This is a killer deal and it is today only on Amazon. Today you can pick up the Nextbit Robin in either Midnight Blue or Mint for just $199. That is $100 off the normal $299 price. Stop what you are doing (reading this) and go order it now. I’ll wait.
Okay, good. Now let’s talk about what you just bought.
There are a lot of indicators to suggest that we could well see Android Nougat, the next major build of Android, be released next Monday. Canadian carrier Telus indicated in a forum post that the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X on their networks will receive the update on August 22nd. If that is indeed the case, it means that Google themselves will be dropping the update out to those devices (as well as the Nexus 6) that day as the carriers and manufactures cannot release it prior to Google themselves.
Adding further evidence to a Monday release is LG. The Android phone manufacture will be starting a limited preview program in Korea on the LG G5. Again, like Telus, LG can’t release a preview program prior to Google releasing the bits. If they are saying that the preview program is starting on Monday, that means Nougat will have to be available on Monday if not sooner.
Last May at Google I/O, the company announced a new video calling app, Google Duo. That app was promised at some point this summer and today it has hit the Play Store as a free download. The app lets you place a video call to any of your contacts who have Duo and provides a seamless and great video experience. One of the key features of the app is that it gives a video preview of the person who is calling or you are calling so you can see who it is and what they may be wanting to have a video call with you about before you answer.
The utilitarian app Google Calculator has been updated for Android and while it is certainly a small update, it does have one nice new creature comfort feature and an underlying more important one. First, the update is build is version 7.0.1 for those keeping score at home and it is rolling out in the Google Play Store now. You should see the OTA in a day or two. As for the creature comfort feature, the app now groups large numbers. In other words, here in the US, you will see a comma between each group of numbers such as 123,456,789. Previously you would just see 123456789. Again, not a big deal but it does make it easier if you are using the app for computing large numbers.
A new update to Google Photos is rolling out that brings a new editing feature for videos. The update is build 1.25.0.12950344 for those keeping score and playing Version Bingo. In the update you will find that you now have the ability to edit a video that you have stored locally. Those editing features include the ability to rotate the video and to clip it at the beginning or the end to adjust the overall time of the video. Once you save that video that you have edited, it is stored online to your Google Photos account like other videos. The key thing to remember is that the feature is limited to those videos you have stored locally. In other words, it does not work on videos that you have uploaded to your Photos account and then used the Free Up Space feature and removed them from your device.
An important update is in the process or rolling out in the Google Play Store for Google Maps. The update, version 9.33.1 for those keeping score at home, brings a new Wi-Fi only mode to the navigation app. In this mode, Maps will not consume any data and will give you navigation information in areas that you have downloaded to your device. Once you are connected again to a wireless network, you have full functionality of the app. The idea behind this new feature is two-fold: First, if you are traveling abroad, you can save on high data usage charges while you navigate in that foreign country. Second, there are plenty of rural areas here in the United States were data from carriers is just not available. Either way, you can use this new Wi-Fi mode and keep navigating.
Last week I posted about an ongoing issue that Windows Phone users have had with adding a Gmail account to their devices. The issue was that when a user opened up Outlook Mail and attempted to add a Google account, it would give an error indicating that the browser of the device was not supported. This on again-off again problem has been going on for several weeks but it appears, finally, that it has been addressed. Google indicated in a forum post that the error was not intentional on the part of the company which I personally think is the case. To me, this feels like simple inattentiveness on the part of the Mountain View company.
In the first month since its release, Pokémon Go has hit the lofty number of 100 million. That’s the number of installs that the augmented reality game has seen on Android and it is only going to climb. The game has been a huge hit world wide with countless photos of parks and urban areas filled with people young and old with their phones in hand trying to catch them. Whether you “get it” or not doesn’t matter: The fact is that the game is hugely successful and for the developer, Niantic, it has been hugely lucrative. In app purchases are rumored to be in the $10 million per day range for them. They, clearly, caught them all.