Latest Articles
If there's any constant in the Android Police tips inbox I can rely on, it's that our Dutch readers are the most enthusiastic of the bunch. Any new feature launches in the country and we're bound to get inundated with emails, but this time, it's not just The Netherlands that should be happy, three other countries in Europe are getting YouTube Premium as well.
Oh Spotify, oh Spotify, oh Spotify... Users ask you to improve your app's interface and you go ahead and try something that doesn't make sense. But such is life and, thankfully, this new interface is still a server-side change that we shall pray never comes to everyone.
If English isn't your native language, you're likely to come across a lot of new words online. As is often the case these days, the first thing you turn to is Google. A simple search for the word gives you a definition card with its different meanings, synonyms, antonyms, and some examples of sentences containing it. But if you live in India, you may start seeing a change in the way definitions are displayed.
In what isn't surprising "news" for anyone, Google's News & Weather app is slowly being deprecated in favor of the more recent Google News. The application, which was pre-installed on many Android devices in the past and served as a good place to check the news, is now nearing the end of its life.
It took a couple of years for Google Duo to spread its wings beyond single-device support, but now that it has, there's no stopping it. After enabling you to make video calls on multiple devices, including Android tablets, Duo is now expanding from the iPhone to the iPad as well.
If there's one Amazon/eBay feature I've searched for and hoped for in the last few years, it's a collaborative wishlist. Ever since I met my now-husband and we started planning a life together, we've had issues keeping a single list of items we're considering purchasing. Both Amazon and eBay let us share our lists, but by "share," they simply mean let the other person view it. Adding items, editing them, removing things, that was all too much to ask for, unless we were using a Wedding registry on Amazon. For regular Amazon lists, those features didn't exist until now.As I was browsing my Amazon wishlist yesterday, I noticed a new avatar icon with a + Invite button next to it. The explanation pop-up said, "Invite others to add or remove list items," and I nearly squealed from joy. Could it be? For real? By golly, it was finally happening!
Instagram is testing a few different layouts these days. Over the past week, my direct message and profile icons swapped places then went back, and a new sidebar showed up on my profile tab, disappeared, and reappeared again. Now it seems that this last iteration is showing up for more users, so let's take a look at it.
Developers, get your fingers and keyboards ready, it's about to get busy in here. You can now download the kernel source for the hottest Android smartphone of the past months, the Galaxy Note9.
Sometimes we report ground-breaking, interesting, and engaging news here on Android Police, but you all know that we don't shy away from the fluff either. And in that vein, we're here today to discuss a small, but very significant(TM) change in the Facebook Messenger app: following Instagram, it now has an adaptive icon too. It only took one year!
The LG V20 is nearly two years old now, but the Korean company hasn't forgotten about it. After the G6, it was next in line to get its Oreo update, and true to form, the Sprint version received its OTA at the end of July. Now, it's the AT&T variant's turn to get its own taste of Oreo.
No social network has been as equally loved and hated as Google+. Those who use it appreciate the tight community and fruitful discussions, those who don't use it see no reason whatsoever to start doing so and deride its many shortfalls. Plus, both the spam propagation and the lack of meaningful development haven't helped its case lately. But nothing has sounded the alarm bells of Google+'s slow demise into pointlessness as much as one of Google's own entities deciding to abandon the platform for good.
Almost two weeks have passed since Google served us a slice of its official Android 9 Pie. Some of us had followed for months as the different developer previews landed and weren't too fazed by the final release, but for those users who preferred to wait, there were many surprising changes from 8.1 Oreo to 9 Pie.
Smartphones are very powerful computers that we often take for granted and simply use to check Twitter or Reddit and play some games or watch videos of puppies. But for the visually-impaired, smartphones can be very helpful tools that support them throughout the day and bring them a bigger sense of independence. We've covered several apps in this vein before, like Be My Eyes and Lookout, and now there's a new kid on the Android block: Envision AI.
Gather 'round, Svenska speakers, we have great news for you this morning. After months of promises and speculation, the Google Assistant can now officially understand your language.
Despite how much I love my Shield TV and how often we use it in my household for streaming videos and playing games, I can't help but scratch my head a little at what NVIDIA is doing here. The company is rehashing its streaming box for the umpteenth time with another bundle and no price incentive to make anyone want to jump on board.The new 2017 Shield TV, which was more or less a rehashed version of the older one, already comes in three versions: a $299 Pro with 500GB of storage and some hardware enhancements, a $179 16GB version with just the remote, and a $199 16GB with the remote and the game controller. Now there's another bundle with the addition of a SmartThings Link hub.This new Smart Home Edition costs $219.99, which is $1 more than what you get by adding $179 for the regular version with remote and .99 for the Link. That makes no sense. You're actually slightly better off buying the items separately than together. And if you're patient enough to wait, you might get the Shield for $139-149 and the Link for $15-20. Overall, those are much better deals than this new bundle.However, if you'd rather get one package from one source and not bother with hunting for deals, then I suppose the Smart Home Edition isn't a bad buy. The Shield TV now runs Oreo and NVIDIA has been stellar with its updates, it has 4K HDR video support, and there are almost no better Android TV options out there. As for the SmartThings Link, it's a very neat way to dip your toes into smart home automation, plus it's compatible with Google Home and plenty of other brands. You can check our review for more details.For those interested in the Smart Home Edition, it will be available on NVIDIA's site, Amazon, and Best Buy. The latter is discounting it $20 to $199.99 for its anniversary sale and offering one month of TikiLIVE Premium. You can grab it from the links below.Source: NVIDIA, Amazon, Best Buy
There's no shortage of dashcam brands and companies nowadays, but very few of them offer LTE connectivity for easy remote access to videos, alerts, and livestreams. Owl Car Cam is one of them and now it also works on Android, after being compatible with iOS only at launch.
Sometimes you install an app on your phone then notice there's no direct way to launch it. This happens with launchers, which simply get triggered when you tap the Home button, and with other apps you use but don't need to access per se, such as keyboards. One newcomer in this hidden app category is Google's Digital Wellbeing, which started its beta on Android 9 Pie and hides inside your Android phone's settings menu. But what if you want to quickly access it? Now, there's an easy way to do so.
Most social and news aggregation services nowadays offer you an easy way to request seeing more or less of something to tune the content to your liking. When Google News launched, the "More stories like this" and "Less stories like this" options for every article immediately caught my eye because such a setting doesn't exist in Google's other news-like service: the Feed. But it seems that Google is aware of that omission and is already testing a way to implement these granular controls.
Android Pie is ready to look after your digital health, but only if you let it. The suite of features that were announced as part of Digital Wellbeing at I/O 2018 finally came to life when Pie 9.0 was released earlier this week, but you had to sign up for them, wait for an email, and then join the beta to get them on your device. Now, the process is much faster.
Read update
Last October, YouTube TV started working as a cable login, allowing subscribers to the service to access other participating networks' streaming sites and apps with their YouTube credentials. However, at the time, we didn't have an exhaustive list of all the networks that support the feature. Now, Google has published it and we know there are 67 partner sites (though with several regional iterations of the same one).