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CyanogenMod 13, based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, was formally released back in March, but it's only just arriving for some devices, in the form of nightlies. The most notable of these devices are probably the original HTC One and the Wileyfox Spark, plus the Spark X - the Spark's bigger, more powerful brother.
Most of us are still waiting for our Pixels to arrive, but one redditor, /u/TCATS5986 already has one, and in true reddit fashion has created an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on it. In the process, he's confirmed previously reported things such as the presence of a reboot option and some pretty outstanding electronic image stabilization in video, which you can see below.
We all love a good widget, so it's great to see home security app Alarm.com updated with a widget to trigger or control any scene on the home screen. Back in May, the app received one-touch automation in the form of scenes - the widget now controls those scenes with a single tap. However, the first iteration of the widget is, um, a little... big.
Following two days of non-stop news on carriers halting sales, reports of Samsung temporarily stopping production, and official partners disabling apps on the device, the only piece of news that could conceivably be next has arrived: Samsung will permanently discontinue production and sales of the Note7 worldwide, with filings made to regulators in South Korea.
I've not been near a Note7 when it explodes, but having watched videos and seen pictures of said event, I'm assured fire, heat, and general explosiveness are involved. Probably best, then, not to use it with Samsung's Gear VR headset. With that said, Oculus has duly disabled the Gear VR app on the Note7, in the interests of safety.
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- Following Verizon yesterday, Sprint and Best Buy have also announced that they are to halt sales of the Note7. Like Verizon, Sprint will also allow customers to exchange either original or replacement devices for another handset, as will Best Buy. For more information, including statements from both companies, head over to The Verge's article on the matter.
After AT&T and T-Mobile confirmed they are both halting Samsung Galaxy Note7 sales, and reports claiming Samsung is temporarily halting production of the device, Verizon has followed suit and halted its selling of the handset as well. The phones - both original and replacement models - can still be exchanged for something less, um, likely to explode, though.
The UK had a pretty good Android Pay deal recently, so now it's the US's turn to save some money. Not just one deal, but two, from Seamless, where anyone using Android Pay can save $15 off orders this month, and Eat24, in which $5 comes off every order above $10 until October 15.
After having a Nexus 6P, I think I'd find it pretty difficult to go back to not having a fingerprint sensor. It's just such a convenient way to quickly and easily unlock my phone. The Sony Xperia XZ and X Compact (this year's model) both have fingerprint sensors, but weirdly on the US editions (and possibly others from around the world), they are disabled via software. Xperiablog has found that by flashing the UK firmware, the sensor can be enabled.
Until now, the material design guidelines, which guides developers and designers for Android, Chrome OS, and the web on how to make an app that aligns with the respective platform, have only been available in English. Right before SPAN 2016, a design conference tomorrow in Tokyo, the material design guidelines have appeared in Japanese, direct from Google.
As expected, both the 5-inch Pixel and the 5.5-inch Pixel XL are compatible out of the box with Project Fi, Google's MVNO (it would be news if they weren't). Google also announced just over a dozen of other international partners around the world.
News apps are all the rage at the moment - just a few days ago we reported on News Pro from Microsoft, and Flipboard just topped 500 million downloads on the Play Store. Yahoo's been quite big on the news before, so today it's launching an update to Yahoo Newsroom to introduce some new features that curate the news to what you want to read.
As Cody found in his teardown of Google Photos v1.21 back in March, and Carphone Warehouse listed in its 'gone-live-early' promotion page, Google has announced free, unlimited photo storage for anyone who buys a new Google Pixel phone. This means any photos you take will be backed up to Photos at the original size, and not the "high quality" size that is uploaded by default. That's not all: 4K videos, which the Pixel phones can shoot, are also supported with unlimited storage and no quality decrease.
Google Home was announced earlier this year at I/O, and since then we've heard little about the product itself. Today at the #madebygoogle event, Google has released all the details, including price, shipping date, more about its abilities, and when you can pre-order it (i.e. throw your money at Google).
After hitting 5 million downloads and #8 in the Top Charts just under a week ago, Allo is now falling fast. As of writing this, it is in 86th, but was 75th a few hours ago and, according to this tweet, 62nd earlier yesterday. This probably shows that after millions downloading it during the initial release and hype period, that has now passed and the number of downloads has fallen dramatically.
The Android community is pretty damn cool, if you ask me - custom ROMs, Xposed, Superuser applications, and a lot more. Android developer advocate Nick Butcher has added to this with a Quick Settings tile to control Android's animator duration scale. Normally this is only accessible through the Developer Options part of Android's [System] Settings, so for developers out there who need to regularly change the animation speed to test out any swanky animations, this should be pretty useful.
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Facebook Lite was released early last year, and it's pretty good - it takes up less space than the regular Facebook app and consumes much less data. As a follow-up, Messenger Lite is now available, meaning phones in countries where data is thin on the ground and people with small amounts of storage can use Messenger as well.
We all have our own unique ways to read the news. Some like RSS apps. Some like Flipboard, or Yahoo News Digest. Others prefer to read the news direct on the website. There's yet another solution now: News Pro is a new app from Microsoft Garage, a department of the software giant that seems to have an unlimited stream of Android apps, and it aims to center the news around you and your profile, finding content that'll interest you.
The Banner Saga, first released on Android just under two years ago, is a beautiful, beautiful game, with fantastic graphics and a great story. The company behind it, independent games developer Versus Evil, has just released the sequel, Banner Saga 2, onto the Play Store, and my word does it look good.
We Brits are just getting used to Android Pay - I paid for a pint in my local pub the other day and was very excited when it worked - and in an effort to increase adoption, Mastercard is offering Transport for London (TfL) refunds and Caffé Nero offers to anyone paying with their Android phone.