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Verizon and Motorola are announcing the latest entries in their long-running DROID series in Chicago today. The DROID Turbo 2 is the new flagship, and its "shatter-proof" screen is the clear highlight, but the partners also announced an updated version of the popular DROID Maxx from 2013. The new DROID Maxx 2 is a mid-range device that shares a lot of design DNA with the Moto X Play revealed earlier this year. It will go on sale on Thursday on Verizon's website and in retail stores with a price of $16 a month - that's $384 over a two-year period.
Accessories for the new Nexus phones are already available (with varying degrees of functionality), but for some reason the Play Store is a little behind. The most expensive case for the Nexus 6P wasn't available for purchase until today. You can pick up the Adopted book-style case in Carbon (black) or Amber (brown). Either one will cost you $49.99, and they're shipping in 1-2 days.
When HTC announced its stand-alone Re sports camera, more than one commenter wondered what the company was doing leaving its smartphone comfort zone for an industry that's already dominated by a single player. Though the Re camera is decent enough on its own and the design is completely unique, it's not enough to sway potential buyers away from GoPro and Sony cameras, which have more features and an established reputation. Apparently someone at HTC agrees, because the camera is being discounted by a whopping 75%.
Those of you who've been waiting with bated breath to get your hands on LG's dual-screen phone won't have to wait much longer. Both AT&T and T-Mobile will be carrying the V10, and both of them will have it available for purchase later this week. AT&T customers can buy the phone starting tomorrow, though it won't actually ship or be available in stores until November 6th (next Friday). T-Mobile customers can buy one on Wednesday, October 28th, but it won't be in stores until Friday.
Remember Samsung's Smart View app? It's OK if you don't - it's basically a mix of a remote control and some Chromecast-style functionality, exclusively for use with both Samsung phones/tablets and Samsung smart televisions. It's the kind of cross-platform"synergy" that gets a lot of play in press releases and on-stage product reveals, but is rarely used by actual customers. The app listing in the Play Store is plagued with negative reviews complaining of frequent bugs and infrequent updates.
The LG G4 has a lot going for it, including a confirmed update to Android Marshmallow. And if you're in the market to buy one for the Verizon network, it currently has some fantastic price discounts. A reader tipped us the following combination of coupon codes and rebates, so follow along:
Electronics and cars are a tricky combination. While the advantages of systems like in-dash navigation and text-to-speech SMS reading are obvious, every extra gadget that travels with you while you're driving has the potential to be a dangerous distraction. Google may be looking to solve that problem, at least as it applies to wearable devices like Android Wear watches. A recent patent published by the USPTO indicates that Google has developed (or at least conceptualized) a system for detecting whether a wearable user is actively driving the vehicle or merely a passenger.
It was only a little over a week ago that we heard that LG was planning a surprisingly quick update to Android 6.0 for its flagship G4 phone, beginning with Poland and expanding out to other territories. We haven't heard anything about an official rollout just yet, but someone's managed to get their hands on a Marshmallow build for the international unlocked version of the G4, model number H815. A KDZ file appeared on the forum yesterday, and it's been adapted into flashable files for users with the TWRP custom recovery already.
Welcome to the latest entry in our Bonus Round series, wherein we tell you all about the new Android games of the day that we couldn't get to during our regular news rounds. Consider this a quick update for the dedicated gamers who can't wait for our bi-weekly roundups, and don't want to wade through a whole day's worth of news just to get their pixelated fix. Today we've got a stylish puzzle game, a south-of-the-border runner, an opera-inspired sliding puzzle, a new Noodlecake runner, a Warhammer 40K game-book, and a ported bullet hell shooter. Without further ado:
We already knew that Apple is working on an Android app for its new Apple Music service (the descendant of Beats Music, which Apple acquired along with the headphone maker last year). We've also heard that it's due sometime this fall. If screenshots posted by German site MobileGeeks can be believed, work on the Android version of the Apple Music app is progressing nicely. We can't verify the shots, but they seem to line up with Apple Music on iOS.
This generation of Nexus phones is having some teething troubles, or at least the accessories are. A few weeks after the first batch of Nexus 6P cases appeared to block the laser auto-focus module on the rear of the phone, some early cases for the Nexus 5X are showing similar problems. Redditor Brucensb showed off a photo of a Spigen-branded Ultra Hybrid case that completely covers the microphone on the bottom edge of the phone, the primary mic used when making a call. Oops.
Right now there are three Android phones and four Android tablets within arm's reach of my desk, and another half dozen or so in my closet. (It's OK, I don't have a problem. This is my job.) If you're in a similar situation, you can put some of those gadgets to use: they work great as remotes for set-top boxes like Android TV or Roku, or you can cobble them together into a sort of poor man's Sonos multi-room speaker system. Here's one more option: turn it into a home security camera.
If you're looking for a pair of Bluetooth headphones that are designed specifically for working out and other active pursuits, you couldn't do much better than the BlueBuds X from JayBird. The company has released a second generation of the headphones, but the originals are still quite good, and they're available with respectable discounts. Right now Amazon has them for as low as $89.99, at least if you buy from the right vendor, Amazon's listing (close to the top) on this page. That's the lowest price for the headphones that we've seen yet.There's a bit of a catch: that particular vendor, which is selling the white version of the Gen 1 BlueBuds X, is out of stock right now. But you can still pay and wait for stock to return, and Amazon Prime shipping is available when they come in. If you don't want to wait (or you don't want the white model), the regular listing also has the black version on sale for $101.99 with Prime shipping, a little less than $70 off of the original retail price. It's also about $80 cheaper than the newer X2 model.
Artem reviewed the BlueBuds X two years ago and found the features and build quality excellent. His only complaints were that it's difficult to tell what the charge level is, and the price... which is pretty much fixed with this discount. It doesn't appear to be a timed sale, either, so the price on the older model might continue to drop in price if you want to wait.Source: Amazon
Words are for losers. As someone who makes a living putting them in a pleasing order, I should know. The future belongs to emojis, tiny, semi-open images that boil the nuances of self-expression down to a series of postage stamps. And at the moment, Apple's iOS has an advantage in that respect: a recent software update gave iPhones and iPads access to new emojis that don't appear on other hardware, like Android. So when Android users can't see the brilliance of a pixel art middle finger and thus miss the subtle meaning behind their iPhone-using friend's text message, the world is poorer for it.
Earlier this week Blackberry's official online store posted a pre-order page for the Priv, a high-end QWERTY slider phone that also happens to be the company's first full Android device. Apparently that was a bit premature - it disappeared after a short time, but not so short that prospective customers didn't balk at the $749 USD starting price. Today the pre-order page is back with a slightly cheaper price: $699. Was the original page an error or did Blackberry see the quick reaction and adjust it down? We couldn't say. The page says the phone will start shipping on November 6th.
If you've been waiting patiently for your top-of-the-line Google flagship phone to arrive, you won't have to wait too much longer. If you haven't been waiting patiently, you probably don't have long to wait either, but you should really be more gracious about it. We've been sent reports from multiple Android Police readers saying that their credit cards have been charged after ordering the Nexus 6P on the Play Store, which typically means that they'll be shipped very soon. At this point, all of them are in the United States.
Hey you, the guy with the New Jersey accent who keeps offering me a small business loan: I hate you. I hate you with a passion that eclipses any love or loathing that I have felt for anything in the mortal world. I hate you and your army of randomly-dialing robots, I hate you and your legions of foreign switchboard operators trying to sucker Americans into possibly illegal and/or phony loans. The multiple times that I've actually gone through your rigamarole claiming to be Archibald Buttz, the owner of a talking dildo emporium called "Buzzwords," has not kept you from calling me on my private cell phone several times a week. The world would be immeasurably improved if you were to step in front of a bus.
Are you enjoying TellTale's latest batch of episodic Android adventure games? Good. They're both coming to an end. For the moment, anyway - the first batch of Tales from the Borderlands episodes (based on and vastly improving the story behind 2K's Borderlands shooter series) is available in full on the PC and consoles right now, and the last episode is scheduled to hit the Android version tomorrow, October 22nd.
Sonos has become the de facto standard for multi-room audio systems, despite the fact that there are now several cheaper (if not better) alternatives. Today it becomes a little better still: those who use Amazon's Prime Music (which is included as a freebie if you've subscribed to Amazon Prime for the free shipping or other benefits) can now stream music directly from the Sonos system. The feature is currently in beta, according to the official Sonos company blog.
The New York Times is nicknamed "The Grey Lady" of the traditional news media. That being the case, they might not be your first guess if you were told to predict which newspaper would dive headfirst into virtual reality. But that appears to be the case: the Times announced today that it's launching a new series of short investigative films intended to be viewed on the new crop of VR headsets that use phones as viewers, like Google Cardboard and Samsung VR. The first entry, "The Displaced," follows refugee children from the Sudan, Ukraine, and Syria. Three films will be published this year with more expected in 2016.