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The rise of the phoenix that is Nokia continues as the company made some key announcements at Mobile World Congress.  First, they announced that the new Nokia 5 and Nokia 3 are soon to be available for the low and mid-range market.  The bigger news however is that their flagship device, the Nokia 6, is going to be released globally.  To this point, the 6 has only been available in China.  It will come to Europe first followed by other markets throughout the first half of the year.

This global version of the Nokia 6 is the exact same phone as the one in China but with an updated software package.  It will be running Android Nougat with Google Assistant, has a 5.5″ Full HD display, Snapdragon 430 SoC, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.  It has a dual-SIM configuration, a MicroSD slot and a 16MP rear camera with phase-detection auto focus.  Add to that a 3000mAh battery and a fingerprint scanner and you have a solid performing phone that will likely be met with open hands throughout the world.

After being exclusive to the Google Pixel phone lineup, Google Assistant is making its way to Android Marshmallow and Nougat devices starting this week.  The news is certainly welcome.  Google Assistant has expanded to being in Google Home, Android Wear 2.0 and Google Allo but for adoption to really take off, it needs to be on phones and not just the latest Google flagship.  Google made it pretty clear which devices are going to see Assistant.  First, it has to be running Android Marshmallow or Android Nougat.  If you are running Lollipop or earlier, you are not going to get the update.  Second, your phone has to be running Google Play Services.  The vast majority of devices out there do run Play Services but you can check on your phone by going to Settings>Apps then tap the Show Systems option in the menu then scroll down and it (they are in alphabetical order).

Assuming your phone meets these two criteria, Google Assistant will automatically be pushed to your phone via Play Services.

Huawei has become the latest manufacture to announce a new flagship Android phone at Mobile World Congress.  The Huawei P10 will be available in March, sporting a 5.2″ HD display, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.  There will also be a larger P10 Plus which will have a 5.5″ QHD display, 6GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage.  Both devices will have a Leica optics dual-camera configuration for the main camera.  The P10 will have a 20MP monochrome and 12MP RGB camera at f/2.2 while the P10 Plus will have an f/1.8 aperture.  Both will have image stabilization.

Processor wise, both phones are powered by the Kirin 960 processor, an 8-core SoC running at 2.4GHz.  The lineup is a dual SIM configuration with USB-C charging, NFC and MIMO antenna arrays for both LTE and Wi-Fi.

Probably the thing that stole the announcement for Huawei however was the colors available for the P10.  This is particularly true of the Greenery color which seems to have everyone smitten.  The phone will be available in Ceramic White, Dazzling Blue, Dazzling Gold, Prestige Gold (P10), Graphite Black, Mystic Silver, Rose Gold and Greenery.  Finishes on the colors will be High GLoss, Diamond-Cut and Sandblast.  These colors were developed in cooperation with the Pantone Color Institute so clearly Huawei is taking your color choice seriously.

In the latest update to the Google+ app for Android, Google has quietly removed the menu link to Google Spaces.  It could be the first indicator that the carcass of yet another social networking attempt by Google is about to be thrown on the pile.  And frankly, it wouldn’t be all that shocking.  The change can be found in the 9.6.0 build of Google+ for Android and if you open up the menu using the hamburger menu or a swipe from the left side of your screen, you’ll see that there is no link to Spaces.

The idea behind Spaces was never fully articulated.  It was somewhat like Circles in the original Google+ but it was also aimed to allow you to create a “space”, invite friends so that you could discuss the space’s defined topic.  You could also share videos, images, texts and other media.  In theory, a pretty cool idea but Spaces never really took off.