Category: Android

A new update to the Evernote app for Android is rolling out today in the Google Play Store.  While the version 7.17 of the productivity and note taking app is mostly a bug fix release, there is a new feature showing up for some users, Collect.

Collect, according to the release notes, allows you to save images containing text that you want to remember later.  Evernote will save it then you can search for it, and presumably the text inside the image, later in the app or online.  The release notes indicate that the feature works with whiteboards, receipts, document and anything with text.

According to research from IDC, Google enjoyed a doubling of shipments of their Google Pixel phone lineup in 2017.  In all, the company shipped some 3.9 million units for the year, mostly comprised of the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL which were introduced last October.

The figures once again come from IDC’s Francisco Jeronimo who yesterday reported the paltry numbers for Essential.  While the numbers for Google are obviously better, they are still pretty small in the overall smartphone shipments market.

Last week, Amazon announced that they were going to be updating their lineup of Prime phones to removed the lock screen ads that had been on them since the program’s inception.  That process, which is a OTA update to the phones, is underway now.

One of the questions that came up last week however was what would the online retailer do with those who had paid the $45 fee to remove the lock screen ads?  The answer is they are getting a refund of sorts.  No, it’s not cash but rather a gift card to spend with the retailer.

A new beta of the Google app for Android is rolling out to testers and it has a lot of interesting, if inactive code built into it.  If you want to read a full teardown of the APK, the team over at 9to5 Google have a great writeup on it.  I’m focusing on the code around a physical Google Assistant button.

The code in the APK points to the ability to have a physical button for Assistant, much like the physical button you find on the Google Pixelbook today.  While this button isn’t aimed at phones per se, it is aimed at Android and coincides nicely with code found last week in a commit in Chrome OS.  That code suggested that a physical button could be remapped for Google Assistant.  Put together, these code snippets indicate just how far Google wants to take Assistant on both platforms.

It has taken seemingly forever but a new update to the Google Calendar app for Android finally, finally lets you duplicate events in one calendar and copy events between calendars.  The updated build of the app is version 5.8.18 for those keeping score at home.  It was released late last week but it is just now rolling out to everyone.

The update to Google Calendar brings two big improvements.  First, you can now duplicate an event on your calendar.  Now, instead of having to create it completely from scratch, you can duplicate a current event on your calendar and use it as a template of sorts.

HTC Vice President of Product Management, Mo Versi, has once again taken to Twitter to announced a new update for one of the company’s phones.  This time it is for the HTC 10 for customers of Sprint here in the United States.

Sprint HTC 10 customers! We have received the Oreo OS approval from the carrier! OTA to start from tomorrow. Thanks!

— Mo Versi (@moversi) February 12, 2018

The release of Oreo on the Sprint variant of the HTC 10 comes literally a month to the day after the build was released for the unlocked variant of the 2016 flagship phone.  That update just over 1.5GB in size so those of you who have the 10 on Sprint, you can expect a similarly sized update for your phone.