The new Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL will be launched tomorrow but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the device’s new wallpaper today. The new wallpaper has been added to the Wallpaper page here on the site and it ready for you to download along with the hundreds of others.
The wallpaper is designed for phones with a 1440 x 2880 resolution. I have added it to this post after the break so those who aren’t interested won’t have to wait for it to load.
HMD Global, the company that owns the rights to the Nokia name, has confirmed that all of their current devices will be getting updated to Android P when it is available in 2018. It is a bold statement given that the company is just now starting to roll out Android Oreo to the Nokia 8, their flagship.
The announcement came during the Nokia 8 launch event held in the Philippines yesterday and it was made clear it would be not just for the 8, but for the Nokia 3, 5 and 6 too.
Android Pay has grown up since its introduction in May of 2015. It launched with just a handful of major US banks at the time and the growth the first year was slow. But through the latter half of 2016, that growth accelerated. In 2017, the growth has been exponential.
Over the weekend, 16 new financial institutions joined the supported list for Android Pay and that brings the total number to a nice, even 1,000. Indeed, nearly 400 new institutions have been added in 2017 along to give you an ideal of the growth rate.
The latest version of Google Contacts for Android is rolling out in the Play Store and it is bringing several noticeable UI changes. Version 2.2 should be hitting devices with the app installed over the course of the next few days and when it does, you will immediately notice these visual updates.
First, the contact photo for your contact is much larger in this new update, harkening back to older versions of the app when this was normal view. Google has indicated that this was one of the most requested features of the Contacts app which is why the added it back to the app.
Google has released this month’s Android Distribution Report and the latest version of the platform has finally made its debut. Android Oreo accounted for .2% of the traffic to the Google Play Store for the seven day period ending October 2, 2017. It was only one of two versions of Android that gained in the distribution report, joined by Android Nougat.
Nougat saw a 2% jump over the September report, accounting for 17.8% of the traffic to the Play Store. All of the others either had no change or saw drops in usage.
Google Photos for Android has a small but handy update rolling out to users today. The update, version 3.6 for those keeping score at home, brings improved speeds when it comes to sharing videos from your collection.
The improvements in speeds comes in the way that Photos handles video sharing. When you want to share a video, a low resolution version of that video is uploaded to the service while the full resolution version is uploaded more slowly. This is particularly handy when you are in congested network or have low signal while out-and-about. Now you can share the video and it not take a long time to upload before you can share it.
As expected with it being the first Monday of the month, Google has released the Android Security Update for October. While there are still two patches that were released per the norm, they contain far fewer patches and fixes than normal.
The first updated, dated October 1st, is general Android fixes and contains a total of 8 patches and fixes, three of which are considered critical. The second patch, dated October 5th, has 6 total fixes with 2 of them marked as critical. As a reminder, the Google Pixel and Nexus devices will be getting the October 5th updates, which are cumulative to the 1st, and is aimed at hardware specific driver fixes for those devices.
LG has quietly updated their Security Bulletins page on their support site, dropping support for several older G-Series phones with the September update. The G3, G4, G4 Stylus and LG Stylo have all been removed from the support list meaning that it is highly unlikely they will be getting updates going forward.
That isn’t too surprising. The G3 for example was released in May 2014 so the fact that the company was providing updates to it at all some 3 years down the road was impressive.