The CyanogenMod team (one of the most popular custom Android ROM) has shared its most interesting new additions to the nightly builds this week. Flashing enthusiasts will be happy to know that Trebuchet GEL and CMHome have been updated to allow more protection to hidden apps.

Those apps can now be further protected from prying eyes with the addition of a pattern lock. Furthermore, users can group hidden apps into a folder, which would mean less work if you access hidden apps often. Read more »

A Firefox-OS-powered streaming stick is in the works and Mozilla aims to provide an alternative to the Google’s Chromecast.

Our colleagues over at Gigaom have their hands on a prototype version and have shared their insights on what we can expect from the stick. Read more »

The results of our last week’s poll are in. Back then, we asked you to cast your votes and choose the winner between the Sony Xperia Z2 and the HTC One (M8) in a number of different areas.

And so you did! The Sony Xperia Z2 is enjoying quite the fan base and it effortlessly tackled the HTC One (M8) in a few of the polls. In fact, all of the polls were won by Sony’s flagship, but some of the wins didn’t come as easily. Let’s see what happened in detail. Read more »

Google has launched an Introduction to Android Wear video, further hyping everyone a week before Google I/O 2014 kicks off. The video shows the Android Wear look and feel and goes on to shed some light on the developer side of things.

In the video, Google Developers evangelist Timothy Jordan also talks about the problem with most smartwatch user interfaces. According to Google, the UI of Android Wear is better, as it is centered around context and this helps users have all relevant information at a glance. Read more »

The stock Email app that has been part of Android for a long time is now available to download in the Play Store. The app is also updated with a few new visual additions that reflect the latest look and feel of Google’s apps.

As part of the changelog, the Email client now sports increased security for Gmail accounts as well as easier account setup flow (not that it was difficult to start with). Read more »

With the weekend now in full swing, we’re reaching out for your opinion in our traditional poll format. We’re pitting another pair of 2014 Android flagships against one another – the Sony Xperia Z2 and the HTC One (M8).

We’ve already compared the two at length in our in-depth shootout, and now it’s time to cast your vote in which one of these is the better one in five distinct categories: design, screen, user interface, still photo and video image quality. Read more »

Google Maps now joins the Android apps list with over 1 billion downloads, following Gmail which founded the club a month ago.

Maps has always been one of the most successful Android apps and the 1 billion downloads mark represents unique accounts that have downloaded the app (multiple downloads from one account are counted as 1). In fact, Google Maps was the first ever Android app to reach 50 million downloads in 2011. Read more »

Nova Launcher is one of the most popular homescreen replacement apps for Android and today it got an update to version 3.0. We featured the app back in our Android for beginners guide and dubbed it as one of the best in its category.

With the latest Nova Launcher version, there are a number of cool new features, chief among which is the ability to make Google searches by saying “Ok, Google”. This command is taken from the Google Experience Launcher and is now available in a number of other launchers as well. Read more »

New week, new weekend poll and this one is sort of epic. The LG G3 is upon us, flaunting its QHD 5.5″ display in the faces of the competition. What competition you ask? Naturally, the Samsung Galaxy S5, Sony Xperia Z2, HTC One (M8) and, for good measure, the Oppo Find 7.

You don’t need us to convince you that this one is hard to miss on. Your anticipation in the polls is going to give us an idea how you feel towards the LG G3. So, without further ado, let’s kick things off. Read more »

The results of last week’s HTC One Mini 2 against the compact smartphone legion poll is now ready and it’s time to see how you voted. Just as a reminder, we saw HTC’s latest mini smartphone face the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact, LG G2 Mini, Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini and the new 4G version of the selling-like-hot-cakes Motorola Moto G.

Overall, the results aren’t all that shocking, for the most part. However, there’s a twist at the end, which we didn’t really expect. Read more »

A firmware for one of the upcoming duo of Samsung Galaxy Tab S tablets leaked today. It appears that someone with access to the tablets has extracted the image from one of them and was kind enough to share it with the rest of us.

While the firmware is currently not very useful to end-users as the 10.5″ and 8.4″ Galaxy Tab S slates aren’t out yet, it could be used by developers to extract software bits such as various Samsung apps, wallpapers and ringtones. Read more »

Despite having its announcement a while ago, LG is still keeping the G Watch shrouded in mystery. Its key specifications aren’t disclosed just yet, as the company awaits the first Android Wear devices to debut at this year’s Google I/O.

This leaves the G Watch’s features open to speculation and according to industry sources cited by a Korean media outlet, the watch is going to feature a USIM module allowing it to place calls. Not surprisingly, the report suggests LG U+ carrier will be the first to release the G Watch in South Korea. Read more »

There’s still some time before Samsung officially announces its new duo of Galaxy Tab S tablets on June 12. We already have a general idea of what they’re all about, especially the Galaxy Tab S 10.5″ one, but thanks to a listing from the AnTuTu Benchmark database, we can now see the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 key specs.

Carrying the model number SM-T700, the 8.4″ Tab S rocks an Exynos 5 Octa 5420 chipset with 1.9 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and 1.3 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPUs. They’re bundled with an 533MHz ARM Mali-T628 and 3GB of RAM. Internal memory is 32GB, which should be expandable via a microSD card slot, but that’s not yet specified. Read more »

Samsung has issued an update for its S Health app allowing it to measure your stress levels. It still needs you to place a finger on the heart rate sensor to do so, but it’s yet another trick in its bag.

On top of single-time measurements, S Health builds a statistic of how stressed you were provided you use the tool regularly. Read more »

Microsoft has published its Windows and Windows Phone Store statistics for the month of April 2014 on the Most downloaded apps by category, country and markets. The stats aim to give developers a better idea what the “app ecosystem” needs developed and what consumers are more likely to purchase.

The statistics show that the US is still Microsoft’s largest market for Windows 8 and Windows Phone apps with the former boasting more downloads. Read more »