HTC puts out tutorials for new Eye Experience software

Just to push the issue a bit more, HTC has just released new tutorial videos to coincide with the launch of its new HTC Desire EYE smartphone, which is probably has the world’s most powerful selfie camera at the moment. The new videos - seen on HTC's YouTube channel - range from the informative tutorial to the “what were you thinking?!?” – so allow us to share these with you.

The first video show one of the Desire EYE’s very innovative features – that is, Face Tracking while on a video call. The video also gives instructions on how to share your screen if you want to show it over a video call. Pretty nifty.

The second video shows the Split Capture feature which enables the user to capture video (and take pictures, we suppose) using both front-facing and back camera. This gives you “both sides of the story”, HTC says.

The third video tells of the Auto Selfie and the Voice Selfie – two ways of easily taking photos of yourselves with the Desire EYE’s powerful 13MP front-facing camera. These features have been seen on other phones before – like priming your phone to automatically take a picture when you smile, or when you say “Cheese!”

The fourth video is where we begin to venture into strange and “why why why?!?” If you’ve ever wanted to “photoshop” your face for a selfie, then HTC gives you Live Makeup – a chance to smoothen your face before you selfie. Watch the video while we facepalm.

The fifth video is a cringefest, to be honest. HTC somehow thinks that it is “cool” to mix your face with someone else’s. Why would you do that? But if you ever wanted to, HTC has that for you, too. Oh dear.

If you currently using one of the HTC latest device like the One M8, the "EYE Experience" enhancement will be also made available to HTC's recent models soon.

SOURCE: HTC on YouTube

Story Timeline

• HTC Desire Eye leaked, with ‘ultimate selfie’ front camera


• HTC Desire EYE has your selfie needs covered on both sides


• HTC's Double Exposure event now up on YouTube

The Risk of Brick – XDA TV

If you spend any amount of time reading or hanging out in the XDA Developers Forums, you will hear people talking about bricking the device. They warn you to be careful because doing this wrong could brick your device. Developers always mention that they are not responsible if you brick your device. There are questions with people asking how to fix their brick. Do the XDA members have a stonemason fetish?

In this episode of XDA TV, Producer and XDA Recognized Contributor rirozizo gets real about the topic of device bricks. He defines what a brick is, what the difference between a hard brick and a soft brick are. Also, he talks about your options if you devices is in one of the many “bricked” states. So, if you want to learn about brick-laying, find a different video, but if you want to learn about mobile device bricks, check out this video.

Be sure to check out other great XDA TV Videos

• CM11 for Android One, Updated Galaxy Nexus GPU Drivers!


• Android App Review: Multitask with Ease with C Floating


• Device Review: Blackphone BP1


• XDA Xposed Tuesday: Don’t Get Down with OBB on Your Internal Memory


• Moto X Available in the UK, Repartitioning The Moto Defy and HTC Pico, and Making Sony S

The post The Risk of Brick – XDA TV appeared first on xda-developers.

QuickEdit, a Sleek and Quick Text Editor

If you’ve worked on a development/design project in the past, you likely found yourself wanting to edit a source file you’ve been working on, or create a quick one for an idea you’ve just had. There aren’t many text editors on Android that excel at this, but QuickEdit Text Editor by XDA Forum Member rhmsoft might be one of them. It combines many needed features for code editing with a neat interface, and then adds some more tricks.

QuickEdit Text Editor comes with all the options you’d expect from an advanced text editor: syntax highlighting for languages you’re likely to work with, line numbering, indentation, undo/redo support and more. A dark theme is also available (and it looks beautiful on AMOLED screens).

It also has several features that make code editing less frustrating on mobile devices such as fast scroll support, current line highlighting and powerful search/replace functionality (that can be launched using your device’s search button, a small detail many text editors forget about).

Where QuickEdit truly shines, though, is editing large files. Other text editors either trim large files or take a good while to load them, but still lag noticeably when scrolling (even on the more powerful devices). QuickEdit, on the other hand, is very quick to load even the largest files, and shows no lag when scrolling or editing.

It’s worth noting that QuickEdit doesn’t support editing remote files directly at the moment. However, most popular hosts (e.g. Google Drive or Dropbox) either integrate with the Android file picker (allowing you to open a remote file directly from QuickEdit), or let you edit your files through their respective apps.

If you’re interested, make sure to head over to the QuickEdit Text Editor application thread to get started!

The post QuickEdit, a Sleek and Quick Text Editor appeared first on xda-developers.

Gameloft’s Cars: Fast as Lightning now available to entertain kids (and maybe adults too)

If your younger kids constantly borrow your tablet or phone to play games, but they've exhausted all the games you've installed there, you might want to consider getting this new one from GameLoft. Based on the highly-successful (well, the first one, at least) Pixar movie Cars, arriving in Android devices is Cars: Fast as Lightning, a racing game that will appeal to the young fans of the animated flick, as well as adults who like simple racing games.

Obviously, this game is all about racing, well, cars. Characters from the movie have major roles here, including Lightning McQueen (still voiced by Owen Wilson), Mater, Francesco and many more. You can choose from among 20 Cars characters, like Radiator Springs Car, Spy Car, Tuner Car and others. You can spruce up the cars with paint jobs that will make them look cool and rad. The controls are easy to learn as you loop around tracks, holding down the pedal when you want to speed up and slowing down as you ease around the corners, almost like you would in a real car.

In one mode, you can customize the tracks by adding roller coaster-like loops so you can perform daring daredevil stunts. And if you're tired of racing, you can play the building game where you create your own Radiator Springs with 30 interactive town buildings, which features characters, buildings and landmarks that Pixar fans will recognize and enjoy. There are also animated cutscenes if you feel like just watching your favorite characters again, interacting with each other.

Now of course, you cannot expect that a game like this would appeal to adults, since its main audience are kids. But if you are a fan of Cars and you like racing games that will not make you think much, you can download Cars: Fast as Lightning from the Google Play Store for free. But it has in-app purchases so better be careful when setting your permissions, especially if it will be kids that will mostly be playing the game.

AMPY powers gadgets using movement

One of the biggest challenges that mobile users face is keeping their gadgets charged up when they are out of the home or office all day and use their smartphone frequently. Often the only choice is to go with a battery case of some sort to keep things running. A new option has hit Kickstarter called AMPY.

AMPY is a device that promises to charge your smartphone using your movement. AMPY is a wearable device that harnesses movement as you walk around during the day and turns that movement into power to keep your smartphone or other gadget running.

AMPY also interfaces with an app that will keep track of stats for you like how much time you spent running or walking, and how many steps you took. It will charge any iPhone, Android device, or USB device.

Inside the small AMPY case is a lithium ion battery to charge devices. Power in that battery also stores your activity data for about a week. The project is seeking $100,000 and has raised over $52,000 as of writing. A pledge of $75 or more will get you an AMPY with shipping expected in June.

SOURCE: Kickstarter

Interstellar war comes to Android with Sentinel 4: Dark Star

An award-winning tower-defense game has now made its way to the Android platform and it will try to wreak havoc on your productivity. Sentinel 4: Dark Star is the 4th edition in the strategy series that has you creating strategies to defend the towers you build as you explore hidden worlds within that universe. It would be easy to be conquered by the Dark Star and its intricacies though (if you're into this type of game) so download at your own risk.

The game has 26 maps with multi-screen landscapes and marathon paths and all of them can be played in endless mode, so there should be plenty to keep you occupied until your batteries run out or something. They have added even weirder aliens and space beings to challenge you while they try to destroy your towers. To beat them, you can employ an arsenal of weapons, ask for support from other sentinels, unleash drones and nukes, earn new abilities to be able to defend your strongholds and unlock Uber towers to damage your enemies' strongholds.

Graphics-wise, you could clearly see why the previous chapters in this game have won awards since its release in 2009. The last installment, Sentinel 3: Homeworld got 87% in peer-ranking site Metacritic. The creator of the game, Origin8, have outdone themselves once again, creating even more systems and worlds to explore, upping up the ante visually, and adding a new tablet interface option. You can also compete with other players in the Global Nexus chart, even those from other platforms.

Of course a game like this will cost you some cash, but based on the comments on its page, it seems like mobile gamers think it's worth it. You can get Sentinel 4: Dark Star for $2.99 from the Google Play Store, with some in-app purchases available as well.

Glympse Express adds location data to other apps

Glympse has been available for Android users for a long time now. In fact, we first talked about it hitting the Android platform way back in 2009. Glympse is an app that allows you to share you location information with other people you know for a limited amount of time.

A new app has launched called Glympse Express that brings that limited time location information capability to other apps. With Glympse Express, you can share your location information with other apps like WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, or Facebook Messenger.

The location information can be seen on a live map allowing others to come where you are. To use Glympse Express, the user has to open the app they want to share location data with and paste a link into the conversation.

After pasting it in, people in the conversation see real-time location data and you can choose people from your address book to share with. The app launched on October 9 and is 2.7MB in size; it requires Android 2.3 or higher to operate.

DOWNLOAD: Google Play