New apps need lovin’ too, right? Every day there are thousands of additions to the Google Play Store, but many go unnoticed and never receive the attention they deserve. We’ve shown in the past that this community can discover great apps and propel them to new heights. Our weekly Fresh Meat column highlights new apps with fewer than 100,000 installs. Browse our new Android app picks below and let us know which ones you enjoy.

Android L Keyboard

Description: The keyboard from the Android L Developer Preview, modified to run as a standalone app by Chrisch1974 and I. Free, no ads, no bloat. No root required. Old users who can’t change to Material may need a reinstall. To show Emojis button, hold down Enter key.

Inside.com

Description: Inside is a real-time mobile news app, designed to be the most efficient way to stay informed. Each day, Inside delivers hundreds of the world’s most important and fascinating stories, all selected and written by our team of talented news curators.

Cardboard

Description: Cardboard puts virtual reality on your smartphone. Try a variety of immersive demos on Android, and get inspired to build your own using the VR Toolkit at http://g.co/cardboard.

YouTube Creator Studio

Description: The official YouTube Creator Studio app makes it faster and easier to manage your channel on the go. Check out your latest stats, respond to comments and get customized notifications so you can stay connected from anywhere.

Parrot Flower Power

Description: The application connects your Flower Power to the Parrot Cloud (via 3G/4G or Wi-Fi) where the data is analyzed. After the data is analyzed, you receive an alert in real time when one of your plants has special water, fertilizer, light or temperature needs.

Nudge

Description: Nudge brings all of your healthy living together in one app with one score. Connect Nudge with your favorite health-tracking apps and wearables like RunKeeper, Moves, Fitbit and more to see how your Nudge Factor stacks up against your friends.

SpeakingPhoto

Description: It is the simplest way to turn your pictures into stories. Transform everyday photos into cherished memories you’ll want to share with friends and family for generations.

NBC Sports Tour de France

Description: Experience the 2014 Tour de France like never before…watch every stage LIVE on your Android handheld or tablet device. And track the peloton in real-time with interactive maps and profiles. It’s as close as you can get to the Tour without a passport!

VLC for Android Beta

Description: VLC media player is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player that plays most multimedia files as well as discs, devices and network streaming protocols. This is a BETA version of the port of VLC media player to the Android™ platform. It plays both audio and video.

Heads Up! – notifications

Description: Never miss your notifications! During the intensive game, or during hard work – Heads Up! will always save your day. This app will let you receive floating notifications from selected apps which you will be able to dismiss – or, if you want, they will disappear all by themselves.

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So far, OnePlus has kept itself busy in 2014 by teasing its One smartphone, officially introducing the device and then inviting consumers to buy one. Just because OnePlus is done hyping up and revealing its handset doesn’t mean that it’s going to just sit back and handle sales, though, as a new leak has revealed that OnePlus may be cooking up another new device.

An image of the alpha version of the OnePlus website that shows an entry for a “OnePlus Tab” has been leaked. According to @evleaks, the screenshot was taken just a few days ago on July 29.

The bad news for those of us that are hungry for details is that that’s all that we know about the OnePlus Tab right now. The name suggests that it’s a tablet-type of device, and considering that OnePlus used CyanogenMod on its smartphone, we wouldn’t be surprised if that OS made an appearance on the OnePlus Tab as well.

Despite the fact that we don’t know much about this OnePlus Tab, it may still be a product worth keeping an eye on. After all, the OnePlus One features some pretty impressive specs and only costs $299 without a contract, so it’ll be interesting to see what OnePlus can do with a tablet.

What features would you like to see included with a OnePlus tablet?

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Project Ara is the long-awaited effort to bring a modular smartphone to the masses. Instead of buying a smartphone and tossing it out when you upgrade, you’ll be able to swap out modules just by pulling them out and sliding new ones in. Everything from the processor to the display will be replaceable, and it seems people love this concept.

Sadly, we have some bad news. The Chief Designer of Project Ara, Dan Makoski, has left Google. His two-year contract with the ATAP team (now part of Google) has expired, and it’s not known whether he had a chance to renew the contract. He’s off to work at Capital One to try to change the way people and banks manage money.

Of course, this leaves Project Ara without a chief designer, which is quite an important role. We have no doubt that the project will manage just fine, as it’s come too far to just stop here, but it’ll be interesting to see how the team will work around the loss of Makoski. And of course we’ll have to see if other members of the team will be leaving during the development of Ara.

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For Samsung, every day is a day to leak a new tablet. Because nearly every day, Samsung has a new tablet in the making. There are already the new Galaxy Tab 4 series, the Tab S series, the Note PRO series and a few others. Why does it need to release more tablets? We don’t know, but there are two new tablet model numbers that have been leaked.

The SM-T360 and SM-T365 have both been leaked on the Samsung Scandinavia website. These might be two different models of the same tablet, or just two tablets of the same size. Since the SM-T33x is 8 inches and the SM-T53x is 10.1 inches, it could be assumed that the SM-T36x tablets will be 9-inch Tab 4 budget tablets. However, we can’t be for sure.

It’s actually pretty funny how many tablets Samsung is releasing, even though only a few are really worth buying. A 9-inch tablet won’t change the market whatsoever, nor is choice in half-inch increments particularly necessary. What do you think of Samsung releasing every size of tablet possible? Tell us in the comments!

Via: SamMobile
Source: Samsung (2)

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If you’re a Nexus owner, you probably know that you can check out Android L in its testing stage by flashing a beta. However, you also know that it’s buggy and unfinished, like betas usually are. There are many things that are simply incomplete about the software, making it ill suited for daily use. One of those problems have been fixed, but not by Google.

The new notification system is more up front and more bold. I actually quite like how it looks. But one thing it’s missing is a way to clear all notifications. When your phone starts getting filled up with notifications, you’ll have to clear them all manually, one by one. That’s quite a big oversight, Google.

Luckily, developer Koush has created an app that adds a Clear Notification button to the top of the Android L notification area. It’s simple, it works and Google should be ashamed. Hit the source link to download the app for your enjoyment, and tell us, are you daily driving the Android L preview? Leave a comment!

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Rumblings of a new Nvidia Shield device have been going on for a few months now, and today that trend continues with more details on Nvidia’s Shield follow-up.

The Global Certification Forum has posted an entry to its website for an Nvidia Shield product that’s described as a “notebook/tablet.” The device, which was certified on June 27, is listed as having cellular connectivity.

A mysterious Nvidia tablet popped up in some benchmark test results back in May that may be this new Shield tablet. Codenamed “Mocha,” the device is said to have a 7.9-inch 2048×1536 display, quad-core Tegra K1 processor, 7-megapixel rear and 4.8-megapixel cameras, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. Android 4.4.2 is said to be powering this mysterious Mocha.

While Nvidia hasn’t made any official statements regarding a new Shield device, we wouldn’t be surprised if such a product were in the pipeline. It’s likely that Nvidia would include its new Tegra K1 chip in whatever new mobile hardware that it’s cooking up, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it threw in a super high-res display to compete with other recently-released tablets.

Now we just need to wait for Nvidia to come forward and spill the nitty gritty details on its new Shield device. Here’s to hoping that, now that the new Shield has been certified, an official announcement isn’t too far off.

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Google’s list of acquisitions is growing once again today, as the Big G has snapped up streaming music service Songza.

Songza has officially announced that it’s been acquired by Google. Details of the agreement aren’t yet known, but Songza promises that there are “no immediate changes” planned for its service. However, it does say that it plans to continue to make its streaming offering “faster, smarter and even more fun to use.”

Rumors about a possible Google acquisition of Songza began swirling last month. It’s not known exactly what Google plans to do with Songza and its music curation technology, but if I were a betting man, I’d wager that we could end up seeing Google utilize the tech to improve Google Play Music All Access’s playlist and music curation capabilities.

Have you ever used Songza?

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The FTC has filed a complaint against T-Mobile regarding those pesky subscription-based “premium SMS services.” According to the complaint, T-Mobile has done quite a few things wrong here. First of all, despite many complaints and refund requests, T-Mobile has done nothing to stop fraudulent charges from these companies and has even profited from it. As much as 40 percent of what is charged by these services could have gone to T-Mobile.

There are also reports of T-Mobile refusing to give full refunds for these charges, giving partial refunds or even claiming that customers have authorized these charges despite there being no proof of this. And thanks to T-Mobile’s poor bill layout, finding fraudulent charges is extremely difficult. The charges are not shown on any summary and have to be found elsewhere in the massive amounts of papers. And in the case of prepaid customers, the charges are taken off of their prepaid cards with no bills to look through.

These complaints are absolutely unproven so far, and will be handled by a court. Until then, we won’t know if T-Mobile is guilty of any wrongdoings. However, these seem like pretty shady business practices with some serious lack of consumer protection. Have you had any experiences with these pesky premium SMS services?

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Moto Maker has slowly been rolling out to various countries of the world, bringing custom devices to those who want them. First available here in the US, Moto Maker allows you to customize a device (currently only the Moto X) by changing various aspects, like color and finish. The latest country to get Moto Maker is Germany.

Now, residents of Germany can buy themselves a custom Moto X, complete with wood backs. Though we’re not sure if that’s a good idea, as the Moto X+1 may be announced in as little as a month. Getting the previous generation model right before the new one will be released isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but you might want to wait to see if the X+1 intrigues you… or if the older model goes down in price.

If you want to build yourself a Moto X, even if you don’t end up buying, hit the source link and head to the German version of Moto Maker! And of course, tell us in the comments if you plan on picking up a Moto X.

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Samsung has previously had problems with its suppliers, as have all companies, so it decided to investigate. The company commissioned independent inspections of 100 Chinese suppliers it uses to see how much illegal activity is going on. And sadly, the results aren’t very good.

59 out of the 100 suppliers did not have proper safety equipment or monitoring systems, 33 didn’t dispose of waste properly, and more than half didn’t provide overtime hours mandated by Chinese law. There were plenty of other violations as well, but luckily, no cases of underage workers was found. Still, it’s a pretty poor situation.

It’s surprising and pretty decent of Samsung to publicly release these reports, as such negative press would drive many other companies to cover it up. Let us not forget that many companies use these suppliers, but most haven’t done anything about such issues. However, it seems Samsung is dedicated to changing this. The company has worked with many suppliers before to train workers and change poor conditions, so we might see this continue on a bigger scale. Good on Samsung for actually doing something to improve the lives of the workers, instead of installing anit-suicide nets and leaving it at that.

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