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[Update 12/20/2017:  It has now been removed.  Microsoft states that the installer violates the store’s policies. ]

Big and somewhat surprising news this morning for Windows 10 users.  Google Chrome is now available for download in the Microsoft Windows Store.  It means that users can now install Chrome on their Windows 10 PCs (except Windows 10S users) without having to side-load it.  This is something that many administrators lock down for security reasons.

Essentially this new app, which is published by Google, is an installer which acts as a shell to go get the browser installed on your PC.  In other words, it is an official channel to go out to the web and download the browser as you would if you were side-loading.

Good news this morning for those of you who have the HTC U11 Life on T-Mobile – Today is Android Oreo day for you.

HTC took to Twitter yesterday to announced that starting today, U11 Life owners on T-Mobile will start getting the hefty update pushed to them to move them from Nougat 7.1 to Oreo 8.0.

The Android 8.0 Oreo update is now available for T-Mobile editions of the HTC U11 life. It’s a big update, so you must be on WiFi before attempting to download. Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/FMd1CO28pJ

— HTC USA (@HTCUSA) December 18, 2017

HTC has, to their credit, been open about which devices would see the Oreo update and they had committed to having the update out for the U11 Life before the end of 2017.

Good news for those of you who have the ZTE Axon 7 phone.  The company has taken to their support forums to let users know that the Android Oreo update for the device is “just around the corner”.

William Guo of ZTE posted in the company’s support forums for the 5.5″ phone that the Oreo update is now in development and that they are working on perfecting it before releasing it.

We are announcing  now that we are already developing android 8 for the Axon 7, your positive feedback has been inspiring us a lot and made us very happy and because of this we try to get it customer ready as soon as  possible for the best customers in the world, and I ask for your understanding because we still need some time to perfect it.

With no definite timeline given, it could still be several months before Axon 7 owners see the update – but at least you know it is coming at some point.

Today’s Deal is on the well appointed MobvoiUS Ticwatch E Android Wear watch.  The 44mm round watch comes with Android Wear 2.0 and Nougat 7.1.1 and is available on Amazon for $127.99.  You can get that price on either the Shadow (black) or Ice (white) color options.  It is an excellent price point for a watch that is running the most current version of Android Wear.

Even better, the Ticwatch E is slated to receive the Android Oreo update shortly, making this an even more impressive value.

The 44mm watch face OLED display renders at 400×400 resolution which gives you ~287PPI.  The watch is 13.5mm thin, has a built-in heart rate monitor, GPS, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi connectivity, and is Bluetooth 4.1 compatible.  The watch is powered by the MTK MT2601 1.2 Ghz Dual Core processor, has 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage.