On the Google Apps blog, the company has announced that a wider range of file export formats are coming to both Google Sheets and Google Slides in an update to both Android apps released today. The apps already allow exporting to popular formats such as Excel, PowerPoint and PDF but these new updates bring new formats that could be helpful if you are needing to send files to colleagues who don’t use the Google apps.
The rebirth of Google+ continues with another update coming to the social & community site app for Android. This latest update, version 7.5.0 for those keeping score at home, was announced by Googler Luke Wroblewski on his Google+ page and amongst the bug fixes in the update, there are also new feature to retry failed posts in the app. In all, there are 34 specific bugs fixed in this release and 12 additional accessibility issues that are addressed so the team is certainly knocking them out at a pretty good clip.
For those readers in the UK, there is good news for you this morning. In a few months, when exactly isn’t known, you will be able to use your NFC compatible Android phone to use Android Pay. The announcement came on the Official Android Blog in the UK and when it does roll out, there are a wide range of retailers that you will be able to tap-and-pay at across the country and most of the major banks in the UK will be supporting it as well.
Google has thrown the switch on a behind the scenes update that allows you to place a shortcut to Google Now weather on your Home screen. This feature has been slowly rolling out over the past couple of weeks, first as a beta, but seems to have been enabled more widely over the past 24-48 hours. As users of the launcher will know, the weather portion of the app was updated a couple of months ago to a more colorful and informative page when you tap on the weather information in Google Now. This latest update doesn’t change anything other than providing you an option to add a shortcut to your Home screen for faster access to local weather.
Google Photos is getting updated with a new Smart Album feature that will automatically create a new album for you from your latest trip or event. The update is coming in an update to the Android, iOS and the website for the service starting today. Users should see an OTA update come to their devices over the course of the next few days with the new feature.
If you are a Project Fi user, in Google maps is one that you will want to get on your phone. The reason? You can now have the app show you were Open Wi-Fi compatible hotspots are near you so you can securely connect your Nexus device to them without any configuring on your part. The points are user generated and provided to you within the Maps app. As Fi users know, Open Wi-Fi is built into Nexus devices and Fi leverages it to connect you automatically to hotspots that meet Google’s criteria. The connections are secure thanks to them being an encrypted VPN connection and when you go into a location with an approved network, your phone will connect automatically for you. I wrote on this feature back in November and if you aren’t familiar with this aspect of Fi, give it a read to get caught up.
Over the course of the past few weeks, I’ve read a lot of comments here and on Google+ with regards to Project Fi and the criteria it uses to select the carrier to use at any given time. It is an interesting subject and one that I have a fair amount of experience with not only as a Fi subscriber, but in my day job in the communications industry. The confusion, I think, rests with a user having what appears to be full signal strength in their area on say T-Mobile yet their phone is continually connecting to Sprint which has less signal in that location. As a general rule, you won’t know which network you are on unless you are using a tool like Signal Spy to check it out. But the bottom line is that a stronger signal isn’t the only thing that Google is looking for when it comes to selecting the network in Project Fi.
If you have the AT&T locked version of the Blackberry Priv, you should start seeing the March security update coming to your device starting today. The update comes 2 weeks-and-a-day after it was released by Google themselves so all-in-all, that is not a bad time frame for a carrier locked device. Further, the update makes AT&T the first carrier here in the US to get the update to the Priv on their network with T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint all having the device but none of them have pushed out this update. For a point of reference, the update came out the same week as Google released it on the unlocked version of the Priv.