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- Microsoft has officially announced this update, explaining that it is using the same Deep Learning engine to manage the offline translations as it is when you are online. This means that you should get really good translations, regardless of whether or not you're connected.
Many of us Android users (and Android Police readers) have been accustomed to using Google Translate to fill our language knowledge gaps, but we often forget the other challenger in the arena: Microsoft Translator. The app was first released last August and when I looked at it back then and compared it to Google's offering, I found it a worthy challenger, but one that lacked a couple of key features.
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Things are shaking a bit in the Google Drive app on Android. Last week, the app got an update to let you control notifications for shared files and now it's ready to add a couple of other new features.
When Vimeo got its much needed interface revamp update at the end of last year, plenty of things got better in the app. It was faster, smoother, less of an offense to good design, and generally really better. However, it was missing an important feature for any Android video streaming app: Chromecast support.
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For $4, you can get an average cup of coffee, or two bottles of water, or maybe a decent sandwich. If you live in India, that same $4 can get you a brand new smartphone from handset maker Ringing Bells. Sorry, I meant $3.67 at the current exchange rate. Excuse me while my mind gets blown into teeny tiny pieces. WHAAAAAAAAAA?!
We've recently covered some odd releases for CyanogenMod on Android, where the custom ROM was resurrecting some forgotten devices from the dead with updates that their original manufacturers wouldn't dare release for them. This isn't the case with these additions / upgrades to the CM lineup.
BBC's micro:bit is an ARM-based embedded system with an accelerometer, magnetometer, Bluetooth, USB, 25 LED lights, and 2 programmable buttons, that is part of a BBC initiative to enhance computer education in the UK. The small board should be given for free to all year 7 students in the country to help them write software and build new computer things. It has a dedicated website to get started and desktop applications to connect to computers.
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- The app received another minor update in the Play Store today to version 2.12.453 (which you can also find on APK Mirror) and the changelog has been updated to mention the previously added Google Drive support (which went live sometime in January), as well as the new emojis, a few new languages, and Android M runtime permission support.
It's almost Valentine's and what more of a perfect gift could WhatsApp give its users than dozens upon dozens of brand new emojis they can use to express all of their emotions and deep feelings? Those cool drawings had been donning the WhatsApp beta for over two months but they're now ready to deck the emoji panel of every WhatsApp user through an update to the stable Play Store release of the app.
Dubizzle/OLX is the Arab equivalent of Craigslist. You can find ads for anything and everything on it, and today, if you go checking the United Arab Emirates section of the site looking for a brand new phone, you can find two peculiar items: brand new unannounced phones. Some enterprising user has gotten their hands on both the LG G5 and Samsung Galaxy S7 and is offering them for sale right away before their almost-certain launch at MWC on February 21.
Both Christmas and Valentine's are over, but Verizon doesn't seem to be aware of that. It has decided to wrap up its OTA updates with a bow and deliver them straight to your phone so you can enjoy some Marshmallow flavor before the end of winter.
Another one bites the dust. MixRadio, we hardly knew ya on Android. The service, which started as Nokia's Comes With Music in 2007 then was renamed to Nokia MixRadio and just MixRadio after Microsoft's acquisition, was later bought by LINE in March of 2015. After that, it went through a wide expansion, launching Android and iOS apps in May, joining the Apple Watch, Amazon, and Tizen platforms, and even starting web clients for Windows and Mac. It looked like things were going well for MixRadio, especially with its growing popularity in India and Indonesia, and over 5M installs on the Play Store.
Focus is a very neat alternative gallery app on Android. After the unfortunate sale of QuickPic, it became my go-to third-party photo browser if I needed something other than whatever was installed on my phone (Google Photos or LG/Samsung's default Gallery app), and that's not just because it's well designed, but also because it's very fast and can handle thousands of photos with nary an issue.
Trivia games are a dime a dozen on Android, but good and popular trivia games that you can play against lots of friends and multiple opponents are a lot harder to find. Trivia Crack has amassed over 100M downloads on Android for its free version and more than 100,000 for its ad-free version, so you're bound to find a lot of users to battle against.
Exercise apps are a really good target for the Chromecast. If you're trying to follow the exact steps of a workout and you don't know the body position and movements, you don't want to check your small phone's screen and keep fiddling with its angle and trying to turn it on each time the display timeout kicks off, while also struggling to maintain a Crab Bridge. Instead, you'd much rather it was streamed to your big TV and you could follow along and see it no matter what weird angle your head is at.
Do you like music? Do you want to listen to as much music as you can, online and offline, from albums you know and others you don't, legally, without ads, and for as little money as possible? Then boy have I got some awesome news for you! Google Play Music subscription gifts are discounted by 50% today and until February 15.
Out of all the watch maker applications on Android, Pujie Black is my favorite. I find the interface easier than WatchMaker, plus it's accessible on Android instead of requiring a web browser like Facer. I also love that I paid once for the app and I can get all of the community's creations for free and edit them to fit my personal needs. There's a learning curve to figuring out what everything does inside the app, but once you've got the hang of it, there are hundreds of things you can change to specifically tailor it to your preference. I personally like seeing my steps, the date, and PST timing (Artem's timezone) as the 3 Pujie indicators, and I love having a tap action to play/pause Pocket Casts specifically. It makes it easier to resume and pause listening to my podcasts from my watch without fiddling with my phone, watch apps, or any voice actions.
The Facebook Messenger team is on an A/B server-side testing spree. It's only a couple of weeks ago that we reported how some users had spotted the app with a new Material Design makeover, but it seems that this wasn't the end of the Material improvements. And that's not even the only modification that's being tested for some users. There's the return or SMS integration and multiple account support too. Here's the breakdown.
Microsoft is slowly reinventing itself, acquiring interesting companies like SwiftKey and Sunrise Calendar, changing the way people perceive it and its services, and improving its apps across multiple platforms. We've sure seen the effects here on Android Police — there's hardly any week that passes by without us mentioning the company at least once, and that's Android which isn't even its main platform.
Google Drive has been giving us notifications about new shared files and requests to access our files for several months, but the notification setting was only accessible from Drive on the web. If you were wondering how to turn it off after you saw it on your phone, you were probably stumped. That's why the Drive team is rolling out an update that adds a Notification pane in the app's settings, which allows you to toggle them on or off.
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To celebrate the release of Rise of the Tomb Raider on Xbox consoles, Square Enix is discounting its Lara Croft GO game by 60% on the Play Store. It's a flash sale though, so you might want to hurry and grab it if the game seemed appealing to you or if you liked its spiritual predecessor Hitman GO.
Before there was even a watchface API for Android Wear, Facer was the go-to app to create and customize your watch's design. The app was later updated to conform with Google's watchface API and has since enjoyed a nice spot as one of the best watchmakers for Android Wear. Competition has gone up however, with apps like Pujie Black and WatchMaker getting a share of the watch customization pie.