Category: Android

Mobile World Congress, or MWC, kicks off next week in Barcelona, Spain and even though there won’t be as many phone announcements, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be an exciting show.  For their part, Google is going to be going strong at the event with a lot of announcements and products on display.

The company updated their blog earlier today outlining their plans for MWC which includes the first set of Android Oreo Go Edition phones.  By now you are likely familiar with the Android Go apps that are available like Gmail Go, YouTube Go, Maps Go and other.  These lightweight apps are aimed to work on low cost, low memory devices.  We will get our first glimpse of them next week.

After halting the rollout last week due to some boot looping issues, Samsung has re-released the Android Oreo update for the Samsung Galaxy S8.  The new build is version G950FXXU1CRB7 for the S8 and the S8+ is getting build G955XXU1CRB7.  Both builds are just over 500MB in size and it is currently rolling out in Europe.

The South Korean company ended up stopping the update rollout last week due to some users reporting that their phones were boot looping or randomly rebooting.  The company quickly reworked the build which early reports suggest that the issues have been resolved.

In a backwards kind of way, LG has announced that the LG V30 and the LG G6 will both be getting updated to Android Oreo 8.1 and soon.  Why?  Because the company announced that both devices will be a part of the Android Enterprise Recommended program once that update rolls out to them.

The press release from LG made it clear that acceptance of these V30 and the G6 was contingent on the Oreo 8.1 update rolling out to the devices.  While not in the press release, undoubtedly Google put timeframes on the contingency meaning that LG is going to have to get the updates out sooner rather than later.

Although BLU had a rough 2017, that hasn’t stopped the company from continually improving and continually releasing budget friendly devices.  The latest example is the new BLU VIVO X.  This 6″ phone has an 18:9 aspect ratio, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage at a price of $249.  Plus, the company has all-but made their UI stock Android (with the addition of some Amazon apps).

The new VIVO X is powered the MediaTek Helio P25 SoC, clocked at 2.6GHz and coupled with the Mali-T880MP2 GPU.  The 6″ display renders at 1440x 720, yielding a reasonable ~268ppi (Pixels Per Inch).

The first fruits of the merged Nest and Google Hardware teams is starting to show.  A new update to the Nest app brings Google Assistant to the Nest Cam IQ Indoor Camera.  The app update is rolling out now in the Play Store and once it is updated, it will enable Assistant so you can use voice commands to view and control the camera.

This is the first Nest device that has Assistant integrated into it but it likely is the tip of the iceberg.  When the merger between the two teams was announced, one of the specific things mentioned was bringing Google AI and Machine Learning to Nest devices.

Google today announced that their own first and second generation of Pixel phones now are certified as Android Enterprise Recommended devices.  I means that the four Pixel phones – the Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL – join the ranks with the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, LG V30, Nokia 8 and others.  You can see the complete list of devices here.

The Android Enterprise Recommended program certifies devices that meet criteria for manageability, support, productivity, security, and reliability.  The idea behind the program is to eliminate the guesswork on which devices are up to the task of being ready to handle the wear-and-tear of being an enterprise phone but also manageable from an enterprise IT perspective.