Gadgetory

hello again ladies and gentlemen I'm Joe Hindy the android authority app guy and welcome back to Google Play weekly this last week was IFA which means that Hardware stole the show but the google play store wasn't silent either we have some bad news about the nexus for some great news about paypal and twitter was everywhere so let's get started the first thing we're going to talk about this week is twitter because twitter had a really busy week they started by opening up their beta to the public for a limited time people who got in before it closed will get to experience features ahead of the actual release we think samsung might have gotten in there because they accidentally leaked an image of the tablet-optimized twitter app ahead of its official release oops the last thing that happened was the app itself got an update in the latest update there were the boilerplate bug fixes and performance enhancements however one nifty feature did come out of this and that is a better way to track conversations now conversations will be connected by a blue line so you can see the progression of the conversation all at once so who's excited about blackberry messenger I didn't get into smartphones until after that craze but I do know that if blackberry has one asset left it's worth anything it's blackberry messenger recently a beta tester put on a video to show people what the new blackberry messenger for Android would look like and here are a few clips from it if you're a fan of blackberry devices then this should all look very familiar to you the design is pretty much exactly like it is on blackberry OS much like Microsoft's apps like outlook.com blackberry is tossing hollow to the wind in favor of its own design the best feature revealed so far is swapping contact info with someone using NFC just tap the phones together and your friend is added to your list automatically we don't traditionally cover hardware in the Google Play weekly show but this week we made an exception because it was hardware that was sold in the google play store this week we say goodbye to the Nexus 4 8 gigabyte edition recently it was reduced to the absurd price of a hundred and ninety nine dollars and it sold out now rumors are that it's never coming back because it's going to be replaced by the Nexus 5 collector's item the popular rumor going around the internet is that google is selling the remaining stock of nexus 4 devices so they can make room for the nexus 5 with all the stuff going around about the nexus 5 android kitkat and the supposed leaked images of the nexus 5 in the kit kat statue video it makes a little sense we salute you nexus 4 you had a good run paypal is rolling out an update and it really is quite huge the premise is that you can now pay for things with paypal at physical locations straight from the app think Google Wallet without all the US carrier controversy I haven't gotten the update yet so here's a quick video of the TechCrunch guys giving it a go one of the new features discussed is the ability to check in to a location much like you can on Facebook or four square then you can order things and pay right away from the paypal app it isn't available at a lot of places yet but the expansion is in progress to see the full interview check out the stories mentioned link below the last thing we want to talk about this week is an update to the BBC iPlayer app that will let you download videos for offline viewing the update is compatible with Android 4.0 and up and pretty much all devices that run android 4.0 the update works like this you can download any show you want to watch another high or standard definition the video will then have a 30-day time limit once you hit play that limit is reduced to seven days so you won't be able to use this to store video indefinitely but if you need to download some Doctor Who for the train ride to work this will do it so who wants to see some trending apps this week next up are the five apps that cut our attention the most this past week if at any point you want to check these apps out the links are in the video description the first app will take a look at this week is called sidebar plus as you have probably guessed by now it creates a sidebar from which you can launch pretty much everything you can create multiple bars on the side so you can access apps settings bookmarks and various other items with a quick swipe it's pretty useful and customizable and there is a free and paid version the Dropbox and Google Drive are great for storing photos but they also store everything else as well and things can get a little cluttered and photo feed the only thing that ever gets backed up our photos some features of the app or automatic uploads from your gallery albums and other options if you're a photo buff and you need a place just to keep your pictures this is worth taking a look at eight fit is apparently never going to die and this game called hell the dungeon again takes advantage of that in this dungeon crawler you essentially just walk around and kill the bad guys it's very simple but surprisingly fun even for an 8-bit game no really it's actually pretty good we covered the release of Geekbench 3 a few weeks ago and it's nice to see it trending the benchmark claim to fame the ability to properly benchmark devices for day-to-day use instead of the typical graphic intensive gaming benchmarks that many people rely on heavily there are a few problems like Android 4.3 compatibility but other than that people seem to like it last up is a checkerboard strategy game called blood battalion the premise for this game is pretty simple you play out battles on a checkerboard using abilities and player types to your advantage it's quick to play easy to learn and most of the work gets done for you also it's free and there's nothing wrong with that once again I'm Joe Hindy the android authority app guy feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channel and if you liked this show check out some of our other ones the written companion to this video is in the video description along with the social media links thank you for watching and have a wonderful day you