 | | Click the image to read the article version on our website! | | | Android Apps you shouldn't miss this week | | | |  | .projekt
.project is a minimal puzzle game. You have to build shapes that shade in the right parts of two surfaces. Neat!
Download from Google Play | |  | My Tamagotchi Forever
My Tamagotchi Forever is the hyped return of the Tamagotchi experience. This one is okay, we guess.
Download from Google Play | | |  | Lean Launcher
Lean Launcher is another minimal launcher on Google Play. It has a lot of features buried underneath, though.
Download from Google Play | |  | RememBear
RememBear is a password manager from the makers of TunnelBear VPN. It's actually pretty good.
Download from Google Play | | | | |  | Florence
Florence is the highly anticipated game from the developers of Monument Valley. It follows the relationship of Florence and Krish as they fight, flirt, help each other, and grow apart. It's a slice of life game, for better or for worse.
Download from Google Play | | Headlines this week - Are you curious about the secrets behind Google's Motion Photos technology? We wrote a post this week all about it. Hit the link to learn more!
- Gameloft's Dungeon Hunter Champions is inching closer to launch. It's out for pre-registration on its official website. It should be a decent action RPG with some MOBA elements.
- Might & Magic is coming to mobile! It's Ubisoft's long-running fantasy RPG franchise. The mobile version, Might & Magic: Elemental Guardians, is up for pre-registration now. Those who pre-register receive special gifts upon official launch. It'll be a freemium game, most likely. It should also have AR elements as well. The launch date is May 31st right now.
- Ark: Survival Evolved is coming to Android and iOS this spring. It's a survival game with a dinosaur theme. It should actually play pretty much like the PC version with slightly worse graphics. That means it has a single player mode, a crafting system, multiplayer mode, and creature taming. It might actually be pretty good. There is a closed beta on iOS right now.
- PUBG is getting closer to a worldwide launch. It soft launched in Canada this week. That's the first non-Asian country with a release. That means a proper worldwide release may not be far off. Fortnite is hot on their heels with an iOS closed beta up and running now. They both may hit the market at around the same time. We'll see which of these two shooters wins.
- Google Play Protect did a lot of good things in 2017. Google released a blog post with all of the details this week. Google's machine learning algorithms took down tens of millions of potentially harmful apps. Google Play Protect also gained an offline mode that scrapped about ten million more installs of harmful apps. They expect 2018 to be a much better year for Google Play Protect.
- YouTube Music is getting closer and closer to launch. The head of it boasted some big numbers this week. For instance, 80% of all YouTube views are recommendations by YouTube. The service was supposed to be out by now. However, YouTube delayed the project to hammer out some additional issues. It's little more than blustering until we see an actual product. It's nice to see YouTube's music subscription service hit the press, though.
- Get ready for a lot more AR games. Google integrated the Unity game engine into Google Maps. That gives developers a good head start with new AR games. Additionally, Google Maps API is available to game developers specifically for AR games. This gives everyone the advantage that Niantic Labs had with Pokemon Go. 2018 will probably see a ton of AR games and releases. Stay tuned!
- It turns out that people spend tons of money on mobile games. In fact, they spend more on mobile games than they do on PC games. This is solely a measurement of game software, not hardware, though. It's easy to get into a mobile game because everyone has a mobile phone. It's a little harder to get into a console or PC when the barrier to entry costs a lot more. In any case, mobile games have outsold PC/Mac titles for a few years now. This year just sees that gap widen even more.
| | App Updates this week - SwiftKey Keyboard received an update this week. The update adds a new toolbar as well as editable stickers.
- Google Maps is receiving a decently sized update soon. The update will add wheelchair accessible routes for bus and train trips. It also did some neat stuff in India this week with location-based digital addresses.
- Google Home now lets you use your voice to set location-based reminders on your Google Home devices.
- YouTube received an update this week. The video service now shows Wikipedia information on conspiracy videos. That's kinda neat. The YouTube app also finally received a dark mode.
- Google Assistant received a big update this week. The voice assistant now supports the Hindi language! Google Lens is also now available via Assistant on some flagship devices. Additionally, third parties can now customize Google Assistant voice commands if they need to.
- Spotify was updated this week with a new features. They now want their listeners to suggest metadata updates to songs, albums, and artists.
- WhatsApp received a minor, but important update this week. The service now gives you an hour to delete messages.
- Gmail received an update to its mobile app this week. It now supports more types of inboxes. That includes important, unread first, starred first, etc.
- Google Play is likely introducing more video ads to Google Play soon. The first type is video ads for games within the Play Store itself. It won't pop up like you see in annoying apps. Instead, it shows them in their own little segment and watching is optional. They are also allowing playable ads within free-to-play games. This isn't a new concept, but it's going to get more popular if this rolls out. These aren't the best changes ever, but they're coming.
| | New Deals and Releases - Spotify if inching closer to a launch in India. The CEO said as much earlier this week. Other countries no the road map include Russia and Africa. Hit the link to learn more!
- An enterprising developer made an iMessage app on Android. It's extremely complicated, requires that the user has a Mac, and a little technical know-how. However, it does seem to actually work. Not bad for a teenager. Hit the link to learn more!
- Google Assistant routines went live this last week with a lot of limitations. The routines let you perform multiple tasks at once. This is the holy grail of virtual assistant tech because you can just list a bunch of commands they all go through at once. However, this is very early stages. Don't expect a lot yet. Amazon Alexa released a similar feature this week as well.
- Facebook Lite officially launched in the US and other developed markets this week. The app was originally for developing countries with poor Internet. However, after the perceived success of Messenger Lite, Facebook went all the way with Facebook Lite as well. It lets you do the basics on Facebook without all of the extra bloat. We love this release because it's a good alternative to the bloated, battery draining main app.
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