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As has become nearly customary for OnePlus, the 7T's announcement last week has been immediately followed by the device's kernel source release. If you're a custom ROM developer, an enthusiast, or a general modder, you'll find that code necessary for your future tinkering.
Until recently, most portable projectors either ran no software at all, relying on HDMI and USB for input, or offered a regular version of Android that wasn't suited for TVs or navigation with a remote. Then Anker's Nebula Capsule II launched with Android TV and the game changed drastically. It was the first projector to provide a seamless experience thanks to an optimized interface made specifically for TVs and official access to the Play Store.XGIMI, a projector maker, is now dipping its toes in the same market with the new MoGo. With Android TV, Google Assistant, Harman Kardon audio, 210 ANSI Lumens, and an appealing price tag, the MoGo has everything going for it, but you should keep an eye open for a few quirks.
After debuting and focusing on activity trackers, Misfit was bought by Fossil and started expanding its portfolio a few years ago to include smartwatches. Its efforts have been mitigated though, and those familiar enough with the Wear OS landscape have noticed how late to the game Misfit's releases have often been.
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- All of these new features, including the dark mode and live lyrics are now available in the stable version of Apple Music, and rolling out to users.
Earlier this month, Apple Music received a beta update that added a new dark mode and synchronized lyrics with the music. While that did cross off two of the most wanted features in the app, there was still one request that Apple hadn't yet answered: Chromecast support. Now, nearly four years after the service launched on Android, it can finally play our tunes on Chromecast speakers.
Home Minis seem to be growing on trees for Google. The company won't waste an opportunity to offer them for free with a Pixel 2, Nest products, on eBay or Google Express, or with a Spotify Premium Family subscription, and now it's giving them away to some Google One subscribers too.
About a month ago, the Google app started showing early signs of a dark mode implementation, but users who had the design only saw it interspersed throughout the interface in some sort of chimera mode that mixed white elements, dark ones, and illegible text in many instances. Now, the proper dark mode is showing up for some users, with the entire interface dipped into darkness, from the entire Google app to Assistant and all of its settings.
Every day this week has brought a new Pixel 4 leak. Two long video reviews of the device surfaced yesterday in Vietnam, and now we have another photo-based look at the device from the same country. Turns out a retailer in Hanoi is selling nearly-finished samples for 25M VND ($1,079) — they could be coming off the new production line or from another source. With that clarification out of the way, let's take a look at what we can glean from this latest leak, courtesy of Genk.vn.
The share sheet in Android 10 has seen many a change. It's supposedly faster, has new previews for links and images before sharing them, eight direct share targets, and four suggested apps on top, plus it uses a strict alphabetical order for apps. What we hadn't noticed, even though it's been there since Beta 3, is one other improvement: apps can no longer hijack the share sheet by naming their targets as "Add to."
Ever since Android 10's first betas, we started noticing bits of information pop up at the top of the general settings section. We've seen them for everything, from available Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth devices to notification channels, customizable styles and themes, and more. A new suggestion is making its way to that area and, this time, it's for the Play Store.
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- Google now says this feature works only if your Google Assistant language is set to English US, English UK, Canadian English, or French Canadian.
If you're out and about and want to talk to someone at home, you can pick from several options. If you own a Google Assistant Smart Display — be it a Nest Hub, a Lenovo Smart Display, JBL Link View, or LG ThinQ View — you get one more possibility: You can video call your display to have a face-to-face chat. Although that feature has been available for a year, it wasn't well known, so Google has been trying to better surface it to users. That's why it's now one of the top shortcuts in the Home app.
Continuing its expansion across the globe, YouTube's paid Premium membership is making its way to my neck of the woods. The service is now available in eight new countries in the Middle East, most of which are in the GCC area. If you live around here, you probably didn't expect Premium to come to us this "soon" after its international launch, so the news is a nice late-night surprise.
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You can't underestimate the benefits of a good education, and one of the first pillars of that is the ability to read. When I travelled to Nepal a couple of months ago, I was astonished by how thirsty for learning children in rural areas are. In the afternoon, many were being dropped off by their bus miles away from any village and had to (literally) trek up hills to get back home. In the morning, many could be seen carrying their backpacks and walking for at least half an hour or more just to get to their school or bus. And us privileged folks complain about waking up early to catch the bus that picks us up right from our doorstep! This is why I'm happy to see Google take learning to heart with its new Bolo reading app.
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- The issue is now fixed with Shield Experience Upgrade 8.0.1 and an update to the Vudu app.
If you have a Shield TV, you may have noticed that some apps have stopped playing content in 4K. That's annoying, but Nvidia has acknowledged the issue and said it's working on a solution.
September 9 is here and as expected, Google's new Nest Hub Max is launching today in the US, UK, and Australia. It's been a few months since the Hub Max accidentally leaked and then was officially announced, but the wait is now over. The Max is already available for purchase on Best Buy and the Google Store, with a few other sites listing it but not yet taking orders.
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If you've bought any Chromebook in recent times, you've probably redeemed your 100GB Drive storage perk, but Google offers more freebies from time to time, and it's a shame not to pick them up.
As a swimmer and a techie, every time a new activity tracker is announced, my first reaction is to skim its official page trying to find if it supports my favorite sport. What follows is an extensive research into what exactly it tracks about the swim because that can be anything from just the total time and distance to a detailed account of every lap. More often than not, none of that information is readily available and I just have to buy the device to test for myself.When I saw Form's swimming goggles, I knew what I was getting into. They're purpose-built for swimmers and no one else, and the app clearly showed a great amount of tracking details. What most appealed to me, though, was the idea of having my stats in front of my eyes as I swim: no more lifting my wrist to check where I'm at and no more water drag with each stroke, I could just swim. In practice, Form met all those expectations.
A couple of weeks ago, Google announced a new and very useful Assistant feature: the ability to set reminders and assign them to someone else in your family or household. The option is now live for some users in English (US, UK, Australia) and works just as expected. You can assign a time or location reminder to someone, change it or delete it, check on their progress, and more. So let's take a look at how this works.
The name "Huami" may not be familiar to most of you, but you'll definitely recognize one of its products: the Mi Band. The company has partnered with Xiaomi on wearables for several years and its Amazfit lineup is to smartwatches what the Mi Band is to activity trackers: very affordable, powerful, excellent for the money. At IFA, Huami announced two new models that'll be joining its collection, the Amazfit GTS and Stratos 3.
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- Although there was a workaround to get Drive's dark mode on any device, it was a complicated process. Now, the mode is officially available according to the app's changelog and should be live for everyone, without any hijinks, in the latest version. It's a slow rollout though, so you need to grab version 2.19.192.05 from APK Mirror if you don't have it. If you don't see the dark mode right away, force close the app then reopen it, that did the trick for me.
Google in 2017-2018: "Whiten all the things!" Google in late 2018-2019: "Darken all the things!" Things have evolved from the eye-searing white and every few days, we see a new app embrace its darker side and offer a black or dark grey mode for sensitive eyeballs and AMOLED displays. The latest to test the waters of a dark mode is Google Drive.
If you fancy yourself a weather expert or you're obsessed about cloud patterns and movements or you simply enjoy earth's view from space and seeing how things evolve around this blue planet of ours, you can now do so from Google Earth. The app has added a new cloud animation layer that represents the last 24 hours of weather patterns across the globe.