Welcome to the 418th edition of Android Apps Weekly. Here are the big headlines from last week:
- Google Stadia employees say they spend 80% of their time not working on the consumer version of the platform. There was a whisper for a while. However, it looks like Stadia is more enterprise-oriented than consumer-facing services. Hit the link to learn more.
- Amazon Prime sees another price increase for US customers. The price increases took him from $119 per year to $139 per year. It’s not a huge improvement, but the service is already quite expensive. Monthly subscribers will see their prices increase from $12.99 per month to $14.99 per month. The changes were made on February 18, 2022.
- Google seems to be working on a smart Android lock screen. It was discarded before it reached final production. It basically uses the At A Glance function and extends to the lock screen. That will show smarter contextual suggestions and a few other things. You can click on the link to learn more about it.
- Google may bring back old features to Google Messages. Its only feature is a hamburger menu, but it’s an odd choice considering how gestures work on Android. The menu includes some of the basics like starred conversations, archives, blocked numbers and other things. It should also get a new profile switcher and a few other things.
- Facebook saw a decline in daily active users for the first time in its history. It was a big deal and even the stock slumped after the announcement. The platform saw a million fewer daily active users than last quarter. Meta as a whole announced lower than expected ad revenue. As a result, the stock fell 20%.
EA Sports UFC Mobile 2
Price: Free to play
UFC Mobile 2 has actually been out for quite some time. However, EA announced that they are discontinuing support for the original UFC Mobile game in favor of the new one. The old version officially sank at the end of January. That makes this entrant UFC Mobile’s premier game in the franchise. The new version makes some changes to the gameplay and players don’t really like it. EA ditched the mechanics a bit and included more microtransactions. It may develop into a good game in the end and now that the original game is gone EA could spend more time making this one better. We hope they do.
CAPod
Price: Free / $2.49
CAPod is an application to manage your AirPods. It can show you things like battery level, charging status for pods and cases, show ear detection, and other things like that. It’s a pretty good way to manage your AirPods on Android devices and also supports Beats devices. Some features require an in-app purchase of $2.49, but overall it’s not a big deal for what you get.
Overrogue is a new JRPG from Kemco. This one uses card deck style combat with turn based combat. It also incorporates some roguelike elements into dungeon crawling. The game offers more than 300 cards, 150 different treasures and five maze themes. Otherwise, the motion and graphics look like SNES or PlayStation-era JRPGs. The game includes a decent amount of challenges, but nothing that players can’t overcome by learning the game better. There is a free version with ads, but to be honest, it’s much better without ads.
Cox Elite gamers
Price: Free
Elite Gamer is the companion app to the Cox Communications desktop app of the same name. Basically, it helps you find the fastest path to the game server to minimize jitter, ping and lag. We think it’s a bit unfortunate that players need such apps, but at least such apps exist. You can create a profile for your game or use an existing profile if you prefer. I personally don’t own Cox so I can’t test it very thoroughly. However, it seems that not all games are supported. Luckily, the app is free so you can check it out for yourself without any problems.
Animal Clash
Price: Free to play
Clash of Beasts is a tower defense strategy game. The player starts the game by collecting beasts. You use beasts to take enemy forts. The game offers more than 65 monsters to collect with various abilities. Plus, you have a base that you have to build to protect yourself from other players’ monsters. The gameplay isn’t too complicated and you’ll get the hang of it in a few hours. There are also seasonal and weekly events to keep things interesting. Progress is about what you’d expect from a free-to-play game. It’s fairly easy at first, but eventually it starts to require a lot of time (or real money) investment to get going. There’s no point in winning, but we’re not going to blame you for feeling that way sometimes.
If we missed any news or a major Android app or game release, let us know in the comments.
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