Monday 16 July 2012

Android Community

Android Community


XBMC media player for Android announced

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 10:55 AM PDT

A version of the open source XBMC media player has been announced for Android, and you don’t need to jailbreak or root your device to get it to work. Even better news is that this is a straight port of the desktop version of XBMC, with the developers saying that all of the features found in the desktop version are present in the Android one as well, or at least will be in time. Alas, this isn’t a finished product you’ll be downloading, but rather an early build of XBMC for Android.


The XBMC project team says that at the moment “only software decode of audio and video is hooked up.” Other features will follow this initial release, and the group said that they even considered waiting until universal hardware decode was in place before announcing the project, which was kept a secret until this past weekend. However, the desire to deliver the project to the open source community eventually won out, and here we are now, with the source code and everything available at XBMC’s website.

Skins are another thing they’ll be relying on the open source community for, with the team admitting that at this early stage, the UI can feel a bit clunky at times. They point out that there are already some great user-made skins for XBMC available, and that more should be arriving shortly. Have a look at this video of XBMC running as an Android app to get a feel for what it’s like:

Judging by the language is this announcement, it seems that this XBMC Android port – which is a combined effort of Pivos and XBMC developers – is aimed more at set-top boxes than it is tablets and phones, but the team does say that it should run pretty well on your smartphone and tablet nonetheless. Whatever flaws the Android version may have in this early stage, it’s pretty clear that the XBMC team plans to have a solid port on offer in no time thanks to the help of the open source community, so keep an eye out for that. For more information about some other Android media players, check out the timeline below!


Batman The Dark Knight Rises game coming to Android July 20th [Video]

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 10:21 AM PDT

Gameloft has been keeping pretty busy this year when it come to releasing Android and iOS game along side big hit blockbuster movies. After dropping a game for Spider-Man and Men In Black III they look to follow that trend by releasing a game for one of the most anticipated movies of the entire year. Batman’s The Dark Knight Rises is coming to theaters, and so is a game from Gameloft.

Gameloft has released another teaser trailer today showing us all just what we can expect from their epic new summer game. The graphics look hot, although that could all just be cut-scenes so we’ll have to wait and see how it really pans out. The trailer below looks pretty awesome from our initial impressions and this game will be arriving July 20th for Android.

If you are excitedly awaiting the next iteration in this impressive series you aren’t alone. Now you’ll get to enjoy it in theaters and on your Android at the same time. Full details of the new Android game haven’t been released but we’re hearing it’ll have a lot of similarities and tie-ins with the movie, including the same characters and villains. Get ready to roam Gotham City Batman style while taking down enemies. Stay tuned for more details.

dark_knight_rises_ios_android Screen Shot 2012-07-16 at 9.51.20 AM

[via SlashGear]


Nexus 7 receiving a small software update

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 09:32 AM PDT

Now that Google’s new ASUS Nexus 7 tablet is slowly making its way to the hands of consumers, it has been getting a few software updates. Last week Google updated it to Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, and today it has another quick (but very small) software OTA rolling out as of last night. The changes seem minimal but this is surely a good sign.

The official 4.1.1 update brought the Nexus 7 and Galaxy Nexus both to build JRO03C last week, but today’s update is rather tiny and we aren’t noticing any changes. Now showing JRO03D, this tiny 859k (not even one MB) update appears to have only changed a few small things, and maybe tightened up some performance.

After checking the “about me” page in settings you’ll now find the FCC ID and IC model numbers clearly mentioning the ASUS MeMo 370T, which was the devices original name, but that is all we’ve noticed thus far. If you want to pull that ugly sticker off the bottom now you can, as the info is still provided. So far we haven’t noticed any other changes at this time but I’m happy to see Google issuing updates so quickly and effectively.

For those receiving their Nexus 7 today or early this week, expect an update or two out of the box. Enjoy those tablets folks!

Screen Shot 2012-07-15 at 2.47.36 PM Screenshot_2012-07-16-08-34-23
Device Specifications and Information
Device Info
    Device Name : Nexus 7
    Manufactuer : Asus
    Carrier : NA
    Announced Date : June 27, 2012
    Release Date : TBA
    Also Known As : Google Nexus 7
Display
  • Screen Size : 7 Inch
  • Resolution : 1280x800
  • Screen Type : IPS LCD
Dimension & Weight
  • Height : 7.81 Inch
  • Width : 4.72 Inch
  • Depth : 0.41 Inch
  • Weight : 340 Grams
Battery & Power
    Battery Type:
  • Lithium Ion
  • Battery Capacity : 4325 mAh
  • Talk Time : NA
  • Stand By Time : NA
Software
    Android OS:
  • 4.1.x
    Audio Playback:
  • AAC
  • AAC+
  • AMR
  • MID
  • MP3
  • WAV
  • WMA
    Video Playback:
  • h.263
  • h.264 / AVC
  • 3GP
  • MPEG-4 (MP4)
  • WMV
    Messaging:
  • IM
Hardware
    CPU : Tegra 3
    CPU Clock Speed : 1300 Mhz
    Core : 4
    Ram : 1000 MB
    Internal Storage : 8 GB
    Front Facing Camera :
    Camera Resolution : NA
    Sensors:
  • Accelerometer
  • Ambient light
  • Proximity
    QWERTY :
Cellular Network
Device Connectivity
    Wi-Fi:
  • 802.11b
  • 802.11g
  • 802.11n
    Bluetooth:
  • Bluetooth 3.0
  • A2DP
    Location Features:
  • Compass
  • GPS
    FM Radio :
    NFC :


Android Community Weekly: July 15th, 2012

Posted: 15 Jul 2012 03:05 PM PDT

Here at Android Community we had another exciting and fun-filled week of Android news. The biggest part however was probably the end of the week where Google delivered a treat to many customers. The flagship Nexus 7 tablet started shipping out to all those patient (and some impatient) customers on Friday, but that’s only some of the news. Head below for your weekly brief.

It was an exciting and news filled week, that is for sure. To start with Friday would sort of be backwards, but it was one of the most exciting days. Google started officially shipping the Nexus 7 tablet from their Play Store, although Gamestop ruined the party a bit early (as did Ebuyer.) And Friday was also the official retail store date for Verizon’s Galaxy S III — but lets back up.

Tuesday Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean was pushed out to both the HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus, as well as Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet. This is how we knew it was about to be a good week because Google gave their newest version of Android the final OK and released it to the world. By dropping the Jelly Bean AOSP source code, and the developer community is now hard at work as we speak making Android 4.1.1 ROM’s for all types of Android devices.

In hardware news we got some hands-on time to unbox the new Motorola Atrix HD, the DROID RAZR HD appeared in some more benchmarks, and even a budget-friendly RAZR was spotted. That isn’t all in hardware either. HTC appears to be making a new quad-core Android tablet, and an unknown HTC device for AT&T was spotted with a 1.7 GHz quad-core processor and 4G LTE — which could already be a successor to the HTC One X. AT&T’s Galaxy S II Skyrocket got Ice Cream Sandwich, and AT&T’s 4G LTE footprint got a little bigger too.

This was just a small part of what we’d consider a rather busy week in the world of Android. Catch the rest of the news that was important via the links below. We hope everyone had a safe Friday the 13th, and enjoy the rest of your weekend!


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