Author: Clinton

If you have been in the market to upgrade your MicroSD card or pick up a spare, today over at Amazon there is a great sale going on with SanDisk.  Today you can pick up a 64GB MicroSD, Class 10 card for just $17.99, a savings of 70% over the regular price of $42.  The card has a 80MB/s transfer rate so it is plenty fast for any Android device and given it is a Class 10 device, it has the speed to deal with Full HD video too.  The card will come with a MicroSD adapter so you can use it in your digital camera or other devices.  The sale at Amazon on the SanDisk card isn’t just on the 64GB model, others are on sale as well at some really good prices.

Good news Samsung Galaxy S5 users who are on T-Mobile:  Android Marshmallow is coming your way.  T-Mobile has updated the Software support page for the Galaxy S5 on their support site and have indicated that the update to the latest version of Android is starting to roll out to devices today.  The builds you are looking for are G900T3UVU1GPE1 OR G900TUVU1GPE1 depending on your device model and when you update, you will be moved to Marshmallow 6.0.1.  You will also need to download the update over Wi-Fi as it weighs in at just over 1GB in size.

During Google I/O last week, Googler Stephan Somogyi presented the 3rd Annual Google Security Update.  The update covered a lot of ground for a 37 minute presentation but one of the key messages around Android was how device fingerprint scanners have dramatically improved device security.  How?  Simply by having people setup the lock screen and use their fingerprint as the key to getting into their device.  With the introduction of these scanners on the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X, Stephan reported that now 90% of Nexus owners have enabled the lock screen.  That is up from just 50% the previous year.

Great news from HTC for those of you have a One M9, One A9 or are considering a HTC 10 as your next device.  All three of these will be seeing the Android N update when it is released by Google.  The information came from HTC’s main Twitter account and it makes HTC, outside of Google, one of the first manufactures to commit to the new version of Android.

Life is about to get a little sweeter. Android N will be coming to the HTC 10, HTC One A9 and the HTC One M9. pic.twitter.com/XzOEwTCVlU

— HTC (@htc) May 18, 2016

The tricky bit, of course, is when exactly it will be available.  HTC did not make that clear in their Tweet nor did they in replies to it.

After weeks of rumors and speculation, Google announced this morning at I/O that the Google Play Store, and subsequently millions of Android apps, are coming to Chrome OS.  The announcement means that later this year, all Chrome OS users will be able to download, install and use their favorite Android apps on their Chromebooks without compromising performance or security.  This, folks, is a big deal.  It means that the OS will have honest-to-goodness apps, not web apps, which means you can get the same user experience on your Chromebook as you do your tablet or phone.

A new update to Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides is hitting the Google Play Store that brings a more effortless way to get to your files while you are offline.  In the update, recent files you have been working on are automatically downloaded to your device so you will have them when you are offline.  Right now, if you want to work on a file while you are offline, you have to flag that file to download to your device.  If you forget, you are out of luck until you get back online.  This new feature removes this manual step.