Tag: Android

OnePlus has begun rolling out OxygenOS 3.2.8 for the OnePlus 3 but before you get all excited, no, it’s not Nougat.  Not yet at least.  The update is a small one but does bring several improvements and fixes to the OP3, the company’s flagship device until a couple of weeks ago with then 3T was announced.  Still, OnePlus has remained committed to getting software updates out for both the 3 and the 3T and even though this update isn’t Nougat, that is expected before the end of the year.

So what’s in this update?  Quite a few nice changes and updates

Great news to start your Friday HTC 10 owners.  If you have one here in the US and it is unlocked, Android Nougat will be hitting your device starting today.  The news came from HTC’s Mo Versi who announced it on Twitter late on Thanksgiving day (when most of us were in food coma).

Happy Thanksgiving! HTC 10 unlocked owners will receive Nougat OS update tomorrow morning! Enjoy!

— Mo Versi (@moversi) November 24, 2016

The HTC 10 has been one of the more underrated phones of 2016.  It is a solid performer with solid specs and now that it has Nougat, it will really bump up the appeal of this phone.  HTC has also been fantastic about keeping this phone up-to-date by having security patches out 30-45 days after they are released from Google.  This alone makes them stand out from other manufactures but you are also getting a great phone on top of it.

For Black Friday, Amazon has rolled out special pricing on the Moto G lineup on the site.  Today you can get a great deal on the Moto G4, the Moto G4 Play and the Moto G4 Plus on the site with discounts ranging from $20 to $70 off.  These are great phones that, although they come with lock screen adverts from Amazon, are tough to be beat for the price.

The Moto G4 comes with 2GB of RAM, 16GB or 32GB of Storage, a 5.5″ display and a 13MP rear camera.

• Moto G with 16GB storage – $129.99 ($70 savings)
• Moto G with 32GB of storage – $139.99 ($90 savings)

The smaller Moto G Play is a 5″ display device that comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage.  The phone can have the storage expanded by an additional 128GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.

• Moto G Play with 16GB of storage – $99.99 ($50 savings)

Finally there is the Moto G Plus.  This is a 5.5″ display phone with 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage and a 16MP main camera.  This is by far the most powerful of the lineup with an octa-core processor and the additional RAM and at $229, a heck of a deal.

• Moto G Plus with 64GB of storage – $229.99 ($70 savings)

As with most of the sales posts you will see today, these prices are good for today only.

The Android team at Google has released what is slated to be the last Developer Preview of Android Nougat 7.1.1.  The update is already pushing out to devices that are enrolled in the beta program which now includes the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9 and Pixel C.  The builds you are looking for are NPF26F (Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9), NPF26H (Pixel C). For developers, Google has outlined that this is a near complete version of what will ship in early December to consumers and are urged to get their apps ready.

Developer Preview 2 is a release candidate for Android 7.1.1 that you can use to complete your app development and testing in preparation for the upcoming final release. In includes near-final system behaviors and UI, along with the latest bug fixes and optimizations across the system and Google apps.

To help developers, API Level 25 Platform updates have been rolled out to Android Studio 2.2.2 as part of the announcement today so final preparations and updates can be made to apps.

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on the solidly built and performing LG G5.  This 5.3″ display device with 32GB of storage and 4GB of RAM is down from it’s normal price of $649.99 to $399.99 on Amazon.  This is a great price on this phone and certainly should be one to consider if you are looking for a top-end phone at a mid-market price.  The G5 is powered by the Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor and coupled with the Adreno 530 GPU.  It has 4GB of RAM which is going to be enough to really do anything with this phone and has 32GB of onboard storage.  That storage can be expanded up to an additional 2TB (that’s right, 2 terabytes) thanks to the MicroSD card slot.

Camera wise, you have dual rear cameras in the LG G5 that give you 16MP images with laser auto-focus and OIS (Optical Image Stabilization).  It has a 2-stage LED flash while the front facing camera is an 8MP shooter with a nice 135 degree wide angle view.

LG G5 on Amazon

Microsoft has begun rolling out a nice update to OneNote, bringing several fixes along with some key updates for those with accessibilities needs.  In the update, users can now have alternative text on images and embedded files in a page.  That means for those who cannot see images, they can have alternative text which can be read to them by recognition software.  This has been a common practice in web design for many years (in fact, every image on ClintonFitch.com has alternative text) and it is good to see it come to a productivity app like OneNote for those who need it.

That’s not the only change of course.  There is now the ability to view images outside of OneNote itself.  Now when you tap on an image in a note, you can choose to open that in another app to view that image.  To this point, once you embedded an image, you had to view it within OneNote.  Also, related to this, you can view embedded files outside of OneNote too.