Author: Clinton

Good news this morning for those of you who have the HTC U11 Life on T-Mobile – Today is Android Oreo day for you.

HTC took to Twitter yesterday to announced that starting today, U11 Life owners on T-Mobile will start getting the hefty update pushed to them to move them from Nougat 7.1 to Oreo 8.0.

The Android 8.0 Oreo update is now available for T-Mobile editions of the HTC U11 life. It’s a big update, so you must be on WiFi before attempting to download. Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/FMd1CO28pJ

— HTC USA (@HTCUSA) December 18, 2017

HTC has, to their credit, been open about which devices would see the Oreo update and they had committed to having the update out for the U11 Life before the end of 2017.

Nova Launcher Prime, the paid version of the ever popular launcher for Android, is on sale at a great price right now.  For a limited time it is only .99 cents for the Prime version that brings more customization and features over the free version.  If you’ve never tried Nova Launcher or want to upgrade your free version to Prime, now is the time to do it.

Nova Launcher is arguably one of the best and most popular launcher alternatives for Android.  I reviewed the launcher earlier this year and while it is a little dated now given the rate of progression of the app’s updates, it is still a good primer on what it can do for you.

Today’s Deal is on the well appointed MobvoiUS Ticwatch E Android Wear watch.  The 44mm round watch comes with Android Wear 2.0 and Nougat 7.1.1 and is available on Amazon for $127.99.  You can get that price on either the Shadow (black) or Ice (white) color options.  It is an excellent price point for a watch that is running the most current version of Android Wear.

Even better, the Ticwatch E is slated to receive the Android Oreo update shortly, making this an even more impressive value.

The 44mm watch face OLED display renders at 400×400 resolution which gives you ~287PPI.  The watch is 13.5mm thin, has a built-in heart rate monitor, GPS, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi connectivity, and is Bluetooth 4.1 compatible.  The watch is powered by the MTK MT2601 1.2 Ghz Dual Core processor, has 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage.

Today’s Deal is on the new Nokia 6 from HMD Global.  The 5.5″ Full HD phone with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expandable memory is on sale for $149 over at Amazon.  This is fully unlocked and works on GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile and has the Amazon Prime adverts on the lock screen.  It is also in the popular Copper color. If you don’t want those ads on the lock screen, the non-Prime version is $229.

It is powered by the Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz.  It has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage on board.  That storage can be expanded up to an additional 128GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.  It has a 5.5″ 2.5D Full HD display coupled with Dolby Atmos sound with 7.2W of output.  It has a a 16MP rear facing camera and 8MP selfie camera with the rear camera having a dual-tone flash for warmer flash photos.

A small, midstream update to Chrome App for Android is now rolling out in the Google Play store for users.  The update is build 63.0.3239.111 for those keeping score at home and is a bug fix update to the browser.  It is the second update of the month for the browser, following the release to Chrome 63 a week ago and fits with Google’s normal update scheme of these past few months.  That is, a major update early in the month with a mid-month minor update.

Functionally, you won’t find any difference in this new build compared to the one released last week.  This update is purely focused on bug fixes and is a pretty small download once it does get to your Google account.

Just a month after hitting the 1 million download mark, Microsoft Launcher has now pushed passed 10 million downloads according to the Google Play Store.  It is an incredible download increase rate and while downloads don’t necessarily reflect day-to-day users, clearly there are people downloading it to at the very least try it out.

2017 has been an incredible year for Microsoft Launcher.  It was rebranded from Arrow Launcher in the summer and with that came a significant rebuild of the app that made it more customizable and user friendly.  Those tweaks continue as earlier this month the update to version 4.3 brought more customizing that users can do.

I have contended for quite some time, including in my review, that this launcher is likely the best out there for readers who are entrenched in the Microsoft ecosystem.