Category: Android

After months of speculation, the Android Oreo beta program for the ZTE Axon 7 has opened up.  The first come, first serve program is open to owners of the 2016 device with the US model A2017U.  You can attempt to sign up here.

In the post announcing the program, ZTE indicated that as they get further into the beta program, more people will be added to it.  So, for now, if you don’t get picked, don’t fret too much.  You could get it later and frankly, being on the early builds of any beta is risky.

Gmail Go, a lighter weight version of the Gmail app, is the latest addition to the Android Go initiative from Google.  The app is available in Google Play Store for devices with low memory, the hallmark of the Go program.  If you aren’t familiar with the Go program, it is an initiative set out by Google back at Google I/O last year to bring apps & services to devices with low RAM.  These apps are mostly aimed at emerging markets or those with very low cost devices with 1GB or 2GB of RAM.

Gmail Go essentially is Gmail but without some of the more powerful management, editing and filtering options.  Still, it comes with Smart Replies and inbox label filtering which is likely going to meet 99% of users needs.

For those enrolled in the beta testing program for the Essential Phone, it is time to check for a system update.  The first beta of the company’s Android Oreo 8.1 build has been released and testers will be receiving the update via an OTA download.  As you may recall, Essential pulled the Oreo 8.0 build last month, citing issue with stability in the build, and decided to scrap it to move straight to 8.1.

The build has the February Android Security Update patch included and also has a fix for a common problem for users of the Essential Phone:  Slow scroll jitter.  Users have complained that the phone has a lot of jitter when slowly scrolling up or down a patch.  This beta has a fix for it and appears to be working well.  All in, the OTA update is just over 500MB in size so WiFi downloading is a must.

Microsoft Edge for Android, the Redmond, Washington company’s mobile variant of their Windows 10 browser, has a new update that brings some improvements for personalization.  The new build is version 1.0.0.1656 for those keeping score at home.

With this update, you can now more personalize the Newsfeed on the New Tab in Microsoft Edge.  Support has been added for the language and geographical area for news feeds.  By default, this will be set to the language and region you are in but by going to Settings>New Tab Page, you can have the news feed in different regions and languages.

Based on a new commit found in the LineageOS Gerrit, support for the Android Marshmallow based version of the platform has been deprecated.  The news isn’t too shocking given that there are virtually no devices left running on what was known as LineageOS 13 and maintenance of most builds of that version have ceased.  It means that version 14.1 is the minimum supported version of the open source Android variant.  That build is based on Android Nougat 7.1.

Version 13 has been completely removed from the Lineage servers at this point, meaning there will be no further updates or support for it.

A new build of Google Photos is now rolling out into the Google Play Store and while it doesn’t bring any new features, it does raise the oldest supported version of Android.  The new Photos build is version 3.14 and with it, API level 19 is the oldest supported level.  That, for those who don’t recall, is Android KitKat.

The dropping of the now five year old Android Jelly Bean in this update to Google Photos isn’t a surprise.  Google has been slowly, and mostly quietly, moving the minimum supported API level up on their apps over the past year.  It is all in an effort to keep their development activities focused more on current versions of Android where they can offer more features.