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Yesterday, Google announced that Google Pay was being officially launched with new branding and app updates.  The update to the old Android Pay app is now rolling out and it brings not only a name change, but a substantial user experience update.  The first public version of Google Pay for Android is 1.53 and it will replace your Android Pay app on your phone when you get the OTA update.

When you first open the app, you will immediately see the improvements in the app.  It has a light theme to it and has a two-tab bottom navigation.  The Home screen has a carousel of all of your cards and payment options at the top.  Simply slide to the card you want to use while you are paying at a terminal to use that card.  If you want to make it your default card, just long press it.

For the fourth consecutive week, the Chrome OS Dev Channel has received another new update.  This week however, it is something new.  Chrome 66 has come to the alpha channel in build version 66.0.3344.0 (Platform version: 10403.0.0).

There hasn’t been a massive amount of insight into what is going to be coming in Chrome 66 and the release notes – of which there are none for this update – didn’t shed any light.  It is known that the Symantec Trust Certificates prior to June 1, 2016 will be removed.  It is also expected that split-screen Android mode will be available.  That feature, to this point, has been in the hidden Canary channel of the platform.

Google Pay, the rebranded merging of Google Wallet and Android Pay, is going live today.  With a new app rolling out and a rebranding of another… wait, I thought there was only going to be one app?  Yeah… we’ll get there.

First, Google Pay is the rebranding of Android Pay and that app is going live in the Play Store today according to the company’s blog.  If you have Android Pay installed on your phone, you will get an OTA update to the new app over the course of the next few days.  Regardless of which one you have installed right now, you can still go and use it.  This, to an extent, is a rebranding exercise at this point.

Having been in the Google Play Store for the past four-plus years, the Nuance developed Swype Keyboard is no longer being developed.  The news came via XDA Developers who confirmed the news with Nuance.

Nuance will no longer be updating the Swype+Dragon keyboard for Android. We’re sorry to leave the direct-to-consumer keyboard business, but this change is necessary to allow us to concentrate on developing our AI solutions for sale directly to businesses.

It means that one of the original swipe-to-type keyboard solution for both Android and iOS is essentially dead.  The app is still available in the Play Store but it is likely a question of how much longer.