Tag: Android

Good news this morning for those in Canada who have the Samsung Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge on either Rogers or Telus.  The two carriers have begun the process of rolling out the Android Nougat 7.0 update to those devices.  The update comes a few days later than the majority of carriers in Canada started the update roll out and follows the release of the update here in the United States.  By all indications, the update is virtually identical to the update that rolled out to other Canadian and US carriers.  That is, it is based on Nougat 7.0 and has the February 2017 Android Security Update.

The update for the phones is sizable at just over 1GB so you will certainly want to make sure you are on a Wi-Fi connection to download it.  Once the update is downloaded, you can expect the install to take 15-20 minutes and after the reboot is complete, you will be on Nougat.

The skyrocketing growth of LineageOS continues with the stats page for the platform now reporting over one million installs.  Considering that the company, rising from the ashes of Cyanogen, started on December 24, 2016, it is a staggering number.  As you would expect, many owners of devices with Cyanogen have flocked to LineageOS and the company has disappointed.  They have continued to add devices old and new to their lineup of supported devices, both running build 13 (Marshmallow based) and build 14 (Nougat based).  But equally, they have attracted a lot of attention from Cyanogen users and others who are looking for a different Android experience.

Oh, and remember, it was just last month that they passed the 500,000 install mark.  That’s growth peeps.

Mario fans, your wait is almost over.  Nintendo has Tweeted that the long awaited Super Mario Run for Android will be released this coming Thursday, March 23rd.  The endless runner style game has been exclusive to iOS since it was released in December last year with some 50 million downloads on that platform.  With the release of the game on Android, that’s likely to easily double in just a few weeks time.

In the game, you are the ever popular Mario and you are doing what you do best:  Collecting coins and progressing your way through six worlds in the game.  The way gameplay works is that you can only move forward, up or down so no going back to get coins you missed for example.  The object of the game is to collect as many coins as you can before get to the flagpole at the end of the level before time runs out.  Sound familiar? Oh, and yes you still can save Princess Peach and defeat Bowser too.  There are two other game play modes as well to keep you entertained.

Will this be how Super Mario Run looks on Android?

As far as pricing goes, it is likely that for Android it will follow the same model it has on iOS.  That is, the game and the first three levels are free and to unlock the remaining three levels, you have a one time in-app purchase of $9.99.  This isn’t confirmed but it makes sense that they would keep the pricing structure the same for each platform.

One thing that you need to be aware of with Super Mario Run is that it does require that you have an active Internet connection to play.

To pre-register for the game, head over to the Play Store and sign up.  Once the game is released on the 23rd, you will get notified, can download it and start working your way through the six worlds and 24 levels offered by the unlocked game.

One of the more popular and well designed Android Wear watches of the past couple of years has been the Huawei Watch.  The watch, which is still readily available, has outstanding specs, comes in a variety of styles and most of them were priced reasonably well (there are a few higher end luxury models too).  It seems fitting then that the Huawei Watch is one of the first watches already out there to get the Android Wear 2.0 update.  The update has started rolling out to owners and while it will take a few days (or even weeks) for everyone to get it, know that the update is coming and bringing all the new features of 2.0 with it.  It should be noted that the roll out is very limited right now and only a few people have reported seeing it.  The official statement from Huawei is that it will be out at the end of the month – but clearly it is either leaked or being rolled out slowly.

If you haven’t kept up, Wear 2.0 brings a lot of changes to the user experience, stand alone apps, Material Design, improvements in the use of Wi-Fi and sensors and Messaging.  It is a significant

update.

With Google Assistant rolling out widely to Android Marshmallow and Nougat running phones, the question of if the new feature would be hitting Android tablets too.  The answer is no.  The team over at Android Police got confirmation from Google directly that the feature will only be rolling out to phones and not to tablets.  As an Android tablet user (albeit limited these days), its a bit disappointing that the feature won’t be rolling out.  That said, it’s understandable.  Given that tablet sales are stagnate at best and most people are driving activity and searches from their phones, it just makes sense for Google not to invest the time and effort into getting it onto tablets.

If you are desperate to get Google Assistant on your tablet, there are hacks that will get it there for you.  If you hit the link to the Android Police article, they have a link to show you how to do it.  But,

Google Assistant

as always, proceed with caution.

Keep in mind that you can still use OK Google on your tablet, you just won’t have all the new benefits of Google Assistant on it.

Is this disappointing news for you?  Are you surprised?  Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

SwiftKey, one of the more popular keyboard apps for Android, has received a sizable update that brings improved Flow typing predictions to your phone.  The Microsoft owned SwiftKey will now give you three predictions as you type or use Flow, the swiping across the keyboard to spell words.  As you type, the center word is highlighted and will be automatically inserted as you begin typing the next word.  If, however, that word is not correct, you can tap the left or right word next to it for it to be inserted.  Previously it would only insert whatever word it though you were typing which caused users to have to backspace to type in the correct word.

Along with new predictive typing model, this update also fixes a big where the brackets in right-t0-left languages are no longer flipped incorrectly and has added four keypress sound profiles to the

SwiftKey for Android

app.  If you want to have sound with keypresses, you can now choose from Modern, Android, Traditional or Blip.  Previously only Traditional was available.

While Google’s GBoard has been getting the lion share of attention these past few months, rightfully so, SwiftKey has been doing a lot of what GBoard does for a long time.  It also has some 250 million users globally which shows its stamina.  If you haven’t tried it out, it is free and available in the Play Store.