BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News: Smooth, easy way to share news and viral content

Got a lot of time in your hands? Literally, you might be holding your smartphone for hours once you download the latest BuzzFeed app for Android and the recently launched BuzzFeed NEWS app. The internet news media site is more fun to explore on its own official app.  It's also a social news and entertainment website that has everything from serious news to politics to business, entertainment, quizzes, viral videos, trending stories, and more. Businesses nowadays need their own mobile apps and BuzzFeed, even if you think is a rabbit hole, is no different.

BuzzFeed articles, or at least, the headlines can easily be mined from any social network but reading the whole article still requires that you open the link within the app or outside using a mobile web browser. Loading takes some time--a few seconds longer. Try browsing the BuzzFeed feed on the app and you’ll notice the obvious difference.

BuzzFeed App for Android

On the original BuzzFeed app, once you click on a story title, the small box will zoom out to reveal the article page. Each story features a related image because such increases page views and because people are more image centric now. App only operates on portrait orientation. Turning the Android phone will not change the screen to landscape so don’t expect the text and images to grow bigger than they already are on your display.

The iOS and Android version have almost the same interface and navigation. They just differ in the colors. App’s color combo is red and white but how colors were used on each version is different. The iOS BuzzFeed features a white banner with the red BuzzFeed name while the Android version shows a red banner with white text.

BuzzFeed's menu can be accessed when you click on those three horizontal lines you see on the app's home screen. You'll see the option to sign in and different categories: Bookmarks, Trending, News, Buzz, Life, Entertainment, Quizzes, and Videos. There's also the LOL, Cute, and Win articles. More specific categories are the following: Animal, Big Stores, Books, Business, Celebrity, Community, DIY, Food, Geeky, Health, Ideas, LGBT, Music, Parents, Politics, Rewind, Science, Sports, Style, Tech, Travel, World

On some stories, the banner part will have three icons: the bubble quote icon for comments, LOL icon, and the ribbon icon for bookmark.

On the menu, there are also options to rate the app, send feedback, and view the settings. Click on what's trending and you'll see that most viewed article. Once inside the app , you'll see a set of social media buttons that allow you to share the particular story on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Whatsapp, or through email, SMS, or text messaging.

Material Design is very obvious on the BuzzFeed app while transition is very smooth.

Download BuzzFeed from the Google Play Store

BuzzFeed News App

A few days ago, BuzzFeed also released a new app called BuzzFeed NEWS. Yes, it's another way to fall down into the rabbit hole that is BuzzFeed. This time though, it's aimed for people who like to read the more serious stuff. By serious we mean the latest news on US Politics, Business, Technology, World News, Science, Sports, Celebrity and Entertainment, LGBT, the upcoming 2016 elections. Some of the articles here you may also find in the other BuzzFeed app and website but the News app makes it easier to follow the news around the world.

The app shows different content from several sources. You may see stories shared on Twitter or on some other websites. The idea is for the user to be informed of some of the things being discussed. BuzzFeed will make sure that user knows all the breaking news that matter.

The app only has two sections: CATCH UP and ALERT STREAM. 'Catch Up' lists all the latest news into one continuous flow. Scroll down to read the main points of the article. Click on a story if you want read the full text. Note that not all articles included in the app are from the BuzzFeed writers. Some stories come from other blogs and websites. The editorial team has curated the article list already. Each article features a short summary or an outline of the content. If you just need to "catch up" and be informed, go through this list and read the important points. The 'who, what, why, when, and where' details should be mentioned already.

Meanwhile, the 'Alert Stream' features a short description of what the article is about and the source---no other details.

Download BuzzFeed News from the Google Play Store

Wrap-up

Regular BuzzFeed readers will find that the app is full of interesting articles and "listicles". Of course, stories are not long because BuzzFeed's target audience are those who have short attention span, are bored at work or home, or those who have work but have the freedom to mindlessly wander all over the Internet. Meanwhile, BuzzFeed NEWS readers are those who care about the world and are only interested in the more serious stuff--business, technology, politics, and etc.

There's no denying that both Android apps have been well-thought-out. Apps are definitely easier to navigate, smoother, and faster compared to when opening the mobile site. Material Design is very noticeable too so you'll see that app is light, easier to navigate, and simple to use.

If you want to read the more fun and viral stuff, go to BuzzFeed but for more important stories and relevant world news, head on to BuzzFeed News and start reading even just snippets of an article.

Story Timeline

• BuzzFeed news app now available for Android devices

Source: Android Community » Reviews

Read More

Farming Simulator 16: Everyone will have to farm at some point

It’s interesting what happens when a gaming bug hits you. It’s both different and similar for all gamers – different in that it will be different genres at different times for most users, and similar because we all know what happens when it hits us – that is, we are inexplicably hooked to the game no matter how illogical it may seem. Take care, because that’s what might happen to you if you get hit by the farming sim bug. And probably the best farming app to waste your time on – Farming Simulator 16.

If you haven’t really been on a farm, starting the game might be an overwhelming situation for you. Luckily enough, there are beginners’ guides that exist just so you’d feel right at home, and say for a fact that you really had a farm (eeyah-eeyah-yowhh!). What you basically start with is a few fields of your own, and one of them ready for harvesting just you could get your boots dirty, so to speak. The other one is ready for sowing, and you also get a harvester (obviously), a tractor, a few handy appendages to your tractor, and a bit of capital cash. Now all you have to do is turn a profit.

How the heck do you do that? Well, it’s basically virtual work – you plant, you harvest, you sell your crops and get cash to buy better stuff, repeat, buy more land so you can plant more crops, repeat, over and over. It’s not the most exciting game you’ll find out there. But when the bug bites, you’ll find that this game is a veritable narcotic – it’s heck addictive. You’ll find yourself getting immersed in the daily mundane tasks of being in a farm, but it also rewards you with a great feeling, particularly once you’ve saved up some money to buy that new harvester or upgrade to that wider harvester head.

From what it looks like, developers GIANTS Software have taken some time and streamlined the app for mobile. Initial farming fear aside (that feeling where you won't know what to do when the game starts, trust us, you'll get over it) -- you will find that the developers have thought this one out, making the gaming experience on mobile as enjoyable as possible. You have tilt steering controls, automated harvesting and driving, and the ability to hire hands (like in real farming, y’awl) to do all the small tasks for you while you work the fields. It even looks like the map size has been thought out so you can drive, for instance, from your farm to where you sell your crops, in a smaller amount of time. I can imagine the time that would be spent driving – slowly, at that, with your tractor – would be considerable if the map had been large.

The app is priced at USD$4.99 at the Google Play Store, and we think that is a good deal. This will obviously not appeal to you if you like all the shooting, explosions, and zombies from the other games – none of that here. But the replay value of the game is immense, this is a game you can dive into and get lost in, making your $5.00 investment very much worth it. And just for fun, you can share the game with your friends, and you can all hang out together and play multi-player farming over WiFi or Bluetooth. Just don’t blame us if you experience withdrawal symptoms, or your wife hollerin’ at you because you have to go to work and you don’t feel like going because of Farming Simulator 16.

Ratings (out of 5)
Graphics and Sound: 4.5 out of 5
User interface: 4 out of 5
Gameplay: 4 out of 5
Replay Value: 5 out of 5

DOWNLOAD: Google Play Store
Developer: GIANTS Software GmbH
Price: USD$4.99
Version Reviewed: 0.0.0.2 (review version)
App installed on: LG G2

Story Timeline

• Farming Simulator 14 setting up roots on Android
• Farming PRO 2015 allows you to build an agricultural empire
• Farming Simulator 16 makes all your farming dreams possible, sort of

Source: Android Community » Reviews

Read More

DU Speed Booster review: A performance Swiss army knife

Most smartphones these days are behemoths of power, almost as powerful as micro PCs in a pocket-sized form. While all that power is available at our fingertips, quite literally, however, that doesn't mean that our smartphones are running at maximum efficiency. In fact, many apps simply presume that they have full access to all CPU, memory, and storage. Multiply that by the number of apps you have installed and you get a sordid mess of performance black holes. Now, Baidu has come up with DU Speed Booster in a bid to clean all that up. We tried it out to see how well it works.

Like a well-oiled machine

DU Speed Booster's main functionality focuses on five core areas. Each of those is clearly marked in the app's home page, plus two more utilities to help your speed boosting goals. Phone Boost is the core Accelerator, and as the name might suggest it tries to supercharge your device, mostly by clearing out apps that have don't really have any business of running in the background. This frees up more memory for more essential apps to use. After a few moments of analysis it came up with multiple apps, some with only a small amount of data to save, but cumulatively adding up to as much half a gigabyte on one of the devices we tested.

Aside from simply cleaning up apps, there are a few other things you can do here, like setting which apps to automatically kill - that is, prevent from auto-starting - schedule phone boosting sessions, and whitelist which apps to save from being killed.

Trash Cleaner erases residue files that may be squatting in your phone, ranging from the huge but unused files DU Speed Booster comes across, to left over APKs or app data from a previously installed app. These are some of the things that no file manager will show you outright, things that even app markets don't completely clean up. You can permanently delete them from here.

App Manager is like Android's own Application manager turned up to eleven. Here you can easily uninstall apps, both the ones that you installed and the ones that came with your OS, as well move apps to your SD card, if you have one. A convenient feature is the APK manager that scans APKs lying around and tells you whether they are installed or not.

Helping set DU Speed Booster apart is its Security function, which comprises both an antivirus utility and a privacy manager. It may sound strange at first to see a security section in a speed booster, but many resource hogging apps and processes are known to come from malware. DU Speed Booster takes care of that with its new antivirus scanner. For more fine-grained control, meanwhile, a Privacy Advisor informs you what apps are using which permissions, like location, messaging, or camera. Unfortunately Android itself lacks per-permission control at present, though that might come in a future Android M version.

Games galore!

The fifth core function of DU Speed Booster is so important that Baidu put it on page of its own. Game Booster is really like Phone Boost, only fine-tuned for games. The basic principles are the same: it frees up memory and resources to make room for the game you are playing, and automatically scans your device to highlight the games you have installed. If it misses any in that scan, you can manually add them. DU Speed Booster also offers to create a game folder on your homescreen for easy access to games, though you'll need to be using a launcher that supports folders.

More features than you can imagine

Like many of Baidu's Android apps, Speed Booster is loaded with a ton of features. There's a Speed Test section that can pretty much replace the popular Speedtest.net app, and which can rank your country's Internet speed performance against the average in other countries.

An Easter Egg feature in the app's menu gives you a complete run-down of your smartphone's hardware, from CPU through GPU, to memory and even hardware sensors. Finally, there are two easy ways to quickly access the phone-boosting functions: first, a conventional homescreen widget that also has quick toggles for Wi-Fi and other settings, and secondly a floating circle, that can be set to be visible in any app, and which allows you to jump straight into Speed Booster.

Easy to use, hard to learn

As with DU Battery Saver, this app is loaded with functions. That could make learning how to use the app a little daunting at first, figuring out what each function does, but thankfully the app is well organized, with very few hidden features lurking in obscure corners.

The best part about DU Speed Booster is that once you've learned it all and set up all the switches and toggles you want, using it is a breeze. A simple tap on the huge circle on the app's landing page starts the process. It couldn't get more straightforward than that.

One thing we'd love to see is more information on what DU Speed Booster is doing as it runs through rogue apps and processes: not only is it useful to know exactly what's going on with your phone, it might also help later on when you're deciding whether a new app or game is something you want to install or not.

Wrap-up

These days, it's no longer enough to just have a super powerful phone, it also pays to be mindful of the apps that you install which may be using up resources beyond reason. In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to actually think about such things, leaving it to the operating system to keep these rowdy apps in check. Sadly, we don't live in an ideal world and apps like Baidu's DU Speed Booster are a welcome addition to our arsenal. Easy to use once you get to grips with the plethora of available features, DU Speed Booster, together with DU Battery Saver, can extend your smartphone's daily life, not to mention make your games play as smooth as butter.

Source: Android Community » Reviews

Read More

DU Battery Saver Review: Feature-filled life saver

Gone are the days when you'd be worried about whether your smartphone or tablet can run an app or game. These days, you're more worried about whether your devices will last long enough for you to get home and plug in. Battery technology hasn't exactly progressed by leaps and bounds unlike other smartphone components. And, aside from hoping for bigger batteries or using power packs in an emergency, users are left with no other option than to make sure that their devices aren't consuming more power than absolutely necessary. Luckily for us, Baidu's got our backs with DU Battery Saver.

To put it bluntly, battery management apps are a dime a dozen on Android, but not all of them work as advertised. And not all of them are worthy of trust. It works wonders, then, when you bear the name of Baidu, China's leading search engine and commonly called the Google of China. That said, that name wouldn't mean much if the app couldn't deliver on quality worthy of the company's name. Fortunately, it does.

At its very core, DU Battery Saver follows the same pattern as other battery saving apps. You've got functionality for monitoring power usage, shutting down wayward and power hungry apps, and offering suggestions for optimizing performance. DU Battery Saver has all these in spades and more. And that more part is how the app sets itself apart from the competition.

Core Features: Saving your battery's life

The app's basic interface is divided into five parts corresponding to five core functions. The Battery page is the one you will most likely use the most. It not only gives you a summary of battery stats, including temperature and voltage, it also has the OPTIMIZE button that, well, tries to optimize power usage using a combination of techniques and settings. We'll get more into that later, but for most users that want to squeeze out every bit of juice from their device, this section will have all that they need.

The Saver tab is actually where you get to fine tune how exactly DU Battery Saver optimizes battery performance. Here you can set up modes, practically power profiles that let you batch settings together, like turning Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off. These modes really shine with the PRO version of the app, which lets you dynamically switch modes depending on situations. In the free version, you'll have to manually switch between these. The Smart tab is the meat of DU Battery Saver's functionality. This is where you can configure which apps to kill or not when power usage is optimized. You can also schedule changing of modes according to time or to battery levels, though these features are locked behind paywalls. One particular feature you won't find in the majority of battery saver apps is Phone Cooler. As the name implies, it monitors your phone's temperature and shuts down apps that raise the heat too high.

Value added: Being smart about batteries

You might notice that some of the functionality is blocked by what look to be in-app purchases. Worry not, you won't have to buy those features. Well, not in the conventional sense. Instead of paying for features with real money, DU Battery Saver instead uses DU Coins. And how do you earn those coins? You simply install recommended apps. This is where the Toolbox tab comes in, which is perhaps misnamed. In actuality, it is an app store filled with free apps that you can install to earn points, which, in turn, can be used to buy added features. It's not a new concept, definitely, and some might not be at ease with it, but it is, admittedly, a less money-centric strategy. Of course, you can also just directly buy the PRO version to unlock all those features. At least you have a choice.

The Charge tab also offers another feature you will rarely find in other apps of its kind. It is both a guide and a tool on how to prolong your battery's life by charging properly. Despite advancements in battery technology, we are still beholden to how we charge them. DU Battery Saver not only tells you how, it also controls the amount of power the smartphone uses when charging; the app calls it "Healthy Charging". When charging below 20 percent, the app turns on fast charging and uses up the full voltage of the charge. Once nearly full, about 80 percent or so, it lowers the voltage and uses impulse current all the way to full. Once full, it switches to Trickle charge, just enough to keep electrons flowing while not overcharging the battery.

DU Battery Saver also has other features that may seem whimsical and some that are probably useful, if you can find a purpose for them. For example, you can choose a battery skin, but don't expect it to change how the entire app looks. It really only changes how the battery image is shown. There is also a Messages feature, for messages that DU Battery Saver will send you. That's where notifications from the app are shown.

Navigating

As you can see, DU Battery Saver is flowing with features, some of which you'll rarely find elsewhere. That can present the user with a wide range of options and switches, and indeed there are quite a number of pages and controls to familiarize with.

The Monitor tab, for example, gives monitoring power consumption its own, dedicated page rather than filing that data away in a section under the Battery tab. The list of apps to exclude from DU Battery Saver's optimization process, meanwhile, is found in the Settings menu.

That complexity isn't a deal breaker, and more an issue affecting many apps that boast so many features. We feel like the learning curve will be considered by most to be be worth the sacrifice for all the power it gives. No pun intended.

Wrap-up

Unless you're already aware of Baidu's presence and activities, you might be surprised to learn that the tech giant has apps on Google Play Store free for the taking. You might be even more surprised how well some of them work. DU Battery Saver is such an example. It's simple yet powerful. Easy to use and, unless you start wandering off to explore, the home Battery page might be all that you'll ever need to use. But, at the same time, it offers more advanced users all the knobs and switches they could ever want.

Baidu's DU Battery Saver can be downloaded for free on the Google Play Store. A PRO version is also available for unlocking all advanced features in one go, for a price of $2.99.

Source: Android Community » Reviews

Read More