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Today’s Deal is on the new Samsung Chromebook Plus.  The 12.3″ convertible has been selling for $450 but is down to $409 right now on Amazon.  That will get you one of the latest Chromebooks available and it will run Android apps natively right out of the box.

The Chromebook Plus has a 12.3″ display rendering at 2400 x 1600.  It is also a touchscreen which makes using the included stylus or your finger for apps easier.  It has 4GB of RAM, 32GB of Storage and you can expand that storage thanks to the MicroSD slot.  It has dual-microphones, a 720p Webcam and, of course, Wi-Fi.  It only ways 2.4 lbs so it is designed for portability and with it being able to be be used as a laptop or a slate, you have a lot of flexibility in where and how you use this Chromebook.

OnePlus has begun the process of rolling out an update to their OxygenOS Android variant to their 2017 flagship phone, the OnePlus 5T.  The updates build of OxygenOS is 4.7.6 and in normal OnePlus fashion, is slowing going out to a select number of users today with a broader deployment happening over the course of the next few days.

The update is still based on Android Nougat 7.1.1 so for those hoping this would bring Oreo to the flagship, you have to still wait a bit.  OxygenOS 5.0 is in beta with an early 2018 release expected.  This 4.7.6 update brings a lot of fixes to the camera, other system improvements as well as the December Android Security Update patch for the device.

If you are a Chromebook users that uses Android apps, Chrome 64 is likely going to bring you some very good news.  The beta of that train is out and in it, Android apps continue to run when they are in the background.  Currently the apps will pause (with a few exceptions) when they are no longer the focus app on your Chromebook.  That is, if you move from one app to another or from an app to a web-based app in Chrome, the app will pause.

Chrome 64 addresses this primarily through an update to the Android Framework running in Chrome OS.  Way back in March, I posted that this framework would be upgraded from Android Marshmallow to Android Nougat.  It was in Chrome 61 but it didn’t work well as apps continued to pause in the background.  With Chrome 64, the framework is updated to Android Oreo and, based on early beta testing, is able to handle multiple Android apps running at the same time without pausing them when they are not the primary focus app.

The Google Pixel C, the latest Android-based tablet from Google, has quietly been removed from the Google Store.  It signals the end of sales for the 2015 tablet that was met with mix results both from a sales and overall satisfaction perspective.  The 10.2″ tablet was released in September 2015 and shipped with Android Marshmallow.  It was upgraded last year to Nougat and the latest update to Oreo rolled out in October.

The Pixel C was power packed and from a specifications perspective, was hard to top.  But it was released at a time when many were beginning to question the need for a tablet at all.  Rumors at the time were pointing to Android apps coming to Chrome OS or, perhaps, a melding of the two (Project Andromeda) which made it curious about releasing a tablet at the time.  Indeed rumors persist that the Google Pixel C was actually slated to run Chrome OS but was switched at the last minute to Android.