be awarded a copy of 24 different magazines. The HTC Sensation 4G on T-Mobily was officially revealed late this Tuesday, and our own Vincent Nguyen gave a solid review of it over on our sister-site SlashGear. Whats better than a single review on an amazing device? Two reviews – and this is why Chris Burns honors us with a detailed review from his own perspective. Sprint released details concering the upcoming 3D content available for the EVO 3D including 3D games from Gameloft and the Blockbuster On Demand app showcasing 3D movies. And Android 2.1 has finally become available for the Xperia X10 – I guess better late than never, right? The community should be cautious to new malware from the same guys that brought us DroidDream. Be wary of titles by Magic Photo Studio, Mango Studio, E.T. Tean, BeeGoo, DroidPlus, and GluMobi. The Nexus 3 was indeed confirmed as a fake, as a closer look revealed to what may be a metallic version of the HTC Sensation. Other leaks this week include the XOOM 2, Targa, Tracy XL, Slimline, and Zaha — all by Motorola. My personal favorite may be the Tracy XL watch; what’s not to like in a watch that records 1080p video? Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread will be hitting the Motorola Atrix soon as Brief Mobile seems to have already have access to it. Wednesday, we found that the HTC EVO 3D had a possible launch date of June 24th from a leaked RadioShack advertisment. It just so turns out that the EVO View 4G tablet will also be headed to Sprint this very same day. Ever wanted to secretly cry out for help? Red Cross launched a new S.O.S application onto the Android Market that also includes handy information if disaster comes your way. There was a hands-on demonstration of the Nvidia Kal-El Quad-core development tablet over at Engadget. This tablet will be simply amazing, and we can only hope the battery life won’t suffer. Chris Burns had his own hands-on with the Pantech Crossover, a midrange Android phone on AT&T with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. At this years Uplinq 2011 event, a multi-burst photo demonstration and 3D capture was displayed on the EVO 3D. Later on in the event, our own Vincent Nguyen scored an interview with Cali Lewis from the Uplinq Daily Show. The 2.3 Gingerbread update is finally available for the EVO 4G! If you don’t feel like waiting, you can force an update. And finally, be sure to join in our Android Community mini collectibles giveaway #2! To enter the contest, all you need to do is post in our “What would you like Ice Cream Sandwich to do? [No Limits!]” forums thread. )
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| Office Jerk Review [Amazon Appstore Free App of the Day] Posted: 03 Jun 2011 02:52 PM PDT Every once in a while there’s a game that gets released to the market that’s so simple that you’ve just got to try it, so free that there’s no reason not to download it, and entertaining enough to keep around for second or even third plays. This is one of those times, this is one of those games. This is Office Jerk and there’s not just a whole lot to say about it beyond explaining which tools you get to use to cause chaos and destruction for yes, you guessed it, that jerk in the office.
This is the Amazon Appstore Free App of the Day meaning that if you’ve got the Amazon Appstore downloaded, you can, indeed, download this brand new application for a total cost of zero. Once you’ve got the app downloaded, you’ll notice the distinct lack of options, a menu, or anything at all really other than the actual play screen. In fact there’s also no ads, as the game reminds you with a coffee cup with ADS crossed out. Well played! What you do in this game is use any number of various weapons at your disposal to hit your coworker in the head. When you hit your coworker in the head, you get a point. The point of the game is to get as many hits on your coworkers head in a row as possible without missing a single hit. Your highest score is always marked in the second or two rows in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. Simple!
I recommend the stapler, as when you toss it at and hit the computer screen you get quite the surprise. On the other hand, the TNT is quite explosive as well. To access this game, get yourself some education with our article by the name of Android Community 101: Amazon Appstore. Once you’ve got that info, use it to get the store and the app, and continue to check Android Community every day to see if the newest free app is worth the tap!
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| Gameloft Posts Trailer for Upcoming 9mm Game for Android [NSFW] Posted: 03 Jun 2011 02:17 PM PDT Sony Ericsson just announced several new games coming exclusively to their Xperia Play, but obviously Gameloft has some plans to bring insane console grade games to other devices as well. “9mm” is Gameloft’s Grand Theft Auto-esque shooter coming to Android (as well as other less awesome smartphones). The game looks to be intense, and shows off some truly impressive graphics. Check out the trailer below, but be warned, its got a bit of a dirty mouth.
The game follows John “Loose” Kannon (HAH!), the leader of a police squad that doesn’t always play by the book! All puns aside though, the game looks to be combining a gritty story with some of the best graphics we’ve seen on an Android device. We’ll have to wait and see how the gameplay stacks up to the visual display. Its also worth noting that since gameloft is developing the game for iPads as well, it may just be set to go on Honeycomb tablets as well. Click here to view the embedded video. )
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| Age of Zombies for Android Review [Optimized for Xperia PLAY] Posted: 03 Jun 2011 01:45 PM PDT Woo! Kill em all! That’s what you’re going to NEED to be doing when you play this fabulous game called Age of Zombies. This game is new to Android, having come out first only on Xperia PLAY (which is what we’re looking at in the review) and just TODAY coming out for the greater bulk of the Android family using on-screen controls instead of the Xperia PLAY’s Playstation controllers. What you’re doing here is surviving, but better than that, you’re stopping a zombie invasion from taking over and eating the entirety of the Earth after they’ve found their way into a time portal. What in the world? Let’s start em all on fire!
This game plays out from overhead, you controlling your little fighter man with a giant head in the classic murder-all-zombies fashion, that being the exact same two-joysticks fashion that we first became acquainted with in the game Gun Bros – a version of which we also happen to have reviewed for Xperia PLAY a few days ago. What you’ve got to do is make sure the zombie hoards don’t kill off humanity at the same time as you make sure they don’t kill YOU off – make sure you collect every weapon you find for superior murdering.
That said, this game reminds us of another similar game on a completely different platform. Ever heard of the massively popular flash-based game Boxhead Zombie Wars? It’s incredibly fun and incredibly similar to the game you’re seeing us demo here and now. If we could play Boxhead games on the Xperia PLAY you can bet that’d be the next thing we purchase, too! This game appears at first to be super simple, but once you’re running around edging out zombies and zombie dinosaurs and zombie this and zombie that, you’ll find that it’s so tense you’ll need a cold shower once you realize you’ve lost all your lives for the 50th time in a row. AKA this isn’t the easies game in the world just because it’s super cute! Those pixel zombies know what they’re doing!
You’re currently able to purchase this game for your non-Xperia PLAY Android device in the Android Market right this second or for your Xperia PLAY via your V-Cast app and your Xperia PLAY app in your app drawer. Don’t miss the rest of this Xperia PLAY app review series if you love getting pumped up about the Android / Playstation wave!       )
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| Panasonic Creates First Mobile Chip Capable of Multi-Gigabit LAN Speeds Posted: 03 Jun 2011 01:36 PM PDT WiGig is a wireless standard which has been developed with the objective of creating a standard for a LAN (think wi-fi) with real world speeds on the order of gigabits. Today Panasonic has announced they have created the first chip capable of bringing that technology to a mobile platform (for instance an Android phone!). We may have to wait a bit for the chip to make it into actual phones, but when it does, get ready to stream 1080p to your tablet from your desktop to your heart’s content.
Panasonic’s chip brings 60 GHz WiGig together with the normal 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi bands, as well as Bluetooth 4.0, making for some fast data streaming. Until now WiGig has been limited to stationary devices, such as TVs or desktop computers, due to the required power to operate at such a high bandwidth as WiGig does. Panasonic’s new chip has managed to squeeze all this wireless goodness in and only run on one watt. The only letdown here is that it won’t be blowing up your internet speeds, as that will still be bottlenecked by whatever speed you have from your wireless provider. What this does mean is that streaming to and from other phones, as well as WiGig enabled devices in your home will become, according to Panasonic, as much as twenty times faster. This means streaming, for instance, a video from your phone to a WiGig TV, or syncing your phone wirelessly to your music or video collection stored on a desktop at home would be almost instant. Exciting stuff. Check out the press release below for more details. )
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| Texas Instruments Announces 1.8 GHz Dual Core Chip Posted: 03 Jun 2011 01:09 PM PDT Texas Instruments silicon has been a bit scarce in top tier Android devices in 2011. In fact almost all of the uber-phones of 2011 so far are running on either Qualcomm Snapdragons or Nvidia’s Tegra 2. TI is looking to change that with the announcement of their latest OMAP ARM processor, the OMAP 4470. The dual core processor is said to launch in the first half of 2012.
While we can’t be sure why TI’s chips seem to have fallen out of the good graces of Android OEMs of late, this chip seems to be poised at offering some major incentives. While 2012 is a little late to peg this processor as the chip to land in the first Ice Cream Sandwich phone this winter, it could make a big splash when it does thanks to its top tier specs and a couple tricks as well. The chip will be clocked at a blazing 1.8 GHz, almost twice as fast as the Tegra 2. But what about Nvidia’s Kal-el processor and its FOUR cores? Well if the new OMAP won’t be making it to devices until 2012, you can be sure it will be competing with with Nvidia’s quad-core device, said to be available at the end of this year. The OMAP4470 has a trick up it’s sleeve though. In addition to its two ARM A9 cores, it will have two smaller ARM M3 cores to ease the load on the two main cores during resource intensive tasks like rendering 3D graphics. TI claims that these smaller cores will draw less power, optimizing battery life, while still providing some extra “oomph” for the times when you’ll need 4 cores. We still have some time until 2012 and Qualcomm and Nvidia certainly aren’t resting on their laurels while TI develops their latest chip. With mobile SoCs continuing to get faster and more energy efficient at an incredible rate, its only a matter of time before I’ll be able to make a certain Dragon Ball Z reference about my Quadrant score… [via SlashGear] )
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| HTC Sensation 4G Review [T-Mobile] Posted: 03 Jun 2011 12:34 PM PDT The folks at HTC have taken their now-classic form-factor for Androids to another level and have once again proven that their last round of 4.3-inch devices just weren’t good enough. Yours truly used the ThunderBolt for months after it was released while other phones were put back in their boxes after a week-long review – did the HTC Sensation 4G carried on T-Mobile suffer the same fate? Or will it go the way of the ThunderBolt, sticking around for weeks and weeks and even beyond that test of time, on into infamy? It’s got a dual-core processor, a brand new version of HTC Sense UI over Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and it’s running one of the most powerful dual-core processors in the world – chances are pretty good this one’s a winner.
HardwareThe HTC Sensation 4G is a device that’s made for comfort. Not shedding a single tear for weight or thickness, HTC’s opted for a 4.96 x 2.57 x 0.44 inches and 5.22oz handset that’s heavy on the good looks. Soft-touch plastic and unibody metal hardware surround the device with what we’d almost classify as an elegance not oft seen in smartphones at this time in history. What we’ve got here is a solid bit of mighty handset, one that’s not afraid to show off some curves in opposition to the much thinner and lighter competition.
The entirety of the back pops off at once to reveal the battery, SIM card and microSD departments, this offering a rather pleasing change compared to the terrible double-door openings on the HTC Inspire 4G. HTC had been moving towards this with the HTC ThunderBolt (which received some major press due to its replacement battery door that looked and still looks like a massive monster from heck), but now we’ve reached a new level of well-thought-out industrial design with the entire back coming off at once.
The display up front is a 4.3-inch qHD 960 x 540 resolution LCD above four touch-sensitive Android buttons below some fantastic curved Gorilla Glass. The curve occurs near the edges of the glass and the casing reaches beyond the glass so that, if you’d take a try, placing the device face-down results in no glass touching the table. This is great for catching ants or making sure your pet amoeba stay in check – also important because on the Sensation, as with all HTC Android devices, turning the device on its face will silence an incoming call – fun fact!
The display is clear, crisp, and unless you’ve got a Super AMOLED Plus device sitting right next to it, as bright as you’ll ever need to get. As with the T-Mobile G2x, the curved glass front ads a level of quality and uniqueness that cannot be calculated in processor power. Your thumb will thank you all day long, every day from now on.
Inside you’ll find the big guns, Qualcomm's new Snapdragon MSM8660 processor. This is a dual-core 1.2GHz chipset rocking with asynchronous cores that are able to run at different frequencies and voltages and give you the hottest blast of power you’ve seen yet in a dual core device. Let’s have a battle in the street! In addition to being wicked cool, this functionality has HTC claiming reduced power consumption on account of this processor’s ability to scale itself to however much power you need at any given time. Of course this chipset also contains Adreno 220 GPU, a hot system tag-teaming all the way to victory in a phone that now adds up to HTC’s most powerful to date.
Connectivity you’ll find happening along GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900, UMTS 900, 1700/2100, 2100, UMTS, and HSPA (HSDPA 14.4 Mbit/s and HSUPA 5.76 Mbit/s). There’s some Wifi in there too incase you’re sitting around the coffee shop just kicking it. Bluetooth 3.0 is part of this party, microUSB, 1080p HDMI output through the same port if you’ve got the correct MHL adapter (not included, sadly,) GPS, gyroscope, G-sensor, digital compass, proximity and ambient light sensors, and two cameras: 8-megapixels on the back with the ability to record in 1080p and with a dual-LED flash, front-facing camera is a fixed-focus VGA resolution camera for video calls only – seriously, don’t use it for anything else.
FM radio, SRS Virtual surround sound, and the ability (like with all newer Android devices) to work with Googles still-beta cloud-based Music app make this a place to listen to news radio and Radio Gaga from as well. And did I mention how comfortable this device is to hold? It’s severely comfortable. The curved glass on the front is only the start. That soft-touch plastic on the back mixed with the metal swoop – goodness! What’s not such goodness is the fact that this device has only 1GB of ROM inside, with a microSD slot with a generous but not top-tier offering of an 8GB card out of the box. We got a 32GB card out of the box with the HTC ThunderBolt, here’s hoping that that particular trend comes back next time.
Hands-On with the HTC Sensation 4GSoftware and PerformanceWhat we’re dealing with here is the newest version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread with HTC Sense, also the newest version with Sense 3.0. This newest version can also be found on the HTC Flyer, reviewed by us back here.. You’ll find yourself working with a brand new lockscreen that allows you shortcuts to whichever apps you’ve pre-set via a magical ring, a seven-pane homescreen that works on a carousel, and various tiny tweaks over the entirety of the stock Android HTC stated with to make it their own.
The differences between the Flyer version of Sense 3.0 and the Sensation version of Sense 3.0 are in the size of the screen, basically – this version not working in landscape mode being the most obvious of these. The lockscreen is a very welcome new addition, allowing you to both see and address missed calls, emails, or whatever else you’d like it to do on the fly easily. You’ll be able to customize this lockscreen with any of multiple skins offered up by HTC out of the box, plus you’ll be able to purchase more through the HTC Hub store if that’s your fancy. The store isn’t massively vast, but it does have some goodies.
You’ll be served a fully immersive media purchasing and rending experience in this newest HTC Sense environment if you want it, “Watch” starting off this bag of fun with purchased or rented movies and TV shows, free access to streaming movie trailers, and if you’ve got another HTC device running this same app, all of your purchased content from there here again for free. Thus far the only other device running such a function is, again, the HTC Flyer.
HTC Reader is an eBook platform that connects to Kobo’s bookstore, so you’ve got that option out of the box for books, then there’s a rogues collection of HTC-placed apps that you’ll be better to know about right this moment: Dock Mode, a helpful ability you’ll be using should you purchase a dock in the future or like to rest your device up against a wall in order to make use of Dock Mode specifically. It’s got the ability to show recent Facebook updates via HTC’s FriendStream, Weather, a clock for if you’d like to se yourself an alarm, and the ability to launch your Mobile Hotspot on the go. Additional apps include Flashlight, which uses the LED camera flash as a lamp, Locations for mapping, HTC Watch, Mirror, and everyone’s favorite metal ball game Teeter just incase you NEED to play a game out of the box. Qik is included out of the box for video chat, and other than the occasional report of an upside-down video from whoever else is on the other side of the line’s end, all is well.
After that, it’s all speedy execution across the board. There’s no lag in any crook or cranny in this device, and it’s essentially only the benchmark numbers we’ve got to rely on in telling this phone apart from the rest of the dual-core monsters out there today. Before we begin, let me set you up with some results from the Galaxy S II: Quadrant Advanced: 3504 Overall, I/O Scores at 3823 and 4472 respectively What you see below all belong to the HTC Sensation:
For a good look at what the HTC Sensation vs the Samsung Galaxy S II looks like from over the pond, check out this video from our pal Chris Davies who has both devices on hand: CameraHTC’s ThunderBolt has been my primary device for filling up the archives of my personal Android – to – web family project A Tiny City – that’s about to change now that we see the quality the Sensation brings. While the difference between an 8 megapixel camera on one HTC device and an 8 megapixel camera on another HTC device isn’t large, it is ever so slightly noticeable, and since we’ve got the choice, heck, let’s go for the newer, slightly better version!
The video camera on the back of this device also records in full HD 1080p, dual mic holes on the back of the device near the flash of the camera offering stereo audio recording. Wind blowing against the device does not stand up very well, but your average everyday video of a baby certainly does. You’ve also got integrated video trimming featured in this version of Sense and you’ve got the option to stream over DNLA or roll out with full 1080p HDMI output – through your miniUSB port, but lo, the converter is not yet available to purchase or view. The front-facing camera is no better than any front-facing camera we’ve seen thus far save for the Samsung Galaxy S, which does seem to fare bit better in video chat – for the perfect vision of the difference, check out this photo taken by our good friend and partner Chris Davies from all the way over the pond in England.
Phone and BatteryWe experienced no problem to or from the device on telephone calls to multiple areas around the United States. When it came to speakerphone, a surprising amount of clarity was heard and not a crackle could be found. As far as the speakers to be used for example Pandora on a picnic, you’re in luck again because, like the HTC ThunderBolt your humble narrator loves so well, the speaker system is adequate and even nice sounding for close quarters.
Battery testing is always an ongoing process with devices such as this one, but initial tests have yielded at the very least a full day’s usage on your average amount of daily requirements being run through the phone. Google Maps, some YouTube videos, a couple of high-requirement games from the Tegra Zone, some Pandora on a picnic, and by nightfall we’re still not completely drained. Keep this in mind and be happy because the last time we tried such stuff using the lightening bolt of HTC phones, the results weren’t nearly so nice. HTC’s certainly made some improvements here OR indeed it IS the LTE that’s making the battery drain so fast on the ThunderBolt. Either way, the Sensation is good to go for at least a day at a time.
Value and PricingThis device will be available on June 15th through T-Mobile for $199 after a $50 mail-in rebate. That is, tied to a 2-year contract and with a required data plan of course. This is a radically good deal considering the fact that this will be your daily electronic companion and portal to the web and the cloud on the web every day for the next two years. $200 should be nothing for you if you’re the type of person that carries around a smartphone, and I assume you are one if you’re reading this sentence, especially when you consider how advanced this device is compared to the rest of the Android lineup out there right this very moment. T-Mobile sells fantastically powerful phones for cheap, now all you’ve got to consider is the fact that you’ll be working on T-Mobile’s 4G network which, by all accounts, certainly isn’t the same network as the other iterations of “4G” out there.
Wrap-UpWelcome to the second big phase of Android handsets. The first was the very first wave, this second wave is certainly a refined edition of that. We’re in a very awesome place right now in tech history, a place where Mobile is just being born, and here with phones like the HTC Sensation, we’re moving through history on finely-tuned spacecraft made of smooth metals and soft plastic sculpted the exactly the right preparations. The week this review was published, HTC spoke at Uplinq 2011 about the future of Android, that being HTC Dev, their collaboration with OnLive, HTC Watch, and HTC Pro. Now that their newest flagship is here in the Sensation, HTC’s set to continue to be, as Peter Chou, CEO of HTC put it, the number one Android brand and supplier “everywhere in the world.”
Of course no good wrap-up of a device of this caliber is complete without a comparison to a competing device. In this case, that competing device, quite obviously, is the Samsung Galaxy S II. This device is the successor to the most popular series of Android phones ever, has the brightest screen in the world, and based on the benchmarks we’ve seen thus far, is at least slightly more powerful at the outset than the Sensation. But in practice, which device wins out? The more square of the two, or the one that feels like aliens collected the palms of 1,000 humans and decided a swoop was best for the back of a handset? Samsung’s newest form factor, or HTC’s next step in a longstanding evolution of form factors? HTC Sense or Samsung TouchWiz? Truly this is a question for the ages.
But if I had to decide right now, I’d say that the HTC Sensation is going to be more of a hit for the greater amount of people who purchase it, and might very well appeal to a larger audience than the stark and flat Galaxy S II. While it may be awesome that the Samsung device is the thinnest Android device on the market, it’s certainly not got the smallest amount of pocket size taken up in the 4.3-inch display having category. Galaxy S II has more RAM and internal storage, but the Sensation is certainly going to pack enough punch to satisfy the masses. And if it’s a battle between TouchWiz and Sense? Sense is my choice right this moment.
The HTC Sensation will be a consumer’s choice phone, certainly and for sure. Look for few to no returns of this device to carrier locations around the USA, while other phones are switched out for the newer model day after day in droves. The HTC Sensation is not just a stepping stone toward future models like so many models are these days, even high-cost models, instead it’s the destination for HTC. Where do they go now? The guts can always get better. The form factor I wish them the best of luck on, because this is about as close to perfect a device in my hand has ever fit.                                  BONUS check out Chris Davies hands-on with the Euro version of the HTC and check out our reaction and understanding coverage of his full review – then we’ve also got another example of 1080p video capture courtesy of Vincent Nguyen – lookin great at Weezer!
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