Where Instagram leads, though, some others have followed, and with the increasing competence of Android device camera hardware, it’s little wonder that the quality of the photography section of the Google Play store is on the rise.

Looking to add to that trend is Camera360, which has just been updated to version 4, known as the Ultimate edition. Camera360 looks to provide a complete photographic package, from the taking of a photo through to sharing, with a few edits along the way.
But is it just another generic snap-and-filter affair? It’s time to find out…

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Getting Started

It is evident from first use that Camera360 has plenty of features on offer. Some, like the self-timer and flash controls, are easy to understand, mostly relying on icons. Other areas of the app are a little more confusing – well, they are if you don’t speak Chinese. Camera360 has only been partially translated from its native language, and even the areas in “English” require some guesswork to find their true meaning.

The look of Camera360 is clean and well-ordered, though, and the initial tour is comprehensible enough to get you going with the app’s basics.

Shooting Options

The assortment of shooting options within Camera360 isn’t particularly inspiring, in part because many of them can be found in the default Android camera app. Camera360 does, however, provide a usable form of digital stabilization, and an adjustable ISO setting.

Camera360 has a modest, if useful, array of shooting features

Additionally, there are a couple of extra options to be found, hidden away, in the pop-up menu which emanates from the right-hand side of the shutter button. The tilt-shift effect provides a good impression of the real thing, and its plane of focus is adjustable, both in terms of size, and positioning. Also available is the colour-shift tool, which provides the ability to add a nice, post-capture, colour-popping style. There’s a wide range of colours to choose from, and the accuracy with which colours are picked out is impressive.

Effects

Effects are the priority in Camera360, and it does them pretty well. Accessed by pulling the shutter button to the left, the Effects menu features 14 different modes, ranging from Magic Skin (“For girls, make your skin looks rosy and glossy” – according to the in-app instructions) to highly styled options, like Dreamy and 1839.

Camera360′s biggest asset is the Effects menu

Many of these titles aren’t just freestanding effects. Choose B&W or Retro, for example, and you’ll be presented with a range of related effects, which can be applied, Instagram-style, once you’ve taken a picture.

Camera360 offers an Instagram-style range of post-capture filters

Those who like a distorted colour balance and a strong vignette will enjoy Lomo. The Retro effects, in particular, really shine, and provide some degree of fading and colour-warping, whilst remaining tasteful. Other modes, like Ghost (inserts a hazy figure into white areas of your photo) and Big Head (you can guess), are just for laughs, while the Enhance menu provides simplistic, one-click edits.

Scenes

Pull the shutter button to the right, and you’ll find 16 different pre-taken images, which are named within Camera360 as Scenes. Each of these contains a designated area for your snapshot to be slotted into, and in many cases, your image is placed within a picture frame or a billboard. Some Scenes even include an artist “drawing” your photo onto a canvas.

Camera360′s Scenes are quirky, but they offer limited lasting value

The concept of these Scenes is quirky, and for a brief period, curiosity forces you to try them. Finding any kind of ongoing use for them, though, is a thankless task.

Looks interesting doesn’t it? Once, maybe…

Online Features

Even once you’ve taken your picture – and styled it, if you feel like it – Camera360 still has a little more to offer.

Many Android users will be familiar with Google+’s Instant Upload, which automatically backs up images to the cloud as soon after you’ve taken them as possible. The Camera360 alternative is called Photo Bank, and it also stores images in the cloud, although it is limited to a maximum dimension of 2000 pixels. It works nicely as an online library, allowing easy access to your images, which are displayed in a calendar-type view.

The Cloud backup function in Camera360 is great for those who don’t use Google+

The sharing controls in Camera360 highlight the app’s Chinese bias once again – how many western users will want to share images on the likes of QZONE and TencentWeibo, I’m not entirely sure. Happily, the more mainstream networks like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Evernote are included, and sending out images from Camera360 is a pleasantly friction-free process.

The Share menu doesn’t have a large selection of networks to choose from, but it is easy to use

Conclusion

For me, Camera360 is a mixed bag. It doesn’t bring many aids to the actual image-taking process, but the functions it does bring — tilt and colour-shift — are of high quality. Equally, the Effects are not in the same class as Instagram’s, but they perform perfectly well for jazzing up your snaps. Camera360′s sharing controls are also worth mentioning in a positive light – although the number of services supported is limited, the actual process of sharing is as simple as it could be.

The biggest downside of this app is the Scenes menu, which is both bizarre and dysfunctional in equal measure. It’s also a shame that some good quality Chinese to English translation hasn’t been utilised in the making of this app.

As an overall package, however, if you like adding a filter or two to your snaps, and you don’t fancy using the Facebook-owned Instagram, Camera360 represents a competent home for your image editing and sharing needs, at the cost of nothing more than a free download.

It takes only seconds to learn, but you could spend your whole life mastering the formula, and it’s incredibly addictive — not only have I wiled away many an hour, but I got my sister-in-law, brother, and girlfriend hooked at one time or another. And I’ve scoured the Play Store for the best in picross action on Android. Here are my 10 favorites.

Logic Square

Reminiscent of Mario’s Picross, Logic Square hides a tough and unforgiving design beneath its adorable façade. There’s a real sense of polish here, although you’ll have to settle for playing mostly with the directional pad as cursor as puzzles get mighty small and every mistake cuts down your time limit. The difficulty is offset, and given a strategic element, by three special items that you can buy with points earned in-game.

The small size gets pretty hairy, so it’s a good thing you have a d-pad.

Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.1 and up
Google Play link: Logic Square
Developer: Devsquare

Nonomatic

Nonomatic delivers a compelling experience in a simple package, combining an attractive red, white, grey, and black color scheme with easy-to-learn controls. It adapts to small screens by letting you zoom in on sections of the grid, with the rest of the squares compressed into lines around the edge. This can be annoying at times, but for the most part works like a charm.

Nonomatic offers an interesting, mostly effective, method of showing you the grid zoomed in.

Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.1 and up
Google Play link: Nonomatic
Developer: Undergrowth Games

NemoNemo Picross

NemoNemo Picross is popular for a reason — it’s an excellent, consistent picross game with 80 well-designed levels. You can zoom in and out with pinch gestures, to make squares a larger target (or to let you read the numbers, if your eyes can’t handle the tiny text). There are separate buttons to switch between fill or cross out tools, while you get a maximum of five errors.

You don’t get the fancy extras of some of the other games on this list, but NemoNemo is strong where it counts — in puzzle design and ease of use.

Simple, pure, straightforward picross.

Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.1 and up
Google Play link: NemoNemo Picross
Developer: GBong

GraphiLogic

GraphiLogic’s cool single and multi-color puzzles are let down by interface woes on smaller devices. A magnifying glass zoom function may sound good in theory — you warp the grid, enlarging everything in its arc, to better see and touch an area — but it’s awkward and clunky in practice. As is the need to fill background squares with the background color.

Aside from those problems, this ad-supported app puts a smile and a grimace on your face with complex puzzles and a light-hearted vibe (the game exclaims “yippee!” every time you finish a puzzle). You can expand on the relatively paltry set of default puzzles by picking up some of the free and paid themed puzzle packs, or create your own.

GraphiLogic goes too far, but it’s a quality puzzler all the same.

Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.1 and up
Google Play link: GraphiLogic
Developer: GraphiLogic.net

Griddlers Plus

You may be better grabbing Griddlers Plus, which also features colored and multi-grid varieties in addition to the standard monochrome picture crossword. It offers a better interface, with pinch-to-zoom and multi-cell selection, and piles on hundreds of puzzles — all free, including an epic 220x260x20 behemoth (broken into 143 20×20 grids). Best of all, you can create and share puzzles with your friends.

Name these characters.

Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.3.3 and up
Google Play link: Griddlers Plus
Developer: A. YILDIZ

Nono Logix

The only faults I could find in Nono Logix are that it lacks zoom functionality —which makes it harder to use on phones — and it uses Adobe Air — which renders it unstable. Its flat, clean interface is a sight to behold, and it’s easy to fly through the puzzles without being slowed down by menus or loading times.

Nono Logix includes 100 free puzzles, with 21 paid packs of 25 puzzles for $0.99 each (so that’s over 600 puzzles in total, with more coming).

If looks could kill.

Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.2 and up
Google Play link: Nono Logix
Developer: ooblada

Nonogram Madness

The retro aesthetic of Nonogram Madness makes it an easy one to like, but it’s tough to love. While puzzles are easy to play, and the interface is straightforward, it’s sorely lacking zoom functionality. I found that the only way to unlock Medium, Hard, and Random modes was to press the Restore Purchases button (then I couldn’t access them at all later). Other minor issues plague the experience. The puzzles are fun, though, so hopefully the problems get ironed out soon.

It’s madness.

Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.1 and up
Google Play link: Nonogram Madness
Developer: Ganbaru Games

NonoCube

NonoCube takes its cue from Nintendo DS hit Picross 3D, shifting the picture crossword into three dimensions. It’s not as blatant or shameless a clone as a certain other game, with intuitive and responsive new controls and a touch of Don’t Worry, Be Happy about its presentation. The fantastic controls and tutorials are a particular standout, but that’s not to say anything against the puzzle design.

It’s shiny, happy, fun, and not too similar to Picross 3D.

Price: $1.99
Requires: Android 2.3.3 and up
Google Play link: NonoCube / NonoCube Free
Developer: Graycode Software

CrossMe Premium / CrossMe Color Premium

CrossMe comes in color and regular flavors, with the latter being a more traditional single-color picross and the former adopting two or more colors that add an extra layer of challenge. It’s smooth and responsive, with an easy-to-grasp two-step interface — one press to mark on, two to mark off;  hold then drag to affect multiple squares in a row or column.

Grab the free versions first to get a feel for things. They have a few tricky puzzles that might take veterans of the genre for a spin, although you may need to pony up the cash for Premium to unlock the big head-scratchers.

CrossMe and CrossMe Color are smooth and responsive, with a nice look about them.

Price: $4.95
Requires: Android 2.1 and up
Google Play link: CrossMe Premium (lite version) / CrossMe Color Premium (lite version)
Developer: Mobile Dynamix

Battle Cross Pixel

If you’ve been yearning for a multiplayer picross experience, Battle Cross Pixel might be just the thing. Its slick, retro-futuristic presentation makes quite the impression, too. The core puzzling side of the experience works well, but it is a bit easy to make mistakes because touch-and-drag filling isn’t locked to individual rows or columns.

There’s a single-player mode and two multiplayer modes — co-op or battle/versus. Be warned, though, that the multiplayer menus are in Korean, and in my testing it was hard to find opponents online.

You might need sunglasses to play Battle Cross Pixel.

Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.2 and up
Google Play link: Battle Cross Pixel
Developer: TRITIUM

The Big Picture

If you’re a fan of Nintendo’s Picross series, it’s hard to go past Logic Square and NonoCube — although I found myself more enjoying the sleek elegance of Nono Logix and the epic scale of Griddlers Plus.

Nonomatic may be the most accessible to newcomers, with a gentle learning curve and plenty of easy levels to kick things off. But if you’re a fan of nonograms, I think you’ll find value in all of these. Just be prepared to learn an entirely new interface and control scheme with each title.

I’ve found around 25 of these kinds of games so far on the Play Store, so this is really just a sampling of the field. Did I miss your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

This week we’ll take a more general approach and suggest various applications and services that save your content in the cloud and synchronize it transparently across devices and platforms. Whether you read articles and books on various phones and tablets, or need your notes and tasks sync’ed or simply want to keep track of your expenses across platforms, we’ve got the right apps for you!

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News, Magazines and Books

How often have you started reading an article or a book on your phone but had to stop and then couldn’t retrieve it on your tablet? This is a daily occurrence for me, but thanks to apps that sync my content with the cloud, I’m able to stick my phone back in my pocket when I have to get off the subway and resume reading where I left off on my iPad when I’m comfortably seating on my couch.

The best apps and services to sync News, Magazines and Books I would recommend are:

• Flipboard — syncs subscriptions only, not where you left off (Android, iOS)
• Pulse – syncs subscriptions and your favorites (Android, iOS)
• Google Reader — syncs subscriptions, your favorites and the articles you’ve read. There are various solutions you can use to sync with Google Reader, my favorite ones are gReader and Press on Android and Newsify and Reeder on iOS. Even though Google Reader will be shut down, these applications will support replacement services to sync your content soon.
• Feedly – syncs subscriptions, your favorites and the articles you’ve read (Android, iOS)
• Pocket — syncs articles to read offline across devices (Android, iOS)
• Instapaper – syncs articles to read offline across devices (Android, iOS)
• Readability – syncs articles to read offline across devices (Android, iOS)
• Zinio — syncs magazine subscriptions across devices (Android, iOS)
• Kindle — syncs books across devices (Android, iOS)

Tasks

Having your todo lists sync between your iOS and Android devices can come in handy. Whether your battery dies or your device crashes, you can always rely on another one to have a look at your remaining tasks. I personally recommend Wunderlist (Android, iOS), but others apps such as Todoist (Android, iOS), Producteev (Android, iOS) and Remember The Milk (Android, iOS) provide similar features. Pick your favorite one depending on the features and design you may prefer, as each app has something different to offer.

Notes and Boards

A tablet is usually more convenient to take notes, especially in meetings or in class. However, it makes more sense to read them from your phone when you’re on the move — at the store for example. You could also be browsing the web from your phone and stumble upon something you’d like to save. When you’re back home, you’d be more comfortable using your iPad to review your various boards. Have a look at the apps below that sync your notes and saved content between Android and iOS:

• Evernote (Android, iOS)
• Catch (Android, iOS)
• OneNote (Android, iOS)
• Springpad (Android, iOS)
• Pinboard (Android, iOS)
• Pinterest (Android, iOS)
• Kullect (Android, iOS)

Health

Many like to keep track of what they’re eating and their calorie intake on mobile devices. Using a phone is more convenient than a tablet to record such data, and is also easier to carry when working out. When it comes to reviewing our activity, a tablet is better to display graphs and progress thanks to its bigger screen. Take a look at our selection of apps that let you sync your health information across platforms:

• RunKeeper (Android, iOS)
• Endomondo (Android, iOS)
• Runtastic (Android, iOS)
• MyFitnesspal (Android, iOS)
• Noom (Android, iOS)
• Lose It (Android, iOS)

Finance

As with the health apps, expense trackers are usually used on phones to record expenses as we make them because we keep them in our pockets. Checking what we’ve been spending at the end of the day, however, remains more comfortable on a tablet. No matter if your devices are running Android or iOS, you’ll be able to sync your expenses and income thanks to the below apps:

• Toshl (Android, iOS)
• Mint (Android, iOS)
• Expense Cloud (Android, iOS)
• Expensify (Android, iOS)

Recipes and Cookbooks

If you’re a food lover, you probably like to browse recipes often and save them to try later on. You could for instance do this on your phone while you’re commuting to work and star recipes straight from there. Once at home in the evening, you can use your tablet to display the recipe and start cooking it! We recommend Evernote Food (Android, iOS), Pepperplate (Android, iOS) and BigOven (Android, iOS) as they can sync data with the cloud and across devices.

Passwords and Sensitive Data

No matter what device you’re using, saving your password and sensitive information such as your credit card and passport number can be handy in case you lose any of these documents, or are asked to provide data at an unexpected moment. Such information definitely needs to be replicated across platforms, and the apps below do just this:

• Keeper (Android, iOS)
• SafeWallet (Android, iOS)
• 1Password (Android, iOS)
• LastPass (Android, iOS)

Documents

Whether you work on the go or need to edit a presentation you’re giving from your iPad you forgot at the office, have a look at these cool apps. They all sync your content with online storage solutions so you can edit your content from both iOS and Android:

• CloudOn (Android, iOS)
• Kingsoft Office (Android, iOS)
• Polaris Office (Android, iOS)
• QuickOffice (Android, iOS).

Conclusion

With our selection of cross-platform apps, you’ll be sure your iOS and Android communicate with each other and sync your content seamlessly. Thanks to the cloud, your application data is saved online and downloaded back to your your other devices.

Now that we’ve looked at how to keep Android and iOS in sync in 3 parts, join us next week to discuss the limitations and caveats of the two systems, as well as the various issues and barriers I personally face when it comes to having my iPad Mini and Galaxy Note II fully understand each other.

For the longest time, I’ve stuck with Go Launcher Ex for all my home screen customization needs, with the occasional flings with other newer, less robust launchers. But along came Atom Launcher. I was drawn to its fresh set of themes, among other things. Here’s why this little launcher got me completely enamored.

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Basics

Atom Launcher has all the basic features a launcher can offer and any average user can ever need. It supports drag-and-drop for moving shortcuts from the app drawer to the home screen. It also offers multiple home screens and docks, as well as widgets and themes.

Switching from another launcher to Atom is very easy and not much of a hassle since you can import your existing home screen’s settings, including icons and widgets that are designed for other launchers.

Importing home screen settings from a previous launcher

You can add up to nine home screens, and choose to implement four to six grid layouts. The app drawer can be sorted, filtered or grouped into folders which are displayed in a thumbnail format, or a nice cascading view where you can swipe through app icons and launch them without opening the folder.

Swipe through icons or tap on the thumbnail to navigate folders

Pick a Theme

I saw one Atom theme on the Play Store and thought it was beautiful, and that’s how I originally came across Atom and decided to try it out. After getting the app, I installed the Atom Store — an additional app necessary to see all themes — and I was smitten.

While themes are not for everyone, there’s a good combination of free and paid ones that lean towards unique art designs, from whimsy to bold. This alone can draw you in and hold your interest enough to try each theme, until you eventually forget to go back to your old launcher.

Free light and dark themes from the Atom Store

More Integrated Features

Atom Launcher has a dedicated menu that appears as a header for displaying the time, date and other information like battery status. This is a small strip on the topmost part of the home screen, right under the status bar, that can be hidden or toggled to show other icons — mostly for accessing launcher settings. This feature renders clock widgets useless, and it gave me the freedom to sport a widget-less main home screen, which I prefer.

Atom’s dedicated menu is a sliding drawer on the top of the screen

Some themes support multiple wallpapers, and although that’s a great thing, it’s actually limited to images within that theme. You can’t add your own images to the mix, but you can omit ones from the theme’s built-in selection.

You can choose which images to show in multiple wallpaper mode

This didn’t bother me one bit, as I find that this benefits the theme’s consistency when it comes to the overall design. By not letting users add images, the theme is guaranteed to maintain the same look and feel all throughout.

However, adding your own background image is still possible with themes that do not have multiple wallpapers. You can even apply filters like Lomo, Water or Light. Swiping your thumb or finger from the bottom of your home screen upwards will show these options, along with Effect and Transparency.

Filters create more dramatic backgrounds

This feature can spell a world of difference when choosing a background image. For instance, a macro image of a leaf will go well with a Water filter, or a beach landscape with a Light filter, and so on.

Even with all these features, Atom Launcher is a relatively lightweight app, with the initial download only at 7.61 MB, plus the Atom Store at less than 3 MB. This generally means that it won’t take up too much of your device’s space, and will probably run faster than other hefty launchers. Sure enough, it’s the case with Atom. Swiping and navigating through screens felt a bit smoother and faster than with Go Launcher Ex.

Atom Widgets

Atom Launcher, like Go Launcher and all others of its kind, has its own set of widgets. Atom All In One Widgets is another additional download necessary if you want to use widgets designed specifically for it. There aren’t many, but those that are available boast a good quality. I found that the widgets went great with any theme I chose, mostly because they’re minimalist in design.

Minimalist widgets complement different themes

I particularly liked the calendar widgets. Its designs are simple yet elegant, and not too distracting when displayed on a home screen. There are four themes to choose from, with an option to add holidays for certain countries including Japan and the US.

Conclusion

As someone who has tried just about every launcher that came out, I’d say Atom Launcher is a huge contender against other more popular and established alternatives in the Play Store. It may not be for everyone, especially if you’re looking to tweak every little detail in your home screen. It is, however, for anyone who wants fresh themes, something beautiful to look at, with as little distractions as possible. Atom is also for anyone who wants a fast, lightweight launcher that works as nicely as it looks.

While there is an obvious correlation between battery backup and the amount of apps installed on your phone and their usage, there are quite a few errant apps that tend to keep running in the background even after you exit them. These apps not only put a huge burden on the battery life but also tend to hog your device’s precious resources, thereby slowing it down considerably and causing numerous problems.  A new app, Greenify aims to solve this problem in a unique and efficient way.

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Why Greenify

The problem of certain apps hogging memory resources and eating up battery is not a new one for Android and there is a countless number of apps present on the Play Store aiming to solve this problem. A common take is to freeze the problem apps but such a solution disables the app and makes it completely unusable. System optimization tools, task managers and automatic task killers are other solutions that rarely seem to work and in many cases, cause more harm than good.

Greenify, a root-only app, takes a different and unique approach to the issue altogether by introducing the concept of hibernation. It identifies these errant apps and allows the user to put them in a state of hibernation that stops them from running in the background. However, the hibernated apps do not become unusable, rather they remain accessible and are allowed to run in the foreground when explicitly called upon. This approach acts as a true battery saver while also affording users the ability to use the apps as and when required.

Greenify Breathes New Life In Your Android

Interface

Greenify is designed with an aim to keep things simple and clean. The main interface is very minimal and launching it for the first time opens up an uncluttered white screen listing out its major benefits. This is also the screen from where you can add all the apps you wish to hibernate. The “+” button at the bottom opens up a new screen that lists out all the apps on your phone divided into the following categories:

• Running in background
• Scheduled running
• May slow down the device (upon the triggering of certain events)
• Recently running

Uncluttered Home Page and App Listing

Each of the categories has a (i) icon beside it that reveals further information and helps you understand why a certain app is listed under a certain category. Choosing an app for hibernation is as simple as just clicking on it from this screen. Each of the selected apps automatically gets hibernated and can be manually put out of that state from Greenify’s home screen itself, which is also just a one tap action.

The simplicity of the app, while commendable, also warrants that the user be careful about the apps that they put into hibernation. For example, picking instant messaging clients, launchers, alarm clock apps, system apps, etc will shut their services down completely and cause numerous problems and inconveniences.

Simple Approach For Moving Apps To Hibernation State

Conclusion

In my opinion, the nature of the solution provided by Greenify works much better and is more efficient than any other alternative available. The app delivers on its promises and there is a definite improvement that I found on the battery life and stability of my phone once I had hibernated some of the more enthusiastic apps. So, if your device is rooted and you feel that it is in need of some fresh air, give Greenify a shot and you may see a marked improvement in its performance.

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Looking for more tablet-optimized Android apps? Check this list of our most interesting tablet app roundups.

Conclusion

So these were 10 of my favorite apps to listen to, discover, and even play music. I think I rounded some of the popular names alongside a few apps you hopefully hadn’t heard of before. Of course, if I missed your favorite tablet-optimized music app, feel free to let me know in the comments.

BBM Coming to Android and iOS this Summer

BlackBerry announced this week that their iconic messaging service and spiritual predecessor to services like iMessage, Kik and other platforms, will be released as an Android and iOS app in summer.

BBM will run on iOS 6+ and Android 4.0+, and naturally integrate with native BlackBerry user’s messaging apps.

BlackBerry Messenger running natively, as well as introducing new platforms Android and iOS. (Photo credit: The Verge)

Initially, the service will feature more basic messaging features of the product, but will be expanded with additional features such as voice and screen sharing in the future.

Android 4.3, White Nexus 4 MIA

One anticipated announcement that didn’t show up at Google’s I/O keynote was Android 4.3, an update expected to include some optimisations such as Bluetooth Low Energy support and OpenGL enhancements.

Android 4.3 didn’t show up at Google I/O (nor was it silently announced afterwards), although it has been spotted in some of Google’s own search results for Android.com.

The alleged white model of LG’s Nexus 4. (Photo credit: Android and Me)

Now, new reports have tagged Android 4.3 and the release of a white model of LG’s Nexus 4 with a release date of June 10th. June 10th is also the date of Apple’s opening keynote at WWDC, where a new version of rival iOS is expected to be unveiled.

900M Android Activations, 48Bn App Installs

Google’s newly installed head of Android and Chrome, Sundar Pichai, announced on stage at Google I/O that the company had hit a milestone of 900 million Android device activations to date.

Google also announced that over 48 billion apps have been installed on Android devices so far. However, in a show of competitive spirit, Apple also announced they’d crossed the 50 billion threshold the same day.

New Google Play Developer Tools and Services

Of course, Google I/O is ultimately a developer event so the opening keynote was filled with a bunch of major announcements for Android developers.

To kick things off, the company announced Google Play Game services, a set of tools, APIs and services for powering games on Android, with cross-platform compatibility with iOS and the web. I took a look at this announcement in depth in a recent article.

Android Studio is already available as an early access preview.

Google also announced Android Studio, its new development environment for the OS. New additions include refined layout tools for devices and realtime updates in the integrated simulator, as well as better tracking of advertising metrics. Android Studio is available as an early access preview now!

Other API announcements included new Google Maps and Location services with advantages in lower power consumption for location detection and geofencing. Google+ single sign-on has also been extended to advertise a website’s Android app and encourage a user to download it when they use the service.

Finally, Google will also be redesigning the web-side of Google Play to better reflect recent changes to the Android app, in addition to the introduction of tablet-specific listings — which you can read more details about in Rita’s article — finally catching up to one of the basic launch features of the iPad App Store.

Subscription-Based Google Play Music All Access

Google also used I/O to unveil its new subscription-based music service, Google Play All Access, to compete with the likes of Spotify.

Google Play Music All Access’s Android form (Photo credit: The Verge)

Google Play All Access will offer users access to a wide library of streaming content that works in conjunction with locally-stored content to offer one, central music app for Android users. All Access is available in the United States for $9.99/month, after a 30-day free trial. Early adopters who start a trial before June 30th will be able to take advantage of a time-sensitive $7.99/month price.

Samsung Galaxy S4 With Stock Android

In one of the more surprising moves of Google I/O, a new piece of hardware that isn’t a new model of Nexus 7 or any other rumoured device was announced. Rather, it’s a Samsung Galaxy S4 running stock Android and completely unlocked, with a promise for timely software updates.

The Galaxy S4 running stock Android. (Photo credit: Engadget)

Google will be selling the device as with its previous Nexus devices on Google Play on June 26th for $649. Due to minimal amounts of marketing likely ready to be put into this phone, it’s unlikely this model of S4 will see the same popularity as the main one, but it’s an exciting step forward into a future utopia of powerful, sound devices without ugly skinning and manufacturer bloatware.

Google Unifies Messaging in Hangouts

Google has announced the unification of its messaging and chat efforts into a single Hangouts product for Android, iOS and Chrome. Available already, Hangouts replaces its namesake Hangout product in Google+, Google Talk, Google+ Messenger and, eventually, should expand to cover all communication platforms bearing the Google nametag including Google Voice.

In addition to boasting a plethora of messaging features to complete with other non-native apps on all three platforms, Hangouts also sports the much-loved 10-way video calling function. In the future, Hangouts will also feature integration with outgoing calls and SMS. Hangouts will also be available on Glass, Google’s Android-powered, wearable computer.

Google Redesigns Maps

Google announced changes to its Maps app on mobile platforms including Android, reflecting some of the design changes first available on iOS. Google Offers will also now show promotions and deals from retailers and allow access to ratings and reviews from Zagat.

Other Updates

• HP announced this week the SlateBook x2 and Split x2, a new 10″ tablet product running your choice of Android or Windows 8. The Android version, available August, will cost $479.99.
• The Nvidia Shield handheld gaming console, powered by Android, has been announced to go on sale in June. Preorders will start May 20th for $349 at a number of retailers.
• Sony has announced the Xperia ZR, a waterproof (to 1.5m) phone with a 4.6-inch screen, 1.5GHz quad-core processor and Android 4.1.
• EA has announced it’s working on a mobile version of its Frostbite engine, Frostbite Go. The engine is said to be in development for “all major mobile platforms”, including iOS and Android. No timeline has been given for release.
• Google Play has been refined to allow all developers to respond to customer reviews, completing a roll out program that began last year.
• Google Play Books has also been updated, enabling support of user uploads of e-books and integration with Google Drive.
• Verizon has pushed up its release date for the Galaxy S4 to one week earlier than planned. The handset will now launch in just four days, on May 23rd.
• In other S4 news, Samsung’s co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun has announced his expectation that the Galaxy S4 will have sold 10 million units by “next week” given that it had been “selling much faster” than its predecessor.
• Google Glass is getting a number of high-profile app releases, as announced at Google I/O. The device will soon see clients for Facebook, Twitter, Evernote and Tumblr, amongst others.

Catch us next week for a return to your regular scheduling of This Week In Android!

For a long time, Instapaper was crippled on the Android platform in comparison to its iOS counterpart. As a matter of fact, we took a look at the app’s many problems in July 2012, and found that its biggest struggle was for feature parity. However, Android developer Mobelux has recently caught up to the iOS feature list, but does that make the app worth getting or is it still inferior compared to contenders like Pocket and Readability?

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Feature Parity

Instapaper for Android finally has the same features, across the board, as the iOS app does. The Feature, a sort of curated section by Marco Arment himself of great long-form articles, is also now on the Android platform. Also, Sharing is built right in and functions exactly how you would expect in any Android app.

The settings match every iOS feature and sharing finally makes it into the app.

Tilt scrolling, which is as poor here as it is on iOS, is finally an option, albeit a forgettable one. Pagination can be turned on and full screen mode can be set to come on automatically or be activated with a double tap on the screen.

In true Android fashion, the app seems a little more customizable than the iOS version, but that might just be my imagination playing tricks on me. I certainly feel like I have more options, particularly with sharing my favourite articles.

Paying for Privacy

The app is still $2.99, which is more expensive than the competition — Pocket and Readability — but some people will like the privacy that comes with paying for the app. Pocket and Readability are free, and although neither appear to be selling user information currently, the lack of a business plan is unsettling to some users.

Beyond privacy, what you’re paying for is the excellent font rendering and great typography.

And the cost gets steeper. To read articles on a Read Later app for OS X, you’ll have to pay a subscription fee for the app. You can, of course, just read from the Instapaper website for free, but that won’t be as convenient for most people as Pocket’s free desktop app.

Rendering is equally as precise on a smartphone screen.

The bottom line is that, like most things, privacy comes at a steeper cost than many of us might like. I’m uncertain if privacy alone is enough to make me buy the app, but Instapaper’s excellent typography and font rendering — along with its focus on text and brilliant sepia background — keep me coming back.

Planning Ahead

Marco Arment just sold the future of Instapaper to Betaworks. What does that mean for the future of the app? Marco has suggested that the iOS version is currently under development and aiming for a major new release this year, and although Marco’s been against an Android version of the app from the start, Betaworks might think differently.

I’m hoping that Betaworks gives the menu screens a fresh coat of paint.

Currently, the app is developed by Mobelux. It might not be for much longer, but the full implications of the deal with Betaworks aren’t clear yet. Mobelux may be retaining development of the Android app, but working with Betaworks to ensure that updates are frequent and important features aren’t ignored. We simply don’t know right now, but I can’t imagine the app will fall into disrepair.

Is the Ship Sinking?

A lot of people will be wondering if Instapaper is a business they want to buy into right now with all the change going on. Quite simply, I believe that the app is only going to get better.

Visually, some elements of the app are in need of a fresh coat of paint — not an overhaul, but a little freshening up could do some good. It’s been clear that, although Marco is interested in his baby, he’s not been able to give it adequate attention for a while. With more focused iOS development, Android development — whether it comes from Betaworks or Mobelux — will have to become more focused too.

If you haven’t invested in Instapaper yet, I’ve heard of far worse things with less promising features to spend $2.99 on. If you have, this is a good time to try the alternatives. But Instapaper remains the best text parser on the market with the smoothest typography on any device, and I suspect you’ll be back. It’s a laid-back reading experience, focused solely on text, that I don’t think anybody can beat.

iTunes is one of the most popular platform for organizing and collecting media, and for good reasons – it gets the job done, and it is backed by a goliath of an online store. It does have its limitations, though. If you want to stream media from your iTunes library, you’re going to need an iOS device. I’m guessing that if you’re reading this, here, that’s not going to suit you.

An alternative streaming system worth considering is Plex. Once you’ve set up a Plex media server on your Windows, OSX, or Linux computer, you can stream content to nearly any smart mobile device via Plex’s app. Unfortunately, there are times when streaming doesn’t cut it, either because you are restricted by a data cap, or because wi-fi isn’t available. For this kind of problem, Plex offers a syncing service (part of the PlexPass subscription), which, when combined with its beta Plex for PlexPass Android app, allows you to download media to your Android device, with ease.

Or, at least, that is the claim – but can media management really be that simple? Time for a test…

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The Look

According to Plex’s own blog, this beta app has been built to be the best-looking resident of the whole Google Play store. Obviously, any judgement on this is subjective, but they have certainly done a respectable job.

Plex for PlexPass looks pretty, in a dark, sleek, Holo way

The main navigation is split up into five panels, each by default decorated with a subtle background image taken from the preview of an item in your library. The panels are controlled with side-swiping, and the sub-menus are hidden from view until they are required. The overall feel is slick, smooth and dark.

Getting Started

After noting that Plex for PlexPass needs a Plex media server-equipped computer to function, there’s not a lot of setting up required when you download the Android app. Sign in with your Plex account details, and the app offers your server-stored media with little delay.

Syncing media to your Android device can be achieved in one of two ways. While you are browsing your PC’s Plex library, the “Sync to device” option is made available; equally, while you are browsing streamable content on your phone, you can tap the drawing pin icon at the bottom of the screen to start downloading the content in question.

Whichever means you use to sync content to your mobile, the downloading process is remarkably speedy, even for full length movies.

Browsing Your Content

As mentioned above, Plex for PlexPass has several panels, which provide something more than just a list of media.

The My Library panel displays the media folders which you set up on your PC. Each of these contains a certain type of media, and tapping on them takes you through to a list of individual videos, tracks, or photos.

The panel-based navigation is pleasantly simple to use

To the left of My Library is On Deck – if you’ve started a movie, but left it unfinished, it will be listed here. This is particularly useful for when you are commuting, or doing anything else that requires you to watch your film in a stop-start manner.

Also available is the Recently Added panel — I’m going to let you guess what this one does — and the Channels panel, which gives you access to all the channels (such as TED talks and Vimeo Staff Picks) that you’ve subscribed to on your PC.

Channels sometimes get a little confused in Plex for PlexPass

While browsing your media, you can sort by name or date added — and artist or album, in the case of music. At most, you are never more than three taps away from your media, which seems like good app design to me.

Viewing and Listening

Most importantly, though, Plex for Plexpass plays well. Movies can be streamed at 1080p, and although video of this quality takes a little while to buffer, it does tend to play without interruption once it gets going. The only slight concern is how hot your phone gets when playing a video like this, although this is unsurprising given the hefty graphics processing involved.

Movies stream nicely, even in high definition

Meanwhile, the exhibition of photos is error free, and music is, generally speaking, played smoothly. Unfortunately, there is one exception to this rule; the first time I attempted to stream a track, the app crashed completely. After that, though, Plex for PlexPass held its nerve, and given the beta status of the app, the odd bug can be forgiven.

Music plays smoothly…most of the time

Whilst DRM-protected videos can’t be played — an annoyance for iTunes customers— the full HD streaming and rich AAC sound make the viewing and listening experience in Plex for PlexPass a rewarding one.

Conclusion

The quality of Plex for PlexPass is excellent, and even more so when you take into account the beta status of its development. The app looks good, is easy to navigate, and provides entertainment on the go with a minimum of fuss.

Stability is currently a point of concern, although the likelihood of most bugs being weeded out before the fully finished version is released seems high.

Overall, then, Plex for PlexPass provides a remarkably simple way of getting content onto your phone. In fact, even if you don’t yet have a Plex account, and you want to have media with you on the go, then Plex for PlexPass may be enough to persuade you to make the switch.

Suffice it to say that tablet app discovery has been a personal cause for us, for the simple reason that we know there are thousands of excellent options out there, but Google had failed to make them visible which in turn had everyone thinking there aren’t any. So you can imagine how elated we were to see Google at I/O introducing new features that focus on tablet apps discovery, from a developer and a user standpoint. While the announcements weren’t the most impressive out of the I/O keynote, and they should have come a year ago, they do mean a lot to us at Android.Appstorm that we can’t help but make a stop to explain to you why you need to get excited.

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We’ve Come a Long Way

For the longest time, Google’s stance about tablet apps was along the lines of “Android apps stretch and adapt to any screen size, so really any app is a tablet app.” This has always been technically true, but it never negated the fact that some apps are optimized to take advantage of a larger screen estate, whether in portrait or landscape.

This stance changed during I/O, with Google recognizing that there is a “designed for tablets” category of apps that could suit the larger screens much better than a stretched phone version. And it comes at a perfect time when Android tablets are finally surpassing their rival iPad in market share, despite the “there are no tablet apps” stigma that has been following them. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Android tablets are about to get even more popular.

Encouraging Developers to Design for Tablets

One of the new sections of the Android Developer Console is “Optimization Tips” where developers are prominently encouraged to optimize their app’s design for tablets following a set of quality guidelines, and then upload the resulting screenshots for 7″ and 10″ screens. The latter suggestion has been pushed by the Android Developer Blog since last month, but it will surely be taken more seriously now.

New optimization tips in the Developer Console: design for tablets and upload tablet screenshots.

Another new feature comes with the new Android Studio, which brings the option to preview the app with all its design elements on various screen sizes and resolutions — without having to compile the code and install it on a physical device to test it out. This should simplify the process of coding and optimizing apps for different screens, including 7″ and 10″tablets.

Android Studio lets developers preview their apps on various screen sizes, including tablets.

“Designed for Tablets” Filter for Users

Both of these developer pushes and changes wouldn’t make a difference if users were still unable to find the tablet-optimized apps easily on the Play Store. That’s why there’s a new drop-down visible on tablets that offers the option to view all apps or only those that are “designed for tablets.”

The Play Store now offers a “Designed for tablets” filter. (Image courtesy of Android Police)

Unfortunately, this drop-down only works in the sections and top lists — not in search results — and will rely on developers to complete their tablet design guidelines checklist and upload appropriate screenshots. However, it is a major step for tablet app visibility and should encourage developers to make the commitment in the first place.

It’s Only the Beginning

All of these improvements are nice enough for us to calm down and rejoice in the knowledge that the Android team recognizes the need for a specific tablet-optimized section and is actively working towards pushing more and better apps. However, these are only one of many necessary baby steps.

Filtering tablet apps in the Play Store search results is an obvious missing component, so is a certain degree of control over what gets through that filter — a lot of phone apps are trickling into the cracks, which should be avoided in the future. I’m also rather disappointed by the Editor’s picks and Featured sections on the tablet Play Store, which are still showing suggestions from all apps, instead of being limited to the new “Designed for Tablets” collection.

But there’s no denying that these new developments leave us very optimistic, if only because Google’s new stance should launch a feedback loop, with more developers designing tablet apps and more users buying and downloading them, which in turn encourages more developers, and so on. All in all, it should quell all the “there are no android tablet apps” cries from users, reporters and bloggers.