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Hangouts users, gather 'round. There's an important update that will likely make this the most popular messaging platform in the world. Ha, I kid! That ship has sailed long ago. But there is actually a small nifty update to Hangouts that will make it easier to catch up on active chats.
Sony has been showcasing a few concept projects for about a year. These include the Xperia Ear which has already materialized and the Xperia Projector that we first saw at MWC last year. The projector is becoming real at this year's MWC, with a new name and more details and specs.
We interrupt our MWC reporting now to bring you some Very Important Breaking News That Couldn't Wait Any Second Longer™. (Read: Rita got bored of spec sheets and wanted to have some light fun.)
Cricket giveth and Cricket taketh away. It was only a month away that it increased data allotments on its plans, and now the wireless MVNO is following in the footsteps of the bigger networks with a few announcements, which in this case, might be a little to the detriment of its customers.
Beside the new Moto G5 and G5 Plus, Lenovo is introducing a few tablets at MWC this year: the Tab 4 Series. And a "series" this is, because we're talking about 4 different tablets, without factoring in LTE and non-LTE versions, storage options, and colors. There's the regular Tab 4 in both 8" and 10" variants, then there's the Tab 4 Plus also in 8" and 10" variants.
Is there anything we don't know or haven't seen from the Galaxy S8 yet? I highly doubt it. Samsung's next flagship has been leaked, again, and again, and that's just a selection of the news we reported, which were already curated from the dozens of leaks that have been flooding the web over the past weeks. Yet ironically, the more advanced these leaked devices get and the better their cameras are, the more the leaks themselves seem like they're coming from a 2MP camera from 2008. Can someone spare a hundred bucks to buy these leaksters a decent pocket camera?
I don't know how Sony hasn't run out of alphabet letters and rectangular designs by now. Year after year, or more like half year after half year, the company churns another phone that distinctly looks like almost every Sony phone we've seen to date (which might be a good or a bad thing, depending on how much you like the design language) and that has another letter or noun added in the name. I'm honestly confused, but I understand that it has its appeal for a small subset of people, so I'll put my judgment aside and carry on telling you about these new Sony phones announced at MWC today.
After the new P10 and P10 Plus, Huawei used its time on stage at Mobile World Congress to unveil the follow-up to its Huawei Watch. And just like we suspected from the previous leaks, this new watch is... nothing like the first. It's chunkier, sportier, blacker, and has a busier look and feel.
Beside the LG G6 and Galaxy S8, one of the most leaked devices in the past couple of weeks has been the Huawei P10 (and P10 Plus), the follow-up to last year's loved and respected P9 and P9 Plus. After seeing it in small renders that showed all its potential colors then catching it in a better resolution, we now have the official device in front of us, ceramics, sandblast, colors, and all.
The world is all eyes and ears today for one of the most important events that take place each year. Oh, you think I'm talking about MWC in Barcelona? Ha, neeeeerd! No, I'm talking about the 89th Academy Awards ceremony which celebrates the best in film for the past year. But for Google, the real award belongs to you and your shots and creations.
The Google Store keeps running promos on the Chromecast, Chromecast Audio, and sometimes the Google Home, but this has to be one of the best we've seen yet. For the past few weeks, you could get $15 off when buying a Google Home and Chromecast, but that deal wasn't even good enough for us to post. Now, however, you can take $35 off the combo, essentially making the Chromecast free.
Talking to a company's customer support rep isn't often a pleasurable experience, and sometimes it's made even more automated and less personal when getting replies from a nondescript "support" or "help" social media or email account without a face or name. That's an issue you could face on Twitter, when multiple reps are in charge of a company's account and presence, but depending on the company's policy, they either hide in anonymity or have to remember to sign messages with their initials or names to seem more approachable to users.
I'm a fan of Synology. I've had their DS416Play DiskStation for a while (review coming) and I never fathomed the idea of having my own "server" but they made the process as simple and fast as possible so that even someone like me, with no background whatsoever in server management, could be up and running in a matter of minutes.
This week was slightly different for the one game + one app 10-cent deals on the Play Store. The game, Guns'n'Glory Premium, dropped its price first and unlike the majority of previous deals, it happened worldwide. The app, however, was nowhere to be seen until now, and ta-da, it's Tiny Planet FX Pro. Womp Womp.
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- Graham Wheeler has posted a few updates on Twitter to celebrate that "Nougat has rolled out to HTC 10 devices in the UK, Russia, the Middle East and Turkey," but unfortunately he also said that the update has been paused in mainland Europe due to a technical issue that HTC is looking into and trying to correct, and that he expects the roll-out to continue in February.
About a week ago, we learned that the Android 7.0 Nougat would be released for the HTC 10 in Europe within 2 weeks. And right in the middle of that timeframe, the roll out has started.
SwiftKey is celebrating a milestone by reaching support for 150 languages. Think that's too many? The Ethnologue says there are more than 7000 languages spoken in the world today, so 150 will seem like a teeny number by comparison, except that it should cover a huge portion of the Earth's population because many of the other languages have less than 1000 native speakers.
Gather 'round folks, I have a Play Store discount for you and this is one you can all benefit from. Yes, for once, this deal isn't limited to a few European countries plus Mexico, Brazil, Australia, and maybe India. Nope, this deal is worldwide, or at least it appears to be valid in more than 25 countries that I checked going from Indonesia (IDR 1500) to Bulgaria (BGN 0.20), Switzerland (CHF 0.20), South Africa (ZAR 1.50), Lebanon (LBP 200), Canada (CAD 0.10), the United States (USD 0.10), and more.
Android Wear 2.0 is sure getting a lot of support from developers. Maybe it's the fact that the old way of installing apps on the watch (by bundling the small watch's APK file with the main phone app's APK) won't work with Wear 2.0. Maybe it's the long developer preview period that gave teams and individuals the time to update their apps. And maybe it's Google incentivizing everyone to get their apps on Wear 2.0. Who knows?! The end result is that a lot of apps over the past couple of weeks have been updated to work with Android Wear 2.0.
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- Here's a more complete list of games that support haptic feedback:
NVIDIA isn't letting down its guard. One month after the company brought Nougat and plenty of new features in an OTA update to its just-released SHIELD TV and a couple of weeks after it did the same for the original 2015 SHIELD TV, it's back with more updates and enhancements for these two Android TV set-top boxes.
Of all the stock smartwatch frames to use, Audiobooks... of all the stock frames! They had to pick the Samsung Galaxy Gear, a discontinued smartwatch that runs Tizen OS and has nothing to do with Android Wear 2.0. A Samsung Gear Live would have been slightly better, because even if it's never getting Android Wear 2.0, at least it runs Android Wear so it's in the same... Galaxy. But let's not let the mistake of the graphics and marketing team at Audiobooks.com take away the spotlight from the prowess of their developer team.The latter has updated the Android app to be fully compatible with Android Wear 2.0, less than 10 days after the platform's official release. This lets users launch the Audiobooks app straight from their watches, browse books, listen directly from the watch without a phone connection, and control playback and volume.Here's the full changelog so you can check everything that's new, followed by a link to the app on the Play Store if you also want to grab it on your phone. Audiobooks.com should already be accessible on the Play Store on your Android Wear 2.0 watch.