Tag: Android

Google Pay has once again been working hard with banks and financial institutions, adding another 63 of them to the roster today.  With the additions, Pay now is supported by some 1,427 institutions in the United States alone, well ahead of their nearest competition.

In addition to the these financial institutions being added, which I’ll list out after the break, Google Pay also picked up support for the PayPal Mastercard.  Support for PayPal was added back in May of last year but the Synchrony-backed Mastercard was not supported.  Now it is and you can add it to Pay to use as a purchasing option when you tap-to-pay at a retailer or online.

A fourth Chrome 68-based build of the Chrome for Android Beta app has arrived in the Google Play Store.  The new build, 68.0.3440.40, brings a number of bug fixes and stability improvements as the Chromium team continues to work on the build for public release late next month.

As you may recall from the first beta release from a couple of weeks back, there are a slew of changes coming to Chrome for Android with Chrome 68.  A new horizontal task switcher is available, a new Home screen mini bar instead of a banner has been added as well as new identifications for non-HTTPS sites that you visit.

Honor, the Huawei sub-brand here in the United States, has a great promotion running now through July 4th.  The deal is on the Honor View10 and the Honor 7X, with the company offering various bundles deals on both devices through their online store.

First, on the View10, the company has setup a spin wheel that gives you the opportunity to win a discount on the phone.  You can save $25, $50, $75 or $100 if you are lucky enough to spin the wheel for that discount.  In addition to this, there are two different bundles being offered.  In both cases, the bundle is $499

1^st Bundle: Purchase the Honor View10 and receive free pair of Honor Sport Bluetooth Earphones AM61 Red

2^nd Bundle: Purchase the Honor View10 and receive a free Tripod Selfie Stick

YouTube is now broadly rolling out the ability for all users, regardless if you are a YouTube Premium subscriber or not, to utilize the app’s support of Android Oreo’s Picture-in-Picture feature.  By all indications, this is a cloud-side change so as long as you are running the latest version of YouTube on your phone (v 13.24.59 for those keeping score at home), you should see the update now or very shortly.

Up to this point, PiP has been limited to YouTube Red previously and now YouTube Premium as a benefit of the paid service.  With this change, assuming that the content creator has given permission for PiP to happen, all YouTube users should be able to utilize the feature.

Endlich! Google Pay ist endlich in Deutschland angekommen

Finally!  Google Pay has finally arrived in Germany!  It has taken much longer than most expected but the tap-to-pay app can now be used with four different banks for Germans.  Rumors had been floating for several weeks that Pay’s debut in Germany was going to happen but there was nothing official on it.  Now the Google Pay support page for Germany has been updated reflecting support for the country.

As for the banks supported, you have four available:  Comdirect, Commerzbank, N26, and Wirecard.  If you bank with one of these institutions in Germany, you can now add your cards to Pay to use them where ever terminals allow you to tap to pay.

After slow rolling out to a few accounts over the past week, the Material Design makeover of Google Maps is now broadly rolling out.  The updated look and feel of the app brings a fresh new look to one of the most widely used apps from Google and also brings it in line with the Material Design makeovers the company has been doing on their apps in general.

The update is a combination of an app update and a cloud side update.  First, make sure you have the latest Google Maps version on your phone.  That is version 9.80.2 and it was released a few days ago.  Chances are you likely have it but double-check.  Assuming you have that version, then it is just a matter of when Google does the cloud-side push to your account to enable the new look.