Category: Android

Huawei has become the latest manufacture to announce a new flagship Android phone at Mobile World Congress.  The Huawei P10 will be available in March, sporting a 5.2″ HD display, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.  There will also be a larger P10 Plus which will have a 5.5″ QHD display, 6GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage.  Both devices will have a Leica optics dual-camera configuration for the main camera.  The P10 will have a 20MP monochrome and 12MP RGB camera at f/2.2 while the P10 Plus will have an f/1.8 aperture.  Both will have image stabilization.

Processor wise, both phones are powered by the Kirin 960 processor, an 8-core SoC running at 2.4GHz.  The lineup is a dual SIM configuration with USB-C charging, NFC and MIMO antenna arrays for both LTE and Wi-Fi.

Probably the thing that stole the announcement for Huawei however was the colors available for the P10.  This is particularly true of the Greenery color which seems to have everyone smitten.  The phone will be available in Ceramic White, Dazzling Blue, Dazzling Gold, Prestige Gold (P10), Graphite Black, Mystic Silver, Rose Gold and Greenery.  Finishes on the colors will be High GLoss, Diamond-Cut and Sandblast.  These colors were developed in cooperation with the Pantone Color Institute so clearly Huawei is taking your color choice seriously.

In the latest update to the Google+ app for Android, Google has quietly removed the menu link to Google Spaces.  It could be the first indicator that the carcass of yet another social networking attempt by Google is about to be thrown on the pile.  And frankly, it wouldn’t be all that shocking.  The change can be found in the 9.6.0 build of Google+ for Android and if you open up the menu using the hamburger menu or a swipe from the left side of your screen, you’ll see that there is no link to Spaces.

The idea behind Spaces was never fully articulated.  It was somewhat like Circles in the original Google+ but it was also aimed to allow you to create a “space”, invite friends so that you could discuss the space’s defined topic.  You could also share videos, images, texts and other media.  In theory, a pretty cool idea but Spaces never really took off.

Big changes are coming in the latest update to Google Sheets for Android, web and iOS.  There are some nice formatting options that are coming to the app but probably the bigger news is that the Android app will have mouse support for the new breed of Chromebooks that run Android apps.

From a formatting perspective, Sheets will now have the ability to rotate text (this is found under Format>Text rotation) to make your spreadsheet cleaner and more visually appealing.  For example, you could rotate column headers 90-degrees so that they are vertical instead of wide across the column top.  This means you can make those columns more narrow.  Add to that, finally, the ability to format numbers in Accounting style.  This is one of those “why wasn’t it there before?” features but hey, it’s here now.  Under Format>Number>Accounting, you can change your numbers into this format for easier and more consistent reports on budgets and other financial spreadsheets.

Rounding out the formatting updates are new border styles.  There are several new border styles in the app that have various thicknesses and double borders.  These are all found under Toolbar>Borders>Border styles.

The big changes though and probably the more exciting ones for most are the changes to the Android (and iOS app) app for Sheets.

A small dot release of Google Play Music is hitting the Play Store that brings back a menu option and other small improvements.  The updated build is version 7.4 for those keeping score and with it you will find that the Recents option has returned to the main menu or navigation drawer of the app.  This feature disappeared late last year when Google started injecting machine learning into the app so it could better learn your listening preferences.  Since then, your Recents appeared as a button on the main display of the app (but it only shows your downloaded music if you are in offline mode)

The return of Recent to the menu should clean things up a bit whether you are online or offline and make it easier to find the music you have recently listened to in chronological order.

Huawei’s junior brand, Honor, has pretty much always had a solid lineup of mid-market phones at a good price.  Then comes along the Honor V9 and it is nothing short of a powerhouse.  The 5.7″ QHD is powered by the Kirin 960 SoC quad-core process running at 2.4GHz, has up to 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage and will start roughly $435.  The V9 is perhaps the most complete, high-end spec phone that Honor has released and hopefully, hopefully we will see it here in the United States at some point.

There are three configurations of the Honor V9 but regardless of which one you get, they both come with the Kirin 960 processor and Mali G71 GPU.  You can get a 4GB model with 64GB of Storage , a 6GB model with 64GB of Storage, or you can pick up the 6GB and 128GB model.  Both come with a MicroSD slot so you can expand the storage up to an additional 128GB.  So if you picked up the top-of-the-line model and added a 128GB card for roughly $40, you would have a 256GB phone for around $550.  That is a steal.

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is a great one if you are needing to pick up an external power pack for your devices.  Today you can pick up the Anker PowerCore 10400 for $19.99, a savings of 60% off the regular $49 price tag.  As the name suggests, this power pack has a 10,400 mAh battery in it so you can easily charge most devices three times before having to recharge it.  It has two USB-A connectors so you can use it with really anything out there:  MicroUSB, USB-C (A to C cable) and an Apple Lightening cable.  It is designed to work with any device and get you powered up and going again.  It also is in a small package.  This pack is slightly larger than a deck of playing cards so you won’t have a big, bulky battery to carry around with you.