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For a couple of years, Firefox Aurora, the developer edition of the popular browser, has only been available directly from Mozilla. As of today, Aurora has landed on the Play Store, in early access (i.e. unreleased) form. This is presumably because it's unstable and not meant to be used by the general public, and only by those interested in what's coming soon or building the web. Regardless, it is always good to see things in development that will later be deployed to the public version of Firefox, which is currently on v49.
A few days ago, Google released Android apps to two Chromebooks: the Acer Chromebook R11 and the ASUS Chromebook Flip. These arrived with version 53 of Chrome OS, on the stable channel. However, the Chromebook Pixel 2, which has had Android apps in beta up until now, has been waiting for the stable release. This painful period is over, Pixel 2 owners, because you too can now join in on the Android fun with the release of stable Chrome OS 53 to last year's flagship Chromebook.
"Anyone got a OnePlus One invite?" is a phrase I remember well. They were the good ol' days. Actually, no, they weren't, they were awful. Anyway, those days are now behind us because OnePlus has announced an exclusive partnership with UK carrier O2 to sell the OnePlus 3 in brick-and-mortar stores.
Millions of people use Microsoft Office every single day, from typing up a simple letter to making complex spreadsheets. For many, another fundamental part of the suite is SharePoint, which is used by organisations worldwide for a variety of different implementations and reasons. Until now, SharePoint hasn't had an Android app, but not any more: Microsoft's just released an early access version of the app on the Play Store.
"The other browser, that one with the red O as its logo, um... Opera!" is the way I've often heard Opera referred to. It's a great browser, but for whatever reason it doesn't seem to have the same public mindshare as Chrome or Firefox does. Today, it's getting a brand new lick of paint in version 37, which might help it in the ongoing quest to overhaul the aforementioned 'big boys' of the browser game.
If you drive a car and have a phone, you've probably got a car charger somewhere - they're very useful for a top-up of juice or if you use the phone for navigation or music while driving. Presumably, Google's realised the same thing, as it's added a Belkin car charger to the store.
The Android Pay team is seemingly on a roll at the moment, adding many new banks over the past few months, including Chase in the US and Natwest, Santander, and Royal Bank of Scotland (among others) in the UK. Today 44 new US banks are being added, and another big UK bank works as well after being announced as 'coming soon' a week ago.
The end of the year is always important for consumer electronics, since people buy their loved ones an expensive new phone or tablet for the holidays. Therefore, HTC has released some new mid-range phones that it thinks will make people say "Can you buy me one of those new HTCs?"
I think we all long for a real, proper tablet interface for Android and not just a blown-up phone UI, like on the Pixel C. We reported on Taskbar, an app that adds a Windows-like taskbar to your device and enables freeform windows mode, a few weeks ago. Developer Braden Farmer has updated Taskbar to version 1.2, adding in a new way to launch the app as the default homescreen, plus a few other improvements.
The NVIDIA SHIELD is probably the best Android TV hardware out there (it has Borderlands!), and today it's getting even better, with the addition of Plex DVR to the latest Plex Media Server beta, which enables the recording of any over-the-air TV channels through any web browser.
I've never quite understood the appeal of Pandora - I want to be able to control what I'm listening to, not be tied to a radio where I can't choose what song to play. While Pandora is massively popular, the company must have realized this too - it's just announced Pandora Plus, which lets you skip or repeat songs playing on the radio station you've selected an unlimited amount of times.
Facebook Messenger, mostly just referred to as Messenger these days, (or "I'll send you a link on Facebook") has improved at a rate of knots over the last year or so. It's had a material overhaul, nicknames and color functions added, group calling, games, new emojis, SMS support, and probably a lot more. Today another new feature has arrived Messenger, especially for Android: Direct Share.
Bohemian Rhapsody is, all told, a pretty cool song, so it only seems fitting it gets a VR experience recognizing its legendary status in music history. Google's released an app that's been developed in cooperation with Queen - that's Brian May and Roger Taylor, out of the four original members - and, as with many things Queen do, it's great.
After rolling out to new countries and devices without a Project Fi SIM just under a week ago, Google has made Wi-Fi Assistant even more useful. The Assistant can now connect to non-secure public networks that are connected to manually, instead of only being able to secure networks that it connects to automatically.
Echo! Echo! Echo! This sound reverberated around the UK and Germany (sorry, Germans, I'm unsure what 'echo' is in German) as Amazon announced it would be releasing its Echo speaker in the two countries this fall, along with a new white model that will also be coming to the US.
Audiobooks are a great way to 'read' when you're driving, cooking, or doing some other activity in which you want listen to something that isn't your favorite musical act. Good thing, then, that Audible is offering free streaming audio books and Channels to Amazon Prime members as part of the 'Prime Benefits' scheme.
We love on-sale games and apps here at Android Police, and we've got another two for you, with LapseIt Pro on sale for 0.10 in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, and Russia, while Motorsport Manager is available for the same price worldwide.
Read it later apps are massively popular, with examples such as Instapaper or Pocket being among the most downloaded apps on Google Play. Google is also getting into the game now, albeit in a different way, with the Chrome team adding a read it later feature to the development versions of the browser.
A few weeks ago, Google told us that Project Fi's WiFi Assistant, which connects users automatically to public WiFi using a secure VPN, was heading to Nexus devices in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, and Nordic countries. This has now started rolling out, via an update to Google Connectivity Services, version D.1.5.10.
Back in April, after Google pulled the option of having tabs and apps merged in Recents, it became apparent that the Chrome team was trying to work out how to move forward. The team placed a new flag in Chrome Dev 52, #tab-management-experiment-type, with five 'flavors' of tab management: Asine, Basil, Chive, Dill, and Elderberry. In Chrome Dev 54, this has now come to a head, with Elderberry being the only option remaining.