Jason Bauman is a 26 year old college graduate with a degree in marketing, a love of technology, good music, and coffee. Jason discovered Android when he picked up a Motorola Droid and registered for Android Central on the same day. When he's not writing, you can find Jason reading, playing computer games, or singing his favorite songs. Off Key. In every instance he will be within arms reach of his coffee mug. You can read all of his posts here. He's also on Google+
I’m a sucker for clock widgets. I have the time displayed clearly on my lock screen, in my notification bar, I even have a watch I wear semi-regularly, but none of them compare to a clock widget. A lot of our readers seem to agree, as most “post your home screen” threads are quickly dominated by a large half-screen widget that lets you know the time. Maybe scientists will diagnose...
If you're a long-time reader of Android Central, you might remember when Phil reviewed Wave Launcher back in March. Recently, the developer updated the application to version 1.8 which added a lot of new functionality, enough that we wanted to revisit the application as well as introduce it to potentially new users. Wave Launcher is an application that works in addition to your...
Here at Android Central we review new devices all the time, but one question we're commonly asked is what devices we purchase for ourselves. Sure, playing with a shiny new toy is great, but what do we buy for ourselves, and what uses do we find for them? This will hopefully be the first in a series of articles where we attempt to answer that question. After the break, I'll try and...
Remember the Vphone? Revealed way back in 2009, Saygus promised that the Vphone would be the first consumer phone to pass Verizon's Open Device Initiative (ODI) certification, promising revolutionary features such as video calling over 3G, Remote backup and restore for data, and up to a three year warranty. The phone won several design awards at CES, and the company promised that the...
Well, this is interesting. I recently went into the Android Market on my Galaxy Tab and it asked me to accept the terms and conditions again. I accepted, and the app closed down. When I booted the market back up I had a shiny new "movies" tab. In my preview of the Touchwiz UX update, I noted that the update came with the "Google Videos" app pre-installed but that the market didn't...
Samsung recently confirmed that its Touchwiz UX update would start rolling out to early adopters after a special launch event on Aug. 3 in New York City. For those of us who already purchased a tablet, this is the "optional" update that Samsung told us about when they launched the Tab 10.1 back in June. If you don't have a Tab yet but plan on purchasing one in the coming months,...
One of the first apps I downloaded on my tablet was the TegraZone, a special app browser developed by NVIDIA to showcase applications that were optimized for its Tegra II chipset. Sure, I have my tower defense games and angry birds, but I wanted to see what an "optimized" game would look like on my Tab's massive screen. Pinball HD was published by NVIDIA to show off the graphics power...
In a news conference today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg unveiled his vision for the next five years of Facebook, and announced a few new features to the popular social networking platform that might look familiar to those of you lucky enough to be using Google+ The biggest announcement is that soon you can now have a video chat with your Facebook friends directly from chat. Both of...
Way back at GoogleIO, Google showed off their upcoming movie rental service, releasing the service to the Motorola Xoom, promising that other devices would be added in "a few weeks." It's taken awhile, but it seems like Google is finally preparing to push the app out to a wider audience. Several members tipped us about seeing the application in the market briefly yesterday evening, and...
Itching to unlock your bootloader ahead of the official unlock supposedly coming with the Gingerbread update? The2dcour over at the XDA forums has posted a method that will allow you to unlock the bootloader. This isn't a one-click root method, and it will wipe your phone's data, but it's amazing that a developer figured out how to do this before Motorola officially offered the option...
Verizon is bringing their LTE network online in six additional cities and expanding their coverage in the Los Angeles and San Diego regions on July 21. New cities covered by LTE include: Huntsville, Alabama Augusta, Georgia Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Greater Springfield, Massachusetts Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Greensboro-Winston Salem-High Point, North Carolina Any...
Lightbox is a camera/gallery replacement application that bills itself as "The Connected Camera," allowing you to snap, "enhance," and easily share your pictures with your favorite social networks. The idea of a "social" camera is still something of a new concept but they're rather popular with our fruit-flavored cousins and they're becoming increasingly popular in the Android...
Good morning Android Central readers! Today, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is available. The Tab had a special launch event in NYC last week, but it's finally available online and at Best Buy and other retailers nationwide. If you're picking up Tab today, be sure to post in the forums and let us know what you think of it.
Youtube link for mobile viewing Samsung released their official promotional video for the Galaxy 10.1 today with several Touchwiz elements in tow, notably several widgets and icon skins. But this is what we expected would happen. Remember, even though the Tab shipping now is stock honeycomb, Samsung plans on shipping future devices with their Touchwiz UI, as well as offering it to...
Panasonic recently announced what it is calling the first "Enterprise Ready" tablet geared towards commercial and government users looking to take their tablet with them into the field. This will be the first Android device offered by the company bearing the Toughbook name, a brand known for its durability and business focused features: A 10.1" 1024x786 matte-finish display that is "...
Adobe pushed out a new update to its Android Flash Player today. In addition to a host of bugfixes, the new version also features several important security updates. Nothing major is listed, but security updates and bug fixes are always a good thing. If you have flash installed on your android, be sure to grab this ASAP. Source: Adobe Thanks, zacharyzblewski!
News apps and RSS readers are a dime a dozen. While the content and interface can vary from app to app, the basics are essentially the same. You choose your news sources and interesting topics, and let the app pull articles it thinks you'll like and display them in a phone-friendly format. It's a great way to get a list of articles that you'll (hopefully) be interested in each morning...
It looks like owners of the Fascinate will start seeing a minor update pushed out to their devices soon. The update seems to be rather small and the only two changes listed are: Improved incoming call connectivity Improvements to how OTA's are delivered to the device. Several members in our forums apparently already have the update, so if you haven't received it yet, you should. In...
This week we wanted to cover a slick theme for devices running CyanogenMod 7. Synergy is a theme built using the T-Mobile Theme Engine, a nifty piece of software that allows you to quickly change the feel of your device without having to flash something through recovery. Instead, themes can be found in the market and downloaded like any other application. There are dozens of themes...
Atinm, the developer responsible for maintaining CyanogenMod on the Samsung Vibrant and Captivate, recently received a free Galaxy S 2 to develop for. (click to see our hands-on). Don't adjust your screens, you read it right the first time: Samsung gave a phone to a CyanogenMod developer because they want them to work with it. It seems that Samsung is starting to see the value of...