A heatwave is spreading across the country, marking the ideal time to unleash our best Android Apps of the week update! We heartily recommend that you get yourself indoors out of the roasting sun, draw the curtains tightly shut and download some of the gems we’ve listed for you below. Sunlight is overrated anyway, if you ask us.
August, 2011
Early adopters rejoice! The HP TouchPad is getting “hundreds of improvements”. HP has kicked out an OTA update for the tablet bringing webOS 3.0.2 to the party and a huge list of performance and reliability enhancements. That’s good news as our HP TouchPad review, like so many others, flagged up sluggishness as a major flaw.
The HP TouchPad update includes major changes to the Email, Calendar and Music apps (including rather worryingly “reduced audio skipping”) and a solution to a bug that cause oversensitive screen rotation. There are also some welcome little additions like the ability to set the device wallpaper from the Photos app and autocorrect that understands contractions.
You can see the full list of changes after the break. If you’re running the HP TouchPad update let us know how you’re finding it in the comments.
Good news for retro gaming fans: Sony has announced that it’s planning to bring classic Japanese and US PlayStation One titles to Europe via the PlayStation Network. The decision means that publishers who still own the rights to their PlayStation One games will be able to apply to have them release here provided they’ve been rated.
Sony says the PlayStation One titles will hit the PlayStation Network “as is” which means some might require you to brush up on your Japanese. All the re-released games will run at 60Hz, so you’ll also need a display that can handle that.
The move already looks promising for fans of long-lost JRPGS. Ross McGrath of the Sony PlayStation Store team says he’s already been in contact with Square-Enix about delving into its catalogue.
Sony is asking for suggestions of games you’d like to see at the link below. Tell us too in the comments by clicking the headline and diving in.
Out TBC | £TBC | PlayStation Blog
Babies now have an official way to join Facebook before they’ve even left the womb. If you’ve had your newsfeed bombarded with messages about kids, it’s going to get worse. Facebook has added the option for expectant parents to include their unborn child in the Friends And Family section of their profiles.
The “Expected:Child” option lets soon-to-be parents add a photo, the name of their unborn child and a due date. The move seems to be an attempt to stop parents creating profiles for unborn children in a breach of Facebook’s terms of service. On a more cynical note, it could also give advertisers an even easier way of knowing what Facebook users to target with baby-related ads.
Click the headline and hop into the comments to let us know what you make of the move? Is it just a natural evolution for the social network or should parents wait until their bundle of joy has actually been born before signing them up?
Image by Spullara on Flickr
Nokia and Microsoft are sending out invites for a joint party on August 17 in Cologne, the final day of the GamesCom Europe which descends on the city that week. Whenever the words, “Nokia” and “Microsoft” are seen together these days, talk about Windows Phone swiftly follows so the event has obviously sparked rumours.
Since the invite features a Windows Phone logo and promises “exciting actions and surprises [to] make it an evening to remember”, some are suggesting that the Nokia Sea Ray device, which has popped up in leaked videos, will get its first official outing at the event. We’re a little more sceptical. Holding a party during GamesCom suggests Nokia and Microsoft are hoping to woo more game developers to the platform and there’s also the little matter of Nokia World, which takes place on October 26 in London.
While we’d love to see the Nokia Windows Phone devices outed this month, we suspect we’ll be waiting until at least September, especially as the Nokia N9 is not due until then.
Out TBC | £TBC | Nokia (via (TheUnwired)
Apple has opened iCloud.com, the iCloud web interface, to developers. The beta site includes new web apps for Mail, Calendars and Contacts along with the online version of the iWork suite. While we’ll have to wait until at least next year for the iTunes in the Cloud feature, iCloud is still due to launch in the UK this autumn and Apple has revealed UK prices for iCloud storage.
The first 5GB of iCloud data will be free but if you need more space, you’ll have a choice of 10GB for £14 a year, 20GB for £28 a year or 50GB for £70 a year. Those prices aren’t cheap but we suspect a lot of users will manage just fine with the free 5GB allocation. Music, movies, TV shows apps and books purchased from the iTunes Store along with the iCloud Photo Stream won’t be counted as part of the free storage.
The latest Apple TV update adds the ability to stream previously purchased TV shows directly from the cloud and buy shows directly from the box. It’s brilliant news but only if you’re in the US. The Apple TV 4.3 software update only adds the new feature if you’re on the correct side of the Atlantic.
One of the biggest complaints in our Apple TV review was that so many features were US-only and it doesn’t look like that’s set to change any time soon. Of course, you can still stream TV shows you’ve grabbed from the iTunes Store from your computer using Home Sharing or AirPlay but that’s not nearly as nifty.
Click the headline and jump into the comments to share your thoughts on the Apple TV. Are you annoyed that the UK always seems to lose out on features?
Out now | £99 | Apple
The battle among high-end processors begins next month. According to a report from DigiTimes, AMD is set to mass product its FX-series Bulldozer-based processors in August with a launch as soon as September and mass production in October. The Intel Core i5 and i7 series chips now have a new competitor.