Android Impress

Android/iOS: Getting rid of your crap is can be costly. Yerdle offers an attractive alternative. The shop allows you to sell your junk entirely cost free. The buyer pays shipping. In exchange, you get Yerdle credit to buy other people’s stuff. The service is fairly straight forward. If you’re a seller, it doesn’t cost you a dime. You can list for free, and if someone decides to buy your stuff, they’ll pay the flat $4-7 shipping fee (provided the item weighs less than 10 lbs). As you sell stuff, you earn Yerdle credit. You can spend Yerdle credit on anything in the store. You’ll still have to pay for shipping, but if you sell enough of your junk, that can be well worth it.

Today, Star Wars gets re-released yet again. This time, it’s coming to iTunes, Amazon and Google Play. Whether or not you’ve already bought this specific collection a dozen times, digital libraries aren’t going away. But is it worth buying from them? There is no shortage of ways to purchase a movie these days. However, conventional wisdom has typically suggested that buying a movie from an online library to gain streaming rights isn’t the best idea. Before we talk about why it might be okay to get an online version, it’s only fair to go over the common objections : You don’t really own it: When you buy a Blu-Ray, you own it. It stays inside your house, you can watch it as much as you want, and you won’t have to pay again for access later on. With digital libraries, your access can be revoked. Big companies (and their servers) can fail: When you buy a movie from Amazon, you can stream it from their servers as much as you want. But what if those servers go down? Tech companies shutter services all the time and there’s no knowing when a company will go out of business. You only get those movies for as long as those companies are capable and willing to provide it to you. You need an internet connection just to watch your library: For decades, if you bought a VHS tape, DVD, or Blu-Ray, you could watch your movie without the internet. Now, if Comcast craps the bed, your entire media library is gone. Worse yet, if you have a slow connection, that HD film starts looking like it was shot in Potat-O-Vision. You can get digital version free with Blu-Rays anyway: Some (though not even most) hardcopy movies come with free “digital” copies. Unlock codes can give you access to films on sites like iTunes, Vudu, or others. If you can have both, why spend $20 on just one? Of course, everyone will have their own objections, but these are some of the most common, and they’re all valid concerns. However, in our rush to poke holes in the digital library method, we may have overlooked a few things. And, for the sake of this discussion, we’re going to assume that it’s worth paying for media under fair circumstances. Digital Movies Are More Convenient Than Ever Why It's Okay to Buy Digital Movies From iTunes, Google, and Amazon There was a time when buying a movie on iTunes meant that you could watch it on your computer, maybe your iPod and that was about it. However, that only covers a small portion of use cases. Most of us want to watch movies on the couch in our living room, on a tablet, or even our phones. Today, that’s more possible than ever. Personally, I have a heavy foothold in the Google ecosystem, which means I have an Android phone, tablet, Chromecast, and web browser where I may want to watch a movie. One movie purchase to the Google Play Store means that I can watch that film on any of those screens. If I were to go out and buy the Blu-Ray of that movie, I would have to rip it to my computer , add it to my own media server , and take responsibility for making sure that computer always has an internet connection with sufficient upload speed. Or I could format the file to be optimized for playback on my phone and take up space on my internal storage, which is even more cumbersome. Now, to be fair, that process is simpler than ever. But it also means that if you want to watch your movies on any device besides a dedicated Blu-Ray player, you have a lot of extra work to do. Work that’s technically illegal , by the way. While few around these parts have a serious moral quarrel with ripping movies you bought, it does mean you have fewer easy options since the software to do it is also illegal. Put another way, you’re not going to be able to rip a Blu-Ray with iTunes any time soon. If you want to pay money to have “permanent” (we’ll come back to that) access to a movie, you don’t really have a more convenient option than buying from an online library. In fact, the only real hangup is matching your ecosystem. If you buy from Amazon Instant Video, you can’t stream to a Chromecast. iTunes movies won’t work on an Amazon Fire TV Stick. And Google’s had to work out some sneaky backdoor shenanigans to get Play Movies onto Apple TV. But if you have a fairly consistent set of devices, you shouldn’t have too many problems. Digital Libraries Are Way Nicer Why It's Okay to Buy Digital Movies From iTunes, Google, and Amazon If you have a collection of Blu-Ray discs, they have to take up shelf space. They have to be packed up in boxes. If you rip your movies, they fill up your hard drive. You can set up your collection in a browsing-friendly way, but most people tend to arrange their movies in a spine-out way, which means any guests who want to see what films you have available will have to bend their neck 90 degrees to the right to get a good view. Simply put, digital libraries look way cooler. You can see cover art, explore descriptions, browse through your selection with a phone or tablet. You can watch trailers and even get info on actors or soundtracks while you watch. Blu-Ray players have some of these features, but they also come with a bunch of extra junk. Most Blu-Ray movies have a ton of trailers and unskippable content crammed onto the front end, and loading times are atrocious. This shouldn’t be big news to us. Netflix is so hugely popular that it’s become a cultural icon for giving us a good-looking digital library that can stream movies on-demand with no unskippable trailers or other junk. Digital libraries like Google Play are much closer to Netflix than they are to the experience of Blu-Rays and this is a good thing. “Owning” Media is Something of a Myth Why It's Okay to Buy Digital Movies From iTunes, Google, and Amazon Most of us don’t like to think about it, but we rarely “own” a movie when we buy it, no matter the source. When you buy a disc from the store, legally, you’re purchasing a license to watch the movie in your home. This is a license that’s controlled by digital rights management tools. Blu-Ray discs in particular have some of the most complicated, over-engineered DRM of any medium out there. Most of the time, this isn’t a problem with a licensed Blu-Ray player. However, Blu-Rays often require updates in order to keep their DRM functioning. New discs ship with updates to the DRM, as well as revocation lists that can disable certain models or lineups of players until they receive security updates. What this means is that it’s possible to buy a new Blu-Ray, put it in an old player, and wind up locked out of that movie, or potentially all of your movies, depending on what rights the new disc revokes. This famously happened in 2010 on a semi-large scale when some legitimate consumers tried to watch Avatar and got locked out. Not everyone was affected, but a bug in the system resulted in some users getting the shaft. Every once in a while, someone bumps into an issue where the software between the player and the disc doesn’t agree and an update is required. However, this raises a key issue. Requiring software updates for Blu-Ray players isn’t much better than storing your movies on a remote server. Both can go down some day. As long as your Blu-Ray player is up to date, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about, but you’re still running the risk of buying into an ecosystem where your rights can possible be revoked down the line. Whether intentionally or unintentionally. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t trust Blu-Rays. Often when we discuss “owning” media, it’s implied that if there’s a risk of losing access to something years down the road, then it’s not worth buying it at all. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Plenty of people bought VHS tapes and now, even if you still have a working VHS player, the cassettes will wear down over time and the quality is crap. Part of buying new media is paying for the tech upgrade, not just the movie license. Whether it’s a cynical cash grab or just the nature of how technology progresses, wanting to pay once for a movie forever is an unrealistic expectation. Even if we’d all like it to be. Digital Libraries Aren’t Perfect, But They’re No Worse Than Any Other Option None of this is to say that streaming digital movies is perfect. $20 is still $20, and even if that’s a normal price for a new movie, there are more and more cheaper ways to watch movies with each passing year. If you don’t want to pay the premium, it would be hard to blame you. However, some people (myself included) still like buying films. Personally, I’ve always wanted to buy discs because I like how they look on a shelf. It’s like a movie-aficionados version of having many leather-bound books in your home. However, as time went on, I discovered that watching my movie collection became a hassle. Half the Blu-Ray players I’ve ever owned are slow, unreliable, or complain about updates every time I try to watch a movie on them. And even in 2015, there is still no free software for watching Blu-Rays on my computer. However, digital movies from online stores are an attractive option. You can play them on just about any device, the library apps are a nicer experience, and best of all, you don’t get locked out of your movies because you didn’t update your toaster. And if you’re worried about your library disappearing, don’t fret. We’ll all be paying for new, 16KHD Holographic versions of Star Wars long before Apple or Google go out of business and shut down their movie servers.

1. Take a screenshot on Samsung Galaxy Note 4 using a button combination

Pressing the Power and Home buttons at the same time will grab an image of the screen. This can be awkward to get right, so it’s important to remember to press both buttons at the same time, and hold them until the shutter sound is heard. (You need to hold the Power button slightly before pressing the Home button, then hold them both down.)

This method also work on the Galaxy S3 and more recent phones like the Galaxy S5, Galaxy S4, Galaxy S4 Zoom, Galaxy S4 Active, Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Mega 6.3, Galaxy Tab 3 Pro, and Galaxy S4 Mini.

2. Take a screenshot on a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 using a hand swipe

Open Settings > Motion. Scroll down and find Hand Motion, then Palm swipe to capture, and tick the box.Close the menu and find the screen you want to capture. Shape your hand like you are karate “chopping” the screen, set your hand vertically on either side of the screen, then horizontally swipe across it — it doesn’t matter which way — like your hand is a photo scanner. If you’ve done it correctly, you should hear the camera shutter and receive a notification that a picture has been saved to the gallery. Screenshot away

3. Take a screenshot on the Galaxy Note 4 using the S Pen 

To use these, you have to open the Air Command menu, which you can do by pulling out the S Pen stylus, or by hovering the pen over the screen and clicking the button on it.

Scrapbooker: This is a selection in the Air Command radial menu. It lets you draw a circle around a part of the screen to take a screenshot. After you take a picture of part of the screen, you can add tags, notes, and categories to organize the pic. You can access the photo from a special scrapbook app on the device.

Screen Write: This feature was also on the Note 2, but that device lacked an Air Command menu. Select it from the options to take a screenshot. You can then write notes on top of the image. There are options to change your pen color and size if you want to get creative.

Just hold the button and tap: On all S Pen Galaxy devices, you can also hold down the button on the S Pen and touch the pen to the screen, holding it there until you see and/or hear a screenshot being taken. This technique is best on the Note 2, Note 8.0, and original Note 10.1.

1. Data Recovery from Google Store

Data Recovery from Google Store is an app that deals with the complete diagnostics of your mobile phone. It checks the data status, locates the contacts, textual and multimedia files, makes a bit-by-bit copy of the data, and restores the lost data onto the phone. It is an anytime anywhere app that responds instantly to a data recovery request from the mobile user. Data can be recovered from the SIM card as well as SD card with this app. You can download free from:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=datarecovery.extranet&hl=en

2. MyJad Android Data Recovery

MyJad Android Data Recovery is designed to help you recover any images, songs, videos, documents, archives, and more data stored on your SD card inside the Android phone. Scan, check and recover. Three simple clicks bring your digital life back to life.

Key Features of Android Data Recovery
*Excellent quality – full recovery of your lost Android data
*Absolutely safe – the scanning is just read-only, no changes done to the data of your Android device.
More About MyJad Android Data Recovery…

3. Undelete Beta

The Undelete Beta is great at handling recovery of all kinds of lost data like emails, messages, audios, videos, photographs clicked and downloaded, and all other information that was stored on your Android-based mobile phone. You just have to pop up the application and select the memory where the app should scan for lost files, whether internal memory or SD card. The app will show a list of all the deleted files, their original directory path, etc. You can download this app free of cost from:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fahrbot.apps.undelete

4. Data Recovery from Gutensoft

This is another single-click method of recovering lost or deleted data on your Android-based mobile smartphone of tablet. Just download this app on our PC and connect the phone with the USB cable. Run the app for data recovery. It will first scan for lost information like messages, contact information, archived files, emails, audios, videos, graphics, etc. and will restore it onto your mobile phone. For free download, follow this link:

http://gutensoft.com/Utilities/recover-android-data.html

5. DDR Data Recovery Software

Smartphones users save a lot of their favorite music files, videos, multimedia and graphics files, emails, instant messages, SMS, contacts, etc on their phones. If any or all of the information is accidentally deleted, this software helps you to recover the data. At a single click, it searches for lost data and provides a list for your verification. When you select “restore” the files are recovered onto your mobile phone. You can even customize the file search with options like Basic, Deep, Video, Photo, Signature searches before restoration. To download trial version click:

http://www.datarecoverysoftware.com/datarecoverysoftware/data-recovery-androidphone.html

Any one of these tools will help you recover your lost data onto your mobile phone. Just download one of these files onto the PC. Connect your mobile device and follow the onscreen instructions.

OK, so the words “cool” and “insurance” don’t typically go hand in hand, but some of the nation’s top providers are proving that insurance can be cool, too. Practically all of the top insurance providers now have a mobile app for policyholders, and they have a big incentive to attract more users. Mobile apps make filing claims a breeze, which provides a better customer experience. From a cost standpoint, mobile apps can save companies money by improving the overall process.

You may be asking yourself, what could I possibly use an insurance app for? Chances are you won’t be using it to pay a bill since most people use the automatic payment option. And how often are you really going to tweak your coverage? Will you even remember you downloaded the app?

Claims are one area that an insurance app could greatly be of service. In fact, smartphone users can do almost all of the claims process right from their app. You can also use your phone to take pictures and shoot video right at the accident site, which can have a dramatic impact on claims management and fraud protection. Some insurance apps could even help score you discounts on your policy.

Here are some of the insurance industry’s coolest mobile apps:

1. GEICO App

GEICO’s mobile app is one the most visible mobile insurance apps out there. The app is sleek and user-friendly. You can even customize the background to feature the famous Gecko, Maxwell the Pig, or the GEICO logo. With GEICO’s app you can:

• Access digital ID cards
• Manage your policy
• Chat with Lily – “your insurance voice assistance” (maybe she’s related to Siri?)
• Access GEICO’s Accident Guide to help you record accident details and file a claim.

2. MetLife Infinity App

The MetLife Infinity app allows users to create a digital legacy for family members and friends. You can create collections of photos, videos, and documents. These can be shared now or saved for a future date.

3. GoodRide® by Allstate

This app is designed specifically with motorcycle riders in mind. GoodRide by Allstate helps riders track their route, time and mileage for each ride. It also helps you prepare for trips so you can scout out gas ahead of time and check local weather. Allstate says on its website that the GoodRide app will soon feature a maintenance log so riders can keep track of every oil change and flat tire. You will even be able to set alarms for when service is due.

The source code for Android 5.0 Lollipop was only fully released yesterday, but developers on XDA work extremely quickly. In less than one day, some developers have managed to create Lollipop builds for particular devices. Let’s see which devices are capable of using Lollipop as a daily driver so far.
It was easy to predict that Nexus devices would be the first to get these unofficial builds. Google Nexus 4 “mako” users have a chance to test one such Lollipop build. It has been prepared by XDA Senior Member C-o-M, and it is nothing more than a vanilla build of AOSP, without Google Apps or any other enhancements. The build reportedly works with 4.4.4 Gapps, but there are some flaws like a force closing keyboard or missing sync provider in the Calendar app. There is another build made by XDA Senior Member sykopompos, but its’ a direct port from Nexus 5’s preview releases.
Nexus 7 (2013) “flo” owners can use a Lollipop source-built port by XDA Recognized Developer scrosler. The developer prepared a Google Apps package with applications available for the Nexus 9, which is also a tablet device, so there should be no issues caused by the gapps package used. If you’re planning to use this build, you need to flash the newest version of the Nexus 7 bootloader from the latest developer preview.
Source-built Lollipop is also available for the Google Nexus 10, thanks to XDA Senior Member stiggy2012. Although the build is devoid of Google apps, users are already reporting great success in terms of usability and stability. You can get in on the action at the Lollipop for the Nexus 10 thread.
Quite a bit of Android 5.0 Lollipop goodness was made available for the Google Nexus 5 “hammerhead”. There are 3 ROMs available. The first Lollipop ROM for the Nexus 5 is a pure AOSP experience and was compiled by XDA Recognized Developer OldDroid. The ROM is available as fastboot images, just like the images prepared by Google. It lacks Gapps and new binary files, but we need to wait a bit to see them available. The Second Lollipop ROM for the N5 comes from XDA Recognized Contributor herna. This is a pure AOSP experience with a modified kernel. The last N5 release is a pure AOSP build made by XDA Senior Member yashade2001.
The only non-Nexus device on the list at this point is the Sony Xperia Z. Android 5.0 Lollipop was ported over by XDA Senior Member thomas1991_12, but there are quite a few items that need to be fixed before we can call it a daily driver. This should be resolved pretty quick, as the Xperia Z was one of the first devices with fully working Android 4.3. You can grab it from here.
There may be some ROMs that have popped since we started writing this article, so please feel free to share any links you find in the comments below. The community works incredibly quickly, so it’s pretty hard to keep up. Hopefully, Google will finally release the official images for all of the supported Nexus devices, as well as the proper binaries, so truly stable builds can be created. This will also surely speed up the development for other devices.

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The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is the successor to Samsung’s wildly popular Galaxy Note 2 and 3 phablet devices. The Note 3 was a giant-sized phone with a 5.7” screen display, with the Note 4 still sporting the same 5.7” display but with a higher QHD resolution. The Note 4 was released on October 17, with some US release dates lagging a bit depending on carrier. For this review, we will be looking at the T-Mobile variant, which did not have a delayed release.
The internal hardware of the US-market Galaxy Note 4 is based on the Snapdragon 805 SoC, whereas the international model features the Samsung Exynos 5433 Chipset. Aside from carrier radio modifications and a few other minor branding details, the models are very similar. Either way, the Note 4 is a powerhouse.
Here’s what’s in the box:
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (natch)3220mAh Fast Charging BatteryUSB 2.0 sync and charge cableA/C AdapterS-Pen and replacement tipsHeadphonesManuals

Hardware
The phone packs the quad-core 2.70 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805, one of the most powerful processors currently on the market. The 5.7-inch device weighs in at 6.3 ounces and has a display resolution of 2560×1440 pixels, which equates to approximately 518 ppi. That is up from 386 ppi on the Note III. The display is protected by a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 panel, and we have the fingerprint scanner as added to the front of the display.
The Main Device specifications are:
2.70GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 8055.7” Quad HD Super AMOLED (2560 x1440) at 518 PPI153.5 x 78.6 x 8.5 mm6.3 ounces3 GB RAM32/64 GB storage options (also includes a Micro SD expansion slot up to 128GB)Fast Charging 3220mAh User Replaceable Battery16 MP with OIS Rear Camera3.7MP + F1.9 Front CameraS Pen stylusAndroid 4.4 KitKat with TouchWiz UI (Lollipop has been promised in the next few months)Bluetooth 4.1NFCWi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2X2 MIMO)4G LTE and BelowT-Mobile Specific: Voice over LTE Enabled
Over the course of a week of testing, the battery of the Note 4 demonstrated impressive longevity. On average, it lasted a solid day with heavy use, and could go to 1.5 days with light to moderate usage. We have a departure of the Samsung Galaxy S 5 material design that we saw this year. Samsung went a premium metal band around the device. The weight of the Note 4 feels even more like a premium device in hand. The processor is very fast, especially for those coming from the US variants of the Galaxy S 5, which features the Snapdragon 801 processor. The S-Pen is even better than the original, with more sensitivity and better selection tools, combined with a new non-intrusive S-pen menu.
Overall, the phone is has a solid build. It should provide a great experience when holding and using it on a daily basis.
Interface
The phone runs Android 4.4.4 skinned with TouchWiz UI. The implementation is visible in every aspect of the phone’s interface. Because of this, if you are looking for a phone that provides the pure Google experience, the Note 4 will fit the bill. However, the options that are added are intended to help the user be more productive.
Multitasking is accessed with a dedicated key that replaces the menu key that we had with last year’s Samsung offerings. The apps and widgets are in the same position and work the same way as stock Android. Folder creation is not the same as stock Android. You need to a shortcut and bring it up to create a folder, rather than hold two app icons on top of each other.
The camera app was modified as well, adding surround shot, panorama, golf, and burst shot modes. This year, we have a slow shooting mode that was added and it works quite well. The Messaging app now features contact shortcuts on the top to match the design from the S5.
The multi-window interface remains the same and it still works great as it did on the Note III or S5, It showcases the added RAM, and you can even use a floating window on top of the multi window when you receive a call.
The UI is exactly what you would expect Touchwiz to be. Samsung has done a great job making it less and less intrusive. It’s likely that those who use the device for a few days will grow to enjoy the little changes in material and added PPI on the screen. However, if you want a pure Google experience, get a Nexus 6 if you can find one in stock!
Design
The Note 4 shows its Samsung lineage, with many design traits similar to those seen on the Galaxy S 5 and the Note 3. The one main change is the speaker position. It is near the back instead of positioned like on the GS5. NFC is built into the back battery like on the S5.
The phone’s dimensions are 153.5 x 78.6 x 8.5 mm, and it weighs in at 6.3 ounces. Compared to the Note III which tipped the scales at 5.9 oz. The S-pen fits inside the phone, and can be stored in the lower right side.
Battery
The Note 4 battery did not grow in capacity much from last year’s Note. They are 3220 mAh and 3200 mAh, respectively. The type of battery has changed. The Note 4 has a fast charging battery with a 2 Amp charger to speed charging. You can go from 0 to 50% in about 30 minutes and be fully charged in about 1.5 hours. The benefit is that even thought we lost the USB 3.0 connectivity, we gain faster charging, a very good trade indead.
Overall the battery life is better then what you would expect for a (2560 x1440) resolution screen. The use of AMOLED technology helps by giving you a balance in performance and battery life.
Camera
Samsung finally included OIS on its Note line of devices, something that we have been waiting for some time. The 16 MP rear camera is sharp and takes great pictures. The front facing one has a wide-angle lens to fit more people in your selfies. (Yay?)
The camera software is still Samsung’s but you get more features like slow motion video, depth of field and much more. Samsung includes more camera options as downloadable content from their App store.
Hackabiltiy
Rooting the device and modding it is possible. Samsung devices have never been too hard to hack for users wanting to modify them. Just be aware of the Knox E-fuse, once you trip it you cannot go back.  Please head over to your variant’s forum and check for the process. The Note 4 had a root method before the device was released in the US. We will cover rooting, ROMs and Mods in video in the near future here on XDA. Please check back soon.
Final Thoughts
The Note 4 is set to compete against quite a few phablets this year. When I reviewed the Note III last year, the Note line was pretty much standing alone and reigning supreme. Google decided to enter into the phablet world with the Nexus 6. Watch out Samsung, you have created your own market and others want to become top dog. Although only the Samsung Note line carries the iconic Wacom-powered S-Pen.
I came to this device with my Galaxy Note III experiences, and the Note 4 has since replaced the OnePlus One and HTC One M7. I love the power under the hood of the Note 4, and wish Samsung would copy some of the new Note design elements to the S6 next year–things like the metal band and fast charging.
Make no mistake, the Note 4 is not made to be a one-handed phone! Although Samsung includes a few one-handed options under the dialer and calculator settings. They introduce an all new one handed mode for easy access. Regardless, you will need both hands for the S-pen.
The Note 4 is available from all major US carriers now. I would like to thank Samsung USA for providing us with this review unit.


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Even though Android 5.0 Lollipop hasn’t yet seen its official release, quite a few users are using the latest version of the Android 5.0 developer preview as their daily driver OS. With the latest revision, Lollipop has gained quite a boost in both functionality and polish, with many more applications and features working than in the previous two releases. Unfortunately, however, there are still a few third party applications here and there that don’t quite work as expected, and data backup applications have been a bit tricky thus far.
This is where XDA Senior Member gh0stslayer‘s new app Backup+ comes in. As its name implies, Backup+ is a complete backup and app manipulation solution similar to the other applications already available for the platform. Backup+, however, is fully compatible with the Android L developer previews, with full Android Lollipop functionality. It even looks good while doing so, thanks to a completely Material Design-themed UI. The app is currently at an alpha stage, but many users in the thread are already reporting success. Moreover, Backup+ even offers batch backup and restore functionality, often relegated to premium versions in other solutions.
If you’re running Android Lollipop and have been looking for a compatible backup solution, head over to the Backup+ application thread to get started.


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Back in March of this year, we took a look at a rather innovated security application by XDA Senior Member thotran7989. Aptly titled Lockdown Pro, this app allowed users to lock applications with a PIN or pattern unlock. But rather than simply locking apps like the sea of other app locker solutions, Lockdown Pro differentiated itself by offering pre-defined locations where the phone locks automatically, as well as simulated force closes to prevent intruders from figuring out that they’ve been locked out.
Fast forward about seven months, and a lot has changed in the Android world. Ever since Google publicly unveiled Android L at the I/O 2014 keynote, both third- and first-party applications have been redesigned to match Google’s new Material Design UI. Naturally, a redesign was always in the cards for Lockdown Pro, which was always a very aesthetically appealing locker app. That update has now come. And along for the ride, we have new locker support that allows you to lock images and videos, play private videos, more trusted device support including smartwatch unlocking, and much more.
If you’ve never used Lockdown Pro, now’s a good time to give it a shot. Head over to the Lockdown Pro 2 app thread to get started!


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If you’re as obsessed with mobile devices as the vast majority of our forum goers, chances are that you browse multiple Android-related websites to keep tabs on all the latest Android news. Manually browsing the web for content, however, isn’t always the best approach. Luckily there are plenty of tools available to aggregate all the relevant content into one place, but following Google Reader’s demise, many have been looking for the “just right” replacement for their Android news fix. XDA Senior Member grilledbacon32‘s new application TechTalk hopes to do exactly that.
TechTalk is an Android news app that aggregates Android-related articles from various sites across the web. Currently, the app supports XDA-Developers (both the XDA Portal and XDATV), Android Central, Android Authority, Phandroid, Android Police, Android and Me, Cult of Android, Droid Life, Android Pit, Android Headlines, Android Spin, Droid Games, and Rootz Wiki. The app is laid out much like most feed readers, with articles categorized by site or all at once. The interface is clean, and there is a slide-out hamburger menu to switch feeds or change settings.
If this sounds like something that’s right up your alley, simply head over to the TechTalk Android News application thread to get started.


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