Microsoft Teams Update Bring HD Video Calling

Microsoft continues to develop their suite of apps for Android and the latest update to Microsoft Teams reflects that development.  The Slack-like app for enterprise Office 365 customers has been updated to version 1416/1.0.0.2017071901 for those keeping score at home and with it comes several key new features and improvements.

The big news is HD audio & video joining of meetings.  Audio meetings has been in Teams for sometime now but the audio was not HD quality and the option to join via video was not available.  Now when you join a meeting, you have the option to do so via video from your phone.

Alphabet Q2 Earnings Up 21% to $26.01 Billion

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has released their Q2 2017 financial report and it is, in a word, impressive.  The company had earning of $26.01 billion US for the quarter, up some 21% over the same quarter in 2016.  This beat analyst expectations which had pegged earnings at just over $25 billion.

Operating income was down to $4.132 billion with an overall operating income margin of 16%.  Both of these were down from the same quarter in 2016.  Net Income was down to $3.54 billion for the quarter.

Android O Developer Preview 4 Easter Egg Features A Swimming Octopus

Ah yes, a fresh new Easter Egg!  If you have Developer Preview 4 of Android O on your device, you have a new Easter Egg to find in the Settings.  For the first three DPs there was a cat emoji but that is now replaced with an octopus that you can interact with on your phone.

For those who don’t know how to get to it, it is easy.  In Settings go to System>About Phone then tap on the Android Version 3-4 time really fast.  This will bring up an Android O logo.  Now tap on that 5 times real fast then hold it.  It will disappear and bada-bing, you have the octopus floating on your screen.

Project Fi Winning at Customer Service – Again – With Usage Credits

One of the big advantages of Project Fi, besides the seamless carrier switching and auto-connecting WiFi to known hotspots, is their great customer service.  This weekend proved it once again.

Multiple Project Fi subscribers received an email (you can see mine after the break) letting them know of a lag issue in their data usage reporting.  Normally, if a carrier has this happens (which it does on all carriers at some point), they simply add the extra data use to your next bill.  Not Fi.  Nope, you get credits.  Those credits are aimed at balancing out any data billing that was missed from June 14th to July 14th.  In other words, you aren’t going to pay for a reporting issue on their side.  Brilliant.

Developer Preview 4 of Android O Released as a Release Candidate

The final beta build of Android O has been released today by the Android team to those in the Android Beta Program.  Build OPP4.170623.014 is rolling out to devices now with it having the final API levels (API level 26) along with finishing touches on the platform overall.

In a post on the Android Developer blog, Vice President of Engineering David Burke indicated that this is being considered by Google as a Release Candidate.  That means that it is both very stable and very little, barring a major bug being found, will stop it from being released in short order.

Developer Preview 4 is a release candidate build of Android O that you can use to complete your development and testing in time for the upcoming official release. It includes the final system behaviors, the latest bug fixes and optimizations, and the final APIs (API level 26)

To be clear, the new APIs were introduced in Developer Preview 3 so this confirms that they are indeed final.

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