Shawn De Cesari
Contributing since December, 2013
-
119articles
About Shawn De Cesari
Shawn is a software engineer and a mobile tech degenerate by night. His daily drivers are a Galaxy S7 Edge and an iPhone 6S Plus.
Latest Articles
Owners of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge on America's #2 carrier are in for a new sweet treat. It would appear that AT&T has begun rolling out a Marshmallow update for both devices. In addition to the host of goodies provided by Google and Samsung, there are also some welcome omissions from the Death Star in terms of bloatware. The update removes Keeper, Facebook Messenger, and AT&T Live, and moves AT&T Mail and YP Mobile from the permanent install to "virtual" preload, meaning you should now be able to uninstall the apps if you so desire.
For a long time now, Google has made factory images available with each new system update for Nexus devices, but the problem was, you had to have an unlocked bootloader in order to flash them. Not anymore. Starting today, Google now offers full OTA images for all currently supported devices. These are not the incremental OTAs which sometimes take weeks to fully roll out. These are full OTA images that you can simply sideload with adb in recovery regardless of whether your bootloader is locked or not.
In a move sure to piss off owners of the 2014 Moto X on Verizon, the carrier has released a Marshmallow update for the Droid Maxx 2. There was a fair amount of speculation as to whether the phone would get an update to Google's latest OS considering that the device never landed on Motorola's official list. Alas, Verizon and the OEM seem to have come through.
If you're an owner of a Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge on Verizon, you'll want to check for an update tomorrow. According to the carrier, an OTA is on the way and there looks to be more than just bug fixes and security patches. According to the support documents, here's a list of what we can expect:
If you're a regular user of Instagram, you may soon notice some nice changes to its look. The photo sharing service appears to be quietly rolling out a tweaked UI to some users, likely via a server-side switch. There hasn't been any official announcement from the company yet, but on the surface it looks like a lot of the blue has been toned down in favor of black, and there are new icons for the photo controls.
When I was in my 20s, I was all about tinkering with things. I strived to always be at maximum geekiness. I built my own computers, it was Windows and Linux all the way, it was all about how much I could squeeze out of my tech. Then I got older. I'm 36 now, and as time has gone on, I've moved away from all that. These days, I prefer my tech to just work and actually allow me to get stuff done. I don't really care about the inner workings of things as much as I used to, or how much geek cred a particular piece of tech gives me.
Following on the heels of other carriers, Verizon has now announced its own deal for customers looking to hook themselves, and someone else, up with either a Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 Edge. If this is you, then you can head on over to Verizon's website to get down to business.
If there's one area where Android mobile hotspot tethering has been lacking over the years, it's been in the inability to share your phone's Wi-Fi connection with other devices. Samsung has apparently realized this as well, and has included a nifty little feature on the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge which allows you to do just that.
It's that time of the week again, namely Update Wednesday. With that in mind, there's a new update to Google+ which should bring a smile to many a person's face.
It would appear that our recent editorial, which opines about things iOS does better than Android, has scored us some points in Cupertino. Today, the moment you've all been waiting for has finally arrived. Yes, you guessed it. Android Police is now available through Apple News!
I've used Android as my main mobile platform for almost six years now. My first smartphone was a Motorola CLIQ XT that I bought back in May, 2010. It ran Cupcake and though, in retrospect, the phone was a bargain basement toy, it paved my way into the Android world. As a fun experiment, I decided to ditch Google's OS entirely for two weeks and use Apple's products exclusively to see how crazy it would make me. I have owned iOS devices in the past, but I've never forced myself to convert. These days I generally flip between my Nexus 6P and my iPhone 6S Plus depending on my mood that day.
Read update
If you go to the Google Store's Nexus 9 page, you'll see that it clearly shows Verizon compatibility for the tablet's LTE variant. The problem is that this claim simply isn't true. Last December, a thread was started on XDA regarding the issue, in which a few people showed that putting a Verizon SIM into the tablet made it exhibit some rather odd behavior. Specifically: it didn't work. Over a year after launch, there is still no fix. After some extensive testing, it appears this probably isn't Verizon's fault, but more likely a software or hardware issue that needs to be resolved by Google, HTC, or Qualcomm.
Ever since the Nexus 5, Sprint seems to be ever more accepting of unlocked devices designed to work on its network. As of right now, there are nine unlocked, SIM-free phones that Sprint allows, and that number will likely grow with each passing year. While this is a great thing, there are definitely some obstacles with getting a SIM card which, in turn, can make activating one of these devices a less-than-pleasurable experience.
If you're an LG G4 owner on Verizon, you may have heard about all the drama surrounding the phone's "touchscreen fix update" that has since rolled out on every other US carrier. Back on October 9, Big Red began rolling out this OTA as firmware VS98612A, but it was pulled two days later due to a major bug affecting the device's ability to receive push notifications while connected to Wi-Fi. A month-and-a-half later, Verizon and LG seem to have gotten their stuff together, and have now released a new OTA which shouldn't have the same problems that the original 12A update had. In addition to the long-awaited touchscreen fixes, people are also reporting that this update includes a new slow motion option in the camera app, and unlinks the ringer, notification, and system volumes a-la the LG G3.
If you're in Australia, a Telstra customer, and own a Nexus 6P, today is a good day for you. As we reported earlier, the Nexus 6P has been suffering from widespread issues connecting to Telstra's LTE network. It would appear that the OTA to fix this is now rolling out.
Read update
Soon after the announcements of Google's 2015 Nexus phones, it came to light that both of them would have band 12 on T-Mobile's network disabled at launch pending certification from the carrier. It now appears that the wait is over, at least for the Nexus 6P.
The big news of today was, of course, Google's announcement of Android 6.0 / Marshmallow. However, it's still going to be quite a while before we start seeing it widely distributed on devices not called Nexus. Now that we have that out of the way, AT&T's Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 variant can finally say goodbye to KitKat. Following Verizon's release of a similar OTA last week, Samsung and Big Blue have finally released an update for the mammoth-sized tablet, bumping it to Android 5.1.1 / Lollipop.
Of our many jobs here at Android Police, one is to make our readers' lives easier when we can. With that in mind, here's a roundup of all the OTA links for the latest security update for Nexus and GPE devices.
Are you tired of having to copy text, flip to the Translate app, paste the text, copy the translated text, then paste it back into whatever you're working on? It appears Google has you covered, as long as you're running Android 6.0. Taking advantage of Marshmallow's new contextual selection functionality, it appears that the latest version of the Google Translate app has added the ability to translate words on the fly from text fields that follow the new Text Selection behavior.
The relationship between Hangouts and SMS/MMS messaging has been a long, gut-wrenching story full of danger at every turn. Although Hangouts 4.0 was a massive improvement over every previous version, it would appear that all is still not well on the MMS side of things.