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Sunday, June 30, 2013

6 Android apps to prolong your phone's battery life

Android is one of the most flexible platforms in the mobile operating system world. And if you have an Android smartphone, you practically use it for everything. With Android devices coming with even larger displays and faster processors, the range of its functions continues to increase. But what suffers is the battery life. Long hours are spent charging the phones. However, the Google Play Store has come up with some amazing battery saver apps for Android devices. They are as follows:

Juice Defender

This is practically the king of battery saver apps. It is perfectly designed to extend the battery life of the Android device. It is packed with smart functions and automatically and transparently manages the most battery draining components like 3G/ 4G connectivity and Wi-Fi. It also allows complete customization through a clean and intuitive user interface. It integrates seamlessly with power control widgets and shortcuts without interfering in the manual settings. Its features include five preset profiles, home screen battery widgets, mobile data toggle information, location aware Wi-Fi control, comprehensive connectivity scheduling, etc. Above all this amazing app is free.

Battery Defender- Battery Saver

This has been described as the phone’s battery’s best wife. It is easy to use and shows the battery percent in the notification bar. The app has a fast Wi-Fi/ GPS/ Data/ Bluetooth switch and an app white list for streaming apps. This app is capable of extending your battery as it automatically disables Wi-Fi and data connection. It also has the genius sync that allows app to sync every few minutes but save battery. It also can disable data network and Wi-Fi connections when sleeping. The sleeping time can be adjusted according to one’s preference.

Easy Battery Saver

This is a super battery savior with a gorgeous and professional UI. It delivers awesome power and yet is simply and elegantly designed. This app has the ability to make your battery last up to 50 percent longer. As a result, your phone won’t run out of battery at crucial times anymore. Moreover, you don’t have to charge your phone every day as is the case with many Android devices.

Battery Booster

This is a unique app as it covers for tablets as well as phones unlike its competitors. It has a clean and clear interface and has a nice look. Apart from that, the app includes real time monitoring with graphs and a host of quick toggles for one to turn functions on and off. This is a huge relief for those who have Honeycomb which is stuck with a terrible battery life. BatteryBooster is the app for your terrible battery life on your tablet till Ice Cream Sandwich comes along.

Battery Dr. Saver + Task Killer

Task killers have gotten a bad name since the launch of Gingerbread but rogue processes continue to exist no matter whatever Google tells us. There are many widgets that refuse to go light with the memory. This app not only tames your battery but also goes light with memory usage.

Dolphin Battery Saver

This is strictly not an app but deserves a place in this list because it serves the same purpose. It comes very handy in some situations such as when one spends a lot of time in a web browser. With the Dolphin Battery Saver one can control and optimize how long your phone or tablet will last. The app is smart, has amazing add-ons and is pretty intuitive.

Apps

5 Awesome Apps for Music Lovers

admin 11:08 AM

Between music players, streaming apps, online radios, social apps for sharing and discovering music, concert finders, ID3 tag editors, ringtone makers, and more, there’s no shortage of Android apps for the music fan. Here are the best 30 ones I would recommend to any fellow avid music listener.

Anghami

Although Anghami rose as an Arabic music streaming service, it is hard to ignore the app’s international catalog of music labels and its extensive featureset. Anghami uses several approaches to bring music to you: you can either view playlists curated by your friends, pick a playlist based on your mood or activity, or search for a specific artist, album or track. A paid subscription even allows you to cache music for offline listening.

Price: Free

Requires: Android 2.3 or above

Google Play Link: Anghami
Developer: Anghami.com

Qello

With a collection of high quality concerts spanning from the 60s until today, over 1000 artists and bands, and a catalog that offers music documentaries and Q&As with the artists as well as concerts, Qello is one of the go-to sources for avid concert fans. The app also gives you access to curated content and setlists, lets you share the videos you run across and looks good doing so on phones and tablets alike.

Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.2 – 4.2
Google Play Link: Qello
Developer: Qello, LLC

TuneIn Radio Pro

TuneIn Radio is the first app that comes to mind when you think of online radios, and that’s for a valid reason. The app is really gorgeous, with a tablet-friendly UI, and packed with features. Over 70000 live worldwide radio stations are available for anyone and can be searched by title, or browsed by country or genre. TuneIn lets you favorite stations, suggests similar ones you might like, and as an added bonus, it also offers over 2 million podcasts, concerts and shows.

Price: $4.99
Requires: Android 2.1 or above
Google Play Link: TuneIn Radio Pro
Developer: TuneIn

Now Playing: Music Player

Now Playing is one of several Android music players based on CyanogenMod’s Apollo app — a clean, Holo-designed replacement for the Android music player that comes bundled with CyanogenMod’s ROM builds. Now Playing builds on Apollo by providing a gorgeous cards UI approach to music, automatically fetching lyrics, scrobbling to Last.fm, and supporting DashClock’s widgets.

However, Now Playing’s signature feature is its gesture support: simply swipe right on the now playing screen to get to the song queue and edit it, or swipe left to fetch and view the lyrics of the song.

Price: Free
Requires: Android 2.3 or above
Google Play Link: Now Playing: Music Player
Developer: Jack Underwood

UberMusic

UberMusic was first made to emulate the gorgeously clean music player found on Windows Phone. It has since evolved to support skins that can make it look like anything from the signature Metro design, to Holo Android, and even MIUI ROMs.

Putting the looks aside for a second, UberMusic also packs a lot of functionality, including a rather fullscreen view that still offers access to your notifications, a live wallpaper that automatically updates with your currently playing music, different widget sizes, scrobbling options to Last.fm, and an ability to automatically download artist pictures to show as the app’s background.

Price: $3.49
Requires: Android 2.0 or above
Google Play Link: UberMusic
Developer: Federico Carnales

Apps Tips

5 Best Android Calendar Apps

admin 10:11 AM

Actually your smartphone is a device that can do almost everything – from calling and texting to playing music and watching movies, but one thing it excels in is being a time organizer. With an extremely versatile and powerful Calendar app on your mobile, you will never forget about birthdays and all other important events.

Usually you have a lot of that functionality covered in the pre-installed Calendar app be it an Android Phone you are rocking. But if you really want to take your productivity to the next level and make sure you have your life perfectly steady in your hands at all times, you need the best calendar apps you can get. So here let us take a look at the 5 best Android calendar apps that you can get on Google Play. Check now!

Top 1: MyCalendar

As the most beloved calendar app by Facebook users, MyCalendar will never let you forget about your friends' birthday again! This app takes note of your friends' birthdays and sets up notification so you can easily message your friends and wish them "Happy Birthday."

Key Features:

Import birthdays from Facebook

Add birthdays of all contacts from your phone and add custom birthdays

Customizable reminder settings: delivers notifications straight to your iPhone)

Easily message your friends and wish them "Happy Birthday " along with custom message with just one click!

Top 2: Jorte Calendar

Jorte is really great at showing you multiple views of your calendar. It shows your day's agenda under the month view when you click on it. Additionally, it lets you view tasks lined up foe each day, making it great for managing both your schedule and your to-do list.

Key Features:

Jorte Cloud: Original Cloud feature for multi-device use and backup.

Various widget settings are available.

Monthly and Weekly views are available.

Important appointments are shown in red.

See completed appointments at a glance.

It can synchronize with Google Calendar.

Adjust the starting day of the week on each view; it doesn't always have to be Sunday!

Import the Holidays of your choice from Google Calendar.

Import and Export the contexts to CSV format.

It can be controlled using Google Voice Search and Google Maps.

Top 3: Business Calendar Free

A complete calender app that is synchronizing with your Google calendars! It comes load with a great and smooth interface where you can pinch to zoom in and out. Instead of having views for "week", "4-day", "month", and so on, you start with a month view and can tap and drag on a certain set of days to shrink the view to those days.

Key Features:

Smooth scroll- and zoomable multi-day view (1-14 days)

Graphical and textual presentation

Month, agenda, day and event view

Quickly fade in/out calendars using the favorite bar

Search function

Configurable widgets in different sizes for month, week, agenda and day view (3 design themes for each widget type)

Easy switching between timeline bars and event titles in month view

Intuitive new handling option: just move your finger over some days of interest in month view to open them in the multi-day view

Quick day overview when adding a new event

Many options for recurrent events (e.g. to add a recurrent event that takes place every other week on Tuesday and Thursday)

Top 4: aCalendar - Android Calendar

Great free calendar app shinning with its unique weekly view of events. Flipping right and left takes you in monthly and daily views. The most impressive feature is the huge tiles for the weekly view, and the widget is also great. The drawback is lack of integration with Google Maps.

Features:

Intuitive navigation with smooth transitions
Day, week & month calendar
48 colors per calendar, per-event color if supported by the calendar (Android Jelly Bean with Google Calendar only)
Custom event font size
Fullscreen widgets
Flexible recurrences (e.g., every 3 weeks)
Birthdays & anniversaries with photos from your addressbook and editing
Fullscreen widgets
Custom event font size
Uses Android's native calendar backend and synchronization
No battery drain
Moon phases and zodiac signs for birthdays
QR barcode sharing of events
NFC sharing
Free
No ads

Top 5: Google Calendar

The Google calendar app comes built-in with the Android OS. The mobile functionality of this app is flawless due to Google and Android's intrinsic link. If you update an appointment on this app, it will instantly reflect on your mobile device. You will also enjoy the built-in functionality of shared calendars where you can simultaneously create and view multiple calendars.

Key Features:

Create, edit, and delete events

View all your calendars at the same time, including non-Google calendars.

Quickly email all event guests from a notification with a customizable message.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Apps

Vine for Android updates to version 1.1

admin 3:27 PM Comment

Vine for Android updates to version 1.1 bringing some much needed improvements to the popular video-sharing service

The increasingly popular video-oriented companion to Twitter, Vine, has updated their new Android app to version 1.1 bringing some very important improvements to the app, which currently has an average rating of 3 stars. Today’s update brings huge improvements to performance including quicker capture speed, higher quality and improved audio/video synchronization. Users now have the ability to clear their local cache in the app’s settings, search for users and hashtags and share videos to Facebook. Finally, the developers have included some bug fixes and tweaks to the UI.

The ability to clear the cache is crucial for any app dealing with video, but the feature is still not perfect. While it erases any unposted Vines from your storage, it doesn’t change the fact that its saving those unposted files in the first place. The next logical step would be to include an option to save or trash the unposted Vines in the first place. Hit the download link below to give the updated version of Vine a test-drive.

Play Store Download Link

Apps

The Official Fakeblock App

admin 2:11 PM Comment

Fakeblock Finally Arrives On Android, Has The Best Tonal Recognition Of Any Privacy Software Around

Wood block apps are a f*!#ing joke. Most of them don't even have mallet options or choices for wood weight or grain type. Fakeblock, which is now free on the Play Store...well, actually, it also doesn't have any of those options. But! It is still the most phenomenal block-of-wood-simulator that you will ever have the privilege of installing on your device.

We've been waiting for this app to launch ever since the big Cinco de Quatro event where CEO George Maharis announced that the app is "real" and encouraged us to "put up this wall." The company has already received several rounds of funding including $50,000 from an unnamed executive of a real estate company. This app is the hottest thing since Schnoodle, and your life is pointless until you go download it.

(206)

INSTALLER

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Apps

Spotify Updates

admin 5:59 PM Comment

Spotify Updates its App To Finally Support Notification Controls

While Spotify has likely seen a fairly dramatic drop in subscribers since the launch of Play Music All Access, the all-you-can-eat streaming audio service hasn't quite given up on its Android users just yet. The last significant update finally brought landscape support (which, honestly, should've been baked in from the beginning), and today's version bump brings another feature long missed by Android users: notification controls for Jelly Bean devices (4.1+).

That's actually the icing on the cake for many users – as far as the app is concerned, it's essentially on par with Play Music at this point (some may even prefer it). The service itself, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. But if you haven't yet decided to make the leap from Spotify to All Access, this update should make life a little more bearable for you.

(164 950)

INSTALLER

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Apps

DroidNAS: Use Your Android Phone as a Network Drive

admin 7:30 PM Comment

Android and Macs don’t always play nice with each other, especially when it comes to transferring files from your device to your computer. Even when using a cable, OS X needs an extra utility to recognize an Android device, which isn’t very stable…

But why bother using cables and additional utilities when your Mac and your Android device can communicate wirelessly and seamlessly with each other? Thanks toDroidNAS, your Mac will automatically recognize any Android device running the application as a network drive and display it in the Finder.

Step 1: Initial Startup

DroidNAS is extremely simple and user-friendly and therefore requires almost no set-up of configuration to work with your Mac. When you launch the app, you simply have to tell it which folders you’d like to share on the network. DroidNAS lets you make your entire SD card available on the network, but you can also pick your Camera, Music, Photos and/or Downloads folders, in case the information is stored on your devices internal memory. If needed, you can adjust the location setting — Home, Office or Café, depending on the connection you’re using. These options will simply untick some folders, without restricting access to the ones you decide to share.

DroidNAS’ interface is very simple and straightforward: only the essential options are displayed

Some additional settings are also available to the end user, such as the possibility to define the name and icon that will be displayed in OS X’s Finder. Therese are really cosmetic options, but the fact that the developers thought of implementing these personalization options is an added value. There is also an option to automatically select a location profile based on the network you’re connected to, which is a nice addition if you often need to use the app from various places.

The Settings are very basic and mostly let you customize the name and icon of your device

Most importantly, DroidNAS lets you restrict access to your device by protecting it with a user name and password you define directly within the app. This way, even if your device appears in Finder, you won’t be able to access it without the proper credentials.

Step 2: Transfer and Access Files Remotely

Once the application is launched and the server started on your Android device, the latter will automatically appear in Finder for any Mac that’s connected to the same network. Accessing it is as simple as clicking on your device’s name and browsing the various folders, as shown below. This way, you can copy, open, delete and move files and folders from a device to another without any cable and through Finder’s familiar interface.

Your Android device appears as a network device directly in your Finder

DroidNAS is also designed to differentiate the device’s internal memory and the SD Card or additional storage. It’s therefore very easy to check the remaining space on a drive. Such information is particularly valuable when transferring large files, as they may be bigger than the remaining space on the device or card.

DroidNAS can even display your SD Card details

Shortcomings

DroidNAS is efficient, user-friendly and safe, which makes it an excellent application. However, because it uses the Samba protocol, the app is not natively compatible with Windows, as the latter doesn’t fully support SMB. There may be a workaround using third party apps, but it would really be easier if the developers released a Windows client instead.

Likewise, because Samba is a protocol that requires a network connection between devices, DroidNAS can only work with a local network. There is no option to establish a hotspot or use another connection method, which is annoying when no WiFi networks are available.

Lastly, DroidNAS needs to be launched manually for a computer on a network to connect. There is no option to force the app to launch automatically during startup, which would mean immediate access. However, this option may have been deactivated to avoid having your files accidentally shared over the network.

Conclusion

DroidNAS is a great and simple utility to have your Mac recognize any Android device as a network drive, which clearly facilitates file transfers. Given the app has almost no limitations and is free, you should really download it and check it out, if you have a Mac, that is…

Friday, June 7, 2013

Apps

Get Next Launcher 3D Free Today

admin 3:14 PM Comment

Get Next Launcher 3D Free Today With This Code (Usually $16)

A $16 Android launcher is a tough sell, but you can pick up a copy of Next Launcher 3D today for free. This alternative launcher is the work of the Go Launcher Dev Team, and the paid version has over 100,000 downloads, even at $16. Just a few keystrokes and you can have it for free, though. Even if the flashy UI isn't your speed, it's worth grabbing just to play around with.

Download the trial version of Next Launcher 3D to get started, and choose Get Free when the splash screen comes up. To unlock it, open the menu and go into preferences. Since this interface is going to take some getting used to, I'll just let you know the menu button is in the far right dock position. In preferences, scroll all the way down and tap on About Full Version. Choose the Activate option, and put in "nextlauncher3d" as the account, and "appoftheday" as the code (both without the quotes). The app should be unlocked and you can play around without worrying about the trial period expiring.

This unlock code is only valid today, and it won't tie the upgrade to your Google account permanently. So think about backing up the app using Helium or Titanium Backup if you want to be safe. Next Launcher also overrides the background image in all launchers when it's installed. You can change it back, but still a small annoyance. All the Go widget packs are installed separately, but they appear to all be free.