Android

According to a report from Bloomberg, HTC has recently hired Paul Golden. If you haven’t heard of Golden, you’re probably familiar with Samsung’s Galaxy brand that he helped create during his role as Chief Marketing Officer at Samsung.

Bloomberg mentions that “two people familiar with the matter” say that Golden was recently hired as a contractor for HTC. Golden is working as an adviser and reporting to HTC’s chairman Cher Wang. At the moment, there aren’t any long-term employment plans for Golden, but his three-month contractor position could definitely become beneficial for HTC.

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Android Police has spotted a new feature in the Chrome OS dev channel that could one day allow users to unlock devices running Chrome OS by simply having their phone near the computer. The feature, which is still in a very early beta, is dubbed “Easy Unlock.” With this feature, your Chromebook could sense when your phone is nearby and Easy Unlock would automatically unlock the Chromebook, preventing the need to enter your password.

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The 8GB variant of the Moto G is now available to buy from Republic Wireless for $149 without a contract. The North Carolina-based MVNO’s “hybrid calling” service is a mashup of VOIP calls via WiFi and roaming powered by Sprint’s CDMA network. If 8GB of storage isn’t enough to support your arsenal of apps, the carrier is also pushing the 16GB Moto G for an additional $30.

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Google announced today on its Chrome blog that Major League Baseball is adding support for its $35 Chromecast streaming stick through the MLB At Bat app for Android and iOS. That means that users with the app and an MLB.TV Premium subscription will be able to stream live and on-demand video content from the app (or from a browser tab in Chrome through MLB’s site) to a Chromecast connected TV. You’ll also be able to use the phone or tablet you’re streaming from as a second-screen experience to “check scores, stats and news” while watching the game on the bigger screen:

MLB.TV is the latest live streaming service to come to Chromecast, so now MLB.TV Premium subscribers can invite their friends over to watch live, out-of-market games. While casting a game to the big screen, use your phone or tablet to check scores, stats and news from around the league. You can even choose between home or away broadcasts to steer clear of the opposing team’s announcers when your guys are on the road.

The updated apps are rolling out today for the MLB At Bat app for Android and iOS on Google Play and the App Store, but the Chromecast feature will require an MLB.TV Premium subscription to get started. Those cost $129.99/year or $24.99/month in comparison to the regular $19.99/season or $2.99 month At Bat subscription and offers “every 2014 Regular Season out-of-market game LIVE or on-demand in HD” across platforms. 

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Out of the three smartwatches recently released by Samsung, the Gear 2 Neo and Gear Fit seem to be questioned the most. Both of these device are priced at $199 and offer similar features, but which one should you buy? Take a look at our full comparison video between these two wearables to find out.

If you’re looking into the Gear 2, you may be surprised to find that the extra $100 will only get you a camera and a slightly different (metal) build quality on the face of the watch. When compared to the Gear 2 Neo, everything else is identical. With that being said, the best options you should consider are the Gear Fit and Gear 2 Neo.

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AT&T has just announced that it will update its variant of the LG G Flex to Android 4.4.2 tomorrow, April 17th. The update includes all the features we’ve come to expect in a KitKat update.

After updating, you should see a new full-screen “immersive” mode, as well as restyled notification and navigation areas. Battery performance should also drastically improve with the update, as should general OS performance, or so says AT&T. Other new features include cloud printing, Tap & Pay for NFC payments, the ability to choose a default SMS app, colored emoji support, and improved music controls from the lock screen.

• New full-screen mode
• Restyled status and navigation bars
• Battery performance improvements
• Enhanced processing speed

The update comes in at 686MB and will begin to rollout tomorrow. You can check for the update by heading into Settings>General>About phone>Software update>Update now.

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Google’s Update Wednesday continues today with an update to YouTube for Android. The update bumps the app to version 5.6.31 from 5.5.27 and includes a couple of significant changes. The biggest new feature is the ability to cast live videos from the YouTube app to your Chromecast. The process works just as it does on the desktop and the quality is fantastic. Of course, this would have been very useful during the live streams from the Coachella music festival last weekend, but there’s still the second weekend with which to use it. This will also be incredibly useful for watching live streams from Google I/O on the big screen.

The Watch Later interface has also been updated to fit in with the rest of the app’s interface, as opposed to the image-heavy interface in the previous version. You can now see at least four videos without scrolling, while you were previously limited to two on the same screen.

The update is rolling out now, albeit very slowly. If you’d like to bypass Google’s staged rollout, head over to Android Police where they have the APK available for download.  If not, keep an eye on the Play Store for it to hit your device.

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Hints of new features have been found in the just-released Google Camera app. The APK — which was put under the microscope by Liam Spradlin of Android Police — contains references to an Advanced Camera Mode, Time Lapse Mode, and Wide Angle Mode. Additionally, Google has confirmed that the Camera app now captures Photo Spheres in 50 MP, making for a major upgrade  in image quality.
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We’ve seen a lot of leaks regarding Google apps recently, including supposed new icons for Android, new features for Google Now, and a new Gmail interface. This time around, Google+ user Yoel Kaseb has allegedly obtained screenshots of a completely redesigned Google+ app for Android.

Kaseb says the app is unstable and still an early test build, but the design appears to follow the same trends as other recently leaked Google interfaces. Kaseb has also been locked out of the APK by Google and can no longer use the interface, which does lend some credibility to the validity of the images.

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After arriving in beta earlier this month, Google today released the Chrome Remote Desktop app for Android to all users through the Play Store. Google has long had its Chrome Remote Desktop app for desktop users to access a laptop or computer remotely for free, and the new Android app brings that same experience to mobile devices starting with Android.

If you haven’t used Chrome Remote Desktop in the past, you can get started by enabling your Windows or Mac machine for remote access through the Chrome Web Store app. Next, simply launch the Android app on your phone or tablet, tap on the computer’s name and start using your remote machine as if you were sitting right in front of it.

The Chrome Remote Desktop app is available for all to download from Google Play starting today and Google notes that an iOS version of the app is on the way sometime in 2014. 
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Following a report at the beginning of this month that Google was about to release a new, standalone Android camera app, today the app has officially made an appearance on the Google Play Store. Google announced the camera app today and in a separate blog post explained the technology behind the new lens blur features:

That all changes with Lens Blur, a new mode in the Google Camera app. It lets you take a photo with a shallow depth of field using just your Android phone or tablet. Unlike a regular photo, Lens Blur lets you change the point or level of focus after the photo is taken. You can choose to make any object come into focus simply by tapping on it in the image. By changing the depth-of-field slider, you can simulate different aperture sizes, to achieve bokeh effects ranging from subtle to surreal (e.g., tilt-shift). The new image is rendered instantly, allowing you to see your changes in real time. Here’s how we do it. First, we pick out visual features in the scene and track them over time, across the series of images. Using computer vision algorithms known as Structure-from-Motion (SfM) and bundle adjustment, we compute the camera’s 3D position and orientation and the 3D positions of all those image features throughout the series.

Some of the features that were reported previously are present, including the lens Blur option, a 100% viewfinder, and a high-resolution panorama mode. We also get a good look at the completely redesigned UI in the gallery below. Here’s the full list of features from Google:
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Want to do something nice for mom on Mother’s Day, but flowers make her sneeze and candy goes against her strict diet? Then perhaps a few books and magazines from Google Play’s Mother’s Day sale will bring a smile to mom’s face on her special day.

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