Android Police

Liam Spradlin-

Liam Spradlin

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About Liam Spradlin

Liam loves Android, design, user experience, and travel. He doesn't love ill-proportioned letter forms, advertisements made entirely of stock photography, and writing biographical snippets.

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It's been a long wait for the Nexus 9. Of course, that's partially our fault for leaking the device's existence back in June. Since that time, we've seen rumored accessories, accidental confirmation, a trip to the FCC, and even a quick photo of the back of the device, but today it's finally really official.

If tonight can be compared to Christmas Eve, we've just seen a big, AT&T-shaped box sitting in the living room. As carriers are wont to do, it appears AT&T has already set up a URL for Motorola's Nexus 6, confirming that the carrier will carry the new whale-sized Nexus.

Google Glass is inviting users to "stay connected to your favorite phone apps with notification sync on Glass." The new feature, as you might have guessed by now, grants Google's MyGlass app notification access, relaying all your Android notifications up to your eyeball for quick and easy viewing/interaction. Previously, only apps compatible with Glass (like Gmail and Hangouts) could send up notifications.

We've already seen most everything about the Droid Turbo, but Verizon has apparently just given us a launch date - October 28. The "Droid Does" landing page hosted on Verizon Wireless' domain has just activated once again, bearing a countdown to the 28th, with the option to sign up for updates.

Just over a week after its last update, it seems Google Play Services is receiving another bump - this time up to 6.1.71.

Recently, we took a look at Ultra Violet, a new Hangouts app for Chrome that - at the time - was still in testing. It promised floating chats similar to Facebook's Chatheads feature, but for your desktop. Today, that app is finally a reality and available for download.

Thanks to MotoFirmware.com, Motorola's Droid Turbo has just broken cover in a detailed quick-start guide to the device covering its form factor, features, and much more.

If you've been paying attention the last several months, you're probably aware that since we posted our early look at Google's revamped launcher icons, users have been yearning for the "materialized" versions of their favorite apps' icons. This new design direction even spurred custom icon packs to replicate the look and feel of the rumored Google goodies. For developers and designers on Android, it's easy to see the attention the new icons are getting and start thinking about redesigning your own app's launcher icon.

One of Samsung's claims to fame is a feature meant to improve productivity on mobile devices. One that users of stock Android and manufacturer skins alike have been yearning for for a while. That feature is multi-window, which allows users to run two apps on the screen at once, dragging and dropping between the two.

With a big OTA expected to hit Android Wear devices starting around October 15th, Google has just published what might be a preparatory update for the Android Wear companion app. Taking the app up to version 1.0.2, the update adds about 3MB to the APK's file size. Google hasn't published a change log quite yet, but we can already tell from a cursory teardown that the new version brings with it an update to Google Play Services for Wearables (a package sent to the watch from the app) - version 6.1.11 (up from 5.0.91).

Adobe's latest Android creation is Creative Cloud (preview), a file management tool connected - as the name suggests - to Adobe's Creative Cloud.

Nexus season is in full swing, and as rumors and leaks continue to pile up around Motorola's Nexus 6 (Shamu), we've been wondering when more news might emerge about Volantis (or Flounder, or T1, take your pick) - HTC's 9" Nexus tablet that we first learned of back in spring.

Google+ got a somewhat unexpected bump to version 4.6 today, an update that brought with it plenty of Material touches. Since we first reported on Material Design (at the time known as Quantum Paper), we've expected that Google's own apps would be undergoing their own gradual transformations in updates leading up to the launch of Android L. The Google+ app got its first round of material changes earlier this summer, but today's update starts its journey through the last mile.

Update 9/18/14: An updated version 6.1.07 (previous was 6.1.05) started rolling out. We've updated the APK below to this version.

Just a couple of days ago, we posted a quick look at what the next Nexus phone would look like (along with some spec confirmations), based on new information and materials we had seen. That image however, as stated before, was just a reproduction of what we'd seen (redrawn to protect our source and eliminate any possible identifiers). Today, though, we have what looks like a photo of the device.

The Chromium issue tracker can sometimes prove to be a good source of juicy bits of information for those inclined to explore its depths. Most recently, we saw several UI refinements in the Bluetooth settings screen for Android L, but today an actual video has shown up depicting Chromium running on an even newer build - LRW87D, which is apparently just five days old.

If you've been keeping up with any tech blogs over the past couple of weeks, you know that the next Nexus phone has been a hot topic. We saw rumored specs and rumored hardware photos that only added to the confusion created back when we first reported on a possible 5.9" Nexus. Today, however, we have something special to share. We've been provided with new information about the next Nexus phone, and can confirm that it will be a 5.9" device called the Nexus 6.

In a bit of non Android-related news that we just couldn't pass up, Adobe and Google have announced "Project Photoshop Streaming" for Chrome OS, which is exactly what it sounds like.

For a long time now, Google's Search app has had a new, more rounded launcher icon and a simple label in your app drawer: Google. The app's Play Store listing, however, has stubbornly clung to the name "Google Search," while retaining the old boxy icon of yore. Without a word, it looks like Google has cleaned up its Play Store listing at long last with the refreshed icon and simplified name. The change makes sense, given the previous mismatch between the Play Store and on-device icons and names. Google's app also encompasses an increasing number of features besides search, including a launcher and Google Now's predictive prowess.

Relative to last year's downpour of Nexus 5 leaks, there's been a bit of a drought in Nexus phone rumors this season. So far, we know that Motorola is expected to have made a large Nexus device codenamed Shamu, which multiple sources have affirmed and which is supposed to share an impressive spec sheet with another device codenamed Quark. This device is supposed to be set for a November release.

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