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There have been a number of eBay promotions lately, like the site's summer sale and the recent $25 off coupon. If you missed out on those, eBay now has a 20%-off coupon code for select items. Some of the applicable categories include phones, tablets, clothes, power tools, home appliances, and more.
The last time we covered LineageOS, the most popular custom Android ROM, it started supporting a handful of new devices with Android 8.1 builds. The project published Changelog 19 yesterday, which goes over some recent changes to the ROM and the community supporting it. There are some leadership changes, more newly-supported devices, and a new custom recovery.
HTC has not been doing well lately, to say the least. The company is currently laying off 1,500 employees, and its June sales were down 68% from last year. Now there are reports that HTC is exiting the Indian market, which the company is denying.
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- Google told CNET in a statement that there is no concrete plan right now for replacing Android within the next five years.
It has been nearly two years since the first evidence of Google's 'Fuchsia' operating system surfaced. It uses the 'Zircon' real-time kernel in place of Linux, and is being designed to run on everything from embedded devices to laptops. There has been speculation for years that Fuchsia is a possible Android replacement, and a new report from Bloomberg seems to confirm that.
The latest model of the Acer Chromebook 15 was released last year. If you read our review, you'll know it's a solid laptop for the price, even if it occasionally stutters under heavy workloads. The original MSRP for $399 was pretty good, but now you can get a refurbished model for almost half of that - just $224.99.The Chromebook 15 has a 15.6-inch 1920x1080 LCD screen, an Intel Pentium N400 processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of eMMC storage, and a 720p webcam. For connectivity, you get two USB Type-C ports, two USB Type-A ports, and a microSD card slot. The whole machine is under four pounds, but has a solid aluminum/plastic body.The refurbs come from Acer itself, and you can buy one from the source link below. As of the time of writing, the sale has 11 hours left.Source: Amazon
Amazon's Prime Day is still going on, and several other retailers have countered with their own promotions. eBay had a (lame) summer sale earlier this month, but now it has released a site-wide coupon that takes $25 off any purchase of $119 or higher.
Smart Text Selection was introduced in Android 8.0 Oreo, and has two components. First, when you tap on a word, it selects the entire phrase (e.g. tapping 'Disney' expands to 'Disney World'). Second, it suggests an action or two based on what is selected (e.g. a link to Google Maps appears when selecting an address).
HP launched the world's first detachable Chrome OS 2-in-1 back in April, and it went on sale the following month. The Chromebook x2 normally costs $599 with the keyboard dock and stylus included, but now you can get it for $569.99 - a $30 reduction in price.
If you weren't aware, Logitech has a line of universal remotes under the 'Harmony' name. In addition to controlling TVs/media centers/game consoles, they can also manage a wide range of smart home devices. It's even slated to get direct integration with Google Assistant, so you should soon be able to ask a Google Home to control devices managed by Harmony (like switching the channel on your TV).
Android Wear 2.0 was supposed to usher in a wave of smartwatch applications that could run independently from a connected phone... but that didn't really happen. Most popular Wear OS apps still rely on a Bluetooth connection with your phone, including the official Spotify application. Thankfully, there's now a full-featured Spotify client for Wear OS, courtesy of moneytoo on the XDA Forums.
The Nokia 2 was released near the end of last year, as HMD's first sub-$100 Android device. That spot has now been taken by the new Nokia 1, which means prices for last year's phone have started to drop. Now you can buy the Nokia 2 for $79.99 on Amazon, an all-time low.
Facebook has been ramping up its hardware development efforts. The company is currently working on a smart display (akin to an Echo Show), which was delayed after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. Facebook also wants to develop its own chipsets, including one that will improve Alexa smart speakers.
Chrome OS has always been designed with low-power laptops in mind. There have been a few desktop machines over the years, like the ASUS Chromebit and LG Chromebase, but they're vastly outnumbered by Chromebooks. Seemingly out of nowhere, several companies announced new Chrome OS desktops at CES earlier this year - all of which are capable of running Android apps.
After the U.S. Department of Commerce banned ZTE from importing US-made components, due to the company violating an agreement it made in 2017, ZTE shut down most operations while it fought to lift the ban. The Commerce Department told ZTE it had to pay over a billion dollars in fines and replace its entire senior leadership for the ban to be lifted, which ZTE agreed to last month.
YouTube is constantly experimenting with ways to demonetize creators present news in a more organized and informative fashion. Last year, it started showing a 'Breaking News' section on the home page during important events. Now the company is expanding on that feature, with changes to search and video playback to improve transparency and accessibility.
Android Studio's device emulator used to be incredibly slow, even on capable hardware. Google has drastically improved the performance over the past two years, but a few issues remain. The Windows version of the Android Emulator uses HAXM, which only works on Intel processors. That means AMD-powered computers can only use non-accelerated ARM images.
The YouTube Kids app was introduced in February 2015, as a way for younger children to view age-appropriate videos. Plenty of functionality has been added since then, including user profiles, channel/video blocking, additional themes, and more.
When Android Pay was renamed to Google Pay earlier this year, the Google Wallet site (which allows you to send and receive money, as well as manage payment methods) also became Google Pay. However, the desktop site didn't get the same redesign that the mobile apps did - until now.
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- The little weather icon is back in DP3, and it should be here to stay. Like the upcoming events feature, it was initially broken because an update to the Google app didn't support it, but there isn't a Google app update pending. We're not expecting it to disappear.
Remember when you could add whatever widgets you wanted to the Android lock screen? Unfortunately, those days are long gone, but Android P is bringing a subset of that functionality back. If you liked using weather widgets on your lock screen, you'll be happy to know that Android P now displays the weather underneath the clock.
Before it became world-famous for Pokemon Go, Niantic's only mobile game was Ingress. It was released in 2012, and the primary goal is to take control of portals located next to landmarks in the real world. Even though Ingress never achieved the massive level of popularity that Pokemon Go hit at its peak, the game still has a large amount of active players.