swifText For Android – Faster Text Messaging With Pop-Up Notifications

If you find it bothersome to launch Android’s built-in messaging application or to drag down the notification bar every time you need to reply to a received text message, then swifText for Android is a text messaging alternative you might want to consider. The freeware can be set to display pop-up notifications for each received text message in addition to the usual status bar notification and allows you to reply immediately from within said pop-ups, making swifText a faster alternative to the default Android messaging application.

In addition, the application sports a sleeker UI that certain users might prefer over the minimalistic interface of the built-in messaging application.

The primary purpose of swifText, as its name implies, is to make viewing and replying to incoming text messages zippy and painless. The better looking interface is a mere bonus. In fact, it is possible that you might prefer the plain and simple UI of the built-in application, in which case you should let it remain your default messaging application.

If, however, you would rather have better looking message threads and don’t mind advertisements then you might want to set swifText as your default messaging application. To do that, simply press the menu button on your device while on the Messaging (Inbox) screen, tap Settings, check the the first option from the top (Use swifText) and in the pop-up that appears, check Use by default for this action and selectswifText from the list of displayed messaging applications.

The application also allows you to turn status bar notifications and home screen alerts/pop-ups on and off. So if you simply want a better look for your message threads but would rather not have pop-ups crowding your home screen every time a text message is received, you may uncheck Show Alert from theSettings menu of the application.

Head on over to the Android Market to get swifText or simply scan the provided QR code.

Download swifText

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Android 2.3 tips & tricks from Google

Google released the Nexus S smartphone a few weeks back which redefined the android smartphone space and is the first phone to carry pure Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Here are a few tips and tricks from Google for the Android 2.3 Gingerbread mobile OS. Note that many of these tips will also work on Android 2.2, but some of them are specific to 2.3:

Tips

• Visual cue for scrolling: When you are in a scrollable list (like your Gmail inbox) and you reach the end of the list it shows an orange hue—a visual cue that you can’t scroll anymore.
• Notification bar icons (Wi-Fi, network coverage bars, etc.): Turn green when you have an uninhibited connection to Google, white when you don’t. Hint: if you’re in a hotel or airport using Wi-Fi, the bars won’t turn green until you launch the browser and get past the captive portal.
• Voice actions: Tell your phone what to do by pressing the microphone icon next to the search box on the home screen, or long press the magnifying glass. You can tell it to send an email or text message (“send text to mom, see you for pizza at 7”), call someone (“call mom”), navigate somewhere (“navigate to pizza”), or listen to music (“listen to Mamma Mia”).
• Find things you’ve downloaded from your browser: Your downloads are now neatly collected in a Downloads manager, which you can find in the apps drawer.
• Turn a Gallery stack into a slideshow: In Gallery, when you are looking at a stack of photos, put two fingers on the stack and spread them. The stack spreads out and the pictures flow from one finger to the other, a moving slideshow that lets you see all of the photos.
• Walk, don’t drive: Once you’ve gotten directions within Google Maps, click on the walking person icon to get walking directions.
• Easy text copy/paste from a webpage: To copy/paste from a webpage, long press some text, drag the handles around to select the text you want to copy, and press somewhere in the highlighted region. To paste, simply long press a text entry box and select paste. Gmail is a bit different: you need to go to Menu > More > Select Text.
• Turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot: Go to Settings > Wireless & Networks > Tethering & Portable Hotspot. (You may have to pay extra for this feature.)
• Look at Maps in 3D: With the latest release of Google Maps, you can now look at 3D maps. Tilt the map by sliding two fingers vertically up/down the screen, and rotate it by placing two fingers on the map and sliding in a circular motion, e.g., from 12 and 6 o’clock to 3 and 9.
• Cool shutdown effect: When you put the phone to sleep, you’ll see an animation that resembles an old cathode tube TV turning off.

Keyboard tricks

• Shift+Key to capitalize a word: In Gingerbread (and supported hardware), you can Shift+Key to capitalize a letter instead of going to a separate all caps keyboard.
• Auto-complete: The space bar lights up when auto-complete can finish a word.
• Quick replace: Tap on any previously typed word, then tap on a suggestion to automatically replace it with the suggested word.
• Easy access to special characters (like numbers, punctuation): Press and hold any key to go to the special character keyboard. You can also press and hold the “,” key for an extensive punctuation keyboard.

Applications

• Angry Birds: Popular game that lets you knock down blocks by slingshotting birds.
• Astro: Awesome file explorer app. Browse and access the directories on your phone, and take full advantage of its capabilities. Great if you’re a power user.
• Chrome to Phone: This one is really useful for Chrome users. You can send anything you browse on your computer to your phone. So if you are heading out to a restaurant or party and look up directions on your computer, just click the “send to phone” button (requires Chrome to Phone extension) and that exact page will open on your phone. Same with virtually any webpage.
• Flash: Install from Android Market to watch Flash videos embedded throughout the web. Runs even better on Gingerbread.
• Fruit Ninja: A juicy action game that tests your ability to smash flying fruit. A fun time-killer on the bus or train.
• FXCamera: Popular photo sharing app with slick effects and filters.
• Google Maps: Use your device as a GPS navigation system with free turn-by-turn voice guidance, and take advantage of other Google Maps features like Street View, Latitude and Places.
• Instant Heart Rate: Measure your heart rate using your camera.
• Phoneanlyzr: Track your phone usage: who you text most, call most, average call length distribution, etc.
• RemoteDroid: Control your computer from your phone. Gives you a mobile wireless mouse and keyboard. Great if you’re using your computer for music or movies.
• Shazam: Identifies virtually any song you are listening to.
• SoundHound: Record a snippet of a song and get it identified instantly. You can even hum (if you can carry a tune!).
• Tango: A free, high-quality video call app that works on both 3G and Wi-Fi. If your device has a front facing camera (e.g., Nexus S), you will love this app.
• YouTube: New UI. Plus, portrait-mode player, and view comments and drop-down box video information

[From Google Blog]

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Opera Mobile 10.1 Beta Now Available for Android Users

Opera Mobile 10.1 is now available for Android users in beta format via Android Market, the official applications storefront for Android users. While Opera Mini has been available for Android for quite some time now, Opera Mobile offers a more complete browsing environment with text and graphics that are natively rendered on Android devices rather than on a server like on Opera Mini. Opera Mobile supports pinch to zoom, a feature that was lacking in the Mini edition, and YouTube playback.

The browser doesn’t quite support full hardware acceleration yet according to an early review on Android Police. According to the Android-centric blog, because Opera doesn’t make use of the Webkit engine, some content may not display as intended on Opera Mobile. Another issue is rendering speed, which is on-par with the newly unveiled Firefox beta edition for Android, but is slower than the native Android browser.

The conclusion that Android Police came away with isn’t entirely positive, but isn’t entirely negative either.

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Tango Video Calls Android app Review

The Tango Video Calls Android app is a great way to talk face to face with those people that you love.

Features:

• Video chatting is getting more and more popular ever since Skype made it so common.  You will be able to use this app to have really high quality video calls with your friends and family that have either an Android phone or an iPhone.
• You can invite all of your friends and family to download the app so you can interact in a fun, new way.  They can just go to the website at tango.me in order to get more information
• You will be able to use this app with phones that have a front facing camera as well as those that don’t have it
• The video quality on the 3G phones is actually pretty good and you won’t have to worry about not being able to see the person you are talking to, the audio is lacking though
• You don’t have to use any cell minutes to use the app and you don’t have to sign up for any accounts as of now

Conclusion:

The Tango Video Calls Android app is a really cool way to do mobile video calls over your Android phone.  For now, the app is completely free so you can use it to your heart’s content.  You can actually do the video calling between both Android phones as well as iPhones.  The other cool thing about this app is that it will actually support phones that don’t have the front-facing cameras like those found on the iPhone 4.  The only issue, as you might have already noticed, is that if you have to turn the phone around to be able to see you, then you can’t really see the other person.   You can get a little creative, however, and use a mirror or something so that you can see the other caller while you are talking to them.  You will be able to toggle the buttons for muting as well as videos.  The video that is transmitted over the 3G network is pretty decent, but the audio is actually really bad unless you are going to be using headphones with each of the calls.
This app has been given decent ratings (nothing amazing) and is currently sitting at a rock solid 4 out of 5 stars by the people that ended up reviewing it.  One of the nice things about this app is that you can download it onto your phone for free.

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Firefox 4 Mobile Beta 2 Released

Mozilla today announced the second beta of Firefox 4 Mobile for Android and Maemo. The software has made substantial process and is now among the most attractive browsers for Android. It scores in performance and HTML 5 compliance tests. iPhone users may be jealous.

The first Firefox 4 Mobile Beta was a rather rough release and a browser that was easily trumped by other popular Android browsers such as Dolphin. However, the second beta is a different caliber and is, according to our preliminary test run the fastest mobile browser for Android. Since it is based on Firefox 4, is offers amazing HTML 5 support, which is on par with the desktop version.
The new beta has dropped in size substantially – from more than 40 MB for the installer to about 17 MB. Mozilla says that future versions will get rid of more weight. There is a new interface that is now much more integrated with Android. Firefox Sync is now supported as well, which allows you to bring your bookmarks through the cloud to the mobile browsers.
Our quick test included a test run of Sunspider on a T-Mobile G2 phone with an 800 MHz processor. The test was completed in 5637.3 ms, which compares to 7129.5 ms of the standard Android browser and 6887.4 ms for the popular Dolphin browser. At least in theory, you can also run any HTML 5 content on this browser you would run on your desktop Firefox. The browser scores 226 of 300 points in HTML5test.com, which trumps Dolphin (176) and the Android browser (176) by a substantial margin.
You can download the browser for Android or Maemo here. the Android version requires an OS version of 2.0 or higher. The required storage space is about 32 MB.

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LG “Honeycomb” Tablet Release in 2011

Want some news about LG's new Android tablet powerhouse?

Last we heard from the Korean tech giant LG, it was scrapping plans for Froyo and looking forward to a more suitable version of Android for their tablets, which a senior official at the company has today clarified to mean Honeycomb, describing it as the "tablet PC-version" of the OS.

LG plans right now are to release the 8.9-inch LG Pad in the first quarter of 2011, boasting that it'll come with a dual-core Tegra 2 chip inside -- the release window is said to be for both domestic and overseas markets.

LG has not given any official statement about the devices.  Which is interesting.

It seems whoever the cited official in this piece, he was dishing details that LG doesn't want the world to know yet. LG's PR team has also pulled a tweet about this story, with no statement as to why.

We also know of the other LG Optimus Android Tablets/Slates, the Optimus One and the Optimus Chic .  Both of them feature the Android 2.2 Froyo operating system, and probably will reach worldwide. The Optimus Chic is targeted at young customers, but the Optimus One is an entry-level device.

The  LG Optimus One has a 600MHz cpu plus a 3.2 inch wide HVGA screen sporting a long life battery to provide up to 450 minutes of talk time and of course a touch screen. The Optimus one also has a 3Mp camera and micro sd slot (up 32GB)

If LG is waiting for the newest version of the Android OS for their premium tablet and it's not Android 2.2 aka "froyo". So it is possible that Honeycomb may launch during the 1st/2nd quarter of next year.

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VIEWSONIC VIEWPAD 7 AND VIEWPAD 10 GET OFFICIAL US RELEASE

ViewSonic has announced US availability and pricing for the ViewPad 7 and ViewPad 10 Android tablets, a week after the 7- and 10-inch slates made their UK debut.  The ViewPad 7 runs Android 2.2 Froyo, while the ViewPad 10 gets Android 1.6 and Windows 7.

The ViewPad 7 will be available in late Q4 2010 priced at $479, while the dual-booting ViewPad 10 will drop in Q1 2011 at $629.

ViewPad 7 demo:

ViewPad 10 demo:

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Samsung Nexus Two With Android 2.3

It seems that Samsung will release a new smartphone,Samsung Nexus Two which will have Android 2.3 operating system.I think that Samsung Nexus Two will have at least the same succes as Samsung Galaxy S.The November 8 want to make a surprise perhaps is not so. The Samsung Nexus Two sticks his paw under the door, and it has done in the form of a mobile phone very similar to Samsung Galaxy S. However, the interest of this new edition of the official Google Mobile does not reside only in the cacharrete but, as said in Beauty and the Beast, beauty is also inside.I like this new Samsung Nexus Two.

We refer to the operating system. The essence of a Google Phone. In this case, the version of Android. Speak of the edition 2.3, known by the name Gingerbread. Despite Froy Android 2.2 has not yet been established in the market, Google have decided to throw more coal on the locomotive, anticipating its advanced edition operating system to their advantage to get more and more open competition.I am sure that Samsung Nexus Two will have a big succes.

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