Tag: Android

After being released in Europe in November, the Huawei Mate 9 is finally coming to the United States.  This 5.9″ phablet will be available at a wide range of online retailers, including Amazon, at the impressive price of $599.  So what does that get you?  a 5.9″ phone running Android Nougat, an octa-core processor running at 2.4GHz and Leica optics dual-camera setup shooting at 20MP and 12MP respectively with OIS.  The front facing selfie camera is 8MP shooter.  You also have 64GB of built-in storage that can be expanded up to an additional  256GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.  Not bad at all for $599.

The Mate 9 is being sold unlocked so the question is always carrier compatibility.  For those of you on GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile, you are good-to-go.  For those on Sprint and Verizon, the phone is CDMA compatible too. Here are the range of frequencies supported:

• GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
• CDMA 800 / 1900
• HSDPA 800 / 850 / 900 / 1700(AWS) / 1900 / 2100
• CDMA2000 1xEV-DO & TD-SCDMA
• LTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 9(1800), 12(700), 17(700), 18(800), 19(800), 20(800), 26(850), 28(700), 29(700), 38(2600), 39(1900), 40(2300), 41(2500)

Those frequencies are going to cover every carrier here in the United States but as always, double-check with your carrier before ordering.

At CES 2017, SanDisk has announced an all new 256GB MicroSD card specifically aimed at mobile devices.  The new card supports Application Performance Class 1, or A1 for short, a new standard in the industry for storage cards.  This new standard means that this card is fast enough to run applications directly from them, not just be a storage facility for photos and videos.  The challenge with MicroSD cards in mobiles is that they are often too slow on the read/write to be able to run an application.  This new card from SanDisk solves that, with a read speed of 95MB/sec and the ability to handle up to 1500 random read input-output access per second and 500 write input-output access per second.  All this technical information simply says that this card is blazing fast and can run applications in real time with no problem.

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on the Microsoft Office 365 Home subscription.  Normally $99.99, it is down to $84.99 at the online retailer.  The Home edition of Office 365 allows you to install the Office suite of apps – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote – on up to 5 PCs or Mac (any combination) and also comes with 1TB of OneDrive storage for your files and photos.  That 1TB of storage applies to all users on the subscription so each will get 1TB.  It’s a pretty sweet deal on the flagship Office offering from Microsoft.

If you already have a subscription, you can still take advantage of this deal.  When you get the subscription card shipped to you, just go to your Office account and add it to your existing subscription. This will just push out your renewal date another year.

Add to this, with the Home subscription, you get full access to the Android and iOS versions of the Office apps.  These apps are free on both platforms but to get all of the features, you have to have a subscription.

Today’s Deal is on the physical subscription card being shipped to you (it’s Prime eligible so it won’t cost you anything if you are a member) and not on the download version.  That version is still $99.

Check it out at Amazon

As expected, Google released the January Android Security Update patches yesterday for the Google Pixel phones and Nexus devices.  The full system images and the OTA images have been released to the Android Developer site already so users who have these devices should start seeing the OTA update come to their phones or tablets over the course of the next few days.  For those who want to manually flash, you can do so with these factory images.

The new build versions are as follows:

• Google Pixel XL – NMF26U or NMF26V (for Verizon owners)
• Google Pixel – NMF26U or NMF26V (for Verizon owners)
• Pixel C – N4F26I
• Nexus 6P – N4F26I and N4F26J
• Nexus 5X – N4F26I and N4F26J
• Nexus Player – NMF26R
• Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) – NMF26R

Notably the Nexus 6 is not on this list nor is the Nexus 9 LTE version.  The Nexus 6 should be getting Nougat 7.1.1 next week but it is unclear why the Nexus 9 LTE did not get updates yet.

Intuit has rolled out an update to their financial budget and bill tracking app, Mint.  The update brings many improvements including a much improved ability to see the bills you have due, which ones have been paid and payment reminders so you can avoid late fees.  If you are a subscriber to Mint and have the app installed, the OTA should be coming to you over the course of the next couple of days.

The biggest change in this update is the new bill section.  Now you can see the number of bills that have been paid and the number that you have coming up in the month.  Tapping on this new tile will give you the exact details of which bill is do when and who it is due too.  The idea is to give you a better grasp on your cashflow so you can budget to get your bills paid on time.

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on a 5-pack of AUKEY USB-C cables for $14.99.  The pack contains one 1′ cable, three 3′ cables, and one 6′ cable so you will have plenty of options for getting your phone charged in various locations.  Equally as important, on the USB-A side, they are USB 3.0 standard.  That means you will get up to 5GB/sec of transfer speed.  That makes this particular deal especially good given most of the time these cables are the slower USB 2.0 standard.

These cables from AUKEY are compatible with any USB-C device:  Phones, Tablets and MacBooks which have the port.  As you likely know, USB-C is reversible so it doesn’t matter how you insert the cable into your device, it works and charges your devices or can transfer data between them.