Foobnix (a music player) for Android is Released!

If you haven't heard then Foobnix is an excellent, cross-platform music player that can be used on GNU/Linux, MS Windows and Mac OSX in the past. But the latest news is that now the developer has released it for Android too!.

So if you're using Android and would like to have a powerful local and online music player (it's famous for that) that has a simple GUI and loads fast... then you should check out the Foobnix in this Android market page.

Although it has been like 2/3 weeks since its official Android release, but it's a bit new thus there could be bugs but from the user ratings... I think it's already a "hit"! nonetheless.

Main features...

*. It's completely free and not free like with filled with Ads ... no ads... nothing, nada, free as in freedom :D.

*. Last.fm and VK integration, so you can easily share and listen to music all day long.

*. Playlist support with play similar songs, search for files (+ including tags), etc or find songs using online source by genre, artists, name...

*. Fetch album art/covers from Last.fm.

*. Create and delete music folders.

*. Separate download manager.

*. Lyrics support.

*. Super fast updates (bug fixes and new features).

As said it's totally free of charge and requires you to have A Android version of 1.6 or higher to use it. You can learn more about recent updates and news from this official Foobnix android page as well.

Google Introduces "Download Map Area" to Google Maps for Android 5.7

As Android is gaining more and more market share, the real "power" behind the opensource OS Google is busy introducing all sorts of new features to help steal some more Apple iOS and other geeks, little by little ;-). It was actually yesterday that Google updated their mobile map for Android devices to 5.7 which is still in its beta stage.

Anyhow, today in the Google blog they also introduced a very useful feature that lets Android users to save their Google maps to the local storage devices on their Android mobile phone thus letting the users make an "offline" version of their maps which are quite handy when you don't have any Wi-Fi or other faster internet connection available (nothing at all included :D) but thanks to this feature, once saved now you can still "browse" and locate landmarks!.

Finally!... ;-)

As said, to have this feature you'll have to have the latest version of the Google Maps for Android (which is 5.7 at the moment) and once launched you should see a "download map area" option added automatically, as in the above screenshot. Although currently there is a certain "radius restriction" thus the features currently lets you save about an area of 10 miles in radius.

You can save as many maps you want and after 30 days of their original downloaded date, they'll be deleted automatically. The downloading time may change according to the radius + your internet connection's speed but these "offline Google maps" won't let you enjoy other popular features such as "satellite views" and "3D buildings according to Google. But you can use these offline maps for finding landmarks while in "no-reception area" which, as anyone can see, is something very very useful nonetheless.

PowerAMP - A Powerful Music Player for Your Android OS!

Unlike many other mobile operating systems (especially iOS), Android for some reason ain't the best of its kind when it comes to dealing with multimedia files. From a fully featured, powerful OS to easy to use GUI... open-source framework, etc... it's all good, except for some of the issues while playing certain kinds of multimedia files.

But as the case with open-source or GNU software, there aren't any shortage of available applications nonetheless. So, if for some reason you don't like your current music player in your Android phone or Tablet, then go to the market place and search for "something" that suits your needs the most.

In that sense, if you're willing to spend few bucks ($5 actually) there is an excellent music player for Android called PowerAMP!. It comes with a simplified interface which is very easy "understand" and lot of other useful features such as ...

*. A 10-band Equalizer.

*. User friendly buttons.

*. Plays a number of audio formats by default such as:  mp3, mp4/m4a, alac, ogg, wma, flac, wav, ape, wv, and tta.

*. Adjust bass and treble separately (other than using the above mentioned Equalizer).

*. Automatic album art downloading.

*. Few different themes.

*. Tag editor.

*. Search for files with ease.

*. Android OS version must be 2.1 or higher.  

But the only drawback is, you cannot listen to any podcasts with it.

But the rest assured this is a pretty powerful player nonetheless. Although you don't have to purchase it first, they do let you download a trial which can be obtained from this market page. If you find it to be quite useful, then you can pay the "price" afterward :).

Transformer TF101 - Asus Eee Pad That Runs Android Honeycomb 3.0!

For no particular reason (other than their excellent portability) for sometime now I've been searching for a Tablet PC that comes with a reasonable price + the possibility of running running GNU/Linux easily. Asus has been producing their "Eee" family personal computers for sometime now but their "Eee Pad" which resembles "Eee version" of Tablet PCs are something new to the consumers.

And to be honest, I haven't purchased it and has no idea whether it we'll be able to run GNU/Linux distributions, considering the fact that it runs the Android 3.0 Honeycomb... well, it might. Anyhow after reading few reviews and the official product page here are the main features and my personal thought about it.

Main Hardware Specifications...

*. Comes with the Nvidia Tegra 2 (a GPU that's especially designed to run on Mobile devices, performance + low power consumptions, etc) Dual-Core CPU that runs around 2 Ghz.

*. Has the ability to comfortably play HD videos around 1080p (resolution level).

IPS Panel, 178° wide view angle.

*. Display - 10.1" LED Backlight WXGA (1280x800) Screen, 10 finger multi-touch support + a scratch resistant glass (for all you "long fingernail" ladies :D).

*. 1GB of physical RAM.

*. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 version.

*. 1.2 megapixel front camera and a 5MP back camera.

*. MicroSD card reader/HDMI output (+ audio output jack and a mic-in).

*. 5 Different sensors - G-Sensor, Light Sensor, Gyroscope, E-Compass and GPS.

*. Powered by the open-source Android Honeycomb version 3.0 (there might be an update available through Asus to the latest 3.1 version, but as usual, delays are expected) and Adobe Flash 10.2 support.

*. 16/32GB SSD (solid state disk) for storage.

*. Battery life of 9.5 hours!.

*. Weight - 680 grams.

But one important thing about the Transformer TF101 Android Honeycomb Tablet is, by adding a portable docking station (more likely a keyboard actually, shipped separately)... you can convert the TF101 Tablet PC into a light weight netbook!.

Have a look at the above screenshot. As you can see, the Tablet is fully integrated into the "dock" because by default the Tablet PC version has two "docking Latches". After integrated with the docking station, it gives you a physical QWERTY keyboard (obviously) but most importantly, this is not just a "keyboard" but it consist of ...

*. 2 USB ports (2.0 high speed).

*. 40 Pin standard battery charger.

*. Dedicated "Android buttons".

*. SD card reader to the right corner and since it has a powerful battery embedded to the dock itself, after attaching it with the Tablet, you should be able to expand the default 9 hours into an impressive 16 hours! (although these values may differ since these are just what the Asus claims).

And apart from the Android Honeycomb interface, Asus gives a UI of its own called Waveshare by using which you can access Asus's online services such as MyNet, MyCloud, etc with ease. And the Asus application Launcher is also embedded into the Honeycomb as well.

And as said, guys/gals this is not a review, because I haven't bought it or anything. But the reason that I choose to write about ... well it kinda impressed me with that Tablet PC and the "dock" thing :).

And if you're wondering about its ability to render HD videos directly into your huge TV screen, well according to Asus, TF101 can do it pretty easily, quoting...

"Powered by the NVIDIA® Tegra™ 2 dual-core processor, the Transformer browses the web at blazing speeds, providing a snappier response time and better performance when multi-tasking. Sporting a HDMI 1.3a port, the Transformer can connect to a HDTV and 5.1 surround sound system, delivering an enhanced multimedia experience..."

Although to be honest, Apple's iPad2 is not as impressive as its predecessor. Because even after Apple claiming about its GPU being, what 9x times faster was it?... still it can't even play HD videos of 1080p... just mirrors those videos. So in that sense the TF101 apart from its cheaper price when comparing with iPad2, it's pretty powerful.

But again, when it comes to the look-n-feel ipad2... oh it looks better, the TF101 looks a bit like came from back in the 70s!. Oh and that dock as I said has to be purchased separately (I think it costs around an extra $130 something). If interested, you can purchase the Asus Transformer TF101 A1 from Amazon :D.

Google Has Officially Released the Android 3.1!

Although it has been several months since we saw the first ever Android Honeycomb (version 3.0) Tablet, the Motorola Zoom, few hours ago Google officially announced the latest update to the Android OS which is 3.1. And in comparison with the version 3.0, this does bring some big improvements.

For instance, unlike with Honeycomb 3.0... this update makes sure to let users have the ability to run a Bluetooth mouse in addition to the multi-touch feature which is quite useful. Although touchscreens can be cool, but as with Laptops... the Mouse is still quite Tempting :) and certainly help to make precise movements as well.

According to the official release page, there are other few enhancements such as...

*. Enhanced UI transitions - For instance, Google says that, starting with navigation, better color choices, improved accessibility and importantly fancy animations such as the launcher app is now optimized and does its transitions faster than ever.

The "better" home screen in Android 3.1...

*. Better USB support - Just like with Windows XP and up, whenever you plug in a USB device the OS automatically gives you a list of apps that are most suitable for opening the content of that USB device. If it cannot find one, then you'll be greeted with a URL for searching an app online.

*. External Keyboards and Mouse support - As mentioned earlier, by default now Android 3.1 supports a lot of different types of input devices (Keyboards, Mouse, etc), so you can still enjoy using your "old" mouse.

*. Joysticks and Gamepads - This should be apparent actually. When we see dual core processors in Android phones, it does tell us the "powerful" future the Tablets gonna have for them in the future. So, in the future, we'll see a lot of 3D games for Android Honeycomb as a result. And the 3.1 brings a lot of additional devices to its list... which is a pretty smart move by the big G nonetheless.

*. Better Wi-Fi - From now on, you'll have the most secure (well according to the developers anyway) Wi-Fi connections + some minor bug fixes which result in faster connections as well.

Again, these are just a few of the main features the 3.1 brings but the biggest drawback is yet to come.

Unlike with Apple, where, they make sure to let all the users have the ability to update to the newest version as soon as they release it, with Android, even though they've made this available, yet according to sources, it seems that it will take at least another month for the current Honeycomb users to "experience" these new features, which is quite annoying. 

So let's hope that in the future, Google would make sure to let everyone who eager to get their hands on the new OS as soon as it hits the downloads.

Thumb Keyboard 4.0 Beta is Out!, An Enhanced On Screen Keyboard App for Android Devices!

Android comes with an excellent onscreen keyboard of its own. But if you want a more powerful, fully featured onscreen keyboard for your Android Phone or any android device ... then Thumb Keyboard is an excellent app.

Although the recently released version 4.0 is still in beta stage but when considering it's features and user feedback it has received so for for the beta version, it's sees as good as any released app.

Thumb Keyboard fully support Android Gingerbread (2.3) and higher, including the separate honeycomb version which is aimed at tablet PCs as well.

Main features...

*. Easily switch between various keyboard layouts.

*. Multi-touch gesture support.

*. Better shortcut support - Say that you have frequent words/symbols, etc then you can set-up a shortcut for speeding the process while typing.

*. Resize keyboard buttons easily. If you have somewhat big fingers and found out that even though your screen still has a bit of a room but still the default keyboard app won't let you change the size, etc... but with TK4.0, changing a button size (both height/width, etc) is a breeze!.

*. With this new version, you can easily access the frequently used keys too.

*. Better predicting algorithms - Meaning that, while you type the app will be able to "guess" your words, again resulting a faster typing speeds.  

These are just a few of its main features to mention. Anyhow, if you want to give it a try then please get it from here. One more thing, if you're using the current market version of Thumb Keyboard, then please make sure to uninstall it first.

As mentioned there could still be bugs, so be aware of it. While I was reading this official release thread on XDA forum, for few "bugs" that were reported, the developer suggested that after installing, if you reboot your Android device, those "bugs" would be automatically resolved. Good luck.

Get Your Free Google Video Chat Facility for Your Android Phone (Starting with Nexus S)

Having installed Skype or any VOIP application is a must these days when it comes to mobile phones. Although you can easily set up the video chatting in your Android phone with the help of Skype for instance. But in recent post by Google mobile team announced that, now you can make free unlimited video calls in your Android phone freely thanks to Google talk!.

Oh it's getting better and better!

This is certainly not limited within Android device to another Android device actually, even if the user at the other-and uses a Google talk account via their personal computer (no matter what the installed OS is)... as long as the conversion is between Google talk to Google talk, you'll be able to video chat!.

This is actually interesting that Skype has been dominating the VOIP market from the start. But it could change in the future if Google comes up with things like this once in a while. Anyhow, you'll be able to start your Google Video chat via the Android phone, a button will appear next to the people in your Google Talk friends list, simply click on that button and you're on!.

This feature will be available first with the Nexus S + within the next upcoming weeks, when the Android 2.3.4 version hits the downloads it'll be embedded into it. Also for Android 2.3 version this will be available in the near future as well.

Below is the introduction video from one of the members from Google's mobile team. More information concerning this feature is available from the Google mobile web site.

Few Tips To Enhance Your Android Phone's Battery Life!

Thanks to the Google powered Android OS... mobile phone manufactures that use Android as their OS are getting more and more popular as a result, without a doubt in the near future, they'll start dominating in all sorts of ways like Tablet PC (oh they already are :D) markets, etc.

Anyhow, these days we're seeing android smart phones that come with dual processors!... which is tempting but...

Some of these smart phones are actually faster than some of our PC as well (OK I'm taking about mine here). But the point is that, no matter how powerful your phone is but if the battery is not capable of giving you a longer batty life... then it just destroys the whole purpose, isn't it? So, let's have a look at few things that you can do to improve the battery life of you android smart phone.

What are the apps that sucks your battery the most - If you navigate to: Settings > About Phone > Battery > Battery Use..... with the help of this feature you can easily figure out those battery suckers more easily.

1. As obvious as it is... the Screen comes first. 

So as a tip, you can override the automatic brightness of your screen by going over to: Settings > Display > Brightness and remove the check of "Automatic Brightness". Now, try manually setting a value about 10-15% for a start. And also there is a built in widget that lets you easily activate/inactivate these settings via a single click.

So enable that widget - press and hold on an empty section of your screen, choose Widgets, and pick the Power Control option.

You can also change the screen timeout settings from 60 seconds to 15-20 seconds as well (Settings -> Display) as well.

3. Turn of your...

*. 3G - another big batter eater.

*. WiFi - Unlike many 3G connections Wi-Fi is not that widely used (well not always true but in comparison). So if you don't use it that much, then, turn that sucker off too.

*. Bluetooth - If you don't use headsets or other Bluetooth related things that often you can turn off it completely or can set it to stand-by mode.

*. Disable GPS (not everyone gets trapped in jungles :D ).

3. Change the "update intervals" of apps

Applications such as Gmail and Twitter client for Android, Facebok, etc are continuously checking for new updates which can again easily wear down your valuable battery. So set their update intervals to about 30 mins or 1 hours, or to longer periods in general which would help to calm them down a bit :).

4. If you have animations that runs in the background, etc.. disable them.

5. Don't let it get too "hot" - Yep, the battery wears out (can do some damages too) easily if it gets too hot. So let it get too hot.

6. Have you tried wiping out your battery status?

Only an illustration... the menu could differ from phone to phone...

Don't do this often, but once in a while you should wipe out your battery status too. For instance, there is a file called "battery-status" that stores information about your battery. But from time to time (especially if you did an OS update, etc) it has to be "refreshed", there are certain precautions that you have to do prior to do that. In that case I humbly advice you to read this lifehacker post. Good luck.

Meet The Tomdroid, Tomboy Note "Taker" for Android Devices!

Tomboy is a very popular, easy to use note-taker that comes with the Gnome desktop. I has a unique GUI... well it looks like a sheet, like a real one being pasted on your computer screen, that's how it looks like :P.

Anyway, it's interesting how many GNU/Linux to -> Android OS, applications "migrations" are happening these days which again shows the close relationship (well there are apparent differences) between the two parties.

What's up!

So if you're a GNU/Linux user that uses our little "Tomboy" and also use your Android smart phone heavily + already starting feel like you're missing Tomboy... then fear not my friends, meet the Tomdroid, the exact replica of Tomboy in GNU/Linux for the Android!.

It is developed by as a Launchpad project and according to them the aim is simple... quoting their own words below,

"The aim of this project is to bring the same goodness to the Android platform. The goal is to be file format compatible and be able to sync notes with tomboy. Of course, keeping a great UI adapted to the mobile context is also a goal of this project."

Still it's at beta stage it seems, and only supports read-only at this time. But that's for a short while without a doubt. You can sync your date using Ubuntu One or Tomboy online accounts as well. Wanna give it a try? :). 

Meet "Agora", An Android Based Sexy Looking Tablet!

Agora is one of the latest android tablets from the Australian based high-tech company called Kogan. Few hours ago they announced the gorgeous looking Tablet-PC with a 7" touch screen display. Although it was almost about an year ago when we first heard about some of the rumors of this Tablet... so they've taken their time, it seems.  

Here are the main features...

*. Runs Android 2.2 version.

*. Biggest disappointment, no 3G, what!, yes.

*. Wi-Fi.

*. Easily capable of playing HD videos of 720p.

*. HDMI output.

*. 1 USB port and a 1 micro-SD slot.

*. Comes with a Samsung Cortex A8 Processor (1Ghz - single core).

*. 512MB DDR2 RAM.

*. 1024x600 screen-resolution.

*. 1.3MPX front camera.

*. 4GB NAND memory.

*. 3600mAH batter.

*. The whole Tablet weights about 390grams.