ClintonFitch.com

The rise, fall, death and now resurrection of Nokia is nearing completion.  Finland based HMD announced today that they have secured the licensing rights to the Nokia brand for the next 10 years and that a new, Android powered smartphone will be hitting the marking in the first half of 2017.  It marks a pretty staggering comeback, if only in name, to a brand that has been in the mobile phone space for decades.  After the company was bought by Microsoft and then subsequently scuttled in the debacle that has been Windows Phone, it appeared that the brand would be gone forever.

HMD is making sure that doesn’t happen.  Comprised of several former Nokia employees, the company will be manufacturing phones under the name of Nokia that will include both feature phones (which are available now) as well as Android-based Smartphones.

Huawei has become the latest manufacture to indicate which of their phones will be receiving the Android Nougat update.  The news is certainly good for those who have purchased one of their flagship devices over the course of the last 18 months or so and it means that starting in the first quarter of next year, updates should be rolling out.  As for the list, it’s all the ones you would hope for and expect to get the update:

• Huawei Mate 8
• Huawei P9
• Huawei P9 Plus
• Huawei P9 lite
• Huawei Nova
• Huawei Nova Plus

The update will come via the EMUI 5.0 update which is Huawei’s Android UI and flavor of Android.  EMUI 5.0 shipped with the Mate 8 and P9 so those devices are already running Nougat.

Just a day after releasing Android Nougat for the Xperia X Performance, Sony has dropped their update to the latest version of Android for the Xperia XZ today.  The update is build 39.2.A.0.327 and is rolling out to unlocked variants of the phone today.  If you have the dual-SIM variant of the phone, the XZ Dual, you too should be seeing the update shortly.  While the update has been released, it could take a few days before everyone sees the update hit their phone.  You can always manually check for the update by going to Settings>About Phone>Software Update.

The update weighs in at just over 1GB so you will need to make sure that you are on Wi-Fi when you download it.  Once it is downloaded, you can expect about a 30 minute upgrade period where you phone will be rebooted and Android Nougat will be installed.

It has been a long time requested feature of Netflix and it is finally here in the Android app.  The latest update to the streaming content provider now gives you the option to download television shows and movies so you can view them offline.

Let’s all take a moment to raise a glass to Netflix.

In the latest update to the app, version 4.12.0 for those keeping score at home, you now have a section “Available for Download”.  Here you will see all of the shows and movies that you can download to your phone or tablet so you can view them later.  You have two options for quality of the downloads:  Standard (720p) or High (1080p) and, as you would expect, the High quality downloads take up more storage on your device.