Category: App Update

With the NFL season just a few weeks away, the wait and anticipation of the new season is palatable across most of America.  To help you pass the time and to live out your digital football fantasy, EA Sports has released this years update to Madden NFL Mobile.  The game builds on the already successful franchise on mobile devices and tweaks some features and adds a few new ones for better game play.  Some of those new features include a Quarterback Scramble so you can have your QB tuck the ball in and run for that 1st down.  There are over 50 new offense plays in the game and the ability to build a defensive game plan for your next game.

The utilitarian app Google Calculator has been updated for Android and while it is certainly a small update, it does have one nice new creature comfort feature and an underlying more important one.  First, the update is build is version 7.0.1 for those keeping score at home and it is rolling out in the Google Play Store now.  You should see the OTA in a day or two.  As for the creature comfort feature, the app now groups large numbers.  In other words, here in the US, you will see a comma between each group of numbers such as 123,456,789.  Previously you would just see 123456789.  Again, not a big deal but it does make it easier if you are using the app for computing large numbers.

An important update is in the process or rolling out in the Google Play Store for Google Maps.  The update, version 9.33.1 for those keeping score at home, brings a new Wi-Fi only mode to the navigation app.  In this mode, Maps will not consume any data and will give you navigation information in areas that you have downloaded to your device.  Once you are connected again to a wireless network, you have full functionality of the app.  The idea behind this new feature is two-fold:  First, if you are traveling abroad, you can save on high data usage charges while you navigate in that foreign country.  Second, there are plenty of rural areas here in the United States were data from carriers is just not available.  Either way, you can use this new Wi-Fi mode and keep navigating.

The easy-to-use yet powerful photo editing app for Android, Snapseed, has been updated with several new features this week.  The updated build, version 2.8 for those keeping score at home, brings users the ability to add text to their photos in a wide range (dozens) of styles.  The new feature is listed under tools in the app and when you tap it, you will see a wide variety of styles to chose from for your text.  Once you type in your text (by tapping the text on your photo), you can move it around within the photo for effect or for location.  It’s quite powerful and certainly adds a nice touch to your photos.

After several months of testing on their alpha and beta builds, Twitter has released a Night Mode feature for their production version of their Android app.  The updated build is version 6.7.0 for those keeping score at home and will now allow for the darker viewing mode to make things a bit easier on your eyes in a low light situation.  The nice thing is you can toggle it on or off pretty easily.

If you have used Google Maps the last day or two and things look different, you aren’t imagining things.  The Maps team has been rolling out a significant update behind-the-scenes for the app for Android and the web that has a much improved color pallet and new highlight areas of interest on the maps.  The good thing is this update is all happening on Google’s end.  There is no app to update on your side.  As the improved maps roll out to all users, you will just see it on your account.

The biggest change is really around the color pallet and the removal of things like black lines around roads.  This makes viewing maps much easier and cleaner than the old maps.

The world is full of information, which means highlighting necessary info on the map without overcrowding it is a balancing act. So as part of this update, we’ve removed elements that aren’t absolutely required (like road outlines). The result is a cleaner look that makes it easier to see helpful and actionable information like traffic and transit. And we’ve improved the typography of street names, points of interest, transit stations, and more to make them more distinguishable from other things on the map, helping you navigate the world with fewer distractions.

In a practical sense, this means that viewing Google Maps will be easier on a lot of levels:  clearer text, less clutter and easier identification.