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Are you a Verizon customer? Are you due for an upgrade on your 2-year contract? Well, go in armed with the knowledge that any 2-year agreement signed from today forward is going to have a substantially awful...er early termination clause.
Update: It looks like the Tango tablet is available to purchase if you signed up to be on the list to buy one at Google I/O. The rest of you will, presumably, have to wait.
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- Google fixed the issue permanently in mid-2015. Make sure to update Android SDK Platform-tools in the SDK Manager to the latest version.
If you're trying to flash your Nexus 5, 7, or 10 to Android 5.0 now that the factory images are out, there's nothing more infuriating than running into an error in the process. The most common error we're seeing today as part of the flashing process is the dreaded "missing system.img" dialog, which aborts the update process on the target device.
A new Google app that allows you to text your friends? Wait, is this replacing Hangouts? Wait, why? Yes, no, and because, to answer those queries, respectively. Google Messenger is now out on the Play Store, having been officially confirmed to exist by Google last month.
I've owned an iPad Air since the original model came out last year (my first iPad), and when the Air 2 came out late last month, I dove right in and bought another. Why? My biggest issue with the original Air was speed: occasional stutters and lackluster multitasking performance (I use that in an absolute, not relative sense) were thorns in the side of an otherwise fantastic tablet. The new Air 2 plucked them effectively with the addition of a third CPU core and doubling of RAM (to 2GB).
Nexus 6 Re-Stock Is Happening / Happened, But Don't Worry, It's Still Just As Horrible As Launch Day
Update: It does appear Google is still doing very small periodic restocks. Keep trying - I just managed to get a white 32GB to the payment confirmation.
Google Maps. Material design. That's pretty much all I need to say, right? Here it is.
The Nexus 9. For many of us, it is the chosen Android tablet. It's setting out to change the landscape (literally, to portrait 4:3). It's Google's first big tablet since the Nexus 10, back in the landscape orientation days. It's built in cooperation with HTC, a company whose few tablets to date have been utter flops. It looks like a giant Nexus 5. No really, it looks like a giant Nexus 5 so much it's a little weird. It packs a next-gen, ARMv8-based Tegra K1 dual-core processor proven to be a benchmark-destroyer. Oh, and Android L. That's really the big thing: Android L is the biggest update to Android since Android(TM).
The Galaxy S5. The One M8. The LG G3. All very good phones - all phones that I like, for various reasons, and dislike in certain respects for others! HTC, Samsung, and LG have generally been the de facto leaders of the high-end Android smartphone market here in the US. But what about Sony? I'll freely admit that I've never been much of a Sony smartphone fan. I didn't like the Xperia ZL as well as its competitors. Nor the TX. I've had a chance to play with most of Sony's major devices in the last couple of years; the Ion, the S, the Z, the Z1, the Z2 - and they did seem to genuinely be progressing into better and better phones. But I never had a chance to carry around those devices on a day to day basis, and so, my attention to Sony's hardware releases has understandably waned over time.
Carrier bloatware apps are quite an issue in the US, where many smartphones ship with almost as much useless junk as they do genuinely necessary applications. This junk is lovingly called "crapware," "bloatware," or "shit" interchangeably by those in the smartphone community. Because it is. This disdain largely stems from the fact that many bloatware apps can't be fully uninstalled, only disabled (some can't even manage to do that).
The Nexus 9 went up for pre-order on numerous websites around the world shortly after its announcement, with the 8.9" HTC-built slate garnering quite a bit of attention for a few reasons. First, HTC - HTC hasn't made a consumer tablet in a long while, with the now quite-old Flyer and Jetstream (an AT&T business exclusive) both having been widely-regarded as flops.
Nest has apparently just acquired home automation firm Revolv for an undisclosed figure.If you've not heard of Revolv, the company was an all-in-one smarthome "hub" solution that wanted to operate as communication nexus for all the stuff in your house. Sprinklers, lights, door locks, stereos, TVs, you name it. If you want an example, you can watch this incredibly awkward video.[EMBED_YT]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDctw8OEoLA[/EMBED_YT]Revolv actually supported compatibility with Nest through its 0 cylinder hub thingamajig and control app. The company's product never caught on in a big way, but did receive some critical acclaim for its versatility.This essentially makes Revolv a Google company, along with recent Nest acquisition Dropcam. The Revolv team will work with Nest at their Boulder, CO office. Revolv's current products will be discontinued, as I imagine will be much in the way of support and features once the acquisition is completed.Revolv
According to Re/code, an organizational reorganization will see Sundar Pichai, head of Chrome and Android, appointed as "czar" of all Google's major products. This includes ads, Search, research, Google+, Maps, commerce, and infrastructure. These duties previously fell on CEO Larry Page. Page will retain his leadership positions, though, at Nest, Calico, Google X, corporate development, finance, and business. Page will also most likely retain final say in most decisions he chooses to be involved in, being CEO and all.
The G Watch R is LG's first circular-display smartwatch, following up on the original G Watch that launched alongside Android Wear earlier this year. While the original G Watch looked like a proof-of-concept brick out of an engineer's garage at some angles, the G Watch R very clearly got the full design and style treatment from LG - it looks nothing like its kind-of-predecessor.
Have you signed up to for an invite to Inbox by Gmail? It looks like public invitations to the service have begun rolling out en masse.
Google has promised standalone music playback over Bluetooth as part of Android Wear for some time, and it appears with Wear version 4.4W2 we're finally getting it, at least if you use Play Music (you're also getting new playback controls). If you're using the latest Play Music APK on your Android phone and have the Android 4.4W2 update on your smartwatch, you can now download your pinned music from your smartphone to your watch.
We spotted it in a teardown of the new material Play Music app this morning, but it looks like a new set of media controls in Android Wear are live - and here's exactly what they look like.
The G Watch R is the first truly circular smartwatch, and it's also the first to ship with quite so many watchface options - 18 in all. Here's every one, in both active (as in, the display is turned on and ready for interaction) and always-on (passive sleep) modes.