Welcome back my Android friends. The ManDroid Show is back for your eyes to see. There was not a show the last two weeks, which we apologize for. The show is now back in full swing and we thank you for watching.

Big News of the Week
Samsung releasing the Galaxy Nexus Plus?
Galaxy S II Plus press image leaked. Looks like ICS with some TouchWiz.

Rumor Control
Fresh batch of Samsung rumors
Is this the new Transformer from ASUS?

ICS Updates
Apex Launcher. New launcher replacement for your ICS.
Android 4.0.4 leaked for Nexus S
ICS update for Galaxy Note and Galaxy S II at the end of Q4. Only for Norway at the moment.
HTC Ville spotted with Sense 4.0 and ICS

ICS ROMS
New ICS ROM for the HTC Amaze

Device Updates
Samsung Advance is not so advanced
ASUS Padfone hands on video
Get Windows 95/98/XP or Linux on your HTC EVO 3D

App of the Week
Koush brings us ClockworkMod Touch

Tweaks of the Week
APW ICS widgets are so pretty
New MIUI theme Lephone will turn heads

Other Tweaks and Reviews
Gain 4.5 GBs on your Dropbox account
Review of the iOmini mount
Review of the Powerbag Backpack

Owners of the Samsung Epic 4G will be excited to learn that an alpha version of CyanogenMOD 9 was made available yesterday, thanks to the hard work and efforts from the EpicCM team. Granted, there’s still a long list of bugs and issues that need to be dealt with — this is far from a stable release — but, none of the problems are what we consider to be deal breakers if you’re just itching to get a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich. To get your paws on the instructions and files you’ll need to make the deal happen, head over to the download page on the EpicCM site. Check out this video review, uploaded to YouTube by qbking77.

OneLouder Apps is no stranger when it comes to social media applications. Many of you like me are probably rocking Tweetcaster for all your tweeting needs. I love Tweetcaster. Its simple, manageable, and the interface is pretty to look at.

Well in comes ChannelCaster. An application that is going to bring your news and social outlets together in one easy app that has an interface that is sleek, sexy and easy to use. When I first opened ChannelCaster my first reaction was, “This kind of has a Windows phone 7 setup! Away demon!” Then I calmed down and proceeded onward.

Now I was not kidding on how the interface resembled that of a WP7 because it mashes all different  news and social media outlets into squares or we can call them what Microsoft calls them, “tiles”. You can even link your Facebook and Twitter to ChannelCaster just to make it that much easier to post videos our news stories to your friends around the world that you never see.

There are three different sections after you open the app. It opens automatically on the “favorites” section where you can put which feeds you like most, such as Google Reader, popular YouTube videos, Gossip Mash, Tech Mash, etc. Gives you the control of putting whatever you would like right when you open the app up. What is pretty cool to is, when you open one of the windows there is a little ticker at the top showing weather, stock, and other random things.

Next section is the “browse”  section. This is where you can take the time and look through all sorts of different social media from local, to jokes from comedians. I did not take a lot of time browsing through this section because there is a ton to look at.

The last section ChannelCaster has is the “build” section. This  is basically where you set up a profile and build your own channel. I briefly messed with this section but this article was mainly to tell you guys about this pretty awesome app and not give a full review on. Check out the demo video to get a quick taste of what I have been writing about.

Pretty cool stuff and the app is FREE. Yes that word we all love, so what are you waiting for. Download it and check it out my social media friends.

Application: ChannelCaster: Social News
Developer: OneLouder Apps
Cost: Free

Many of you have probably tried all the Siri clones out there. Iris Vlingo, Speaktoit Assistant, the list just goes on and on. To me it just seems like a Siri clone  is not going to cut it in the Android world. We have had this voice recognition technology since the beginning and now we are all looking for that technology to talk back to us.

So in comes Evi. She is the new dirty talker on the block. Evi not only works on the Android OS, but also works on iOS as well. So she isn’t picky. Always a good sign I guess. Evi comes from a company called True Knowledge, and  taps into the true knowledge search engine when asked questions.

According to Tech Crunch, Evi seems to be a little better at putting information together than Siri. Mike Butcher put both ladies to the test by asking them to make an apple pie. Siri pulled some web info and Evi actually pulled some apple pie recipes. A voice recognition app that can cook? Dream come true! Evi also is more international based, unlike Siri who mainly sticks with US based search results. Only features Evi lacks though, is all those personal assistant features such as creating reminders, checking calendars or adding events to calendars. Butcher said though that Evi is coming along and will be getting those features and that it is still in its beta phase. Check out the video below for more information on what she does. So you going to give the new girl a try? Or are you over the whole Siri clones out there?

Source: The Droid Guy

If you own a Motorola Atrix 4G and have waited patiently for your device to make the roll call for some Ice Cream Sandwich lovin’, your patience has just paid off. Thanks to the Atrix and Photon dev teams and XDA Senior Member, jokersax11, there is now an early build of CyanogenMOD 9 available for those who can wait no longer. Keep in mind, the build is still in an early beta stage of development, meaning there are a handful of bugs preventing this from becoming your daily driver ROM; however, from a quick look at the changelog, it looks like progress for this project is coming along at a nice rate.

What doesn’t work, you ask? Here’s the rundown:

Camera
Adobe flash issues- either adobes fault or 2d issues fault
HDMI landscape
YouTube
Car dock-missing apk
Some 2d issues, mostly works
Built in video playback- use 3rd party for now as its driver related

As you can see, there’s a few things that will hold back most folks from keeping the ROM at this stage, but jokersax11 has vowed that he is in for the long ride and will do his best to bring the project into a stable state. At this point, if you’re sick of waiting and just want to get your hands on ICS, or you want to keep tabs on progress, point your browser to the jokersax11′s original thread for all the juicy deetz.

If you’ve flashed the ROM already, be sure to let us know how much you’re liking (or disliking) Ice Cream Sandwich on your Atrix 4G and why.

Source: XDA

That’s my opening statement and now I’m going to explain why!

You’re probably reading this article, or at least the title and thinking; what the hell is going on with AndroidSPIN and all this Windows Phone 7 talk and bashing Android. First of all, this is all me and my thoughts and feelings about where Android is heading. These are the impressions I get when I use competitors products to try to keep up with the times, and see what Android has to compete with. I still love Android and it’s still my number one OS and I don’t see anything changing in the near future, but I also like to keep my mind open and see what other people do better or worse and feed this information back to you guys. Read this article before you start to judge and I hope it will get your brains kicked into motion and see if we can get some more informed answers to the questions I’m raising in this article. I’m no developer so all the opinions and findings in this article are based on my own experiences.

Androids Achilles Heel? Maybe!

Everyone states that we have complete multi tasking operating in Android and how awesome it is to have all that power, but I’m saying that’s it’s becoming Androids Achilles Heel.  Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with a Samsung Focus S from AT&T that Samsung was kind enough to send me. While I have my concerns about the Interface and the lack of customization you get with Android, I have to say that Windows Phone 7 is pretty well done. It will never replace my Android phone, but it does work well. One of the main advantages is the battery life that I previously reported.

The Windows Phone 7 has never had any problems with memory or slow down and I never have to worry about what’s running in the background.  I don’t have to think about the applications I’ve installed and if my phone is slowing down or becoming unstable due to badly written software running in the background that is not easy to track down or close.  It just seems to keep going.  I’ve gone through the Windows Marketplace and installed application after application, games, social tools and lots more and have not experienced any issues.

What’s with all the developer options?

The guys over at Google want us to believe that Android  has awesome memory and task management and that the operating system will simply take care of things and manage its memory as required.  If this is the case, why does Google keep adding more and more tools in the background to counteract badly written applications?

The option for “Don’t keep activities” appears to force android to clear out the data used by the application you are switching away from, thereby releasing more memory.  This is something the application should do on its own accord, if the developer has written the application correctly.  From what I’ve read, the function “onSaveInstanceState” is what a developer should use to save the application state from an activity before being killed so that the state can be restored later when the user returns to the application.  This is probably too much information for the average Android user, but I’m just trying to give some background.  You can also set the “Background process limit” which I’m assuming will prevent an application from starting too many background processes, leaving them running in the background.  I’ve done some searching for more information about these options, but I can’t really find any definitive answers.  Most of the answers I find just say that these options are for developers and should not be touched.

What I don’t understand is why we are even seeing these options.  Most people are end users of the phones and not developers so why not have a developer tools application that developers can install with extra setting for their application testing.  They are simply making Android more complicated to the average user and the over all experience.

I’ve talked about Windows Phone 7 before and people commented that they never have slow down on their devices and Android is simply awesome.  I seriously question those statements or say that those people are not really using the power of Android to its fullest or haven’t encountered one of the many badly written programs.

If a program is written correctly, it should release most of its memory and processes when you switch to another task, but this relies on each and every programmer to write their applications correctly in the first place.  Windows Phone 7, iOS and WebOS  enforce this method and freeze an application when you switch away from it, only allowing specially written services to continue to do background tasks.

If a program is written badly on Android, it can refuse to release the memory it should and simply continues to run at full pace in the background eating your precious clock cycles and eventually slowing down your phone.

Why are we trying to make our phone act like a desktop computer?

Android is an operating system designed to run on phones, so the first question I ask is “Why do we need our phones to multi-task like a desktop computer?  Your screen is not big enough or capable of showing multiple applications at the same time so why do this!

I’m sitting at my desktop running Windows 7 and have a dual monitor setup.  I have 3 browser windows open, a number of Google Talk chats and I’m monitoring my tweets while I’m writing this article in Microsoft Word.  Do I want it to multi-task, of course I do!!  I can see everything at the same time so I want it all to keep running and updating in real-time.  That’s the nature of what I call multi-tasking.

Can I create this same view in Android?  No I can’t, so why do I want it all to act the same as my desktop?  I don’t!

It seems all other phone operating systems have stricter control over the applications released for them.  Windows Phone 7, iOS, and WebOS to name the major players.  It also seems that these other operating systems do everything we need them to do but don’t get bogged down with too many programs running at the same time.  They still perform all the same functions.  We still get our notifications for email, Twitter, Facebook and many other social applications.  They still receive phone calls and text messages in real-time in the background.  They just do it differently.  The tighter guidelines and controls over how people implement services that perform the background tasks of the applications seem to work much better and give much less chance of a rogue application causing chaos on our devices.

Is Android Too Much?

The BIG question is.. “Is Android overkill for a device that has a primary purpose of receiving phone calls and keeping an eye on some of our favorite social messaging and emailing accounts?

When we have a rogue application, why don’t we have an easy way to shut down that application?  Why isn’t there a task manager we can get to?  this also raises the never-ending debate of whether we need a task manager or not to make Android run better.

I made the mistake of thinking that the new “recent application list” in Ice Cream Sandwich was in fact a pseudo tasks manager.  From watching initial videos and presentations from Google, I thought when you swiped your finger across an application from this list that is was not only removed from the list, but it also killed the application altogether.  Silly me.  It’s still just a recent application list the same as we’ve always had, they just changed the way you get to it.  This really makes no sense to me.

They have removed the long press of the Home button that we previously used and added a dedicated button.  Now a long press of the Home button does nothing.  What a waste of screen real estate.  We still have the Home button so why didn’t they just leave it alone and use the soft keys at the bottom for some other purpose or allow us to customize it ourselves?

So I open the debate!  What is wrong with Android?  Why do we need multi-core processors and gigabytes of memory to run what is primarily a phone?  I can understand this need more when we start to get some serious gaming on our phones, but then again, most of this performance comes from the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and no the CPU.

Forget your interface preferences at this point and just think about what I’m saying in this article!  Does Android need to be a fully multitasking operating system that acts like a desktop computer and why?

Is the two button control method of games such as Robot Unicorn attack bringing you down? Because Whale Trail is now on Android, with half the buttons and twice the delight.

Is a platform game still a platform game when you get rid of the platforms? Perhaps not, but what if you’re scrolling from left to right, collecting objects and avoiding enemies by pressing a single button to go upwards? Trying to put today’s games into genres could drive a man mad! Whale Trail might not be the first game to bring a single button control method to Android, in fact I believe we took a look a look at The Impossible Game a couple of years ago, which showed us just how tough a game with a singe input could be. Difficulty isn’t the selling point of Whale Trail, although it can become quite challenging, the biggest treat that it has to offer is its experience.

Saying the experience of a game is its biggest feature is rather vague, but Whale Trail is the type of game that is more than just the sum of its parts and if you break it down too far it stops making sense. Although in actuality, there’s already very little sense in Whale Trail. You are in control of Willow the whale who’s flying through Rainbow Land to escape Barron Von Barry. So the story is total nonsense, not that you’ll find any story once the game begins anyhow. You can’t have such a bizarre story without the visuals to back it up and sure enough there’s evil clouds with faces on; happy clouds with faces on; a colorful mountain range in the background, also with faces on and so many colors, as if someone cranked the psychedelic dial up to 11. The graphics are just as much nonsense as the story, so is the music just as nonsensical? Well, here’s a sample of the lyrics: “Ain’t no riots in the sky – Just a riot of color – That lasts forever”, so, check!

Guiding Willow through the riot of color in the sky is simple: Press on the screen to tilt him up, keep holding on the screen and he’ll do a loop-the-loop. You won’t be flying aimlessly through the sky as you’ll need to collect sky bubbles for whale fuel (Did I mention the story was bizarre?). Running out of fuel will cause Willow to fall out of the sky and I can’t imagine what multicolored horrors that would cause on the land below. There are also storm clouds in the sky that will reduce your fuel if you collide with them unless you’ve collected enough stars to gain temporary invincibility, then you can smash through them for extra points. The endless mode eases you in on each play-though with few clouds and plenty of fuel, but eventually you’ll be scrambling for enough fuel to continue and carefully steering Williow through tight passages between walls of clouds.

If you’re looking for a more structured experience there’s 32 challenge missions that are unlocked after earning a small score in the classic mode. These challenges require you to reach a score milestone by the end of an area in order to win up to three stars. These stars are then used to unlock more challenge levels, which begins to get quite difficult around the high teens when you start to require a higher than two star average to unlock further levels. To reach three stars on many levels requires nothing short of perfection, which feels against the ‘spirit’ of the rest of the game’s feel good charm. There’s nothing wrong with a challenge, but when you can pay a couple of dollars through an in-app purchase to unlock the rest then the difficulty feels a little more insidious.

There’s a few technical hiccups that are worth mentioning. Firstly the frame rate isn’t as stable as it should be for a game so simple and secondly when there is a lot going on then the game simply freezes for a a second or two. Hopefully these issues can be patched out, but for now they can make some difficult situations even more challenging. Performance issues aside. Whale Trail is a nonsense game that’s a lot of fun to play. Beautiful, beautiful nonsense.

When you’re ready, head over to the Android Market and download this game by clicking or scanning the QR Code below.

Summary and Downloads:
Game: Whale Trail
Developer: ustwo
Cost: $0.99

The Android development community is abuzz right now about a downloadable .APK file that made its way to the Internet today, thanks to up-and-coming developer and CyanogenMOD crew member, +Andrew Neal. For those of you who’ve been following us for a while, you may remember a while back when we first reported on the sexy new Music app that will be coming to CyanogenMOD 9 builds in the near future. Today, the world gets its first taste of said app, thanks to a post on Seeing Pixels and shared to Google+ thanks to Mr. Neal.

For those unfamiliar, the new CM9 Music app has a sleek and sexy UI and features a literal ton of functionality. The top-notch customization features in the application allow you to shop the Android Market for the currently playing song at the push of a button, share what track you’re listening to with all your social outlets, set your favorite song as ring tones, delete unwanted tracks, and search your music from anywhere in the app.

Some of the apps other key features include:

• Fling up to control your music
• Long press for Party Shuffle
• Long press for queue
• Custom notifications
• Drag and drop queue and playlist
• Custom lockscreen
• Themes
• Shake and flip options
• New widgets

The Music app only works on devices already running CyanogenMOD 9, so sorry about your luck if you’re not in that group — hey, I’m right with you too, so don’t kill the messenger. If you’re lucky enough to have a CM9-ified device, head on over to the source link below for all the 411 and download links. Then be sure to add Andrew on Google+ to keep tabs on his work and say thanks. Enjoy!

Source:  Seeing Pixels, via +Andrew Neal

Welcome loyal fans of The ManDroid Show. I thank you as always for tuning in to another episode. As much as I wanted to be at CES I couldn’t make it. We did our best to cover it as much as possible and there will still be more to come next week.

CES articles
ICS announced for Transformer Prime
Lenovo announces new products
7-inch Transformer Prime announced
Samsung inTouch
Samsung Security Cameras
Android powered Polaroid camera
Android powered car radio
T-Mobile announces 4G expansion and 2 devices
Senseg touch technology
Epson 3D technology will WOW you

Device Updates
Verizon road map showing Droid 4 price
Sprint Galaxy Nexus confirmed with Google wallet

App of the Week
Dragon Go! New voice recognition app

Tweak of the Week
MIUI ported to Verizon Galaxy Nexus