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Google's selling a whole bunch more Pixels now than it was a year ago
Manufacturers are still struggling to fill the void LG left in the budget segment
Despite stiff competition from Apple, Android smartphones remain strong sellers in the North American market, and there's plenty of room for all the big smartphone brands to fight for their piece of the pie. Google's been slowly working to increase its own share, and we've seen more and more people choosing a Pixel over other options. Now the latest Canalys market report sheds some light on Q2 shipments, and shows Google clocking some impressive growth.
The Snapdragon 870-powered Motorola G100 makes its way to the US
Flagship-like performance at a mid-range price
If you haven't been big on the idea of buying a OnePlus phone, the mid-range market might have seemed a little bland as of late. Now Motorola seems to want to shake things up a little with a new contender. After having launched it in several markets around the world, the company is finally bringing its Moto G100 to North America.
OnePlus says it will never sell the base model OnePlus 9 Pro in the US
The company confirms the cheaper phone won't come to the US due to supply constraints
When OnePlus launched the 9 Pro, the company highlighted the $969 starting price for the new phone in an 8GB/128GB "base" model. Unfortunately, it wasn't actually available for purchase in the US at the time, and all you could buy was the more expensive $1,069 version of the phone. In April, OnePlus told us that this base model was still coming, it had simply been delayed. But now, the company has made an about-face, and it has confirmed to us that the 8/128GB base model OnePlus 9 Pro is never coming to the US or Canada.To date, neither OnePlus nor any of its North American retailers or carrier partners have sold the base model of the phone. When we first reached out to OnePlus about the subject in April, an explanation for the delay wasn't provided. However, the company did claim that version would eventually be coming here, a plan that has apparently changed:
Google Meet gets live captions in North America and Latin America
US Americans had to wait for a Google feature, for once
As an international website with a mostly-US staff, covering a US company, we get a lot of commenters telling us how much it sucks that Google's stuff isn't available everywhere immediately. Well today all of you international readers get to thumb your noses at us! Assuming you live in Europe or Asia. And also that you really care about a very specific feature of the Meet video conferencing tool.
The US and Canada are getting the Pixel 5 after everywhere else
And Japan gets the Pixel 4a 5G first
Google's Pixel 5 is official, and the pre-order floodgates have been opened. But this year, there's a bit of a twist when it comes to actual availability: The US and Canada won't be getting the phones first or on the same day as most other markets. In fact, we're getting it last, on October 29th compared to October 15th everywhere else.
LG Velvet coming to North America and elsewhere in the coming weeks
The company told everyone pretty much everything about this phone well before launch
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As we're used to for the past several years now, LG leaves very few secrets on the table about the phones it's going to launch. Indeed, the new Velvet phone was teased quite early on as the successor to the longstanding G-series. Tomorrow, it goes on pre-sale in South Korea and we're now getting a clearer look at what we can expect out of the phone.
The smartphone market isn't what it used to be anymore. By now, pretty much every person in North America owns at least one of these devices, and combined with mostly iterative improvements and slowing innovation from manufacturers, demand has naturally decreased. Thus, shipments in Q1 2019 are down to 36.4 million, 18 percent less than last year's Q1 record-breaking 44.4 million. This is the steepest fall ever recorded.
For many features, international rollout has to take a second place to North American availability. But that wasn't the case with RCS messaging in general, and specifically with its support on dual-SIM devices. More than a year ago, we reported that the feature was starting to properly work on devices in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. You'll notice North America was missing, and it took fourteen months for it to land there.
OnePlus' 5T has been in and out of stock at the company's website for the last couple weeks, and it turns out that's not a fluke. Engadget has confirmed that the company has run out of all its North American stock in just four months. If you didn't manage to grab one new from the OnePlus store, 3rd party resellers and used phones are now your only option.
To call the Facebook suite of apps a bloated mess would be an understatement, most especially the ever-growing Messenger — I think I've used it once, after which I uninstalled it. However, in a surprising turn of events, Facebook has launched the "lite" version of the app in North America, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.
Update: While both the US and Canada did not have access to VLC for Android on the Play Store at launch, some of our Canadian readers have pointed out that they have since been able to download it from there for quite some time now. As it turns out, the American release was indeed the last hold out.
Rumblings of delays aside, we've been waiting to hear more concrete information about the arrival of the new HTC One. Well, today we got something closer to solid facts. According to the company itself, the new flagship phone should launch in the UK, Germany, and Taiwan next week. Dates may vary by local carriers, but it won't be too long of a wait.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems like Samsung is getting even faster with open source file releases. Today, the Korean manufacturer dropped open source kernel files for the Galaxy Note 8.0, Samsung's first foray into the tablet-that's-also-a-phone market. Both international and North American variants are represented, so those interested can take their pick.
Google Adds 38 Run And Lift Maps From Major Ski Resorts To Google Maps, But Please Don't Use Them On the Mountain
Google Adds 38 Run And Lift Maps From Major Ski Resorts To Google Maps
A non-zero number of Android Police team members enjoy skiiing. Who wouldn't, right? Well, people who get lost for starters. Mountains can be mazes! However, Google did what Google does best and made some sense of the madness. Now you can find guides for 38 different resorts all on your mobile phone.
Acer Announces North American Availability Of The 7" A110, Coming October 30th For $229
Acer Announces North American Availability Of The A11
Ever since Acer announced the A110's European availability back at the end of September, we've been waiting for word on North American availability. Given the 7-inch slate's reasonable specs, the biggest question has been how much will it cost?. The company just sent the word, and it looks like this Nexus 7 competitor will be available beginning on October 30th for $229. Here's what to expect for that price:
Keeping true to its reputation for timely updates, ASUS pushed out an official Jelly Bean OTA update to lucky Transformer Pad TF300 owners in North America last Saturday after a quick tease. Now, under a week later, it looks like ASUS has provided the full firmware for download directly from its support site.