Corbin Davenport
Contributing since August, 2015
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3615articles
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About Corbin Davenport
Corbin is a tech journalist and developer who worked at Android Police from 2016 until 2021. Check out his other work at corbin.io.
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It's been a long road, getting from there to hereIt's been a long road, getting from there to here. Google announced at the end of 2016 that it would start rolling out a tabbed interface in the Google app - one tab for your feed (previously known as Google Now), and the other for reminders/emails/etc. But then Google only enabled it for a small amount of users, and left it at that for a few months. Then a third tab was added, and even more users received the changed interface.
It has been over a year since Google introduced its two new messaging apps - Allo and Duo. While Allo was a standard messaging app, Duo attempted to make mobile video calling as easy as possible. And today, the app turns one year old.
Ah yes, Polaroid - once a major force in the world of photography is now just a brand name slapped on random products (like home security cameras and TVs). Back in May, the company was sold again to another group of investors. But it looks like the new owners are happy to continue Polaroid's current product lines, as two new phones and a tablet were just announced.
So far, HMD Global has released three Nokia-branded Android phones - the Nokia 6, 5, and 3. But the most-expensive model, the Nokia 6, still had a mid-range Snapdragon 430 processor. With HMD/Nokia's clean Android ROM and competitive pricing, many hoped for a true flagship model to be released. Now the time has come, as HMD has taken the wraps off the Nokia 8.
One of the many announcements we saw at Google I/O 2017 was hands-free voice calling for the Google Home. Instead of Alexa's equivalent feature, which requires both people to have an Amazon account, the Google Home would use VoIP to call standard phone numbers. At long last, the feature is starting to roll out.
Google's newest messenger app, Allo, was released about a year ago. The app's momentum dropped shortly after release, but that hasn't stopped Google from continuing to improve it. At long last, Allo has gained a web client, but has it been worth the wait?
Earlier this year, Samsung launched two new Chromebooks - the Chromebook Plus and Pro. Both have a 3:2 touchscreen with stylus support and the Google Play Store, but the Pro has slightly beefier specifications. Now you can grab one for $50 off at a handful of retailers.The Chromebook Pro has a 12.3" 2400x1600 touchscreen display with stylus support, 4GB of RAM, two USB Type-C ports (that are used for charging), a headphone/microphone combo jack, a microSD card slot, and 32GB of eMMC storage. It's a 2-in-1, so you can flip it around to use it as a giant tablet.The processor is the only major difference between the Plus and the Pro. While the Plus has a custom ARM-based OP1 chip, the Pro has an Intel Core M3 G730 CPU. The Pro also comes in a sleek black color, while the Plus is silver. You can buy it from the source links below, and it's worth noting that B&H doesn't collect tax outside NY and NJ.Source: Amazon, B&H, Best Buy
LG is really excited about its upcoming V30 flagship. There have been several leaks of the phone already, but LG is revealing some information as well. The company previously announced that the V30's camera would have an f/1.6 aperture, but now it has revealed some of the V30's software prowess.
TWRP recovery continues to add support for more and more devices. Last time we took a look at the project, unofficial builds for the Snapdragon Galaxy S8/S8+ were available (but not for the US models). Over the past few weeks, more phones have been added to the official support list.
Carrier bloatware is always annoying, but Sprint just upped the ante. Sprint is currently the only US carrier selling the KEYone, the latest BlackBerry-branded device manufactured by TCL. Owners of the Sprint KEYone are reporting a huge amount of apps being automatically installed, and they can't be disabled or removed.
Android Wear 2.0 has been quite the wild ride. Not only has the update taken months to arrive on most devices (a few are still waiting), but it brings major platform changes that not everyone is happy with. There have been a few major bugs as well, such as recurring reminders being completed without any user interaction.
The Google Pixel's camera is one of the best smartphone cameras on the market, partially thanks to Google's proprietary HDR+ image processing. Put simply, HDR+ takes multiple underexposed photos and combines them, reducing image noise in the process (you can read more about it here). But even when the Google Camera was sideloaded onto other devices, HDR+ remained disabled.
The experimental 'Chrome Home' interface first appeared in October of last year, and at the time, only moved Chrome's address bar to the bottom of the screen. Google has continued to work on it since then, like adding a revamped New Tab page with a bottom tab bar. A new flag has appeared in Chrome Canary, that further changes the Chrome Home interface by making everything round. In other words, there's a new experiment for the experimental UI.
YouTube Kids launched in 2015, as a portal for child-appropriate content with parental controls. It has been over two years since then, but for most of that time, only apps for Android and iOS were available. An app for select smart TVs was released in April, and now Android TV owners can use the service as well.
Android Things is a minimal version of Android, intended to power Internet of Things devices (like smart appliances). The first Developer Preview was released at the end of 2016, and new versions have come out steadily since then, most recently with Preview 4.1. Google has now released Developer Preview 5, with plenty of major changes and new features.
ASUS is still chugging along with its series of ZenFone devices, most recently with the AR and 3 Zoom. The first product in the ZenFone 4 lineup was quietly released in Russia last month, but it looks like four more are on the way. ASUS' online French store accidentally listed the unreleased phones, and promptly took them down - but not before they were noticed.
If you have read one of our several reviews of Xiaomi phones, such as the Mi Note 2 and Mi 6, you'll know that the software experience just isn't good. MIUI is Xiaomi's heavily modified version of Android, complete with less-than-stellar RAM and Bluetooth management (among other issues). But the ROM has several major security problems, as found by research firm eScan.
There are quite a few Android phones that support FM radio, at least on a hardware level. But the feature is rare on devices in the United States, and even more rare on carrier-sold phones (carriers would much rather you use more data). Most of LG's recent devices have shipped with the feature (at least in some regions), including the G5 and G6, but it will expand to more devices soon.
The YouTube for Android TV app was updated to version 2.0 last month, with an all-new interface and changes to the video player. While there are a few great aspects of this update, like the new auto-play screen, many users aren't happy with it.
Lenovo is one of the worst Android manufacturers when it comes to updates. Motorola devices went from extremely quick updates under Google's ownership to mostly-bad support under Lenovo. The company updated its software upgrade page today, which now states that the entire existing Phab product lineup (as well as two tablets) will not receive further software updates.