Author: Clinton

Home Depot, the nations largest home improvement chain, will be coming to Google Home and Google Express.  In a press release, the company announced that customers will be able to shop via Google Home and have their orders shipped to them via Google Express, Google’s shopping service.

“We’re focused on delivering convenience and value as we continue to invest in best-in-class interconnected experiences for our customers,” said Online President and Chief Marketing Officer Kevin Hofmann. “Google has been a key strategic partner for us over many years and we’re excited to take our relationship to the next level with the Google Assistant and Google Express.”

The addition will mean that Google Express will offer shopping and free shipping from over 20 retailers by the end of the year.  Remember that Walmart is also coming to Google Express this month.

Ookla, the company behind Speedtest, has released a report on the health of mobile networks here in the United States.  In that report, T-Mobile was deemed to have the best performing mobile network in the country, outscoring Verizon, AT&T and Sprint.

Speedtest, for those who don’t know, is a service that allows you to test the download and upload speed of your data connection (or Wi-Fi) from a website or their mobile app.

The report bases the information on a new Speed Score model that the company uses to measure the performance of mobile networks.

This year Ookla also introduced Speed Score to more accurately reflect the full breadth of networking experience on a given network. Speed Score incorporates low-end, median and top-end performance for both download and upload speed. It’s a comprehensive metric that combines all factors that matter to a good network experience into a single score.

Using this methodology, the test results should more accurately reflect what users can expect from a particular mobile network.

Today’s Deal is on a great little portable charging pack from AUKEY.  Right now on Amazon the 10000mAh Slimline Charger is on sale for $19.99.  However, for ClintonFitch.com readers, you can use the coupon code AUPOWER9 and save an additional $6.  That makes the pack $13.99.

The AUKEY Slimline Charger has two USB ports for charging of two devices at a time and each port can put out a maximum of 2.4A.  This low-cost pack doesn’t support Quick Charge technology but doesn’t have AUKEY’s own Adaptive Charging technology which is design to maximize the recharge rate safely.

Huawei continues to make huge strides in the smartphone market and their surge over the course of 2017 continues.  Counterpoint, a global technology research firm, has just released their latest Market Pulse for July 2017.  In that report, the Chinese manufacture has jumped over Apple to take the number two position in global smartphone sales percentage.  Perhaps even more impressive in this is the fact that they made this jump without a “hero” device like Apple’s iPhone 7 or Samsung’s Galaxy S8.

Samsung is by far the leader in smartphone sales percentage globally with just over 20%.

The July report from Counterpoint is the fifth consecutive month of gains in market share by Huawei and they have distanced themselves from others in the highly competitive Chinese manufacturing market.  Still, as the report points out, the risk to Huawei is their over dependence of their home market and expansion into Europe and North America will need to happen for them to hold on to that 2nd place solidly.

OnePlus 2 owners, the sun hasn’t quite set on your 2015 flagship.  Although OnePlus themselves have all-but dropped the phone, the developer community continues to bring out the best in the phone.  The latest is LineageOS who has released an Android Oreo based ROM for the phone.

LineageOS Build 15 is now out in the beta channel and while it is far from being ready for your daily driver, the takeaway here is that development is happening across a lot of devices, including the OnePlus 2.  There are a lot of things that don’t work, including the camera, in this alpha build.  So unless you are a developer willing to give feedback and test (or some sort of ROM masacist), I would recommend staying away from it for now.

Google has released the September 2017 Android Security Update for supported devices.  The update, as has been the norm for a while now, comes in the form of two updates.  The first update, dated September 1st, contains 33 specific updates for vulnerabilities all the way back to Android 4.4.  Of those 33, ten are marked as critical fixes.

The second patch, dated September 5th, contains a whooping 51 updates, three of which are marked as critical patches.  The second update is more driver or component specific fixes while the first patch is general Android system fixes that all devices will see.  All of the Google supported devices will receive the September 5th update.