Tag: Android

After months of waiting, Chase has finally started supporting Android Pay.  The support makes Chase one of the last major banks in the United States to support the tap-to-pay app and frankly put it behind smaller, regional banks in supporting the service.  Why the delay is unclear as the bank has been supporting Apple Pay and Samsung Pay for some time.  It was just a matter of them getting around to supporting Android Pay.

If you are a Chase banking customer and have a device that supports the service, you can now add your debit or credit cards to the app to be used at touch terminals for payment.

The Google OnHub app was updated last week and while the official release notes indicated it was primarily around performance fixes and adding support for Phillips Hue lighting, there was another small but important change made to the app.  The OnHub app has always been able to do some network testing and when I initially reviewed the router and app, this was one area that was really in need of improvement.  That improvement has come over the course of the past few updates (I have no hesitation in recommending it now) but the change made to the app last week brings some clarity to those network tests.

To begin, the testing of your Internet connection speed and your Wi-Fi speed are now two separate tests.  You can run both of them or just one of them where as before, they were all lumped in together.  To be clear however, you have to run the Internet test first, every time, to get to the stand alone Wi-Fi test.  Hopefully this will change in the future but for now, it is what it is.

The September 2016 Android security patches have been released for both Android Marshmallow and Nougat today.  This month there are three different patches available, an increase from the two that we have seen over the past few months.  Google has been working to spur on manufactures to get the security updates out quicker and by further subdividing the patches, it is further eliminating reasons on why they aren’t released.

According to the Security Bulletin released by the Android team, the patch 2016-09-01 will primarily deal with remote code execution and elevation of privileges within the Android platform.  This patch contains two critical updates and five high priority updates.

Microsoft has rolled out yet another update to their Android launcher, Arrow Launcher.  The update marks the third significant update to the launcher over the course of the past three weeks as the company continues to improve the performance and information in the app.  This latest update, version 2.3.0.26056 for those keeping score at home, brings a handful of changes with the most notable being IM support on the Recent tab.  Now that tab will show you recent Instant Messages that you have received from Facebook Messenger, Skype and other messaging apps.  Now you don’t necessarily have to open each app to see your latest interactions on those apps.

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua.  This 5″ Android phone is down to $149 over at Amazon, a savings of over $50.  The phone is unlocked and is compatible with GSM carriers here in the US (AT&T and T-Mobile), it has 16GB of storage which can be expanded thanks to the MicroSD slot and is water IP68 certified against dust and water.  That means this phone is dust and water proof up to 1.5 meters deep for up to 30 minutes.  Powering the Xperia M4 is the Snapdragon 6.15 processor clocked at 1.5GHz with 2GB of RAM installed.  If you are looking to pick up a solid performing phone at a great price, this could be a good option for you.

Based on a leak from the ever reliable Evan Blass, it looks like we could well see a new 7″ Android tablet from Google coming very soon.  In fact, it could be as early as next month with the October 4th event slated to announce the new Pixel phones, a 4K Google Cast device, Google Assistant and Google Home.  Adding a tablet to that mix wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility.

Google’s Huawei-built 7-inch tablet, with 4GB RAM, on track for release before the end of the year.

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) September 5, 2016

If the rumor is true, this would be a welcome device by many Android fans.  The very popular Nexus 7 (2013) tablet is no longer available or supported as far as major releases are concerned and the only real Google branded tablet option is the Pixel C.  That’s a nice device and Android Nougat has certainly made it more usable, but at 10″, it is bigger than what some people will want or need.