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If there has been one criticism of the Essential Phone, it has been the camera and the camera app.  Frankly, it was a hot mess when the phone was released but the company has been making huge strides in updating both the firmware and software to improve photos from the phone.  Today, they are getting a little better.

There is an update to the Essential Camera app in the Play Store that brings a lot of fixes as well as Auto-HDR support.  The update is version 0.1.096.003 and a lot of work has gone into it around HDR in general.

There is a new update for the Android Messages app for Android rolling out in the Play Store today.  Frankly there isn’t anything very interesting about the update from a user perspective but what is in the code is quite interesting.  It appears that there is code now in the app that would allow for a Allo-like web experience for Messages.  This could allow for sending and receiving of text messages from your desktop.

The code was discovered by the team over at Android Police in a tear down of the new version of the app.  It appears that, like Allo, you will scan a QR code to sync your computer with your phone and be able to send and receive messages on both.  This feature isn’t something new.  Google Hangouts still has this feature if you are a Project Fi user and use Hangouts as your SMS app (SMS in Hangouts isn’t supported anymore outside of Fi).  Instead, it would be a return of a feature and that is a great thing.

The fourth build of Chrome 65 has landed in the Chrome OS Dev Channel today.  Build 65.0.3325.56 (Platform version: 10323.21.0) is the first updated build since the end of January and it is available for systems that are in the Dev Channel.

For those that aren’t familiar with the different Chrome OS channels, the Dev channel is essentially the alpha channel.  This can be a really rough experience with lots of weird behavior and bugs.  It is aimed at developers and those who like serious bug hunting to see what is coming up in the platform.  This channel is not recommended for daily use on your daily driver Chromebook.

In their continuing effort to keep end users safe and aware when they are visiting a non-secure website, Google has announced that starting in July 2018, these sites will be clearly identified in the Chrome browser.  The change will coincide with the release of Chrome 68 and will be across all platforms as well as Chrome OS.  A non-secure website is noted as http:// when you visit the site while a secure, encrypted site is noted as https:// in the URL.

The official announcement should not come as a surprise.  Google has already been urging sites to move to secure deployments with changes in how page ranking is done for secure versus non-secure sites.  This is the culmination of that effort.