Gadgetory

hello again ladies and gentlemen I'm Joe Hindy the android authority app guy and happy Friday everybody this week we're going to talk about a whole bunch of stuff out of Google as well as some potential issues for root apps down the road along with a bunch of app news without further ado let's get started in our first bit of news this week google along with a lot of other places could be getting fine soon for their freemium apps this time around is the antitrust and competition authority that comes out of Italy according to them Google Play having apps that show is free but actually costs money is apparently confusing customers so much that Google needs to be fine for it if successful Google could be facing 5 million euros and fines it's not just google play either the Apple App Store Amazon App Store and others are all under fire for the freemium app model it presents a unique catch-22 in the application world because freemium is not the most preferable way to do things but on the other hand ad blocking and piracy have made other forms of revenue more difficult than ever to take advantage of it's definitely had an impact because 147 of the top 150 grossing applications currently use in-app purchases so they are obviously working well for developers another big piece of Google noses squeak came when they acquired the application Word Lens word lens allows you to translate words through your camera in real time ok so here's how word lens works you point your camera at words you do not understand and the application will automatically translate them into words that you understand this is wildly useful for travelers especially but it's still a handy app to have along if you need it now it belongs to google when Google up and buys a company it's usually left to the imagination what they'll be using it for after all no one is quite sure as of yet what they plan on doing with timely however word lens is fairly obvious eventually this technology will be integrated into google translate and frankly that's going to make google translate way more epic than it already is for now though you can still get word lens as it is now if you want it's in the google play store last week we didn't have all that many Google Apps updates to talk about and that is not true this week ok so Google Chrome Google Maps gmail and google+ all got updates this week and we'll talk briefly about each one of them gmail got a save to Google Drive option embedded in the email options along with some extra stuff in the overflow menu Google Maps now has elevation profiles for cycling routes google chrome now has support for multi window devices you can undo close tabs now and there are some new html5 features lastly and our winner of the google app that got the most update love this week is google plus the new app has a serious you i redesigned and it's likely the first of many redesigns we'll see in google apps also included are a new stories feature auto awesome movies better support for large photo libraries auto awesome gifs and finally it shows your profile views it really was a gigantic update our next bit of news is about you guessed it google and it's the first time i've gotten to talk about android wear on camera so google is going to be showing off their new platform at this year's google i/o and as per the norm they want some other stuff to show off with it a fungal thing that google is doing is asking app developers to submit their applications to google for use at Google i/o when they demo Android wear if they do and Google likes the app still get practically free advertising at Google i/o as well as prime placement in the Google Play Store so if you start seeing these apps to pop up you know where they came from so a while back XDA developer chainfire stated that rooted apps are going to have a little bit of a problem in the next version of android this last week he said it's going to be just a little bit harder than he originally envisioned okay so here's the deal originally it was known that the next version of android would restrict how apps interacted with the data partition and thus would require root apps to work around it however this week we also learned that a number of other under the hood changes could further complicate the lives of those who use and develop root apps some may think it's a conspiracy theory to kill off root access but when you look at what's actually going on it's simply Google making Android more secure and that means things like root access will require more work to get through the security chain fire has been able to successfully update his supersu app and has stated that for most fruit apps workarounds should be relatively simple so you can exhale root users everything is going to be okay so 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 first up this week is summoner wars it was a popular game on iOS and it's finally made its way to android word has received a sub amount of press it is a digital card game with a board game mechanic baked in you collect cards and then play a sort of modified chess game with them against either artificial intelligence or real life components there is quite a bit of gameplay cross-platform support and app purchases and it's accumulated over 5,000 install so far the app is a little buggy though so do beware quick click is a very simple application that allows you to set either a volume button or a sequence of volume buttons to perform certain actions for instance you can set it to turn on your camera after you click the volume up once and the volume down once in quick succession and then when you do that later the camera will open it's a fairly nifty application for those who want more out of their hardware buttons and it's free so check it out if you've been a longtime fan of the Google Play weekly show you've no doubt heard about all cast is developed by koushik Duda and it streams local content to chromecast's now he's released the all cast receiver once you install this nifty and free application you will be able to use all cast to play media to that device so let's say you want to play something from your phone to your tablet's install all cast receiver on the tablets all cast on the phone and you can stream it easy-peasy next up is a nifty little camera application called whistle camera the premise is simple you whistle and it takes a picture that's essentially all that it does we know there are times when your hands are preoccupied or covered in things like gloves that make it difficult to capture images and with this application you can whistle to get it done in the demo video has suggested taking photos while driving which I personally think is a terrible idea but the app is free and for the love of God don't use it while driving last up this week is a fun application called beautiful icon styler what this app does is let you change icons on your stock launcher now for those of you who don't know usually you need a third party launcher like nova apex or action launcher in order to use custom icon packs what this app does is let you use those icon packs on your stock launcher and you don't need anything special like root access you can try it for free to see if it works for you but so far people seem to be really enjoying it now don't forget folks you don't have to wait for my show every week to get the latest and greatest in android app news if you head to android authority calm and click on the apps button in the header you can see our latest news and reviews as well as our the apps of the day and our weekly developer interviews whenever you want to 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 check out android authority myself or the rest of the video team you can find our social media links in the video description below if you're hanging out for a minute we have a couple of Awesome videos for you to watch right over there including the latest android authority weekly out of J's broda as well as a video that helps you determine if you should buy an HTC One m8 finally don't forget to check out the written companion in the video description below for all of the download links as always thanks for watching everybody and have a wonderful day