Microsoft Office for Android officially available, but don’t get too excited just yet

After launching an official but limited iOS Office application a short while ago, Microsoft has finally released a similar app for Android.

The Office Mobile app can be downloaded now free of charge from the Google Play Store, but don’t get too excited about it, as there are several limitations in place.

For starters, you will need an active Office 365 subscription to use the application. Furthermore, the app is compatible with devices running Android 4.0 and higher, and does not have tablet support.

But most importantly, we’re not looking at a full-fledged Office mobile client here, as users won’t be able to do everything they’re used to doing with Office apps on their desktops.

Here’s what the application will let you do once you get it:

• Edit – You can make quick edits to Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.
• Documents Remain Intact – Formatting and content remain intact when you edit Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents on your phone.
• Edit While Offline – Your device doesn’t have to be continuously connected to the network to work on an Office document that is stored online. You can view and edit recently used documents even while you’re offline. Your changes will be saved online when your device reconnects to the network or to Wi-Fi.
• Create – You can create new Word and Excel documents on your phone.
• Comments – You can review comments that have been made in Word and Excel documents on your phone and add your own comments.
• Share – When you’re done with your edits or comments, simply send the document in email or save it to SkyDrive or SharePoint.

However, we can only hope Microsoft will further update the app to add more functionality to it. Also worth mentioning are cloud- and email-related features for the app. Office Mobile will let you open documents from the cloud (SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro, SharePoint), access recent cloud documents and even email attachments.

While there are other app alternatives for Android users to Office Mobile, including Google’s own Drive, the app will surely be appreciated by those users that spend a lot of time in Microsoft’s Office environment.

Source: Android Authority

Galaxy Note 3 Mini anyone? Three different sizes for the smartphone apparently spotted in document

A new Galaxy Note 3 report seems to suggest that Samsung is testing different sizes for its upcoming flagship smartphone, although it’s unclear at this point whether the company is actually thinking of launching the handset in different screen sizes.

While this is an unconfirmed rumor, it looks like there’s a document in the wild that lists shipments of several Galaxy Note 3 models with screen sizes of 5.5, 5.7 and 5.99 inches. This would match Samsung’s policy of launching a phone for almost every taste – just check out this year’s Galaxy S4 family.

Initially spotted by TechKiddy, the screenshot below comes from Indian logistics website Zauba, which shows the Galaxy Note 3 coming in three different sizes.

Considering the variety of Galaxy Note 3 rumors out there that are rather conflicting when it comes to display size – some older ones say 5.99-inch while newer ones say 5.7-inch – such a document makes some sense, and seems to indicate that Samsung may have not chosen the final design of the handset.

Similar reports concerning the nature of the display – flexible or not flexible – as well as fingerprint-reading technology have also circulated recently, suggesting that the design of the handset is far from final...

Read the full story here. Source: Android Authority

The new Nexus 7 vs the competition, how does it stack up?

The new Nexus 7 was announced today and the Internet has been ablaze with the information all day. It’s a pretty impressive device and one that all Android fans have the potential to enjoy. It has amazing specs, a cheap price point, and best of all, it’ll be available on July 30. While it’s pretty much the common sentiment that the new Nexus 7 will be the best 7-inch tablet on the market when it gets released, we have to ask ourselves if it really is that much better.

With that in mind, here is a direct comparison with some of the more popular 7-inch tablets in the industry. For a full list of the new Nexus 7 specs, check out Andrew Grush’s earlier post detailing the official specs. For this comparison, we’ll take a look at the 5 major specs that people care about. Those are the screen, the CPU, the battery, the RAM, the storage, and the connectivity...

Read the full story here. Source: Android Authority

Mysterious HTC Zara to arrive alongside HTC One Max?

As Samsung prepares for the release of its Note 3, HTC is also getting ready to unleash two new devices of its own. The first of the handsets is known as the HTC One Max and is designed to compete directly against the Note series. The second is a previously unheard of handset by the name of Zara.

We’ll start by talking about the One Max, which we already know a great deal about.

For starters, the phone will feature a premium metal-body design similar to the HTC One. The handset is also said to have a 5.9-inch FullHD display, a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU, UltraPixel camera and Android 4.3 Jelly Bean.

What about the HTC Zara? The latest report from China Times suggests that the handset will arrive in September alongside the One Max. Unlike the One Max, the HTC Zara trades in the premium metal body for a plastic design that is probably more akin to Samsung devices.

Unfortunately, beyond its plastic shell, next to nothing is known about the Zara. We can’t say what markets it is being aimed at, its pricing or even what kind of hardware or screen size the phone might possess.

What we do know is that September is shaping up to be an interesting month. Not only will we see Samsung’s latest Note, but now we have two interesting HTC devices to look forward to as well.

With HTC’s push towards higher-end metal bodies, would you still consider a plastic-bodied HTC handset if the specs were right for the money?

Source: Android Authority

HTC One is actually easy to open with a special tool, says HTC lead designer

Back in March, iFixit went to work on taking the HTC One apart to give us all a better look at the phone’s insides and determine how easy (or hard) the phone would be to repair. The verdict? Just 1/10 – with 1 being ultra hard and 10 being easy as pie.

The reason for the low score is that the HTC One is very hard to open without damaging the rear case. The good news is that the phone might be hard for everyday users to take apart, but HTC does have a special method for prying open the handset in the event that the phone needs servicing under warranty.

According to HTC’s senior manager of the One design team, Justin Huang:

“During the development [of the One], there was another team inside HTC who looked at the repair process.“ “So every phone sent to HTC, they have a special tool to disassemble the back cover, to let us have the ability to access all the components inside.”

In other words, you might not be able to self-repair or send it in to a third party for cheap and easy repairs, but at least you can rest assured that you can send it in directly to HTC. Unfortunately for those looking to get their phones repaired cheaply, this isn’t exactly great news.

On the plus side, if a tool like this really does exist, it is probably just a matter of time before a Chinese knock-off tool becomes available online. What do you think, does the HTC One’s low repairability score matter to you or not?

Source: Android Authority

Facebook Android app security flaw affects those who don’t even use the app

While it’s not clear just why the app would do this, or what purpose it has for doing so, the Facebook app for Android is taking your phone number the first time you open it up. Without even logging in, the app takes your number and stores it on the Facebook servers. You don’t need a Facebook account, or even initiate an action within the app. Simply having it and opening it will allow the app to take your phone number.

Norton discovered this security flaw during routine testing they perform on apps for their Mobile Insight security app. According to Norton, their testing methods are sound:

Through automatic and proprietary static and dynamic analysis techniques, Mobile Insight is able to automatically discover malicious applications, privacy risks, and potentially intrusive behavior. Further, Mobile Insight will tell you exactly what risky behavior an application will perform and give you specific, relevant, and actionable information.

-norton

Norton then reached out to Facebook, who claimed to be unaware of the issue. They told Norton they“did not use or process the phone numbers and have deleted them from their servers”, and said they had no knowledge of the issue. Norton also notes that Facebook is not the only app doing this, or even the worst offender. They promise more information on other culprits in coming weeks, but we’re still curious why Facebook would take numbers from a device that wasn’t even logged in. If I were to download the app, then open it to see what it looked like out of curiosity, my number would then be uploaded to the Facebook server.

We’re not ready to call Facebook nefarious on this account. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, even in the face of all their other security flaws, we’ll chalk this up to another error on their part. What this does do is bring into focus app permissions, and how important they are. Perhaps more importantly, how they can be abused by the app publisher, and ignored by users as fine-print.

Source: Android Authority

iOS 7 looks great, but can it lure this Android user?

iOS 7 is still not quite the Droid I've been looking for in an iPhone.

I've been an Android devotee for about three years now, but ever since the introduction of theiPhone 4S and Siri -- something totally new running on a nice piece of hardware -- I've been considering making the switch to iOS. As intriguing and enticing as the 4S was, I balked due to the lack of LTE. The iPhone 5 fixed that, but by then iOS seemed stale to me, and the lack of any major new innovations kept me tapping away on my aging Droid Razr and led me to declare that the iPhone and the ascendant Apple of this century's first decade had peaked. (Actually, the phrase I used was "jumped the shark" -- I suggest reading the original post for an explanation.)

So I watched with great interest on Monday as Apple unveiled a reboot to its mobile operating system in the form of iOS 7, which is being hailed as beautiful and ambitious. CNET editors have dubbed it a "radical new look" and part of Apple's "quest for perfection and the devotion to creating objects of profound and enduring beauty," as our Dan Farber put it...

Read the full story here. Source: CNET

The 6 most underrated games for Android: May 2013 edition

 

There are a lot of fun games on the Google Play Store, but it's difficult to find a game that isn't overshadowed by a game that has millions of downloads and high ratings. So just like last month, we've gone into the depths of the Google Play Store searching for some of the best underrated games, and we're back to show you what we've found. As usual, if you'd rather watch the video, just head down to the bottom of the article...

Read the full story here. Source: Android Authority  

Why an Android OEM should make an iPod Touch competitor

This week Apple announced that it has sold 100 million iPod Touch units since 2007 – keep in mind that this is not a statistic for all iPod devices, but all iPod Touch units. This is obviously a massive milestone for Apple, but it also brings up the question, why hasn’t an Android manufacturer built a legitimate iPod Touch competitor?

What past experiences have brought us?

As far as Android is concerned, there have been very little competitors to the iPod Touch. Samsung, for all its success in the smartphone market, dabbled half heartedly into the iPod Touch’s domain, but with horrible specs and outdated software, its Galaxy Player models were never going to compete with the iPod Touch, especially after Apple brought out the fifth-generation iPod Touch.

There haven’t been a lot of other competitors willing to tip their hats into the ring, and attempt to take on Apple. The only other OEM worth mentioning is Sony, which tried to use the Walkman brand name to leverage its very unsuccessful attempt at an “Android media player”...

Read the full story here. Source: Android Authority

Twitter rolls out Vine app for Android

Twitter is bringing Vine, the popular 6-second looping video application, to Google's Android operating system, months after debuting it for Apple's iOS.

Vine launched on January 24 for people with iPhones and iPads and has climbed to 13 million users, but none for Android. That vacuum, on world's No. 1 mobile operating system platform, forced Android smartphone users into circumventions to view the snippets.

The Android version gets many of the same capabilities: easy video creation with automatic playback and sound; the Explore feature, for discovering popular posts and seeing what's trending; and Find Friends, to find and invite people.

Plus, Twitter added a feature unique to Android: zoom.

The company seems to be girding itself for some bugginess. It says users will see frequent updates with new features over the coming weeks -- including front-facing camera, search, mentions and hashtags, and the ability to share to Facebook -- as well as bug fixes and performance improvements.

The news was met with many tweeted cheers, but some Android users were reporting problems with the new app--trouble finding it in the Google Play store, speculation it was quickly pulled from the store, and complaints it trips up on download.

It now appears to be live in Google Play store.

Twitter has been updating and adding features to the iOS app while working on the Android release, meaning the two apps are not perfectly in sync. But Twitter promises "that won't be the case for long."

Though Twitter users already had options for other video looping apps, Vine kept its controls simple and seamless, making it easy to create short videos you can share with friends and on social networks.

Source: CNET

Study shows Android users spend larger percentage of time browsing than their iOS counterparts

Are you reading this on your smartphone? If so, you’ve got about 14 minutes to finish up.

A new study by Simmons Connect finds that smartphone users spend about 14 minutes a day looking at websites. They also compared Android to iOS users, and found some interesting statistics which may cast doubt on previous claims of iOS usage over Android. Interestingly enough, this all comes to light the day after Tim Cook noted (again) that iOS users spend more time visiting websites than their Android counterpart.

Android users spend about 49 minutes on their mobile device daily, whereas iOS users spend a whopping 75 minutes a day squinting at their screens. That averages out to about an hour, which is a good median number for comparison. We’ll keep in mind, though, that percentage of use versus overall time will have an integral part of the discussion...

Read the full story here. Source: Android Authority

HTC One stock Android edition could be “announced within two weeks”

A launch of a HTC One stock Android edition in the U.S. is “imminent”, according to sources quoted by the same writer that mentioned the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition before its release.

Normally, this could be treated like yet another HTC One stock Android rumor, but this time the information comes from Geek.com's Russell Holly, a man known for not being a fan of baseless rumors, and, most importantly, the man that broke the news about the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition being launched at Google I/O.

Quoting “multiple sources,” Holly says that the “senseless” edition of the HTC One will be a reality very soon – it should be announced sometime during the next two weeks. The possible release date of the device, which would be running Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, is said to be at some point during the summer.

The HTC One stock edition would be available in the U.S. at the beginning, which makes Holly think that it's possible for Google to sell it itself, through the Google Play Store.

The reason for HTC's decision to make the device available would be that, while the HTC One is clearly a very good handset, with encouraging sales (despite delays that even caused the company to apologize to users by sending them Play Store gift cards), HTC was impressed by the way the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition has been welcomed with.

While this is all as unofficial as can be, since the announcement is said to arrive “within the next two weeks,” we won't have to wait too long in order to get a confirmation (or not). On the other hand, this report seems to shed a totally new light on HTC employee Leigh Momii's tweet, posted after the Samsung Galaxy S4 running vanilla Android was announced.

While HTC has denied preparing an HTC One running stock Android, it might have changed its mind since. Or it could have just decided to wait a while longer before making the announcement.

Would you want to buy an HTC One running stock Android or would you prefer the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition?

Source: Android Authority