Category: Android

Today’s Deal is on a 5-pack of durable, USB-C braided cables from AUKEY.  The pack of cables consists of one 6.6′ cable, three 3.3″ cables and one 1′ cable.  All of the cables are USB-C to USB-A so they you can plug them into any standard USB port.  Today and the rest of this week, you can pick up this pack of cables for $14.99 when you use the coupon code AUKCM007.

The cables support USB 3.1 and have data transfer rates up to 5Gbps while safely charging your devices at up to 3A with a 56k ohm resistor.  That means that the cables are able to take on Samsung’s Adaptive Fast Charging or Qualcomm Quick Charge to charge your compatible devices quickly, efficently and safely.

Today the second Developer Preview of Android Oreo 8.1 was released to those in the Android Beta Program.  The update brings the November 2017 Android Security Update to the beta program and OTA updates for those with devices enrolled should start flowing today and throughout the next few days.

This will be the last Developer Preview of Oreo 8.1 before it is generally released next month.  You can read about all the major updates & changes coming in Oreo 8.1 here.

The 2nd preview more-or-less fixes bugs and other issues found in the first preview released last month.  The new Pixel Visual Core, which was not in DP1, is now enabled in this second preview.  For those that are familiar with this feature, it is Google’s first co-processor for image processing and Machine Learning.  Currently it is only available in the Pixel 2 lineup.

Today on Amazon, you can pick up the Essential Phone with its 360° camera for just $399.  This is a huge savings off the phone alone (which is normally $499).  The camera is normally a $100 accessory so you are getting a screaming deal on one of the more popular flagship phones out there right now.

Essential Phone with 360° Camera – $399 Today Only

The phone got off to a bit of a rough start but through multiple software updates, it has become one of the best out there.

The Essential Phone has a titanium body with a ceramic back, a 5.7″ 2560 x 1320 Quad-HD display, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage built-in.  It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor.  This octa-core processor has four cores running at 2.45GHz and the remaining four clocked at 1.9GHz.

Good news this morning for HTC U11 owners here in the Americas, the Android Oreo update the company has promised before the end of the year has arrived.  Starting today, U11 owners will start getting the OTA update to Oreo with the process likely taking several days (or even a week or two) to complete.

This is for the unlocked variant only.  If you are locked to a carrier then the update will be later.

The news of the rollout came from HTC’s VP of Product Management Mo Versi on Twitter.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. The Oreo OS update will be available for download on the HTC u11 unlocked version starting on Monday! Enjoy!

— Mo Versi (@moversi) November 25, 2017

You will be able to manually check for the update in the System Updates area of Settings on your U11.

Google has made a small but significant change to the way that Google Pixel devices measure estimated battery life.  The update replaces a simple model that was on the devices that could produce some wildly inaccurate measurements and results.

The news of the update came via the Pixel Product Help Site and essentially, the new model now looks at how you actually use your phone rather than making estimates based on your previous hour of usage.  Before this change, if you used 10% of your battery in an hour, the model would assume that you would continue to use your batter at a 10% per hour clip.  This resulted in some discrepancies if you went above or below that 10% rate.  The change to the model gives more personalized results.

To fix this, we built an on-device model that evaluates how you use your phone’s battery over time. Your phone looks at your battery usage on similar days and times, and uses that to predict your battery life in a personalized way.

The cool thing is, this is all a cloud-side change that Google pushed out so if you have a Pixel device, you likely already have this change in place.

Microsoft has rolled out a new update to the Bing search app for Android today.  Version 7.4 of the app brings mostly under-the-hood fixes and improvements to the search app but does have two new widgets for Bing Rewards tracking.

For those who aren’t familiar, Bing Rewards are points that you accumulate as you use the app on your phone, PC or if you use Microsoft Edge on your PC as your browser.  You can then use these points for discounts in the Microsoft store.   It is a program that Bing has had for several years and remains popular.

With the 7.4 update, you will have the ability to add one of two widgets.  The first is an adjustable panel which shows you your progress and a quick link to go search using the search engine.  The second is a non-adjustable round dial style that shows your progress.  I’ve added a screen shot at the end of this post so you can see them.