Author: Clinton

With the holiday season in full swing, Google has rolled out a new holidays promotion in the Google Play Store.  The aptly named Google 12 Days of Play brings discounts to games, movies and television shows, books and discounts on subscriptions.  It is a pretty impressive offer and there is likely something for everyone in the promotion.

Let’s talk about apps.  In the Google 12 Days of Play, there are 20 games that are discounted up to 80% on offer.  You can find the full list here but some of the games include:

• Minecraft: Story Mode Season 2  for .99 Cents (normally $4.99)
• Bloons TD 5 for .99 Cents (normally $2.99)
• Final Fantasy Tactics: WotL for $4.99 (normally $11.99)
• The Game of Life for .99 Cents (normally $2.99)
• The Room Three for .99 Cents (normally $3.99)
• Need for Speed Most Wanted for .99 Cents (normally $4.99)

The release team at T-Mobile has been quite busy it would seem preparing updates for multiple Samsung Galaxy devices on their network.  Late yesterday the carrier released multiple updates for Galaxy devices, bringing overall improvements as well as the December Android Security Update patch to them.

The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are the first ones to get updated. The S7 will be receiving build G930TUVS4BQL2 while the S7 Edge will be getting build G935TUVS4BQL2.  For both devices, the OTA updates are less than 50MB and is primarily the December security patch although there could be some undocumented improvements brought to the devices.

It is inevitable that at some point you are going to need to convert a document from one format to another.  Generally, doing so on a Windows PC or a MacBook is pretty straightforward.  But what if you are on the go?  Then the challenge gets a bit tougher as there are dozens of apps out there that convert to one type of file or another but not necessarily universally.  That’s especially true if you are using cloud-based storage for documents like Dropbox or Google Drive.

Enter PDF Converter by Cometdocs.  This single app is able to convert virtually any type of document to a PDF or a PDF to any type of document.  It is impressive and while the conversions can take some time based on the horsepower of your phone and the size of the document in question, it is one of the best in its class for what it does.

Recently the Cometdocs team sent me an unlocked version of the app to install and review.  I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and it is an impressive app.  The question many readers will ask is if the $19.99 price tag for the fully unlocked version of PDF Converter is worth it?  It is a fair question, especially in the less-than-a-dollar app economy.  The short answer is yes if you meet the use case scenario:  Lots of documents to manage and on the go.

Twitter has finally begun allowing users to use 3rd party two factor authentication apps to verify their identity.  The new feature is rolling out to users accounts online and you can now select the default SMS authentication or a 3rd party authentication tool.

In April, the social micro blogging site rolled out SMS authentication that allowed users to have an authentication code texted to them when they were logging into their account.  That is still enabled by default but you now have the option to use a 3rd party app like Google Authenticator to verify your identity.   The feature requires that you log into your Twitter account online, then go to Settings & Privacy in your account settings.  There you can setup an authentication app.

The venerable Samsung Galaxy Note 5 keeps on keeping on.  Samsung today has released an update for the 2015 phablet that brings the December Android Security Update to the phone.

The new update is build NRD90M.N920GDDS3CQL4 for those keeping score at home and it is aimed at the unlocked variants of the Note 5.  It is a very small update, coming in at 17MB.  That means that this update is essentially only the December Android Security Update.

At their working meeting in Lisbon, Portugal today, the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partner Project) has ratified the standard for the first 5G New Radio.  Setting the specifications of this first 5G NR is critical as it becomes the standard by which carriers and manufactures use to build or utilize 5G networks respectively.  The news isn’t surprising as they have been working tirelessly to come up with a standard early so the transition from 4G to 5G is as smooth as possible.

When 5G begins rolling out, it will leverage the backbone of today’s LTE networks and will focus primarily on data.  It will also utilize sub-6GHz that many carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile have been purchasing rabidly.  Because the focus of this first NSA 5G (Non-Stand Alone), specifications for calls are not outlined in the initial specification.