Verizon leads pack in smartphone sales, T-Mobile marks a change

As expected, the nation’s largest carrier has lead all U.S. carriers in smartphone sales in a three-month period ending in August, according to a recent Kantar Worldpanel ComTech USA survey.

More specifically, 37.1 percent of all smartphone sales went to Verizon, marking a 6.9 percent growth year over year. AT&T held their place in second with 21.7 percent of all smartphone sales— Sprint, in third, with 14.6 percent.

Qualcomm plans to help develop standard for hybrid wireless charging as it joins Power Matters Alliance

Wireless charging has been getting more and more attention as of late, and yesterday we showed you that remote wireless charging was even possible. Today, we have news that Qualcomm has joined the Power Matters Alliance and has plans to develop the standard for hybrid wireless charging.

DroidStars

This news comes only a month after Qualcomm joined the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC). Qualcomm will reportedly take on a “senior leadership role” at the Power Matters Alliance, and will work on ways for PMA devices (PowerMat) to receive wireless power using both low-frequency induction and high-frequency resonance.

Leaked version of Android 4.3 for AT&T’s HTC One appears

Well would you look at that! It seems as though HTC has made good on their promise of getting the latest versions of Android to their top-line devices as fast as they can. A leaked version of Android 4.3 for AT&T’s HTC One has appeared, and has been tested by Android Central’s Kevin O’Quinn— so far so good, they let us know. He hasn’t found any bugs, and fluidity is great.

Unlimited Free VPN for Android

Hola is open VPN that gives access to restricted content, such as geo-restricted content or that blocked by governments, companies or ISPs. But it also bundles some very interesting innovations with it: namely, a scripting language open for use by the community, and the ambitious goal of making your internet 10 times faster. It purports to do this through a combination of technologies, most notably a peer-to-peer network that can accelerate your internet as more and more people use it by using idle resources on remote computers to compress data.

But the fact that it not only provides AD FREE unlimited free VPN, but does it everywhere (in your desktop, browser, AND Android) makes this a winner.

While previously VPN was a program you installed on your PC (think Tunnelbear or HotSpotShield), Hola comes in many guises: a desktop app, browser extensions, as well as an Android app (although  the latter is somewhat less straightforward to operate than the others).

Android VPN Client for Tablet.

VLC for Android beta now available, unless you’re a North American

The VideoLAN Project has pushed a beta version of VLC for Android to the Google Play Store. The beta brings most of the functionality of VLC for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X to Android in a native UI in the Android 4.0 Holo style. However, there are a few hitches.

The beta release published to the Google Play Store today is only compatible with ARM systems that use the ARMv7 architecture set and support the NEON instruction set. That means that there are several devices — mostly those released before the Samsung Galaxy S in late 2010 — that cannot run the current beta. The major exception here is the Nvidia Tegra platform. Nvidia’s Tegra 2 (which is a popular choice for many Android device makers) cannot run this beta because it lacks the NEON instruction set.

Many low end devices (as well as high end devices from 2009) use ARM chips that utilize ARM core designs that are referred to as the ARMv6 architecture family. The ARM11 family of chips utilized this architecture. When ARM Holdings created the new Cortex series of ARM cores, it developed a new ARM architecture called ARMv7. ARMv6 and ARMv7 are incompatible, as ARM made different design choices for the architectures.

The NEON instruction set is what ARM calls its SIMD instructions. SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) instructions are also referred to as vector math instructions, which provide hardware support for processing parallel data sets. These instructions are often used for vector manipulation, which is critical for dealing with multi-dimensional data such as 3D polygons for graphics. It is also used for fast encoding and decoding of audio and video data. It is equivalent to Intel’s SSE instructions.

Some of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S1 and all of its Snapdragon S2, S3, and S4 chips use ARMv7. All Cortex series cores, including Samsung Exynos and TI OMAP 3, 4, and 5 series use ARMv7. The NEON instruction set is supported in Samsung Exynos and TI OMAP 4 and 5 on all chips. It is also supported on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S2, S3, and S4 chips. Nvidia’s Tegra 2 is ARMv7, but there’s no NEON instruction support. The Tegra 3 adds NEON to the supported ARMv7 instruction set.

Within the next few days, a version of VLC that does not depend on NEON will become available on the Play Store, as well as a version for ARMv6 processors.

However, if you live in the United States or Canada, you will not be able to get the VLC beta from the Play Store. VLC is available globally through the Play Store except for North America. The VLC team explains that they do not have access to North America-specific Android devices to test the builds with. If you live in North America and wish to use VLC for Android, you can grab auto-built nightlies for your Android device from the VideoLAN nightly build server. If you live outside of North America, head to the Play Store to grab the beta. The VideoLAN nightly build server has builds for ARMv6, ARMv7 with NEON, and Tegra 2, so no one gets left out of the party.

Note that the beta is most definitely unfinished, and early testing has shown it is rather slow right now due to all the debugging options enabled. Not to mention that the UI is unfinished and will likely be drastically different in the final version. But if you are not worried about any of that, go ahead and try it out!

Download VLC APK for Android Play Store (free)

Tips to Buy Cheap Android Handsets

One handy tip for budget shoppers is to hunt for an Android with a microSD card slot so you can affordably expand internal storage. That way you can buy a handset with a small amount of built-in memory -- hopefully meaning your initial outlay is lower -- and bulk the storage out on the cheap with your own SD card.

Above all, do your research before splashing your hard-earned cash. Reading reviews is great but there's also no substitute for getting your own fingers on a phone. Take a trip to your local mobile shop to check out your options before  parting with the contents of your piggy bank.

Make sure to check out how much older phones are going for, too. You might find higher-end mobiles from a couple of years ago for a bargain price on Amazon or similar. Some of these might provide more power than more recent low-end phones, but make sure to properly compare what each offers.

Budget Android phones

Lego Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles for Android

Lego Star Wars is getting a free-to-play mobile spin-off, called "Lego Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles." It's due on iOS on May 4, also known in nerd circles as "Star Wars Day," and will follow on Android sometime this summer. It lets players align with the Light or Dark Side of the Force, take part in lightsaber duels, and explore dungeons for studs. Those parts can then be used to build soldiers and vehicles.

Polygon reports that the game will be playable on the official site, and will use the Lego ID system to let you switch between the mobile and browser versions.

The mobile version will launch with eight main missions and three bonus stages, with another seven missions and two bonus stages to be released later this summer. Each content drop will include 20 achievements, and the bonus missions will include a quick-play mode that pits you against a horde of enemies.

Download Dark Avenger APK

Gamevil and Boolean Games’s highly anticipated RPG Dark Avenger has been officially released and is now available for Android. This Diablo-esque dungeon crawler cast players as one of three legendary hero types who must defeat a host of demons and undead who have descended upon the lands of the living. Bashing skeletons, looting treasure chests, and slaying giant monsters are all just another day in Dark Avenger.

Its not all the same with Dark Avenger though, as the hack ‘n slash title has a few tricks up its sleeve. In a mobile twist on a classic rpg staple, dungeons are now completely endless in addition to being procedurally generated, which is sure to delight elite dungeon masters. An included multiplayer mode allows players to take their heroes online in PvP competition for treasure and coin.

Download Dark Avenger APK

Dark Avenger for Android

Download Carmageddon APK

That blood-spattered recurring nightmare you had as a kid may have been formed by playing too much Carmageddon. The 1997 game has been resurrected for mobile devices after earning over $400,000 on Kickstarter from the company’s founding studio, Stainless Games.

All the carnage, swearing and pedestrian-maiming mayhem is intact here, though the on-screen controls are a bit too finicky for my liking. The game doesn’t stray too hard from the original premise, but there are new goals and plenty of updated HD graphics including “buckets o’ gibs” that shine on HD screens.

I noticed a bit of frame dropping on the HTC One, but for the most part performance stayed solid; the little human sprites are not detailed, but things can get hectic onscreen when there are multiple cars vying for a piece of you.

The game’s economy revolves around Profit, a generic currency that can be used to repair your car and buy new items or unlock vehicles. Repairing your car, which you will inevitably repeat throughout the match, is easy — one tap on the top right corner — but in later levels it costs more and Profit is less freely available.

Carmageddon is free for a day to promote its launch, but is (and will continue to be) available for $1.99 on Android and $3.99 on iOS.

Download Carmageddon APK

Carmageddon for Android

Samsung Galaxy S Advance sees a huge price drop, now available for Rs. 14500

Samsung Galaxy S Advance has got a huge price cut in India, and is available for Rs. 14,500. It was announced in January last year, and launched in India last April at a price tag of Rs. 26,900 (MRP) running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). It was selling at Rs. 17,500 earlier this month. Samsung announced the Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) update for the device last year, which rolled out starting from Russia earlier this year.

The Samsung Galaxy S Advance has a 4.0-inch (480×800) Super AMOLED display, powered by 1 GHz dual-core Processor and has a 5 Megapixel Auto Focus Camera with LED Flash, 720p video recording and a 1.3MP secondary camera. It has 768MB RAM, 16GB internal memory, expandable memory up to 32GB with MicroSD and has a 1,500 mAh battery.

The Samsung Galaxy S3 and the Galaxy S Duos got a price cut last month, now price of these devices have slightly increased to due to the increase in customs duty. The Samsung Galaxy S2 Plus went on sale in India last week.


Download Candy Crush Saga APK for Android

Huawei Ascend Y300