Author: Clinton

Today’s Deal is on the well appointed Sony Xperia XZ2.  This 5.7″ display phone with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage is down to $699 at Amazon right now.  That’s a savings of $100 off the regular price.  The Xperia XZ2 is the latest generation of the Sony Xperia lineup and was launched back in April after being announced at Mobile World Congress in February.

As a reminder about some of the key specs of the Sony Xperia XZ2, it is powered by the Snapdragon 845 SoC, hs 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage built-in.  That storage can be expanded up to 400GB thanks to the MicroSD card slot.  It is equipped with a 19MP f/2.0 rear camera that can shoot an incredible 960 fps slow motion video, and a 5MP f/2.2 selfie camera on the front.  Display wise, the Xperia XZ2 has a 5.7″  Full HD+ display that renders 1080 x 2160 and is an 18:9 ratio.  It is also HDR.

In a surprise announcement today, Google stated that the Google Clock app for Android will be updated this week to support a new Spotify integration.  That integration will allow you to set the Clock app to play music as your alarm instead of the range of tones already available.

The news is surprising for two main reasons.  First, Google has had a clock app for years and the decision to put in this somewhat basic feature now is a bit of a mystery.  Second, why Spotify?  The feature works for both free and premium subscribers to the service but why not use their own Google Play Music?  The feature, as it appears, only supports Spotify for the integration.

In a surprising announcement, OnePlus has stated that Android P will be coming to the 2016 OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T phones.  The company has said that in order to do this, they will be abandoning efforts to get Android Oreo 8.1 to these phones and will focus on Android P instead.

After internal discussions and evaluation, we have decided to focus our development resources on the Android P project instead of upgrading the device to Android 8.1, so that we can offer more exciting features and improvements for our OnePlus 3 and 3T users.

The news is surprising in that most 2016 will likely not see the next generation of Android, slated for release as some point in August.

Google has begun rolling out the latest update to ARCore for Android, the system level app that brings Augmented Reality to your devices.  The new update is version 1.4.180716066 for those keeping score at home.  The update brings support for the upcoming Google Pixel 3, codename Blueline, as well as the Pixel 3 XL, codename Crosshatch.  Given that the AR Core app is updated every 4-6 weeks and that this is the first reference to the new Pixels, it likely means that we getting close to launch.

Having the two new Pixel 3’s in the mix isn’t surprising but there was a surprise in that the first Chromebook is now listed as supporting ARCore.  That is the new Acer Chromebook Tab 10.

It has taken nearly a year to arrive but Chrome is finally available in VR on the Google Daydream headset.  The news came earlier today from Google and so long as you have the latest version of Chrome for Android, you can strap  on your Daydream headset and you will see Chrome as an app available to use.

Google actually started working on Chrome in VR way back with the Chrome 61 release.  That was back in September 2017 and to this point has only worked in the Chrome for Android Canary and Dev versions of the app.

Отличные новости! Google Assistant теперь доступен на русском языке

The global expansion of Google Assistant took another step forward this morning, with the release of Russian language support for the service.  While it is still in the process of rolling out to compatible phones, the Official Google Blog in Russia has been updated with the news of the release and indicates that the roll out for both Android and iOS will be taking place over the next several days for devices running Android Lollipop and later.

The news comes on the heals of Google Assistant supporting Dutch in the Netherlands just last week and a plethora of other features that have rolled out over the past several months.