TiVo Android App Released in the UK

Thanks to an ad run in CE Pro, we knew TiVo had Android and iPhone software in the pipeline. And a variant of their Android apphas now been released… in the UK. Unlike TiVo’s rich and powerful iPad app, the Android experience being made available to Virgin Media TiVo subscribers is significantly pared down – merely featuring a guide, with the ability to record individual episodes or schedule a Season Pass. The app, available via the Android Market, also features Virgin’s red theme and minimal TiVo branding. So it’s safe to assume this won’t be exactly what makes its way to TiVo Premiere customers here in the US. However, beyond cosmetic changes, I’d hope for somewhat more robust functionality – including the ability to manage recordings and a virtual remote. But, perhaps that’ll have to wait until v1.5.

Fieldrunners HD hits Android

After something of an uphill battle, Fieldrunners HD, the hugely popular Tower Defense game for iPhone, has finally made its way onto the Android platform. Originally tabbed for release last week, Fieldrunners ran into a few speed bumps with the Android Market. But fortunately all is well now, and for the first 24 hours (the clock is already ticking), Fieldrunners will be available in the Amazon Appstore for free or in the Android Market for a buck.

With high-def graphics, more than 400 levels, and four battle fields, this multiple award-winner is certainly worth checking out.

Scrabble Is Finally Coming to Android

We can all agree that Scrabble is the greatest mobile game in the history of mobile gaming, right? It makes a good board game, too, ironically enough.

But Scrabble's been missing from Android phones for so long that I was beginning to wonder if EA and Android had some weird Scrabble-related falling out. Maybe Android invited EA over for some casual burger grilling one summer night a few years ago, and EA was like, "Aw, perfect, I'll bring beer!"

And the next thing you know, Android drank 10 beers—not light ones, like we're talking double IPAs—and made a pass at EA's girlfriend, Scrabble. And Scrabble was like, "The iPhone never does that! The iPhone is a gentleman," and EA was like, "Okay, we'll only go to iPhone's house from now on."

That's how it all played out in my head, at least.

(LIST: 50 Best iPhone Apps 2011)

Turns out, EA may have just been preparing Scrabble to be its first ever free Android game AND make it so you can play against people on iPhones, iPads, and Facebook. I know, right?!

EA says the following:

"As you know, SCRABBLE was the first of our mobile games to introduce Origin mobile and one of our launch products when the Apple App Store went live in July 2008. With the launch of SCRABBLE Android, it will be the first franchise for EA that can be played across iOS, Facebook and Android. This is big news since few multiplayer games in the industry can make that claim. It will also be EA's first free game on Android so we're one step closer to our goal of delivering the best in free and freemium content. I encourage all of you to try SCRABBLE for yourself – on any of these platforms -- and to invite friends to play."

This is, of course, a direct shot at Zynga's Words With Friends, which is similar to Scrabble and can already by played across platforms. Every time I complain about Scrabble not being available on Android, people try to tell me Words With Friends is better than Scrabble. But it just doesn't do it for me. It's like I'm expecting banana bread but I bite into pumpkin bread: It's good, but in a different way. And it's made from pumpkins.

Scrabble will be available for Android sometime next week.

NASA's App for Android

it’s official now. Android users with a keen interest in the world of astronomical science and activities of NASA can now find them right on their smartphones. After the immense popularity of the NASA app on the iPad and the iPhone, and scores of requests from Android users later, an app for Android was decided on. A screenshot of the app.. The NASA App is currently available for free on the Android market. The NASA App for Android includes content from NASA’s collection like – images from NASA IOTD, APOD and NASAImages.org, videos-on demand, and access to streaming video from NASA’s very own, NASA TV, details of their several missions, launch information and their countdown clocks, ISS and Earth Orbiting Satellite tracker, feature stories and breaking news, among others.  The app can be downloaded here.

Android 3.2 for the Motorola Xoom in a few days

Said comment was made in the discussion thread for one Android issue at Google’s official bug tracker. The Googler’s comment in its entirety was:

“There should be a 3.2 update coming within days, and that should help those of you with the Xoom.”

So there you have it. Huawei may have been right after all about the imminent release of Android 3.2 that its upcoming MediaPad tablet will supposedly run.

Android 3.2 won’t bring any major new user-facing features, at least not that we know of right now. It will, however, apparently be the first Honeycomb version to fully support 7-inch tablets (or, better said, tablets with screen resolutions lower than 1280×800). It will also be the first Honeycomb build to support Qualcomm processors. Up until now Android Honeycomb tablets have all had 1280×800 screen resolution and used Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processors. So the new version will make room for some differentiation on the part of tablet manufacturers, and that can only be a good thing. Who knows, we may even see the HTC Flyer get updated to Honeycomb 3.2, since it has a Qualcomm processor and 1024×600 resolution. After all, HTC has promised an update to Honeycomb back when it launched the Flyer, but the reason why that hasn’t happened yet may just have become obvious.

While we can’t know for sure what will happen, let’s just wait a few days and see. Maybe Android 3.2 is closer than we ever thought.