Category: Android

Today’s Deal is on the Choetech Dual-Port Car Charger.  Today you can pick up one of these great little accessories for either $7.99 in black or $5.99 in white.  Choetech makes a wide range of accessories for Android and iOS devices and this Car Charger is one that I personally use in my car and when I travel.  It features two USB-A ports, one of which sports Quick Charge 2.0 technology.  If you have a compatible device, it will charge at up to 5v for minimal charging time but the adapter also includes over-charging technology to prevent damage to your device.

The second port in the charger is designed for any device and has auto detection technology to charge that device with maximum efficency.

Google News & Weather has been updated with a new feature that basically allows you to infinitely scroll news headlines.  The new feature, named More Headlines, brings you 200 headlines to stories that you can scroll through and read.  The articles offered up are based on the settings you have in the app but also an algorithm to keep articles clustered together and to present you more relevant information.  It is a nice update to an app that has taking a little bit of a backseat to the recently revamped Google News app.

The new More Headlines feature is enabled by default once you have the latest version of the app.  That is version 3.1.4 for those keeping score at home.  You will get your normal weather card and headlines from categories that you have selected in the settings of the app.  Once you’ve gone past those sections, you will see the new More Headlines section.  Then just keep scrolling!

With the release of the first Developer Preview of Android O, the question most people want to know the answer for is when it will be available for the masses?  According to Google, that will be Q3 of 2017.  Google, much like they did with Android Nougat, is being very transparent about their timelines and have published it in the O Program Overview.  Basically it will breakdown like this:

• Preview 1 which is the initial release and considered alpha (do not install it on your daily driver!)
• Preview 2 will be an incremental update and the first beta of Android O
• Preview 3 will bring us the final APIs and the official SDK.  At this point, developers will be able to published their Android O compatible apps
• Preview 4 will be the near-final image for final testing
• Final Release will be the AOSP build and ecosystem release.  This is when the public will get it and OEMs will get it to start prepping their devices images.

This pattern follows much of what Google did with Android Nougat so there aren’t a lot of surprises here to be found.

A bit unexpected, Google has announced the Developer Preview of the next generation of Android, Android O.  The program is designed for those who want to check out what is coming in the next version as well as developers who want to start preparing their apps for the build.  It is not intended for general consumption and should not be considered a beta!  At this point, Android O is very much an alpha or even pre-alpha build and I highly recommend non-developer readers not to install it on their daily devices.  To give you an idea of just how alpha this build is, it isn’t even in the Android Beta program yet.  That’s still focused on Android Nougat 7.1.2.

On the preview page, Google highlights five key areas in which O will be focused:  Notification channels, picture-in-picture viewing, autofill, adaptive icons and multi-display support.  All of these are aimed at making the platform more flexible and considering that Android now runs on Chrome OS, the ability to do some of these things will become ever increasing in importance.

Evernote has begun rolling out a healthy update to their Android app that brings several improvements on editing of notes.  The update, version 7.9.9 for phones for those keeping score, adds the ability for strikethrough, subscript and superscript text in notes.  These text styles were available on the Mac or PC version of the Evernote app, and were visible in the mobile versions, but you couldn’t actually add them in the Android app.  Now you can just like you can on your laptop.

Improvements have also been made to the camera function of the app.  Now it can automatically detect and capture business cards, documents, whiteboards, Post-it® Notes and receipts.  Just enable the camera function in the app, point it at what you need to capture and it will do the rest for you.

With the announcement and launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8 coming on March 29th, at the current rate of leaks, there will be little mystery left on new flagship from the Korean manufacture.  It seems daily there are leaked images, leaked component details and other tidbits.  But one interesting report has come from ETNews in Korea about the production levels of the new Galaxy S8 and S8+.  From the report, it is expected that Samsung will be producing in the neighborhood of 12.5m units in March and April to meet the expected demands when the phone goes on sale and pre-orders are filled at the end of April.  To put that into perspective, Samsung sold 10m units for the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge last year with 20 days of release.  Samsung, it seems, wants to be prepared.

Breaking it down further, the 5.8″ Galaxy S8 will be 7.1 million according to ETNews while the larger 6.2″ S8+ will have around 5.4 million in available supplies at the time of release.