Back in March, Facebook made much noise with its unveiling of Facebook Messenger Platform, a way through which developers can integrate their third-party apps into the company’s popular Messenger app, creating new uses and features for the messaging service. Now, the platform is seeing its first Android game in the form of Doodle Draw.
Speaking to Chinese media, He Gang, the head of Huawei’s mobile division, has said that the launch of the company’s first smartwatch, called Huawei Watch, has been delayed until at least September or October, pushing its launch to the latter half of the year. The Huawei Watch was unveiled back at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with the company having said at the time that they were planning for a launch sometime “around the middle of the year.”
The delay can largely be attributed to “incompatibility issues with Android Wear,” according to the reports. In other words, Google Play services being unavailable in China due to strains between the Mountain View company and the People’s Republic of China has meant that Huawei has to build its own smartwatch services to match those built and offered by Google.
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The LG G Pad 7.0 was released back in July of 2014 alongside its bigger brother, the G Pad 10.1, and while it doesn’t rock the most high-end specifications, Verizon is giving it some love with an update to Android 5.0.2 Lollipop (yes, not 5.1.1). The software version number is VK41022A.
There isn’t much to be said about this update beyond what we wrote for the Verizon G Pad 10.1’s Lollipop update. LG’s custom UI additions have received a fresh coat of paint to fall in line with Google’s Material Design guidelines and all the features and improvements that are included in Android Lollipop are there – Smart Lock for authenticating the device when other trusted devices are nearby, the Interruptions menu which provides granular control over which app notifications light up your device, Floating Action Buttons, and more.
As always this is a carrier OTA update, so don’t be surprised if it’s a week or more before you see it in your system updates.
We’ve heard very little about the much-anticipated OnePlus 2 since September of last year when OnePlus confirmed it was working on the device and targeting a Q2 or Q3 2015 launch. We expected the company to unveil it late last month when they tweeted a plan to “shake up the industry” on June 1st, but that turned out to be teasing flash sales and a consequential permanent price drop of the OnePlus One. Today, however, OnePlus is actually teasing the OnePlus 2 in the form of two contests.
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One of the major improvements found in Android M and highlighted during Google’s I/O developer conference was two new features meant to significantly increase standby times of smartphones running the OS over previous versions, and now we have some more numbers that should make the differences concrete.
For the uninitiated, the two new features meant to tackle battery life are Doze and App Standby. Doze uses what Google calls “significant” motion detection to determine when a device has been left unattended for an extended period of time, and when it does find that your device is idle, backs off background activity (like apps syncing data) to go into a deeper state of sleep and drink less power in standby.
Update: Google has contacted us to clarify how the feature works on iOS devices.
Google Maps for iOS has been updated today to 4.7.0 and includes a neat new feature introduced on Android back in April which allows users to send directions and turn-by-turn navigation to places they find on their desktop to Google Maps on their mobile device, among other things.
The new feature, once enabled properly (you need Google Maps installed and to be signed-in on both devices), works by presenting a “Send to device” prompt in the answer card for places found on Google Maps desktop (pictured above). Clicking “Send to device” presents the user with a choice of which linked device to send the location to, and then triggers a notification on the chosen device with the option to get directions or turn-by-turn navigation to the place.
Two smaller capabilities coming with this update to Maps for iOS are the ability to add or edit the business hours of places, and view all of the reviews and photos you’ve shared of places from the “Your profiles profile. Also included in this update are, of course, the usual “bug fixes.”
Update: Google responded to our request for comment by saying that 8K video has been supported since 2010, but that labeling for 8K video (the 4320p/8K quality setting like pictured above) was added “earlier this year.” We’re not sure how long ago they really mean, but a simple search on Reddit shows threads about the new label surfacing just over the past few days (Marques Brownlee also noticed it today), so there’s reason to believe it was a recent change.
It may seem a bit excessive to most of us, but it seems that playback of 4320p, 8K video is now possible on YouTube. The playback works in Chrome (although most consumers can barely play 4K at 60fps as it is), but YouTube doesn’t have any official announcement yet mentioning 8K video playback support…
OnePlus has sold only somewhere over a million units of its OnePlus One (very small compared to the big OEMs), and went as far as to call its recent flash sales of the phone as something that would “shake up the industry,” but the company isn’t stopping there. Based on taking a “hard look at the numbers to make sure we were maintaining our commitment to our users,” OnePlus has decided to make the $249 starting price of the One permanent (sorry to everyone who waiting anxiously at their computers to get the deal last week). It also has a new partner in another promotion…
Starting June 10th – and for a limited time, they say – the company will be offering the 64GB OnePlus One with a 1-year subscription to Dropbox Pro, the cloud storage service, for $349. The deal is valid in the US, EU, and Canada. We wouldn’t be too surprised to see this deal lasts longer, though, as Dropbox continues its ugly battle against Google, Microsoft, and others to be the future storage center of people’s millions of files as they move from device to device.
While the OnePlus One is a solid buy for anyone in the market for a gimmick-free, what-you-see-is-what-you-get Android phone sold at cost, we still expect to see a OnePlus 2 soon, with the last word from OnePlus that it would go on sale “sometime in 2015.” Bloomberg pegged the August through September timeframe as when we should see it, and we recently reported on seeing a mysterious device from OnePlus show up in Geekbench test results. Just something to keep in mind.
We’ve had quite a few leaks of the device already, and now AT&T has officially unveiled the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active on its website. We’re still waiting for the customary blog post to go up with information on pricing and availability, though, so we’ll update this post when those details goes live.
Update: The press release has just gone out with everything we really want to know about the Galaxy S6 Active. In terms of details we didn’t know about, the phone runs 5.0.2 Lollipop, comes with an Exynos 7420 64-bit octa-core processor, 32GB of internal storage, and the 5.1″ QHD Super AMOLED display has a pixel density of 577 ppi. The S6 Active will be available starting June 12th, as always, as an AT&T exclusive and will be available on the same day both online and in retail stores. Installment pricing with be as such: $0 down on AT&T Next for $23.17 with 30 device payments on Next 24, $28.96 per month at 24 payments on Next 18, or $34.75 per month at 20 payments on Next 12.
“With the Galaxy S6 active, we’re delivering consumers with high durability coupled with the powerful performance of Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone,” said Tim Baxter, President & COO & Mobile Division GM of Samsung Electronics America. “The result is a smartphone that brings ruggedized capabilities and water resistance coupled with the camera, battery and design features that empower our consumers and business users to do more.”
The promotional page for the S6 Active confirms just about every detail we already knew about the rugged device save for battery size – the S6 Active indeed does have a 3,500mAh onboard battery (contrary to belief it might stay at 2,800mAh), as well as Quick Charge and Ultra Power Saving functionality, that together should stretch out use off a cable by quite some time.
The Galaxy S6 Active has an IP68 rating and is certified to meet military standards for water and dust resistance, shock, vibration, extreme temperatures, humidity, and high altitude. It comes in Blue Camo, White Camo, or Gray and as expected has a 5.1″ QHD Super AMOLED display and 16MP rear and 5MP front-facing cameras.
The company has a promotional video for the phone up on its YouTube account:
We’re quickly nearing the point when we’ve covered more leaks of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active – a ruggedized variant of the flagship Galaxy S6 – than we can count on two hands, so it only makes sense to keep the coverage coming. Today’s bit of news isn’t a leak, however, but rather a tweet from AT&T hinting at an imminent launch of the device.
HTC hasn’t been having the best run lately and that continues today. After promising this past Wednesday at an investor meeting to reinvigorate its line through a new product in October and “improved design and innovation,” the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer has posted bleak earnings results for the month of May with revenue of NT$10.79 billion (US$347 million), down 50% over the same month last year and down 11% from April’s revenue of NT$13.5 billion (US$440 million). Revenue for April was down itself 33% from the month prior and 38% from April 2014.
Three new phones in Sony’s already large Xperia lineup are now shipping and hitting store shelves. XperiaBlog reports that its begun seeing both the water-resistant Xperia M4 Aqua and its dual-SIM variant the M4 Aqua dual showing up on store shelves in retailers across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East while Sony Mobile has confirmed the “The World’s Best Selfie Smartphone,” the C4, has begun shipping to the Asia-Pacific region.
The M4 Aqua, pictured below, is offered in white, black, and coral color options and has an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance. It’s a fairly mid-range phone featuring a 5.0″ 720 x 1280 pixel-resolution screen, a 1GHz octa-core Snapdragon 610 processor, and 2GB of RAM.
The Xperia C4, meanwhile, is a more powerful phone – Sony’s first with an octa-core processor – that is all about selfies, and even has its own PROselfie® registered trademark. What makes the C4 good for taking selfies is that the front-facing camera has a 28mm wide-angle lens, 5MP Sony Exmor R mobile sensor (Sony says the rear camera is good too, though), and front-facing LED flash. Sony says that in a test against the competition in 6 different picture-taking scenarios (low-light, outdoor, etc), the C4 came out on top, and has posted a full report on the results. There’s a dual-SIM variant of the C4 shipping as well, and the phone will be available in white, black, or mint color schemes. Sony says the rollout will reach other regions “within the coming weeks.”
The Internet can be a double-edged sword – a window to the world’s knowledge at one end, and at the other a window to the world’s favorite cat pictures. And since on the web all sites are treated equally (save for the “deep” web, I guess) if we don’t have a strong, lasting motivation to get work done it can prove all too easy to get distracted browsing places that aren’t a valuable use of our time. While that lasting motivation must come from within, there are certain tricks and tools you can try that may just give you the boost you need to power through that next email or essay. The one I’d like to share with you today is an extension for Chrome called Momentum.
Momentum quite simply replaces the default New Tab page of Chrome with a “personal dashboard,” as the developer calls it, like the one you see above. For reference, here’s the New Tab page:
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Thanks to the keen eye of one Google+ user, we now know that Chrome for Android beta 43 introduced banner ads for the installation of native apps. Chrome for Android 43 was released just last month. The functionality for web apps was introduced in beta 42 and rolled out in April.
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If there’s one smartphone manufacturer punching above the rest to provide the latest software from Google to the greatest amount of customers, it’s Sony. The company posted to its blog today that not only is Android 5.1 Lollipop rolling out to the whole series of Xperia Z-Z3 phones as well as the Xperia ZL, ZR, and Tablet Z right now, but July will be the beginning of a Lollipop rollout for even more devices.
First, in July the Xperia T2 Ultra and Xperia C3 will get the update. Then starting “a little after we’ve made the update available for the Xperia Z Series,” the M2 and M2 Aqua will go directly to Android 5.1.
The company says to hang tight for more updates on each of these rollouts (noting that timing may vary by market and/or carrier) and follow them @SonyMobileNews on Twitter for information as its released, or keeping checking the blog. We’ll continue to keep you posted on these rollouts as well.
Okay, we know what you’re probably thinking – that of course he’d want Google to buy Twitter, as he’s a shareholder, and a particularly large one in Twitter, at that – and as such has a large financial interest in its success. But Chris Sacca, who has worked as the Head of Special Initiatives at Google, is a smart guy with early investments in a lot of now-successful companies including Uber, Instagram, Bitly, and many more. And he thinks that Twitter and Google would be mutually benefited if they were married together as one.
HTC CEO Cher Wang during an investor meeting yesterday apologized for the company’s poor performance in recent months. According to the Taipei Times she attributed it to “poor operational efficiency and overly conservative marketing strategy amid fierce competition in the global market.”
Further differentiating its lineup (or complicating it, however you look at it), HTC has just unveiled a new dual-sim HTC One for the Chinese market called the HTC One ME, previously believed to be called ME9, via its website. The high-end smartphone matches the specifications and physical design of the One M9+ but only has a single 20MP round camera on the back, like the One E9+.
The Verizon LTE variant of the LG G Pad 10.1 was released last November, which can feel like a long time ago here on the Internet, but Verizon hasn’t forgotten about owners of the tablet as it’s now receiving an update that sees its software version bumped to the 5.0.2 version of Android Lollipop. The actual software version number of the tablet, since of course LG has its own skin (albeit a light one) over Lollipop, is now VK70022A.
First, the UI elements specific to LG’s layer have been updated to fall in line with Google’s Material Design suggestions, and everything you’d expect from Lollipop is there as well: Smart Lock for authenticating the device when other trusted devices are nearby, notifications on the lock screen, the Interruptions menu which provides granular control over which app notifications light up your device, as well as Floating Action Buttons and the Screen Pinning feature. The notifications panel has also been completely redesigned and displays both notifications and quick settings within the panel.
The update should be rolling out over-the-air now but carrier OTA releases are notorious for taking a week or two to reach everybody, so hang tight if you don’t see it in your system updates.
Google today released a new version of the official Google Keyboard to the Play Store, most notably bringing along with it dictionary syncing to Google accounts (Apps for Business accounts excluded, it seems) and the ability to access emoji from physical Bluetooth keyboards.
Slack, the workplace communication service that has taken the corporate communications space by storm, has released what is says is a “better, faster, and all around Android-ier” Slack app for Android, rewritten from the ground up. The biggest changes to come with this new version are a faster user experience for navigating around the app and the introduction of new user interface elements which follow the Material Design guidelines set forth by Google.
At this point we have to believe that Samsung just doesn’t care very much about keeping the Galaxy S6 Active – a ruggedized variant of the flagship Galaxy S6 – a secret, as information about the device has leaked multiple times already starting early last month. Today we get what is essentially a complete rundown of the device in the form of its user manual, courtesy of none other than Samsung US.
The manual, clocking in at 108 pages, includes everything from information on Samsung’s custom interface on top of Lollipop to how to install the SIM card and customize the function of the “Active” key found on the side of the device.
Since this manual is coming straight from the dragon’s mouth, we feel it safe to consider all the details within official and confirmed, so let’s go through the top-line specifications. The S6 Active has a 5.1″ 2560 x 1440 Quad HD Super AMOLED display, an Exynos 7420 octa-core processor, 32GB of non-upgradable internal storage, 16MP rear and 5MP front-facing cameras, and unlike previous rumors suggested, the battery is staying the same as the S6 at 2,550mAh. All of these internal specs are pretty much the same as the standard Galaxy S6, actually.
Aside from that it lacks, as we expected, a fingerprint sensor or touch-sensitive buttons in favor of rugged hardware keys, but preserves the heart rate sensor and interestingly weighs just as much as its standard counterpart. The manual shows off the S6 Active in both Camo White and Titanium Black paintjobs, though we still expect there to be a green camouflage variant as was the case with its predecessor, the S5 Active.
With this phone having already been submitted for FCC approval, which typically happens when a device’s specifications and hardware design are set in stone, and considering the launch of its predecessor in June of last year, we should be seeing this device officially confirmed by Samsung pretty soon.
Thanks to a screenshot shared on Google+, we’ve learned that the previously experimental Touch to Search feature for the Chrome browser on Android seems to have been moved to the stable build and is now rolling out to users. Touch to Search “sends the selected word and the current page as context to Google Search,” according to Google. In other words, you see something in a webpage that you’d like to learn more about and can highlight and look it up in Google Search without leaving the page.
It’s notably similar to the recently announced Now on Tap, except it only works within the Chrome browser and, of course, you’re providing more context than Now on Tap requires. From the image above it seems that this feature is opt-in, which makes sense with many cautious of Google’s attempts to collect information on their every digital move.
According to Android Central they’ve been able to access the feature from Chrome on a 2014 Moto X without updating, so Google probably just enabled a flag for the feature on the public build server-side, but I just tested it on a 2nd generation Moto G and wasn’t able to bring it up. Does the new feature appear like in the image above when you highlight text in Chrome for Android? Leave a comment if so!
According to Italian HDBlog via SamMobile, Samsung is planning on launching what is essentially a larger Galaxy S6 Edge and will call it the Galaxy S6 Plus. The device is apparently codenamed Project Zero 2. The South Korean electronics giant is expected to release the new phone in the coming weeks before IFA 2015 where it is still plans to release the Galaxy Note 5, which is being called Project Noble inside the company.
