Androidifying

Shutterstock Truly unlimited plans are a very rare breed in today’s USA cellphone market. One of the very few carriers still offering unlimited calls, messages and “high speed” data is Sprint. The network also happens to offer one of the best deals at $60 per month, but now we are learning that’s a price that won’t be sticking around for long. Sprint has announced it’s Unlimited Plan rate is going up by $10, effectively costing $70 starting October 16th. They don’t go too much into detail about the factors involving this decision, but we can assume the $60 price point simply isn’t bringing enough cash. And at $70 the price is still cheaper than competing rates. T-Mobile charges $80 for a similar plan, for example. Current customers need not worry, though. Those who are already on Sprint, or sign up by October 15th, will be able to stick with the $60/mo charges. This is why Sprint is urging customers to sign up before then, if they are thinking about switching to the Now Network.

Confirming earlier rumors about the device’s availability, Samsung has just announced that its Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic smartwatches will be available for purchase Friday, October 2nd in the United States. The standard Gear S2 will be available for $299 and the Gear S2 Classic will run you $349. You’ll be able to purchase the wearables from Samsung.com , Amazon, Best Buy and Macy’s. As a refresher, the Gear S2 is a Tizen -powered smartwatch that features a 1.2-inch circular display with a resolution of 360 x 360, and it’s powered by a dual-core 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM and comes with 4GB of built-in storage. There’s also NFC on this device, which will enable users to purchase goods from stores around the world using Samsung Pay. Quite possibly the biggest news with the Gear S2 is that it will be compatible with other Android devices, unlike other Gear smartwatches in the past. There might be a few hiccups in app compatibility here and there, but for the most part, you’ll be

Please enable Javascript to watch this video Back at Google I/O, we got our first glimpse of Google Now on Tap. The simple, but very powerful functionality promises to scan your screen for stuff and then deliver valuable information on that stuff such as directions to places, information on movies, and a whole lot more. We've got our hands on it so let's take a quick look! How does it work? Google Now on Tap is actually very easy to use. To engage it, simply pull up the information you want Now on Tap to analyze and then press and hold the home button. This will bring up Now on Tap which, after a few moments of loading, will display any information it can about whatever it is that's on your screen in card format. Below that is a Google button that will simply open Google Now. Once the card pops up you have a few options and they're all listed as icons across the bottom of the card. You can Google it, find images, open Maps, open social media pages, and a lot mo

One of the main reasons why third-party messaging applications are so popular around the world is because standard text messaging through mobile carriers is so lacking in the features department. Group chatting, sending high resolution photos and the ability to see when the other party has read a message are all points of contention with standard text messaging, which is why Google is committing to a new standard called Rich Communications Services (RCS) to help change that. As part of the big commitment to adopt the RCS standard, Google has announced that the company is acquiring Jibe Mobile, a messaging startup that’s been a leader in the RCS standard ever since it was founded in 2006 . Jibe’s main goal now is to help carriers easily deploy RCS to their users, which should help make a big impact on carrier messaging in the future. Google explains: Many leaders in the wireless industry have already put great work into laying the foundation for RCS, and we’ve heard from many of th

  Last year saw Huawei introduced its first all-metal big-screen smartphone with the Mate 7 , which brought a stylish design and unique single-touch fingerprint sensor. Fast forward a year and Huawei introduced the Mate S at IFA, bringing an updated design and second-generation fingerprint scanner, but how do these two devices compare? That’s exactly what we aim to find out in this quick look at the new Huawei Mate S vs the Ascend Mate 7. Design Although it has a frameless display, the Mate 7 is definitely one of the larger smartphones on the market and even though I have large hands, I find it difficult to use in one hand. With the Mate S, Huawei has made its latest flagship smaller and more manageable, resulting in a much improved in-hand experience. The Mate 7 brought a design that’s atypical of Huawei devices and, although it’s been tweaked a little, the Mate S mostly follows the same design. Huawei says both smartphones have frameless displays and while this is somewhat tru

Update (9/30): As promised, Sleepy Z Studios has released Ski Safari 2 to the Google Play Store. If you’re up for trying out the successor to the original Ski Safari, head to the download link below to get started! Download Ski Safari 2 from Google Play Original post (9/29):  Those trying to get their game on will have a fun time this week, when Ski Safari 2 is finally making its way to Android. The game has been on iOS for about a month, so this definitely comes as good news to those who have been waiting for the popular app to hit Android. Now we know it will finally hit the Google Play Store on September 30th, which is this Wednesday. Just in case you are out of the loop, Ski Safari 2 succeeds a very popular game. The first Ski Safari has a 4.7-star rating and 500,000-1,000,000 installs in the Google Play Store . Those are definitely some numbers your average game can’t easily achieve. Furthermore, we  listed it as one of the best Temple Run alternatives around , so you know it

Alongside the big announcement of its new GeForce NOW game streaming service, NVIDIA today revealed that it would make its SHIELD Android TV available for purchase across certain parts of Europe beginning Thursday, October 1st. Both the SHIELD and SHIELD Pro Android TV boxes will be available in the U.K., France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden from  shield.nvidia.com , Amazon, and various other European online retailers. As far as pricing is concerned, the SHIELD Android TV will cost €199.99/£149.99 and the 500GB SHIELD Pro model will cost €299.99/£229.99. The SHIELD Stand will set you back €29.99/£19.99, the SHIELD Remote can be purchased for €49.99/£39.99 and an extra SHIELD Controller will run you €59.99/£49.99. Along with the big GeForce NOW update that’s set to roll out tomorrow, NVIDIA is also rolling out a good amount of playback enhancements to the SHIELD Android TV like lossless audio including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio pass-through with WMA-Los