Author: Clinton

Google Search on your Android device just got a whole lot more powerful.  The Search team announced that a new feature named In Apps is now rolling out to the app on Android devices that will allow you to search content within apps installed on your phone.  Now you can search for a contact for example and find that contact along with being able to see all the messages that you have had with that contact in the various apps you have used to contact them.  Perhaps even more useful, you can search for a subject from an email and Search will interrogate Gmail to find that email.  Essentially this new feature eliminates the need to do per-app searching (if that is possible) and takes it to the system level.

Today at IFA in Berlin, Germany, Acer announced a new Chromebook that looks pretty impressive.  The new Chromebook R13 will be hitting stores in October and it sports not only a touchscreen but also has a folding design so you can use it as a slate.  This is the combination that many Chromebook users have been waiting for from the platform and with a price tag of around $400, it is still reasonably affordable.

As the name suggests, the R13 has a 13″ LCD display that provides 1080p HD, has 4GB of RAM and will start out with 16GB of storage.  Acer plans to have 32GB and 64GB models available at the time of the release.  The R13 is powered by a MediaTek MT8173C quad-core processor, has a USB Type-C port, HDMI port and a 720p webcam.

Google has rolled out a nice improvement to the search functionality in the Google Inbox app.  This latest update builds on the 1.30 update that rolled out last week and is a behind-the-scenes update.  So long as you have the latest version of the app, this feature will roll out to you over the course of the next few days.  Essentially, this new search function makes it far easier and faster to search for an email message.  By tapping the search function, you will see a quick list of the contacts you email with often, the businesses you email with often and a refinements section that allows you to search for messages that have attachments, photos or are from last week to name a few.  You can, of course, still search for any word, date or topic within the search function as you have always been able to do.

Florida based BLU Products has announced and released their latest phone and it is pretty impressive for the price point.  The new Pure XR is a 5.5″ display device with a whopping 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage that sells for $299 in silver or gold.  That alone makes this a pretty attractive device but diving into the specs a bit more, this is a serious phone.  It is powered by the MediaTek P10 octa-core processor running at 1l9GHz on four cores and 1GHz on the other four.  It has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage but can be expanded with an MicroSD card up to an additional 64GB.  The display is a 5.5″ Full-HD Super AMOLED curved display that has 3D touch technology and is protected by Gorilla Glass 3.  That display renders at 1080 x 1920 with ~401ppi.

From a camera perspective, the main camera is a 16MP camera with laser focus and the front facing camera is 8MP and designed to give wide angle selfies.

Today’s Deal is a great one for those looking to pick up a solid performing Android Phone.  Right now over at Amazon you can pick up the Sony Xperia XA Ultra with a 64GB MicroSD card for $298.  That is a savings of about $100 on the phone alone so this is a really good deal.  The Xperia XA Ultra is a flagship device with flagship specs.  It is powered by the octa-core Mediateck MT6755 processor with 4 cores running at 2.0Ghz and 4 running at 1.0Ghz.  That is coupled with 4GB of RAM and 16GB of built in storage.  It has a 6″ IPS display that renders 1080 x 1920 pixels for ~367 ppi.  The cameras built into the XA ultra are pretty awesome too.  The main camera is a 21MP with hybrid autofocus while the 16MP front face camera has a flash and a gesture shutter so you can take that selfie with just a wave of your hand.

Google has stopped selling their remaining flagship Chromebook device, the Chromebook Pixel 2.  The store shows that the $1299 powerhouse is no longer in stock and according to VentureBeat, the company has no plans of restocking the device.

“We’re committed to the Pixel program but we don’t have plans to restock the Pixel 2,” a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email.

While there are certainly high-end Chromebooks out in the market thanks to the like of HP and Acer, having a Google Chromebook in the mix for the “ultimate” experience was fun to see – even if it was a steeply expensive “ultimate” experience.