Tag: Android

The LG V30 was announced earlier this morning and now you can download the official wallpapers for LG’s latest flagship phone.

In all, there are 22 wallpapers that come with the V30 and I’ve added them all to the wallpaper page.  After the break, I’ve also added them to this post for those who are interested.  As I always do, I display them in a lower resolution to speed things up but when you click on the wallpaper, you will get the full 2880 x 1440 image.

As you would expect, all of the wallpapers for the V30 are in a 18:9 ratio so if you have a phone that renders at that ratio, they will work perfectly.  For other, smaller ratio phones, you’ll have a bit of a cropped image.

As a reminder,  6″ display is a QHD P-OLED display that renders 2880 x 1440 in a 18:9 ratio.  That gives you a very eye comforting 538ppi.    LG refers to the display as FullVision which is their term for a near bezel-less experience.  The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 835 SoC with 4GB of RAM.  This is coupled with either 64GB or 128GB of storage depending on the variant you pick up.  That storage can be expanded up to an additional 2TB thanks to the MicroSD slot.

At IFA in Berlin this morning, Sony pulled back the covers on the all new Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact.  This 4.6″ phone, running on Android Oreo, is the follow up device for last year’s Xperia X Compact.  That phone was one of the best I reviewed for last year and it is great to see Sony continuing the compact phone in this day of phablets.

The new Xperia XZ1 Compact has a 4.6″ full HD display (1920 x 1080) and is powered by the Snapdragon 835 SoC and coupled with the Adreno 540 GPU.  It has 4GB of RAM and has 64GB of storage.  That storage can be expanded up to an additional 256GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.

Microsoft’s personal assistant, Microsoft Cortana, has a new update rolling out in the beta channel this morning.  The new beta build is version 2.9.3 and while it doesn’t bring new features, it does bring a lot of performance improvements and stability to the app.

The update outlines three key areas of focus in the release notes:

• Improved app performance
• Stabilized the app
• Fixed several crash bugs

While that isn’t overly exciting, the fact is that Microsoft has been working pretty hard on getting Cortana solid for Android.  Having tested out this new beta build this morning, I can say it is much faster than the current stable channel build and seems to be far more reliable.

OnePlus has begun the process of rolling out an update to OxygenOS for the OnePlus 3 and 3T.  The updated version is 4.1.7 and brings a handful of fixes, security improvements and optimizations to the Android-based platform.

The August 2017 Android Security Update is included in the 4.1.7 build, bringing it up from the May 2017 patch, the last time the OnePlus 3 and 3T so an OS update.  This makes the 3 and 3T one of just a handful of phones outside of Google’s own Nexus or Pixel devices that have the August update.

OnePlus has also optimized the battery and improved overall system fluidity which should make these devices a feel a bit snappier when you are using them.  What exactly was improved here was not outlined in the release notes but users are reporting that these are positive steps in usability.

This weekend, Hurricane Harvey struck the state of Texas here in the US, leaving a path of complete destruction.  The death toll as of this morning sits at six but with another 24″ of rain expected in some areas, that is likely to rise.  Once the waters recede from the Texas coast, the billions of dollars in damage will be revealed and it is going to be very high.

The American Red Cross is already in the area helping victims of the storm and Google is helping their efforts.  Google.org, the charitable arm of Google, has grant donation of $250,000 to the American Red Cross and Google employees themselves have donated another $250,000.  This will help the ARC continue their work in the area, who will be active for a long time after Hurricane Harvey is no more.

Microsoft OneDrive for Android has a new update rolling out that brings some significant improvements to key features within the storage app.  The updated build is rolling out in the Play Store now and should be landing on devices that have it installed via an OTA update over the course of the next few days.

The first big improvement in this update is around the Scan feature.  Microsoft OneDrive has had a scanning feature built in for a while now but it was pretty limited.  Now they have essentially taken the Office Lens app and integrated it with OneDrive to give you a far superior experience.  You can now crop and clean up scanned documents within OneDrive which is a direct leveraging of Office Lens’ features.