Author: Clinton

Today’s Deal is on the all new HTC U11.  The phone was announced a few weeks ago and is available from various carriers locked to them.  Now you can pick one up unlocked for $649 on Amazon.  You have three color options – Sapphire Blue, Amazing Silver or Brilliant Black – and all three colors are the same price.

To be very clear:  This is the unlocked GSM version of the phone.  It will not work with Sprint, who has it available directly from the carrier.  This model will work with carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile however.  Here is a rundown of the supported bands:

• GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
• HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700(AWS) / 1900 / 2100
• LTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 12(700), 13(700), 17(700), 20(800), 25(1900), 26(850), 28(700), 41(2500), 66(1700/2100)

In case you don’t recall, the specs of the HTC U11 are certainly flagship level.  The 5.5″ Quad-HD phone is powered by the Snapdragon 835 octa-core processor with 4 cores clocked at 2.45GHz and 4 at 1.9GHz.  It is coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage which can be expanded an additional 2TB thanks to the MicroSD slot.

Yahoo stockholders, in a special meeting held yesterday, have approved the sale of the company to Verizon.  The news came from Yahoo’s Investor Relations site and was a short but important announcement.

Yahoo stockholders approved the previously announced proposed sale to Verizon Communications Inc. (“Verizon”) of the Company’s operating business (the “Sale Transaction”). In addition, Yahoo stockholders voted to approve the advisory vote on the compensation payable to the Company’s named executive officers in connection with the completion of the Sale Transaction.

The announcement goes on to say that the expected close date of the sale is June 13, 2017.  The company will then be named Altaba, inc..  The total cost of the transaction is $4.48 billion and will position Verizon as a significant player in the digital marketing sector, their primary purpose for making the acquisition.

A hard-to-track and not always an issue bug is impacting many that have the Google Pixel Launcher running on their Pixel phone.  The issue is around searching when you tap the search pill at the top of the launcher.  Some have reported that when they tap it, their search history does not display and suggestions does not load.

The issue does not seem to be universal.  Some users have had no problem (I fall into that category) while others have found that a restart of their phone resolves the issue, others haven’t been able to get it resolved with a reboot.  Equally, it is not clear if the issue is related to the recent update to the Pixel Launcher which rolled out earlier this week.

Google has released the June Android Distribution Report and it continues to show a picture of challenges.  Android Nougat gained 2.4% over the May report but it still sits below 10% of the total install base of device that hit the Play Store for the week ending June 5, 2017.  That is a very slow adoption rate for a platform that has been out for 8 months and one that its successor, Android O, is already in the beta channels.

Equally as challenging is that Android Marshmallow remained at 31.2% of the install base, the exact same number it has had for three reports running.  Android Lollipop, version 5.x, dropped to 30.8% this month, down from last month’s 32%.  If there is a positive in all of this it is that the last three versions of Android are on 71.5% of all devices hitting the Play Store, but that is covering nearly 3 years of Android builds.

As expected with it being the first Monday of the month, Google has released the Android Security Update patches for June today.  Like the past few updates, this month’s patch consists of two patches, one dated June 1st and the other June 5th.  The first patch deals with broader issues with Android in general while the second patch is more driver or component specific.

Perhaps the best news in this month’s update is the fix of a long standing Bluetooth vulnerability within Android.  There are three specific fixes that are in this update which squelch the ability of malicious apps to elevate permissions.  This issue has actually be in Android since the KitKat days.  Yeah, a long time coming.

After a few months in beta testing, the Android Nougat 7.1.1 update for the Nextbit Robin is now available.  The 540MB update is rolling out to all Robins starting today and brings with it the April Android Security Update along with it.  The OTA update to 7.1.1 should automatically be checked for by your Robin but if you want to manually check, go to Settings>About Phone>Check for Update.

As most readers will know by now, Nextbit was acquired by Razer at the end of 2016 and the Robin, the San Francisco startup’s only phone, was discontinued at that point.  The company committed to keeping the device up-to-date through February 2018 but realistically, this will be the last major update for the phone.  It will likely only be security patches from this point forward.