About Author: Raveesh Bhalla

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Posts by Raveesh Bhalla

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Evernote’s new app Hello tries to help you remember who you just met

By
Raveesh Bhalla
– June 3, 2012Posted in: Applications, NewsFeed

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Do you have problems remembering the names of people you have just met? Then give a shot to Evernote’s new app, called Hello, which helps you organize you’re new acquaintances, for whom you can store contact information, a photo and also pull information from their LinkedIn profile.

Unfortunately for them, the seventh season of How I Met Your Mother ended a few weeks ago. Having Barney Stinson, the character portrayed by Neil Patrick Harris, use the app to store the names and photos of his female conquests instead of the big diary would have been perfect product placement. Or not.

The amount of steps required to fill the information currently makes the app feel like a naive idea. Despite belonging to the target market (I’m  so bad at remembering names that I don’t know a few from my own class for the past 4 years) I simply cannot imagine myself using the current system. Stuff like NFC and even QR-codes are a necessity to make it close to being practical.

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You can now Any.do on Chrome

By
Raveesh Bhalla
– June 3, 2012Posted in: Applications, NewsFeed

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Although I’m not much of a to-do list maker, when I do use one, I use Any.do. The design won me over, and so did the fact that it was Android first. After accumulating a ton of downloads on our beloved OS, it’s now making its way to other platforms: Chrome and iOS.

You can get the extension here. Unfortunately, I’ve found it to be buggy right now. Tasks and folders weren’t being displayed after I had added them, and after logging out and back in, it shows me a blank overlay. The design is beautiful, as with the mobile app, and they’ve added a useful pop-out option, but unless I’m the only one facing these issues, it isn’t quite consumption ready.

[via TechCrunch]

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[Developer] What are the best UI resources out there?

By
Raveesh Bhalla
– June 3, 2012Posted in: Developers, NewsFeed

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Ever since the launch of ICS, we’ve seen a greater deal of UI resources made for Android developers by various members of the community. I’ve decided to list a few that I know of, and would love to hear from you which are your favorites, and why.

 

ActionBarSherlock

Created by Jake Wharton, ActionBarSherlock brings the ActionBar capabilities back to all devices running on Android 2.x. The ActionBar is of vital importance to ICS phones and tablets, yet its lack of backward compatibility meant that it isn’t available natively to a huge majority of the devices in the market currently. Google needs to add this to the support library, and every developer needs to get some experience with it.

Link: http://actionbarsherlock.com/

 

Action Bar Style Generator

I’ve highlighted the importance of the ActionBar above, which needs to be themed to suit the look of an app. While the process itself isn’t that complicated, you can save yourself some time using Jeff Gilfelt’s neat little tool. It creates all the required resources, including drawables, the colors and the style files.

Link: http://jgilfelt.github.com/android-actionbarstylegenerator

 

Pull-to-Refresh

Not everyone is a fan of the pull-to-refresh concept, and I can understand why: the capability simply not that obvious to the common user. However, if you do wish to add the functionality, have a look at Chris Banes library. Additionally, note his blog post regarding adding an indicator to point out the feature to the user.

Link: http://www.senab.co.uk/category/android-2/pull-to-refresh-android-2/

 

Android Ribbon Menu and Android Delicious

These two are based on the new trend towards a side navigation menu (like what we’ve seen in the Facebook and the new Google+ app). I haven’t had a chance to test run either, simply spotted them on my Google+ feed, but they look interesting and are definitely the way to go as we shift from the dashboard UI system.

Links: https://github.com/lexs/android-delicious, https://github.com/darvds/RibbonMenu

 

Google+ profiles to follow

Android UI Patterns

Android Niceties

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I’ll be interviewing Rubicondev on Google+, when would you like it? [Poll]

By
Raveesh Bhalla
– June 2, 2012Posted in: Developers, NewsFeed

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When I first introduced myself at the time I joined Phandroid, I named Great Little War Game as amongst my favorites. Over 4 months have passed since, and I’m yet to find a more addictive strategy game on Android.

I’m quite frankly in love with it, which is why I’m delighted to announce that I’d be interviewing the team behind the game, Rubicondev, via a Google+ Hangout as part of our developer appreciation month. There’ll be a lot of good stuff (trust me on this) for which is why for the fans behind the GLWG franchise should really tune in.

But before I schedule it with them, I’d like to ask the readers a question: which part of the week would you like us to host it? While it would be available to watch later on YouTube, we’d love to see as many people be part of it live. Put in your votes below, and also in the comments to provide any suggestions you might have.

Take Our Poll
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Microsoft to launch cross-platform app that pushes media to Xbox 360? [Rumor]

By
Raveesh Bhalla
– June 2, 2012Posted in: Applications, Industry News, NewsFeed

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This might just be the most interesting Android-related news to have come out of Redmond in a long, long time: apparently, Microsoft is working on a cross-platform app called the Xbox Smart Glass, which will allow users to push media to their TV screens via the Xbox 360.

The rumor originated at The Examiner, where they claim a “Microsoft Confidential” presentation in the build up to E3 highlighted app. If it works sufficiently well, we can easily see quite a few people choosing the Xbox over Sony’s Playstation 3.

Anyone out there looking forward to this besides me?

[Examiner via Talk Android]

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The Evo has landed

By
Raveesh Bhalla
– June 2, 2012Posted in: Handsets, HTC, NewsFeed, Sprint

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And some more good news, folks. Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G LTE has finally hit stores across the country, and you can pick one up (or order one online) for $199 with a new contract agreement. The phone looks like an absolute beauty, and I’m one of those that loves the kickstand. It’s kind of sad we don’t get such an option overseas.

How many of you are looking forward to getting this phone, even before seeing what Samsung has in store with the S III’s Sprint variant?

[via Sprint]

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ICS continues its glacial rise up the Android Distribution chart

By
Raveesh Bhalla
– June 2, 2012Posted in: Industry News, NewsFeed

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Let’s kick off the weekend with a wee bit of good news, shall we? Google has updated the Android distribution chart, and ICS is now on 7.1% of all devices (up from 4.9% previously). Gingerbread continues its dominance at over 65%.

While the snail-like pace at which the numbers are rising does leave a lot to be desired, we must remember that a majority of the devices that were on Gingerbread don’t have the hardware capability to run ICS. Passing a stripped-down version of ICS could in fact cause devices to perform poorer than before, which no user would want.

That’s not to say I’m OK with the amount of time taken to update the phones that are capable of running the OS. Or in some cases (looking at you, Sammy boy) the complete ignorance of a once flagship device. But the numbers will rise substantially in the second half of the year as more and more devices running ICS out of the box hit the shelves. In fact, the Samsung Galaxy S III alone should result in a massive boost by about mid-July.

[via Android Police]

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[Discussion] How many of you like what you see in Chameleon?

By
Raveesh Bhalla
– May 27, 2012Posted in: NewsFeed

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While I must admit that I was first intrigued with Chameleon, the custom launcher that is looking to raise funds on Kickstarter, based on what I read about it, the video demonstration has underwhelmed me. In the crudest of ways to describe it, it looks like it helps you create “themed” home screens, so that each screen is dedicated to a purpose, such as work, or reading, or entertainment. And using indicators such as time or the WiFi network connected to or location, it chooses the default home screen.

The issue I have with it is that I have always sorted my home screens according to purpose, which basically leaves only the variable default home screen as a feature that I don’t have. And it comes at a few costs in ability, too, such as you lose the capability to create folders, there’s no guarantee about support for smaller tablet screens (their own words, though they do mention they have tried to keep the UI dynamic), it looks like the only widgets you can have so far are those that they include, and that developers would need to use HTML5 to build custom widgets for Chameleon if they wished to do so.

Maybe I’m missing something, and I’d really like there to be something that makes me want to support it. But, so far, I just can’t seem to think of a great purpose for this. What about you guys?

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Video walkthrough details Sony Xperia S ICS update

By
Raveesh Bhalla
– May 27, 2012Posted in: Handsets, NewsFeed

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Looks like the Ice Cream Sandwich update for the Sony Xperia S is right on track. This little video over here has been doing the rounds on the internet today, and though it’s in a foreign language, we can at least see the visual features of the updated software. Have a look, and as always, post your thoughts in the comments.

[via s-ense.net]

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Get your camping kits ready, Londoners. First 50 Galaxy S III owners to be given tickets to the Olympics

By
Raveesh Bhalla
– May 27, 2012Posted in: Handsets, NewsFeed, Samsung

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As if they aren’t fortunate enough to be the first ones to get their hands on the Samsung Galaxy S III, Londoners now have another reason to buy the phone as soon as the stores open: tickets to this summer’s Olympics. Just to be clear, you have to have pre-ordered the device, as these customers have been invited pick up their phones before regular customers are allowed to.

Considering the mess that was the ticket lottery system, this might actually be the easier way to watch one of the events at the Games (though which one hasn’t been specified). Samsung is clearly going on overdrive to promote their phone along with the Olympics, having earlier released a special edition of the Galaxy Note and an advertisement of the phablet that featured David Beckham (who is still heavily tipped to be part of Great Britain’s football/soccer team).

[via Android Central]

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