Google Play Newsstand for Android has been updated today and while it is a small upgrade, it is an important one. The app now supports Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, which will give users amazingly fast page loads within the app. AMP, for those who aren’t familiar, is a new code structure that Google has introduced that allows quick loading of pages from sites that are AMP enabled.
As part of their monthly security update plan, Google has released the March 2016 security update for both Android Lollipop and Android Marshmallow today. Both updates have had their factory images posted on the Android developer site while the OTA updates are also shipping today for Nexus devices. Users can expect to see the update hit their unlocked Nexus devices over the course of the next few days and maybe up to a week as it rolls out.
After 10 months of being invite driven, Google announced this morning that they are killing the Project Fi invite system across the US effectively immediately. To this point, in order to join and use the MVNO service from Google, you had to ask for an invite (ask for a SIM basically) to join up and use it. That system is gone and anyone with a compatible phone can now simply go to the Fi website and join up, getting a SIM shipped to them in a few days.
Microsoft continues to develop and enhance their apps for Android with one of the newest, Arrow Launcher, getting a healthy update over the weekend. The updated build is version 1.1.2 for those keeping score at home and there are a lot of fixes, improvements and UI changes in this update to the launcher. Designed for Android phones, Arrow Launcher gives a mult-page look to your phone that brings things like contacts, widgets, most used apps and reminders within easy reach.
After what could only be described as a snail’s pace for the release of Android Marshmallow by manufactures and carriers, the last few weeks have been more of a frantic pace. Last Friday I posted that the Galaxy Note 5 on Verizon was seeing the latest version of Android start to roll and today the carrier along with competitor T-Mobile have begun the release of Marshmallow the HTC One M8.