Tag: Android

The Google Clips app has a new update rolling out that brings a couple of new features to the AI-powered gamera.  The new app build is version 1.4.189410803 for those keeping score at home and brings a couple of new features to the device.

In addition to this new app update, there is a new firmware update for your camera itself which will enable these new features.  You can update the Clips firmware from the app itself after you perform the app update.

First, you can now get high resolution still photos from manual captures using Clips.  When you press the shutter button either in the Live Preview in the app or the physical button on your camera, you will get a HiRes image along with the normal clip that you already get with the camera.

Google has announced the availability of Android Studio 3.1, the Android development app.  It is available to download for Windows (32-bit and 64-bit), Mac and Linux.  The release comes with a lot of new features as well as underlying performance improvements.

First, there is a new C++ performance profiler to help developers find bottlenecks in their app code.  There are also improvements to the Kotlin Lint checks that add on to the support of Kotlin in the studio.  Editing SQL/Room database code in projects are now easier too.  Android Studio 3.1 has a SQL code completion in the @query declarations and better SQL statement refactoring.

A new commit in the Chrome OS Gerrit suggests that Android P framework testing is already underway for the platform.  This could allow for P support to roll out at the same time or very close the release of the update for phones later this year.

As readers may know, Android apps in Chrome OS run in Android Framework, which was updated to Nougat last December in Chrome 61 but, interestingly, the Oreo framework never rolled out.  The reason for the skip isn’t clear but it could have simply been focus shifting to get as many Chromebook builds updated to run Android in general.  The number of Chromebooks supporting Android apps has significantly increased over the course of the last year, in particular the last four months.

The framework is what allows Android apps to run in Chrome OS and for developers, gives them a standard API level across Android devices and Chromebooks so their apps will run on both and with the same feature sets.

A new update to Microsoft Outlook for Android is rolling out, bringing improved conversation viewing and interactions for users.  The new update is version 2.2.121 for those keeping score at home.  It has been released to the Play Store so if you have Outlook installed, you should get the OTA update over the next few days.

First, all messages now appear uncollapsed in conversations and with cleaner separation between messages.  This makes it easier for you to scan email conversations to find a particular email in the thread.  Previously, everything was collapsed into one header and you it looked like one giant email.

The Nokia 7 Plus was announced last month at Mobile World Congress and it is just now starting to roll out to various markets globally.  While the phone likely won’t be coming to the United States, that doesn’t mean you can’t get the wallpapers from the phone.

In all, there are 11 wallpapers that come with the new 7 Plus, all are 2560 x2560 so they will work on just about any phone out there and more than a few laptops too.  As I normally do with wallpaper posts, I have added all of the wallpapers to the Wallpaper page here on the site as well as to this post after the break.

Google has rolled out a great new update to the Google Files Go app for Android.  The update brings three key new features to the lightweight file management and storage clean up for all Android phones, not just Android Go devices.

First, Files Go now has Google Search built into it and it is proper Google Search.  It gives you instant results, search history, autocomplete and filters to file management on your phone.  The search feature is found on the Files tab at the bottom of the page and it works offline.