Tag: Android

Google has made it easier for parents to manage their children’s phone usage by adding Family Link support on Project Fi.  Now parents can add their children to their Fi account for the same $15/month and can manage the amount of data they are allotted each month as well as when their phone can and cannot be used.

Aimed for parents who have kids under 13, Family Link is designed to help parents manage everything from sites available for their kids, to which apps can be installed, and now their phone usage through Fi.

A new commit in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository suggests that facial authentication is coming to Android as a system level API.  It could mean that from system point of view, Android P could well allow for facial authentication on devices, assuming of course that the hardware to do so is built into the device.

Currently, for manufactures to support facial authentication (like OnePlus for example), they have to build their own app and leverage existing APIs, mostly around the fingerprint authentication.  That works, obviously, but it isn’t as optimized as it could be and it is dependent upon OEMs to build the supporting software & hardware to make it happen.  This commit would more-or-less standardize things for Android.

If you like Google Lens but hate the fact that you have to open up Google Assistant on your phone to get to it, then today’s your lucky day.  Google has just dropped a Google Lens standalone app in the Play Store that you can download.

By all indications, this is a shortcut app.  That means it simply opens up Lens on your phone by pressing the icon for the app instead of having to long press your Home button the tap the Lens icon within Google Assistant.  There is nothing new or special that the app does itself.

The Chrome team at Google has announced that starting with Chrome 68, the banner to prompt users to add a site to their Home screen will be changing.  Today, when you visit a site and are prompted to add it to your Home screen, it is a rather large banner.  Starting with Chrome 68, this will be displayed in a mini bar at the bottom of the display.

The goal of all of this is to eventually have an install button option on the omni bar in Chrome and this is a stepping stone to that eventuality.

With it being the first Monday of the first full week of June, as expect, the Android team within Google has released this month’s Android Security Update patches.  The full builds along with the OTA builds are now available for those who want to sideload while devices should be getting the update via the System Update settings on their phone later today.

As usual, there are two patches in this month’s update.  The first, date June 1, 2018, consists of 22 total patches, five of which are considered critical.  This patch mostly deals with the base Android platform itself and the patches address things like Media Framework and System level patches.

Over the weekend, I posted about the great deal the Google Store is running on the Google Pixelbook.  Now it seems they have put together a great deal on the Google Pixel 2 XL phone too.  Right now at the store you can pick up the flagship Pixel device for regular price but you get $150 in store credit to use later plus a Google Home Mini.  All you have to do is add both the Google Pixel 2 XL and the Home Mini to your cart and the price will be discounted.

While we all know that the Google Pixel 3 lineup is going to be coming later this year, that is no reason not to give the Pixel 2 XL a serious look.  It will be updated to Android R when it is released and you still get free Google Photo storage for two years too.  Oh, and it is a seriously awesome phone.