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Adoption of the new USB-C port standard has commenced surprisingly rapidly. While there are some holdouts in the world of budget phones, every major smartphone manufacturer but Apple has embraced the new port, even if across various levels of the USB standard or support for features like USB Power Delivery (USB-PD).
HTC and Android Police are teaming up to give you a chance to win the company's newest flagship, the U11. It's actually U11 launch day here in the US, so the timing couldn't get much better, right? We've got a single unlocked or Sprint (your choice) U11 to offer to our readers, and you can choose any one of the three launch colors here in the US, too (silver, blue, or black).
Tablets as a form factor seem to be headed for niche-ification in the near future. Sales are down, consumer interest seems low, and smartphones are just getting bigger and better, allowing us to do things that may have seemed a bit impractical on a handset as little as five years ago. Laptops, too, are seeing a resurgence: they last longer, do more, and are becoming even more portable and versatile, often offering touchscreens and convertible designs that make them work as quasi-tablets when needed.
Google I/O 2017 is in full swing, and we're about halfway through the first day as I write this post. Even so, we've already had dozens of stories come out of Google's big developer conference, and we want to make sure you're able to find all of our coverage in one place. Google Home, Photos, Assistant, Android O, Daydream - all saw major announcements today, and we're just getting started. I'll break it down for you. I've bolded what I think are some of the more important stories out of I/O today.
During today's keynote at Google I/O, Google revealed a couple of interesting figures about the upcoming Android O release. Namely, it should be a lot faster in certain regards. Google says that the Pixel, for example, will reboot up to twice as fast on Android O (it does take a while at the moment). It wasn't immediately clear what optimizations allowed for this boosted performance.
Android O is going to bring a lot of changes to our favorite mobile platform, and one of the most visible for those of us using Nexus and Pixel products will be the emoji: Google is completely redesigning them. Again.
According to a trusted source, Google plans to announce that the Google Assistant will be launching on iOS soon as a standalone app. The announcement could come as soon as Google's I/O conference this week, but it's unclear exactly what Google's plans are at this time. The app would likely feature a blend of the "chat" style functionality in the Google Allo version of Assistant and the voice-controlled version found on Android, but again, details are scant.
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- As spotted by Abner Li over at 9to5Google, this productivity mode appears to be an ape of an existing feature from Lenovo's Yoga Book. Still seems like a good idea to me, though.
The Google Pixel is a notoriously hard phone to get a hold of. Persistent stock issues have plagued Google's first "in-house" handset from day one, and things really are little to no better six months after the launch event. Honestly, it's a bit embarrassing just how consistently incompetent Google seems to be at keeping a reasonable inventory of phones available for purchase. But setting that aside, as one of the Pixel's most ardent evangelists, I think there's something it's probably time for me to come clean on: Even if you could buy a Pixel today, I really think you shouldn't.
