Tag: Android

Signal Spy, the great helper app for Project Fi users, has been updated and now also supports U.S. Cellular.  As readers will know, Project Fi has started rolling out support for U.S. Cellular as part of the MVNO (joining T-Mobile and Sprint) so it can seamlessly move you from any of the three carriers to another for better data and call quality.  Signal Spy, which allows you to monitor your connections and manually force them to change, now supports U.S. Cellular too.

Good news this morning for those of you who have a Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge on T-Mobile.  The carrier has released the June security update in an OTA update with some other fixes and improvements this morning.  The updated builds are G920TUVU4EPF1 for the S6 while the S6 Edge new build is G925TUVU3EPD1.  For either device, the update weighs in at about 200MB and you will have to reboot your phone after you download and install the update.

A behind-the-scenes update and a new partnership with LyricFind has brought inline lyric viewing right within Google Search and Google Play Music on your Android phone.  The partnership with LyricFind brings lyrics to songs from over 4,000 publishers to the apps, making it much easier and smoother to find the words to your favorite song (and to figure out if you have been singing them wrong all these years!).

“We’re happy to expand the depth and quality of lyrics available on Google’s services,” says LyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne. “We’re working together to make lyrics available to a larger audience in a faster and more efficient way.”

LyricFind has been the main driver behind creating a legal and global lyric infrastructure for all platforms, and its partnership with Google further strengthens this mission. LyricFind collects new royalties for songwriters and rightsholders, and benefits music fans who engage more easily than ever with lyrics that inspire them.

Ultimate the good news for us Google users is that there is nothing we have to do to make the magic happen other than do a search.

Good news for those of you in Singapore.  Today you can download the Android Pay app and start using the service wherever tap-and-pay is supported.  The expansion comes a couple of weeks after Samsung Pay made its way to the country and gives users the ability to make secure payments from their phone without having to pull a credit card out of their pocket. In order to use the service, you have to have a MasterCard or Visa from a supported bank.  Those banks include Standard Chartered Bank, OCBC Bank and POSB.  DBS and UOB are also supported.

Good news for those who use WordPress for their site or blog.  The new build for Android Finally, finally, contains a Visual editor. That means that you will have the same look and feel as you do on the web when it comes to formats, layouts and other things instead of having to use plain text and HTML markup.  The change is most certainly welcome for those who don’t have code experience or simply don’t want to have to bother with the code.  I’m certainly in that camp (ClintonFitch.com is powered by WordPress).

Today Google has announced that they will start using images from the Landsat 8 satellite for Google Earth and Google Maps, bringing far superior images for both apps when you view the earth in satellite mode.  The change moves the primary imaging source of Google from Landsat 7 and both of the satellites are operated by the USGS/NASA Landsat Program.  What this means for you is far more detailed and clearer images when you use either of the apps.

Today we’re rolling out an even more beautiful and seamless version, with fresh imagery from Landsat 8 satellite and new processing techniques for sharper images than ever before. Satellite images are often cloudy, but not always over the same place, so we looked at millions of images and took the clearest pixels to stitch together this cloud-free and seamless image.

There is nothing we as users have to do.  This is a back end update from Google and you should start seeing higher quality images in both apps today.