Sega Announces Crazy Taxi: City Rush, An All New F2P Crazy Adventure For Android

via AndroidHeadlines.com |

If it wasn’t enough for some of you nostalgic Sega loving fans out there that Sega of America brought us a much loved Dreamcast classic with Crazy Taxi last year, you might just want to prepare yourselves for even more over-the-top crazy action coming our way from Sega. They have just announced that they will be releasing soon, an all new Crazy adventure onto Android and mobile with Crazy Taxi: City Rush. The best part about the game is that it will be free to play. Now I know what probably most of you are already thinking. That because it’s free to play it will be ghastly, dismal, and downright blasphemous. Well.. put away your pitchforks because so far it looks like the game will be pretty sweet. Free to play may not always be the best choice, but it has been implemented decently before and hopefully Sega hasn’t done us wrong here.

Crazy Taxi: City Rush will boast an all new campaign, filled with zany new missions, tons of crazy challenges and plenty of unlockable, unique areas to explore and find new fares. Sega says this game has been designed from the ground up for the mobile platform, so you’ll have intuitive ways to control your cab, like swiping to quickly change lanes, and hop up on curbs. There’s also an added ability to customize your cab with all kinds of upgrades, which can help you increase your visual appeal to fares, and make your cab more powerful so you can zip through the city streets as fast and crazy as ever. To celebrate the upcoming launch of Crazy Taxi: City Rush later this year, Sega has already dropped the price of the Original Crazy Taxi Android title to free for a limited time.

Normally the game cost $4.99, so if you haven’t already picked it up there’s no better time then now to grab it before the price goes back to the original cost. Look out for Crazy Taxi: City Rush to hit Android soon. If you’re a huge Sega and Dreamcast fan, this game should definitely appeal to you. Take it from BD Joe of BD’s Cab Emporium. If you’re a little crazy and unemployed, you can snag yourself a free job and you don’t even need a Drivers License to get behind the wheel. Just make sure you keep that kind of mentality to in-game only.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The post Sega Announces Crazy Taxi: City Rush, An All New F2P Crazy Adventure For Android appeared first on AndroidHeadlines.com |.

http://bit.ly/1gjQtYQ

Chrome Issue Tracker: “Add Project Tango device support to Chrome”

via AndroidHeadlines.com |

Some of you probably know about Google’s Project Tango which was announced a little while ago. It’s Google’s little 3D mapping project. It has now appeared on the Chrome Issue tracker, basically saying that it needs to get support for Chrome. What the issue tracker does reveal about the phone, though, is that it will feature a 4MP color camera on the back, a 180-degree field of view (FOV) Fisheye camera, a depth camera 320×180 @ 5Hz and a front camera with a 120-degree FOV.

Project Tango was created by Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects Group, which is the part of Motorola that Google decided to keep. This project is to make it possible to create a 3D model of the space around the phone. Basically create a 3D model of your home, your workplace, or wherever the phone may be. It’s possible to created indoor 3D maps to make it easy to navigate through buildings like offices and supermarkets. Which is the whole point of basically anything Google does, which is data mining. To either get more people using their services for ad revenue, or get more data to improve their services. In this case it’s street view and Google Maps.

Google has made a prototype 5-inch Android phone already. Which contains some customized hardware and software designed to track the full 3D motion of the device, while simultaneously being able to create a map of the environment. The sensors inside the Project Tango allow the phone to make over a quarter million 3D measurements every second, updating its position and orientation in real-time, combining all the data it retrieves into a single 3D model of the environment that you are currently in.

Google is only making a few hundred Project Tango prototypes for developers to work with. But the search engine hasn’t stated if these sensors and technology will come to more smartphones. But it looks like we’ll have Chrome compatible with it very soon.

The post Chrome Issue Tracker: “Add Project Tango device support to Chrome” appeared first on AndroidHeadlines.com |.

http://bit.ly/PBi82z

Rumor: Verizon Smart Rewards Going Nationwide on April 1st

via AndroidHeadlines.com |

Most of you have probably never heard of Verizon Smart Rewards, which is a loyalty program from Big Red. Basically what it does is Verizon gives out points to their customers for paying their bill, managing their account online, upgrading from a feature phone to a smartphone, etc. These points that customers earn can then be redeemed for things like deals and gift cards. Not a bad thing, right? Currently, Verizon has been testing this loyalty program in eight states. That includes Arkansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, Northern Idaho, Northern Mississippi, and Western Tennessee. But according to Fierce Wireless, it appears big red wants to expand it nationwide as soon as April 1st.

Verizon had previously confirmed that they had plans to expand this program in 2014, but had not offered up a firm launch date just yet. Some ways to earn Verizon Smart Rewards Points are not things you’d do too often, but there are plenty of other ways to get points. This includes getting points for every dollar you spend on your bill – which can add up pretty fast, keeping a connected tablet on a plan and using Auto Pay. Those seem pretty easy to do, especially where they will give you a point for every dollar spent on your bill, and according to a recent study, the average cost for a monthly bill on Verizon is nearly $148/month. That can add up quite quickly.

What’s going to be interesting here is how many points you need for these special deals and how many points you’ll need for those gift cards. We’ll have to wait and see how Verizon will handle it once it’s rolled out nationwide, but it sounds like a great idea to keep customers with Verizon. I wonder if other carriers will come up with something similar soon?

The post Rumor: Verizon Smart Rewards Going Nationwide on April 1st appeared first on AndroidHeadlines.com |.

http://bit.ly/1gjQuMA

Android App Updates 3/14/14: IMDB, My Verizon Mobile, Google Wallet and More

via AndroidHeadlines.com |

IMDB Hits v4.2

For those that don’t know, IMDB has a beta version, which you’ll need to join the appropriate Google+ community to take part in the beta. Version 4.2 left beta this week, and it brings quite the changelog, including a new navigation drawer, action bar with share notify and movie check-in features, special features section, celebrity heights, celebrity ages, movie, TV, and celebrity news now available on tablets and more.

My Verizon Mobile Brings back the Data Usage Widget

A while ago, a new update to the Verizon Mobile app got rid of the Data usage widget, but now it’s back. Verizon also has it auto-updating various times throughout the day, so be careful with that using up your data usage. But it’s nice to have it back with many people on tiered data these days. This version is rolling out over the next few weeks. Yay for staged rollouts.

Google Wallet Updated with the Ability to track current and past Online Orders

Google announced a new update to their Google Wallet app this week. This update is actually for both Android and iOS. It basically does one thing, new. Which is to add a new feature called Orders. Which requires your receipts to be first sent to your Gmail account. For those of us on Android, the update is in a staged rollout and rolling out now. So if you haven’t received it yet, you should get the update in the next few days.

Facebook Updated to support Photo Comments and Untagging

For those of you that still use Facebook, there was a new update this week which brings Photo Comments and Untagging to the app. You can also delete and edit photo albums, upload multiple photos at a time in groups and they fixed some bugs as usual with updates. The update hit last night and should be rolling out over the next few days if you haven’t already received it.

The post Android App Updates 3/14/14: IMDB, My Verizon Mobile, Google Wallet and More appeared first on AndroidHeadlines.com |.

http://bit.ly/1gjQuMu

Microsoft Also Against Dual-Booting Devices With Both Android And Windows

via AndroidHeadlines.com |

It’s been said that Google doesn’t want a dual booting Android/Windows device on the market. That was the general consensus when we had heard that they told ASUS they were against them releasing such a device. It would seem that they aren’t alone in their thoughts though, and that Microsoft has similar plans for putting pressure on the OEMs that had visions of producing dual-booting devices. ASUS was not the only company that had proposed releasing a device that would run both Android and Windows 8, Huawei made a statement yesterday that they also had plans to release a dual-booting handset.

Microsoft should have every reason to want dual-booting devices because it would allow them to have at least some presence in the same area as Android devices. They already hold a much smaller piece of the pie where Android is the dominant force in mobile, so it would seem like a good idea. Apparently though Microsoft wants exactly the opposite. According to analyst Kevin Moore, Microsoft wants the same thing as Google, and that’s devices with either OS but not both. The reason behind this is sort of for the same reason why it would make sense for them to want a device that dual-boots both OS platforms, just on the flip side of things. Because it would allow Google more direct access to a market that is currently held dominant by Microsoft and their Windows platform. The PC market.

Having Android in the PC space directly on a windows machine could mean bad news for Microsoft, and the same could be said for Google allowing Windows to be dual-booted onto an Android powered device. They currently dominate the mobile space, and have every reason to want to prevent Windows from having a chance at more access to marketshare. Google has also already entered into the PC realm with their Chromebooks which are doing pretty well, although they still don’t have nearly the amount of marketshare that Microsoft and Windows have. While it’s beginning to look more and more likely that we might never see a device hit the market that is shipped with dual-booting OS platforms, that is still something that is uncertain. Although manufacturers will most likely continue to receive pressure from both Google and Microsoft, that doesn’t mean a dual-booting device will never make it to consumers.

The post Microsoft Also Against Dual-Booting Devices With Both Android And Windows appeared first on AndroidHeadlines.com |.

http://bit.ly/1gjQrQR

Google May Have The Most Used Mobile OS, But at What Cost?

via AndroidHeadlines.com |

We all love Google, for one reason or another, Google is our preferred search engine, our preferred mobile operating system provider, and soon our preferred wearable provider. It is also no secret where Google makes most of their money, advertising. However Google may be facing a big issue that they may have caused on their own. The issue is the amount of money they get for advertising on mobile devices. Since most of the information we are usually searching for can be provided by an app, Google is missing out on the money provided by advertising that we otherwise would have seen if we had to search the web for the answers.

There are apps for weather, traffic, banking, movies and just about anything under the sun, that we would want to search for, there is an app for that. This is where Google will lose money. Instead of using the web, we can just use our apps, and in doing so, advertising provided by Google is seen by far fewer people than before. Recently, Nielsen data, shows us exactly how much time is spent on mobile apps rather than mobile browsing. According to the report, 89% of our time is spent on mobile apps, and only 11% on mobile browsing. Rolfe Winkler from the Wall Street Journal, points out that “Google spiders can’t freely crawl apps,” So what will GOogle do to keep earning money?



One way Google has attacked this issue in the past, is by the use of “deep links” which makes in app information discoverable to Google. However, with so many app developers and permissions that need to be granted to Google in order for them to access the information, Google will have to strike deals with each individual app developer. That is no easy task since there are over 1 million apps, and each app will need a deal, that’s a lot of deals. There could be a saving grace for Google though, and it is HTML5.

If developers used HTML5,even if they used a hybrid version that combines HTML5 with native coding, than Google will have better discoverability. HTML5 has been getting lots of praise from Google for quite some time now. Google has webpages dedicated to showing the benefits to using HTML5. Basically, the use of HTML5 makes inapp data searchable, which benefits Google, as well as developers. However, the benefits are clouded by the disadvantages to developers, which may be the reason HTML5 isn’t being used.

Using HTML5 from a developer’s standpoint, could mean lower performance compared to using native coding. This may be true for full HTML5 apps, but there is a hybrid version that is not getting much love either. This could be due to the fact that it is lesser known, a hybrid HTML5 and native coded app. This is where Google could start seeing an increase in cash made by mobile apps and mobile web. Google just needs to be more vocal about the issue.

Are you a developer, if so what is keeping you away from HTML5 or HTML5 native hybrids?

The post Google May Have The Most Used Mobile OS, But at What Cost? appeared first on AndroidHeadlines.com |.

http://bit.ly/1eAPBQ7

Sungale’s Stackable Power Bank is the Best thing Since Sliced Bread

via AndroidHeadlines.com |

Here at Android Headlines, we love a good power bank. Because we are always using our phone or tablet, and always need more power. We’ve reviewed many power banks already, but today we’re taking a look at a new power bank from Sungale which is plain and simple, just awesome.

Basically, the Stackable Power bank is a small battery pack that is 2000mAh in size, which is pretty small. But the great thing about these is that they are stackable – which I’m sure you noticed from the name. So you can add a second one to make it 4000mAh, and so on until you max out at 10,000mAh. Now that is pretty darn cool if you ask me.

According to Sungale, these are high efficiency power conversion power banks and can charge your smartphone, tablet, or any iOS device. It can even charge the new HP Chromebook 11. It’s slim, round and humanized housing design, and has an easy way to charge. you can use one cable to charge all of these at once. Of course the more you stack, the longer it’ll take to charge them. But that’s just common sense there. The whole power bank is a unique, superposition design, easy to assemble or part by the middle black magnet. The capacity is up to you, obviously since they are stackable.

As far as the specs go, it’s a capacity of 2000mAh. Input is DC 5V-1000mA, Output is DC 5V-1000mA. Efficiency is >=85%, Input port is a microUSB connector, output is a standard USB 2.0 connector, and dimensions are 2.95 x 2.95 x 0.51 inches.

The Stackable Power Bank is not yet available, but we’ll be sure to let everyone know when it’s available and where you can pick it up from. In the mean time, let us know in the comments below what you think about the Stackable Power Bank in the comments below.

The post Sungale’s Stackable Power Bank is the Best thing Since Sliced Bread appeared first on AndroidHeadlines.com |.

http://bit.ly/OcGNtq