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Google’s consumer messaging app, Google Allo, has another update rolling out that brings the ability to uplift your chat conversation to a video call with a single tap.  The update, version 14.0.037 for those keeping score, now has a button in the upper-right corner in the messaging screen that to launch Google Duo.  So if text-based messaging isn’t getting the conversation done, you can now place a Duo video call without having to launch it separately.  The new feature is aimed to bring the two apps more closely together but also to make communication more frictionless.

For those new to Android, Google Allo is Google’s text-based messaging app while Google Duo is their video calling app.  Both are focused on the consumer market while Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Video, the completely revamped versions of what is now known as Hangouts Classic, is for the enterprise space.

After a delay of 3 months, Samsung Bixby is finally rolling out to the Galaxy S8 here in the United States and in South Korea.  The update to bring Bixby to the S8 devices and brings along all of the normal features of a personal assistant along with a few Samsung features too.

Bixby was heavily touted in the lead up to the launch of the Galaxy S8 but expectations fell well short when the device shipped without the assistant.  Indeed, the dedicated hardware button on the S8 phones for Bixby couldn’t even be remapped initially although some developers found ways around it – which Samsung kept knocking down.  Without remapping, you pretty much had a useless button on your phone until now.

If you use the Pixel launcher or the Google app on your Android phone, you will have noted a few changes recently to the feed in apps.  The feed, which rolled out with the Google Now launcher, has slowly been improved to provide you more accurate or interesting information to you based on your habits.  Today, Google has pushed the big red button and with a server-side update, everyone’s feed is now showing these improvements.

Inside the Google app, you will see a much improved lists of articles and topics that are potentially of interest to you.  They did this by heavily leaning on Artificial Intelligence to bubble up things that you may find of interest based on other articles you have read or other interactions with Google along with local information on events happening around you.

Analyst firm IDC has released their Smartphone OS Market Share report for the first quarter of 2017 and its all looking good for Android.  The report looks at smartphone unit shipments to base the figures and Android for the quarter was on 85% of all units shipped.  That’s up from the 81.4% of the previous quarter (Q4 2016) but still 2.6% below the high water mark of 87.6% in Q2 2016.

The gains for Android came at the expense of Apple’s iOS.  Unit shipments for iPhones dropped to 14.7%, down some 3.5% from Q4 2016, which happened to be the height of its shipments at 18.2%.  The only other mobile platform that was mentioned was Windows Phone in the report.  That all-but dead platform now accounts for .1% of smartphone units sold.