Sony’s Xperia phones to join in effort to provide cure for diseases

“Protein folding” is not a new concept – this refers to the way our bodies proteins fold into different forms that correspond to different body parts. A mistake in this folding process actually contributes to diseases and bodily malfunctions like Alzheimer’s, so it unlocking the secrets in this folding process is key to medical professionals and scientists providing cures and solutions for said diseases. But where does your Sony Xperia phone come in?

Folding@Home was an effort to distribute the computing load in simulating the folding process – the “slowest” proteins fold in a few milliseconds, so one can imagine the computing power needed to simulate this. Folding@Home has been around for a while, helping a team at Stanford University to look into the process and where it goes wrong. The effort has used the distributed computing powers of home computers, even idling desktop GPUs, PlayStation 3 units, and a whole lot more. As a result of the data gathered, the Folding@Home team has published papers leading to major advances in medicine.

Can your Sony Xperia phone help in this effort? Say for example, contribute to the folding process while you’re asleep and your phone is charging? It just might work. A typical Sony Xperia phone would be able to contribute an average 30 GFLOPs of computing power. The world record for distributed computing was “1 Petaflop” – achieved in 2012 when PlayStation 3’s contributed to Folding@Home.

A new Folding@Home app – still in its beta version – is available at the Google Play Store for all Xperia Z series smartphones, as well as the Xperia T3, T2 Ultra, M2 Aqua and C3 to contribute to this effort. It will take around 50,000 smartphones to equal that world record, but think about this – in order to achieve a data breakthrough, the Folding@Home team needs 150,000 days of computing from one phone. Split that load to 10,000 phones and the time drops to just around 2 weeks. What more if there were more than 10,000 Xperia phones contributing to this?

Do something cool for the world. If you own an Xperia model mentioned above, get the app and help out.

DOWNLOAD: Google Play Store

SOURCE: Sony Mobile

Story Timeline

• BOINC software creates a distributed smartphone computer system


• Leak shows an insanely powerful Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet Ultra


• More rumored specs of the Sony Xperia Z4 leaked

Crossy Road hands-on gameplay

With so many games on Google Play Store, the competition is fierce in terms of fighting for popularity. Crossy Roads picks up an old school concept of the retro game Frogger and utilizes the graphics of the popular modern game Minecraft. It looks catchy and has made its way across the Play Store and is catching a lot of attention. Taking on two popular concepts and forging them, seems like the new way to get a shot at fame in the mobile game industry.

The popular game released late last year for iOS and has seen an update with new characters added. If you've played Frogger then you've played Crossy Road. It's much more enhanced in terms of graphics with HD 3D blocks. Try not to get eaten alive, smashed by trucks, demolished by a train, or jumping in water and drowning, and you should be good. The gameplay is simple and mechanics are easy to learn.

Crossy Road is free, with in-game content that can be purchased. “Why did the chicken cross the road?” You tell me, that's what you start off as and you unlock other characters as you put more time into the game. With over 50 characters to look forward to, Android users get the notorious droid bug that can hopefully make it all the way over to the the other side.

Playing the game in a short amount of time, I've earned plenty of coins to upgrade and buy in-game content. If you don't have time, a mere 99 cents can buy you new characters to cross the road. Crossy Road was released and optimized for iOS but released last month for Android as an Android exclusive. The graphics are intensely colorful and shows depth. Getting hit by a vehicle or killed by an animal always has a dramatic impact.

Looks like a good time waster, with nice catchy music and sounds bits, the easy mechanics keeps me coming back for more, trying to get one step further every try. If its appealing to you, then grab it at the Play Store and try it out. Warning, you will easily get addicted (like me).

VIA: Download Google Play Store

More Motorola Lollipop updates rolling out soon

Motorola is working really hard to release Android 5.0 Lollipop updates for its latest devices. Luciano Carvalho, software engineer at Motorola Mobility Holdings, posted on his Google+ account that more Moto products are getting a taste of the sweet Lollipop this year. Even those older models from 2013 and 2014 will receive Android 5 so users can enjoy the new platform. Some Moto phone owners are reportedly receiving 5.0.2 updates. These are on-the-air (OTA) updates but are being released to a limited number of people only in different parts of the world. Once more people confirm that the Lollipop updates are good enough and if there are no big issues, Motorola will release the software update to more people.

The new Moto G was the first Moto product to officially get Android 5.0. If you own other Moto products, download the latest Motorola Updates Services app to check if you can receive the Android 5.0 update. We're certain that once you update, you'll see more bugs that need to be fixed. This is not new because updates released by Google are not really validation for all Android phones. Luciano Carvalho noted in his post that it's actually the job of phone manufacturers to fix the problem.

Motorola wants to make sure Moto phone owners continue to enjoy a smoother experience on their devices after the Android 5.0 update so if you're a Moto device user, feel free to inform the company about possible bugs you encounter.

SOURCE: Luciano Carvalho

Story Timeline

• Motorola to roll out Lollipop soon for 1st Gen Moto G


• Motorola lists Nexus 6 again, will start shipping on January 6


• Motorola returns to China with new Moto handsets

A Galaxy S6 With (Almost) Stock Android Sounds Like a Dream Come True

There are some pretty unsubstantiated and vague rumors that Samsung's new Galaxy S6 won't just have a new Note-inspired hardware design; it'll also have less ugly TouchWiz skinning than ever. Who knows if this is true! It's probably not. But man, it still sounds fantastic.

Read more...

Where Is Lollipop?

Google’s latest OS, as pretty as it is, has failed to reach even 0.1% of the Android user base, at a timeframe where KitKat was already at a respectable place in the chart. So what happened to Lollipop? Greed, laziness, carriers, OEMs, or all of them could be involved.

The post Where Is Lollipop? appeared first on xda-developers.

Control a Parrot with SmartEyeglass and a SmartWatch 2

The Sony Smartwatch 2 platform, despite being replaced by Android Wear, is not completely dead. Sony engineers decided to have some fun with it and did something straight out of Iron Man 3. See what happens when you combine the watch’s sensors, Sony’s own SmartEyeglass and a Parrot 2.0 drone.

The post Control a Parrot with SmartEyeglass and a SmartWatch 2 appeared first on xda-developers.

Kill zombies whatever way you can with The Bursting Dead

With the huge popularity of the TV adaptation of the comic book series The Walking Dead and more upcoming TV series like iZombie, zombies are still very much a huge thing in pop culture. And they've sort of evolved now from just being the dumb, extreme slowpokes who just want to eat your brains (but yeah, they really do want to eat your brains). Another Android game hopes you'll enjoy killing zombies whatever way you can with The Bursting Dead.

Based on the game's name itself, you know that this is the kind that doesn't need any backstory or any more motivation to fulfill your destiny, other than to just escape becoming a zombie yourself by killing all that you come across. "Blow all zombies to dust," is what the game calls your mission. There are eleven different characters that are all ready to kick zombie butt. And there are eleven different zombies that are all out to get you and your brains.

The game also has 200 levels and different game modes as well. You'll be able to use 24 different types of weapon to make the zombies "burst", but you are also free to manipulate the game play and fight whatever way you think is best when it comes to killing the undead. All you have to do is use the virtual joystick to move and attack and then hold it down to move and run.

If you want to get more coins and prizes, you can take a break from the zombie killing and play some slot machines. That way you can have more virtual money to buy or upgrade your weapons so you can get back to bursting the undead. You can get The Bursting Dead for free from the Google Play Store, but with in-app purchases available.