Tag: Android

After weeks of rumors and speculation, the Razer Phone is official.  Razer, who acquired Android phone maker startup Nextbit earlier this year, makes their first named device in the Android space and it spectacular from a specifications perspective.  The phone will be $699 and pre-orders are being accepted starting Friday.  And, get this, it will be in Microsoft stores nationally.

Okay, to the nitty-gritty.  The Razer Phone is powered by the Snapdragon 835 SoC, has an impressive 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64GB of onboard storage.  The phone will support a MicroSD card so you can expand that storage up to 256GB.  Display wise, it is a 5.7″ LCD that renders at 2560 x 1440 at, wait for it, 120Hz.

If you haven’t put it together yet, this phone is squarely aimed at being an entertainment device, both for gaming and for video watching.

Camera wise, the rear camera configuration is a dual camera with a 12MP f/1.75 wide angle shooter and a 13MP f/2.6 normal with both supported by PDAF.

Powering all of this is a 4000mAh battery that supports Quick Charge 4 technology.

As rumored, Samsung has begun the public beta testing of their Android Oreo build for the Galaxy S8.  The program officially kicked off today and is expected to run for at least a couple of months.  It is good news for S8 owners as Samsung is notoriously slow about getting major updates out to their devices.  It would see, at least with Oreo, Samsung is trying to reverse the trend.

Unlike the beta program for Google’s Pixel and Nexus devices, Samsung is being very limited in the number of Galaxy S8 owners who get the beta & who have signed up for the program.  In talking to their technical support team today, I was informed that a small number of users who had signed up for the beta were randomly selected and were offered the OTA update to the beta.  When I asked if this would be expanded later, the support agent indicated it was possible but that she could not comment.

Google has begun rolling out an improved look to the overflow menus in the Google app for Android.  The update is a server-side change, meaning that as long as you have the latest version of the app on your phone, it will be pushed down behind the scenes to your phone.

That latest version is 7.13.28.21 for those keeping score at home.

Previously, when you were looking at cards in the Google app or in the Google Pixel or Now Launcher page, you would get a pop-up card on the display when you wanted to dismiss a card.  Now, when you tap the three vertical dots in the right-hand corner of any card, you get a bottom-up card.  It looks much cleaner and refined over the pop-up card.

Today’s Deal is on the powerful, 5.2″ Sony Xperia XZs.  The XZs is a revamped version of last year’s XZ and has, as you would expect from Sony, some pretty impressive specs.  Today, the XZs has dropped in price down to $499 on Amazon.

The Xperia XZs is powered by the Snapdragon 820 processor clocked at 2.2GHz, has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.  That storage can be expanded and additional 256GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.  The XZs is IP68 rated against water and dust intrusion and, a not-so-common thing here in the US, it is a dual-SIM phone.  The display is a 5.2″ FHD and all of this is powered by a 2900mAh battery that is charged via a USB-C port and it supports Quick Charge 3.0 technology.

What really makes the XZs however are the cameras.

Essential Phone owners, you have a small but important update rolling out to you today.  The company Tweeted earlier today that build NMJ20D is rolling out to owners that fixes some vulnerabilities as well as adding a few new features.

First, before you get all excited, no, this is not bringing you Oreo.  The update is only 75MB in size so this is truly an incremental update.

As for what is fixed, a fair amount.  First, this build patches the KRACK WiFi vulnerability and brings the October Android Security Update patches to the phone.  There are also improvements in the touch screen performance as well as overall system improvements for performance.

The big new feature, fingerprint scanner gestures.

Another week, another crop of Android Pay supporting banks.  Seriously, with over 1,000 banks now supported in the US so we are getting to the point where it is more of a question of which banks don’t support the tap-to-pay service than those that do.

As you would expect, most of the new additions today are small, regional banks and credit unions.  The list includes:

• 1st Northern California CU
• Adirondack Regional Federal Credit Union
• Bankwell Bank
• Central Alliance Credit Union
• Coastal Heritage Bank
• Cumberland Valley National Bank
• Greenfield Savings Bank
• Home National Bank
• Sauk Valley Bank and Trust
• Sicily Island State Bank
• UnitedOne Credit Union

If you bank at one of these institutions, you can now add your bank card to Android Pay and use it where the service is accepted.

Probably more interesting in this update however is the support for Synchrony private label credit cards – well some of them at least.  Synchrony is the company behind many department store cards as well as online cards like Gap, Banana Republic and Nissan Visa card.