Tag: Android

Update – The tablet section of the Android.com site has returned.   Maybe it was a mistake but tablets are still in trouble I suspect.

It what is the clearest indicator yet that Android on tablets is dead, Google has removed Tablets from the menu on the official site for the platform.  Up until yesterday, if you visited Android.com, you would see an option for Tablets where you could get information on the smattering of tablet devices that are out there for purchase.  Now that is gone, with the menu reset to include Phones, Wear, TV, Auto and Enterprise.

While the move isn’t completely shocking, it is more-or-less the official final nail in the coffin for tablet form factors running the platform.

The solid mid-range phone from Sony, the Sony Xperia XA1, is now on sale at Amazon for a pretty stunning price.  Right now you can pick up the XA1 in black for just $180.  That is a savings of $119 off the normal $299 price, or 40% off depending on how you want to look at it.  The best part is, this is the US warranty backed variant of the phone, not the International version that often goes on sale at Amazon.

The Sony Xperia XA1 made its debut in May of last year and earlier this year it, along with most of the rest of the Sony 2017 phone lineup, was updated to Android Oreo.  Sony, for their part, does a pretty solid job of getting updates out to their various phones.

Google One, the Mountain View company’s new all-in-one storage, support and benefits program, is now starting to go live.  Paid subscribers to Google Drive are now getting notifications via email that their account has been converted to a One account and for them, the One app has now lit up too.

One is a central repository of sorts for your Google Drive storage and gives you the ability to share that storage with other members of your family.  It also provides you access to Google support via chat, phone or email and that support is available 24/7.    You can also adjust your drive storage account in the app, change payment methods, manage family members and even shut down your subscription.

Following the release of the Chrome 67 update for desktops, the Chrome for Android update has now too been updated to the latest build of Chrome.  Build 67.0.3396.68 was released earlier today and it will take a few days for everyone’s Play Store account to be updated so it can be downloaded.

The update brings a lot of security fixes and overall improvements to the browser along with a new generic sensor API which adds gyroscope support for augmented reality as well as the new Credentials Management API.  Of course, on the desktop version, the bigger news was the full fledged support of Progressive Web Apps in Chrome.

After a trickle rollout last week, Google appears to be more broadly rolling out a new Purchases and Reservations section within Google Assistant on Android.  This, like many changes with Assistant, is a cloud-side update so as long as you have the latest version of the Google app and/or Assistant app, you should be good-to-go.

The new sections are accessed by long pressing your Home button to activate Google Assistant.  Now tap on the blue Explore button in the upper right corner.  Finally, tap on the overflow menu (three vertical dots) and go to Settings.  If it has rolled out to your account, you will see the new Purchases and Reservations sections.

In today’s chapter of “It’s cool living in the future”, Google Lens is now broadly rolling out real time information and text selection features via Google Assistant.  The new features, which were highlighted at Google I/O a few weeks back, trickled out to some last week but now it appears that Google has pushed the cloud-side big button and it is now going out to everyone.

There are few different elements that are rolling out today that are pretty magical.  First, there is real time information element.  When you enable Google Lens (long press your Home button to activate Google Assistant and then tap the Lens icon in the lower right corner), you can point your camera at different objects.  If it recognized that object, you will get a colored bubble over that item which you can then tap and Assistant will give you information about it.