Google this week at Google I/O unveiled its unified messaging service called Hangouts (our app review here). The Google Talk replacement has had a rocky launch, causing update woes for many, especially those with a tablet. Rest assured that Google has quietly pushed out a new update for Hangouts, which will make the app compatible with tablets of varying sizes.

Keep in mind that users may still be experiencing compatibility issues, as the service is being pushed out over several days. So it shouldn’t be long before users running Android 2.3 or higher see Google Talk get replaced with the Hangouts interface.

The excitement for Hangouts has dwindled a little bit as users learned that, unlike iMessages, it does not have SMS support yet. The sort-o good news is that Google Hangouts Community Manager Dori Storbeck confirmed that SMS support was coming, but quickly rescinded her comment saying, “we actually have nothing to announce at this time.” However, there’s still hope for SMS integration, as the app still requests a number of SMS permissions.

Have you downloaded the new update for Hangouts? Has it fixed the tablet woes that were previously an issue? Better yet, have you gotten to use the new messaging service?

Google’s Play Music has been around for some time now. It acted like your standard music player with a few bells and whistles thrown in, such as being able to play stream music instead of just off of your internal storage. The app had a really nice techno-themed design as well.

As you know, Google I/O is underway. During the conference’s first keynote, the search giant has said out with the old and in with the new. Welcome to the new, vastly improved Play Music app — now a rival to Spotify and other similar services.

Design

The first thing you’re going to notice after updating Play Music is that everything has changed. Much like Google+, and the recently updated Google Play Store, Play Music has adopted that beautiful Google Now-esque card design. While the design is a complete overhaul of that old techno-themed design, it should be quite familiar to those who use Google’s services regularly.

When you open the app, at the top left of the screen you’ll see the Play Music icon. When you tap it, you’ll be presented with a list. In that list is options like Listen Now, My Library, Playlists, Radio, and Explore. This makes it easier to enjoy your own library while making it a nice hub to explore and consume great content through the All Access radio (more on that later).

When you go to your playlists, song lists, or artist lists, you’ll notice that everything shows up as cards instead of the list view that the old version of Play Music used to use. It’s a lot nicer, cleaner, and makes the app feel a lot more natural.

One of the benefits to the new app is that once you get used to it, you’re able to swipe and slide through everything with the greatest of ease. It was a bit more complicated than that in the old version. As you can tell, everything is more colorful as well. This is a great improvement over the old app where all we really had was a dark background, and a simple list view. With this new design Play Music feels more like a media hub than your standard music player with streaming support.

Functionality

When you really look at it, Play Music has about the same functionality as before — you can play music either off of your device or stream it. Nothing’s really been removed from the app — it functions just like it did before. However, all of the big changes that happened to Play Music come from all of the new features Google has packed into the app.

Google is trying to offer its users a more convenient, and immersive web experience. The search giant is essentially eliminating the need for you to use multiple native applications. That said, you can now browse music inside the Play Music app instead of having to open up the Play Store and browse for music through that instead. In other words, you don’t need two apps to get the full Play Music experience.

Play Music will also recommend new music to you based off of your playlists and radio stations. On the other hand, you’ll be shown your own music when you’re exploring new genres, music, artists, etc. It really is a seamless experience.

Another basic, but really cool feature is that you’re able to create a new radio station based on an artist in your library. In example, if you’re a fan of Bon Jovi, you’ll be able to create a radio station that will play the same music in that genre. In addition to creating radio stations based off of artists, you can also create them based off of albums, songs, and even genres.

While Play Music has a lot of new exciting features, the biggest addition has to be the new subscription service. You can purchase the all access pass for $7.99/mo if you subscribe before June 30, 2013, and after that the price will go up to $9.99 per month. For the time being, Google is calling the subscription service All Access.

Here’s how All Access works: as long as you’re subscriber, you can listen to anything that is available on Google’s Play Store, which has a very wide variety of songs with more being added everyday. For the cheap subscription fee, you can listen to every artist, song, and genre on the Play Store. Simply head on over to the artist page, and you can listen to anything you want. It’s really an awesome service so far.

Conclusion

The new Play Music experience is jaw dropping. The Play Music has truly become a full-fledged Google service that all music lovers can enjoy. It’s an all-around seamless experience that can be enjoyed by all, even if you don’t have an All Access pass.

Of course, having the All Access pass makes the Play Music experience even better. Being able to seamlessly blend your library with Google’s without noticing it is a job well done, I say.

Play Music will, in the future, be a great rival for the likes of Spotify and similar services. At the time being, Play Music may not seem appealing to Spotify customers as Google doesn’t have the 20 million tracks that Spotify does just yet. After launching this music streaming service though, there’s no doubt that Google will catch up in no time.

Watch out Spotify, you’ve got a new competitor in town!

The Xperia L comes in a few different colors: white, black, and red. The device is up for pre-order today, and buyers should begin seeing it on their doorstep come May 23.

This particular handset certainly isn’t a bad entry-level player either. It sports a 4.3-inch 480 x 854 FWVGA SCHOTT display, a 1GHz dual-core CPU, an Adreno 305 graphics chip, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, and a 8-megapixel rear-facing Exmor RS camera, all running off of a nice 1750mAh battery. It also has a microSD slot allowing for 32GB of expandable storage.

While the Xperia L certainly doesn’t look like a bad entry-level device, we can’t help but notice that you can get more bang for your buck with the Nexus 4 at the same price. Which one is better to get? Ultimately, it is the preference of the buyer, but while the Nexus 4 has a lot to offer in terms of hardware and software, the Xperia L has some great design (i.e. the illuminated bar and sleek body) points that you really won’t find on many smartphones.

Which smartphone would you rather get for $350? The Xperia L or the Nexus 4? Let us know in the comments!

Mountain View yesterday at Google I/O announced something very exciting: Google Play Games services. At the time of this writing, the new Play Games features have only been integrated in a small handful of games, but we should see more integration as time goes on.

There’s only a few games that have implemented the new features, including popular titles like World of Goo, Triple Town, Plague Inc., Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour, and Beach Buggy Blitz.

Not every game you come across in the Google Play Store is going to offer the new Play Games features. ”We won’t make it a mandatory exercise, or have any certification process around it,” Google lead product manager Greg Hartrell told Engadget. “We create fantastic services that allow developers to create these great game experiences, and help promote their discovery, help retain their users and keep them engaged.”

As much as I’d like to see the Play Games services become a mandatory implementation, it’d at least be nice to see a category in the Play Store that showed you which games are using the new APIs. In the meantime, Droid Gamers has a forum thread with all the games using the new services, which will be updated “until it becomes impossible to do so”.

Are you excited to see more games implement Google’s new Play Games services? Do you think it should be a requirement for all games to implement the new games services? Let everyone know in the comments!

Mountain View yesterday at Google I/O announced their new messenger app, Hangouts, for Android, Chrome, and iOS! It has been a long time in the making, and it’s finally here. The Google Talk replacement is available for Android, Chrome, and iOS.

Hangouts brings with it a plethora of new features to toy around with, including group messaging, inline pictures, and more! As per the usual, if you’d rather watch the video review, just head down to the bottom of the article.

Design

When you first open Google Hangouts you’ll be met with a new and fresh interface. The app opens to a window that shows your current conversations. Similarly to Gmail, you can archive messages by sliding your conversations to the left or the right.

By sliding to the right of the app you can start a new Hangout with someone. In the New Hangout page, you’ll see the people that you most frequently contact, and below that you’ll see everyone in your Google+ circles. If you have a lot of people circled, this list is pretty gigantic. Thankfully, you can easily search for a name or circle you want to chat with.

Hangouts doesn’t use the green or grey dots that Google Talk used to identify if someone is online or offline. Instead, you can tell if a contact is online if their profile picture is faded or clear. A faded profile picture means your contact is unavailable, and a clear picture means they’re online. One downside is that Hangouts doesn’t support the “invisible” status like Google Talk did.

After opening a conversation simply slide back to the left to go back to your active conversations list. At the top right is a plus sign that lets you start a new hangout. Similarly to Gmail, if you want to archive a conversation, simply slide them off the screen. You can view them later in the archived hangouts section of the app or your “Chats” category in Gmail.

Next to the plus sign is the menu button, which is made up of the usual three dots. In this menu you can access your archived hangouts, hangout invites, and you can set a notification snooze for an allotted amount of time. If you want to sleep and you keep your phone by your bedside, you can set it to eight hours. During that time Google Hangouts won’t bother you.

The settings menu isn’t really anything special. Really all you can do there is change your notification behaviors (i.e. set a new ringtone or turn notifications off entirely) or vibration settings. There’s also a way to control the blocked users list and customize invites for your circles. There also seems to be an option that’ll quickly take you to your Google+ profile page.

Functionality

When you get down to the core of Hangouts, it basically functions the same way Google Talk did. You can have text conversations with people and start video chats just like you could on Google Talk. The difference here is that video chats are now Google Hangouts like they are on Google+ instead of normal video calls on Google Talk.

Google has had some new functionality to the app though. You can now have group chats, which was a much needed feature in Google Talk. In my testing, this worked seamlessly. It’s a great feature if you often need to have group chats with your team at work or with a bunch of gaming buddies during your downtime.

One of the best features of the new Google Hangouts app is the amount of emojis there are. Hundreds of them are available at your fingertips. There’s smileys, animals, dragons, and much, much more. I think you can easily say that there’s an emoji for every expression in Hangouts.

In the Chrome extension of Hangouts, you can make unicorns dance across the chat window. Considering that it has dancing unicorns, I’m quite disappointed with the lack of a nyan cat. Unfortunately, dancing unicorns (and nyan cats) aren’t available in the mobile app.

Lastly, one of the great things about Hangouts is that you can now share images directly through the app. This functionality wasn’t really there with Google Talk. Normally people would have to upload the picture elsewhere, such as imgur, and then paste the link. Now you can easily share files straight from your device.

Conclusion

Overall, the new Google Hangouts app is a vast, and welcome improvement over Google Talk. As was expected, Google has had a few launch problems. Some people aren’t able to get the Hangouts app working on their tablets, and some people aren’t getting switched from Talk to Hangouts a full day or longer after updating. Issues like these really dull the excitement of a big release. It shouldn’t be long before all of the kinks are worked out, as Google seems to be on top of things after already pushing out a new update since the app’s release yesterday.

SMS support for Google Hangouts also still seems to be up in the air. We’re not sure if that’s going to get added, but if it does, there’ll be a more positive outlook on the new Hangouts app. It’d also be nice if AT&T would unblock video calling through the Android version of Hangouts on their network. I guess you can’t have everything, can you?

Aside from the kinks that’ll eventually get worked out, there really isn’t a reason to not like Google Hangouts. Of course, at the time of this writing, the lack of SMS support is a tad disappointing.

You can update the old Google Talk app to get the new Google Hangouts. Keep in mind that it may take up to a few days to get the new interface though. You could also just download the new Hangouts app from the Google Play Store.

The LG Optimus G is a spectacular device, in part responsible for LG’s smartphone sales growth, and the Korean company is reportedly preparing a successor, the LG Optimus G2. In the meantime, and according to E-Price, LG has sent out launch invitations to the Taiwan media for the LG Optimus GJ on May 22.

According to the publication, the Optimus GJ will simply be a waterproof version of the Optimus G. Features and hardware specs will remain the same – the only differentiating factor is that the Optimus GJ will have the IPX7 waterproof standard. This rating will let you submerge the Optimus GJ in one meter of water for up to 30 minutes, whereas the IPX6 waterproof standard is resistant from powerful water jets (i.e. heavy splashes, rain, etc).

The Optimus GJ isn’t a surprise considering that the Korean company already has a waterproof version of the Optimus G available that released on Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo last year (pictured below).

While the launch event for the Optimus GJ is set for May 22, a few days after that on May 30 in Macau, LG has another launch event scheduled for a smartphone in LG’s popular “G” series. We’re not sure what the Korean company plans on announcing then, but it’s not a far-fetched idea that we’ll see the Optimus G2, or even the Optimus GK.

While I can’t imagine many people would go out and get the Optimus GJ simply for its waterproof prowess, at the core of it, it still has some excellent hardware. Similarly, Samsung is also going to launch a rugged Galaxy S4 version – the Galaxy S4 Active – at some point in the coming months.

Are you looking forward to seeing the Optimus GJ become available in Taiwan?

Android WiFi Signal Booster

Android WiFi Signal Booster will analyze your WiFi network and connection strength so that you’re able to find a WiFi network with an even better connection. This particular app isn’t ideal for home use, but if you’re at an Airport terminal you’ll find it be a nice tool.

In the app there is a radar view, which will allow you to analyze a multitude of WiFi networks and find the best connection available. The app also has a signal booster, and according to the app description, it’ll give your Wi-Fi a network boost by 25-30%. Some people say it works really well too.

Network Signal Speed Booster

Network Signal Speed Booster will boost your call and signal strength in just a few short steps. Simply open the app, and wait. That’s all the setup that is involved. The app performs all of the steps for you and lists them out on the screen so you know what’s going on.

The downside to this app is that it is plagued with ads. As you can see in the image above there’s a banner ad. When you hit the menu button on the app though, you’ll notice that there’s other options to take you to the developer’s other apps, his website, and etc. There’s no way to buy a pro version of this app to remove them either.

Regardless, if you’re not technologically inclined, this app is very simple to use. Especially with the nice network boost it gives you!

WiFi + 3G Signal Booster

Like most signal boosting apps, WiFi + 3G Signal Booster is very easy to use and configure, and it gives you a nice network boost too. It enhances the usual WiFi and mobile data signals, but it will also improve your Bluetooth connection if you need a stronger signal.

To set up this signal booster up, you simply tap a button and wait a few minutes for it to complete the process. During that time, it’ll tell you exactly what it’s doing to get a better signal. It’s a very simple and quick process that shows some positive results. If you’re looking for a quick network boost, this’ll do the job nicely.

WiFi Manager

WIFi Manager isn’t entirely a signal boosting app. However,  if you’re around a lot of WiFi hotspots, it’ll help you manage them all by picking one with the best signal strength. After all, when you’re around a lot of WiFi networks, it’s often better to pick the one with the best signal strength than simply boosting a really bad connection.

This app does have a few options to help give you a network boost, but not in the traditional sense. For instance, there’s an option that will let you switch from a fixed to a dynamic DHCP. Of course, there are a few features in this app that’ll require you to purchase the $1.75 premium package. So, while the app is free, there are a few features that’ll need you to purchase that package.

All in all, it’s a great app to organize and find the best WiFi connection in your immediate vicinity while giving you a decent network boost too.

WiFi Signal Speed Booster

All of the apps on this list are very easy to use and configure, but WiFi Signal Speed Booster is unique in that it examines your WiFi speed in real time and then shows what the potential of your connection looks like. After that, you simply tap the fix button and your WiFi strength should get a tad better.

Given how simple this app was, we decided to give this signal booster the Speedtest treatment. Our first test more than doubled the speed — we went from 7mbps down to 15mbps down. The results seemed really fishy, so we uninstalled the app and ran another test. This time we got 10mbps down. While this signal booster seems to bog down your WiFi a bit for a dramatic increase, it does still increase give you a bit of a network boost, but not much.

Signal Booster wrap-up

You can check out our leaderboard (image above) to see how these apps rate against each other. As usual, our ratings are based on download numbers and Google Play Store ratings, so there’s no bias on our part whatsoever.

When it comes down to it, these apps all essentially do the same thing. They’ll restart your modems to get you a better connection to a closer tower, and so on. On the other hand, and as you can see on the reviews section of each application page, many consider this stuff to be voodoo since signal boosters and similar apps don’t do much beyond what your device is capable of.

Of course, everyone is going to have a different experience with apps that give you a network boost like these, so you may not get the same results as we did.

Regardless, we’ve tried our best to find some of the best signal strengthening apps out there that’ll really give you a network boost. So, as usual, if we’ve missed one that really works well for you, be sure to let everyone know in the comments below.

Mountain View today at Google I/O announced some really big changes: new APIs for Google Maps, Google+ single sign-in, cloud messaging, and Play Games. These are some exciting times for Android users, and we’ve got the rundown on all of the new services below!

Google Maps

Google Maps has received a trio of APIs: Fused Location Provider, Geofencing, and Activity Recognition. The first of three brings more accurate location signals. It even has a low-power location mode that uses less than one percent of your battery per hour! Simply amazing.

Geofencing allows for virtual fencing around a geographical area, and the last of the three, Activity Recognition, uses accelerometer data to tell if someone is, say, walking, running or driving.

Google+ single sign-in

Google earlier announced the ability to sign-into websites using your Google+ credentials. Today at Google I/O, Mountain View revealed further plans to make the feature more seamless. Once navigating to a website using your smartphone’s or tablet’s browser, you can sign into the website using Google+.

From there, it begins downloading the Android app for the website. Once it’s installed, you can launch the app and you’ll find that you’re already signed into it via Google+. It’s a small update, but makes for a more seamless browsing experience.

Cloud Messaging

Google Cloud Messaging, the push notification service that was introduced last year, is now integrated into Google Play services, and has received three new features. These include persistent connections, which will help push out messages quickly, upstream messaging for easily sending data from your app to your servers, and perhaps the most awesome feature yet: synced notifications across all of your devices.

Game services

Google Play Games services introduces a number of new APIs for developers to use, including instantaneous cloud game saves, which will be amazing for games like Angry Birds. Developers will also be able to take advantage of leaderboards and achievements.

So, it’s your standard gaming platform, like Apple’s Game Center. Google takes it a step further though. While developers will get take advantage of cloud game saves, leaderboards, and achievements, all of these APIs won’t just be available on Android — they’ll be available on iOS and the web too.

Conclusion

There are some exciting things going on in the Android world, folks. Google’s game services is going to be really helpful among the developer community considering you won’t have to worry about services like OpenFeint shutting down and essentially ruining your leaderboard, and achievement integration.

There’s only one thing I’m a tad worried about though. What if the Google Play Games API isn’t mandatory? While giving developers a choice is nice and all, it seems like it’d be a bad idea to leave the space open for third-party developers (i.e. Verizon and Playphone) to make their own gaming platform to try and trump Google’s own Play Games services.

Regardless, the features listed in this article will be rolling out today to those running Android 4.0 or higher. Are you excited for any of these new APIs and services? Sound off in the comments!

Google today announced at its Google IO conference that Android has reached 900 million activations, which is a drastic increase from the 500 million last year.

The search giant also revealed that there were 48 billion application installs on the Play Store. Hugo Barra, vice president of Android product management at Google, even said that revenue per user is 2.5 times than what it was a year ago, globally. That’s huge!

Keep in mind that the search giant only counts one activation per device regardless of how many times the device has been flashed with a ROM or passed onto another person. The Mountain View-based company doesn’t even count devices that aren’t running Google services, which means Amazon’s popular Kindle Fire lineup isn’t even included in the numbers.

It’s only a little while now before Android hits one billion activations.

Google Play Games was confirmed ahead of Google I/O just a few days ago thanks to an APK teardown, and now we have more evidence that Google is working on a Game Center-like platform thanks to an update to a unique and popular Android game called Eufloria HD.

By taking a peek in the “What’s New” tab, you’ll notice that the update states that it now has support for Google Play Games Achievements. The changelog also says that you’ll be able to sync those achievements with your Google+ profile and share them with your circles. Let’s just hope there’s an opt-in and opt-out setting for this, as I’m not sure the people in my circles want to know when I have completed an achievement.

There’s no doubt we’ll hear more about how this all works in just a few minutes here when the Google I/O keynote begins. Are you excited to hear more about Google’s Play Games service?