Tag: Android

Love them or hate them, Apple does produce some awfully nice wallpapers for their iPhone, iPad and MacOS lineup.  As some of you may know, the beta for iOS 10.2 has started rolling out to those testing it.  In that beta are three new simple but beautiful wallpapers that you can now download to your phones here on the site.  All three are similar, featuring a stark black background with a blue, orange or pink semi-transparent stone in the middle.  They look great frankly and now you can add them to your Android phones.  Because, why not?

I’ve put thumbnails of each image after the break so for those who aren’t interested, you can move along.  For those who are interested, click on to get to them.

One of the best password management apps out there, LastPass, has given everyone a reason to be happy:  They have lowered their price to… free!  The even better news, they haven’t stripped the app down to the barebones either.  The free app now gives you the ability to sync your password and other secure content to your phone, PC, Chrome extension and tablet.  To this point, that sync feature was part of the premium package for the app (which was a quite affordable $1/month).

From the company’s blog…

I’m thrilled to announce that, starting today, you can use LastPass on any device, anywhere, for free. No matter where you need your passwords – on your desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone – you can rely on LastPass to sync them for you, for free. Anything you save to LastPass on one device is instantly available to you on any other device you use.

If you have been looking for a password management app, you need to seriously consider LastPass as an option.

If you thought that Android Pay had killed off Google Wallet, think again.  Google has just rolled out an update web portal for the person-to-person payment service along with a refreshed Android app.  The update brings a completely refreshed website for Wallet that is Material Design in nature and intuitive on sending or receiving funds from others.  The app update mirrors this new look of the portal and it, as before, is simple to use.  The app is certainly faster than the website and has some added security features like requiring a PIN to get into it.  However, if you don’t have your phone handy, you now have an easy way to send or receive funds using the service.

As expected, Lenovo has come to market with the first Project Tango enabled phone.  The 6.4″ Phab 2 Pro can be purchased directly from the manufacture for $499.99 and for the price, it is certainly feature packed.  For those who may not recall what exactly Project Tango is from Google, it is devices and apps that work in augmented reality.  These apps and now the Phab 2 Pro allow you to do thing like measure distances, fly through the solar system and other things all from the device.  A good example is the Lowe’s Vision app for Tango. It allows you to measure a space in your house and virtually put an appliance or other furniture you buy from Lowes in your house.

As for the Phab 2 Pro, you are getting a lot of horsepower in the package from Lenovo, starting with the 6.4″ display that renders 2560 x 1440.  Coupled with this is the Snapdragon 652 octa-core process running at 1.8GHz.

Google’s SMS & MMS app, Google Messenger, has had a nice update this week that brings a lot of visual tweaks as well as some new features.  The new build is version 2.0 and it is rolling out now in the Google Play Store.  The most immediate thing you will notice is the new round icon for the app, fitting in nicely with the look of the Google Pixel launcher on the Pixel devices.  That new icon also can now show unread message counts, ala iOS, which is something that Android frankly has needed for a long time.  But get this:  It doesn’t work on the new Pixel Launcher or the Google Now Launcher.

Insert head scratching here.

The Project Fi app for subscribers has received a nice behind the scenes update that most users will find quite helpful.  Now you can see which apps have consumed the most data in your current billing cycle.  The good news is that no new app download is required.  So long as you are running the most current version you will see this new information within the app.