Category: Android

The Google Play Games app for Android has an update rolling out that brings a fresh look to the gaming hub and a much improved way of finding your games that you have installed or have purchased/played in the past.  The new build is version 5.3 for those keeping score at home (pardon the pun) and should be coming to everyone over the course of the next few days via an OTA update.

The first thing you’ll notice after the update is the game carousel.  Here you can swipe to find games that Google has built into the app like Cricket, Pac-Man and Solitaire but also games that you have installed on your phone.  If you want to play any of these games, simply tap the Play button below them and off you go.

The final supported feature of the Nextbit Robin will be going away March 1st.  The Nextbit Cloud storage solution offered Robin owners 100GB of storage online to keep older apps and files just a tap away.  This was offered over an expansion slot on the device, which came with 32GB of storage.  The idea was simple:  Apps you don’t use a lot and their associated data would be moved to the cloud and the icon for them would be grayed out on your Robin.  If you needed them again, just tap the icon and it would be restored with all its data to the phone.

Now that is going away as part of Razer’s acquisition of Nextbit last year.  Owners were notified yesterday of the impending turn down of the cloud storage service with all users being automatically signed out on March 1st.

While the growth of Android apps on Chrome OS has been great to see, it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been without its challenges or limitations.  One such limitation is the ability for those apps to read a USB drive attached to your Chromebook.  The Android app is completely blind to that drive being there and can’t access.  It looks like that could be changing.

A new commit in the Chrome OS Gerrit suggests that through a settings in Flags that Android apps can be given permission to access the USB drive attached to your Chromebook.

const char kArcUsbHostName[] = “Enable ARC USB host integration”;
const char kArcUsbHostDescription[] =
“Allow Android apps to use USB host feature on ChromeOS devices.”;

When enabled, this would allow your Android apps to see your USB drive on your Chromebook.

Huawei has announced this afternoon that the Huawei Mate 10 Pro will be available from a wide range of retailers here in the United States starting February 18th with pre-orders starting February 4th.  The 6″ phablet will be priced at $799 and will be available in Midnight Blue, Titanium Grey and Mocha Brown.  

“We’ve experienced unprecedented growth worldwide and are now bringing our award-winning products to the U.S.,” said Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group. “Huawei is and has been in the U.S., and is part of a community of visionaries that strive to push boundaries and improve daily lives through technology. Our newest consumer solution, the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro, is the smartphone that U.S. consumers need and deserve.”

The phones will be available from Amazon, B&H, Best Buy, Microsoft Stores and Newegg with Best Buy having the phone available in their retail locations to view and purchase.  The phone will be sold unlocked and will work with various GSM carriers here in the US like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Cricket Wireless.

If there is any doubt that Razer has intended their first smartphone, the Razer Phone, to be a premium gaming and entertainment experience for their customers, you can put them to rest.  Today’s announcement around Netflix will end all doubt of the company’s intention.

Today at CES, the company announced that the Razer Phone will be the first smartphone to deliver Netflix content in both HDR video as well as Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio.

“We engineered the Razer Phone to handle HDR video and sound like no other phone on the market,” says Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder and CEO. “We are incredibly excited to deliver Netflix entertainment on a smartphone like never before, enabling us to take full measure of the Razer Phone’s HDR10-enabled display and dual-firing, front-facing Dolby-optimized speakers and THX-certified headphone connectivity.”

The phone joins several other devices in the market that already provide Netflix in HDR video including the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the Google Pixel 2 series.  But Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio is a different and more difficult matter.

Google Text-to-Speech is an underlying app that your Android phone and apps on your phone leverages to read text on your screen.  It is mostly used for those who need to enable accessibility for vision challenges and is generally one of those “set it and forget it” type apps.

That doesn’t mean Google isn’t keeping things up to day with it however.  A new build, version 3.14.9 for those keeping score at home, is rolling out with support for three new languages.  Those new languages are Estonian, Romanian and Slovak, further expanding the global reach of the app.