Andronicles

Do you know that you can turn your current location into a wallpaper on your smartphone or tablet? There’s a new Android app on Google Play Store that can do just that. It's called Skyline. Skyline uses 3D terrain data from Map box to show your exact location and then create it as a wallpaper in full detail. The app can shift the image so that you can see more of the area when you unlock your phone or swipe through your launcher pages, and it features a parallax effect that’s visible when you tilt your phone to different directions. Skyline lets you set any location around the world to get a different background, and pan and zoom before you apply a new background. You can toggle the depth effects in settings and choose the right framing for your map or wallpaper. If you want to liven up your wallpaper, then you should hink about giving Skyline a try. But that will cost you N720 in the Google Play Store which is the asking price. That isn’t bad for a pretty inventive wal

Android emulators have been around for years now, making it easy to run Android apps on PC. But there are still some hurdles to overcome, like Android’s dreaded fragmentation. Having Android in different versions on different devices have been a major headache for developers as it is with users. For example, some games only run on, say, Android 7.0 Nougat, leaving out those with older Android versions. However, it seems like BlueStacks, the leading PC's Android emulator, is one step closer to closing that gap with the release of a new Android N beta that promise to bring the latest Android games for you play on your PC. BlueStacks has been running on Android 4.4 KitKat, making it impossible users to gain access to the latest apps and games. But the Android N opens up a whole new world of opportunities as you can now enjoy the latest Android content in the comfort of desktops or laptops. The beta also comes with the latest Hyper G Graphics System that helps games run more fas

Audiobooks are now being sold on the Google Play Store. In case you don't know what audiobooks are, these are audio recordings of books or magazines being read aloud. You can play it on your home smart speaker, in your car, and on your phone. New titles of the audiobooks are available on Android, iOS, the web, and Google Home speaker. They’re also available via the Google Assistant. As part of the launch, Google will be offering customers the chance to purchase books without subscription, with a bunch of discounts on a lot of titles. Google is also offering 50 percent off your first audiobook purchase. With this initiative Google is following Apple’s iBook’s model of allowing customers to purchase audiobooks without subscription. Though there's a lot to expect, you need to know that Google audiobooks only works with the Google Assistant on Android phones, not iPhones — and only in English. No matter what, Google audiobooks seems promising and it should be available on

WhatsApp, a company owned by Facebook, recently launched WhatsApp Business for Android, an app that will help small businesses manage their presence in the messaging platform. ​With the 1.3 billion users on the messaging platform, business users will be able to give a good profile of their business and provide customers with useful information about their products and services. Businesses can take advantage of messaging tools like quick replies to quickly answer common questions and the ability to create greeting messages to introduce customers to their business. They also get to receive a verified badge to display on their profile, messaging statistics, and desktop access. Previously, the app was only available on a limited edition for testing. Now businesses in Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, the UK, and the US can download it on Google Play Store for free, with plans to make it available worldwide in the coming weeks. There are even plans for an iPhone version as well. This new e

Since you are using an Android, you no doubt know about Google Play Store. For the millions of Android devices users, Google Play Store is the most valuable app there is. This is because it is the one-stop shop for Android apps, games, movies, music and e-books. It also serves as the official app store for the Android operating system and comes pre-installed with Android devices. About Google Play Store  As you may have already known, Google Play is an app store owned by Google, where Android apps, games, movies, music and ebooks can be downloaded on Android devices. Previously, Google Play Store was known as Android Market. The Android Market handled app content, and Google Music and Google Books handled books and music. YouTube was the source for movies (and it actually still is a location for your movie rentals and purchases). For a time, the Android Market was the only Android app store. Then Amazon, Sony, Samsung, and just about every single Android device maker began off

SEGA's Sonic Android games has been accused of leaking users location data and device info,and the the Japanese video game publishers says that it’s investigating the claims. The allegations were made by cyber security company Pradeo who identified three of the Sonic games that as responsible for leaking user location data and device info. The affected games are Sonic the Hedgehog Classic, Sonic Dash, and Sonic Dash 2: Sonic Boom. Based on the download estimate offered by Google Play Store, between 120 million and 600 million users could be affected by the leaks from the trio. The mentioned games are said to collect the data and info and then sending it to uncertified servers, likely for marketing purposes. Out of three servers accepting the information, two are used to host the Android/Inmobi.D advertisement library which is widely considered to be a security threat. Pradeo also said it found two critical issues that could make it possible for malicious third parties to i

It has not been long since Android 8.1 Oreo was released and now we'll be expecting a new update of the operating system later this year, come August. This new update will be version 9.0. What would Android 9.0 be called?  Though a name has yet to be picked for the coming update, it is currently termed as Android P. Nevertheless we can expect it to be named after sweet treats because that is what all the Android updates have been named since the first Android OS came out years ago, and they are also done in alphabetical order. So far we've seen: Android Donut (v1.6) Android Eclair (v2.0) Android Froyo (v2.2) Android Gingerbread (v2.3) Android Honeycomb (v3.0) Android Ice Cream Sandwich (v4.0) Android Jelly Bean (v4.1) Android KitKat (v4.4) Android Lollipop (v5.0) Android Marshmallow (v6.0) Android Nougat (v7.0) Android Oreo (v8.0) The new Android 'P' is most likely to be announced  during Google I/O 2018, which may take place in mid-May,

In the tradition of publishing a quarterly collection of top Android apps and games, Google updated its Play Store’s Excellence portion of the Editor’s Choice section with new apps and games. The list shows the best Android experiences of the first quarter of 2018 which includes 22 new apps and 16 games. The Excellence program was first launched back in June last year with the aim of honouring the app developers who worked tirelessly to drive innovation, quality, and polish to the Android Platform. The list is meant to showcase the very best of what Android has to offer. According to Google, developers who want their apps to be featured in this exclusive category must follow the best practices for app development , design, usability, technical performance, localisation, and device optimisation. Google recognizes applications that went above and beyond to adopt Android latest features. Those who do qualify enjoy a near universal use of their apps since they are position in a lo

Google just announced the twenty finalists for this year’s Play Store Indie Games Contest. With the constant new release of apps from developers, it can be hard to keep up. And the apps at Google Play are so vast that it can be hard to decide what to download. The charts are usually filled with throwaway freebies riddled with in-app purchases and the “trending” section is always fairly hit and miss in terms of quality. So it's no wonder that apps from well established developers are often the first choice by users at the expense of independent and promising developers. So Google created indie Games Contest to celebrate the best of independent developers. This is an opportunity for promising developers to showcase their talents to help their games gain more exposure on Google Play. This year's award will be held in London, UK on February 13th. The eventual winner, which will be decided by judges from within Google and the mobile gaming industry, will receive a free ti

In view of the rising tide of malware attacks and hackers, we constantly have to look for ways to bulletproof our smartphones and tablets. There are various ways we can keep our devices from becoming a victim of attacks, and one of such ways is to install an antivirus. Many of the antivirus on Play Store can be gotten free and they often come with extra features that can help your handset's performance. One of such very good antivirus that you should consider installing is AVG Free Antivirus. About AVG AntiVirus AVG AntiVirus is developed by AVG Technologies. The app protects users from malware, spyware, and scamware, among others. The AVG AntiVirus comes with a free and paid version. While the free version offers basic protection, the paid version offers full protection which includes hack attacks, online payments, app locks and private data. Downloading AVG Free AntiVirus on Android While there are websites that offer free downloads for AVG AntiVirus software, it is a

Are you running out of storage on your smartphone or tablet—with no memory left for photos or videos, new apps, or data for your existing apps? If you want to free up some space, then following these 5 tips for managing your storage space can help your device performance. 1. Move to the online storage  This is one of the most important item in the list that will have more impact on your storage space than any other because photos and videos tends to take a large amount of space on mobile devices. There's no doubt that we all love snapping pictures on your phone or taking countless selfies, but there’s only so much weight that your internal storage can pull. Add to that are the photos and videos you constantly download from WhatsApp, Facebook or the web, leaving no room for your device internal memory. But you can limit this problem by making use of online cloud storage services such as Google Photos or Google Drive. Google Photos  Google has offered an automatic backup

When your smartphone or tablet starts misbehaving and then freezes up, keeping everything on standstill and refuses to reboot, what do you do? For some people, they just take off the battery and then put it back to get their device working. That may seem okay but not the best. A better way would be to perform what is termed a soft reset. What's a soft reset  A soft reset is very different from a hard reset which involves wiping out everything you have on your device and leaving it in the state it was when you first bought it. But soft reset will simply close all your open apps and reboot your device. When the device reboots, your files would still be intact except the ones you failed to save. Follow the link to learn more on how to perform a hard reset. https://andronicles.blogspot.com.ng/?m=1 How to perform a soft reset  To perform a soft reset, you need to reset your handset to recovery mode by turning it off. To do this: Step 1 Just press and hold down the Power

Do you feel that your phone or tablet performance has b een lagging lately? Do you suspect some malware at play, or do you want to boost its performance to its former condition? Then the best bet is to run your device through a factory reset. What's a factory reset When you perform a factory reset, also known as a hard reset, you effectively return your handset to the state it was in when you first bought it, meaning that all your data will be wiped out—your photos, videos, contacts, messages, apps, and everything else—except what the manufacturer and Google have preinstalled. I know that is not what you want to hear and it is no surprise that many people are put off on going through this method knowing that with everything wiped out of their phone, they will have to start from scratch all over again. But you can still go through the process painlessly by following the simple methods below. How to factory reset your android Before you begin, make sure you have enoug

Unlike before when smartphones usually carry just a few kb of storage space, many devices today are now coming with larger storage space with some even going as high as 250gb. But not everyone could afford those kinds of phones, so they settle for the budget ones with 8gb to 32gb memory. Still even the space in these devices tend to get quickly exhausted. So solve this problem you need to back up your photos and videos which you need to know is the main culprit in hogging space. Google has provided us a useful app that can easily do just that. It called Google Photos. The good thing about Google Photos is that you have the freedom to store countless amounts of photos and videos for free, but your images will be resized down to a maximum of 16 megapixels and your movies down to 1080p full HD with no 4k allowed. If you do want to store your files in full resolution, you'll have to pay for the service. Once your files are backed up Google Photos can then delete the images fro

It's now months since Google released their new Android OS, Oreo, and we are even in a new year. But Google's Android distribution chart shows that the Oreo has been growing at an excruciatingly slow pace as it is yet to reach 1% in the market. A month ago Oreo was at 0.5%, and now it's reached just 0.7%. At this rate, it will be many months before it will reach at 10%. According to Google's own report, the Android version that command the highest lead in the market presently is still Marshmallow which was first launched in 2015. Though its fallen some pace, from 29.7% in December to 28.6%. Nougat comes next with 26.3% (up 3% month-on-month), while Lollipop is third with 25.1%. KitKat owns 12.8% of the market, and Jelly Bean has 5.6%. Ice Cream Sandwich and Gingerbread have been overtaken by Oreo as they have 0.5 and 0.4 respectively. Share your views of what you think.

Google recently announced that over the coming weeks, it will be merging all its payment services, including Google Wallet and Android Pay, under one umbrella called Google Pay. However, the Android Pay and Google Wallet products aren’t undergoing any major feature changes, but will only operate under the Google Pay name. With the new system, all your payment information that is stored in your Google account will be available everywhere you use Google products: in Chrome autofill settings when you make web purchases, in YouTube when you renew your subscriptions and in apps on Android when you make in-app purchases. Since 2011, Google has been exploring various ways to enable digital payments, when it first released Google Wallet. Then in 2015, Google introduced Android Pay. But despite all its efforts, Google’s service was still trailing seriously behind Samsung Pay and Apple Pay by 2017, according to Juniper Research and payments industry site PYMNTs. The only thing we

So, you’ve downloaded and installed Nova Launcher on your Android smartphone or device. You've set it up. Now you want to use it to customize your phone, but you don't know how to go about it. Well you are in luck as I'm going to be explaining how you can do that. A while ago I posted an article on how you can customize your smartphone with Nova Launcher app. Now this will be the 2nd part of the the article. Without wasting time let's continue. APP & WIDGET DRAWERS *App Drawer Grid - Choose the way you want the app drawer grid size to appear - if you want the app grid to be either portrait or landscape. *Icon Layout - Choose the size of your icons, as well as the size and the type of fonts for the labels. *Frequently Used Apps - Decide if you want the frequently used apps in the top row of applications to show by turning on button. *Card Background - Choose whether or not cards have a background. *Swipe to Open - You can use this to swipe up on t

Have you ever wondered why your smartphone or tablet may be acting sluggishly when you urgently want to perform an important task quickly? This may have a lot to do with your device's cache. Just as with computers, a smartphone or tablet contains an internal storage called a cache memory that store frequently or recently used data from an app or the web. Though there's a good reason for this, it can however have an adverse effect on your device as your phone cache can become filled with old apps, photos, files and other garbage data. When that happens, your phone or tablet might not respond as smoothly as it did before, or perhaps not respond at all. If this is what you are experiencing, what would you do? First you might want to take a look at clearing those junks from your device's cache. In this article, you will learn how to clear the cache of any Android device using CCleaner app. Clearing cache with CCleaner  If you have a computer, and you at times neede

A new year is here again! I hope you'll have a great time in 2018. Well you can have fun this month enjoying more data as all the network providers are trying to outdo each other towards getting your subscription by doling out bonuses, increasing data volumes or even giving promos. So you can expect much this year. Let's turn our attention then to one of Nigeria's biggest network providers, Airtel.  Airtel Nigeria is currently the second biggest telecommunication service provider and company in Nigeria after MTN,with more than 40% of Nigerians are currently using the network for internet. Not only is Airtel Internet connection fast, but their data plans are very affordable and flexible for various lifestyle. it is little wonder that in some quarters they are considered the best network providers in the country. Airtel provides complete Internet packages and data bundles that are suitable for Light users, Middle users and Heavy users. Before subscribing, you

If Telegram is your chat app of choice, then you will be interested to know that it will be bringing a handful of helpful features this year. First of these will be its ability to support multiple accounts. The latest version of Telegram app makes it possible for you to have up to three accounts with different phone numbers. You can quickly switch between them on the side menu, but you will get notifications for all of them regardless of which one is active. For those using Apple iOS, it will take some time before this new feature comes their way. In the meantime they can avail themselves with another feature that Telegram has for them. Apple users can now change the look of their telegram app under the new Appearance settings. There are several themes to choose from in this setting, including two dark "night" theme and a "day" theme with colours that you can tweak  to suit you. Although this feature is not as cool as the multiple accounts feature that Androi

Welcome to the new year. We hope it's gonna be swell this year. Without a doubt, we'll all be having a lot to do online with our Android devices. As such, we'll want a lot of internet data that is affordable, and not too pricey. That’s why we have Glo, the grandmaster of data plans. Though Glo's network connection can at times be terrible, their data packages are currently still the cheapest compared to what other internet providers charge. And there is their never-ending awoof. such as the 200mb free data day. Just recently they increased their data volumes, though only new subscribers and existing customers who renew their plans within 3 days benefit from it. Without further ado, let's consider Glo's Data Plans for January below. GLO DATA PLANS Glo data bundles range from daily, weekly, monthly and Flexi plans to Blackberry Plans including plans for Blackberry 10 devices. The plans works perfectly well on all devices including Android smartphones, Ap

Posted by Chris Iteh MTN NIigeria is without a doubt the biggest mobile communication and the one with the widest coverage in the country, or as their tagline goes “Everywhere You Go”. So you can expect their network to be the best in the country. However, MTN plans can be somewhat stiff in price, and this month plans are no different,even though this happens to be the of gift-giving Still, the fact that MTN network has the widest coverage can save you the stress of waiting for a connection to boot up. It could also half the time you would have spent on the internet with another network that has less coverage. Not all their plans are pricey though. Some of are affordable, and even cheaper than some of the other network providers. For example, do you know with just N25 you can get 500MB to browse the web? This is in fact my favourite plan from mtn when I want to download large files on my phone cheaply. In this post, I'll be sharing with you mtn data plans for January t