Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. Today we have the early access release of The Elder Scrolls: Blades, the official launch of the beautiful skiing game Grand Mountain Adventure, and a console-quality...
Google Camera 6.2 adds dark mode and animated transitions [APK Download]
Google's Camera application for the Pixels received an update a couple of days ago from version 6.1 to 6.2. A quick look at the app left us wondering whether anything was new at all, but upon closer inspection we noticed a few changes, some minor and one most of you will love: a dark mode.
Dark mode...
16 new and notable Android apps from the last week including Energy Ring, Photo Map, and Firefox Send (3/23/19 - 3/30/19)
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. Today we have an awesome battery display app that can place a ring around your newfangled cutout camera, an interesting app that can display your photos on...
30 temporarily free and 36 on-sale apps and games to finish the week
March is just about over, so here's the last app sales roundup for the month. Today's list has some goodies, which I've marked in bold, but there's plenty else here, too. Feel free to check out what's on offer today, enjoy your weekend, and I'll see you all in April.
Free
Apps
DDA - Internet Download...
Google Duo gets new contact screen, audio messages, and more in server-side update
Usually, Google bundles up new features in big app updates that you can sideload, but it's increasingly common for new features to just show up after a server-side switch gets flipped. That's the case today with Duo. The way you select contacts is different, and you can do different things with them.
Previously,...
WhatsApp beta rolls out continuous voice note playback and message forwarding count
Step by step, WhatsApp has been implementing features to combat the uncontrollable spread of fake or even just sugar-coated news on its platform. Today's update to the beta app includes one more measure to help monitor forwarded messages, but it also brings one very handy feature for voice notes.
First...
Google Photos will soon suggest cropping pictures of documents
Google Photos uses AI sorcery to do all kinds of cool stuff, and starting this week, the service is getting another new trick on Android: it'll soon offer to adjust photos of documents, presenting one-tap options to rotate, crop, and adjust color balance to make them more legible.
The new functionality...
Google's new offline Easter egg game is like Flappy Bird, but with a cute cloud
Google's witty side has been showing up more frequently over the past few weeks. First, it rolled out animated doodles in the homescreen Search widget, then yesterday we discovered an adorable elephant in the Go app, and today we've come across another hidden Easter egg. This one is like a game of...
Twitter shares some love with AMOLED users with true-black dark mode
Twitter was amongst the early ones to release a night mode for its app. However, even though it's been around since 2016, the interface uses shades of midnight blue rather than black, which might be easier on the eye but doesn't help save battery on AMOLED screens. The social media giant is now addressing...
[Update: Now available for all users] Commuters in Melbourne can now add their Myki card to Google Pay
Update 1: 2019/03/29 1:39am PDT
Public Transport Victoria has officially rolled out the program to the masses. All Full Fare, Senior, Child or General concession Myki users will be able to use Google Pay for
Google Pay is aiming at becoming a true virtual wallet by gathering payment and loyalty...
AOSP Application Updates
Posted by Raman Tenneti, AOSP Software Engineer and Ally Sillins, AOSP Program Manager
When we started the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) 10 years ago, we included some basic applications in the AOSP build for three main purposes:
to provide a usable set of applications for someone building an...
Gboard v8.1 makes space for OCR, prepares Pixel-specific theme, enhanced Japanese keyboard, and more [APK Teardown]
The latest update to Gboard is making the rounds, and this one appears to be taking another stab at enabling the clipboard manager. Meanwhile, this update also sets the stage for additional features to be added to the overflow menu, an improved Japanese keyboard, a Pixel-specific theme, and more.
What's...
[Bonus Round] FoxyLand 2, Twaddle Paddle, Darkestville Castle, Mindsweeper, Woody Battle, ORAC, and Spirit Roots
Welcome to the latest entry in our Bonus Round series, wherein we tell you all about the new Android games of the day that we couldn't get to during our regular news rounds. Consider this a quick update for the dedicated gamers who can't wait for our weekly roundups, and don't want to wade through...
Google Go has the most adorable elephant easter egg
Easter eggs used to be a lot more frequent back when Google let its fun side show, but now that the company is trying to project a more serious image, these little undiscovered gems are becoming rarer and rarer. Or maybe we're not playful enough to discover them. However, I'm ready to scratch all...
YouTube search filters are working again after temporary suspension by Google
If you've recently noticed some issues while trying to use the filters when searching for a video on YouTube, don't worry — you're not alone. Multiple users have been complaining that filter functionality has been completely borked for them (since March 19), and Google has admitted that this was an...
[Update: It's here] Grand Mountain Adventure is a gorgeous skiing game that's officially launching on the Play Store on March 27th
Update 1: 2019/03/28 6:17am PDT
The full version of Grand Mountain Adventure is here
Last year I stumbled across a post on Reddit that brought Toppluva AB's skiing game Grand Mountain Adventure to my attention. At the time the title was still in an unfinished state since it was released as...
Spotify launches Duo plan for couples in 5 countries, with special Duo Mix playlist
Up until recently, Spotify had two plans for you to consider: the single account and the family plan, both billed monthly. Then the music streaming service launched in India and introduced daily, weekly, yearly, and more granular plans to fit any user or family's demands. This adventurous approach...
Instagram is finally working on seek bar for videos — hello 2005!
Some luxuries of our online lives can be gravely underestimated until you hit some nook or cranny of the World Wide Web that doesn't have them. Take seek bars in videos. Have you ever stopped to think how awesome they are? You can skip forward if you're not interested in what's happening now but would...
[Update: Improved] Chrome tab groups are live in Canary on Android
Update 1: 2019/03/28 4:33am PDT
With the latest Chrome Canary v75.0.3748 (APK Mirror), tab groups have received a couple of improvements. First, there's a new button to create a group in the grid tab
We've known for a while that the Chrome team was working on tab groups. The feature first...
Photo Map lets you explore your Google Photos on a world map
Smartphones have been adding location tags to pictures for years to help identify where a photo was taken, which is particularly useful when looking at old memories. However, it's not easy to find images you've shot in a particular location if you haven't properly sorted them out beforehand. iOS,...
Inbox is about to die, and Google still hasn't brought its best feature to Gmail
As some of us are painfully aware, Inbox is set to die next Tuesday, April 2nd. Google has been pushing Inbox users back to Gmail since the original announcement last September. Initially, that transition was eased with promises that Gmail would eventually inherit Inbox's bundling, the email client's...
Bethesda's next mobile title, The Elder Scrolls: Blades, has entered early access on Android
The last we heard about The Elder Scrolls: Blades was back in November when the game was delayed to a release sometime in early 2019. Well, it would appear that we are finally inching closer to the official release date (whatever that may be) because The Elder Scrolls: Blades has gone live for those...
21 temporarily free and 28 on-sale apps and games for Wednesday
It's Wednesday, so it's time for the mid-week app sales roundup. Today's list is small and rather underwhelming, but perhaps that's just reflective of the slower time of year. Anyhow, you might find something you like below.
Free
Apps
Manual Camera : DSLR Camera Professional (Procam) $4.99 ->...
Wyze announces $20 home sensor system to pair with its $20 security camera
Home security cameras are common these days, but they're often spendy. Wyze made waves a while back by offering a basic but effective security camera for just $20. The Wyze cam is now getting some company in the form of a home sensor system that also costs $20.
The Wyze Sense kit ships with a motion...
[Update: Officially out now] This War of Mine: Stories brings the Father's Promise DLC to Android
Update 1: 2019/03/27 7:54am PDT
This War of Mine: Stories - Father's Promise is officially available on the Play Store
11 bit studios released the side-scrolling survival strategy game This War of Mine on Android back in 2015. What people may not know is that the game had been available on...
Changes to the Google Play Developer API
Posted by Vlad Radu, Product Manager and Nicholas Lativy, Software Engineer
The Google Play Developer API allows you to automate your in-app billing and app distribution workflows. At Google I/O '18, we introduced version 3 of the API, which allows you to transactionally start, manage, and halt staged...
YouTube Music can now act as a media player for files stored on your phone
Google has been pitching YouTube Music as an eventual replacement for Google Play Music since the company refocused what it was for last year, but it's still missing plenty of features. You still can't access your Google Play Music uploads from YouTube Music, and there's no easy way to import playlists...
Google Podcasts in-episode search is coming, shows now being fully transcribed
Google Podcasts is now automatically generating transcripts of episodes and is using them as metadata to help listeners search for shows, even if they don't know the title or when it was published.
With the help of a tipster, we were able to find that the company has been logging those transcripts...
Google gets ready for summer by adding vacation rentals to hotel search
Finding the perfect place to spend your vacation shouldn't be a difficult task, and Google has been making it easier in the last several months. It started with a Maps redesign that made finding Hotels more streamlined, and now Google's expanding those travel listings to include even more vacation...
Gmail's dynamic emails make the service more interactive with AMP
The internet has changed a lot since its inception, moving from static websites to the dynamic place we've come to take for granted today. While emails may look fancier today than they did 30 years ago, they've still been very limited so far as user interaction goes — you can click a link to visit...
Pearl Abyss will launch Black Desert Mobile globally on Android this year
Black Desert Mobile is an MMORPG that's already available on Android, though you can only download it off the Play Store if you live in Korea or Japan. Now that the developer Pearl Abyss has had some time to iron out a few kinks and find some success in the regions the game was launched, the studio...
New Google Pay tweak makes account switching faster
As Google progressively moves things around to comply with the ever-changing design guidelines, we see apps catching up as each new change appears. Google Pay's latest move pushes the account switcher out of the navigation drawer and into the top right corner. This matches other apps like Gmail that...
IMDb helps you find the exact movies or TV series you want to watch
The IMDb app is one of the first I installed on my Android devices, way back in 2010 on my Galaxy 5 (not S). But over the years, the need for the app has fallen, especially when Google added IMDb scores to its search cards. Now, I just Google the name of a movie or show and open the IMDb site from...
Square Invoices arrives to create, customize, and distribute ... well, you can guess what
Square, of point of sale/payment processing fame, has just pushed out a new application onto the Play Store for handling invoices. The functionally named "Square Invoices" will allow Square customers to create and fire off invoices and estimates, track payment statuses, and set automatic reminders...
Android Accessibility Suite 7.3 exits beta, adds screen search and other TalkBack additions [APK Download]
Accessibility options have come a long way in Android, especially in the last year or two. The aptly-named Android Accessibility Suite, formerly TalkBack, just hit v7.3 stable, adding some refinements to the Accessibility Menu and other new options like screen search and additions to continuous reading.
Here's...
Google Maps adds speed limits while driving, easy-to-see business hours
We've got a two-in-one deal in UI tweaks if you spend crucial time in Google Maps. One is a toggle for making speed limits disappear from your navigation view, the other brings business hours without the need for search. Each have their catches.
So, say you're in a bar-hopping group and you've been...
Samsung built a useless AR app that lets you attach virtual media to real-world objects [APK Download]
Augmented reality lets you display virtual elements on top of what is captured by the camera. These can be navigational arrows to guide you to your destination, fictional characters you interact with as part of a game, and so much more. With Playground, Google designed an app that lets you add various...
Lovecraftian card game Cultist Simulator is coming to Android on April 7th
Weather Factory originally released its Lovecraftian card game Cultist Simulator on PC in May of 2018, and Playdigious has taken the reins for the development of the mobile version that will soon land on Android on April 7th. Weather Factory has recently announced the official release date of the...
