Category: Android

Over the past few months, Sony has been making great strides in keeping their phones up to date with major Android releases as well as the monthly Android Security Update patches.  This month it would seem is no exception.  The Japanese company has rolled out the December security update to the Xperia XZ, Xperia XZs and the Xperia X Performance.

The update is firmware build 41.3.A.2.24 for all three devices and the update is hitting unlocked phones first as you likely suspect.  The update is small, less than 200MB, so it is a quick install but does require a reboot of your phone once you have it downloaded and installed.

After making its debut on iOS last month, the new Grammarly Keyboard has now made its way to Android.  The new keyboard looks at the grammar used in your emails, texts and other apps to assure that you have proper spelling and grammar.

If you haven’t used Grammarly before, it is an excellent service that has been available as a Chrome extension for years.  More-or-less, this new keyboard app functions like the extension.  This new keyboard option is able to analyze your typing in any app on your phone to provide you suggestions on grammar and spelling.

Today’s Deal is on the powerful yet budget friendly Honor 6X.  Honor is the sub-brand of Huawei and the 6X is one of their late-2016 models.  I reviewed the phone back in March and it was the first Honor product I’ve reviewed.  I was impressed, especially for the price point.  That price has gone down to $149 on Amazon and that makes it an even better deal.

The Honor 6X measures 150.9 x 76.2 x 8.2 mm or 5.94 x 3.00 x 0.32 inches in old money.  It weighs 162g or 5.71 ounces.  The display on the phone measures 5.5″ and renders a Full HD resolution of 1080 x 1920.  That gives you an approximate pixel-per-inch count of 403.  It has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, which can be expanded thanks to the MicroSD slot.

The main camera configuration of the 6X consists of dual-cameras rated at 12MP and 2MP.  The Sony built sensor has a 1.25µm pixel size and has phase detection autofocus.  It has an LED flash for low light photography.  On the front, the selfie camera is an 8MP shooter.  Both the front and the rear cameras are capable of shooting HD video at 1080p at 30fps.

Google PhotoScan, the app for scanning older photos to save digitally, has a new update rolling out that brings several improvements.  The new build is version 1.5 for those keeping score at home and is rolling out into the Play Store today.

The first change that users of PhotoScan will likely appreciate the most is the automatic saving of scanned photos to your Google Photos account.  Previously, when you scanned a photo, it was saved to its own library on your phone and you had to then manually sync that library with Photos.  Now when you scan a photo, it is automatically saved to your Google Photos library, eliminating the manual step.

Google+ has a new update rolling out for the community network on both Android and iOS.  The update brings a new advanced search function to the apps, much like the search functionality of Google Search itself.  In this new update, you will be able to use search operators to do specific searches within Google+

Google has already built a guide for these new search functions on the support site which will outline in detail how they can be used.  Some of these new functions include:

• From:  To identify a post from a G+ users
• Has:  Has an attachment such as an image or Google Doc file
• Before:  Before a specific date
• After:  After a specific date
• Commenter:  Search for a specific commenter on a specific post

As you can see, you can get quite specific in your searching to pinpoint a specific post or person.

Google Lens began a general rollout less than a month ago and at the time I said it felt futuristic and had a huge amount of potential.  Indeed, looking back on 2017, I thing that Lens could be one of the most significant product releases by Google for the year – or will prove to be in the coming 12 months.

Google’s Rajan Patel, the lead engineer for Google Lens, took to Twitter yesterday and highlighted some of the areas in which we are going to see Lens improve and grow in the coming months.

Shopping (apparel, home goods, etc) in the works. Natural world (flora and fauna) improvements coming. Team just sent me an amazing new OCR model. Experimental AR experiences coming as well…

— Rajan Patel (@rajanpatel) December 9, 2017

Before readers get too excited, it should be noted that Mr. Patel gave no indication on when we will see these new features and functionalities within Lens.  That said, it is exciting to read that Google is thinking about where to take the app & service next.  Truly exciting stuff!