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Mozilla retires its Firefox Lite browser, probably because it wasn't actually all that 'lite'
The company says the standard Firefox app is fast enough all on its own
It's all too easy for applications to grow bloated after years of updates. While extra functionality isn't usually harmful, weighing an app down with useless features defeats the whole purpose if it's designed with performance in mind. Firefox Lite was intended to be a stripped-down version for select markets, but as of June 30, Mozilla has stopped supporting it.
New Google Photos storage management tool is already rolling out
Pay for more space or manage the heck out of what you have
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We're about a week away from Google Photos turning off its most popular and unique selling point. Almost every user will soon lose out on unlimited backups and will either need to use up their existing cloud storage space or pay up for extra. As we approach this big change, there are a few smaller changes to look out for.
FreedomPop's free wireless plan becomes less free, more bad
The most annoying change? No more auto-renewals
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One of the hidden gems in the MVNO sector was FreedomPop's free plan: for some people, 500 texts, 200 minutes, and 200MB of LTE (plus a pay-as-you-go overage rate of 2.5¢ per MB) goes far in a month. Recently, though, the company made sweeping changes to the so-called "freemium" plan by pushing Wi-Fi calling and messaging to the forefront and making drastic cuts to talk, text, and cellular data allowances. Worse yet is the sense of urgency put into place as those grandfathered into the old free plan have been told they will be kicked off of it after January 31. And the rabbit hole goes only deeper from there...
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Almost a decade ago (!) in 2011, EA released Tetris for mobile devices, following it with Tetris Blitz in 2013. Being the only way to play "official" Tetris on your phone, the two apps have been extremely popular for fans of the classic brick-stacker game. Unfortunately, EA is ending its run with Tetris and will be abandoning the games in April.
The writing has been on the wall for months, so it must not be a surprise for anyone that the Celeron Pixel Slates, the lower-end $599 and $699 models that were very briefly available and didn't impress much, are now completely gone from the Google Store. All mentions of both variants have been wiped off, as if they never existed in the first place.
We'd like a moment of silence for our fallen friend, the oft-discounted, Assistant-equipped Insignia Voice smart speaker. It was officially discontinued sometime around the turn of April, and it's no longer offered by Best Buy, which owns Insignia.
We've had it a long time coming, and today is the day we finally have to bid farewell (the shutdown is rolling and starting to affect some users of both the site and the app): Inbox by Gmail reaches EOL. After announcing the death in September 2018, Google promised to bring over all the features we love about Inbox to Gmail. While that's true for snoozing, follow-ups (nudges), and Smart Replies, it's not the case for the differentiator between the two services: bundles. Let's take a look at what made Inbox so universally beloved, and stroll down memory lane to remember its way too short life.
If you read the title of this post and didn't really understand what it was about until you saw the screenshot, you're not alone. Most of us on the team had to do a double check when we caught the news because we didn't immediately recall what this web notification widget really was. But now that we do, we're heartbroken about the news... not!
Yesterday, a post on Reddit said that Google's little music streamer that could, Chromecast Audio, had been discontinued. Sadly, that turned out to be true: according to an official statement from Google, the device is no longer being manufactured.
No social network has been as equally loved and hated as Google+. Those who use it appreciate the tight community and fruitful discussions, those who don't use it see no reason whatsoever to start doing so and deride its many shortfalls. Plus, both the spam propagation and the lack of meaningful development haven't helped its case lately. But nothing has sounded the alarm bells of Google+'s slow demise into pointlessness as much as one of Google's own entities deciding to abandon the platform for good.
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Google has been doing an impressive job of pretending Android tablets don't exist for the last few years, and now it's done pretending. Google has updated the Android website to remove the tablet section entirely. You can now use that site to learn all about Android on Phones, Wear, TV, Auto, and Enterprise. That's it. RIP Android tablets.
Anyone who grew up on the internet prior to the smartphone era has probably spent a lot of time on AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM in the common vernacular. AIM made sense in that world, but not anymore. True to its previous announcement, AIM has gone offline today.
Here's some great news to start off your Monday: Opera is suddenly and abruptly killing off its Opera Max app. Opera Max was a free VPN service that aimed to compress data before it got to your device in order to lower data usage. Unfortunately, it is now no more.
Google is constantly adding and removing products to and from the Google Store. With the speed that tech moves along at and the amount of products that the store carries, having to dump older or slower-selling products is inevitable. Earlier today, the LG Watch Style and Sport went up for sale (the Sport is already out of stock, by the way); now, the Nixon The Mission smartwatch and Philips Hue Color A19 Starter Kit, which made their Google Store debuts around four months ago, have been axed.In the Nixon The Mission's case (also simply called the Nixon Mission), it's pretty likely that slow sales were behind its removal. I'm willing to bet that many of you have never even heard of it, even though it was introduced only a few months ago. Surprisingly, it has some pretty decent talking points: a 400x400 AMOLED display, an ambient light sensor (and no flat tire!), a Snapdragon Wear 2100, a waterproof rating of 10ATM, GPS and a bunch of other sensors, as well as a unique design. However, its fairly hefty price tag of $400 and lack of anyone knowing about it probably killed it. For what it's worth, the Mission is on the list to receive Android Wear 2.0. It can still be purchased from stores such as Amazon.As for the Philips Hue Color A19 Starter Kit (what a mouthful), I'd imagine that the same thing led to its departure. After all, who thinks of the Google Store when they're looking for smart lighting products? I can think of a dozen other places I'd search for something like this first. The kit, which is also still available for purchase through other retailers like Amazon, contains three LED A19 Hue smart bulbs and a bridge to connect them to your network.The links to the former Google Store listings are below; however, they simply redirect to the Store's front page.Source: Google Store (1), (2)
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Well, this is it. On December 31, 2016, we will bid adieu to the ambitious but riddled with managerial missteps venture that was Cyanogen. In the ongoing saga of Cyanogen's "reorganization" efforts, we've seen Kirk McMaster being ousted as CEO and replaced by Lior Tal, followed by a modular OS announcement, then we started hearing rumbles of layoffs, office closures, and more, which ended with a rather public finger pointing and break up with Steve Kondik, the guy behind Cyanogen and CyanogenMod.
Another one bites the dust. MixRadio, we hardly knew ya on Android. The service, which started as Nokia's Comes With Music in 2007 then was renamed to Nokia MixRadio and just MixRadio after Microsoft's acquisition, was later bought by LINE in March of 2015. After that, it went through a wide expansion, launching Android and iOS apps in May, joining the Apple Watch, Amazon, and Tizen platforms, and even starting web clients for Windows and Mac. It looked like things were going well for MixRadio, especially with its growing popularity in India and Indonesia, and over 5M installs on the Play Store.
Chrome to Phone used to be a nice way to receive links, directions, and notes from your Chrome browser on your Android device. The app's functionality was however rendered redundant after Chrome gained open tab sync across devices and Google added a way to send notes and directions (and reminders and alarms) from Chrome to your phone.
Everything dies. It's kind of a grim reality we have to face, but there's nothing in this world that's truer. One day, everything and everyone you love will die. There is no escaping it. Now for a bit of lighter news: Sony is finished updating the Xperia L, M, C, and SP. While that's generally bad news, I tried to ease the blow by reminding you that you're going die one day. Did it help? I hope it helped.