If you are into reddit and Android, you have likely heard of baconreader. It’s made by OneLouder Apps, the same crew that produced 1Weather, SportCaster, and TweetCaster to name a few. Their reddit app though, is the go-to for the service. It received a mention-worthy update this afternoon that brought with it a scrollable and resizable widget, NFC Beam support, hardware acceleration, subreddit widgets that refresh depending on frequency, and more. It’s mostly Ice Cream Sandwich related, but you won’t complain, will you?  

Here is the full list:

1. Widget points to selected subreddit, and refreshes at selected frequency
2. Widget supports scrolling and resizing on Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich devices
3. Supports Beam on NFC-enabled Ice Cream Sandwich devices
4. Supports Hardware Acceleration
5. Posts, widgets, external images and gifs, and comments load more quickly due to component rewrites
6. Widget points to the appropriate story in the application
7. If you like what you see, please consider changing your rating in the Android Market!

Market Links:  Free | Premium ($1.99)

Cheers @Esteinberger!

Chrome Beta for Android was completely unexpected and sort of took the tech world by storm this afternoon. We gave our first impressions on it, talk about a couple of issues that may or may not be addressed, praised it in a number of ways, and are more than likely going to make it our daily browser. After all, there is a good chance that this will become the official Android browser before long. It doesn’t have Flash support though, and according to Adobe, it may never. Is that a killer for you? Will you stick with another browser option or have you already made Chrome your default?

Now that I have had some time to toss around this new Chrome Beta for Android, I thought I would share some of my initial thoughts and reactions to it. As a reminder though, this is definitely in a first edition beta which means there are some bugs and nuances that Google needs to work out for it to have the polish of the official Android browser. For the most part, it’s pretty damn awesome. Let’s get to it. 

Syncing

Other than some fancy UI tweaks, the coolest part of Chrome Beta for Android is easily its syncing abilities. The Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich browsers have had the ability to sync for the most part, but not on this live “real time” level. If you have your PC’s Chrome browser synced, you can view all of your tabs on your phone, access those same pages, etc. Firefox has been doing this for a bit now, but the sluggishness of that browser overall even after dozens of updates has made it not much of an option. For many of you, this is the first time you will have experienced real time syncing.

With that said, Chrome for Android so far has been finicky when it comes to syncing, but once it does, it works better than you would expect. Since it’s a beta, we will try not to be too harsh over the fact that it took almost an hour to get our device to sync. Now that it has, I’m impressed with it.

Also, it does a great job of syncing bookmarks, separating them into folders from Chrome on your PC and then allowing you to manage them.

Two Tips:  Transitions and Text Preview

Two things that I initially had been using for the last couple of hours yet managed to leave out of this review were pointed out in the comments as pretty major features, so I’m adding this quick section to make sure everyone is aware of them. The first is the ability to flip between your tabs by simply sliding your finger from the edge of your phone across either left or right. Again, you have to start your finger almost off of your screen and then onto it to activate the slide.

The second thing is to activate Chrome’s new zooming feature for small text areas. As you can see in the screenie on the right, I tapped in our “Recent Posts” widget which had 5 links in it. Since Chrome was unable to recognize or possibly didn’t want to guess which link I was trying to tap, it zoomed out on that area, giving me a close up look at the links. I was then able to choose the exact link. Cool, right?

UI and Polish

The look of Chrome for Android is an odd mix that we both like and dislike at the same time. It utilizes swiping gestures very well and includes beautiful transitions, but none of it reflects Ice Cream Sandwich whatsoever. Obviously Chrome is its own brand that is separate from Android, however, you get the feeling that this browser was made to eventually replace the stock Android browser. Now, there is time for them to work out all of the kinks in it and theme it to make it official or even steal some of the new features and bring them to Android, but for now, it feels like what it is, a separate product. Overall though, it looks as good as any other Android browser out there. Plus, the tilt scrolling is simply too awesome to not play with for a few minutes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

No Flash

Many of you noticed immediately that Chrome for Android lacked Flash support. It’s unfortunate, but with Adobe announcing the end of mobile Flash support a few months back, this is not surprising. They also released a statement this afternoon confirming that this product will likely never support Flash, as they have moved their focus on to HTML5.

Lack of Quick Controls

The lack of “Quick Controls” that are in the stock ICS and Honeycomb Android browsers is killing me already. We understand that this is an Android “Labs” feature, but how difficult would it be for one of these two teams to port it to Chrome. It could happen at some point, but that could be dependent on whether or not Chrome becomes the official Android browser.

Wrap-up

This browser is my new phone browser. It’s that simple. The fact that I can essentially manage my internet world from either PC or phone is something that I have longed for. As a first release, Chrome for Android has bugs and will annoy you at times, but the benefits of using it as a daily driver are outweighing those shortcomings. This is as fully-featured (aside from a lack of Flash support) a browser as you will find.

What are your initial impressions? Can’t survive without Flash? Or is fully-featured enough to get beyond that?

Now that we have figured out how to install the mysterious Google Voice update that appeared in the market within the last couple of hours, it’s time to dive into some of the new stuff we are seeing. The most noticeable change comes on the UI front. Google has introduced a new icon for the app that matches the color scheme for Ice Cream Sandwich as well as the overall look. All menu and action bars are now themed to fit the theme of other prominent Android 4.0 apps.

The other cool thing one of our readers noticed was on his tablet – there is now an option for “Click-to-Call.” If you click this button and then give it a number to call, it will send a call to your phone that will then connect to the number you requested. There has been a Chrome extension that worked in a similar way for a while now, but as far as we know, this is new to tablets.

*Note – The market lists stuff about prefetching and sending to multiple recipients, but that was included in the update back in November. The official full changelog is not out yet.

More pics below.  

Market Link

Click here to view the embedded video.

We love to tinker with apps, so whenever something new is released by Google, we almost always dive into the settings to look for developer options or new Labs features. Sure enough, Chrome for Android has just that in a feature called “Tilt Scrolling.” It’s not the most practical of all features, but the cool factor is too high to not show off.

When you are in your “stack view” of open tabs, Chrome can use your accelerometer to spread your tabs apart or close them together. Again, the day-to-day usefulness of this can be questioned, but I think the point is to show you what this browser and a mobile device are capable of. We’re officially impressed.

To enable this option, head into Settings>developer tools and check the box to “Enable Tilt Scrolling.”

Other tips that you would like to share?

On the heels of the release of Google Chrome for Android, it appears as if Google Voice is also about to get a bump. The market won’t let you actually update the app just yet, but we can see that a new icon will at least be introduced. Will keep an eye on it.

Update:  If your market will not allow you to update, try this trick from reader fallingd0wn:

Pull up Google Voice in the web market on a PC.  It will show installed already on your phone, but click “Install” anyway.  You’ll get the updated version.

Update 2:  We have comparison shots of the new UI along with a feature for tablets called “Click-to-Call.”

Cheers Wayne, Isaac, Tojo, and Adrian!

Chrome for Android literally just went live in the market all of 2 minutes ago. We haven’t even had a chance to play with it ourselves, so go grab it and come back for our reactions in a bit. So far, it is only available to Android 4.0 devices. 

Market Link | Mirror

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Alain Mutricy is the senior VP of portfolio and product management at Motorola. More importantly, he has an awesome French accent that turned this intro video for the DROID 4 into an instant classic. I’m not sure that I want to buy one anymore than I did before watching it, but that is not this video’s fault. Just watch and enjoy.

One of our favorite features in all of Ice Cream Sandwich is the set of quick controls that the stock browser offers. We featured these controls during one of our Android 4.0 tutorials and have even turned to 3rd party browsers like Browser Plus because it offered an expanded set of them. They really do make your browsing experience that much more fluid should you get the hang of the idea. Unfortunately, we felt like we were stuck with two extremes when it came to stock or Browser Plus controls. What I mean by that is, the stock browser only offered the ability to switch tabs, load settings or activate the address bar, while Browser Plus seemed to offer too many controls, making the experience a little overwhelming.

In Android 4.0.4, Google has found the perfect balance in activating a couple of extra controls. As you can see from the screenie up top, you now have the ability to add a tab and jump into bookmarks. These probably should have been activated initially, but for whatever reason, we are just now getting them in 4.0.4.

If you have yet to use “Quick Controls,” I highly suggest that you give them a shot. Head into Settings>Labs through the browser to get started.

You can install Android 4.0.4 on you Galaxy Nexus using these instructions.

*Note – As many have pointed out in the comments, these were available in 4.0.3 as well, but only those that were able to flash ROMs could experience them.

Cheers samuel!

Two days ago, Motorola announced that a new update was headed to the DROID Bionic. We assumed that it was the 5.9.902 update that our sources tipped us off about a few weeks back, and sure enough that is exactly what it is. The update will introduce a couple of pieces of bloatware, but most importantly will make the device more stable – something that Bionic uses have been asking for from day 1. Black screen lockups, camera issues, idle resets, and multimedia dock freezes have all been addressed. Oh, battery life should also be a tad better.

The update is 57.6MB in size. Be sure to let us know when it pops up on your device.

Update:  If you a part of the Motorola Feedback Network and have registered your Bionic or soak tests, you should be able to pull the update now.

More info.

Cheers Dan!