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- As commenters have noted, the free Gear Fit 2 or MicroSD card deal is a Samsung promotion, not tied to any particular carrier. That means that Verizon fans can get in on the action as well, and that AT&T customers might be able to get all that and a bag of chips a second free watch and a tablet.
Not even an entire day has gone by since the official reveal of the Galaxy Note 7 (no, Samsung, I'm not going to take that space out, no matter how hard your brand managers glare at me) and everyone who's anyone is already trying to sell pre-orders. It's par for the course for American carriers, naturally, but something about this year's upgrade seems to have brought out the big guns. Maybe all of the cell service companies are trying to switch everyone over to a Note 7 before iPhone season rolls around? In any case, here we go:
It seems like we've been talking about the Gear 360, Samsung's branded 360-degree "action cam," for a long time without getting to see it on store shelves. For the record it was officially announced way back in February, though there were a few leaks before that. We expected it to land around the same time as the Galaxy S7 and its Edgy brother, but as it turns out the camera will launch along with the Galaxy Note 7 later this month. It's scheduled to go on sale starting on August 19th in the United States.
When the Pixel C was first released, there was a lot of speculation that it was originally intended to run a tablet version of Chrome OS instead of the Marshmallow build it eventually shipped with. There's still no easy way to get Chrome OS running on it, but today you can try the next best thing: the desktop-flavored version of Android developed by Jide. Remix OS, which was just recently upgraded to add code based on Android 6.0, is now available for the Pixel C. The Nexus 9, HTC and Google's 2014 offering, gets the same treatment.
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- Well-known developer Francisco Franco says that his custom kernel franco.kernel solves this problem in a flash. (Sorry, sorry.)
The incremental security updates that Android gets are generally regarded as a good thing, but with every software update comes the chance that something could get borked. That's doubly true with faster updates, and it seems to be the case with the latest Marshmallow release for the Nexus 5. According to our own readers, commenters on XDA and Reddit, and not least users on the official AOSP issue tracker, the original Nexus 5 is encountering some serious problems with volume control on the latest build, MOB30P.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
Microsoft wants to get in on some of that sweet action that services like If This, Then That and its competitors have been working on for years. To that end they've created Flow, a new web tool that automates actions across some of the major web services available at the moment, most of which (shocker!) aren't even owned by Microsoft. Flow allows users to set up automated "recipes" to complete tasks in Twitter, Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack, OneDrive, Github, Facebook, YouTube, and more.
We've taken a look at the APK for the latest version of YouTube, 11.29, and there's some mildly interesting bits under the hood, but not much that's user-facing. There's one exception: the little "X" button to close the notification has returned. See it up there? It's back. Hooray!
One of the coolest additions to the camera in the Android 7.0 developer preview was an option to manually adjust the exposure in the camera app. It's not as if that's a groundbreaking feature - plenty of third-party apps and manufacturer skins offered the same thing - but it's nice to get it in stock. The manual exposure option has disappeared in some of the later preview builds, but there's good news: it's coming back.
Hey United Kingdom readers. We know you don't get to participate in a lot of the Deal Alert posts here on Android Police. We're sorry about that... especially since you folks could probably use a few discounts right about now. Well here's a pretty good one: take 100 quid off of an HTC 10 from the company store. It's available on HTC.com/uk right now - just add the coupon code SUMMER100 when you check out. It brings the full price down to £469.99.
At the moment, the default Google camera app allows a staggering one option for a helpful photo grid: on or off. As happy as we are that it's there at all (if you're wondering, it's very good for getting a straight perspective and a balanced composition), we'd like to see some more options. And we'll get them sometime soon! We've managed to snag a preview of a future update for the APK, and while it's not exactly mind-blowing, it does add some very welcome tweaks to the grid.
A couple of weeks ago, when the "three footprints" monster tracking system in Pokémon GO suddenly stopped working and showed three steps for everything, I decided to stop playing the game until Niantic fixed the issue so I could reliably find Pokémon nearby. I guess the joke's on me.
Who says that Nexus owners get to have all the fun? Yesterday an innocuous XDA thread claimed to have a beta version of an Android 7.0 build, ready and waiting for Huawei's dual-camera phone, the P9. Usually that sort of post when we're still weeks or months away from a full AOSP release of a new Android version is, to put it bluntly, bunk. But in this case, users who have flashed the ROM say that it's functional and apparently legitimate - Huawei's proprietary EMUI skin, marked as version 5, is running on top of Nougat. It's working on the EVA-L09 model; others may not be compatible.
The US Customs and Border Patrol's mobile passport app has been out for a little over a year. Lately they've been adding the streamlined customs process to approximately one airport a month, which means that every passenger airport in the country should get official support in the next few decades. Maybe by then the country's air travel system won't be a farcical crap-fest of corporate greed and government incompetence. But in the meantime, the mobile passport app is getting two new locations: San Jose and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
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New Nexus phones are right around the corner... which means it's a pretty great time to pick up the current models with a sweet discount. B&H Photo, Best Buy, and Newegg are all offering dramatic price cuts on the LG Nexus 5X and the Huawei Nexus 6P. Here's a breakdown of this weekend's deals:Nexus 5X - note that different colors have different discounts. The best deal is the white or black 32GB version for $269.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
Has it already been three years since the original Chromecast came out? My, how the time flies when you're streaming video. Google marked the occasion on the Google Store's Plus page with the nifty animation below, but there aren't any promotional deals. Not that you really need them - it's $35, for cryin' out loud.
Niantic's Pokémon GO is something of a dichotomy. I've never seen such a deeply flawed, broken game (with such poor support!) remain in such high demand. This weekend France, the last of the major Western European markets without entry to the augmented reality game, finally gets access to it in the Play Store. France follows Germany, the UK, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and many, many European countries smaller than it in terms of both size and population - it's not clear why France had to wait so long, but at least they're in good company. Update: as a commenter pointed out, the company delayed the release following the latest terror attack in France.
Prisma, a new photo app that's been quite popular over on iOS, was in beta on Android and then transitioned to a non-functional state before we could even report on it. But that's okay: it's out of beta now and on the Play Store. The app applies a series of "artistic" filters to users' photos, then allows them to share on Facebook, Instagram, or the other usual suspects via the Android share menu. Prisma is free and available on Android 4.1 and up.
If there's one thing the last few months have taught us, it's that savvy consumers need never pay full price for a Samsung flagship. Hardly a week goes by when we don't see some new low on the Galaxy S7 or its Edgy brother, and this week's deal is courtesy of eBay. That's where you can find a Galaxy S7 Duos (that's the dual-SIM version popular outside the US) for just 9.99, the lowest price we've seen yet on any new dual-SIM S7 variant.
Motorola's latest cell phone efforts have been less than stellar, but their watches remain some of the best Android Wear devices around... if you can get over the flat tire look. Today DailySteals is offering the second-generation Moto 360 for as little as 9.99, an impressive half off the list price for the cheapest model. There are a couple of caveats, however: one, they're refurbished. Two, you can have any color you want, so long as you want black.