Androidifying

Vine received quite a hefty update in the Google Play Store yesterday, furnishing it with two very useful new features, and a handful of the usual bug fixes and stability improvements - designed to make its user’s experience with the app as seamless and fluid as possible. The first new feature the upgrade brings is called “Sessions,” and is essentially a very basic drafts folder for incomplete, complete or edited videos. Users will now have the ability to crop sections from published Vine’s in addition to being able to save completed Vine’s for later. However, due to the social network’s pretty high user base, users will be limited to storing up to 10 videos at a time. The Sessions section can be accessed by tapping on a new distinctive “save” icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the capture window. The second new feature that users will be able to enjoy is called “Time Travel,” this provides “Viners” with a brand new way to edit the Vine they are currently working on. Time Travel

It’s another week, so naturally we have another launcher, or actually a lock screen replacement app, to talk about. It’s not yet available but should be coming soon. Cover was actually created by a few veterans over at Google, Facebook and Yahoo. The goal with Cover is to make the lock screen more flexible by anticipating which apps you want at that particular moment. Of course, this is something that’s not possible on iOS since it’s such a closed down OS unlike Google’s Android. What Cover does is it shows a 6-item list of a persons most-used apps down the let edge of a phone’s lock screen. Tapping on one of the icons launches the app immediately, just as you’d expect. Sliding an icon to the right lets you peek the details of that app quickly. Which is really good for email, maps and calendar apps. What the app does, is it tries to anticipate what you’ll need so you’ll be one step closer to getting or accessing what you need on your phone. It actually sounds really cool, and I’m exc

We already know just about everything about the Nexus 5, or at least we think we know everything about it already. We know the specs, pricing, we just need availability. And hopefully tonight’s rumor is real. So we can stop hype beasting the Nexus 5 and get it in our hands already. We’ve already seen many renders of the Nexus 5 floating around. Including one from Canadian carrier TELUS along with one from Google. The image above is the same image that was used when the Nexus 5 hit Google Play prematurely a couple of weeks ago. The rumor right now is that the Nexus 5 would be available on Google Play on October 31st. Which means we should see an announcement about Android 4.4 and the Nexus 5 sometime next week. Unless Google decides to just announce it through a press release again this year, which I really hope they don’t. As for our Canadian friends, the Nexus 5 will be heading up North on November 8th and according to  Mobile Syrup , it should be landing on Rogers, Bell, TELUS, Koodo

A few weeks ago, we had posted that Plants vs Zombies 2 was available on Google Play but it was quickly removed by Electronic Arts due to some issues they were having with the game. It’s now in the Play Store, and it’s about 169MB in size. Finally the next generation of Plants vs Zombies is here. There was even some talk of Apple paying EA to keep the game off of Android for a while, giving iOS an exclusive. While both EA and Apple had denied that, I’m sure that happens more than we actually know about. Similar to the original, the gameplay is basically the same. They’ve added a few new plants and a ton of new zombies though. The game is free-to-play, with in-app purchases. Which seems to be what all the developers are doing these days. It’s not a bad thing because more people will use the game without pirating it. Some of the other features include: Meet powerful new plants that will defend your lawn through time Go toe-to-missing-toe with dozens of new zombies Supercharge your flor

Once upon a time Google launched something called Google TV that was supposed to take the world by storm. Unfortunately it never really took off the way Google thought it would, and just this year it seemed that Google might just be dropping the Google TV thing for a little device called Chromecast. While Chromecast does many things, it isn’t even close to being as full featured as Google TV, and there’s a big reason for that.  Google TV runs Android, and as such is a lot more powerful than Chromecast is. There’s also the fact that the hardware on a Google TV device is generally a lot more powerful than a Chromecast too. Now it sounds as if all that is going to change with the introduction of Android 4.4 KitKat. We’ve heard in the past that Google might be trying to re brand Google TV to Android TV, but this is the first big rumor about KitKat changing the landscape for those devices. It’s not clear whether or not Google will push for all Google TV’s up to this point to be updated to

The Nexus 5 has been rumored to be launching in October for a long time now and the KitKat Twitter account has been making all sorts of hints that it’s coming then but now, we’re hearing that the Nexus 5 and KitKat won’t be launching until next month. Of course, this is jut another rumor but, according to  Phones Review   the Nexus 5 and KitKat have been delayed and neither will be launching until next month. That doesn’t mean that Google won’t be going ahead with whatever press event they even planned to unveil the new Nexus and their latest version of the OS but, it does mean that the devices themselves won’t be shipping until a later date. How reliable is this rumor? Well, not very if we’re honest but, a delay is relatively likely. After all, that would explain why we’ve seen the device leak out so many times now, see it pass through the FCC and yet we’ve heard nothing from Google on the subject. In fact, the press event that they’re holding later on today is apparently going to foc

Apple has just roll out a somewhat significant update to iOS 7. In version 7.0.3 sees the return of iCloud Keychain, a feature that promises to store and encrypt users passwords, payment information, etc., making it easier to fill in things on websites while browsing on Safari. Speaking of Safari, the mobile browser also added its own security feature that acts as a standalone password generator to help folks create secure logins. Another subtle change comes in the lock screen, as it will now wait to display “slide to unlock” when Touch ID is enabled — it now waits for you to use your print instead. In addition to these security features, iOS 7.0.3 also brought back the ability to search Wikipedia and the web from Spotlight, addressed the accelerometer bug, and several iMessage bugs, which caused many message fails. Lastly, Apple responded to the huge uproar from folks who’ve been suffering from iOS 7 giving them “motion sickness.” The company dialed back animations even further in its