Samsung has not been one of Android Wear’s biggest supporters. They have opted to use their own Tizen OS instead. The Gear 2 is one such device to use Tizen, but a tinkerer at XDA has fixed that. User biktor_gl has successfully ported Android Wear over to the Gear 2 after four months of work. That’s dedication.
The implementation is still very rough. The only things working so far are touch and basic Bluetooth support. It has taken so long to get this working because Android Wear is not the same as Android. Anyone can download Android from AOSP, but Android Wear is not open source. Despite everything, Biktor has proved that a Tizen smartwatch is not limited to what Samsung wants to do with it. Android wins again.
Do any of you have the Gear 2 or other Tizen smartwatches? Would you prefer Android Wear?
The music industry is experiencing a huge shift with physical and online music purchases declining and streaming music services on the rise. Among the most popular is Spotify who today in New York City made some interesting announcements to bring their customers entirely new experiences.
The most exciting new feature is for runners: Spotify now has a mode that will detect your running pace, the rhythm of your feet, and select songs that perfectly match the way you run. This is an outrageously cool idea that I know exercise enthusiasts will be dying to try out.
Spotify also announced partnerships with Nike and RunKeeper to bring this feature to the Nike Plus and RunKeeper apps later this year. We can only assume you’ll have these features on your Android Phones in due time.
Running Mode is the most exciting feature Spotify announced but it’s not the only thing. The new Spotify aims to deliver 3 key elements:
The perfect soundtrack for any part of your day
New types of content
Better experiences with innovative solutions
The “soundtrack for your life” could also prove promising. They’ve created an auto-create playlist feature that takes into consideration everything about you to continually decide what song it thinks you’ll want to hear next.
Depending on who you are it selects music for when you wake up, when you go running, when you get to work, when you’re commuting, and so on and so forth. It constantly learns who you are, where you go and when, what you like during those times, and creates the soundtrack for your life in real-time.
This isn’t a particularly new idea, but alternatives offered by the likes of Google Play Music, iTunes Radio, and Pandora don’t choose music particularly well. Spotify’s “soundtrack for your life” could end up being pretty darn awesome. We’ll have to wait, try it, and see.
Enhancing the experience with new types of content is an interesting concept as well, but again, nothing particularly new here. Spotify is adding new forms of media from popular podcasts, news programs, television shows, and more- including some video content.
Are you a Spotify customer? If so, do any of these developments sound particularly exciting? If not, will these new features entice you to become a Spotify customer?
With Android M becoming official last week — and available now as a Developer Preview — you may have lost sight of the most recent Android firmware version yet to hit your device: Android 5.0 Lollipop. It’s been more than 7 months since Lollipop was released, and you’d think with that with that length of time under OEM’s belts a modest number of Android devices are running the most recent firmware. Well, not so much. Anyone curious to chart Lollipop’s progress across the Android globe need look no further than Google’s newly updated Platform Version numbers for the month of June.
According to the updated numbers, only 11.6% of active Android devices (those that have recently accessed the Google Play Store) are running Android 5.0, followed by Android 5.1 at .8%. That brings the grand total of devices running Lollipop up to 12.4% (up from last month’s 9.7%). It’s not a terrible number, especially considering all of this year’s flagships are running Lollipop in some capacity. Of course, it’s 5.1 — which significantly polished up Lollipop from a usability standpoint — that Android fans are really looking forward to (at least until Android M launches at the end of the year).
There’s a bunch of other numbers you’re likely not to give a hoot about. Not unless you’re a developer looking to support older versions of Android in your apps. We always look at these Platform Distribution numbers as more of an Android report card which really isn’t so bad considering all the varying amount of hardware and carrier meddling that goes into issuing software updates on our smartphones. With the LG G4 and Samsung Galaxy S6 picking up steam, we should see these numbers jump drastically in the coming months.
“Run in circles” is an idiom that usually has something to do with wasting your time, and that is exactly what Running Circles does, but in a good way. This is yet another extremely addictive game that will waste all your free time if you’re not careful.
The main goal of Running Circles is to successful move from circle to circle for as long as possible. Your character is constantly running around circles, but you control when and where it goes. To play the game you only need to tap the screen. On each tap the running character with switch from the inside of the circle to the outside, or vice versa. If you time it just right you can jump to a connected circle.
Your score is determined by how many circles you can successfully enter before running into an obstacle. The obstacles can be stationary or in motion, and if you run into the outside of an adjoining circle you’ll also be killed. While you’re playing you can collect diamonds for purchasing new characters.
The single player mode is addictive enough, but there is also a multiplayer mode. The gameplay is the same as single mode, only this time you’re going up against another player. Sometimes you’ll see them in real-time, but mostly you’ll play against their ghost. You can challenge friends fro Facebook, random players, or send an invite. The multiplayer mode adds a layer of competition that makes the game even more fun.
Running Circles is free to download and play, but there are in-app purchases. You can unlock Easy Mode for .99 and unlock all the characters for .99. Extra diamonds are also up for sale if you’re willing to spend real money of fake currency. The good news is it’s very easy to play the game without spending a dime. It’s fun, well designed, and very addictive. Download Runnin Circles for free here.
