There was a reason why I said that Valve was one of my favorite companies yesterday. We got hooked up with access to the closed beta of the Steam Android application that hit the market yesterday and all I can say is “wow.” The app was tested on my Galaxy Nexus and has worked perfectly and better than expected on every aspect of the app, bringing all of the functionality of Steam to your phone, except for the part where it does not play Skyrim.

For the past week I’ve been spending some quality time with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. While I like the hardware for the most part and I don’t mind TouchWiz, I’ve been struggling to find a place for the device in my life. While a large part of it is simply that I’m not entirely convinced that a tablet is the best form factor, I keep finding myself disappointed with the app selection and quality. There are some great apps available for Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich, but overall I’ve been disappointed time and time again. 

The Galaxy Nexus has an outstanding fan base among the developer community and it completely shows when you poke your head into these forums. After receiving plenty of requests for us to post some custom ROM goodness, here is a ROM called the Android Open Kang Project (AOKP). It is based on Android 4.0.3 and has all the features you would hope for when flashing a ROM to your brand new Galaxy Nexus.

There are a few main things people look for when flashing ROMs to the G-Nex. They need to be able to switch up the colors on the navigation bar, add system toggles to the notification bar, switch up their lockscreen to have more than just unlock/camera options, and of course they need WiFi tethering. From what we have experienced, you can do all of that and a whole lot more. AOKP comes with a custom 1.2 GHz kernel that is set to an interactive setting. For battery life, it is one of the best I have seen on a device. If you have been looking for a good custom ROM to throw on your device, then look no further. 

Why Motorola went with the term “XYBOARD” here in the U.S. is beyond me, but if you want a tablet with such a unique (to put it nicely) name that isn’t tied to a carrier and connects via WiFi only, then you can pick one up today. Both the 10.1″ and 8.2″ models are available in two sizes:  16GB or 32GB. The 16GB 8.2″ model runs $399, with the 10.1″ starting at $499. Personally at that price, I would recommend the Transformer Prime since it already has Ice Cream Sandwich (XYBOARDs do not), runs a quad-core Tegra 3 processor (XYBOARDs only dual-core OMAP), has an advanced display that is crazy sensitive to touch, and has one of the best cameras a tablet will ever see.

Moto, time to rethink your strategy.

Buy.

No, this isn’t the touch-based Clockwork Recovery that was created for the Galaxy Nexus at the beginning of the month. This is a fully touch-enabled version that no longer uses arrows or physical buttons to get the job done. Our man Koush released a teaser on G+ to get some feedback and to show the progress that he has made. You can’t test it yet and he has promised a better UI, so try to be patient.

Via:  Google+

Over the next few days I’m going to do my best to document my DROID RAZR MAXX battery journey with posts like this. Since the big selling point of it is clearly the massive 3300mAh battery that has been tucked inside, this just seems like the right thing to do. So up first is day 1, which with most phones, tends to be one of the worst as far as battery life is concerned. 

All I can say to this app is “Wow.” If you have grown sick of waiting for Hulu to release some sort of non-membership app or to add your device to their supported list, you may want to check out Flash Video Browser. Using this app, you can watch all the Hulu you could ever dream of, just like you do through a PC browser. No subscription required, just free web-only content that for whatever reason, has been blocked from mobile devices.

And here’s to hoping that this doesn’t get shut down in the next couple of days now that it has started to get some attention.

Market Link ($0.99)

Cheers Ted!