Tag: Android

Google has released the first schedule for this year’s Google I/O event in Mountain View and it is evident that Android and Google Assistant are going to be the headliners.  The schedule has multiple Android and Assistant events over the three-day conference with everything from advanced coding sessions to general information sessions.

Some of the events slated for I/O include:

• 10 tips for building better actions (Google Assistant)
• An introduction to developing Actions for the Google Assistant
• Build an AR app with the Poly Toolkit for Unity (Android)

• What’s new in Android Wear

That’s just a few of the dozens of sessions on tap.

Nearly a year after it was announced and almost all of that time in early adopter programs, Google’s Hangouts Chat is now generally available as a core service to G Suite customers.  It provides deep integration with the entire G Suite of apps for easy collaboration and sharing of files along with group and direct messaging capabilities.  There are also some 25 bots available starting today to further integrate with other solutions your organization may have in their portfolio.

The most direct comparison of Hangouts Chat in the market today is Slack and in many ways, the two messaging & collaboration solutions are equal.  But for G Suite customers, the advantage of Chat is that everything stays inter-domain which provides another layer of security.

When the new lineup of Nokia phones were announced this week at Mobile World Congress, one of the key questions was which one of the devices would make it to the United States.  Initially, the answer was none of them.  HMD Global, the parent company of Nokia, indicated that while the US market was on their roadmap, it wasn’t in the plans for this year.

That now has seemed to change slightly.  CNet, who originally published an article stating no phones were coming to the US, has updated their post after clarifying it with Nokia.  Now it appears that at least the revamped Nokia 6 will be coming to the country in May.

Earlier this week at Mobile World Congress, we got our first glimpse at the completely redesigned Sony Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact.  Generally speaking, the reception for both phones has been great with Sony finally ditching their massive bezel design.  A key question remained however:  How much will they cost?

Thanks to Sony Mobile’s German site, we now have an idea.  The Xperia XZ2 will be €799 which roughly breaks down to $977 US.  The European price is a full €100 more than last year’s Xperia XZ1.

Today at Mobile World Congress, Formula 1 announced their new over-the-top (OTT) Grand Prix subscription service, F1 TV.  The service will cost between $8-12 per month depending on your subscription level and will provide fans of the racing series ad-free streaming of all event sessions.

Formula 1 fans will get commercial-free live streams of each race with multi language commentary. In addition, the service will provide exclusive access to all 20 driver on-board cameras throughout every race session. F1 TV Pro will have unique feeds not available on any other platform with the capability of multi-level personalisation.

One of the key Pro features of the service will be the ability for subscribers to select the on-board cameras they want to watch during a race.  If they want to watch the head-to-head battle between Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, they can do so while others watch Williams’ Lance Stroll battle McLaren’s Fernando Alonso.

Today at Mobile World Congress, Google introduced Flutter, their new cross platform mobile SDK.  The new development tool will allow for developers to create native UI frameworks for both Android and iOS that are native to each platform.

The beauty of Flutter is that it comes packing its own rendering engine and framework which, in essence, bypasses the native UI frameworks in both platforms.  This is not something new for developers, especially game developers who have used different rendering engines.  This allows for significant performance increases (particularly on Android).  When you compile the app with the available Android and iOS SDKs, you get the appropriate app & framework for the respective platform.