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One of the nice changes that has come with the latest update to the Google Phone app under Android Marshmallow has been a significantly improved Caller ID function.  Caller ID itself is a rather old technology with its origins back 1984 and while in principle it hasn’t changed a lot, providing this information on mobiles has been a less than perfect scenario.  Unlike land lines where you can associate a number with a specific point geographically on a map, mobiles are, well, mobile, and tying a number to them when they could be triangulating between cell towers is a challenge.

That is where this latest update from Google comes into play.  With the abilities built into the Phone app and Marshmallow, you can now get far more detail on a call than you could before including how far away that person or business is from your current location and information on that business.  All if this is possible of course with Google having the machine learning and apps that take advantage of it on your phone and in the cloud.  While it is far from perfect, it certainly is more robust than simply depending on the person calling you to be in your contacts – the most common way around the Caller ID problem on mobiles.

As I’ve implied a couple of times already, you have to have the latest Google Phone app and Android Marshmallow on your phone for this new functionality to work.  The app comes by default on Nexus devices but you can now install it on any Android phone and use it as your default phone app.  However, to get this new function you must be running Android Marshmallow.  With that established, now it is just a matter of enabling the function which I go into after the break.

If you have been wanting to try Google’s Project Fi mobile service, now is a good time to give it a go.  Now through December 30th, you can sign up on the Fi website and there is no wait time for you to get your SIM.  The “instant invitation” program means that instead of having to wait in queue before your SIM was sent to you, you will now get it in about a week and can start using the service in your Nexus 6, Nexus 6P or Nexus 5X.

It is not a well kept secret that I am a Project Fi users and I am very pleased with the service.  You can read my full review of the service but also check out the many posts I have made on making Fi work a bit better for you and explanations of the intricacies of the service.  The bottom line is I’m happy and after 17 years of being an AT&T customer, I’m not looking back.

While I and many users of Fi are quite happy with the service, it is technically still in beta. That means that Google has been slowly feeding new subscribers into the system and if you applied for a SIM it could be a matter of weeks or even months before you got it to try in your phone.  While there are still some rough edges with Fi, it is solid for the vast majority of users and Google has run this “instant invitation” twice now in as many months.  To me, that indicates they are more confident in the service themselves and are wanting more subscribers to try it and use the service.

To sign up, just go to http://fi.google.com and sign in with your Google account to get started.

More details after the break.

Fans of The Beatles, your wait is finally over.  You can now download and stream all 13 of the Fab 4’s albums through the Google Play Music service on your PC, Mac, Android tablet or phone.  In addition, there are four collections that are available through Google Play Music for purchase.  Individually, the albums are $7.99 each while the collections are $12.49 each.

The best-selling band in history, with 20 number one Billboard Hot 100 hits, The Beatles continue to be one of the world’s most beloved bands decades after their last original album.

The news is certainly welcome for fans of the band and brings the Google service on par with Apple’s iTunes which has had The Beatles available for about a year now.

The Beatles on Google Play Music

HTC has started pushing out the Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 update to the One A9 today and owners of unlocked variants here in the US should already see the update starting to hit their phone.  The news came via the Twitter account of HTC’s Mo Versi and certainly is welcome news to owners of both the One A9 as well the One M9 which is seeing the 6.0 update roll out.

Happy Holidays! Updates to the Unlocked A9 6.0.1 and Unlocked M9 6.0 will be able to be downloaded within next 24 hours! Enjoy 🙂

— Mo Versi (@moversi) December 23, 2015

When the A9 was released, HTC committed to having Marshmallow updates out to the device within 15 days of them being released by Google.  While they are hitting the 15 day… ish mark on those releases, they are a far cry better than many other OEMs out there.  Indeed new phones being announced are still coming with Lollipop on them.

If you are curious as to what is new in the 6.0.1 update, you can read about it here and of course my review of Android Marshmallow is available at this link.