Category: Android

Project Fi subscribers are about to get some much needed improvements around international data usage tracking.  In a post in the Fi user forums, Community Manager Jordan posted that improved graphs and the ability to setup threshold warnings is coming to the service.

We’re improving the way you keep track of your international data usage with Project Fi. Currently, international data is not included in the threshold for triggering data usage alerts nor the data usage graph (under Account > Current Cycle). We’ll be making changes to both of these features to include international data usage to help you view and monitor more accurately. Note that international data is the same rate you’ve always paid, $10 per GB.

This is great news as now international users of the service will be able to track their data more discretely versus their domestic data usage.

The latest update to the popular Transit App for Android has brought a much requested and desired feature by users:  Transit Maps.  Now when you are in a location with a public transportation system, not only do you get the bus, subway and train schedules near you, the display also includes the map of those routes so you can see where they go.  Even better, the team at Transit App has made the routes color coded to those of the city you are viewing.  So, for example, the A Line in Denver leads from Union Station to Denver International Airport and is designated as a light blue on any Denver RTD map.  In Transit App, the line is in the same shade of blue and it shows you exactly how it goes from the city center to the airport.

Last week I posted that Huawei had clarified their software update policy on the Honor 8.  This week the Chinese manufacture has added the Honor 5x to the list of devices under the new upgrade policy.  That means both of the latest devices, for the next 24 months, will see major and minor updates.  It is good news for sure as the Honor 5x has been a popular device (and at $189 unlocked, it’s not hard to see why) and Huawei is doing their part to keep their devices up-to-date.

Well done Huawei.

If you are willing to do a little work and link some accounts, Disney has a great deal for you.  Right now if you download the Disney Movies Anywhere app for Android, sign up and then link an account, you will get a free copy of Monsters, Inc. added to your account.  If you aren’t familiar with the app, it serves as a central repository for all movies from Disney, from animated classics to the modern remake of The Jungle Book.  You buy movies through the app and they are purchased through whatever app store you have linked to the app.  Then the movie appears in the Disney Movies Anywhere app and in the linked accounts movies.  So for example, I linked my Google account to the Disney app and my Microsoft account.  When I make a purchase of a movie through the app, that movie appears in both my Google and my Microsoft accounts.  I don’t have to repurchase!

The Google Search team has added two fun games to Search that you can start playing immediately without any downloads.  On your Android phone, type in Solitaire or tic tac toe and you can immediately start playing the classic games right from within the Search results.  The new additions are just the latest in a series of app-like functionality within the Search app.  Previously information on the US election was added and more recently, detailed information about the Olympics in Rio were just a search away.  Games are nothing new either. You have been able to search flip a coin and get a coin toss from within search results too.  Now you have two more to play.

Google Photos, the photo and video storage app-meets-service for Android and iOS, has hit an important milestone in the Google Play Store.  The app has now been downloaded an eye watering 500 million times, putting it in very rarefied air in the Play Store.  To put this into perspective, Snapchat is only in the 100 million download range along with Pokemon Go.  Yep, the app that has been the craze for the last month hasn’t come close to where Photos is when it comes to downloads.  Even Netflix is only at 100 million.  You get the idea:  500 million is a big deal.

For those of you who haven’t tried Google Photos, is stores all of your photos online (which you can get to via https://photos.google.com) so your photos are stored not only on your phone but in the cloud.  When you use the Free Up Space feature (which was highlighted in adverts during the Olympics), the photos are deleted from your phone but kept safe online.  Even better, if you store photos in High Quality, it doesn’t count against your Google Drive storage.