Author: Clinton

After a lengthy hiatus after a lot of staff left, the all-new Paranoid Android team has returned with new AOSP-based ROMs for many popular devices.  This is the first release from the team since July of last year and the new builds are based on Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 and are available on a wide range of devices.  For those who like clean, non-bloated versions of Android, Paranoid Android is one of the best at giving you that on your device.  The team has had a heavy focus on design and the UI and the new ROMs look very clean and minimalist.

Big news today from the Project Fi team at Google.  The company’s MVNO service has signed on US Cellular to the service, bringing another carrier on board to provide LTE coverage in both urban and rural areas.  US Cellular joins T-Mobile and Sprint as the providers for the Fi service and will be rolling out over the course of the next several weeks.

U.S. Cellular, one of the top mobile networks in the U.S., offers service in 23 states with 4G LTE coverage for more than 99% of their subscribers, both urban and rural. With the addition of a third network, Project Fi now gives you more coverage and speed, helping you stay connected wherever you are.

The good thing is, your current Nexus device that is supported on Fi will work after this additional carrier is added.

It wasn’t long ago that Blackberry as a company was on their deathbed.  Blackberry 10 was dying a death and the company switched gears to Android, making the secure and eagerly anticipated Blackberry Priv.  The device got reasonable but not glowing reviews and the price tag of $700 was laughable at best.  Still, the Priv did okay at first and both AT&T and T-Mobile picked up the device.  Now, nearly a year later, T-Mobile has dropped the Priv from their site and AT&T admits that the device is struggling with them.

What went wrong?

There are a lot of things that led to the situation Blackberry find themselves in at this point.  The question is, will we be on death watch once again for a company that just a handful of years ago ruled the enterprise mobile device market?

It has taken the better part of eight months but Android Marshmallow has finally broken through the 10% barrier when it comes to the install base.  The latest report was provided by Google yesterday and it shows the latest version of Android is now on 10.1% of the devices that came to the Google Play Store the 7-day period ending June 6th.  That is a jump of 2.6% over the course of the report from last month.  Given the number of updates carriers and manufactures released throughout May, the jump itself isn’t surprising but to move the needle over 2% is tough when we are talking about millions of devices out there.

The official Twitter app for Android is getting a major makeover today that brings a full-on Material Design makeover along with improvements in the overall user interface of the app.  The update is rolling out now in the Play Store so if you have it installed, you should be seeing the OTA update over the course of the next day or so.  Once you have it, you will have a vastly improved Twitter experience on your phone or your tablet.

The MLB at Bat app for Android has been updated today with a lot of improvements around video playback and some new features for those of you who are Lite users of the app.  The biggest change is the support of 60 FPS video on phones that support it.  Video playback in the app was my only real complaint about it as it was a bit pixelated and not very smooth.  In checking it out this morning after this update, it is not even comparable to the old build.  Video is very clear and smooth in playback.