Category: Android

BLU’s latest offering, the Life One X2, is now available for pre-order at their store front on Amazon.  The phone comes with either 16GB of storage and 2GB of RAM for $135 or you can get the much better deal 64GB of storage and 4GB of RAM model for $180.  That’s a great price for a well appointed budget phone, something that BLU is well known for producing.

As for the specs, it isn’t too shabby.  The Life One X2 is a 5.2″ display device that is curved and gives you Full HD rendering.  It is protected by Gorilla glass 3 as well.  Powering the phone is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor.  That’s an octa-core processor running at 1.4GHz.  It’s not the fastest processor out there but keep the price point in mind here folks.  As mentioned, the phone has two options from a storage/RAM perspective at 16GB/2GB or 64GB/4GB.  That storage can be expanded up to an additional 64GB as it has a MicroSD card slot.

Samsung USA has stated that nearly half of the 1 million of the Galaxy Note7 impacted by the recent recall have been returned here in the US.  That’s actually really great news as owners of the Note7 have taken the recall pretty seriously and returned the devices to their carrier or the store from which they bought it for a replacement.

Samsung Electronics America, Inc. announced today that about half of all recalled Galaxy Note7 phones sold in the U.S. have been exchanged through Samsung’s voluntary recall. Additionally, 90 percent of Galaxy Note7 owners have been opting to receive the new Galaxy Note7 since the phones became widely available on Wednesday, September 21.

It would appear too that users are opting to stick with the Note7 upon that exchange of their devices although they have mostly had the option to go with a different device if they so choose.

The Weather Channel app for Android has been updated today with some very impressive new radar images.  The updated build is version 7.0.1 for those keeping score at home and the update is rolling out in the Google Play Store now for those who have the app installed.  Now when you go to the radar section of the app, you will see a much more interesting maps than in the previous release.  The first thing you’ll notice is that the maps look more topographical which is great for those of us who live in mountainous areas.  But the update isn’t just skin deep.  The app now allows you to zoom down all the way to street level so you can see exactly when a storm is going to impact you & your neighborhood.  Before you could zoom in but it wouldn’t go down to street level.

If there is one fact in Android life that remains true, it is that Samsung will be slow in getting updates out to their devices.  It was four months after Android Marshmallow was released before the company pushed it out to the Galaxy S6 and they have been even slower on other devices and releases.  So when reports that Samsung has a test build of Android Nougat in the wild for the Galaxy S7, just weeks after it was released, it is good news.

Before you get your hopes up, no, a release of Nougat on the S7 lineup is not immanent.  In fact it is probably months away.  But SamMobile is reporting that Samsung has confirmed to them that they are indeed testing Nougat on a S7.

Google has rolled out a small but important update to Google Photos that makes it much easier to share your photos with others.  The update gives you the ability to share a photo or set of photos with an individual contact, not just another app.  The ability to share with another app has been there for a while but to share photos with a contact, you had to dive into another app (Messages, Hangouts, etc.) to make that happen.  Now you will see your contacts in the Share menu and can share directly from within Photos, saving taps and steps.

After weeks of anticipation and waiting, Google finally pulled the trigger and launched Google Allo, their new messaging app.  The company had indicated it would be available this summer and as expected, it launched today (late last night technically) on the last day of summer.  Promise kept!

The new app that is “a new smart messaging app for Android and iOS that helps you say more and do more right in your chats. Google Allo can help you make plans, find information, and express yourself more easily in chat. And the more you use it, the more it improves over time.”

Leveraging phone numbers of contacts in your contacts list, you can SMS or, if they are using Allo, rich message them with larger text, inked photos and stickers.  If you message someone and they are not using Allo (on SMS), they will get a small prompt to download the app if they are on Android but they don’t necessarily have to do so.  Allo can be just a SMS app if you so choose.

The real killer feature in Google Allo however is Google Assistant that is built into it.