Author: Clinton

Today’s Deal on the Essential Phone is pretty awesome all told.  First, the phone itself which just got upgraded to Android Oreo, is down to $449.  That’s the lowest price drop ever for the phone.  But, for a limited time, you also get the Essential Ear Buds for free.  That’s a $99 value itself so this deal is really good.  The deal is over at Amazon and you can get it for either the Black Moon or Pure White colors of the phone.

The PH-1 as it is known got off to a rocky start with most people loving the design but not so much when it came to the camera and overall stability.  That has changed, radically.  Essential has been pumping out updates at a steady clip for the phone and it is now one of the best flagship device options out there.  At this price, with the spendy ear buds included, it is a hard deal to pass up.

A week later than expected, the update to Chrome 65 for the Chrome OS Stable Channel has been released.  The update brings a number of new features and enhancements to the platform as well as some key security updates.

The new build is 65.0.3325.167 (Platform version: 10323.58.0/1) for those keeping score at home and is available to a number of devices.  Generally speaking, if your device can run Android apps, you won’t get updated to this build but rather will get updated in a subsequent update in another week or two.  That has been the trend for several months now in Chrome OS.

Google has rolled out six games as part of their Instant Apps initiative.  The games – Clash Royale, Words With Friends 2, Solitaire, Bubble Witch Saga 3, Mighty Battles, and Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire – can be found in the Google Play Games app on your Android phone.

The idea behind Instant Apps is to give you an opportunity to try out a game or app without having to actually download it to your phone.  You get a limited demo version of the game that loads right in the Play Games app and if you like what you see, you can download the full app.

When Android Pay was rebranded and revamped as Google Pay, it known that public transportation tickets would eventually make their way into the tap-to-pay app.  Now the first one has arrived in Las Vegas.

Starting today, you can purchase tickets for the Las Vegas Monorail online and have it added to your Pay wallet.  Then, when you get to a pay station, just tap your phone to the terminal like any other purchase.  When the gate turns green, go through the gate and your fare will be deducted from your balance.

Following Verizon and T-Mobile, the Samsung Galaxy S8 on Sprint is now getting updated to Android Oreo.  The update began rolling out yesterday and should be landing on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ on the network over the course of the next few days.

For those of you who have the Galaxy S8, you are looking for build G950USQU2CRB9 while those of you who have the S8+, you are getting build G955USQU2CRB9.  Both updates come in at just over 1.5GB in size so you will certainly want to download them via WiFi when you get the notification of it being available.

The continued interweaving of Chrome OS and Android looks to be taking another step forward, but it will be a while for this one.  A new commit points to Chrome OS getting Android-like lock screen notifications.  In theory, it would function much like they do on Android, allowing for the message center to be visible while your Chromebook is locked.

The new ability would come via a flag that would be aptly named enable-lock-screen-notification and would give users notifications on their lock screen for the user that is logged into the device.