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Google has released a new beta of Chrome for Android today in the Play Store.  The new build is version 65.0.3325.53, bringing the mobile browser up to the Chrome 65 version of the browser.  The build is mostly a bug fix and building upon the current stable build of the browser.

As the name suggests, this new build of Chrome for Android is beta and while anyone can get the beta from the Play Store, it is recommended that it not be your primary browser.  It can crash and there will likely still be bugs to be addressed.  If you can live with that however, and need to do some testing, give it a try.

In a move that caught many by surprise, Amazon has announced that they will be eliminating the lock screen ads on all of the current Prime phones and future phones will not have them.  On the current phones, there will be a firmware update that will eliminate the ads which should be released this week.

The move means that the company will be in compliance with Google’s new rules for Android that bans lock screen ads.  This is likely the reason for the dropping of the ads.  Amazon has reported that they plan to increase the price of the phones by $20 across the board which will likely go into effect after the patch to remove the ads has been released.

A small, incremental update to Chrome OS has been released that should be landing on everyone’s devices over the course of the next week or so.  The new version remains in the Chrome 64 train and is build 64.0.3282.144 (Platform version: 10176.68.0).

The release notes on this new build are pretty limited, indicating that it addresses several bug and security issues with the first Chrome 64 build released for Chrome OS earlier this month.  To check if the update is available for your system, type chrome://help in the browser bar and check for the update.  The release notes do indicate that systems with Android app support won’t see it for another few days yet.

Over the course of the next few days, a new version of Google+ will be rolling out to Android users.  While visually the app won’t look much different than it does today, Google’s Leo Deegan has taken to the community site to let everyone know what to expect.  Given he is the lead engineer of G+, he should know.

Though it very closely resembles the current app, this new version is the culmination of a complete rewrite of many core features using Google’s latest Android app infrastructure which will allow our Android team to build new features on a modern tech stack.

During the rewrite, we were able to build in some subtle updates. For instance, stream rendering and scrolling have been improved, the photo lightbox has been redesigned, comment options slide up from a bottom sheet, and grey-spammed comments are now viewable by post authors.

All of these changes point to a smoother experience overall with the community app.