Author: Clinton

The expansion of Android app support on Chromebooks continues with the addition of three more devices supported in the latest Chrome OS update.  The Lenovo Thinkpad 13, the HP Chromebook 13 G1 and the Samsung Chromebook 3 are the latest to gain Android app support in the Stable channel.  This came with the latest Chrome 62 build that rolled out to these devices earlier this month.

If you have one of these Chromebooks, once you have received the update (you can force the issue by typing chrome://help in the browser), you should see the Google Play Store in your App Drawer.  Click on it and get things configured and you can then install Android apps on these devices.

In addition to these in the Stable channel, the Dell Chromebook 13 and the Acer C740 also have Android app support but only in the Beta Channel.

For those of you who have the HTC U11, there is good news this morning.  The company has begun rolling out their Android Oreo update to the phone but, for now, it is only in Taiwan.  The update to the company’s home country is likely their version of “phasing” meaning that they are going to make sure that the update performs as expected before rolling out globally.

Assuming that everything goes smooth in Taiwan, you can expect the roll out of Oreo to the U11 to happen globally pretty quickly.

As for the update itself, it is big at 1.3GB which is not uncommon for major version changes in Android.  The update also has the November Android Security Updates baked in, has support for Voice over WiFi.  In Taiwan, VoWiFi is only support with Chunghwa Telecom so it isn’t clear if this will be available on the likes of T-Mobile when the upgrade comes to devices in the US.

Good news today for those who live in Singapore and have Singapore English as their language on their Android phones.  Google Assistant now supports you!  The addition of Singapore English comes on the heals of Spanish and Italian being added a few weeks back and while the roll out of language support has been slow, at least some progress is being made.

For those of you who have Singapore English as your default language on your phone, there isn’t anything you need to do.  If you have Google Now on Tap, you will automatically be moved over to Assistant once it rolls out to your account.  You’ll know you have it when you long press the Home button on your phone and you get Assistant instead of Google Now on Tap.  This should work on any Android phone running Lollipop or later.

Android Pay continues its global expansion this week with the tap-to-pay service launching both in the Czech Republic and Brazil.  The addition of these two countries comes on the heels of the service’s expansion into Ukraine last week.  Now Android users in these two countries will be able to use their phones to pay for goods & services where it is accepted.

In the Czech Republic, over 144,000 locations now accept Android Pay including retailers like Billa, McDonald’s, Lidl and Penny Market.  For Brazil, that country becomes the first Latin America country to have the service available.  It too is available through a wide range of retailers and is available for customers of Banco do Brasil and Caixa.

In July of this year, my company was purchased.  The last week of September, the sale was completed.  And, in the first week of October, my role was eliminated.  Yeah, it sucks but fortunately for me, it looks like the job search is nearing an end.  But when I see the improvements that Google Search is making for job seekers, it makes me smile as they are certainly trying to make what can be a painful process easier.

Teaming up with the likes of LinkedIn, Glassdoor and PayScale, Google Search now not only allows you to see jobs in your area, but also can give you an estimated salary for those roles.  This adds to the already powerful job searching features in the app, which Google rolled out earlier this year.

In addition to this new salary information in Search, Google has listened to feedback on the feature and have now added a much more granular location filtering feature.

Google Play Music has a new update rolling out that significantly drops the size of the app as well as Adaptive icons.  The update is version 8.5 for those keeping score at home and the slimming down of the app comes primarily from the dropping of the Android Wear APK that was built-in the main app.

The requirement of the Android Wear APK was a holdover from pre-2.0 Android Wear when in order to control music on your watch, you had to have the app installed.  Google’s sorted that out with standalone app support in 2.0 and now in 1.x versions of Android Wear.  What this means is that the APK is simply no longer needed.

By stripping out the APK, Google was able to reduce the app size significantly, but nearly 2MB.