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Google is preparing to make a significant change to how users are informed of security online. Beginning in January 2017, Chrome will subtly mark password and payment pages as non-secure if they use HTTP instead of HTTPS. This is just the first step toward marking all HTTP pages as non-secure with a more visible notice.
You can usually take your time with puzzle games, but Bit Bit Blocks is anything but leisurely. You have to play this puzzle game at lightning speed to have any hope of winning. By making bigger blocks, you can beat back your opponent's advances, and that opponent can be the computer or your friend/enemy.
Amazon is filling in the gaps in its Fire tablet lineup, small though they are. Starting today, you can order the Fire HD 8. As the name implies, this is an 8-inch Fire tablet with an HD screen; one inch larger than the regular Fire. However, it does offer something new for Amazon's tablets—the Alexa voice assistant.As usual, this is a budget tablet with special offers as the default. The specs aren't amazing, but they look solid. Of note: Amazon says the tablet takes around 6 hours to charge fully. Quick Charge this is not.
The Chase app added fingerprint login support a while back, which was great. Or rather, it could have been great. It wasn't particularly useful because many functions still required a manual login. That's no longer the case as of the latest update. Yay.
Pssst. Hey... you looking for some apps and games? It just so happens we've got some of those, and they're priced well. They fell off the back of a truck, I think. You're not a cop, are you? Okay, continue reading below.
The third member of Amazon's Moto G4 family will be coming to the US after all—the Moto G4 Play launches on September 15th, and you can pre-order it today. You've got some choices to make, though. The regular phone will be on sale via various retail outlets, but there's also going to be a cheaper Amazon Prime version with ads.The G4 Play is specced lower than the other members of the G4 family, but it's also cheaper. Here's what you get.
A new Humble Bundle has debuted; the 20th iteration of the mobile bundle. This is your chance to snag some cool Android games for a very low price, and also support charity while you're at it. The current bundle has eight games with more on the way, and you can get in the door for as little as $1.
If you are among the lucky few who have Android 7.0 Nougat already, SwiftKey's got your back with some updated emoji. Nougat brought ample new emoji, and now SwiftKey has been updated to take advantage of them. This feature previously came to the beta, but now it's in the stable version.
Okay, so there's a small chance the Galaxy Note 7 might explode. That's a bummer, but older note phones probably won't do that. It just so happens a lot of them are on salve via Woot today. These are all refurbished phones, and a few of them might have some cosmetic damage, but they're cheap.
USB Type-C is fast becoming the standard for mobile devices, and it's more than just a reversible plug design. USB Type-C can do a lot more than microUSB could, and that now includes native HDMI output. The HDMI Founders organization has developed HDMI Alternate Mode for Type-C, which could enable easy video-out on future devices.
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It has been a long and winding road for Google's Project Ara, and a new report claims this is the end of the road. Sources tell Reuters that Google has suspended work on Project Ara as part of its efforts to bring together its disparate hardware projects. Google, as you might imagine, refused to comment.
Pinch-to-zoom has existed in photo-centric apps for years. However, not in Instagram. Yes, perhaps the most popular photo sharing community that has ever existed does not have support for zooming in on photos, but that won't be the case for much longer. Pinch-to-zoom is coming to Android soon, and some of you might already have it.
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- None of the previous press material of both Fossil watches mentioned the processor they ran, but now we have an official confirmation. The Q Wander and Q Marshal will have a Snapdragon Wear 2100 under the hood, the second-gen Qualcomm processor made specifically for wearables that also powers ASUS' new ZenWatch 3.
Fossil announced Q Wander and Q Marshal Android Wear watches way back in March, but neglected to provide basic details like release date or price. I'd almost given up hope they'd actually come out, but now the date has been set—both watches go on sale August 29th, but you can pre-order them this Friday.
Your wrist is looking rather bereft of apps and watch faces, but we can assist with this roundup. Contained herein are all the best things to hit Android Wear in the last couple months. Slap on your watch and get ready to test.
Motorola was the first major smartphone maker to start putting its stock apps in the Play Store. Before that, OEMs would only update those apps as part of an OTA update. It sounds positively barbaric by today's standards. Motorola isn't done yet, though. Just today it added its stock file manager to the Play Store. You won't see much in the way of improvements this time, but who knows what the future could bring?
The Google OnHub was launched one year ago with a lot of implicit promises about smart home functionality. We never saw any of that materialize, though the router has gotten more capable. Now there's finally some smart home integration happening in the form of a Philips Hue partnership. Oh hey, guess what still doesn't work. Yep, the USB port.
Motorola launched the Moto Z on Verizon a few weeks back with three optional Mods—a battery, speaker, and pico-projector. Before that was all announced, there were rumors of a camera Mod with optical zoom. It wasn't available at launch, but now the Hasselblad True Zoom Mod is official, and it costs $300. I've been snapping photos with the Hasselblad Mod for a few days, and here are a whole bunch of them. Spoiler: they're kind of disappointing.
Verizon has had the exclusive on the Moto Z line for the last few months, but that's almost over. Pre-orders for the unlocked Moto Z start on September 15th, but the pricing is even higher than it is on Verizon—$699.99. The device won't actually ship until sometime in October.
Motorola's new Moto Z family is still only on Verizon, but unlocked phones are coming soon. In the meantime, Verizon is getting it's third Moto Z variant, the new Moto Z Play Droid. It launches first on Verizon, but an unlocked version will come out in October (pre-orders on September 15th). It's a less expensive device that works with the same Moto Mods as the more spendy versions—including the new True Zoom camera Mod. The specs are a step down, but you get all the same software features.
That ZenWatch 3 leak from a few weeks back appears to have been right on the money. Asus just announced the new smartwatch, and it's got a round display, distinctive design, and a new Snapdragon 2100 system-on-a-chip.