Though the Google I/O 2013 opening keynote may not have yielded all the awesome things we wanted, such as new hardware or even a new version of Android, but we walked away with at least one new service worth getting excited over, at least for music fans. Google Play Music All Access. Google Play Music All Access is two things: a name that is entirely too long and an add-on subscription music service to Google's existing Play Music digital catalog. Play Music allows users to upload up to 20,000 of their own songs to an online library for free, and any music purchases from Play are added to ...

Beautiful Android tablet apps were mostly non-existent for quite some time. Applications defaulted to the smartphone interface and were stretched to fit the extra display space. And because of the lack of adequate content, it made it difficult for many to recommend buying an Android tablet over, say, an iPad. Last year, however, Google made a push for better looking Android apps. The company introduced new design guidelines and updated its own apps, as well as the operating system with the Holo theme. Google also encouraged third-party developers to follow its lead. Sure, iOS may still ...

Just two or three years ago, smartphone cameras were laughable, at best. Sure, there were a few out there worth mentioning, like the iPhone 4 or Nokia N8. But the majority of smartphones just had cameras as a technicality, not because they were terribly impressive or groundbreaking. Fast forward to today, and many manufacturers have fitted their flagships with image sensors that rival most point and shoot cameras – if not entirely in quality, in portability and convenience. The 8- and 13-megapixel cameras of 2012 and 2013 have sparked a revolution in mobile image sensing, and we're bound ...

This past Friday, Facebook pushed out the new Facebook Home application to a select few Samsung and HTC Android devices. The HTC First officially launched, and the Facebook Messenger application was also updated. In all of this, the public finally got their hands on easily the best service – period – that Facebook has managed to produce. Chat Heads. To be fair, Chat Heads is not the first free-floating application on Android. In fact, it's not even the first free-floating messenger for Android. Last year, I wrote a piece about an application for Android called LilyPad HD, a floating ...

We all use our smartphones to snap pictures left and right. Whether we're capturing our family and other sentimental moments, unusual sights or … even what we're about to eat, not every picture turns out the way it should, or how you were expecting. Fortunately, post-processing applications are aplenty. In the Google Play Store, there are literally hundreds of photo editing apps – maybe even thousands. And sifting through them all can be quite difficult, especially if you don't know what you're looking for. Some only offer simply filters, others are rather complex with a significant ...

Thanks to both hardware and software enhancements, Android performs a lot better than it did just a two, short years ago. Project Butter in Jelly Bean brings on serious improvements to the smoothness of the operating system, and more advanced CPUs and GPUs give the OS the horsepower it needs to work like a well-oiled machine. But sometimes raw performance just doesn't outweigh the navigation of the interface, or the overload of animations and other flashy visuals. Using the methods and applications I note in the video below, not only can you make your Android device feel like it's faster, ...

The Android interface has drastically changed over the last six years. Few of us care to recall the days of Gingerbread, where the operating system was accented with two contrasting colors – neon orange and green – and an uninspired interface. Dare we think back to FroYo and beyond, where the notification shade was an odd shade of light gray (slightly 0ff-white) and the app drawer was literally a drawer that had to be opened by a upward finger swipe. Matias Duarte, Google's Director of Android User Experience, has worked his magic with Android. Since he joined the ranks, the interface ...

There's one thing that's for sure, when it comes to the Pocketnow Crew, no editor is created equal. Some of us live in different countries, and therefore each of us comes from significantly different backgrounds. We all majored in different careers and once you get to know each of us, you'll learn that we all landed in the smartphone or tablet ecosystem to satisfy certain specific and different needs. That's the reason why some of us choose to stick with one platform, others like to switch around every now and then, and some of us are even willing to carry more than one device in order to ...