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Amex Mobile, the Android app for American Express cardholders, has received an update to v5.0 that includes a major redesign. Substantively speaking, this adds focus to benefits and rewards along with making statements viewable as an activity timeline.
Mozilla, keeping pace with their regular rapid release schedule, released an update for Firefox Beta today. v39 graduated to stable, sending v40 to the beta channel. With some focus on changes to the desktop version, there aren't major user-facing changes in this Android update. Still, there should be some performance enhancements along with a nice UI improvement for navigating forward and backwards through a tab's history.
The Guardian Project, the group behind previous efforts to bring Tor and other privacy-preserving software to Android, is working on a Tor-friendly browser built on the desktop equivalent's codebase. This app, named Orfox, will replace its WebView-based predecessor Orweb.
If you aren't familiar with the controversy over Samsung's decision to make the S6 and S6 Edge's batteries non-replaceable, you probably don't follow Android news very much. Because you can't just swap out another battery, more people have gotten interested in figuring out how to ensure they have an operating phone after a long day. One method that owners of many smartphones have been using for years is the battery case. While there are tradeoffs involved in putting a case on your phone that is big enough to house a battery, there is a payoff too: no need to find an outlet or juggle wires when your device would normally be running out of juice.MOTA's offering stands out, if nothing else, for its price. On Amazon right now, it sells for just under . Competitors like Mophie check in at and above $100, which makes a big difference when weighing costs and benefits. The key here is whether MOTA's offering is solid enough in other areas to be worth buying at all. Overall, my take is that it depends. If you want an always-on, everyday case, I'm not sure you will want to stick with this one or any battery case at all.Still, the MOTA battery case does everything it is supposed to do without any true problems. There are things about it I would change, but they all fall on the side of user preference. Here's a rundown.
If you have been skeptical about whether Qualcomm's Quick Charging 2.0 standard is all that useful, this deal is arguably the best use case for it. How often do you head out the door for a short trip and realize your phone just doesn't have enough charge? If you could get it mostly charged in 15-30 minutes, there would be no worries. Ta-da! You can get Aukey's QC 2.0 car charger for $10.99 after coupon on Amazon.
Back in Chrome v39, we got a look at a reader mode not unlike many other mobile browsers such as Firefox. However, it didn't even leave Chrome Beta before getting hidden in the flags menu. Features that were not originally in flags but later moved there tend not to come back. Well, the latest Chrome Dev, v45, features a revamped version of reader mode. Now, on pages the browser decides could benefit from it, it gives a prompt that says "make page mobile-friendly." Tapping on that brings the user to a slightly redesigned reader view, though it isn't described as such anywhere.
Inputting+ quietly keeps tabs on all the text you write across various apps for safekeeping while bundling an undo and redo function in case you have accidentally made a change that you didn't mean to. And if you want to find and replace something, Inputting+ has your back there too. All of this is easily accessible from a small bubble (which can be turned off, made transparent, and made bigger/smaller) that floats on your screen while typing.
Google Opinion Rewards is a program that targets people with very short surveys and pays them a very small compensation for completing them, which is in Play Store credits. It launched in the USA and has since expanded to the UK, Canada, and Australia. With its latest update, Opinion Rewards is now available in Mexico and Brazil as well, expanding its reach to Spanish and Portuguese speakers. In light of the many recent comments by Donald Trump, I can't help but think about the implications.
Luxe is a service that allows you to summon a valet to park your car when time or energy is low, something that many people probably won't consider using due to either reluctance to paying for this sort of thing or because they don't live in an area where it just isn't very hard to park for yourself. The name itself screams, "This is a want, not a need" (also, luxury). The service is launching something new called Drive Home in which their valets will drive you up to 50 miles to your own home and in your own car, which is targeted to keeping drunk or otherwise compromised drivers off the road.
Amazon's latest app giveaway is worth more than $50 and will remain available for the next week. As you can see in the hero image, some of the headliners include The Bard's Tale and Weather Live, though there are several more that may interest you. And while the super-popular Monument Valley has disappeared from the promotional page, it's free too. This is bigger and better (and longer-lasting) than its typical free daily deal, though it isn't their best ever. Beyond those already mentioned, you might want to pay special attention to Quell Memento and Alarm Clock Pro.Here is the full list of what's on offer, all of them free for now:
No longer a labs option, file attachments in Google Calendar are going to the stable channel. A feature oriented towards shared events, this can allow you to share important information that can't be captured in a written description. It is live now on the web and the API is ready for use, which means we should see app developers taking advantage in the near future.
After about a week of speculation and confusion, Samsung has released an official fix for the disappearing quick toggles bug. In case you missed it, we reported just a few days ago about a strange bug affecting some owners of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. Basically, some of the quick toggles that you see when pulling down the notification shade were disappearing. For instance, the on/off for mobile data would be there when people bought the phone, but over time it would simply go away.
BlackBerry has slowly but surely realized that their best bet for continued existence is to somehow bridge the app compatibility gap that Android and iOS boast in comparison to their platform. The route they have taken is adding the ability to natively run Android apps within the BlackBerry OS, which quite honestly is a good idea. The next step is getting those apps to users. For American users, that starts today, as a new OS update will bring the Amazon Appstore along with it.
The developers that brought us Pushbullet have announced a brand new app. Portal is designed to do one thing and one thing only: move files between your computer and your Android device. While this is possible with Pushbullet, it isn't a strong point and requires sending those files to their servers and back. Portal sends them within your local wireless network, avoiding potentially costly data fees and making possible far faster transfer times.
There are so many gadgets nowadays that charge via USB that having a separate AC outlet dedicated to each one can be difficult, if not impossible. A multi-port hub can definitely solve this problem, though. Personally, I have a 5-port charger on my living room table where I have my G Watch's charging connector, a microUSB cord for my phones, and the cable to charge the heart rate strap I use during workouts all in one place. This deal on an ORICO 5-port hub for $10.99 might be just the reason you need to streamline your charging game.
Google has unveiled several handy new features for Sheets, their Excel competitor that quite honestly needs all the help it can get. The goodies include enhancements to core functions in addition to collaboration. One of these involves being able to apply sharing permissions to specific parts of the spreadsheet, rather than the entire file.
After paying a lot of attention to the mobile and connected TV experience, Netflix has announced a major overhaul of their browser interface. Before you sign in and get confused, today is just the beginning of the rollout, which they say will complete in a couple of weeks. Netflix bills this as the first major update in four years, though its look has certainly gone through several iterations over that time span. For a refresher, here's a side-by-side comparison of old and new (click to embiggen):
We heard at Google I/O about Google's plans to help improve the experience of users on slow connections, especially in parts of the world where even 3G speeds are few and far between. They gave us a peek at how the search interface would change under those circumstances to improve those load times. Now, in select markets, the pages you click on will also be optimized to load much faster.
Getting a software update from Verizon is usually a real treat, since Big Red isn't normally too fond of pushing them out. Well, Verizon Galaxy S5 owners, this is one of your special days. Before getting too excited, though, there isn't much to this one.
Spotify started rolling its v3.0 update to users today, which brings some design tweaks to the player screens as well as a new feature for the mini player. The relationship between the main player screen and the mini player is now clearer, since there is an up arrow and animation to maximize the mini player along with a down arrow on the main player to do the opposite. You can also now swipe left or right on the mini player to skip tracks, rather than go to the main screen to do that.