Last Chance Offers at AndroidArea.com: Organize your keys or win a Galaxy Tab S 8.4

A few last-chance offers are currently ticking away their final hours at AndroidArea.com. You won’t want to miss your chance to win the excellent Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4, especially when the cost of entry is nothing more than a few minutes of your time.

Submit your email address at AndroidArea.com and you will have a chance to take home the super slim, ultra hi-res, blazing fast Galaxy Tab S. You are limited to one entry, but you can increase your odd of winning by sharing the contest to your Twitter followers. The cutoff for entry is a little over 24 hours away, so get them in before 11:59PM on April 1st (and that’s not a joke).

As a consolation for those that don’t win we can offer up the KeySmart 2.0 Compact Key Organizer. Don’t be fooled by its name; there is absolutely nothing high-tech about it. It won’t interface with your smartphone, it won’t alert you if you lose it or track your keys via GPS. Nope, it’s just a simple keyring crafted from high quality aluminum and designed to keep you smartly organized. You have 6 more hours to get it for only .99.

 

Xiaomi’s $205 Mi 4i offers a relatively big punch: 5-inch 1080p display, Snapdragon 615 and more

Xiaomi has announced a new Android smartphone aimed straight at the mid-range market. It’s a 5 Xiaomi Mi 4i, and for that reasonable price tag you’re getting a pretty good set of specs that not many in its price range can boast.

Highlights of the device’s specs include a 5-inch 1080p display, Qualcomm’s octa-core Snapdragon 615 chipset, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, a 13 megapixel rear camera, an 5.1 megapixel front camera and a 3,120mAh battery. It’ll run Android 5.0 and MIUI 6.0, which brings your typical MIUI user experience with the added benefits of Android 5.0 Lollipop.

The device will be sold in India to start with a price tag of just Rs. 12,999 — that’s just over 5 — and will be available in white, orange, black, pink and blue. Flipkart will have the goods for you starting April 30th if you’re interested.

New Google Photos app offers unlimited storage for infinite photos

Today during Google’s IO keynote, it unveiled the long-rumored standalone photos service, Google Photos. The biggest perk of the new standalone app isn’t all of the cool new features Google unveiled for Photos, but rather the fact that the service will offer unlimited cloud storage of all your photos and videos. That’s a huge departure from services like Apple’s iCloud, which only offers 5GB of space for free.

So what’s the catch with the free unlimited space? Any pictures that are over 16MP will be compressed. You’ll also be able to store 1080p videos for free, but any 4K recording you take with your phone will be downsized on the service as well.

If you’re a photographer who doesn’t want to opt into the free option with compression, when you install the app you’ll be able to choose the “original” Google Photos option. This will store all of your photos and videos that you select at the original resolution, but you’ll need premium Google Drive space. For a month, you can get 1TB of space for all your uncompressed photo and video needs.

For everyone else, backing up and finding your photos just became a whole lot easier.

UPDATE: It’s live!

T-Mobile releases 8 new ads attacking Verizon and offers their customers a risk-free trial [VIDEO]

The gloves just came off, folks. T-Mobile has a bone to pick with Verizon and they want the whole world to know about it. The company has just released new ad campaign called #NeverSettle (OnePlus, anyone?), and they kicked things off with a whopping 8 videos to server no other purpose than to show people what they do much better than Verizon ever has.

The talking points cover the usual areas of unlimited data, no contracts, early upgrades and other perks T-Mobile can tout. The company even swears they have the network to take Big Red on, noting that they deliver the fastest LTE speed of any of the nation’s major carriers. Of course, actual coverage of said network is a whole different issue that they took care not to harp on, though they reminded us they’re on track to cover 300 million Americans by the end of this year.

As part of the campaign the company is offering up a free no-risk test drive to any current Big Red customers. Here’s how it’s going to work:

• Port your phone number to T-Mobile and get a T-Mobile smartphone (all the while keeping your Verizon device)


• After the trial, if you decide to switch T-Mobile will pay any early termination fees or device payments up to 0


• If you decide you want to go back with Verizon, simply trade your T-Mobile phone within 14 days, and once you’re back they will even pay the costs associated with reactivation.

The trial starts May 13th, and signups will be taken through the end of the month. T-Mobile didn’t give us an idea on how long the trial would last once you’ve started, but we’ll do our darndest to find out. Be sure to take advantage if you’re truly on the fence, and look straight ahead of the rest of the advertisements T-Mobile dropped today if you’re interested.

[via T-Mobile]

Angry Birds Fight! offers a new spin on an old franchise, now available globally on Android [DOWNLOAD]

The folks at Rovio are back again, this time with the 11th Angry Birds title designed to suck the pennies out of your wallet. Angry Birds Fight! is now available on Google Play and like most of Rovio’s titles, is free to download. It’s not really a fighting game per se, with gameplay more closely mirroring those match-3/RPG games that are all the rage these days. Think more Puzzle Quest than Candy Crush.

Players can battle it out against pigs in story mode, or against other players in real-time matches. Basically you match as many birds as you can within a short time frame and when you’re done, you and your opponents characters commence fighting while you sit back and watch. The fact that fighting doesn’t take place in real-time really kind of kills it for us.

• CHALLENGE other players globally in real-time match-three puzzles


• POWER UP birds for the fight by matching faster and better than your opponent


• MATCH 4 to activate special powers, MATCH 5 to start FEVER TIME!


• WIN fights to gain XP, win items and customize your flock and your ship


• ACCESSORIZE with different items to increase health, attack and add skills


• EARN bird coins in fights to buy more weapons and accessories in the shop


• PLAY the lucky slots to unlock more items – go on, give it a spin!

Birds can be equipped with a variety of defensive and offensive equipment, even special abilities to tip the scales in your favor. New characters, weapons, armor, and items can all be purchased use the game’s 2-forms of currency (coins or gems) or you always have the option of making purchases using real money — something we don’t recommend. Angry Birds Fight! has in-app purchases ranging anywhere between .12 – .87 for extra gems.

The game initially launched in Asia Pacific (it’s actually a collaboration between Rovio and Japanese game studio Kiteretsu Inc.) but only now is it available globally. Download link provided below.

Angry Birds Fight! (Playboard) | Angry Birds Fight! (Play Store)

LG offers “buy one get one free” sale on LG G4 leather backs

One of the best things about the LG G4 (our review) is the replaceable back cover. You can easily swap it out for different colors and materials, including five shades of leather. To fully take advantage of this customization feature you’ll want several different covers to switch between. For a limited time you can get two leather back covers from LG’s store for the price of one.

The leather back covers are still only available for pre-order. When you pre-order two of them ( a piece) LG will automatically slash the price in half. The five colors available include Sky Blue, Orange, Pink, Red, and Yellow. The leather back covers are slated to ship after June 26th, and this sale is running until June 30th. Slap one of these covers on your G4 and it instantly feels more premium. Are you planing on getting a leather back cover for your G4?

[via LG]

 

New LG G4 promo offers free leather back and bonus battery with cradle for a limited time

If you were bummed that you missed out on LG’s initial LG G4 promo back when the phone first launched — which officially expired toward the end of June — you could have a second chance. LG is now offering up a new deal for the month of July to anyone still on the fence about picking up a G4 and it’s not too unlike their previous deal.

In fact, it’s almost identical. The only difference is they’ve swapped out that free 32GB SD card for your choice of leather battery cover (available in yellow, pink, blue, orange, and red). Making a return is the free 3,000mAh spare battery and charging cradle to keep you juiced up on-the-go.

To get in on the deal, you’ll need to purchase an LG G4 before July 31st and submit your receipt before August 15th. That should be more than enough time. For anyone else that recently bought an LG G4 between June 21st and July 1st, it appears you’re out of luck. Oh, and for the record, this is US-only.

[LG]

Verizon offers up $10,000 to catch Southern California copper cable thieves

We’re not sure what the going rate is for copper wiring, but it must be high enough that someone would risk their freedom to try and steal it. That’s the situation Verizon Wireless is facing down in Southern California where someone (or a group of individuals) has been making their way from city to city, stealing Verizon’s copper communications cables along the way.

Verizon says that over 16,000 feet of copper cable has been stolen over the past 6 months, with the most recent of 16 incidents taking place last week on June 22nd. The result has been outages in these areas, sometimes lasting as long as several days until service could be restored. Margaret Serjack, Verizon California’s region president made the following statement:

“These thefts not only disconnect our customers from the phone and online services they count on every day, they also endanger the communities where they reside by severing a communications link to emergency services we all depend on in times of crisis. We will not tolerate these deliberate and malicious acts against our customers and our communications network.”

The thefts have occurred around the cities of Hesperia and Victorville in San Bernardino County, as well as Baldwin Park in Los Angeles County, and the community of Thermal in Riverside County. Verizon is offering up to ,000 to anyone with information leading to the arrest and prosecution of these copper bandits. You can contact Verizon Security at 1-800-997-3287; or Deputy R. Oakleaf with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department at 760-248-7655.

[Verizon]