Author: Clinton

Owners of the Nextbit Robin will want to check their devices for updates over the course of the next few days.  Nextbit has pushed out a series of updates for the phone, updating a system level app as well as the Camera, Gallery and Smart Storage apps.  The updates are all being pushed at the same time so once you get one, you like will see all of them.  Robin owners will get these via an OTA update.

The first and probably the one you will notice first is the Nextbit Servcies update.  This update will pop up a notification that will allow you to opt-in to have additional performance metrics about Robin to be measured.  This is 100% opt-in and is not required… but if you want to help the Nextbit team improve the software on the Robin and likely learn things for their next phone, doing so isn’t a bad thing.  No, nothing you do on your phone is tracked, it is all anonymous data.

If you are a member of Hilton HHonors and use their Android app, there is a nice update coming your way.  The latest build of the app, version 2.9.3 for those keeping score, brings a handful of improvements but likely the one that will get everyone’s attention is the improvements around Fingerprint Authentication.  For a while now the HHonors app has had fingerprint support but it was pretty much a one-and-done thing.  Once you signed in, it kept you signed in and you never really had to authenticate again.  Not very secure.

This update changes that.  Now you can enable the feature and you can enable a secondary feature to indicate how often you want to be required to authenticate.  You can choose to have it ask every time you fire up the app on your phone or after you have closed the app for 1 minute, 5 minutes or 10 minutes.

Some eleven months after it was made available for iOS users, Microsoft Selfie has finally hit the Google Play Store for Android devices.  The app is aimed at giving you some filtering options for photos you take with the app or selfies that you have in your camera roll.  While the selfie camera app-meets-filter app is not something new, this app does a pretty good job.  With each filter in the app you can adjust the intensity and there are 12 different filters that you can apply to your photos.  There is also a preview button that you can tap and hold to see the photo with and without the applied filter.

[Note:  While comments on this post are welcome, any post regarding one political party or another will be deleted.]

Regardless of where you stand politically, Google Search has you covered tomorrow.  With Americans going to the polls to decide not only the presidential election but multiple Senate, House or Representatives and other local elections, November 4th every four years is an seemingly endless flow of information.  Google is trying to give you a one-stop-shop for all that information.  On your Android Phone you can type in “Election Results” in Google Search and you will be taken to a comprehensive overview of all the election results for the country and your particular state.

Starting when the polls close on Election Day, you will be able to find U.S. election results integrated right into your Google searches in over 30 languages around the world. You’ll also be able to see detailed updates and results of the Presidential, Senatorial, Congressional, Gubernatorial races as well as state-level referenda and ballot propositions.

But, if you want live streaming of information, Google has an answer for you there too.  YouTube.

Here is the good news:  If you have been thinking about picking up the fun & fabulous Nextbit Robin, you can still get it for $169 from Amazon.  That’s half the cost of the original price of the phone.

Here is the bad news (sort of):  You are going to have to wait until next week before it ships.  Right now Amazon is showing that November 10th is the date they will have them back in stock.  So you can still order it, but it will just take a little longer to get.  The wait, however, is worth it.  At this price, this is a bit of a no-brainer.

For those that don’t recall, the Nextbit Robin has some great features and offers a unique device-meets-cloud storage solution.  It has 32GB of onboard storage merged with 100 GB online storage, so you always have the space you need. Robin seamlessly backs up your apps and photos, intelligently archives the stuff you’re not using, and easily restores items when you need them.  The idea is that you never run out of space.  Those less used apps are backed up into the cloud but then are instantly available when you want them.  You’ll know an app has been backed up into the cloud as it will be grey on your Robin.

The Chromium team has released a minor update to Chrome OS for the majority of devices today.  The update takes the build version up to 54.0.2840.93 (Platform version: 8743.83.0) for those keeping score at home.  If you remember, the first major build of the 54 train was released a couple of weeks ago.  This update is much smaller and generally addresses some security fixes which Google did not disclose the full details of in the release.

The update however is not for all devices.  If you have a HP Chromebook 13 G1, Acer Chromebook 14 for Work and Thinkpad 13 Chromebook then the update will not be coming to your devices – not yet at least.  If you remember, these are the same models that didn’t get the original 54 train so it stands to reason on why this minor update didn’t touch these devices as well.