Category: Android Marshmallow

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua.  This 5″ Android phone is down to $149 over at Amazon, a savings of over $50.  The phone is unlocked and is compatible with GSM carriers here in the US (AT&T and T-Mobile), it has 16GB of storage which can be expanded thanks to the MicroSD slot and is water IP68 certified against dust and water.  That means this phone is dust and water proof up to 1.5 meters deep for up to 30 minutes.  Powering the Xperia M4 is the Snapdragon 6.15 processor clocked at 1.5GHz with 2GB of RAM installed.  Perhaps the deal clincher for some readers will be the fact that Android Marshmallow is available for this phone.

Readers who own the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 on the AT&T network have a nice surprise waiting for them this morning.  The carrier has rolled out the July 1st Android Security Update to the device in what must be record time.  The update, a 22.6MB sized download, will give your Note 5 all of the security fixes and improvements from the first security patch released this month by the Android team.  Remember that there were two patches this month, one dated July 1 and the other July 5.  In the Release Notes, according to the Kernel version, this patch was compiled on July 4 so it will not have any of the fixes or driver updates that were in the 2nd patch.  Those, likely, will be rolled up into an August update for the Galaxy Note 5 on the carrier’s network.

The latest update to Google Inbox is currently rolling out in the Google Play Store and with it comes Direct Share support.  For those who aren’t familiar with it, Direct Share is a feature in Marshmallow that allows your most frequently used contacts to show up in the Share pane of an app.  This is something that several apps have been rolling our recently including Google+, Whatsapp and Hangouts.  Now if you have Inbox installed and you want to share something (say a website), you can use the share function in your browser and share it directly to a contact using Inbox.

Good news this morning for those of you who have a Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge on T-Mobile.  The carrier has released the June security update in an OTA update with some other fixes and improvements this morning.  The updated builds are G920TUVU4EPF1 for the S6 while the S6 Edge new build is G925TUVU3EPD1.  For either device, the update weighs in at about 200MB and you will have to reboot your phone after you download and install the update.

Let’s all give AT&T a slow clap.  It only took them three months after every other carrier released it but they finally have dropped Android Marshmallow on the Galaxy Note 5 for their customers.  Well done.

The OTA update for Marshmallow 6.0 is huge at 1.4GB so be prepared to wait a while for the download.  Once you get the update, it will take 20-30 minutes to install and your phone will reboot.  As always, I highly recommend that you have all your files and photos backed up before you begin the update process.

One of the more powerful features of Android is the Do Not Disturb function.  It is a feature that has grown in functionality over the life of Android Lollipop and Marshmallow (spoiler alert:  It gets further tweaks in N) for keeping your phone quite while you sleep, at the theater or in a meeting.  Did you know though that you can set up a DND for events from your calendar?  It is a feature that is handy by not requiring you to manually turn on Do Not Disturb before a meeting begins.  In this How To I’ll show you how to set it up.