Author: Clinton

After being leaked a couple of days ago along with a slew of other leaks, the Google trade-in program for the Google Pixel is now live at the Google Store.  The program allows you to trade in previous Google Nexus phones, LG, Samsung, and iPhones to get a credit towards the purchase of a new Google Pixel or Pixel XL.

With the new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL only a few weeks away, it is a little surprising to see Google open this program up now.  The assumption was that it would start when the next generation phones were announced.

As for the value that you get, it largely depends on how new your phone is and its condition.  For example, if I wanted to trade in my Nexus 6P with 64GB of storage, I would get back $155 since it is in working condition and doesn’t have a broken screen.  If I trade in my wife’s iPhone SE 128GB, that would get me $87.

Good news this afternoon for those of you who, like me, have the Lenovo Yoga Book.  The long awaited update to Android Nougat is now available.  The 1.39GB update is build YB1-X90F_17902 for those keeping score at home and brings a lot of updates and changes beyond the Nougat update.  The OTA is rolling out now and should be hitting devices over the course of the next few days.

The Nougat update for the Yoga Book was planned by Lenovo but it was not slated to hit until October.

First, Android Nougat.  The Yoga Book update takes it to Nougat 7.1.1 so you have all of the benefits that it brings.  It is also updated to the June 2017 Android Security Patch.  That’s not so great but hopefully it’ll get updated soon.

Amazon has done well with their lineup of Android-based tablets and their latest update to their 10″ model is quite impressive.  The new Fire HD 10 is available for pre-order from the retailer and this update is really impressive for its $149 price point.

The new Fire HD 10 has a 10.1″ display that renders 1920 x 1200 resolution making it a full HD display.  It is powered by a Mediatek quad-core processor that runs at 1.8GHz and is coupled with 2GB of RAM.  That RAM count is double of the first Fire HD 10 and should significantly improve performance, especially with multiple apps running.  Storage comes in at either 32GB or 64GB depending on the model but there is a MicroSD expansion slot.  That will add up to an additional 256GB of storage to the tablet.

A new update to the diet and wellness tracking app, MyFitnessPal, is rolling out in the Play Store.  The update, version 6.24-10373 for those keeping score at home, brings a lot of general fixes and improvements to the app as well as bottom tab navigation.

The new navigation in the app falls in line with what Google expects from apps today and provides three options to users.  The Home tab is your news and information feed with posts from MyFitnessPal themselves as well as achievements that friends who use the app have completed.  The Diary tab is where you log your food and exercise for the day while the Me tab gives you an overview of your profile, see your friends profiles, and your achievements.

The updated ASUS Chromebook Flip C101 is now available for pre-order from both ASUS directly as well as Amazon.  The 10.1″ WXGA Rockchip powered Chromebook is only $299, a great price point for a budget but well appointed Chrome OS device.

The display on the Chromebook Flip C101 renders at 1280 x 800 and is powered by the Rockchip 3399 OP1 processor and Mali-T860MP4 graphics processor.  It has 4GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 16GB of storage.  That storage can be expanded thanks to the MicroSD card slot but given that Chrome OS leverages Google Drive for storage, that may not be a big deal.

Build 61.0.3163.98 of Chrome for Android has been released by the Chrome team at Google, bringing with it a handful of fixes and improvements.  The update is now in the Google Play Store and should roll out to devices via an OTA update over the course of the next few days.

The update, as is usually the case, brings a lot of under-the-hood updates to the browser as well as security fixes.  Most of these updates are focused on stability and performance of the app.  There are, however, other fixes that are specifically called out in the release notes.