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Instagram nowadays is synonymous with three words: Stories, filters, and ads; and the first two are at the crux of the latest addition we spotted in the app. After allowing you to apply filters à la Snapchat while taking photos and videos for your Stories, Instagram has added the option to use those filters after the fact.
Juho Sarvikas, Chief Product Officer at HMD and our current source of information on all-things Nokia, revealed yesterday the Android 9 Pie update roadmap for the company's devices. True to what was promised there, the Nokia 5 (2017) is the first phone to get the OTA today.
Google Maps has seen a lot of UI changes recently that some of us may consider superfluous, or at least not a high priority. But over the past few days, two really important features popped up in the app — speed trap cameras and speed limits while driving — and now there's a third addition. When you're retrieving driving directions, you can - finally - set your departure or arrival time and get an estimation of how long your route will take, via the route options menu.
Thanks to brands like Mobvoi and Zolo, the true wireless earbud form factor is no longer a luxury that only those who can pay several hundreds of dollars can afford. It's been democratized and has reached prices around the $100 range. Until today, that benjamin was the least you had to pay to get Mobvoi's TicPods Free. Now, the earbuds are even cheaper, reaching an all-time-low price of $90 thanks to a coupon code on Amazon.The TicPods look quite similar to Apple's Airpods. They use Bluetooth 4.2, offer 4hrs of playback, and have touch controls. A charging case is included for up to 18hrs of audio playback (it charges over MicroUSB). When Scott reviewed them, he liked their sound quality and battery life, applauded their lack of A/V sync issues, but he also said the controls are finicky. Overall, he found the balance of quality versus price pleasing, even at their original retail value of $130. Take $40 off that and you have a real winner.
At times, it feels like Google is playing whack-a-mole with all the head-scratching apps that have popped up on the Play Store. Every few weeks, there's an update to the Google Play developer policy, clarifying something, adding new restrictions, and generally trying to curb as much as possible the amount of spammy, harmful, and sometimes illegal apps on the Store.
Google Trips is a great travel planner. Besides automatically importing your flight and hotel bookings, letting you browse and bookmark things to do, and offering practical information about the country/city you're going to, it also has one little-known trick that can save you some dinero while traveling: discounts. When you're already dipping into your piggy jar for a trip, it doesn't hurt to save upward of 20% on travel cards, tickets to places, and experiences, does it?
In a world that bombards us with things to do, it can be tough to stay on top of everything we think is worth checking out. Movies we want to see, music to listen to, books to read, restaurants to try, and places to go, there's just so much to do and almost no central way to keep track of all of this. You can use a simple list app, like Google Keep for example, but where's the fun in that? Now there's a new way to stay on top of your bucket list: Soon.
The Google Play Store seems to be in a perpetual state of server-side tests. No sooner do we discover one new interface element being changed or added than there is another one to look into. Two tests have made their way to our inbox today. One shows a small, but telling, change in the tabs order and names; the other sees the overflow button disappear from all app "cards" and be replaced by a new tap-and-hold gesture and pop-up menu.
For the past few years, Spotify has been doing its best to make it easier and safer for you to control your music while driving. You can use Android Auto (in the car, or standalone on your phone) to manage Spotify in a driving-friendly way, as well as the simpler controls integrated with Waze and Google Maps, but Spotify has also been working on its own in-app driving mode. We spotted it more than a year ago, but the interface never rolled out widely. Spotify has now revived it under "Car View," which is beginning to show up on some devices.
For the longest time, users have been bemoaning the lack of Waze-like reports on Google Maps, even though the two apps are technically part of the same company. Things started moving in the right direction when we spotted crash and speed trap reports in Google Maps in November, then again in December, though the feature hasn't rolled out to everyone yet and is still a little flighty in the way it works. Until now however, that meant only reporting something, and not seeing what others reported. But development is on track as one tipster let us know that he can now see speed traps on the map.
Beta tests for Google Assistant's Polish language support have been going on for several months, so it's no surprise to see the feature officially launch. If you speak Polish, you will now (or soon, at least) be able to use Assistant in that language. Developers can also build Actions on Google in Polish.
From time to time we come across a story of an app being removed from the Play Store unjustly and the developer getting frustrated with the lack of warning or communication, and more frustratingly, the absence of a valid reason. The case of popular apps Power Shade (500K installs) and Material Notification Shade (1M+ installs) has proven to be a little different though, and possibly more head-scratching than that.
Google Assistant is everywhere. On your phone, tablet, smart speaker, watch, car, TV, and even your oven. Even on your phone, there are several ways to trigger Assistant, from saying "Ok Google" to tapping and holding the home button or using the icon in the Google search bar. And now, there's a new way to open Assistant from the Google.com mobile homepage.
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- Looks like the Google One love is already spreading, and now we get word that the service is now available to users in additional nations across Europe, including Spain, France, and Russia. In France, at least, pricing comes in at:
After tentatively launching in the US in May, Google One, aka Google's new unified storage plans and service, has been shyly expanding. It didn't become available to "everyone" in the US until August, and even then, there were plenty of exceptions that meant not all users were able to migrate to the new plans. After that, it was announced for Argentina, Australia, Brazil, and Mexico as well as India. Now, users in two more countries are getting emails notifying them of an upgrade to Google One.
Android's check for update button must be one of the most loved and hated interface elements on the platform. When it works correctly, it brings you a new update with better security and some/many new features (some bugs too, possibly). But more often than not, it doesn't. Google seems to have fixed it now, but just in case you're stuck checking for an update for the umpteenth time, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, you may see a new animation.
YouTube's community features began showing up around a couple of years ago but it took a year for the feature to reach more channels and start popping up in users' home feeds on mobile. However, on the web, these posts were not as easily accessible: you had to go to each channel's page to see if it had any community updates. That won't be the case for long though, as posts are starting to show up on the home page for a few users.
Xiaomi is already known as the value-for-money smartphone brand, but even in the company's own portfolio, the Redmi line-up takes the crown of value budget devices. Now, Redmi is officially an independent brand, under the supervision of new General Manager Lu Weibing (former president of Gionee). It will focus on making successful cost-effective devices for e-commerce sites and expanding into more countries. Its first smartphone is the rumored 48MP camera-toting Redmi Note 7.
Instagram influencers will tell you, that life is hard. If they maintain several accounts with different scopes and specializations, it's easy to switch between one and the other, but it's not easy to post common photos and videos to more than one. They'd have to do it from scratch for each. However, that might be changing as some users on iOS have started noticing the option to share their post to other accounts they own.
USB-C is becoming more and more ubiquitous these days, and while there's always a bit of confusion about compatibility, what's supported what isn't, and that new DRM-like authentication program, things have been mostly moving in the right direction. Options for chargers, cables, and other accessories are more varied now, and prices are dropping down.However, if you own a few USB-C devices, you may have noticed something: multi-port chargers often have just one USB-C output, with the rest being USB-A. With the exception of Aukey's 36W dual USB-C PD, I can't find anything from Anker, Ravpower, or other known brands, despite doing this search every few weeks. So you can imagine my surprise and joy when I saw that Satechi is finally granting us our wish of a desktop/travel charger with two USB-C PD ports.
A few months ago, Chrome added a picture-in-picture mode for watching videos, be it on YouTube or other sites. However, the implementation lacked a few essential features, like reopening the video and skipping ads. The former is getting worked on and should soon hit the stable of Chrome, while the latter has just been added to the Chromium Gerrit by François Beaufort.