Category: Android

This weekend, Hurricane Harvey struck the state of Texas here in the US, leaving a path of complete destruction.  The death toll as of this morning sits at six but with another 24″ of rain expected in some areas, that is likely to rise.  Once the waters recede from the Texas coast, the billions of dollars in damage will be revealed and it is going to be very high.

The American Red Cross is already in the area helping victims of the storm and Google is helping their efforts.  Google.org, the charitable arm of Google, has grant donation of $250,000 to the American Red Cross and Google employees themselves have donated another $250,000.  This will help the ARC continue their work in the area, who will be active for a long time after Hurricane Harvey is no more.

Microsoft OneDrive for Android has a new update rolling out that brings some significant improvements to key features within the storage app.  The updated build is rolling out in the Play Store now and should be landing on devices that have it installed via an OTA update over the course of the next few days.

The first big improvement in this update is around the Scan feature.  Microsoft OneDrive has had a scanning feature built in for a while now but it was pretty limited.  Now they have essentially taken the Office Lens app and integrated it with OneDrive to give you a far superior experience.  You can now crop and clean up scanned documents within OneDrive which is a direct leveraging of Office Lens’ features.

On Monday, right in the middle of the eclipse, I was on a flight out to, ironically, the Google campus in Mountain View.  At the same time all those shenanigans were going on, Google dropped Android Oreo out to the Android developer community for the Pixel lineup and the Nexus lineup.

Of course, all of this while I’m in the air on craptastic Wi-Fi on a plane.

When I landed in San Jose and got to my hotel, I immediately started the upgrade process as my Pixel XL was a part of the Android Beta program.  20-odd minutes later, I was running Oreo and after living with the latest iteration of the platform, I have to say it is lovely.

Yesterday during the launch of the new Galaxy Note8, Samsung indicated that there would be a trade-in program for eligible devices if you bought the phone from them directly.  That program has gone live now and it is pretty extensive.

The discount for your trade-in varies depending on the model you are giving up to get in the new Note8.  Here is the breakdown:

• $200 Off:  Galaxy S5, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+
• $200 Off:  iPhone SE, iPhone 5, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus
• $300 Off:  Galaxy Note5, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge
• $300 Off:  Google Pixel, Google Pixel XL, LG G4, LG G5, LG G6, LG V20

That’s a fairly comprehensive list and clearly Samsung is aiming to convert iPhone users over to the Note with these discounts on the older iPhone devices.

AT&T has announced that the Blackberry KEYone will be coming to the carrier starting September 1st in an exclusive color.  The phone will be available in Space Black and will be priced at $16.67 per month for 30 months.  That adds up to just over $500 which is less than the unlocked GSM version which is $619.99 on Amazon.

For those that don’t recall, the Blackberry KEYone is a 4.5″ device that is powered by the Snadragon 625 processor.  It has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.  It runs Android Nougat 7.1.1 out of the box and has the same cameras as you will find in the Google Pixel and Pixel XL.  It is powered by a 3505mAh battery and has a physical QUERTY keyboard.

The main camera on the KEYone is a 12MP shooter that has Sony technology & optics.

The storage on the KEYone is expandable thanks to the MicroSD slot and charging is done via the USB-C connector.

It looks like everyone needs to go put a reminder in their Google Calendar for October 5th.  That day, according to a leak from Evan Blass, suggest that will be the day that we see the all new Google Pixel 2 and Google Pixel XL 2.

Google’s second-generation Pixel handsets, powered by Snapdragon 836 SoC’s, will be unveiled on October 5th.

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 24, 2017

For those who may not know who Evan Blass is exactly, he’s a reporter for Venturebeat and has been one of the most reliable resources for inside leaks on upcoming device launch dates and details on those devices.  He’s pretty amazing actually and I recommend following him on Twitter.

Put it this way:  Those of you who are long time readers know I rarely post anything leak related.  But I will post something from Evan Blass because it is 98% likely to happen.