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?  

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?

 Loading ...

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. 

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.  

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?

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. 

Let’s be honest, notification toggles should have been built into Ice Cream Sandwich. Custom ROMs have had them for months, plus OEMs have even started building them into their skins. For whatever reason though, Google left them out and non-rooted users who own stock devices are stuck looking for options. One of those is Power Control Plus, an app that I was a huge fan of pre-ICS. This used to be a go-to app for customizing home screens as it gives you a ton of options for making the ultimate power widget. Once Honeycomb (Ice Cream Sandwich too) was released though, the app was given the ability to dock itself in the notification bar.

You don’t need root or a custom ROM – this can be installed with the tap of a couple of buttons. Colors, toggles and other goodies can be added thereafter.

Market Link ($1.99)

Cheers TheAndroid1!