ClintonFitch.com

It is news that Blackberry Priv owners likely knew was coming down the pike:  There will be no Android Oreo update for the last Blackberry-build device.

The news came via the company’s general manager of Mobility, Alex Thurber.  He was recently on the UTB Blogcast and confirmed that the phone will not be updated to Oreo.  It is disappointing of course but not surprising.  Blackberry’s new parent company, TCL, has been focusing on restoring the brand’s name and their own first built device, the KEYone.  The KEYone has been confirmed to receive an update to Oreo.

Microsoft Bing, the Redmond, Washington’s search engine and app, has an update rolling out for Android users that brings a lot of improvements.  Along with an overall improvement in the search experience, this update to Bing also brings support for Android App Shortcuts.  Now you can long press the app to open new tabs, save images, and start a new search.

Search results in Microsoft Bing are also improved with this update.  Searches are new faster with the search results being more accurate and more clearly laid out in the results view.

The experimenting with the layout of the Google Play Store continues as Google trots out yet another new look & feel for the app.  The latest update brings a new top level sliding navigation to reach different parts of the Play Store as well as a slightly condensed menu.

The top navigation, in my opinion, is quite nice.  All of the major areas of the store are now in a sliding navigation bar at the top of the screen, which makes finding specific areas of the store much easier.  This new navigation bar can be slid left to right and then you tap on the area you want to see.  Those areas include For You, Top Charts, Categories, Editors’ Choice, Early Access, and Family.

Previously, to get to these areas, you either had to find it on the menu (depending on which flavor of the store you had on your phone or tablet) or you had to scroll down to that section on the main page.  Neither was a great user experience and this new navigation bar greatly simplifies the process.

A new update to the ClintonFitch.com app is rolling out to the Play Store that brings a raft of changes and improvements.  The new build, version 10 for those keeping score at home, brings an improved layout to the app that is more in compliance with Material Design principles (although not 100% there yet), improved sharing and overall a lot of stability fixes.

This update also brings the app up to the API level 26 (Android Oreo) so for those who have updated to the latest build of Android, things should work smoothly.