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Google Play's branded Music app has had Pandora-style thumbs up and thumbs down controls, applicable to your local and cloud music as well as streaming radio stations, for quite a while. But they're not all that easy to get to: aside from the "now playing" screen and the homescreen widget, the functionality isn't all that obvious. The latest update to the app puts those recommendation tools front and center, right on the notification and lockscreen controls.
T-Mobile customers may or may not be using the company's official Android app, which allows users to view remaining minutes and data, pay bills, and manage their accounts - since the company has been attracting so many "bring your own device" customers lately, they might not even be aware of it. But the My Account app is due for a substantial update very soon, at least if a newly-leaked APK file is anything to go by. After an employee tipped the new app for a December 10th launch (which obviously didn't happen), posters at the T-Mobile Reddit page have been dissecting a leaked version; that's where the screenshots below came from.
Earlier this week Motorola began rolling out the official Marshmallow over-the-air update to the Moto X Pure Edition. That's the weird-ass name that Motorola gave the US version of its latest flagship - the international version, which differs only in carrier support, is called the Moto X Style. According to at least one of our readers in the United Kingdom, the Moto X Style is now receiving its Android 6.0 upgrade as well.
If you've heard of Fuhu, you're either a parent, a tech news junkie, or both. The Los Angeles-based company makes the Nabi line of tablets, some of the first Android-powered devices to be made and marketed directly for children, and the forerunner of more widespread "kid" tablet variants from Samsung and Amazon. Android Police has reviewed several of its tablet designs. Fuhu announced that the company is being acquired by Mattel, famous makers of Barbie, Hot Wheels, and all manner of other children's toys and games.
Unlike some of my colleagues in the tech media, I don't have any particular beef with Walmart. Yes, they sell cheap imported crap, and yes, they under-pay their employees, stiffing both the people who make stuff and the people who sell stuff. But if you object to that strongly enough to actually change your buying habits, you'll soon run out of places to buy things. I do, however, object to the idea of a mobile payment system that works at exactly one store. That's taking the biggest problem with mobile payments as a whole, the lack of inter-operability, and turning it into a selling point.
If you have more than a dozen friends on Facebook, odds are pretty good that at least one of them has started tagging every person on Earth with suspiciously misspelled advertisements for knockoff Ray-Ban sunglasses. Facebook would really prefer that this not happen, or at least not happen quite so often. To that end the company introduced the Security Checkup feature to the web version of the social network, and now it's available on Android as well. Maybe.
This month millions of people will be travelling to see friends and family for various holidays. And that's great. What isn't great is a 12-hour car trip with five people and only one available DC outlet for five phones, two tablets, one Wi-Fi hotspot, and a USB-powered cup warmer. With a little advance planning and just ten bucks, you can avoid backseat scuffles and keep everyone charged and happy thanks to a 4-port car charger (compatible with Qualcomm's Quick Charge 2.0 standard) from Amazon.
Owners of the Moto X Pure Edition, ostensibly Motorola's flagship US phone at the moment, should be receiving the over-the-air update to Android 6.0 soon. That's according to Motorola employee David Schuster, who has shed light on upcoming updates many times before. He told his Google+ followers earlier today that the Marshmallow upgrade is currently being sent out to those Moto X Pure Edition phones on Verizon, Sprint, and US Cellular. The updates follow shortly after the soak tests from last week.
Google seems to be doing a lot of tinkering on the basic interfaces of Android TV, if only because the company's experience with television UIs is less extensive than it is on smartphones and tablets. Yesterday an update to the "leanback" launcher (Android TV's default home screen) added the ability for users to manually rearrange app icons. Today the Android TV version of the Play Store gets a slight adjustment as well: the "update all" button is back, baby.
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.
Are you noticing muted colors or unusual artifacts when watching video on your Android phone or set-top box after upgrading to Marshmallow? You're not alone. Dozens of users across several devices are complaining of muted colors after upgrading to Android 6.0. On Google's own Nexus help forum and Android issue tracker, plus less centralized places like XDA and Reddit, users are complaining of similar problems after the update.
Google is continuing to refine what data you can access without ever leaving its browser-based search interface. A few of the more complex options for searching popular culture have now made their way from the desktop to Android, and they've also been given some impressive layout adjustments. According to Google's own search blog, contextual information for music, movies, and television shows will now appear in a dedicated sub-section of Google Search. Some of this was already available, but some of it's definitely new.
Chrome's URL bar is so fast that I generally don't even bother with bookmarks anymore, but those who do might have noticed that they look a little different lately. In the latest version of the Chrome stable build for Android, there's a new user-selectable flag that can enable or disable a different interface for the Bookmarks manager. It can be enabled (or disabled, if you prefer) in the Flags settings page: chrome://flags/#enhanced-bookmarks-experiment.
Yu's Cyanogen OS-running Yuphoria phone, sold primarily to the Indian market, has had CyanogenMod 12.1 (Android 5.1) available for almost half a year now. The catch is that it's been available as a CyanogenMod nightly build, requiring end users to flash a custom recovery, then a custom ROM in order to access it. Yesterday, the Cyanogen company and Yu itself announced the over-the-air rollout of the finished, consumer-ready update for the stock software build.
If you're looking for some high-grade headphones to get you through that insufferable plane ride or 12-hour road trip that's looming in a few weeks, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better deal than the one Adorama has right now. The online electronics store is selling Audio-Technica's ATH-M50x, a studio-grade set of around-the-ear wired headphones, for just . That's $70 off of Adorama's regular price, and a whopping $140 cheaper than Audio-Technica's recommended retail price. The white version is the only one available, but it's even cheaper than the Amazon deal from a couple of weeks ago.
If you pay for cable, you probably pay for ESPN. Disney's sports empire is practically inescapable, especially if you watch college sports, and it's essentially impossible to pay for conventional television without getting ESPN thrown into the package, whether you want it or not. So if you're paying for it, you might as well get it on your phone too, right? ESPN's live streaming service WatchESPN is now available within the primary ESPN app itself. Previously WatchESPN was a separate Android app.
There's a surprisingly wide variety of content available for Google's dirt-cheap Cardboard VR system, but not many ways for end users to make use of it for their personal media. Enter Cardboard Camera, a new Google app that allows you to take a series of photos and automatically format them for the stereoscopic, 360-degree headset. (You don't need the headset to take the photos, but you'll need one to view the results in VR.) The app even records a little of the ambient sound in the area while you're taking all the necessary photos, so you can create a complete scene.
OnePlus has been visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, and they've been convinced to mend their frustrating ways. Either that, or the sales of the OnePlus 2 (which has been widely criticized for its hardware shortcomings) have been less than stellar, and the company no longer needs its rationing system in order to fill demand for the device. Starting on Saturday, the OnePlus 2 will be available for purchase without jumping through the hoops of the invitation system. It's a friggin' holiday miracle. The cheaper OnePlus X isn't getting the same treatment, but you will be able to buy one without an invite from December 5-7.
Games for portable consoles like the Nintendo 3DS and the PlayStation Vita make for natural ports to mobile hardware, if only because the technical requirements for those games are only a fraction of the hardware power needed for full console titles. LEGO has already released several of these, and the latest is in the company's home-grown line of vaguely Asian-style action toys, Ninjago. Shadow of Ronin is an action title that stars the characters from the kids TV show and the building sets, and it's available for five bucks with no in-app purchases.
The last two Rayman games to grace Android, Rayman Jungle Run and Rayman Fiesta Run, are some of the best examples of the genre on the Play Store. Now the developers are branching out by bringing Rayman back to his platforming roots. The third game in the series, Rayman Adventures, allows for more direct control of the 2D characters as they run around the screen. That makes stages bigger and less linear, encouraging players to explore every nook and cranny. You know, like an adventure.