Tag: Android

The Android Enterprise Recommended program has been expanded and now includes Android tablets for the first time.  The new Huawei MediaPad M5 tablets, which were announced as being available in the US yesterday, are now a part of the program.

For those that don’d recall, the Android Enterprise Recommended program certifies devices that meet criteria for manageability, support, productivity, security, and reliability.  The idea behind the program is to eliminate the guesswork on which devices are up to the task of being ready to handle the wear-and-tear of being an enterprise phone but also manageable from an enterprise IT perspective.

If your Pixel 2 XL seems to have slowed down on wake-up after the June Android Security Update, you are not alone.  Yesterday Google confirmed that a bug, which was likely introduced with the update, has caused devices to take 1-3 seconds to wake up after the power button is pressed or the fingerprint scanner is used.  They also identified that the issue only impacts Pixel 2 XLs that have had the Ambient Display is disabled in Settings.

The work around to the problem is to turn the Ambient Display setting to Always On until Google can roll out a patch to fix the issue.

Huawei has announced this morning that the company’s MediaPad M5 lineup is now available in the United States.  Coming in both an 8.4″ and 10.8″ with 2D curved glass – a first for tablets, the Huawei MediaPad M5 brings a powerful Android tablet experience that really no other manufacture can match these days.  Both tablet sizes are powered by the Kirin 960 SoC built by Huawei, 64GB of storage and 4GB of RAM.

The MediaPad M5 lineup will be available from Huawei’s Amazon storefront.  The 8.4″ model is $319.99 while the 10.8″ model is $359.99.  Both models are currently in stock.

A new Material Design look is in the process of rolling out for Google Maps on Android devices.  The update is a cloud-side change but you’ll want to make sure that you have the latest version of the app installed on your phone.  For those curious, that’s version 9.79.2.  Since this is a cloud-side update to Google Maps, not everyone is seeing the changes just yet.  It will likely be several days before all accounts get it.

Once you do, the changes will be immediately noticeable.  Gone are the square information blocks and icons on the Explore tab, replaced with bright, rounded corner information boxes and round icons.

The latest update to Microsoft Edge for Android is now rolling out to the Google Play Store with a slew of new features and updates.  The new build is version 42.0.0.2033 for those keeping score at home and brings support for Microsoft Family accounts as well as the ability to read Books purchased from the Microsoft Store.

The update to Edge also brings support for signing into the browser with your work and school account.  While this doesn’t do a lot for you right now, Microsoft plans to roll out Favorites and password sync across devices leveraging the signed in account.  There is no word yet on when that will be released.

Let’s see if this one sticks, shall we?  Last week, Verizon began rolling out the Android Oreo update for the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge on their network.  Then they pulled it.  Then they released it again.  Then they pulled it again, apparently for good for the moment.  That cause a lot of confusion and got me a nice “FAKE NEWS” comment on the article.

Sigh.

Okay, so now A&T seems to be giving it a go and has released the update for the S7 lineup on their network.  Multiple sources are pointing to screenshots of the update rolling out which comes in at about 1.7GB.  But, to this point, AT&T has not updated the support pages for either device.