Galaxy Nexus gaming performance: ShadowGun and Riptide GP

Wondering how the Verizon Galaxy Nexus will handle all the high-end games that are coming out and taking advantage of super-powered Android hardware? Well wonder no more. Chris Burns over at SlashGear took his shiny new Nexus on a gaming bender, trying out two high-profile 3D games that are quickly becoming the standard for Android graphics: third-person shooter ShadowGun and jet ski racer Riptide GP.

The results are impressive, to say the least. Despite the Galaxy Nexus’ 720p resolution, both games run quickly and smoothly at the highest settings. On ShadowGun you can notice minimal slowdown during screen-filling effects, but that’s about it. When playing Riptide, the racing is incredibly smooth and fluid even with the multiple water effects at play. Notice that in both titles, the virtual buttons on the Galaxy Nexus don’t disappear like they do with active videos – this may be a limitation of the APIs in question, or it could be adressed by future releases of either game.
Check out the videos below:








Of course, neither game looks as good as it does on the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, but that’s to be expected. The quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor combines with a slightly lower system load for Honeycomb as opposed to Ice Cream Sandwich, and Riptide GP has a special version designed specifically to take advantage of the hardware. But there’s no doubt about it: the Galaxy Nexus is one of the best Android smartphones out there for gaming, if not the best at the moment. We’ll see how long it can keep its crown when Tegra 3 smartphones from HTC and others start arriving in Q1 of 2012.

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Celebrate New Years with the Official Times Square Ball Drop App

Celebrate New Years Eve in New York City and Times Square live right from your phone this year with the Time Square Official Ball App. Everyone celebrates the new year a little different but I’m sure everyone’s watched the NYC Ball drop a time or two. I used this last year and today the application has been updated with full support for 2012 in just 11 short days. The countdown has already started. Who is ready for 2012?

In 2012 we’ll be seeing tons of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich quad-core phones and tablets — it will be a fun time for the world of Android that is for sure. What better way to celebrate then watching the NYC Ball drop right from your Android smartphone or tablet since we can’t all be lucky enough to live in the Big Apple.
I’ll most likely be out on the streets of the Las Vegas Strip with a warm jacket and a few friends but I’ll be sure and watch this from my shiny new Galaxy Nexus. The official app allows for sharing of photos, sharing your location, watching the ball drop live, reading up on past New Years Eve events and more. A few lucky uploaded photos will appear on the Toshiba super-screen so be sure and upload a few.
For those that love to get into the seasons and the mood this would be the perfect application. Get it today from the market link below and bring in the New Year with ease.
Market Link: Times Square Ball Drop

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Dropbox Beta updated with ICS support, improved gallery, and bulk uploads

Everyone’s favorite cloud storage option for Android has just released their latest beta build. Currently the version available in the Android Market is the same one we all already use and love but today Dropbox has pushed their latest beta build over at the Dropbox forums. Complete with an overhauled UI that not only looks like ICS but fully supports it too. Download links and more details are available below.

The Dropbox forum has posted a few awesome beta versions in the past but this latest release today is extremely nice and polished — but I do have one complaint. They added a bulk upload option but sadly they didn’t do the same for downloads. Being able to download all the files that aren’t in a select folder in bulk at once would be awesome — I sure hope this makes the final release. Here’s the list of changes with the latest Dropbox beta:
• Favorites: quick offline access to files
• Bulk upload photos and videos
• Rename files and folders
• Single-tap access to all file and folder actions
• Improved gallery view
• Upload from and export to local storage
• Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements
In the forums they mention this is just a beta preview although it should be released to the Android Market here soon. For those that would like to try this latest version of Dropbox today click that download below and give it a try. I love it and wont be going back to the old anytime soon — that is for sure.
Download: Dropbox beta-v1.3.0.6

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Acer Iconia Tab A200 pricing and picture gallery revealed

ACER is all set to launch their next Android tablet named the A200 and while we don’t have a quad-core processor or anything revolutionary from their previous attempts this tablet should be quite impressive. We’ve seen various leaks and ACER officially announced this dual-core Tegra 2 slate in early December but no launch date or pricing was given. Today we have a full image gallery and some suggested prices courtesy of NotebookItalia.

While this isn’t the best tablet around it does offer impressive specs and a promise to be upgraded with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich in early 2012 — all for a great price. The official press release didn’t give us any of those details but below you’ll find both suggested price, and availability. The A200 features the standard to Honeycomb tablets with a 1.0 GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of RAM inside, 8 and 16GB versions for storage and a 10.1″ 1280 x 800 resolution display — not to mention front and rear cameras like most slates as of late.

The A500 was a pretty fat and chunky tablet so it’s nice to see the A200 coming in much lighter and thinner. The image gallery below will give potential buyers a better idea of what to expect with the A200 once it hits the streets. According to NotebookItalia the 8GB model will be priced around $399 USD with the 16GB flavor coming in at $449. Not the cheapest prices around but with a thin chassis, dual-core processor and ICS on the way it could be a great sleeper tablet come 2012 — until the A700 quad-core slate gets released of course. 

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Amazon offers free two-day shipping on all Kindles this Christmas

If you’re running out of ideas on what to purchase for your friends and family for this year’s Christmas, Amazon has got some suggestions for you – namely its popular eBook reader, the Kindle. The company announced today in a press release that it is offering free two-day shipping on all of its Kindles if you make an order today by 8pm PT. This one day promotion will ensure that the Kindle will get to you or your recipient just in time for Christmas, and you won’t have to worry about extra costs either.
Amazon is putting up all of its Kindles on this offer – the $79 Kindle, the $99 Kindle Touch, the $149 Kindle Touch 3G and of course the $199 Kindle Fire tablet. With the Amazon Kindle Fire being one of the hottest tablets around this season, the free two-day shipping is pretty much icing on the cake. After all, who would say no to a tablet for a Christmas present?
To take advantage of this offer, just purchase a Kindle from Amazon, and select two-day shipping when checking out.
Buy Now:-

 [Press Release]

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Nuance, Who Are Responsible for Siri’s Backbone, Buys Vlingo

News has broken today that Vlingo has agreed to sell to Nuance for an undisclosed amount of money. Nuance, as you may know, is the driving force behind many voice recognition applications on mobile and desktop including yours truly – Siri. With their purchase of Vlingo it would appear that Nuance will make a very strong push into this market though we’re not yet sure in which way.

Nuance deals in both direct-to-consumer sales as well as business to business sales, offering their engine for licensing to application developers and OEMs who want to enable natural language dictation features for their users.
We’re not sure if Vlingo will continue to offer their services as-is which include free mobile applications and applications integrated into OEM products (namely Samsung’s Galaxy S II series) or if the brand will eventually be evaporated into the big Nuance cloud.
Either way, we’re excited to see what these two could be working on for the future of voice-enabled actions because let’s face it – everyone wants Siri even if they don’t know it. [via GigaOM]

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TWRP 2.0 Now Available for Download on Select Devices

TWRP – the exciting recovery project that would transformer the way we backup, restore and flash ROMs – is making great progress. In fact, version 2.0 is now available for download! For now, only a few select devices are supported including the Nexus S, the HP Touchpad and the Kindle Fire but we’re sure the team is working to add even more devices over time. Pretty soon your volume rocker will be screaming with joy as it’s freed from its lifelong duties of handling your raging addiction to custom ROMs. [TeamWin via Engadget]

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NFL Pro 2012 Now Available for Free in the Android Market

Following the launch of the third title in Gameloft’s Modern Combat series, they have launched another new game to the Android market: NFL Pro 2012. It’s an NFL football game adapted to the small (or medium, depending on what device you have) screen for football action on the go. It’s going up against a heavy hitter in Madden but considering that they are offering this game for the low cost of free, I can’t see why you wouldn’t download it and give it a shot at your earliest convenience. Hit the Android market up for the download. [via Android Central]

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Google Said to be Suspending Nexus S ICS Update Due to High CPU Usage and Battery Life Bug

Google began rolling out the Nexus S ICS update in several regions a short time ago but it seems they’ve already had to suspend the upgrade for an issue that is affecting battery life.
Alongside abnormal battery drain users are seeing high spikes of CPU usage, two things that could be directly related. If you’ve gotten a notification that the upgrade was available but you have since been unable to apply it, don’t worry – you’re not crazy.
Now is as good a time as any to mention that Galaxy Nexus users have also been experiencing less-than-normal battery drainage for quite some time. Many believe it to be a kernel driver issue and is causing the OS to keep the device awake (this doesn’t necessarily mean the screen has to be on) which causes excessive battery drain.
I personally have been seeing half the awake time as overall up time (for instance, 4 hours on battery gives me 2 hours of awake time even if I’m not using the device more than 10 minutes throughout that period) on my Galaxy Nexus. Compared to other devices this most certainly is an anomaly. We’re not sure what’s going on but Google is apparently aware and working on a fix.
For the time being, if any of you have a Nexus S receiving the official update would you please be kind enough to go into the Battery Usage menu and letting us know what your Android OS usage is showing after using it for some time? It would go a long way toward figuring out if this is an Ice Cream Sandwich issue in general or if the two devices are unrelated. [Google Code (Galaxy Nexus), Google Support, XDA via Droid Dog]

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