Today’s Deal – Archeer USB C Charging Dock – $11 on Amazon

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is a great one if you are looking for a charging dock for your USB Type-C devices.  Right now you can pick up the Archeer USB C Charging Dock for just $11, a savings of 72% off the normal $27.95 price.  The stand is designed to hold your Android phone charge it thanks to a connection on the back for a standard MicroUSB connector which you plug into an electrical source.  This won’t give you fast charging but, as it is designed to sit on your desk, fast charging may not be as big a deal for you.

Twitter Brings Night Mode to Android App

After several months of testing on their alpha and beta builds, Twitter has released a Night Mode feature for their production version of their Android app.  The updated build is version 6.7.0 for those keeping score at home and will now allow for the darker viewing mode to make things a bit easier on your eyes in a low light situation.  The nice thing is you can toggle it on or off pretty easily.

OxygenOS Updated for OnePlus 3

The OnePlus team has begun rolling out an OTA update to the OnePlus 3 that brings a sizable number of improvements to the device.  OxygenOS 3.2.2 is being rolled out to users in phases as the company continues to tweak and improve their homebrew version of Android Marshmallow for the flagship phone.  One of the big changes is the improvement of notification management in Doze, the battery saving feature of Marshmallow while your phone is unplugged and idle.  Another big improvement is the alert slide/silent mode issue where some users were accidentally turning on their phones while dropping it into their pockets.  This, appears at least, to have been fixed with this update.

Google Maps Sees A Major Makeover

If you have used Google Maps the last day or two and things look different, you aren’t imagining things.  The Maps team has been rolling out a significant update behind-the-scenes for the app for Android and the web that has a much improved color pallet and new highlight areas of interest on the maps.  The good thing is this update is all happening on Google’s end.  There is no app to update on your side.  As the improved maps roll out to all users, you will just see it on your account.

The biggest change is really around the color pallet and the removal of things like black lines around roads.  This makes viewing maps much easier and cleaner than the old maps.

The world is full of information, which means highlighting necessary info on the map without overcrowding it is a balancing act. So as part of this update, we’ve removed elements that aren’t absolutely required (like road outlines). The result is a cleaner look that makes it easier to see helpful and actionable information like traffic and transit. And we’ve improved the typography of street names, points of interest, transit stations, and more to make them more distinguishable from other things on the map, helping you navigate the world with fewer distractions.

In a practical sense, this means that viewing Google Maps will be easier on a lot of levels:  clearer text, less clutter and easier identification.

Pokemon Go Passes 50 Million Installs on Android

If there was any doubt to the popularity of Pokemon Go in your mind, you can comfortably put them away.  The listing for the hugely popular game was updated in the Play Store and now indicates that over 50 million downloads of the app has happened in just the first 20 days the app has been available.  Keep in mind that it isn’t even rolled out globally just yet so these are staggering numbers by any measure.

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