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It's been more than two years since Google Assistant became available in the Brazilian localization of Portuguese, but speakers of the Portugal version (pt-PT) were left waiting. Google has been working on that for over a year, and it began testing it in a closed beta a few months ago, but it appears ready to make it public now.
OnePlus is known for its outrageous marketing stunts so we didn't even blink when we saw that the company was building a piano out of its phones. The goal is to show off the 7T Pro's 90Hz display and fast processor, which were supposedly crucial in creating a smooth musical keyboard.
While true wireless buds are easy to find in all shapes and prices these days, those that are made for exercising and built for stability aren't that many. Plantronics already dabbled in this segment last year with the BackBeat Fit 3100, which were good until you stepped into the wide open outdoors. Connectivity dropped between the two buds, making them nearly unusable in the environment they were built for.Plantronics came back this year with a fix to this problem. The new Fit 3150 and 3200 use Bluetooth 5.0, offer a more stable connection, and don't have any issue outdoor. The 3150 use a non-sealing eartip, while the 3200 I'm reviewing here have in-ear noise-isolating silicone tips. Unfortunately, like the Pro 5100 and Fit 6100, they still use Micro-USB for charging.
Google is rolling out the ability to edit and manage your public profile from Maps. Previously, all you could do was check up on your Local Guides points, if you were part of the program, but you couldn't edit your name or bio. With the new My profile tab, you have more control over how others see your contributions in Maps.
When you copy something from an app then switch to another and tap on a text entry box, the next thing you're likely to do is paste what you just copied. We often run into this scenario when using our phones and they could be a little smarter about it. Chrome already suggests pasting a link you just copied and now a similar feature is coming to Android on a system-wide level.
When Google teased the next-gen Assistant at I/O this year, it left a lot of us in awe of how fast and seamless it was. But as the Pixel 4 launched and reality took over, we noticed many limitations with this new Assistant experience. Sure, it has more compact UI and continued conversation, but it only speaks English for now, requires full gesture navigation, and doesn't work if you have a G Suite account on your phone. It does, however, offer a few features that aren't available on the existing Assistant. Chief among them is better integration with some apps, which allows Assistant to reply to your messages, share photos, and find things in different apps.
Google is putting its weight behind YouTube Music and trying to bolster the service's incentives before Play Music's rather inevitable demise. Part of this strategy involves adding plenty of interesting playlists to keep users entertained with hours and hours of music. Among these recent additions are 19 playlists dedicated to the best songs from this decade.
Google Podcasts is still far from being a possible replacement of third-party clients for many podcast aficionados, but the service keeps adding minor refinements here and there to improve the experience. The latest is a multiselect option to help you perform bulk actions on episodes.
Black Friday is still a few weeks away, but that's not stopping companies from starting their deals early on, very early on. We're not complaining, though, as competition means we get to see some fantastic discounts such as today's deal on the Sony WH1000XM3 over-ear headphones: they're down to 8 on Amazon, a full $122 off.Sony's cans are amongst the best over-ear noise cancelling headphones on the market right now. Great tunable sound, efficient noise cancellation, comfort, 30 hours of battery life plus USB-C charging, Google Assistant integration, and a sleek design made our own Richard love them and recommend them when he reviewed them. What he didn't like were the touch controls and the high $350 price, the latter of which is easily mitigated by this 35% discount.
Google Photos users are probably familiar with the app's many hidden gestures. You can pinch two fingers together in the main library to see smaller and more numerous thumbnails, or expand those fingers to enlarge the thumbnails. When viewing a photo, pinching or swiping down will minimize it and return you to the previous screen, while swiping up will reveal its info. Artem recently discovered a Motion Photo-related gesture, and despite it being quite old, we'd never seen it mentioned before and didn't know about it, so here it is.
YouTube Music and Premium are continuing their expansion across the world. After adding eight Middle Eastern countries in September, the service is now spreading to seven more markets in Asia. Most notable among these additions is Indonesia, the fourth most populated country in the world, and a potentially huge market for Google.
A hallmark feature of the Pixel 4 is its ability to detect car crashes and call 911 for you (only in the US). This smart option can potentially save many lives, but it's not enabled by default on the device. Here's how you can turn it on.
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Android Auto has experienced a major shift over the past few months. At I/O, Google announced Assistant Driving Mode and a spokesperson confirmed that this new experience would replace the Auto app's phone interface. Additional signs pointed to the demise of the standalone mode on phones, like the full Auto redesign that only rolled out for head units and the fact that Auto became a built-in feature with Android Q, not requiring an app. We were bracing ourselves for never being able to use Auto on our phone displays, but a new statement from Google brings us a little bit of hope.
Smart thermostats offer plenty of energy-saving benefits by letting you schedule different modes, turn them off when you leave home, and optimize temperature based on occupancy. Ecobee is now taking these smarts further with its new eco+ mode.
Unicode 12.0 was officially announced many months ago, but the emojis and changes it brought have slowly been trickling down to different platforms. Google already implemented them in Android 10, but WhatsApp, which likes to use its own cross-platform designs, is just now following suit.
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Google is always trying new things with the Maps app's interface, moving items from the side menu to the floating layers button, implementing different designs of the bottom bar in various regions, and lately just dabbling with more and more changes that fall in line with the new Material Design looks. And now we have a new change: a scrolling floating bar of category searches is showing up on the top of the screen.
One of the ways Digitial Wellbeing tries to curb your phone usage is through "Focus mode," a targeted and advanced do-not-disturb-like setting that stops distractions from certain apps and stops you from easily launching them. Until now, Focus mode was a manual setting, but with the latest beta of the app, it has gained an automatic schedule and a way to ask for a break.
Adobe's Max conference is scheduled to start today, and expectations point to an announcement of Illustrator and Photoshop CC for iPad. Android rumors are less tangible, but users can whet their appetite with an update to Lightroom v5.0.
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During its Pixel event, Google teased a slightly redesigned Google Home app with a new Nest Aware feed. We've been waiting for it to roll out to our devices and now it has as part of v2.15 of the Home app. Along with it we're getting the new Cast media UI that was leaked several weeks ago.
There is no shortage of true wireless earbuds nowadays. Although new, this product category has taken the audio world by storm and appealed to most users thanks to a combination of convenience, portability, and longer listening time between charges. The first generation of products was expensive and riddled with issues, but with time, we're seeing more and more good affordable options, like Anker's Soundcore portfolio.The company first dipped its toes in this market less than two years ago with the Zolo Liberty and Liberty+, but has since done what it's wont to do by releasing model after model across many price points and form factors. Its new line-up, announced in September, forges on in the same direction, with a few noteworthy additions: USB-C and wireless charging on many models, and a high-end option for picky listeners. Here, I'll be looking at the latter, the 0 Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro as well as the more affordable 0 Soundcore Liberty Air 2.