Back in September we took a trip to San Francisco to hang out with the OpenFeint team to see some of the plans they had for Android, but most importantly, what new games they were looking to release.  One of the most impressive was a little game called Jet Car Stunts.  It’s a time trial racing game, but you aren’t necessarily battling other people so much as you are battling the difficult race tracks.  You have jet fuel to help you clear large gaps, the turning is super touchy, there are jumping tricks that only the best will find, and of course you’ll love the ability to post up a new high score into Feint to let your friends know how badly you’ve just crushed them.

It seriously has been one of the games at the top of our list for months now.  $1.99 in the market.

Download Link

GameLoft may have been a part of Android for the last year and a half, but only now are they ready to start taking it to the next level.  To kick off a new aggressive gameplan, they are planning to release 10 new HD games throughout the rest of December with titles like Oregon Trail, Shrek Kart Racing, Brother in Arms 2, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, Let’s Golf 2, Gangstar Miami Vindication, Real Soccer 2011, Spiderman Total Mayhem, Fishing Kings, and GT Racing.

Check out the trailer for these new games after the break.  

Remember that X-mas gift that Dolphin was preparing for us?  It’s a happy new Christmas theme for you all to enjoy!  I know, I know, we were hoping Dolphin had some inside scoop on a mass Gingerbread release date or winning lottery numbers, but that isn’t the case.  If you want to show some holiday spirit though, then feel free to grab this add-on from the market for free.

Download Link

Cheers Brian and everyone else!

There aren’t many of people in the world right now that can actually utilize this list, since Gingerbread is officially only on one device, but why not get it out there to help prepare everyone anyway?  This is a list of tips and tricks that Google has released for those with Android 2.3 and that need a little help becoming an Android power user.

• Visual cue for scrolling: When you are in a scrollable list (like your Gmail inbox) and you reach the end of the list it shows an orange hue—a visual cue that you can’t scroll anymore.
• Notification bar icons (Wi-Fi, network coverage bars, etc.): Turn green when you have an uninhibited connection to Google, white when you don’t. Hint: if you’re in a hotel or airport using Wi-Fi, the bars won’t turn green until you launch the browser and get past the captive portal.
• Voice actions: Tell your phone what to do by pressing the microphone icon next to the search box on the home screen, or long press the magnifying glass. You can tell it to send an email or text message (“send text to mom, see you for pizza at 7”), call someone (“call mom”), navigate somewhere (“navigate to pizza”), or listen to music (“listen to Mamma Mia”).
• Find things you’ve downloaded from your browser: Your downloads are now neatly collected in a Downloads manager, which you can find in the apps drawer.
• Turn a Gallery stack into a slideshow: In Gallery, when you are looking at a stack of photos, put two fingers on the stack and spread them. The stack spreads out and the pictures flow from one finger to the other, a moving slideshow that lets you see all of the photos.
• Walk, don’t drive: Once you’ve gotten directions within Google Maps, click on the walking person icon to get walking directions.
• Easy text copy/paste from a webpage: To copy/paste from a webpage, long press some text, drag the handles around to select the text you want to copy, and press somewhere in the highlighted region. To paste, simply long press a text entry box and select paste. Gmail is a bit different: you need to go to Menu > More > Select Text.
• Turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot: Go to Settings > Wireless & Networks > Tethering & Portable Hotspot. (You may have to pay extra for this feature.)
• Look at Maps in 3D: With the latest release of Google Maps, you can now look at 3D maps. Tilt the map by sliding two fingers vertically up/down the screen, and rotate it by placing two fingers on the map and sliding in a circular motion, e.g., from 12 and 6 o’clock to 3 and 9.
• Cool shutdown effect: When you put the phone to sleep, you’ll see an animation that resembles an old cathode tube TV turning off.

You can find more info, plus some of Google’s favorite apps over at their blog.

Famed tech rumor starter DigiTimes is reporting that Honeycomb, which is the version of Android built with some specific tablet features, won’t be released by Google until March of next year.  No sources or mentions of sources are given, and it almost looks like a line just dropped on a rumor they would love to see come true.  They also mentioned in the same report, that the version number will still be 3.0 and not 2.4 which had become the new favorite in the numbering scheme…

On the other hand, MSI is set to display its 10-inch Wintel-based tablet PC as well as engineering samples of its ARM-based Google Android model. MSI is also prepared to sell an Nvidia Tegra 2-based model in April or May after Google releases Android 3.0 in March.

So what do you guys think?  If this is the case, we won’t see Honeycomb tablets until March, rather than February which I believe is what most of us were hoping for.  I know that January will fly by after all of the announcements of everything at CES, but it’s going to be hard for us to stop the drooling for 3 months while they prepare those same products for store shelves.

Via:  DigiTimes, BGR

EA Mobile is currently offering up what appears to be their entire lineup of Android games for $.99 as a holiday celebration of sorts.  Even Need for Speed, which isn’t showing above, can be had for a single dollar.  Speaking of the holidays, there is something about Tetris that brings me back to X-mas morning when the Gameboy first came out and that was the game.  Memories.

Check your market now to grab some of this killer deals.

Cheers JoelSeph!

The Droid Pro (our review) is the latest family member to receive an update.  With so many devices out now, seems like one pops up each week, and of course, we’re not complaining.  This one appears to be pretty minor, weighs in at about 15.9MB and looks to improve a bunch of stuff.  If you’d like to tell your phone to pull the update immediately, head to Settings>About Phone>System Updates on your device and it should be waiting for you.