Android Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Dark Meadow getting an update and free version, coming to Android

by Mike Schramm (Mar 29th, 2012)

Dark Meadow is a title that's gained quite a bit of attention on the App Store since its release. It's a horror adventure game of sorts, though not that scary -- "dark fairytale" is what it calls itself -- with some really excellent graphics and pacing. If you've been turned off by the US$5.99 ...

You're the Pundit: Why is Android ugly?

by Erica Sadun (Mar 28th, 2012)

When it comes to analyzing the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is Android. Why doesn't Google put as much of a design emphasis into its Android releases as Apple does with iOS? Is the ...

China surpasses US on iOS, Android activations

by Steven Sande (Mar 21st, 2012)

When I first saw this news on MacRumors this morning, my immediate thought was "Duh! China has 4.4 times the population of the U.S." But there's more to the story of China passing the U.S. in iOS and Android activations, since the per-capita income is almost twelve times greater for Americans ...

Halfbrick acquires Onan Games, Mandreel cross-platform software

by Mike Schramm (Mar 19th, 2012)

Halfbrick Studios (the makers of popular iOS games like Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride) has announced that it has acquired Spain-based studio Onan Games, whose main project is a system called Mandreel that allows developers to send their games cross-platform to places like Android and the ...

New iPad battery nearly as good as iPad 2

by Kelly Hodgkins (Mar 19th, 2012)

CNET reporter Eric Franklin spent his weekend torture-testing the battery of the new iPad, the iPad 2 and the Android-powered Asus Transformer Prime. He took each device, charged it fully and then drained its juice by continually playing a movie. All these tests were conducted in airplane mode ...

Siri's Japanese performance not as good as DoCoMo's voice assistant

by Kelly Hodgkins (Mar 13th, 2012)

Apple added support for Japanese in iOS 5.1, but the roll out isn't going as smoothly as expected. According to a Kotaku report, Apple's voice assistant can apparently only handle simple and universal Japanese phrases. When it comes to complex phrases, Siri stumbles while its competitor Shabette ...

Tatem Games goes freemium with Dream Gym and more

by Mike Schramm (Mar 13th, 2012)

I last talked with the folks of Tatem Games at last year's GDC. The Ukraine-based developer has had a few hits on the App Store already, and this year Tatem Games tells me it's headed onto other platforms. For example, the popular Carnivores game is heading to Android and aiming for release on a ...

A new iPad looms, others still DOA

by Kelly Hodgkins (Mar 7th, 2012)

Apple is poised to announce its next generation iPad today and, as expected, the tablet is dominating the news. Even mainstream news outlets like Foxnews and CNN have reports on the highly-anticipated device. As CNN Money points out, this contrasts greatly from the launch of your average Android ...

Google, Motorola told to give Android data to Apple

by Steven Sande (Mar 6th, 2012)

Aww, they're so cute when they fight! No, not the fluffy kittens, I'm referring to the battles between Apple, Google and Motorola Mobility. U.S. Judge Richard A. Posner ordered Google and the soon-to-be-purchased-by-Google Motorola Mobility to hand over info about the development of the Android OS ...

Report: iOS beats Android at HTML5 rendering

by Mel Martin (Mar 5th, 2012)

AllThingsD reports that Spaceport.io, which makes a cross-platform gaming SDK, has tested the speed of HTML5 rendering on iOS and Android. The results show that iOS is faster by far. Spaceport used its own benchmark, called the "PerfMark," which counts the number of moving images on a screen at 30 ...

NYT: Android also lets app developers steal your photos

by Kelly Hodgkins (Mar 1st, 2012)

Earlier this week, a New York Times report detailed how iOS apps can snoop on your photos when you give them access to your location. Now in a follow-up report, Brian X. Chen and Nick Bilton discuss a similar flaw in Android. According to their report, any Android app that has the right to browse ...

Report: Apple's iOS accounts for 35% of mobile ad impressions

by Mel Martin (Feb 24th, 2012)

Apple's share of the overall mobile market seems to be heading dramatically upward, at least according to inMobi. The company measures how ads they serve (almost 100 million ads deployed each month) are filtered onto mobile devices. The figures are striking. Apple's share of ad impressions went ...

Android apps more expensive on average than iPhone counterparts

by Steven Sande (Feb 23rd, 2012)

As an unabashed iPhone fan, I often ask owners of Android smartphones why they chose their phone over an iPhone. Answers have included "I like larger screens and styluses" (from a Samsung Galaxy Note owner), "There are more choices," and the ever-popular "iPhone apps are so expensive!" Well, a ...

Apple wins injunction against several of Motorola's slide-to-unlock implementations in Germany

by Kelly Hodgkins (Feb 17th, 2012)

A German Court handed Apple a significant victory over Motorola this week. The Munich I Regional Court ruled that Motorola's handsets infringe on Apple's slide-to-unlock image patent. The patent describes a method of "unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image." A previous ruling ...

Spotify adds support for 320 kbps music streaming

by Kelly Hodgkins (Feb 14th, 2012)

Spotify brought its music streaming service to the US last year, and both the desktop and mobile apps have been well received. On the desktop, the service delivers a high-quality 320 kbps audio stream, but the mobile app cuts that in half with its 160 kbps stream. Thanks to a recent update, iOS ...