Author: Clinton

According to research from IDC, Google enjoyed a doubling of shipments of their Google Pixel phone lineup in 2017.  In all, the company shipped some 3.9 million units for the year, mostly comprised of the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL which were introduced last October.

The figures once again come from IDC’s Francisco Jeronimo who yesterday reported the paltry numbers for Essential.  While the numbers for Google are obviously better, they are still pretty small in the overall smartphone shipments market.

After being in beta for just a few weeks, HMD Global has released the Android Oreo 8.1 update for the Nokia 8.  The news of the release came from the company’s Chief Product Officer, Juho Sarvikas, on Twitter:

We are rolling out #AndroidOreo 8.1 on #Nokia8 ! Get the sweetest Android to date #Nokia8 #Nokiamobile pic.twitter.com/3pRlNuPIpe

— Juho Sarvikas (@sarvikas) February 13, 2018

The news of the release was a bit of a surprise given that the open beta for the 8.1 build only started in late January.

Another week, another Chrome 65 build in the Chrome OS Dev Channel.  For the third consecutive week, a new build has landed in what equates to the alpha channel of the platform, bringing more stability and bug fixes to it.  The new version is build 65.0.3325.65 (Platform version: 10323.30.0) for those keeping score at home.

The update doesn’t bring any new features into play but rather refines what is already there and brings other stability improvements to the platform.  As previously written, the Dev channel is essentially the alpha channel.  This can be a really rough experience with lots of weird behavior and bugs.  It is aimed at developers and those who like serious bug hunting to see what is coming up in the platform.  It is not ready for prime time in other words.

Last week, Amazon announced that they were going to be updating their lineup of Prime phones to removed the lock screen ads that had been on them since the program’s inception.  That process, which is a OTA update to the phones, is underway now.

One of the questions that came up last week however was what would the online retailer do with those who had paid the $45 fee to remove the lock screen ads?  The answer is they are getting a refund of sorts.  No, it’s not cash but rather a gift card to spend with the retailer.

A new beta of the Google app for Android is rolling out to testers and it has a lot of interesting, if inactive code built into it.  If you want to read a full teardown of the APK, the team over at 9to5 Google have a great writeup on it.  I’m focusing on the code around a physical Google Assistant button.

The code in the APK points to the ability to have a physical button for Assistant, much like the physical button you find on the Google Pixelbook today.  While this button isn’t aimed at phones per se, it is aimed at Android and coincides nicely with code found last week in a commit in Chrome OS.  That code suggested that a physical button could be remapped for Google Assistant.  Put together, these code snippets indicate just how far Google wants to take Assistant on both platforms.

In the six months that the Essential Phone was available in 2017, the startup company shipped only 88,000 units and shows that the company, despite its deep Android roots in Andy Rubin, has a long way to go to hit the mainstream.

The figures came from IDC researcher Francisco Jeronimo who posted it on Twitter.

. @Arubin‘s @essential smartphone is still a long way from becoming a successful venture. In 2017, it shipped less than 90K units (first six months after launch) pic.twitter.com/NHVlA2Gjzr

— Francisco Jeronimo (@fjeronimo) February 12, 2018

The numbers certainly reflect on what was a difficult birthing process for the company’s first phone.