Tag: Android

Nextbit was acquired by Razer today, ending the company’s independent status as well as ending the sale of their only phone, the Nextbit Robin.  In an announcement today, Nextbit will become an operating unit within Razer going forward.

While we have stopped selling Robin and all accessories through our official channels, we are still dedicated to supporting all of you. We will continue to fulfill warranties for 6 more months. And as promised, we will continue to provide software updates and security patches through February 2018.

The news isn’t entirely a surprise but still interesting given that the Robin has been a solid Android option that has nice specs at an affordable price.  What this means for Nextbit’s next phone, if there is one, remains unclear.

The Google Opinion Rewards app for Android has had a small but nice update to it this weekend.  The update expands the free Play Store cash app to Austria and Switzerland firstly, allowing Android users in those countries to fill out surveys and get Play Store credit in return to spend on whatever they want in the Store.  This brings the app to 17 different countries globally.

If you aren’t familiar with the app, it is pretty simple.  You are sent survey’s periodically to fill out and get anywhere from a few cents (or your local currency) up to $1.00 for completing them.  They are sent to you at random and as you fill them out, you get these credits to spend in the Play Store.  You can always check out which countries are eligible and added at this link.

Google Docs for Android had a nice update last week that brings more document editing power to the mobile app.  The update is still rolling out so it may be another day or two before you see it.  Once you do have it, you will find that you can now edit the headers and footers of your documents from within the app.  You can also now drag-and-drop text in a Docs file.

In addition to manipulating text, you can also manipulate images that you have inserted into your Docs file.  You can resize, rotate and move images within the file as well as adjust the text wrap around that image.

Today’s Deal is on the Anker 5-Port USB Wall Charger.  This 63W unit has two ports that support Quick Charge 3.0 technology for rapid charging of compatible devices.  Today you can pick it up for $29.99, a saving of 60% off the regular $60 price.  Anker is one of the long time manufacture of accessories for Android and iOS and I never hesitate in recommending their products.  This particular accessory I have (albeit the Quick Charge 2.0 model from last year) and it is rock solid and used every day for the myriad of devices I have plugged into it at any given point in time.

Google Maps has rolled out a new feature that gives you an idea of how difficult parking will be once you get to your destination.  The new feature is a behind-the-scenes update so if you have the latest build of the Maps apps installed, the new feature will appear in the metro areas in which it is enabled.

Factoring in time for parking can make or break a night out, let alone making it to that big meeting on time. So in 25 metro areas throughout the U.S., we’ve introduced a new parking difficulty icon in Google Maps for Android that’ll give you a heads up on what kind of parking crunch to prepare for when you’re on the go.

This should make sure that you are on time to that dinner reservation or meeting as it builds in some time for you to go park your vehicle.

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on the powerful ASUS ZenFone Zoom.  This 5.5″ display device with a 13MP rear camera, 64GB of storage and unlocked phone is on sale today for $229.  That’s a savings of $170 from the normal $399 price.  For that price, this is a well spec’d phone.  It has an Intel 64-bit Quad-Core processor running at 2.3GHz and coupled with 4GB of RAM.  Storage wise it has 64GB of storage built-in but can be expanded an additional 128GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.

The ZenFone Zoom, as the name suggests, has a 13MP camera with a 3x optical zoom on the rear camera.  Optical zooms are not completely unique but they aren’t found often on phones.  Having an Optical zoom provides much crisper images over software zooming.  The front camera on the Zoom is a 5MP shooter.