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5 best Christmas game events you can play on Android
Get in the holiday spirit with these festive mobile game events
The holiday season is in full swing on the Play Store, with a myriad of great games celebrating the season with Christmas-themed events. Some Christmas events are overt and embrace the classic iconography you'd expect. In contrast, others celebrate with more reserved winter themes, which tend to be more grounded in their respective worlds. These Christmassy events are here to bring old and new players together to celebrate with some cool extra content. Here are our favorites that stand out from the crowd, providing quality winter themes everyone can enjoy while playing on their favorite hardware released this year.
Best Buy's Last-Minute Sales event drops tons of new gift-worthy deals
For those who waited far too long, Best Buy's helping you out this week
In a down-to-the-wire move that's sure to save a ton of last-minute shoppers from disappointment this weekend, the Best Buy Last-Minute Sales event just kicked off today, and it brought a bunch of new gift-worthy offers just ripe for the picking.
3 reasons not to wait for Black Friday and start shopping now
Don't let missed opportunities and other factors ruin the fun this season
In the past, you always waited until Black Friday sales to do your holiday shopping. You knew that the best offers were only available after Thanksgiving, and the weekend that followed brought with it amazing deals that would only be around for a limited time. However, the paradigm shift from brick and mortar shopping to online purchasing over the past few years has played a big part in changing the way Black Friday plays out now.
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If you're looking for a quick way to get into the holiday spirit, music's probably your best bet. Sure, you could flip on the radio or find a playlist on Spotify, but where's the magic in that? If you're looking to create some holiday fun of your own, Google's Blob Opera has returned for another round of caroling.
YouTube Music isn't wasting any time getting into the holiday spirit
All I want for Christmas is less Christmas music
YouTube Music has been steadily growing and adding new features, and lately it seems like it's been giving us just a ton of new playlists. Today some users woke to find an unexpected playlist gift waiting for them for the holidays — and we're not even at Thanksgiving yet.
15 holiday-themed apps, games, live wallpapers, and watch faces for Christmas 2020
Here are a few titles to get you in the holiday spirit
Thanks to the limited filters on the Play Store, it can be challenging to find quality Christmas-themed apps, and since Christmas is right around the corner, I figured I'd go ahead and collect a few of the better apps, games, live wallpapers, and watch faces currently available on the Google Play Store. I have 15 listings in total with have been hand-picked by yours truly. So if you are looking for some fantastic Android-specific apps that sport a Christmas theme, you've clicked on the correct roundup.
Dead Zebra's Christmas-themed Android figurine is now available — with a catch. You can order up one Santa Claus-dressed bugdroid (sack of gifts and glassed included), but it won't actually ship until the week of Christmas, and it's guaranteed to arrive after the date itself. That gives you a full year to put it in the closet and get ready for next year.
Color in a sledding penguin with new Google Duo doodle drawings
Plus, become a reindeer or tree with new holiday-themed face filters
Those video chats with your kids and their friends or relatives — via your phone or tablet, of course — are about to get plenty more festive with new AR face filters and some new color-in drawings to doodle on. The new doodle-able drawings are courtesy of Google Duo's relatively new family mode where the drawer can create works of art and the recipient can watch as they see it come to fruition, live on the line.
St. Nick masks up for Christmas in Google's 2020 Santa Tracker update
Just like all the good little boys and girls
COVID-19 may have thrown a wrench into people's holiday plans, but Google's Santa Tracker is back to keep us company while we're stuck at home. And this year, Google has given it a simple modification that makes it feel very 2020: gifting a pair of purple masks to Santa and Mrs. Claus.
Waze adds tons of Santa stuff for Christmas, just in time for you to not drive to Grandma's house this year
We're still in the middle of a pandemic, guys
Waze is picking up a little bit of Christmas fun to go with the upcoming holiday season. Until the end of the month, drivers can take advantage of a new holiday theme loaded with three fun features: Santa's voice for navigation, a "Santa Mood" you can share with other folks on the road, and you can even drive around maps as Santa's present-laden sleigh.
Holiday-themed Nest Hello Doorbell ringtones are back, with brand-new Kwanzaa chimes added
Greet delivery people with some festive cheer
Google has made a charming habit of enabling special Nest Hello ringtones for holiday seasons, and that's continuing this year. We got some spooky Halloween sounds not long ago, and now it's time to greet visitors with some festive-themed chimes. In addition to the options that were available this time last year, Google has added a brand-new Kwanzaa category.
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Christmas Eve is only 20 days out, and as such, Google has teamed up with Santa's Elves just in time to spread the festive spirit around the world. Google Assistant will offer you fresh broadcasts from the North Pole Newscast every day, and the Elves have polished up the Google Santa Tracker, which lets you explore Santa's village starting today.
Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, jolly Kwanzaa, or content December. I'll let you pick the greeting you identify with most. During this time of year it's lovely to focus on the things that bring us together, and one thing I think we can all agree on here at AP is that free stuff is awesome. In that spirit of awesomeness, I'd like to give each of you a small gift to celebrate Christmas (I'm doing the giving here, so I think I get to pick the occasion).
You know the season to be jolly is upon us when the Google Doodle has turned white and snowy. Another sign of the Christmas season's arrival we look forward to each year is when we start tracking the world's busiest Amazon delivery driver Santa Claus's progress in delivering presents with the Google Santa Tracker.
Now that Christmas is so close that you can almost taste it many companies are running giveaways on AP to take part in the holiday spirit. They are offering some excellent deals and prizes, which would be a shame to miss out on. In an effort to collect every giveaway we are currently running in one place, we have put together this special holiday giveaway roundup for your convenience. As new giveaways are published, they will be added here, so make sure to keep an eye on this post in particular.
The Android faithful will know that Andrew Bell's Dead Zebra has long made various Android vinyl figures. They look like businessmen, skeletons, astronauts, and all kinds of neat stuff. Never before has there been a holiday ornament version, though. Dead Zebra will sell you a special edition Android mini ornament tomorrow (December 12).
Google's Santa Tracker and Santa's Village are both making a return this year, with a couple of new additions. This year Santa has decided to enable location sharing in Google Maps, giving you another way to follow his location come Christmas. This year's app seems mostly the same as last year's, with a minor bump in version to 5.3.0 from 5.1.4, but it's available now for your kids (or your inner kid) to enjoy.
Christmas is over, but if you're anything like us then the holiday spirit is still with you and you refuse to let it go this easily. If that's the case and you're still huddled indoors with family and kids, you might want to wish a Merry Christmas to your Google Home or to Assistant on your phone. The response, as is often the case with Google, will be a little, uhm, Easter egg.
Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays AP readers. I can't tell you what a pleasure it is working at Android Police. One of my favorite parts of the job is interacting with all of you. Without you guys, there wouldn't be any point to what we do. More importantly, there wouldn't be any money, and as much as we enjoy our work, I don't think any of us would work here for free, except Corbin, he still doesn't know the rest of us get paid (shhhh).
Google has added a few entertaining Easter eggs to Google Assistant since its release, including fully interactive quiz games. In the spirit of the season, a few new holiday-related commands have made their way to Google Assistant.