Author: Clinton

Over the course of the past few weeks, Google has been doing a lot of tinkering with various apps and services for Android.  One of these tweaks, in the Google Play Store app, is the ability to sort your installed apps.

In the Google Play Store app, you have always been able to see your installed apps on your phone or tablet by going to My apps & games then to the Installed tab.  There you would see the number of apps you have installed on your device and they would be presented to you in the order of last updated.  Now you can change that sorting.  Next to your app’s total app count, there is a new pull down that allows you to sort your apps four ways:  Alphabetical, Last Updated, Last Used and Size.

Today’s Deal is on a great USB desktop charger that is a bit future proof.  The AUKEY Amp USB Charger has four USB-A ports and one USB-C port built in and, with a coupon code provided to you by AUKEY, you can get it for only $13.  The deal is over at Amazon and when you check out, simply use the code N79URQMX.  This will drop the price in your cart from $24.99 to the sale price.

The AUKEY Amp USB Charger supports 2.4A output, per port, on the USB-A ports while the USB-C port supports rapid charging thanks to 5V/3A support.  That means it can charge any of your Android phones or tablets that support USB-C.  AUKEY has done a great job in designing this desktop charger as you can actually use all five ports at once if you wanted to do so.  Many desktop chargers drop the number of ports you can use or the amps down to the point where it is unusable if you plug into all the ports.  Not so with this one which makes that $13 price tag pretty awesome.

The August edition of the Android Distribution Report was released last yesterday and there are a fair number of positives to take away from it.  For the 7 day period ending August 8, 2017, Android Nougat was on 13.5% of devices that visited the Google Play Store during that time.  That is up 2% over the July report which is steady growth.  Android Marshmallow was the only other version of the platform to gain usage during this month’s report.  Version 6.x of Android was up to 32.3%, an increase of .5% over July.

Combined, the last two versions of Android are on 45.7% of devices hitting the play store.  That’s well below what it should be for sure but it is a significant increase over the course of 2017.  Still, it does speak to the challenge facing the platform and hopefully Project Treble will make an impact in 2018 on the latest version of Android being on more devices.

After a week or rumors and leaks, the Samsung Galaxy S8 Active is real and available for pre-order.  The ruggedized version of the Galaxy S8 will, as it has been in the past, exclusively available from AT&T here in the United States.

The Galaxy S8 Active internally is just like the standard Galaxy S8 you can order from Samsung or your carrier.  The 5.8″ phone is powered by the octa-core Snapdragon 835 processor running four cores at 2.3GHz and the other four running at 1.9GHz.  It is coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage which is expandable up to an additional 256GB thanks to the MicroSD card.  The display renders at 2960 x 1440 QuadHD with an impressive 571 PPI.  Powering all of it is a 3000mAh battery which is charged with inductive charging.

Camera wise, the rear shooter is a 12MP camera with OIS and has a f/1.7 aperture.  On the front is an 8MP camera.  The S8 Active is IPS68 rating meaning it is water and dust proof.  It can go under water for up to 30 minutes.

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 4WBMEFZL and save an additional $5.  That makes the pack $14.99.

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.

With today being the first Monday in the first full week of August, it was expected that Google would be releasing the August Android Security Updates today.  Like clockwork, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific this morning, the updates were launched on the Android developer website and now OTA updates for compatible Nexus and Pixel devices are available.

As has become the standard practice on the Android Security Updates each month, the August update consists of two patches.  The first one, August 1st, is for general issues and fixes for Android.  There are 29 different patches or fixes in this update with ten of those updates being marked as critical updates.  Most of the fixes are to patch potential exploits for remote code execution and elevation of privileges within different parts of the Android platform.