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The Verizon-exclusive Droid Turbo 2 was released almost a year ago, and promptly made headlines with claims of a shatterproof screen. Verizon and Motrola have at least made an effort to keep the device updated, compared to other devices on Big Red, and it even received Android 6.0 Marshmallow earlier this year. Now owners of the Turbo 2 can finally use WiFi calling, courtesy of a software update.
A week ago, a Chromecast Preview Firmware changed all references of the companion Google Cast app to Google Home. The reasoning for that change seemed simple at the time: presumably you would control Google Home and your Chromecasts from the same app. But a recent report from Variety sheds light on Google Cast's role in Google's smart home ecosystem.
If you click the source links at most of our posts about Google products, you might notice there is a lot of Google blogs. Almost every Google product has its own blog - Android, Gmail, YouTube, Chrome, Google Fiber, you name it. I think Google finally realized the need to consolidate, and has created 'The Keyword.'
Unity, if you're not familiar with game development, is a popular cross-platform game engine. Although Unity games can most often be found on PC and consoles, Android games utilizing the engine include Crossy Road, Monument Valley, Lara Croft: Relic Run, and more. Today Unity has announced the Vulkan Renderer Preview, finally allowing developers to use the Vulkan API with their games.
Google Drive has recently added an enhanced search and regular expressions support, but those features have not yet made their way to the mobile apps. Now the Android application exclusively has a new feature, simply called Quick Access. This uses machine learning to predict what documents you are most likely to open, based on your Drive activity and recurring patterns. Google claims this "saves 50 percent off the average time it takes to get to the right file by eliminating the need to search for it."
Just two days ago, Roku announced their new lineup of media center devices, and today Amazon has made public their latest Fire TV Stick. If you are unfamiliar with Amazon's hardware offerings, the Fire TV Stick is their competitor to the Chromecast (even to the point of Amazon removing Chromecast listings from their store). But unlike the Chromecast, and similar to the recently-announced Roku Express, all applications run directly on the device. The Fire TV stick also has a sizable game library, which is certainly unique at the price point.The updated Fire TV Stick is a major improvement in almost every way. The CPU has seen a major upgrade from the first generation's dual-core ARM Cortex A9. It is now powered by the quad-core Mediatek 8127D, the same chipset found in the Amazon Fire tablet. It has the same 8GB internal storage and 1GB of RAM as the original, but makes the jump from Bluetooth 3.0 to 4.1. The device can also decode H.265 video, no doubt future-proofing for future streaming and media support. Finally, 802.11ac WiFi support has been added.On the software side, the new Fire TV Stick is running the same Fire OS 5 that other Fire devices run on, a modified version of Android 5.0 Lollipop. The biggest improvement is the addition of Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant. You can open applications, ask queries similar to Google Now, and control other Fire TV functions easily. To facilitate this, the new Fire TV Stick has a redesigned remote with a microphone button.Overall, this is a much-needed improvement from the first generation, and if you don't mind the Amazon ecosystem it is a solid option. You can pre-order it right now, and it will go on sale October 20.
Many years ago, my first game console was a Nintendo DS Lite. And one of the first games I got for it was LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. It still remains one of my favorite games of all time, mostly because of nostalgia to that red and black handheld, but also because the LEGO video games are incredibly fun and engaging (for all ages).
Regular expressions are common in the programming world as a way of finding (and filtering) text based on patterns. regexes can range from extremely simple, such as the example above for finding whitespaces, to longer expressions for more general inputs. If you are one of the wizards who can actually comprehend phrases like (?<=^|(?<=[^a-zA-Z0-9-_.]))@([A-Za-z]+[A-Za-z0-9]+) (a regex for identifying Twitter usernames), then Google Docs' latest feature is just for you.
Google News & Weather has an interesting history. After years of being included on Android devices with almost no changes, it moved to the Play Store and received a Material Design facelift in 2014. Now Google has added a 'Lite mode' to the application, designed to save bandwidth for users in India and other regions where data is at a premium.
TWRP is by far the most popular custom recovery as of late. Flashing ROMs, backing up your device, managing files in a pinch - TWRP makes it all easy. The custom recovery has extended its reach to six more devices, three of which are from Samsung.
Spotify has offered its Premium for Family plan for some time now, and in May the price was dropped to $14.99 a month. Now Spotify is expanding availability to the land up north, at the same $14.99/month pricing as the United States.
Roku Inc, maker of the popular Roku line of home media players, has just refreshed their entire product lineup at once. The existing lineup of flagship Roku boxes (but not the Roku Streaming Stick) has been replaced by three new products (with upgraded models for each); the Roku Express, the Roku Premiere, and the Roku Ultra.
One week ago, the Xperia X Compact became available for pre-order on Amazon for $499 with a $50 credit. Today, as expected, it is officially available for sale on the site (we have yet to locate other sites currently selling it).
Mafia III, the next entry in the popular Mafia video game series, is coming to Mac, Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on October 7th. Android, however, is missing from that list. A mobile spin-off, titled Mafia III: Rivals, is arriving on Android (and iOS) on the same date.
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The Chromecast Audio is a great little device, allowing you to stream supported content to any speaker (or anything else really) with audio input. I myself bought one fairly recently, so I could turn my old iPod dock into a WiFi speaker.
Not too long ago, Google began offering users the chance to test unfinished Chromecast firmware. The first preview firmware, version 1.21.72444, began rolling out to users recently. Google's release notes for the update only state, "General bug fixes and stability improvements." Really helpful, Google.
I would argue that Duo is a better product than Allo, at least in this early stage. Duo makes video chatting as simple as possible, and the result is a simple but easy to use application. Micromax, an Indian electronics company, has announced that four phones they are releasing in the near future will have Duo pre-installed.
Blu has a history of making phones with excellent specs for extremely low prices. We recently reviewed the Blu Pure XR, and while the specs on that device were good for a $299 phone, the software experience left a lot to be desired. Blu has just revealed their newest device, the Life One X2, and it is very impressive at the price point.
As it turns out, people don't want to hang onto exploding phones. Samsung initially started the Note7 Exchange Program earlier this month in the United States, offering owners of affected Note7 devices the choice of a fixed Note7 or a S7/S7 edge. Over a week later, the CPSC officially began working with Samsung to handle the recall.
For months, we have seen Hangouts shift from Google's primary messaging service to being focused on business use. The official Google for Work (which is in the process of becoming Google Cloud) blog has announced that Google+ is moving to the same purpose, and is now a core feature for businesses to use.