Category: Android

While the ability to run Android apps on Chrome OS continues to roll out, the question for many is when or if it will be updated.  The answer is yes and pretty soon.  This week while attending Google Cloud Next in San Francisco, I posed the question to Chrome OS product management in a breakout session and it was confirmed that Android Nougat will be coming to the platform build 58 or 59.  Given that it is already in the beta channel, I suspect that it is likely 58.

As readers may know, Android Framework in Chrome OS currently is based on Android Marshmallow.  So, in theory, if an app will run in Marshmallow, it will run on Chrome.  The tricky bit has been that some apps can’t go full screen in 6.0 and features like multi-window support for apps is not something that is supported at all in Marshmallow.  All of that changes under 7.0 obviously as the framework allows for it.

Google Play Music has released their first podcast produced by Google, City Soundtracks.  The 15-odd minute casts are aimed at highlighting an artist and the city from which they originate.  While Play Music has had the ability to listen to podcasts for a while now, this is the company’s first foray into actually producing one.  And I have to say, it’s pretty good.  Right now the cast list is only three episodes, all released yesterday, featuring artists from Austin, New Orleans and Oakland.  You can check it out here.

The official description pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

City Soundtracks by Google Play Music is a traveling conversation about the people, places and moments that shape our musical lives. Each episode features an artist and a city. Host Hrishikesh Hirway invites musicians to lead listeners on a tour of the city through conversation and music.

I’ve listened to two of the three episodes and I have to say, it’s not bad.

App Shortcuts, the ability to tap-and-hold to get to specific parts of an app in Android Nougat 7.1, continues to grow and Google is catching up too.  The latest update to Google Play Newsstand now supports the shortcuts, allowing you to quickly get to your curated news, digest of news, Magazines and items you have marked for reading later.  Newsstand undergone a lot of changes in the past six months, most of which have been pretty good.  The big knock I had on the app was that in the redesign, getting to your magazine subscriptions became confusing and not-so-easy to figure out at first.  It’s still that way but with the shortcut now available, it makes it easier to get to them.

As readers probably know, in order for app shortcuts to work, you must be running Android Nougat 7.1 or higher.  That means it is almost completely for Pixel and Nexus devices as very few other devices from other manufactures have 7.1 as of yet.

The latest Android Distribution report has been released by Google and it shows that Android Nougat made a healthy 1.5% increase in install base over the February report.  The bump means that the latest version of Android is now on 2.8% of devices that high the Play Store for the week ending March 6, 2017 but by comparison, it is still well behind the likes of Marshmallow and Lollipop.  The increase represents the largest growth version for the report period and is reflective of the significant number of devices that have had their Nougat update come to them over the course of the past few weeks.

Android Lollipop remains the leader as far as install base is concerned, coming in at 34.5% which is a drop of .4% over the February report.  Marshmallow is second at 31.3%.  That is an increase of .6% for the 6.0 build of Android.  Android KitKat saw the largest drop at 1.1% but remains on some 20.8% of devices that came to the Play Store.

LineageOS is making up for lost time and doing it fast.  The rise of the platform out of the CyanogenMod project has been very impressive and got even more so today.  Multiple Samsung devices, both phones and tablets, have been added to the supported devices for the platform.  The new build is in the 14.1 train of the platform which is based on Android Nougat.

As for which Samsung devices were added, the list is pretty comprehensive.  The Galaxy S7 (G930F), S7 Edge (G935F) are probably the banner models that will catch everyones attention.  But the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 9.7″ was also added, both the Wi-FI and the LTE variants.  The Note 7 Tablet was updated to the 14.1 train too.

The continued advancement of Android Pay support in Europe took another step today, adding support for Belgium.  Belgians become the 10th country to have the tap-to-pay service available, with it being a pay option in some 85,000 retail locations throughout the country.  It is also backed by key banks within the country with support for MasterCard and Visa.

As readers probably know by now, using Android Pay requires that you have a phone running Android KitKat or later and have a phone with NFC support.  Once you arrive at a retailer who accepts the service, just tap your phone to the pay terminal to complete your transaction.