You are no longer stuck with that janky Android 3.0 preview SDK as of about 10 minutes ago. The full Honeycomb SDK and tools are now available for developers to get cracking on. Just in time for Thursday’s Motorola XOOM launch. Oh, and did you hear that the bootloader on the XOOM can be unlocked? Yep, today is officially awesome.
According to the “official” Motorola Twitter account, the XOOM will come packed with a “unlockable/relockable bootloader” that gives developers access to hardware for development. Yes, you are reading that correctly. I’m actually speechless right now…what exactly does that mean though? Do they have something secret planned to control developer access, but complete limit end user? Will it be similar to the Nexus S method? I have no idea, but the hammering of the account has already begun, so keep it hear as we’ll be all over this.
Update: Not that this adds anything new to the situation and is the same message tweeted above, but the Moto forums manager confirmed this as well…(Cheers Matthew!)
Greatest news of the week…month…year?
Cheers Mark!
The kind folks at Slacker reached out to see if we would be interested in hooking up readers with a few 3-month subscriptions to their Plus service, and you know we never turn down an opportunity to feed you guys some free stuff. For those of you not familiar with Slacker Radio, I highly suggest you check out their site and Android app because it’s one of, if not the best internet radio services on the planet. You can customize stations using your favorite artists or listen to pre-sets, but most importantly, you can access it all from anywhere including your mobile device and computer. And with the “Plus” subscription you get even more goodies like: unlimited song skipping and song requests, access to song lyrics and no audio or banner ads. Good stuff for sure.
So here is the deal!
1. We are giving away three 3-month subscriptions to Slacker Radio Plus.
2. To enter, you have to follow us on Twitter and tweet the following message:
Win a 3-month subscription to Slacker Radio Plus from @droid_life – Details here – http://goo.gl/xGBIx #android #contest
3. For those that hate Twitter, you can “like” us on Facebook to enter.
4. We’ll pick the 3 winners on Friday 2/25: 2 from Twitter and 1 from Facebook.
5. We’ll inform the winners that same day!
Good luck everyone!
My hatred of touch screen controls is well-known to my editor here at Droid Life. Most of the time Kellex isn’t a fan of posting my more vitriolic reviews because games that do touch controls badly are simply bad apps. They fail in their most basic function: to make the game easily playable with minimal frustration.
Every once and awhile, however, I find something that changes my mind: PewPew is one of those games. It takes the winning formula of the Geometry Wars series and mercilessly rips it off; I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. However, it replicated the dual joystick experience of an Xbox 360 controller quite well through two amazing responsive on-screen control knobs. In short, one control stick moves you, the other tells the game which direction you want to shoot. Sometimes the game is a “rub your stomach while pat your head” conundrum; keeping track of the two is harder than it looks.
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The Samsung 4G LTE device that we got our hands on at CES made a major appearance in Verizon’s Info Center just a few minutes ago and is apparently still nameless with only a model number of SCH-i510. It received its “MAP designation” which stands for Minimum Advertised Price and is usually a good sign that the device launch isn’t all that far off. We aren’t sure exactly what that price will be, but if it follows the Thunderbolt model at all, we should expect it somewhere around the $249 mark on a 2-year contract and hopefully no where near that $749 number.
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We were turned on to a new lockscreen replacement last night called GOTO LockScreen and damn are we impressed. The actual rotary lock-wheel is polished, lets you jump right into your Gmail/dialer/messaging apps, and even displays a notification count on them. You also get weather, time, battery level, alarm status, and the ability to set up a custom wallpaper. And yes, this is for all users including those non-rooted folks in the wild.
The app doesn’t allow you add all of the extra sliders that say a WidgetLocker would, but the look is so much more appealing. We’re hoping that the developer adds more options in the near future and then this app will be on our phones for a long time.
And the good news is that it’s on-sale for $1.49, so you might want to give it a quick look.
Download Link ($1.49)
Cheers person on Twitter that I forgot!
In the March edition of Details, they recommended a bunch of phones that don’t begin with an “I” and we couldn’t help but smile at all of the Android options. Of course, we loved seeing the Thunderbolt, but also took notice that they left out Skype and 8-device hotspot features which we know have been fueling the delay controversy lately. Oh, and another 2-page ad showed up directly after. Just wanted to share…
From Android Life
