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Android Auto gets another navigation alternative to Google Maps
The latest update to Yandex.Maps offers Android Auto support, but it only works in Russia
Google Maps is generally pretty darn great, but it's always good to have alternatives. There have been a variety of new navigation tools for the Android Auto system over the last few months, including Waze, TomTom, and Gaia, all taking advantage of new third-party API options. The latest is Yandex.Maps, the popular mapping app from Russia-based Yandex.
Asus upgrades its ROG gaming phone with a faster CPU and a color rear display
The ROG Phone 5s and 5s Pro will be released next month
Asus' bombastic ROG Phone 5 is only five months old, but it's already getting a mid-cycle refresh. Say hello to the ROG Phone 5s and 5s Pro, which look very nearly identical to the original. That's because they are: aside from a slight bump with the latest Snapdragon 888+ chipset and a marginally improved 360hz touch sampling rate on their 144Hz AMOLED screens, they're pretty much the same. The 5s sticks with the decorative dot matrix RGB graphics on the rear, while the 5s Pro (above) upgrades the black-and-white rear screen from the ROG 5 Ultimate to a new color OLED display.
Google kicked a FOSS app off the Play Store for linking to its own website
Google isn't messing around when it comes to payment processing
While the Play Store is generally the more accepting and pervasive of the two big mobile application platforms, it still needs a fair amount of moderation to keep out the riff-raff. Malware, spyware, annoying apps that put things like [Free Download] in the title, it's all got to go. But it looks like Google is getting more aggressive in enforcing its more general developer terms, especially when it comes to payments. Case in point: Language Transfer.
Samsung accidentally shares the unannounced Galaxy S21 FE all over Instagram
There's still no official confirmation of this highly anticipated phone
The Galaxy S20 Fan Edition ("FE" for short) was one of the best values in smartphones last year, and a follow-up to this lower-priced variant is highly anticipated. We've seen a few leaks of the phone so far, but the latest one comes straight from the horse's mouth. The horse is Samsung, if you're wondering.
How to deal with the new Chromecast's tiny storage space
Google's choice to use only 8GB of storage on the Chromecast with Google TV is creating some headaches
Google's latest iteration of the Chromecast isn't really a Chromecast, at least in the sense of the original design. It's a tiny hockey puck dongle running a full version of the Android TV operating system (with the Google TV interface on top of it). It's a very cool, compact little piece of technology, but it looks like Google's efforts to keep the hardware small and cheap are creating some unforeseen issues.
My Friend Pedro lands on Android as a slingshot-based platformer, and it's pretty good
It's a new mobile-optimized game, not a port of the original
My Friend Pedro is a Devolver Digital game focusing on tight, visceral combat, stylized visuals, and a trippy hallucinogenic story. And because that describes about 95% of Devolver Digital games: this is the one with a banana in it. The game got rave reviews when it released on PC and consoles back in 2019, and now there's a mobile version coming to Android.
Realme's MagSafe clone shows what it's capable of in new video
The tech is called MagDart, and it's designed for rapid charging
Look, MagSafe is some cool stuff. A collection of interchangeable accessories that instantly clamps on with magnets, including wireless charging? Hell yeah, I'm not made of stone. It's not enough to actually make me switch to an iPhone (he said, dodging disapproving glances from his Pixel 5), but I can't deny that it's a fantastic idea. Fantastic enough that it's surprising it took this long for someone to brazenly rip it off. That someone is Realme, with its recently-leaked Realme Flash phone. GSMArena reports that the Flash will be a fairly typical high-end model, with its biggest differentiator being the "MagDart" system, with integrated magnetics in the rear of the body for attaching a Qi wireless charger.Reportedly the manufacturer will offer two choices in chargers: a small puck-shaped charger that more or less matches Apple's MagSafe with 15 watts of wireless charging, and a massive brick with a built-in cooling fan. Exactly how fast this version will charge isn't yet known, though the source claims it will be "the fastest magnetic charger in the world" at its launch.[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/realmeIndia/status/1419545519127367682[/EMBED_TWITTER]Other details on the phone indicate it's a flagship: Snapdragon 888 processor, 12GB of RAM, up to 256GB of storage, three rear cameras of indeterminate quality. The screen size isn't known, but it'll use curved glass and a "hole punch" camera in the top left corner. Realme is currently teasing the phone on Twitter, so we should get more official details (hopefully including launch markets) before too long.There are a few other options if you're looking for a MagSafe-style system for Android. Moment makes some cases for the Galaxy S21 that are compatible with MagSafe chargers and accessories, and there are some stick-on magnets available. Neither are particularly elegant.
The setup app for Google TV is now in the Play Store
You probably won't ever need to manually download it
When you first turn on the new Chromecast with Google TV, you're put through an extremely simple setup process: choose your language, connect to Wi-Fi, log in to Google, select your default streaming apps. There's not much to it, but just in case Google wants to change things around, the tool is now on the Play Store.
New owners infect Mi Control Center and other apps with insane ads and subscription prices
$30 a month seems a bit steep for a notification shade
Read update
A company snapping up a popular Android developer can be a precursor to shenanigans. And shenanigans aren't anything new for Treydev Inc, a Romanian developer which we've reported on before. The dev makes popular custom user interfaces that mimic the behavior of Android device maker skins. Earlier this year Treydev's most popular apps were switched over to the developer account for ZipoApps, a holding company with a few dozen apps on the Play Store of varying function and quality.
Google will start enforcing its new anti-spam Play Store policies in September
Your Play Store search results should start to look a whole lot cleaner
Read update
As a blogger focused on Android, I see a lot of spammy app names in the Play Store. Apps with extraneous descriptors trying to pop up in more searches, apps that include the name of other, more popular apps, or even (shudder) emoji in the names. Someone at Google is as tired of all that as I am, because there's a new set of guidelines for developers publishing apps in the Play Store.
Fan-favorite video editor leaps from iPhone to Android
Videoleap is free to use, but you'll have to pay up quite a bit to get the full version
Do you take videos on your phone? Do you subsequently need to remove and/or rearrange portions of those videos, along with more subtle changes? Do you find the app that came with your phone to achieve this purpose underwhelming? Then You might want to check out Videoleap. Previously restricted to iOS, this video editor comes from the same people who developed the Motionleap photo animator.
The Google TV app now supports YouTube TV, which it didn't before for some reason
Also Google stretched out the interface a little bit
Google's TV-focused branding is kind of weird. So when I say Google TV, am I talking about A) the short-lived precursor to Android TV, B) the new interface that runs over Android TV (but isn't exactly the same thing), C) the thing that let you buy and rent TV episodes via Google Play, or D) the new app that also lets you do that, but kinda sorta controls Google TV (the one from B)?
OnePlus is done with Android 11 betas for some 2020 phones as Android 12 approaches
The final beta updates for the OnePlus 8, 8 Pro, and 8T are now available
Owners of OnePlus 8 phones, I hope you've been enjoying the beta versions of software updates that have been posted for the last few months. Because after today, you don't get any more. OnePlus has announced that its software updates for the 8 series have gotten to an acceptably stable state, so the newest beta will be the last one. From now on the software will be sent out in the standard OTA only.
LineageOS comes to the Samsung Galaxy S10 and Note10 families
Other newbies include the Razer Phone 2, FairPhone 2, and various flavors of Xiaomi and Poco
LineageOS is the custom ROM version of Android for when you throw your phone's original software away and say "screw it, I'm gonna load my OWN Android, with blackjack and hookers." We keep an eye on Lineage to let you know when it's come to new devices, but these are frequent enough (and sometimes inconsequential enough) that ain't nobody got time to do them one by one anymore. Here's a bunch of new devices that have received their first builds over the last six weeks.
Google Keep is great, and if you disagree, you're wrong. At this point I'm torn between my love for this basic but incredibly handy note-taking utility, and my terror that Google will yank it away in favor of refocusing on Tasks and making me update it solely via Assistant. I'm getting a little less nervous after seeing a new Keep feature pop up: background images!
Google gives its cookie replacement FLoC a more precise timeline
The current plan is to transition Chrome users by the end of 2023
Last month Google revised its target timeframe for FLoC, the new privacy-focused replacement technology for advertising and other tracking cookies, into 2023. Now the company has a more precise timeline of events for its multi-staged plan to implement the Federated Learning of Cohorts tool for Chrome, which is now in the early stages of testing.
Grab a Sony OLED TV with Android TV for $700 off, its lowest price ever
The Bravia A8H is just $1200 at Amazon and Best Buy
Android TV is great. OLED TVs are great. If you want to get them both in the same package, your options are limited: the only widely-available brand with OLED options that also uses Android TV as its smart TV interface is Sony. Today you can grab a rare discount on a 55-inch Sony TV, packing the Android TV interface built in, at both Amazon and Best Buy. The 55-inch Sony Bravia A8H, a 4K OLED television, retails for about $1900. That's considerably higher than comparable OLED TVs from LG and Vizio ... but then, Sony TVs tend to have quite a markup. Today Best Buy and Amazon are selling the 55-inch A8H for $1199.99, the lowest price we've seen for this particular model by a whopping $300 margin.
You can typically find a 55-inch OLED from a cheaper brand for around $1000-1100, if you're patient. So this deal really only makes sense if 1) you want one right away or 2) you want one that runs Android TV out of the box, saving you the cost of adding a kick-ass NVIDIA SHIELD set top box to your home entertainment center. Even so, it's a pretty fantastic discount if you're a fan of Sony as a brand, Android TV as a platform, and OLED as a display tech.Buy: Amazon, Best Buy
After 3 years of betas, K-9 Mail gets an update with tons of new features
It's not up on the Play Store, but you can get it on APK Mirror right now
While most Android users are satisfied with Gmail, power users look for something a little more tailored to their needs. One of the most popular alternatives is K-9 Mail, an open source client focused on interoperability and easily handling multiple accounts. The last time the app had a stable release was way back in September of 2018, working on a beta for an extensive overhaul in the meantime. Yesterday the stable update to 5.8 finally dropped.
The YouTube Android app has more installs than there are people alive on Earth
It's only the second app to ever reach the 10 billion mark
Wow, y'all really like to watch videos on YouTube. Google's Android video player app, which was first publicly available way back on the 1.0 launch version of the very first Android phone, has now been downloaded from the Play Store over ten billion times. Quite a lot of that figure has to be from before it was even the Play Store.
Google reminds you the Android Auto app has a beta program — have you signed up yet?
Try it out to get the latest tweaks
Google's car platform, Android Auto, gets updates just like the rest of Android. The company is now letting users try out beta updates to the system, delivered via the Android Auto app on the Play Store. The beta version should run on any car stereo that's Android Auto-capable.