Category: Android Nougat 7.1.1

Today’s Deal is on the powerful and ultra thin Lenovo Yoga Book Android tablet.  The 10″ 2-in-1 tablet is on sale right now at Amazon for $299.94 in Gunmetal Gray.  That’s a savings of $200.

The Yoga Book has a 10.1″ display that gives Full HD resolution of 1200 x 1920.  It is powered by the Intel Atom x5-Z8550 processor, a quad-core processor that is clocked at 2.4GHz.  That is coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage.  That internal storage can be expanded up to an additional 256GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.  Also, the Lenovo Yoga Book can take advantage of Adaptive Storage in Android Nougat so once you have a MicroSD card installed, it can act as part of the main storage on the device.

What really makes the Yoga Book stand out is its size.  It measure just 6.72 x 10.1 x 0.38 in and weighs 1.52lbs.  That’s 256.00 x 170.80 x 9.60mm and 690 grams in new money.  When you open it up, it is 4mm thin.  It has a beautiful hinge that allows the keyboard to rotate completely around to the back of the tablet to use it in tablet mode.  Camera wise, there is an 8MP main camera and 2MP front camera for selfies and video calls.  All of this is powered by a whopping 8500mAh battery that gets you 15 hours of use between charges.  Charging is done via a MicroUSB connector and it supports Quick Charge 3.0 technology for fast charging.

After months of delays sorting out bugs and upgrade issues, the Android Nougat 7.1.1 update has finally been released by Google for the Nexus 6.  The original update for the November 2014 flagship phone almost immediately caused issues for those who upgraded from Nougat 7.0.  Issues with the original update back in March dealt with Android Pay, as in, it completely broke.  Nexus 6 owners were not able to use the tap-to-pay service if they upgraded to Nougat 7.1.1.

To address the issue, Google actually reverted the devices back to Android Nougat 7.0 which sorted out the Android Pay problem but left “Shamu” owners out of luck on the latest & greatest features of Nougat 7.1.1.

One of the best budget phones out there is the Axon 7 Mini.  This 5.2″ phone has excellent specs and you can pick one up in Gold for $199 right now.  Unlike most budget phones however, ZTE has done a great job of keeping this phone (and its bigger sibling the Axon 7) up to date and today is another example of it.  The Android Nougat 7.1.1 update is now rolling out to the Axon 7 Mini and should be hitting all devices over the course of the next few weeks.

The update will bring all of the goodness of Nougat to the phone along with support for Wi-Fi calling on the T-Mobile network.  If you don’t recall what is in Nougat 7.1.1, you can check out my post on the update.

Good news this morning for owners of three Sony Xperia devices this morning.  The Xperia XZ, Xperia X Performance and Xperia XZs all have the June Android Security update rolling to them starting today.  The updated build is version 41.2.A.7.8 for all three devices and the OTA update is starting to roll out now.  It should hit devices over the course of the next several days.

The new firmware does not contain any new features and remains based on Android Nougat 7.1.1.  It only updates the security patch level on the devices but, given that other manufactures are still months behind, it is great to see Sony get at least three of their phones to the latest patch level.

The new Sony Xperia XA1, which was announced back in February at Mobile World Congress, is now available to pre-order.  The XA1 will be $299 and you can place your order over at Amazon.  The phone won’t ship until May 1st and you won’t be charged until it does ship.  But for a Sony device at this price point and an impressive 23MP camera, they are likely going to sell well.  The 5″ phone has Full HD resolution at 1280 x 720 and is powered by the MediaTek P20 octa-core processor.  That processor has four cores running at 2.3GHz and four running at 1.6GHz which should provide excellent performance.  The processor is coupled with 3GB of RAM and it the phone has 32GB of internal storage.  That storage can be expanded up to 256GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.

As I mentioned, the Xperia XA1 has a 23MP rear camera with hybrid autofocus and an 8MP selfie camera.  Powering all of this is a 2300mAh battery with adaptive charging support.

The phone is sold unlocked and works with GSM carriers here in the United States like AT&T and T-Mobile.  Unfortunately it isn’t an option for Sprint and Verizon customers as CDMA isn’t supported.

Good news this morning for those of you who have the Sony Xperia XZ or the Xperia X Performance.  Sony has released the Android Nougat 7.1.1 update for both of these phones and it is already rolling out to users.  The updated build is 41.2.A.2.199 for both devices and along with the improvements that come with 7.1.1, the April Android Security patch is also in this build.

The big change with 7.1.1 is the support for app shortcuts.  This allows you to long press an icon and be able to get to a particular part of an app (for example, in Gmail you can tap-and-hold to start composing an email in a particular account).  The problem is that the Sony launcher doesn’t support app shortcuts, at least not yet.  If you are using a launcher that does support them on either of these phones (like Nova Launcher), then you will get to use the new feature.  Also, the 7.1.1 update brings Unicode v9 emoji to these devices.