Remix OS Android operating system – but for PCs

Deep dive Jide’s Remix OS is Android for a desktop or tablet OS: with multitasking, overlapping windows and the shortcut conveniences you need for productivity-style work.
And the firmware tweaks to make it run well on x86 processors. I’ve seen what the next billion internet users will be running.
Jide was founded by three Google veterans and draws heavily on the Android-x86 project, a heroic solo effort by Chinese engineer Chih-Wei Huang, that he began seven years ago. The founders moved to Beijing to be close the Huang and China’s supply chains.
“It’s where the talent pool is,” the founders told me when I met them recently. There are now more than 150 staff at Jide.
Jide’s first product was a nifty, pebble-shaped Mini, which raised $1.6m on Kickstarter. It’s also unveiled an 11.6-inch Surface-like tablet, NVIDIA Tegra powered,with detachable keyboard. Both are ARM-based hardware.
Jide sees its mission as “unifying the whole computing platform” – and from the results so far, I reckon it stands a very good chance of doing just that.
The most promising market for Remix OS is emerging markets. Dumb terminals like Chromebooks are too limited; they need always on connectivity that isn’t there. Full fat Windows 10 is still too complex and bloated. The slimmer Windows 10 Mobile just doesn’t have the apps. (Yet).
I chose to set up Remix OS from scratch on a 2011 Lenovo Thinkpad. I found a few minor convenience glitches but overall it was surprisingly slick and functional. And the apps just rain down from the Google Play store.
To get an idea of what Remix has achieved, and what it needs to do be truly prime time, here’s the journey.
Remix comes as a ZIP file with a USB installer and the image file. USB 3.0 and 8GB are recommended for the USB stick. You can run it off the USB drive but here I installed it side-by-side with Windows.This boot screen will appear every time you start the machine from now on. It’s a bit misleading. Choose Remix OS at this point and the Thinkpad BIOS Flash screen will appear. On installation we get a familiar GRUB screen:

There isn't too much of an interrogation...

Another reboot and we’re in the desktop:
It’s slick but could be slicker. There’s a several second delay before it invites you to configure the menu before you see the Linux loader. But here we are.
Does it look familiar?

Click to enlarge

From the Terminal we can see it’s Android KitKat (4.4) with regular SE Linux underneath.

Click to enlarge

The big addition is a desktop/tablet-class file manager, with drag and drop between windows.

Shutdown and Standby hang from the Start menu – but also from every file manager window too:

On my Thinkpad X220, I needed to manually connect to the Wi-Fi network, a bit of a pain.
Another familiar Windows element....

And the bundled browser is KitKat's.
Now came the most consuming part...

Getting Google Play store to work

Once you’ve allowed Remix to download from unknown sources, you can install a Play .APK. Don’t download from unknown sources – I went with one recommended in the Google+ Remix group.

Android app split-screen multitasking

Split-screen multitasking and improved notification controls are among the new features being added to the Android operating system (OS).

An early build of the new OS, known as Android N, was released on Thursday for app developers to test.
Google said it had released the beta software earlier than usual so that device manufacturers could get the finished version sooner.
At the moment, fewer than 3% of Android phones run the latest OS, Marshmallow.

"Early release"

On Monday, Google published statistics that showed an older version of Android, Lollipop, was still more widely used than the latest variant.
About 36% of Android devices run Lollipop, with fewer than 3% running the newer Marshmallow.
But a range of new smartphones running Marshmallow, from manufacturers such as Samsung and LG, are due to be released.

New features

Android N will introduce split-screen multitasking that allows people to use two apps at the same time.
Information can be copied across from one app to the other.
A similar feature is already available on some iOS and Windows 10 devices, and Samsung has already added the feature to some of its Android smartphones.
The new software also introduces some cosmetic changes to settings and notifications, and aims to improve battery life.
Google has traditionally named new versions of the operating system after sweet treats, as was the case with Lollipop and Marshmallow.
The newest version has not yet been named but it has been suggested that Android N will be named after a popular chocolate and hazelnut breakfast spread.

New Android Keyboard app

We used to call ginormous phones “phablets,” and they were novelties. Now they’re just phones. And as big as they are—the Nexus 6 may have been too big—everyone’s making devices with ever bigger screens, and people are buying them.
This makes sense. After all, everyone’s spending more time on mobile devices and less time on computers. As phones increasingly replace desktops and laptops, the need for a larger screen for typing, reading, surfing, streaming, and gaming becomes really important. A bigger phone can also accommodate a bigger battery, and obscure less of the screen beneath your fat thumbs as you’re typing and swiping.
But even the biggest smartphone screen is more cramped than a flight on Spirit Air, making things that would be multi-window tasks on a computer very tedious. To share a link, a contact, or a chunk of text, you’ve got to hop, skip, and jump between apps, poking and dragging to make a selection, revisit the messaging app, and paste your info there.

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The problem, says Steve Won, a senior designer at Microsoft Office, is everything is siloed. “On a small screen, there isn’t a scalable way to run apps side by side. The interesting UX challenge for the small screen is breaking down these silos and having what the user needs readily available,” he says.
Microsoft has a slick solution to this problem: the Microsoft Hub Keyboard, a software keyboard that eliminates a lot of that app-hopping. And what’s really interesting is Microsoft created it for Android devices, not its own Windows 10 Mobile devices.
The Hub Keyboard, which is free at the Google Play Store, offers handy shortcuts and tunnels into other apps without being overly complex. Above the keys, which can be long-pressed to bring up punctuation and numbers, lies a strip of options akin to the Microsoft Office Ribbon. It offers five choices: View your clipboard archive for easy pasting, search your OneDrive documents for easy linking, type in the name of a contact for easy sharing, translate your text to a different language, or disable those features to enter autocorrect mode.
Instead of jumping between your browser and your contact list and Google Translate, you access data within other apps through the keyboard. This keyboard follows you from app to app, so there’s far less finagling involved to share a contact or a link. (Other perks: Through its inline translation feature, I discovered that the Slovak word for pepperoni is “feferónky,” which is now my new favorite word.)
The Hub Keyboard is still a work in progress, but it’s off to a great start. At the moment, the keyboard’s functionality is limited. You can’t use it as a swipe keyboard, you must disable its unique menu to enable autocorrect, and it still needs support for third-party apps (Dropbox and Google Drive in addition to OneDrive, for example) to reach its full potential. But there’s plenty of room for it to grow into an essential part of the mobile experience.
Before it can become truly essential, though, Hub Keyboard must work on other mobile platforms. Microsoft wouldn’t say whether that’s in the pipeline—it won’t even say if it will become the default keyboard for Windows Mobile 10—but Redmond wants to use the next month or so as one hell of a suggestion box. “In the coming weeks, a number of new features will be introduced,” Won says. “We are very excited to hear feedback and evolve the product.”
Hub Keyboard is yet another example of a growing trend in the mobile space. In the past year or so, Apple and Google have been razing the walls between apps, surfacing information within them in core OS services. Increasingly, you don’t have to open an app to see what’s in it; you can use system search tools and voice assistants to access that data.
But what makes the Hub Keyboard so unique and promising is that it helps us use our phones more like we use our computers: crazily, quickly, and with plenty of shortcuts. It’s the direction we’ve been headed for years, without the interface or input device to do it right. That may be about to change, or at least take a big step in the right direction.

Best music player app for Android

The Walkman and the iPod are as good as dead, because our smartphones have taken over as powerful music players. While the default music apps on your Android device probably do a fine job, if you want to crank up the bass or other aspects of your music, you'll need something more.
One of the best music player apps for Android is Poweramp. It’s a great way to enjoy your favorite music, with a ton of options and support for almost any type of file. You can’t go wrong with Poweramp.

Best Android file manager app

ES File Explorer has been our go-to file explorer for years. If you're having trouble tracking down documents or pictures in your internal storage or microSD card, this is the app for your.
ES just works. It offers myriad extra features, but the reason it's so widely used it because it has nailed the basic sorting of files. You can find all of your music, images, videos and more without having to dive through layers and layers of subfolders: the most common types of files are all accessible with simple shortcuts on the main screen.
The subtle animations are great, it rarely bothers you with notifications and it provides a one-touch way to clear out old and unused files to free up space. In short, ES File Explorer is the best way to keep your data organized on Android.

ES File Explorer File Manager download from google play

top 10 andriod apps

Apps

BBC Music (Free)
Currently a UK-only app, this brings together live performances and interviews with musicians from the BBC’s TV and radio output, as well as playlists curated by its DJs. The app learns your tastes as you use it to refine its recommendations, with songs available as 30-second clips or – via Spotify or Deezer – in full.

Glow Baby: Feeding Tracker (Free)
Glow’s previous apps have focused on helping women track their periods and pregnancies, so it makes sense to follow them with one for babies. This isn’t just about tracking breast or bottle feeds: you can also use it to log sleep, nappy changes, weight and other milestones.

BuzzFeed Video (Free)
There’s already a good app for watching BuzzFeed’s fast-growing video output: YouTube. But now the news site has launched a standalone app for its video division, including alerts when shows you’ve subscribed to have a new episode, and a trending feed to spot popular videos.

Reuters TV: Video News (Free)
More mobile video courtesy of news service Reuters, with the inventive idea of creating a news bulletin tuned to your interests. You tell the app how long you want to watch for – between five and 30 minutes – and it draws together video reports from its correspondents around the world.

TapTapSee (Free + IAP)
This is a truly intriguing use of smartphones for blind and visually-impaired people: using their device’s camera to take pictures of objects in the real world, and identify what they are. The app uses Android’s TalkBack feature to read out the details, with photos snapped by double-tapping the screen.

Peach (Free)
When it launched for iPhone in January, social app Peach surfed a wave of hype from tech sites that has since died down. Can its Android release revive the buzz? Peach is certainly fun: a quick way to post photos, doodles, gifs, songs and other stuff to your network. Inventive, but it relies on your friends being on it.

Sleepfulness (Free + IAP)
With a Google Play blurb like “Better sleep. Better days. Powered by mindfulness” this app will raise your hackles if you’re sceptical about the mindfulness boom. If you’re curious, though, Sleepfulness is worth a look: made by the developer of popular app Buddhify, it promises soundtracks to help you get better shut-eye.

Everalbum: Organise Photos (Free + IAP)
This app has a firm fanbase on iOS, so its appearance on Android is welcome news for non-iPhone mobile photographers. It backs up your photos (and videos); can import from Facebook and Instagram among other sources; and most usefully helps you free up space for more stuff on your device.

MyShake (Free)
If you’re in the UK, hopefully MyShake will never be an app you need: designed, as it is, to measure the tremors before and during earthquakes. But this is a really interesting idea for people who do live in quake-affected parts of the world: an app from Berkeley Seismological Laboratory that aims to “create a dense network that could one day provide warnings prior to shaking”.

VHS Camcorder (£2.47)
Any self-respecting hipster wanting to share videos on social networks that look like they’re filmed with a 1980s VHS camcorder will, of course, go out and buy a 1980s VHS camcorder. But this is an app shortcut to creating retro videos. And yes, if there’s a demand for this it’s probably as an Instagram filter, but the app is well put together with good attention to period details.
There’s already a good app for watching BuzzFeed’s fast-growing video output: YouTube. But now the news site has launched a standalone app for its video division, including alerts when shows you’ve subscribed to have a new episode, and a trending feed to spot popular videos.

The Walking Dead: Road to Survival

The Walking Dead provides the basis for another Android game, as well as more evidence that franchises thrive as well as zombies on the post-apocalyptic earth. The Walking Dead: Road to Survival is probably the richest Walking Dead Android experience yet. It functions mostly as a base-building game, and Woodbury is the setting in which you construct the usual workshops, training grounds and farms to get humanity back up on its feet.
Outside the base, there are missions and raids. The former finds you exploring the surroundings through story-led turn-based combat, and the latter lets you face off against opponents online, fighting for reputation and supplies. The story mode lets you make decisions at key moments, and will prove particularly enjoyable for fans of the comic books.
Overall, the game is pretty involving to start out with, and its dynamics function well, but its pay-to-win nature becomes apparent after a few hours of gameplay. There have been complaints about the random chance of characters and equipment you acquire and the cost of doing so. We would advise you to enjoy the game as far as possible for free, and try to avoid dropping any (or at least too much) money into it.

UNKILLED

MADFINGER Games, the folks behind Dead Trigger 1 and Dead Trigger 2, have now released Dea… er, UNKILLED, a new and completely different kind of first-person zombie shooter. In it, you blast your way through New York City streets during the onset of a zombie apocalypse, using the left side of the screen for movement and the right side for aim.
Because your weapon fires automatically once something is in your sights, the controls of the game feel incredibly smooth. There’s a cheesy storyline to follow, but the real fun is in blasting through undead hordes with extras like rockets and bullet-time buffs. If you want to see what the latest tech is capable of, you need to check this game out.

Need for Speed: No Limits

Need for Speed: No Limits is almost the complete opposite of Prune. It’s big and loud, and is the latest game in a long-running race series. EA has pushed out a number of these titles on Android, and this latest installment sees you competing in races in order to improve your reputation and your car.
The game takes place in an urban setting and the races are often short and sweet – some take less than a minute to complete – making it ideal for short sessions. EA nails the look and feel of the cars and environments, and the game is undeniably polished, but do expect in-app purchases.

download from google play

Color Switch

Color Switch might be the most popular game on Android right now and if you play it you'll immediately see why. You tap the screen to bounce a ball upwards through a series of obstructions. Each of these obstructions is made up of four colors, and your bouncing ball will only pass through it if it is the same color. The tricky part is that the obstruction is also moving. Each time the ball passes, it changes color and faces a new moving obstacle.
It sounds more difficult in theory than it is in practice: it plays like a minutely more nuanced Flappy Bird. The key difference is that, unlike Flappy Bird, you progress at your own pace: it’s possible to keep the ball aloft without actually moving through the next goal.
You are forced to be patient and wait for the right moment, before pushing through the next goal. Rushing ahead regularly results in an early demise – and it's a painful experience. Color Switch is another one of those frustrating, just-one-more-turn, "tap tap tappy" titles which are great for comparing high scores with friends.  

Download Color Switch from Google Play

Dead Effect 2

 

This is another not-so-original Android title (even its name is a cross between two other games, Mass Effect and Dead Space). It’s a free-to-play first-person shooter that takes place onboard a zombie infested space station and sees you killing mutants and solving some light puzzles in order to survive.
Dead Effect 2's major strength is that it looks incredible – the graphics are really pushing boundaries. The movement controls are a little floaty by default but, thankfully, they’re completely customizable. What it lacks in gameplay depth, Dead Effect 2 makes up for in polish. If you want something that feels like a console FPS on Android, this is it.
Dead Effect 2
download now from google play and enjoy 

Dying Light: The Following Review

Discerning gamers often view downloadable content (DLC) with suspicion: they believe that too often, it exists solely to give games publishers a means of making an extra buck on the back of once-popular games. However, there are signs of a recent shift in attitudes, resulting in slabs of DLC which conform to what gamers actually want – rather than what publishers want to sell them. The Following, a substantial piece of DLC for last year’s excellent open-world zombie game Dying Light, is a case in point.
For a start, it’s huge – its map, developer Techland reckons, is twice as big as that of the original game, and that feels like a plausible claim. The action begins with protagonist Kyle Crane outside the city of Harran, in a mountainous region, from which he descends to find farmlands. Most of those are overrun with either zombies or bandits, but Crane comes across pockets of survivors, who apparently owe their continued existence to a shadowy cult run by the mysterious Mother. Intrigued, he sets out to find their secret. But first, he must gain the locals’ trust, which he achieves by performing story and side-missions.
Gameplay-wise, there’s a big twist on top of the original game: because The Following is set in a rural area, rather than a city, Crane gets to drive around in a buggy – which can be upgraded (for which you must scavenge parts and fuel from abandoned vehicles) and has its own skill-tree. The buggy is great, and since you gain experience points for mowing down zombies in it, it adds a welcome whiff of Carmageddon to proceedings. Localised driving challenges also often crop up, and as in the original game, you often come across random location-based missions, and – after dark – nests of Volatiles you can clear out.
The story missions are, if anything, better-written and more imaginative than those of the original game, and the same can be said of the side-missions. There are points at which the story comes to a halt and you’re forced into side-missions, in order to build up your local respect, but that never feels like an imposition. You come across new weapons – such as an excellent crossbow – and enemies, such as Freaks, which are essentially bosses which you must approach in highly strategic ways. Often, it’s worthwhile finding a co-operative partner in order to take them down.
On the PlayStation 4, at least, The Following also looks notably better than the original, which itself was by no means a bad-looking game. Overall, it’s a prime example of how DLC should be done: it returns you to a thoroughly enjoyable and beautifully fettled game-world, with plenty of welcome additions and nearly as much substance as the original game. If you played Dying Light but have recently neglected it, The Following is pretty much a must-buy. And if you didn’t, you might want to check out the just-released Enhanced Edition of the game, which includes The Following and other items of DLC such as The Bozak Horde. A rare treat for those who love to slice and dice the undead.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition PC Requirements Revealed

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition - a remaster of the 2006 Xbox 360 classic released on the Xbox One last year to rave reviews. Prior to the third-person shooter hitting Microsoft's latest black box, the company announced at E3 2015 that the game would be coming to Windows PCs. Since then though, we haven't heard much else. That is, until now.
Perusing through the Windows 10 Store led us to a listing for the game. It's unavailable for purchase at the moment and there's no price either, but we won't be surprised if it isn't long before it will be. Most importantly though, the page indicates what kind of machine you'd need to play it.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition minimum requirements: 

• OS: 64 bit Windows 10 (v. 1511)
• Processor: Intel Core i5 @ 2.7Ghz / AMD FX 6-core
• Memory: 8GB RAM
• VRAM: 2GB
• GPU: AMD R7 260x / NVIDIA GTX 650 Ti
• HD Space: 60GB
• DirectX12

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition recommended requirements:

• OS 64 bit Windows 10 (v. 1511)
• Processor: Intel Core i5 @3.5GHz+ / AMD FX 8-core
• Memory: 16GB RAM
• VRAM: 4GB
• GPU: AMD R9 290X / NVIDIA GTX 970
• HD Space: 60GB
• DirectX12As per the store page, the above configuration is the "recommended system requirements for 1920X1080P", what this means is, you should ideally be able to play the game at full HD/1920x1080 at 60 frames per second without much trouble. There's a third configuration that's even steeper.
  Gears of War: Ultimate Edition ideal requirements:
• OS 64 bit Windows 10 (v. 1511)
• Processor: Intel Core i7 @4GHz+ / AMD FX 8-core
• Memory: 16GB RAM
• VRAM: 6GB
• GPU: AMD R9 390X / NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti
• HD Space: 60GB
• DirectX12

With a Windows PC of this calibre, the listing claims it is the "recommended system requirements for 4K", so hitting 3840x2160 at 60 frames per second should be of little worry.
Much like Quantum Break it appears that you'll need a superlative Windows PC to get the most out of it. Perplexing considering how underpowered the Xbox One is in comparison to the average gaming PC these days.
As with all Microsoft first-party games, this will be exclusive to the Windows 10 Store, ruling out Steam and other digital storefronts. The Redmond-based firm is hosting an Xbox One and Windows 10 event on February 25 so don't be surprised to see more information, including a potential release date soon.