Multiple owners of the 1st generation of the Moto 360 are starting to see Android Marshmallow show up on their smartwatches today and I am one of them. The update, which has been rolling out to other smartwatches recently, seems to have had the trigger pulled for one of the first and popular Android Wear devices with users reporting to Phandroid and Reddit that they are seeing the update.
For all of you who are running Chrome OS, there is a minor (emphasis on minor) update available for you today. The update was released late yesterday and takes the build version up to 48.0.2564.109 (Platform version: 7647.78.0). If you remember a couple of weeks ago, the 48-train was released so no, this is note the Material Design-looking 49-train that you may have been reading about. This, plain and simple, is a bug fix release.
Following up on notifications coming to Google Drive, Google has announced that their productivity apps, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, all have the ability to send you and you can control push notifications from the apps. The update to the three Android apps will be rolling out to the Google Play Store and should come to your devices over the course of the next three days. While push notifications themselves are not necessarily new to the productivity apps, how you control them is in this update. Previously, if you did not want push notifications from Google Drive, Sheets or Slides, you could only deactivate that feature from Google Drive. That is now no longer the case.
In an offer that is very similar to that of T-Mobile a few weeks ago, AT&T is now offering a buy one – get a 2nd for free on the Samsung Galaxy S6. The promotion is going on now through the end of March and when you sign up for service with the carrier or upgrade your device, you can take advantage of the offer. The Galaxy S6 on offer is a 32GB model so for most people this will be plenty of storage and the 2nd one you get will be the same model. It’s a pretty good deal if you are on AT&T and looking to upgrade your device and that of a family member.
In an announcement made today, Microsoft and Acer have come to an agreement whereby a suite of the Redmond, Washington company’s apps will be pre-installed on selected Acer Android phones and tablets later this year. While it is not clear which devices will see these apps installed, it was clear in the announcement which apps are involved. Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and OneDrive will be there along with Skype for voice and video communications.
Nick Psyhogeos, president of Microsoft Technology Licensing, said, “We’re pleased that we have been able to enhance the already strong partnership that exists between Microsoft and Acer. Mutually beneficial and collaborative agreements such as this one promote innovation and lead to better products and experiences for consumers.”
The announcement falls in line with the continued “mobile first” strategy of Microsoft who has continued to develop their Android apps at a feverish clip over the past 18 months. Indeed the suite of apps now are almost on par with their desktop counterparts from a feature perspective while remaining free to download. For all of the functionality the apps have to offer, customers will still need to sign up for Office 365 and this deal with Acer is no exception.