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Google's Android Auto system is gaining a bit of steam, but you still need to hunt for a manufacturer and model that support it (assuming you're buying a new car and not just upgrading your stereo). That will be a little easier later this year: in the lead-up to CES, American manufacturing giant Ford has announced that its semi-proprietary SYNC system will soon support Android Auto. Specifically, those cars that are currently on the road and use SYNC version 3 will be upgraded with Android Auto capability, and 2017 SYNC-equipped models should have Android Auto support built in.
Local music players (as opposed to online radio and cloud storage players) sometimes seem like dinosaurs now that everyone and their dog is offering a connected music option, but there are still plenty of users who prefer high-quality playback of local files. For them, the years-old PowerAmp remains a popular choice thanks to its excellent codec support, extensive equalizer, and a long list of musical creature comforts. Developer Max MP has now made version 3.0 of the app available as a public alpha; you can download the APK directly from the app's user forum.
Android Wear devices seem to be discounted pretty heavily after their initial retail release, so long as you wait long enough. For example, Motorola's original Moto 360 sold for around $300 at release, but the daily deal site Woot is offering a Champagne model with a metal band for just 9.99. This is the gold-ish version with a matching band in both large and small sizes. That's $150 off of the original price for the all-metal version of the 360, or $80 off of the gold model.
If you've been experiencing some intermittent problems getting timely email alerts on your Nexus phone, you're not alone. According to lengthy threads on both Google's official Nexus Help Forum and the AOSP issue tracker, quite a few Android users running Android 6.0 and later builds on Nexus hardware are seeing similar issues. The problem seems to result in late or missing notifications for Gmail and Inbox, as well as less frequent alerts for other apps, and less definable errors with some Google services like Google Now.
Fair play to Huawei for including a speaker on its self-titled Android Wear watch long before the software actually supported it. That being said, I'm sure Huawei Watch owners are wondering when their expensive gadget will have all of its parts activated so they can stop carrying around an extra quarter-ounce of extraneous electronics. According to multiple sources, that speaker will be activated soon, specifically whenever Google gets around to issuing the next version of Android Wear's firmware.
Do you remember the huge scandal that was Carrier iQ? It's alright if you don't - it's been over four years since the company's data-logging mobile phone software was revealed, resulting in accusations of privacy violations, lax security, lawsuits both from and against the software maker and its partners, and eventually the removal of Carrier iQ code from phones via security patches. The months-long scandal basically killed Carrier iQ as a company... but now its corporate assets are owned by a carrier jokingly referred to as "the Death Star." There's no way that can go wrong, is there?
Android's rapid rise to the top of the mobile market was accompanied by a number of legal battles, and perhaps none of them was so central and so contentious as Oracle versus Google. The fight over the legality of patents and copyrights in some of the portions of Android that used allegedly proprietary Oracle-owned Java software has been raging since 2010, eventually being considered for review by the US Supreme Court before being bounced back to the lower appeals court. The fight was a constant, and sometimes dramatic, part of legal software news at one point.
If you drive a tiny car like I do, you know the struggle of a long car ride, two passengers, two phones, and only one power port. If you'd like to alleviate that frustration, head on over to Amazon. Today you can grab a Tronsmart car charger that has two ports for just $7.99 with a coupon. The charger is compatible with Quick Charge 2.0, and on both ports to boot. If that's not enough to convince you, they're throwing in two MicroUSB cables for free.To take advantage of that low price, add the Tronsmart charger to your cart, then check out and apply the coupon code "DUALPORT" to bring the price down from $19.99 to $7.99. That's the lowest price that this particular accessory has had so far - last month it was slightly more expensive during the big Tronsmart sale. Naturally, Amazon Prime customers can get free two-day shipping, which will hopefully get the charger in your hands before you have to leave Grandma's house.
Even as we're swimming in mobile payment systems from such wide poles of the electronics world as Google to WalMart, one has to admit that Samsung Pay's ability to pay for goods and services using most standard card-swipe machines is pretty neat. A recent report from Reuters says that Samsung has even more plans for mobile payments, and it doesn't have much to do with "mobile" at all.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
Well this is a bit of a surprise. When Sprint launched its carrier-branded version of the LG G Stylo back in June of this year, it didn't garner too much attention - it's just another big-screen, low-price device filling out the mid range, albeit with a somewhat novel built-in stylus. If you were to make a list of the phones you'd expect to see rocking the latest version of Android by the end of 2015, the G Stylo might be just in front of the Kyocera Echo.
Welcome to the latest entry in our Bonus Round series, wherein we tell you all about the new Android games of the day that we couldn't get to during our regular news rounds. Consider this a quick update for the dedicated gamers who can't wait for our bi-weekly roundups, and don't want to wade through a whole day's worth of news just to get their pixelated fix. Today we've got a unique platforming, a cave-based navigation game, a sarcastic take on Simon Says, a circular twitch game, and a space-based MOBA. Without further ado:
Touch to Search, which enables users to highlight a single word or line of text in the mobile version of Chrome and instantly search for that text in Google, is pretty neat. It was introduced in the beta build of Chrome for Android version 38 way back in March of last year. But in the latest versions of the app (including the standard release), it's been curiously absent for many users.
Quite a few of you are probably travelling back home this weekend, and if you'd like some free or low-cost tunes to get you there, check out the Google Play Store. Play Music has four albums available for free, and another eight for just a dollar each, all from popular musicians and most of which have been released just this year. As usual, your mileage may vary with this deal - these album prices are valid in the United States, but may not be available elsewhere.
What the hell? After many users were happy to see the "until next alarm" option return to Android's somewhat nebulous "Do Not Disturb" mode after upgrading to the cutting-edge 6.0.1 build of Marshmallow, several have now reported that the feature is once again gone. What's going on here?
The world of open source collaborative projects can be murky at times, and throwing crowdfunding into the mix doesn't make it any clearer. This odd intersection is the source of much drama in the small but passionate community that wants to see Android become as widespread on the desktop as it is on mobile. Members of the open source development team over at the Android-x86 Project, which aims to make Android operable on standard PC hardware, claim that Kickstarter project Console OS has "stolen" Android x86 code and presented it, at least in part, as its own creation.
If you need an absolutely massive amount of storage for your Android phone or tablet, you might want to mosey on over to Amazon before the day is out. The retailer is offering SanDisk's Ultra MicroSDXC card in its highest capacity, 200 glorious gigabytes, for just .99. That's an amazing $170 off of the suggested retail price. According to the product listing, that price is available for only the rest of the day (Saturday, December 26th) and it ends at approximately 2AM Pacific time.
There are probably quite a few new Amazon Kindle tablet owners poking through their brand new gadgets this morning, and to encourage new customers to check out what the Appstore offers, Amazon is giving some of its best games for free. A couple of its best games, anyway - the rest of today's 13 freebies are less than notable. But gamers will definitely want to grab textual space adventure Lifeline, atmospheric exploration game Last Horizon, and the zany fantasy-themed Goat Simulator MMO Simulator.Here's the full list of currently free titles.
At this point, anyone who shelled out the kind of cash it takes to buy a flagship Samsung phone on day one might be wondering when the TouchWiz their Android 6.0 update is coming. If you happen to live in the United Kingdom, the answer is "now," at least if you're willing to beta test some software for free. Samsung sent out tweets inviting UK customers to test the Marshmallow update on its 2015 flagships, the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge.
Back in August LG announced new versions of its G Pad tablet in both 8 and 10-inch varieties. Aside from a couple of features like an integrated stylus on the former, they weren't all that interesting, just middling updates of the previous budget-focused models. Even when one of them showed up in the US for a little carrier-branded fun, it was met with a big fat "meh." The sequel to the G Pad 8.3, which was actually quite nice when it launched back in 2013, is likewise underwhelming.