android
Android Market updated with new app discovery features
The amount of apps available on the Android Market has been steadily growing since its inception. With over 200,000 apps available on the Market now, it’s pretty hard to discover the new apps since there’s just so many to choose from. Well, Google has decided to upgrade the Market to make it easier to discover new apps. Starting today, the Android Market will have 5 new app discovery features.
New top app charts – the charts have been revised to be fresher and country specific, so you know what app is being downloaded the most in your country. There are also new categories such as top new paid, and top grossing lists.
Editor’s Choice – the best apps are handpicked by the Android Market staff themselves and placed here. The apps include but are not limited to games and productivity.
Top Developers –developers behind the highest quality, popular and notable apps on the Android Market will be receiving a special icon on their Android Market website to let people know that they’ve attained such a status.
Better related apps – app recommendations are now based on what you’re downloading at the moment, and what other apps that people have been downloading along with the same app.
Trending apps – Apps that are quickly growing in daily installs will be featured here, so users can catch on to the latest trend before it explodes.
These features are now available on the web-based Android Market and will be pushed to Android devices in the near future.
The Fairphone 2 was first unveiled in June earlier this year, where this particular handset carried a modular design while featuring majority of its components that have been sourced from conflict-free mines. It seems that this particular handset that you can purchase with a clear conscience has begun to ship to those who happen to live across Europe.
Fairphone announced in a blog post, “It’s been almost two years in the making, and some of the earliest buyers have been patiently waiting since July to receive their new phones. As community manager, I want to personally welcome the new batch of Fairphone owners to our community.” The initial 1,000 units are tipped to ship this month, before the other pre-orders follow in January 2016.
In terms of hardware specifications, the Fairphone 2 will run on a Snapdragon 801 chipset, has a 5″ 1080p screen with Gorilla Glass 3 protection, 2GB of RAM, an 8MP camera, with Android 5.1 Lollipop in tow. It will be a dual SIM capable handset with a microSD memory card slot and plays nice with 4G LTE networks, retailing for approximately €525 a pop.
It looks like the upcoming flagship model from Xiaomi will feature NFC support, at least based on a document that was released by China UnionPay. Just in case you are scratching your head and wondering who China UnionPay is, they happen to be the only domestic payment gateway supplier and card organization, and hence, to see them offer detailed support concerning the newly released NFC-based payment system points to the very real possibility of the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 5 featuring NFC capability.
After all, the Xiaomi Mi 3 was also mentioned on the list, which so happens to feature NFC, and there is no mention of the Xiaomi Mi 4 which does not come with NFC. Still, such a new payment system would be the ideal tool to see the reintroduction of NFC to the flagship model.
OnePlus did make an announcement in the previous month that the Ceramic variant of the OnePlus X will be released on November 24. True to their word, they did exactly that – although only a pitiful number of units were made available, and not only that, this was through a charity auction. Thankfully for the rest of the masses who are on the lookout for this device, it has gone on sale officially already.
Needless to say, this particular variant is available only by an invitation, although do bear in mind that standard OnePlus X invites are not good here – you will still need to snag yourself a specific Ceramic variant invite before you make a purchase. OnePlus is also on the lookout to offer additional methods of picking up this smartphone, although no further details were revealed.
The OnePlus X Ceramic will be available only in select markets, where among them include Europe, India, and Hong Kong. To date, we do know that OnePlus had made only 10,000 units of the handset available. A case of the early bird getting the proverbial worm here?