A. Rehman Maqbool

Mobile Content Writer
Technology enthusiast. I love exploring, reviewing and sharing anything related to Google's mobile OS, Android. Follow me on Google+

Create, Download, Randomize & Backup Custom Boot Animations On Android

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When talking of tweaking your smartphone’s UI and firmware settings to the very core, hardly any OS comes close to Android. From boot animation to system and sound profiles, Android users have the liberty to tinker with virtually any aspect of their devices as they like. Speaking of boot animation customization, previously-reviewed AniBoot by SoCal Devs is a fine example of how easy it is to download and install custom boot animations on Android. If, however, you felt somewhat unsatisfied with the various animations that the app had on offer, or wished to have some more control over modifying the settings of your favorite boot animations, then you must give Boot Animations by JRummy Apps a try. This particular solution from the developers of ROM Toolbox, BusyBox Installer, Root Explorer and numerous other nifty apps, offers arguably the most comprehensive collection of custom Android boot animations that can be configured in a number of ways. There are more than 300 different high quality stock and custom boot animations that can be downloaded from the online servers. Whether you’re looking for the stock Honeycomb, ICS or Jelly Bean boot animation, some custom Android ROM goodies, a random animation upon rebooting your device, or itching to create custom animations out of your own select GIF images, this app has you covered. Read More

Stream Airplay Audio From An iOS Device To Android Using HIFI

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Being Apple’s proprietary wireless media streaming protocol suite, the renowned AirPlay feature can be used to remotely stream multimedia content across various iDevices. Courtesy of the company’s decision to authorize other manufacturers to utilize the audio (and in some cases, video) streaming aspect of AirPlay, there are quite a few solutions out their that allow non-iOS devices to receive streamed media content from any AirPlay-compatible iDevice. XDA member Android-HiFI has been busy developing an app that enables your Android device to act as an AirPlay receiver, which means you can now listen to whatever audio is being streamed from your Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod touch on your Android device. The app sports a rather simple interface, and can run in the background. For streaming video content, you’ll only be able to listen to its audio. Other salient features of the app include manual adjustment of playback delay to sync audio with videos or other receiver devices, auto-adjustment of volume levels in case of incoming calls or upon unplugging the headset or turning off Bluetooth, and the option to keep the screen awake during playback. Read More

Current Caller ID By WhitePages Is A Social CID App For Android

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WhitePages, one of the leading people & business contact lookup services, has just launched a rebranded and revamped version of their famous Caller ID Android app with a fresh look and a plethora of new features. With what’s now being titled in the Google Play Store as Current Caller ID, Android users get to see a wonderful blend of an intuitive caller ID UI with real-time informative content based on your callers’ location, social network updates from Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn, and the extent of your interaction with them. In addition, the app helps you easily and instantly identify callers – whether individuals or businesses – by pulling contact information from no less than 300 million registered phone numbers stored in WhitePages’ extensive and constantly-updated database, and displaying it right on your Android’s caller ID screen. Current Caller ID is more than just a gorgeous-looking social caller ID app; it is also laced with plenty of cool infographic content that helps you sneak peek into your calling and texting habits by showing you detailed statistics pertaining to your most frequently called and texted to numbers, your favorite time of making these interactions, and the mode in which you interact with a particular contact the most. Continue reading past the break to find out what else Current Caller ID for Android has on offer. Read More

GO SMS Pro For Android Gets Facelift, Cloud Message Management & More

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GO SMS Pro, the crowd-favorite and feature-filled alternative messaging Android app, has just received a massive update in the Google Play Store, which introduces us to a brand new UI and several handy features that you won’t want to miss out in a hurry. Currently standing at v4.60, the app gets a huge facelift, courtesy of a well-polished and crispier main interface, message bubbles, as well as notification style that help it get closer to Holo-style visual goodness. Also included within the package are several nifty free and premium features, including protection of your GO SMS Private Box via gesture lock and ability to hide the feature’s access icon, enhanced GO Chat experience, improved Facebook Friends sync and recognition via avatars, schedule-based local settings backup, native support for management of SMS backup files stored on cloud, and last but not the least, extensive cloud-based GO SMS messages, chat and backup management support through an interactive web app. Details on all the features to follow after the break. Read More

WiFi Shoot! For Android Allows Photo & Video Sharing Over Wi-Fi Direct

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No matter from whatever perspective you look at it, the emergence of Android as one of the top-notch contemporary mobile operating systems is, to say the least, quite encouraging. Although each subsequent iteration of Google’s mobile OS is known to bring some innovative and user-friendly features to the table, none has managed to get as much attention and admiration as Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Included within this ground-breaking version of Android were a couple of very handy wireless file sharing methods in the form of Near Field Communication (NFC) Beam and Wi-Fi Direct. For those unfamiliar with the latter, it can, at best, be described as a super-fast version of Bluetooth file transfer wherein you don’t require any Wi-Fi router or Access Point (AP) in between to share data from one Wi-Fi Direct compatible device to the other. Instead, it’s direct device-to-device file sharing at super-high speed. So far, we haven’t seen too many apps taking advantage of said feature, but thanks to the developer community, one of the first-of-its kind solutions has finally arrived, and it’s quite a useful one, too. Currently in beta, WiFi Shoot! puts the aforementioned Wi-Fi Direct feature to good use, allowing Android users to wirelessly share photos and videos with each other. Read More

PhotoUp: Facebook Camera-Like App For Android With Instant Upload

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Back in May, the social networking giant, Facebook, announced a very fine photo capturing, editing and bulk-uploading tool for iOS users in the form of Facebook Camera. The app also brought with it several slick features, including Instagram-esque filters and effects, updated photo feed of your Facebook Friends, option to add custom tags and captions to photos, and plenty more. However, as far as Android is concerned, users of Google’s mobile OS are still awaiting the official Facebook Camera app to head their way. That being said, with the app of the quality and price ($0) of PhotoUp at their disposal, Android users can safely argue that they have a way better solution to play around with. Fresh from the oven, this Android-exclusive app has been designed to help users with managing their Facebook photos. Apart from supporting Facebook Camera-style batch image uploading, capturing, tagging, captioning, geo-tagging, and editing (via dozens of filters), PhotoUp brings Dropbox and Google+ style instant photo uploading to the table, and in doing so, it puts you in control over the Album to which you wish to upload these photos, their preferred image quality, and that one favorite filter of yours that will be automatically applied to all the photos pre-upload. Read More

Enjoy Rule-Based Wi-Fi Connectivity On Android With Better Wifi On/Off

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Android users conscious about their devices’ rather limited battery life constantly keep searching for reliable and convenient means to minimize use of resources that drain the battery the most. As we have discussed on so many previous occasions, one of the most effective ways of ensuring that your device’s battery doesn’t drain all that quickly is to keep a close check on Wi-Fi usage. There are quite a few handy solutions in this regard that can be employed to make sure that the Wi-Fi radio on your Android doesn’t remain unnecessarily and/or consistently activated. Previously-reviewed Sentry, that brought with it three-way automated Wi-Fi toggling on Android, is arguably one of the most hassle-free solutions that we have come across so far. However, an XDA member, chamonix, has been busy prepping his very own solution that can, at best, be cited as an enhanced version of the aforementioned Sentry. Currently in beta, Better Wifi On/Off brings forth a comparatively extended pool of conditions that will determine when to enable Wi-Fi connection on your Android, and when not to. Like Sentry, Better Wifi On/Off is Holo-themed, involves minimal configurations, and has the capacity to automatically enable your Android’s Wi-Fi on boot, upon screen unlock, and in case where an active internet connection is detected. That, however, constitutes only half of the app’s features. To explore the complete list of rules, continue reading past the break. Read More

Appy Gamer: A Sleek & Customizable News App For Gamers [Android, iOS]

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Being a regular smartphone apps reviewer, I feel absolutely blessed to come across offerings from some of the giants and recognized names in business. Looking at the events of the past three days, first it was team Root Uninstaller that came up with Smart Settings – a nifty solution to personalize and automatically switch between Android sound and system profiles. Then yesterday, OneLouder Apps introduced us to arguably the most innovative and feature-rich Twitter client for Android and iOS-powered devices in the form of Slices for Twitter. Today is the turn of MobilesRepulic – the creators of several intuitive news aggregating smartphone apps, such as Appy Geek, Glam Life, News Republic and Sports Republic – to unleash yet another gorgeous-looking, free news app. While Appy Geek was aimed at geeks and tech lovers, Glam Life had you covered with all the latest happenings from the fashion world, Sports Republic tried to attract avid sports followers, and News Republic covered news stories from almost all wakes of life, the team’s latest release, Appy Gamer, aims to be the hardcore gamers’ one-stop shop for getting daily doze of gaming news from virtually every known platform, including PC, mobile, Xbox, PS3, Nintendo and almost every reliable news source out there. Read More

OneLouder’s Slices: One Of The Best, Most Innovative Twitter Apps For Android & iOS

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OneLouder Apps have a thing for smartphone apps based on social networking, as can be seen with almost all their previous releases, including BaconReader, 1Weather and SportCaster. Oh, and did we forget to mention Friendcaster and TweetCaster, their biggest offerings to Android and iOS users in this regard? Of course, not. With a truly powerful and intuitive unofficial Twitter client already under their belt in the form of TweetCaster, you won’t back too many companies to dare release another candidate, especially when the market is already brimming with all sorts and sizes of third-party Twitter apps, and more importantly, when your own existing offering is raking rich accolades from Twitter-maniacs from all across the globe. That’s not the case with OneLouder Apps, though, as they’ve released to the Google Play Store, Amazon Appstore and the iTunes App Store one of the most feature-laden, aesthetically appealing and innovative unofficial Twitter app by the name of Slices For Twitter. Besides being one of the most complete Twitter clients for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, Slices brings to the table several handy feature that had, so far, been missed quite badly by impulsive tweeters. These include slicing down your Twitter Timeline to view all content under various categories (referred to as Slices), extensive pool of categories to explore, pluck and follow content from, thorough search across the Twitter network to find and bookmark content of interest, way better in-app navigation and content filtering to instantly access the required Twitter sections, sneak peek into your Twitter world via detailed statistical analysis, and lots more. Read More

Formvote Brings Its Vote & Discussion Based Q&A App To Android

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Curious about who’s going to win the most number of gold medals at the London Olympics, and who’ll have to make do with the wooden spoon? Want to get the general public response about the best vacation spot in the world? Itching to find out which smartphone OS is better between Android and iOS? As long as you’re content with getting just plain text-based answers to all your burning questions, you can resort to a variety of online services, such as Ask.com, Yahoo! Answers and Answers.com, but if you’re looking for a Q&A based platform that blends the elements of crowdsourcing with socializing and interactive vote-based answering, then you must give Formvote a try. Using this user-friendly platform, you can post your own questions, supplement them with images, videos and all the available choices for answers, and get the opinion of worldwide users. Similarly, you can view a live feed of questions posted by users from all across the globe and help them with finding the answers by voting on their posts. Formvote also lets you follow other users’ posts, make friends with them, share private messages with them, and indulge in discussions on any post that requires some sort of argumentation to help you reach to a better conclusion. How about posting and voting on questions on-the-go right from your Android smartphone? That’s right, the official Formvote app for Android and iOS has just recently been released to the Google Play Store, as well as the iTunes App Store, and we’ll be reviewing it for you after the break. Read More

Smart Settings: Ultra-Customizable Automated Profile Switching On Android

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When discussing some of the most reputed Android app developers, you can ill-afford to overlook Root Uninstaller – the creators of some very fine apps, such as Root Uninstaller, Smart RAM Booster, 1Tap Quick Bar and quite a few other handy tools. Each time these guys release an app to the Google Play Store, users know that they’re in for an effective and impressive solution to their routine Android-specific issues. Same is the case with the team’s latest release, Smart Settings, that can, at best, be deemed as a powerful combo of hyper-extensive Android sound and system profile customization and event-triggered profile management. This fully Holo-themed and free app is aimed at users who’re either discontent with the rather constrained and disorganized stock profile settings, or are looking for convenient and automated means to switch between the required profiles on their Android. Not only Smart Settings consolidates your system’s network, display, sound and sync settings under one hood, but also lets you extensively personalize each, and switch between the required ones with a tap. In addition, it can also automatically switch between various user-defined profiles as per the specified rules for battery level, WiFi status and/or custom time intervals. Read More

Official Android Client Of Online Photo Aggregator Pictarine Released

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With the previously reviewed web app, Pictarine, we have already seen an effective and well-crafted photo consolidating platform that allows users to aggregate their photos from a plethora of different online services under one roof. Using the web service, you can associate accounts of your most frequently used cloud, social, micro-blogging and photo hosting services, create custom albums to fill them with photos from whatever services you prefer, and share the best ones with your buddies with ease. Now, if you’re an Android user, rejoice, for the official Android app of Pictarine has just been released in the Google Play Store with the same set of goodies. Apart from serving as a nifty local image browser, the mobile app supports integration with as many as 11 different online services, from which you can pull all your and your friends’/followers’ photos, and interact with them accordingly. Just like the web app itself, the mobile variant of Pictarine allows you to create custom playlists, complete with the best images from any of your favorite services or those lying within your device’s gallery. The most fascinating aspect of the app remains its complete offline browsing feature, meaning that you can access almost all the content that you last viewed on Pictarine even when not connected to the internet. Read More

MoboPlayer: Free, Feature-Rich Android Media Player With Floating Window

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Android users have the option to resort to some quality media playing apps in order to enjoy their favorite music and videos on their devices. Previously reviewed MX Video Player, Wondershare Player and Super Video, Floating & Popup are a few names that deserve a mention in discussion of some of the most feature-rich, free media players for Android. While all aforementioned names are relatively new to the scene, there are a few candidates that have been around for quite some time now, trying to attract masses with their own set of goodies. One such very fine app has been MoboPlayer that is not only graphically rich, but packs enough quality and a broad set of features to be given a shot. As the article progresses, you shall be able to unveil the amazingly impressive features that the app possesses; however, it is worth mentioning here that with the latest update, MoboPlayer has transcended beyond being just a simple media player, as the Samsung Galaxy S III style floating window capability has been thrown into the mix as well. This particular feature of the app allows you to enjoy your favorite videos atop your Android’s homescreen or any other app that you want to have opened on your device without interrupting video playback. Read More

beeZee For Android Allows Schedule Based Auto Replies To Calls & Texts

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Staying in touch with your friends, colleagues, clients and loved ones is, no doubt, of ample significance, but there ought to be situations when you’re busy enough to respond to their calls and texts in a timely manner. Surely, in all such cases, nobody fancies keeping their contacts worried about your whereabouts simply because you can aren’t able to get back to them in time, and this is where smartphone messaging apps with integrated automatic responding/replying feature comes into play. We’ve previously reviewed one such simple yet effective app called Can’t Text… that can automatically reply to all the missed calls and text messages on your behalf via context-specific custom SMS messages. New to the market, beeZee is yet another remarkable addition to the list of Android apps belonging to the aforementioned genre that takes said concept even further by letting users post the same automated custom text as their Facebook status updates. Not just that; the app also allows you to activate its scheduled auto-respondent feature in a couple of ways: by specifying an estimated timer or by setting an expiration time for the profile. Moreover, it can automatically enable silent mode on your device as soon as a beeZee profile is enabled, so that you may work, sleep or study uninterrupted while beeZee handles and replies to your contacts’ queries. Read More

Manage Your Delicious Tags & Bookmarks With Droidicious For Android

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Social bookmarking and bookmark sharing web services are gradually increasing with the increase in the overall usage of the internet, and the competition in this regard is certainly heating up at a matching pace. When talking of some quality services belonging to said genre, Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon are a few names that instantly pop up in one's mind, but above all, there is Delicious (aka del.icio.us) – an innovative web service that focuses solely on letting users store, share and explore tag-laden bookmarks pertaining to virtually every topic that exists in the wide world of web. Quite surprisingly, the service doesn't yet support a companion app that can help users access their Delicious content right from their mobile devices. That said, there are quite a few third-party Delicious apps available to Android users that try to fill the void, but none of them is known to be offering the complete set of Delicious goodies. Adding to the list of candidates is Droidicious, another promising unofficial Delicious client with some much sought-after features; the most noteworthy of which remains remote access to, and sync with, your Delicious account, a beautifully and smartly designed Holo-themed UI with full support for Android tablets, and a plethora of customary Delicious features that will certainly make your social bookmarking experience on Android more enhanced, fun and thorough. Read More

How To Get Jelly Bean Style Makeover & Features On Any Android Device

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At Google I/O 2012, not only was the world introduced to Nexus 7 - the first ever Android tablet in the Nexus series - but the event also brought with it the announcement of the latest iteration of Google’s mobile OS, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. As it turned out, not even the most die-hard Android fanboys had anticipated the goodies that Big G had up their sleeves for the latest version of Android, especially considering that it saw the version number of the OS leap by a mere 0.1 points from its predecessor, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. However, the fact of the matter remains that Jelly Bean is hands down the fastest, smoothest, safest and most user-friendly version of Android to have arrived to date. Ranging from the knowledge-powered Google Now to a better predictive keyboard and expandable notifications to auto adjustable widgets, there are dozens of innovative features in Jelly Bean to look forward to. However, as long as you can manage to go through our detailed post covering the most noteworthy features of Jelly Bean, we won’t be required to repeat them here, since this particular post focuses on the apps and mods that can help you get the taste of Jelly Bean on almost any Android device. Read More

Reddit ET: An Elegant Android Reddit Client With Extended Filters

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In spite of not having an official Reddit client, Android users are blessed with plenty of quality third-party Reddit apps. As can be seen in our comprehensive compilation of the crowd-favorite Reddit apps for Android, each candidate brings something visually as well as functionally fresh to the table, yet one can’t help but be startled upon seeing an alternative that is laced with several never-seen-before goodies. Fresh to the market, Reddit ET happens to be one such power-packed unofficial Reddit app for Android that has in it what it takes for an app to claim as the being the most complete solution belonging to its genre. Like most apps mentioned in our best Reddit apps collection post, Reddit ET sports true flavors of Ice Cream Sandwich, with Holo-style menus, dropdowns and tabs/columns. Also included within the package are several typical Reddit features, including threaded comments (with expand/collapse option), native browser, up/down voting, Subreddit un/subscription and searching, multiple themes, option to save, share, hide and/or reply to posts, custom link and text submission, save photos to SD card, complete Inbox support (with customized message sync & notification), wide array of options to filter content, fully customizable & highly informative homescreen widget, NSFW support, navigation via swipe gestures, and inline text & image preview etc. What’s different in all that, you may ask? In order to find the answer, continue reading past the break. Read More

WebSnap: Capture Selective Or Full Websites & View Them In A Live Widget [Android]

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With the previously reviewed SnowDeer Web Scrapper, we have already seen how to effectively capture snapshots of an entire webpage on Android. Though quite helpful in its own respect, said tool was effective only in situations that demanded grabbing snapshots of the complete page. What if you were to capture a specific area or elements of the required website? New to the Play Store, WebSnap is a promising Android app that makes capturing select parts of any webpage as easy as one-two-three. Just like SnowDeer, WebSnap comes with a built-in browser that you can use to explore and capture virtually any part of the required website. It also supports UA String selection to help you quickly switch between mobile and desktop layout of the current website. In addition, it provides easy-to-use navigation controls, supports pinch-to-zoom gestures, and lets you natively manage, preview and share your snapshots. All aforementioned features aside, the mainstay of WebSnap remains its nifty little dynamic homescreen widget that not only sports the captured view of your preferred website, but can also be set to automatically update as per user-defined intervals. Read More

Top 5 Android Apps To Tweet Longer Than 140 Characters

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As we all know, popular micro-blogging phenomenon, Twitter, allows users post tweets up to just 140 characters long. If you wish to post a message longer than that, you’ll need to resort to other web apps, such as TwitLonger, TweetExtend, RichTweet, TMI.ME, JumboTweet and EZTweets etc. Just like the Twitter web service itself, its official Android client doesn’t let users post a tweet longer than the conventional 140-character mark. Worse yet, Android users don’t have the luxury of resorting to a standalone app to post longer tweets, either. Although the previously reviewed Tweet Longer For Twitter app emerged as a worthy candidate in this regard, it didn’t last long in the market, leaving Android users yearning for an alternative solution. While we may not be able to present you with another standalone solution, we can bring to your attention several other third-party Twitter clients for Android that support integration with one of the aforementioned services, and hence, let you post tweets without taking the notorious character limit into consideration. Continue reading past the break to reveal the list. Read More

Get Voice Enabled Google Now On Any Android Device Running ICS

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A couple of weeks ago, we posted a method to get Google Now on devices running Android 4.0 or higher. Although said procedure was effective enough to give your rooted Android device a taste of the revamped and intelligent version of Google Search (now popularly known as Google Now), it lacked a very important feature: voice search. However, as is so often the case in the Android realm, a workaround is never too far away. XDA member SilentStormer has managed to come up with a solution that lets you use Google Now through voice recognition, too. As with the previous method, this latest solution is also meant to be working with just AOSP-based ICS ROMs, and hence requires a rooted Android device. It must be mentioned here that the solution mentioned in this particular post requires a couple of additional steps in order to get things sorted out accordingly. That said, should you be able to follow the process correctly, rest assured that you won’t be missing Jelly Bean on your device a great deal – not at least in terms of availing the much-revered Google Now functionality. Read More