Another year, another game dev summit from Google. On March 12, 2024, Google's digital game dev summit took place. It was an excellent sort-of-webinar for those interested in hearing out what Google has to offer for developing Android games and promoting them. If you've missed it, don't worry, as they've posted a YouTube recap of the game dev summit, which I highly recommend listening to.
Things evolve each year, especially in the technological field, and MWC is the perfect event to see what we can expect on the short term. At this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC), there were truly a plethora of announcements. Some of the presented things are good, creating eagerness (i.e. the Samsung Smart Ring), others not so good but announced only for marketing purposes (i.e. the transparent laptop screen). Anyway, some of the most interesting Android devices in my opinion were the wearables and foldables, as it seems these two categories are here to stay. OnePlus Watch 2 and Xiaomi Watch 2, respectively, are the two most promising wearables to be released soon.
I bet you won't guess what the most downloaded Android app was in 2023. Hint, it's not TikTok. It's not Facebook, nor Whatsapp. The most downloaded app of 2023 (for Android that is) was Instagram.
I've started having even more fun with Kotlin. One way you can learn Kotlin is by practicing and solving real exercises. That's how I discovered Exercism.org, a free way to learn dozens of languages by jumping head first into problems. One of their first exercises for learning Kotlin is calculating the Hamming Distance between DNA strands.
This made me scratch my head a few times before understanding what those double-exclamation points mean in some Kotlin code references, but it seems it's not that difficult to understand. This is another post in the "Fun with Kotlin" series. Btw, I didn't explain before because I thought it's easy to spot, I chose "Fun with Kotlin" because the word fun in Kotlin is what you start the declaration of a function with and it also means having a great time. I know, a bad dad joke but I couldn't help myself.
Coding your own Android app as a newbie dev sounds extremely difficult. Sure, there are a lot of platforms out there that allow you to create your Android app without any coding knowledge, but at some point if you need anything advanced you'll still need to look at the code. That's one of the reason I've recently started having a bit of fun with Kotlin to see where that gets me. In the worst case scenario I'll simply give up on learning it after spending a bit of time doing so - but even this scenario has the benefit of training my mind (learning something new helps) and in the end I'd still know something new. The best case scenario is the one where I manage to publish a small Android app built from scratch.
The Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona is almost over, so as usual they give awards for groundbreaking innovations and revolutionary products. The MWC 2024 is a prestigious event and most tech-related innovations are launched or announced here. Thus, their awards are quite sought for because they truly recognize the best in class across various categories. Google Pixel won the best smartphone award, and I must say I'm a bit surprised that Samsung didn't steal that one. Here are the most important awards given at MWC 2024 this year.
Smart rings are not a new concept as they have been available on the market for quite some time, since the release of the first smart ring by Oura. However, it is the first time that Samsung announces a smart ring, called the Galaxy Ring. This was displayed live at MWC 2024, and even if visitors were not allowed to touch it, you could still see its main characteristics.
I also use the Yahoo Mail app for Android, and to my surprise today (February 27th, 2024) I couldn't open my email account using the app. Occasionally, Yahoo will have trouble opening up, but I do not recall it having issues for such a long time as they've had today - Yahoo Mail app is still down at the time of writing this, both for Android and iOS. I did check to see if it's a worldwide issue and that's the case, as they've posted a message on the official Yahoo Twitter account that the apps have issues and that those will be solved soon, as their technical team is currently investigating the cause.
A multi-chain crypto wallet, like AnCrypto, is a type of cryptocurrency wallet that supports multiple blockchain networks and their respective cryptocurrencies all in one. Unlike traditional wallets that are limited to one blockchain, multi-chain wallets offer users the ability to manage various cryptocurrencies across different blockchains within from a single app. Basically you install an app such as AnCrypto and you'll be able to hold in it all your important crypto currencies. It works with all leading blockchains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance, Polygon (Matic), Doge, Tezos, Litecoin, Nordek, Fantom, Bitcoin Cash, Tron & others (up to 12 different blockchains are available).
