If you're a fan of the Engadget Android app (and let's be honest, you are a fan), then we've got some good news for you today. The app has been updated with some minor fixes, and one not-so-minor addition... a homescreen widget! Included in this release (besides your new favorite widget) is a fix that enables the Android status bar, built-in sharing for articles and galleries, a refresh button for article views, and other assorted tweaks that will make your Engadget experience even more delightful. Don't sleep on this one -- go get the update!
Update: We know there's an issue with the space the widget takes up, we're working on it!
posted April 13th 2010 5:32PM
I hope there is a *refresh* option! If there has been one, I haven't been able to find it. It should be there and it should be obvious!
-Taylor
@Taylor Yes Taylor
Included in this release (besides your new favorite widget) is a fix that enables the Android status bar, built-in sharing for articles and galleries, ***a refresh button for article views***, and other assorted tweaks that will make your Engadget experience even more delightful.
@Eric W
*Doh*
I was too excited about posting first so my comment got seen, i forgot to see if they mentioned it! The no refresh thing seemed so weird to me I wanted to make sure my comment didn't get buried! Oh well...
@Taylor Yes Taylor
I have never really been jealous of Android (i use a 3gs) but being able to scan that QRcode to go straight to the App store... nicely played Google, nicely played.
PS. Barcode Beasties best android game EVER!!!!
It would also be nice if the galleries were tied/linked to from their articles within the app...
Hey Engadget, some QVGA love would be very appreciated. ;)
Waaait a second engadget... every time i shut down the screen or even return from an app the widget reloads itself and downloads all the data from scratch? Thaat sucks a little, since it does take quite a while to load if not on wifi.
@Ipadkiller Your negativism is legendary!
@Taylor Yes Taylor
on a slightly unrelated note, I really need help I am planning to buy an android device and I wanted to know if the operating system leans more toward the stability of webos, or windowsmobile... in other words, how often does it crash, and or "glitch up?" that is all
@wtgig Haven't played with WebOS at all before, but I'd say it's nothing like winmo in terms of stability. Crashes/slowdowns/freezes are incredibly rare, especially on the newer Droid/N1 hardware.
@wtgig It crashes less then windows mobile if with a UI skin. It crashes most with sense (what I have), least with blur. If you get a vanilla android phone then crashes are non existent (unless you have a crappy app). But if you don't download a bad app then any option is stable enough for daily use, work or play. And if you have important files DO NOT use HTC Sync with Windows, it is crap, make sure you drag and drop your files on and off of your SD card.
@wtgig
I second MarcusMaximus there. I have two Android phones in my household, a MyTouch 3G and a G1. Neither crash more than once a month, though the occasional app will. App crashes haven't yet caused a phone reboot for me.
@Mentat: so glad I got rid of my 3.1.2JB'd 3gs for my droid. ;)
@Prokanda me too! Best decision I ever made was dumping my 3Gs for my att band nexus one. Android is great
@angermeans
thanks you guise have been a great help, until i know if palm has a solid plan for the future, with the whole "for sale" situation, and until wp7 gets real multitasking I most likely will be heading to android, the htc 4g looks amazing.
while I have not owned an android device I have used it many times, I've owned win-mo and a lot of my friends own iphones... webos in my opinion, is honestly the best mobile experience available on a mobile operating system.
It sucks that it hasn't gotten the recognition I think it deserves. I mean the brilliant multitasking alone is enough for an award :-(... but on the bright-side android's sounding pretty good right about now.
The app store is packed, the notification system is very similar to the pre's, it has multitasking, and based on the feedback you guise have given me I'm guessing the community is probably just as friendly and helpful as the home-brew community for webos. Once again thanks for the feedback everyone :-).
@Taylor Yes Taylor or the widget that takes up 4x4 instead of 4x2
@wtgig webOS is beautiful and simple, Win Mo is constantly crashing is is an irritant at best. I use a Droid and my experience is 99% positive. Any and every phone will have rare bugginess. I say go Android, if you find Palm to be more your style than go for it. As a previous owner of 2 Win Mo devices, I suggest avoiding them. Hopefully, WP7 will be drasticly different.
@Mentat
You should be buddy.
@Mentat : that bar code looks so blured out that I'm not sure that most phones will get the message (jpg level 80 compressed ?)
@Eric W
v1.0.3 is out to fix the widget spacing issue.
Install, delete widget, and re-add the widget :-)
@fiduce The code works for me, I just tested it with my Nexus One.
@m4ryv
yeah I own a pre at the moment, it's the bes phone I'v ever owned but I figured that with palm's current situation, I need to prepare for the worst case scenario....I'm Just looking at what my choices are, and although I did like having the options I had with winmo... it was sluggish and glitchy.
I am not a fan of apple, and never will own an iphone... honestly I'm hopping that palm can pull through this rut... because any mobile os I invest in after the pre.. will definitely be a downgrade :-(
Windows Phone Engadget?
Yah, and Storm? I guess I'll just wait until I get my Incredible
@derviskemal
I figure by the time makes a update for my storm I'll already had upgraded my phone to something else...
@derviskemal Yeah, either release a WinMo version of the app or enable comments on i.engadget.com. The main site takes to long to load and doesn't work well on most phones.
@XIYL Software development on WinMo is dead...
@MONKEY
I'm happy with the way os5 renders the mobile site on my storm, but man would I love the app, too.
@ai4281 No its not. I still get new software all the time on my Touch Pro2.
I hope its a full screen widget that resembles the actual apk.Anything else is uncivilized
@chosenone1 Aww man i was hoping it would be a full screen widget. Will there be a option in the future for size of the widget ... so this way i could have say a 4x3 or 4x4 widget and just scroll through the post by touching the arrow keys
@chosenone1 yeah, i was hoping for at least a 4x2 widget.. this one is reaally small, but looks great nevertheless :) good job guys!
thanks engadget!
Topic hijack:
can you show the iPhone app a little love at some point, article refresh would be nice, live blogging kinda sucks...
Nothing but love for engadget though.
@geekthree ditto the above sentiments, is anyone else finding that you can't post comments from the iPhone app
- Not sent from my iPhone
@geekthree
I think it sucks that the iPhone app won't save its place if you exit out of it. It seems simple enough. I guess I'll have to wait for OS 4 for that...
@geekthree Ohhh Ohh yea and widget would be nic....ohh wait..... xD
Someone needs to slap you guys. You made a widget that takes up the space of 4 icons, require the space of 8 icons?!
WHY?
I don't have room for a widget that takes up twice as much space as it needs, sorry.
@GldRush98
I was about to comment and complain about this too. What the heck, guys? I only have so much screen space!!
@GldRush98 Yeah, it takes up less room than the pandora widget, yet requires 2 rows? Widget fail.
@GldRush98
My first reaction also!
@GldRush98 You are very right sir. I thought my phone was buggin out. Epic widget fail. It takes half my home screen but is only a bar... i cant spare the room for it.
I was going to say the same thing about the widget size... come on Engadget, you should know better than to take up precious (but unneeded) home screen space!
@Steve B
Was going to replace the HTC calendar widget but this is smaller than it yet takes up more space. It's only a third the height of the space it takes up, either fill the alloted space or shrink the amount of space it takes up.
@GldRush98
*whew* thanks to the Sense UI w/ 7 screens makes the phat widget tolerable :p still please fix. also would suggest an option for a small thumbnail on widget and display time between each article would be nice as well.
Damn my Android phone just broke. Now I will definitely need to get it fixed.
@windywoo its android, it didn't break by itself... ;)
@96th Are you saying that Android phones are so reliable that it must be user error? Its the USB port if you want to know, no longer charging. Hardware fault, not software and most likely due to my computer crashing while it was plugged in.
Loving the commitment to android now, great app.
@GBobBillyBob Well it's either commitment or the fact that out of blackberry/iphone os/palm os/android, android is the only one that supports widgets :)