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Android Apps you shouldn't miss this week
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Defenders 2
Defenders 2 is the sequel to the very popular Defenders tower defense game that's available right now!
Download from Google Play
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Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
There is now a Metal Gear game on Android! It's an NVIDIA Shield exclusive which is great if you have one.
Download from Google Play
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Cavernaut
Cavernaut is a cleverly done maze game with minimal graphics and a fun premise. Survive as long as possible!
Download from Google Play
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Worms 4
The latest game in the Worms series has hit Android and it's actually pretty decent (and inexpensive!).
Download from Google Play
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Apps
A clever developer has used a secret link to the Google Play Store to create an app that shows you the top Android apps charts on Google, but without the games!
Download from Google Play
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Headlines this week
- In honor of Elvis' birthday, Google Play is giving away his 30 #1 hits album free of charge. We're not entirely sure how long this will last, but we do know that it's a US-only promotion and it won't be sticking around long. Fans of Elvis should definitely pick that up. The famous singer would've been 81 years old as of January 8th.
- It was revealed at CES 2016 that YouTube will soon support HDR video, which is following the trend started by big names such as Netflix, Amazon, and others. The only downside is that you can only consume this on devices that have HDR compatibility which are pretty much limited to only TVs for right now for various reasons.
- Another big announcement at CES 2016 was from Netflix. The video streaming giant announced that it was opening its doors to 130 new countries, which increases the number of compatible countries by over 200%. On top of that, they added a few more supported languages, bringing their total to 21. This is a huge move and lots of people will be signing up for Netflix over the next few weeks.
- Over the last week, Google quietly banned 13 applications that were secretly downloading other malware applications and potentially giving themselves root access so they could install themselves in the /system partition to survive a factory reset. They have been removed from the Play Store and if you downloaded them, prepare to reflash the stock software to get rid of them.
- Adult Swim announced a new mobile game this week that will revolve around the increasingly popular cartoon Rick and Morty. The game will be called Pocket Mortys and will play much like a Pokemon game. We know it will be free to play and it'll be released on January 14th which means we'll be talking about it again on next week's show.
- On top of that, The Room 3 is arriving Monday, January 11th. We were huge fans of the first two titles here at Android Authority and we're really looking forward to the third title. It'll follow the basic premise and game play mechanics of the prior two titles but with a new story line thrown in. It'll cost $4.99 with no in-app purchases.
- Earlier this week, it was announced that Twitter is expanding their character limit to 10,000 words. We don't know much yet, but if this does happen, it'll happen sometime in the next month or two.
- If you're thinking of writing your own Android apps anytime soon, you should definitely check out this article by Gary Sims!
- And if you're thinking of writing an Android game anytime soon, you'll want to see this crash course on Unity3D!
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App Updates this week
- Google is apparently testing a new weather card for Google Now. It's only available to a select few and we don't know when, or if, it'll roll out to the public. It definitely looks nice though and would come with new functionality including additional info and forecasts.
- WeChat released a serious update this last week that allows users to call landlines and mobile phone numbers. Much like Skype, you'll have to pay for minutes to use the service but it's there now.
- It was announced that Samsung Pay will be expanding to a number of new countries in the near future, including Australia, Singapore, Brazil, the UK, Spain, and China.
- LastPass was updated to version 4.0 this last week and brought a slew of improvements. Some of them include a brand new UI, better sharing, the ability to give access to other people, and more!
- AccuWeather updated their app recently to improved Material Design. However, the reception was lukewarm as some people criticized the volume of Material Design elements. It definitely looks better than it did, though.
- Poweramp is about to update to version 3.0. If you want to see what's coming up, you can download a sneak preview!
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