Category: iOS

Google’s efforts to have Google Assistant available on all the things took another step forward yesterday.  The company released an update to the stand alone app, essentially a shortcut to Assistant, for both Android and iOS that expand device availability and functionality.

First, for Android, two big changes came to the Google Assistant app.  It can now run on devices running Android Lollipop which greatly expands the overall number of devices that Assistant can run on.  Second, support for tablets has also arrived on the app.  So instead of the app looking awkwardly huge and only in portrait mode, it now works in landscape and looks like a proper tablet app.  Keep in mind that both of these were actually supported by Assistant last year.  This update to the Assistant stand alone app just adds the support.

When it comes to Personal Assistants on phones, we tend to think of Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa most often while iOS users tend to think of Siri.  But Microsoft Cortana slowly and quietly continues to develop and made inroads on both Android and iOS.  A new report suggests that Cortana is about to go even further into both platforms.

The Verge is reporting that Microsoft is working on integrating Cortana in Outlook for both Android and iOS.  This would allow for things like emails to be read to you while you are on-the-go but could also allow for dictation of emails.

Today’s Deal is a great one for those of you looking to pick up a powerful external battery.  The Poweradd Pilot X7 20000mAh Power Bank is down to $16.49 today only over at Amazon.  Normally this dual USB port pack is $49.99 so this is a solid deal. 

The Poweradd Pilot X7 is powerful enough to charge a Samsung Galaxy S8 up to four times while it can charge an iPhone X about 4.5 times.  For those of you who have an iPhone 7 or 8, you can get 8, count ’em, 8 charges out of the pack before it needs to be recharged.  

Google has informed webmasters via a blog post that an upcoming changing the Google Search algorithm will take mobile site speed into consideration for page ranking.  Referring to it as the “Speed Update”, starting in July 2018, sites that have slow response times will have that factored into their overall search results within Google Search.

The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page.

However, mobile site speed is not the only consideration in page ranking nor will it be the only factor come July.

Analyst firm IDC has released their Smartphone OS Market Share report for the first quarter of 2017 and its all looking good for Android.  The report looks at smartphone unit shipments to base the figures and Android for the quarter was on 85% of all units shipped.  That’s up from the 81.4% of the previous quarter (Q4 2016) but still 2.6% below the high water mark of 87.6% in Q2 2016.

The gains for Android came at the expense of Apple’s iOS.  Unit shipments for iPhones dropped to 14.7%, down some 3.5% from Q4 2016, which happened to be the height of its shipments at 18.2%.  The only other mobile platform that was mentioned was Windows Phone in the report.  That all-but dead platform now accounts for .1% of smartphone units sold.

In the latest update to Google Photos for both Android and iOS, the ability to backup photos while charging your phone has been removed.  It is unclear as to why the feature was removed but in version 2.17 for Android and 2.18 for iOS, the feature is gone.  You can still limit the app to only backup when you are on WiFi networks as well as if you want to backup while roaming.

Google Photos remains one of the most popular Google apps with over 1 billion users of the service and over 500 million active monthly users.