Author: Clinton

The Project Fi app for Android has been updated with a new but important diagnostics tool for the Fi team.  When you update the app and go to the Privacy settings, you will note a new Network Diagnostics toggle which will send information about your cell tower connectivity and location to Google.  The idea is for Google to collect information so they can improve the service and network quality.

When you go to Privacy settings at the bottom of the app, you will see this new feature with a description of what it is doing exactly.  “Automatically send cell tower info and approximate location history to Project Fi from your phone to help improve network quality”

Google Search is getting a much needed and impressive voice makeover on your Android devices.  Gone is the somewhat broken English and in is a much smoother voice read back experience on your search results.  The update appears to be a combination of a back-end upgrade on Google’s side along with an update to the Google Text-to-Speech app and a new version of that app is in the Google Play Store that should be pushing out to everyone over the course of the next few days.

For those readers in the UK, there is good news for you this morning.  In a few months, when exactly isn’t known, you will be able to use your NFC compatible Android phone to use Android Pay.  The announcement came on the Official Android Blog in the UK and when it does roll out, there are a wide range of retailers that you will be able to tap-and-pay at across the country and most of the major banks in the UK will be supporting it as well.

Google has thrown the switch on a behind the scenes update that allows you to place a shortcut to Google Now weather on your Home screen.  This feature has been slowly rolling out over the past couple of weeks, first as a beta, but seems to have been enabled more widely over the past 24-48 hours.  As users of the launcher will know, the weather portion of the app was updated a couple of months ago to a more colorful and informative page when you tap on the weather information in Google Now.  This latest update doesn’t change anything other than providing you an option to add a shortcut to your Home screen for faster access to local weather.

Google has announced that the Chrome App Launcher for Windows, Mac and Linux is being retired with it being completely eliminated by July of this year.  Citing the lack of use and the preference for users to launch apps from within Chrome itself, the launcher will be slowly phased out over the coming weeks with apps no longer being able to be added and warning messages that the app is going away in July.  By the time July hits, it will no longer be available or supported.

Google Photos is getting updated with a new Smart Album feature that will automatically create a new album for you from your latest trip or event.  The update is coming in an update to the Android, iOS and the website for the service starting today.  Users should see an OTA update come to their devices over the course of the next few days with the new feature.