Black Friday – Amazon Deal on The Moto G Lineup

For Black Friday, Amazon has rolled out special pricing on the Moto G lineup on the site.  Today you can get a great deal on the Moto G4, the Moto G4 Play and the Moto G4 Plus on the site with discounts ranging from $20 to $70 off.  These are great phones that, although they come with lock screen adverts from Amazon, are tough to be beat for the price.

Moto G Plus

The Moto G4 comes with 2GB of RAM, 16GB or 32GB of Storage, a 5.5″ display and a 13MP rear camera.

The smaller Moto G Play is a 5″ display device that comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage.  The phone can have the storage expanded by an additional 128GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.

Finally there is the Moto G Plus.  This is a 5.5″ display phone with 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage and a 16MP main camera.  This is by far the most powerful of the lineup with an octa-core processor and the additional RAM and at $229, a heck of a deal.

As with most of the sales posts you will see today, these prices are good for today only.

 

Final Developer Preview of Android Nougat 7.1.1 Released

The Android team at Google has released what is slated to be the last Developer Preview of Android Nougat 7.1.1.  The update is already pushing out to devices that are enrolled in the beta program which now includes the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9 and Pixel C.  The builds you are looking for are NPF26F (Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9), NPF26H (Pixel C). For developers, Google has outlined that this is a near complete version of what will ship in early December to consumers and are urged to get their apps ready.

Developer Preview 2 is a release candidate for Android 7.1.1 that you can use to complete your app development and testing in preparation for the upcoming final release. In includes near-final system behaviors and UI, along with the latest bug fixes and optimizations across the system and Google apps.

To help developers, API Level 25 Platform updates have been rolled out to Android Studio 2.2.2 as part of the announcement today so final preparations and updates can be made to apps.

Review of Google Home – Powerful But Room to Grow

Google Home, in many ways, is the physical realization of the machine learning that Google has been doing for years.  Equipped with Google Assistant, this small, unassuming device that sits in your home is a gateway to Google and all of your personal information at a voice command away.  It is powerful and handy… but not perfect.  Like many first generation products, Google Home has room for growth in what it can do, the apps it can interact with and, of course, how it interacts with you.  I’ll borrow a phrase from my Google OnHub review earlier this year:  If you are an early adopter, Google Home is a great product for you to consider.  If not, you may want to give it a few months and software updates to improve.  And it will improve.  Unlike OnHub, which Google hasn’t fully abandoned but equally isn’t doing much more investing in thanks to Google Wi-Fi, Home is a central and key part of what Google considers the next technical transition we are to see.  That transition is from mobile to machines and Google Home will be at the center of this transition.

I’ve had my Google Home for about a week now and I have to say that it is very much a part of my daily routine and work flow.  It saves me from having to pick up my Nexus 6P or Nexus 9 to use the “OK Google” voice commands (if my phone is locked, I have to unlock it to get the results) and gives me a wealth of information all a voice command away.  But I can already see things I’d like to improve, particularly around app integration and more natural language discussions.  But that will come in time.  One thing is for sure:  The speakers in Google Home are impressive and have excellent sound.  For this, you won’t be disappointed.

Android Gingerbread and Honeycomb Support Ending in 2017

Google has announced that support for the six year old Google Gingerbread and 5 year old Google Honeycomb builds will be ending early in 2017.  The news came via an announcement about Google Play Service on the Android developer blog.  In the announcement, Google said that in the next release of Google Play Services, version 10.2.0, the minimum API supported will be API 14 which is Ice Cream Sandwich.  Previously API 9 was supported.

The Gingerbread platform is almost six years old. Many Android developers have already discontinued support for Gingerbread in their apps. This helps them build better apps that make use of the newer capabilities of the Android platform. For us, the situation is the same. By making this change, we will be able to provide a more robust collection of tools for Android developers with greater speed.

For end users, what this means is that any device running Gingerbread or Honeycomb will no longer be supported which means that they will likely not have access to the Google Play Store or very limited access.

Today’s Deal – Sony Xperia XA for $199

Today over at Amazon you can pick up a great deal on the 5″ mid-market Sony Xperia XA.  At $199, the Xperia XA has a Mediatek MT6755 octa-core processor running at 2GHz, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage.  That onboard storage can be expanded up to an additional 200GB thanks the the MicroSD slot available.  The phone is sold unlocked and works with GSM carriers here in the United States like AT&T, T-Mobile and StraightTalk.  Sorry Sprint & Verizon customers, this phone won’t work on those networks.

Camera wise, you have a 13MP rear shooter with OIS with a front facing 8MP shooter.

%d bloggers like this: