Gadgetory

hello again ladies and gentlemen I'm Joe Hindy the android authority app guy it's Friday and welcome back to the Google Play weekly show this week we're going to talk about a couple of Android applications that were mining dogecoins the freedom of microsoft office and a whole lot more so let's get started as most of you are aware the new HTC One was announced this last week and with it came a couple of applications from HTC in the google play store along with announcing and releasing the new HTC one HTC also put their service pack and the HTC blinkfeed launcher on the Google Play Store this is very encouraging for two reasons it means that HTC is lightening up on their OEM skin customizations into standalone applications which will make a lot of stock android fans happy and it means that other HTC devices may be able to download the launcher themselves from what we can ascertain the apps are in the google play store so that HTC can update their devices without being required to push out a system update as i'm sure everyone knows by now pushing out system updates can take a lot of time thanks to things like carrier approval so if you have the new HTC One or even one of their older devices that slated to get sent six prepare to see your updates for a lot in the google play store instead of your typical over-the-air updates so how refreshing has microsoft been lately since Steve Ballmer finally called it quits this last week they continue to unravel the mistakes of the ball moreira by making Microsoft Office free for home users I actually covered the release of microsoft office to the google play store in my very first episode of google play weekly it was about eight months ago and the app itself has always been free however to really use it it required an office 365 subscription with this new update it is now free for use for home users while business users still get to pay for it this is kind of a big deal microsoft office is one of those software suites that has owned its category for more than a decade and it's practically ubiquitous with this new move in place microsoft now has an accessible free office platform on android along with an equally accessible and integrated cloud storage service after months of speculation it appears as though Microsoft finally does have a somewhat competitive response to google drive good for them after all competition inspires innovation if you're a student in the United States and you subscribe to Spotify or you want to subscribe to Spotify that our next is going to make you a happy camper Spotify appears to be doing what it can to help the everyday broke students in the United States by giving up to fifty percent off of service for 12 months just for being a student so instead of this still very reasonable 999 per month Spotify will make students pay only four dollars and ninety-nine cents per month and it's still the same ad free experience that the regular people get there are a few catches though you'll have to reapply after 12 months to get the discount again and you can only get the discount for a maximum of three years also it's kind of lame that it's limited to United States students only because most students around the world are broke not just the ones here in the States that said if you do qualify it's a spectacular deal and one that you're likely not going to find anywhere else so check out Spotify his official website for more details on that so one of the more interesting pieces to hit the news this week was an announcement by the security firm Trend Micro which revealed that a couple of Android applications were using user devices to mind dogecoins the apps were called songs and prized and what is surprising is that songs had over 1 million downloads while prized was sitting pretty between 50 and 100 thousand according to trend micro the apps created both doge and litecoins and the developers have cashed in a few times already so they have been making money off of these apps as you can imagine Trend Micro has reported both applications and they are now gone from the google play store well it is a very interesting idea it's also against pretty much all of the rules and does constitute as malware so to summarize Wow much crypto such currency very no Play Store our next story is a triumph i'm making a note here it's hard to understate my satisfaction with this next story okay i'm sorry i'm done now yes i get to talk about portal this week because nvidia has announced that they'll be porting the game to android with valves permission this is pretty awesome because one of the major complaints about mobile gaming is the lack of top to your games even though portal really isn't a top-tier game anymore it's still a cult classic and a name no one would mind being associated with Android the bad news is that the portal port will only be available for tegra 4 devices like the Nvidia shield this has had mixed reactions because people seem to be getting angry that Nvidia is developing a game for their own gaming platforms I don't stand why because it's not like Nintendo didn't do the same thing with Mario for more than two decades I for one am excited to see a good pc game getting ported and i hope this begins a trend that lets us see more the who wants to see some trending applications as usual if you want to check any of these applications out you can find the links in the written companion which is in the video description below we reviewed link bubble and we'll have a link to that here at the end of the video link bubble is a floating window based browser that opens links in the background when the site is loaded it'll pop back out or remain in the background until you bring it forward the decision is yours there is a free version to kind of try it out but the full version is four dollars and ninety-nine cents to see more details you should really check out our full review last pass is a password manager and frankly it's one of the best ones available for any platform android or otherwise it recently got updated and it now supports android apps and the chrome browser so you can auto log into applications and websites using chrome much like you can on the computer variant it's free for a couple of weeks but then it requires a subscription for twelve dollars per year this can be an amazing way to help you manage and improve your passwords we first talked about Star Wars assault team when it was just an image and a vague announcement and now the whole game is out it's a card based strategy game that takes place in the Star Wars world it's free to play with in-app purchases so it's a paradigm everyone is familiar with the premise is you get character cards and then level them up through fighting there is even PvP if you're into that kind of stuff scramble with friends is on our list of the best multiplayer games because it's quick and easy to play it was recently updated with a whole new interface that better correlates with the android design standard and Google Play game services the game mechanics remain unchanged so there is nothing new to learn but it does look a whole lot nicer and the play games achievements is a really nice touch last up this week is Captain America the Winter Soldier it was released by gameloft be sort of the official mobile game for the movie you get to play as Captain America in an action game and lead teams around in level based gameplay to kill bad guys it's playable only in portrait mode which is kind of lame but it's not all that bad also the game is a demo you'll have to pay two dollars and ninety-nine cents for the full version if you want all the levels this apparently took some people by surprise so don't let the lower Google Play rating scare you away once again I'm Joe Hindy the android authority app guy don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and if you want to follow android authority myself for the rest of the video team you can find our social media links in the video description below also don't forget to give us a thumbs up if you liked the video it lets me know that you enjoyed it if you're hanging out for a minute we have a couple of Awesome videos for you to watch right over there including junction regards five favorite features of the HTC one alone with my review of link bubble finally don't forget to check out the written companion in the video description below for all of the download links as usual thank you for watching and have a wonderful day