Tag: Google

After being leaked a couple of days ago along with a slew of other leaks, the Google trade-in program for the Google Pixel is now live at the Google Store.  The program allows you to trade in previous Google Nexus phones, LG, Samsung, and iPhones to get a credit towards the purchase of a new Google Pixel or Pixel XL.

With the new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL only a few weeks away, it is a little surprising to see Google open this program up now.  The assumption was that it would start when the next generation phones were announced.

As for the value that you get, it largely depends on how new your phone is and its condition.  For example, if I wanted to trade in my Nexus 6P with 64GB of storage, I would get back $155 since it is in working condition and doesn’t have a broken screen.  If I trade in my wife’s iPhone SE 128GB, that would get me $87.

Google’s continuing effort to “Google Assist all the things” continues with an announcement from Bose this morning on a new wireless headphone that is available today.  The new QuietComfort 35 II brings all the greatness of the original QuiteComfort 35, but with an added Action button that allows you to access Google Assistant.

The new Action button is located on the left earpiece and by pressing it, you activate Google Assistant.  The headphones have a built-in microphone which has noise reduction for improved accuracy.

After being announced last week, the new Google Dashboard designed to be more mobile friendly is rolling out globally.  You can find out if you have received it by going to https://myaccount.google.com/dashboard from Chrome on your Android phone.

For those who may not know, the Google Dashboard gives you the ability to see and manage your data associated with your Google account.  You can, for example, see your activity in Gmail, Google Photos, Google News and the like.  Everything you do associated with Google can be found here and you can download your data.

A lot of leaks and rumors are suggesting that tomorrow we can expect a big announcement between Google and HTC.  That announcement is expected to be that Google will acquire all or some of HTC.  Bloomberg Gadfly reporter Tim Culpan is reporting that trading of the Taiwanese company will halt trading of their stock tomorrow as part of the “major announcement”.

Rumors of the demise of HTC have been swirling for years as the company has struggled to make a firm foundation for itself in the smartphone space.  While they have had some outstanding phones, they have also had plenty that have simply not performed well both in sales and overall usability.  HTC has built phones for Google in the past and is the company behind the upcoming Google Pixel 2.

The Google+ app for Android has an update rolling out in the Play Store that brings support for Android Oreo’s new Notification Channels feature.  The update is version 9.20 for those keeping score.  It was released yesterday and should come to everyone who has the app installed over the course of the next few days.

For those who aren’t familiar, Notification Channels are built into apps by developers as a way to allow you greater control over the notifications you see and how you are notified.  They bring granularity to notifications and not just a general “on or off” type functionality.  That’s an over simplification but you get the idea.

With this update to Google+, you have three channels now available:  App Status Updates, New Activity, and Content.  You can now customize the notifications for the app to different levels depending on how you set it up.  To setup the channels, go to Settings>Notifications then select the Google+ app.  There you will see your stock notification settings which you can tap to adjust.

There is a new command in Google Assistant that makes taking a screenshot of your phone even easier.  Now you can either long press the home button on your phone or simply saying “OK Google, take a screenshot” to capture display on your phone.

The ability to capture a screenshot on virtually any Android phone (or tablet for that matter) has been available for a long time through the button combination of Power+Volume Down and it remains so today.  Further, many manufactures have included a shortcut in the Notification Shade for easy screenshots (Huawei and Lenovo for example).  Even Google at one point had a screenshot option in Google Now but none of these have been voice enabled to this point.