Tag: Android

Essential teased on Tuesday via Twitter than a new color for the Essential Phone was going to be available starting today.  That color, Ocean Depths, has arrived.  The teal blue with gold highlights version of the PH-1 has the exact same internals as the current Black Moon and Pure White versions but you get what is a pretty stunning looking color combo to set you, and your phone apart.

The new Ocean Depths color is available starting today.  It is exclusively available through the Essentials site and costs $599, $100 more than the standard color models.  In addition to this new color, two more were announced today and will be available starting next week.

Project Fi, Google’s MVNO mobile service, has added several new countries where their low cost international usage is provided.  The list is now over 170 countries strong with the latest addition of 73 countries announced today.  In these countries, Fi users will have the same costs as they do at home, which is $10 per GB of usage.  Text messaging is unlimited as part of the package and voice calls are a low .20 Cents per minute.

Some of the new countries that Project Fi users can travel to and get coverage include:

• Algeria
• Armenia
• Bangledesh
• Laos
• Madagascar
• Mongolia
• Niger
• Oman
• Uganda

You can see the complete list of countries in the announcement made by Fi today.

Gmail Go, a lighter weight version of the Gmail app, is the latest addition to the Android Go initiative from Google.  The app is available in Google Play Store for devices with low memory, the hallmark of the Go program.  If you aren’t familiar with the Go program, it is an initiative set out by Google back at Google I/O last year to bring apps & services to devices with low RAM.  These apps are mostly aimed at emerging markets or those with very low cost devices with 1GB or 2GB of RAM.

Gmail Go essentially is Gmail but without some of the more powerful management, editing and filtering options.  Still, it comes with Smart Replies and inbox label filtering which is likely going to meet 99% of users needs.

The Google Phone app is being updated in the Google Play Store, bringing a new chat head feature and improved persistent notification shade.  The new build is version 17.0.184919600 and will come to compatible devices (Google Nexus & Pixel phones, Android One phones, etc) over the next few days.

The main new feature is a chat head feature.  Now, when you are in a call and move away from the Google Phone app, you will have a chat head, similar to Facebook Messenger, appear on your Home screen.  Tapping that head will allow you to control the call:  Return to the call, mute the call, move the call to speaker or hang up.  There is nothing you have to do to enable this feature and you can move the chat head around your Home screen to a convenient place.

Microsoft Edge for Android, the Redmond, Washington company’s mobile variant of their Windows 10 browser, has a new update that brings some improvements for personalization.  The new build is version 1.0.0.1656 for those keeping score at home.

With this update, you can now more personalize the Newsfeed on the New Tab in Microsoft Edge.  Support has been added for the language and geographical area for news feeds.  By default, this will be set to the language and region you are in but by going to Settings>New Tab Page, you can have the news feed in different regions and languages.

In an unexpected move, it looks like Samsung has pulled their Android Oreo update for the Samsung Galaxy S8 lineup.  The update to the latest version of Android began rolling out to beta testers in Europe last week but according to SamMobile, the build has been pulled from Samsung’s update servers.

The news likely means that a show stopping bug or other install issues was discovered after the limited rollout began, forcing the South Korean company to halt the updates to prepare a new build to address the issue.