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Today IKEA has announced that its IKEA Place augmented reality app, previously exclusive to iOS, is now available for Android. With it, prospective furniture customers can see if a given IKEA product will be a good fit—in every sense. From relative sizes to aesthetic comparisons, you can choose just the right side table, lamp, or shelf to fit your particular niche, and even search for your existing IKEA furniture in the app.
Although there might have been a couple hiccups, Samsung's Galaxy S9 and S9+ are finally available for purchase in stores. The two phones might be more iterative than revolutionary, but they impressed us quite a lot in our review. So much so, in fact, that we gave the pair our Most Wanted superlative. David even recommended them over the Pixel 2 XL. So, with Samsung's latest flagships being worth it in our eyes, what do you think? Are you going to grab one?
Rumblings of a PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds release on Android for Western markets started late last year, when two different versions of the game were announced for China: one made by TIMI Studio Group, the other by Lightspeed & Quantum Studio. The latter version has made its way across the globe during the last three months, as PUBG Mobile is now live on the Play Store. But, this is a soft launch, so it's Canada-only (for now).
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- Google has finally made a formal announcement that helps to explain what we observed going on with Huawei Watch 2 users and Google Pay support outside the US and UK: starting today, Wear OS users in Canada, Spain, and Australia can all conduct tap-and-pay transactions with their NFC-equipped smartwatches.
When the Oreo update landed for Huawei's Watch 2 back in February, many reported that it was disabling Google Pay (then called Android Pay). One month and one rebranding later, this issue seems to have been fixed. There are reports that something in the last few days has re-enabled Google's rebranded NFC payments for the Watch 2.
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- Based on specifications and appearance, this Chromebox might just be a rebadged CTL model. The article has been updated to introduce that comparison.
Chrome OS is all the rage in education these days. It's ideal for classroom use, with sandboxed security, low-cost and durable hardware options, and plenty of management tools. Viewsonic is no stranger to the education market, either, with its wireless ViewBoard classroom displays. And now it's pushing out a Chromebox to accompany that display, the new $349 NMP660 which will be available in April.
Today Google has released its 4th annual so-called "Android security year in review," a number-heavy report meant to demonstrate the improvements made over the last year when it comes to security. And it's not just ego-stroking, Android made great strides during 2017 on the subject. From the launch of Play Protect to increased distribution of security patches, Android as a platform has never been more secure.
When it landed on iOS last month, Annapurna Interactive's Florence was a hit, almost immediately making the App Store's Editors' Choice list. The game is simple, a so-called "interactive storyboard" that follows our protagonist Florence as her first relationship breaks up the mundane tedium of her life. Now those of us on greener (#A4C639) pastures can enjoy the game as well, and it's just been released for Android on the Play Store.
For many people, especially those of us here at Android Police, Google's various backup tools are an integral part of our daily workflow. Frankly, I'd have to entirely restructure how I do things without the convenience of Google Photos and Google Drive/Backup and Sync. For some, the combination of those two services isn't working as expected when it comes to Motion Photos, and backup synchronization to a desktop fails for those MVIMG-labeled images.
The Google Assistant listing on the Play Store might only be a glorified shortcut, but it's still one avenue for accessing the Assistant on supported devices. And, as of a few days ago, it was officially updated to support devices running Lollipop 5.0. Explicit Android tablet support was also added, which brings parity to today's announcement that the Google Assistant is now supported on the iPad, too.
Magisk is probably a name that needs no introduction 'round these parts, but for the uninitiated, it's an open source root solution which includes SafetyNet root detection mitigation—so you can have your # and still get Pokemon Go, too. Prolific Magisk developer topjohnwu may have been called to military service, but even he couldn't resist the allure of the new Android P developer previews. The new Magisk v16.1 and Magisk Manager v5.6.2 released over the weekend have introduced support for Google's latest.
Google just released its developer previews for Android P, the upcoming and as-yet-unnamed version of Android. Since this is DP1, it's too early to tell which changes will stick: some missing features are likely to return, and some new changes could still be reverted. But, we've had four days to play around with the new images and develop our own opinions. What's yours?
Android's "Do not disturb" setting has an incredible degree of flexibility, but as of the recent Developer Preview, it looks like it may be simplified a bit going forward. In our hands-on time today with Android P, we have discovered that the Do not disturb setting, and its various modes, has been reduced to a single toggle accessible only via quick settings. Gone are the old "Total silence," "Alarms only," and "Priority only" modes.
Last year, Google introduced a new neural networks API in Android 8.1 Oreo that provided developers with hardware-backed tools for machine learning. Now, with Android P, Google is expanding the API to support nine new operations. Pixel 2 devices will also have support for Qualcomm's Hexagon HVX driver, giving developers further improvements in performance on those devices.
Just earlier this hour, Google released the details and images for the new Android P developer preview, and now we know what sort of schedule to expect for future releases—assuming Google sticks to it. The current plans are to push the 2nd Developer Preview in May. Two more are planned for June with a final image expected to land in July before the ultimate Q3 release.
The latest as yet unnamed flavor of Android is now circulating for your unstable curiosity, and with it come a pile of new features, including a bunch of camera additions. The new multi-camera API available in Android P is an especially exciting enhancement because of its flexibility. Although there are obvious use cases, not even Google knows what novel applications developers might find for it.
The 2018 Mobile World Congress ended just last week, and over the course of the week-ish of announcements, there was a lot of news to cover. Just in case you happened to miss any, we've put together a quick little list of all the things we wrote about from MWC this year, plus a few things we saw that didn't merit their own post, all mixed in with a big gallery of photos.
Today ARM has announced its new Mali G52 and G31 GPU designs, respectively targeting so-called "mainstream" and high-efficiency applications. The bigger G52 will someday make its way into more demanding use cases like TVs and high-end phones, where its 3.6x performance improvements in machine learning/AI workloads can be appreciated, while the G31 brings ARM's Bifrost architecture, Vulkan and all, to a more affordable level.
It was reported earlier this year by Reuters that Google may have been looking to sell Zagat—the restaurant reviews guide/service it picked up for $151 million in 2011, if you're unfamiliar. Those unofficial plans appear to have panned out. The Infatuation, a new restaurant guides and reviews company, has just announced that it's acquiring the Zagat brand from Google.
For most people, using the SiriusXM Android app in their car is probably something of a corner-case. Many head units that support Android Auto are compatible with SiriusXM satellite radio tuners. But just in case you'd prefer to navigate by voice or get your music delivered via LTE rather than satellite, the SiriusXM app for Android now works with Android Auto.
ASUS' latest flagship, the ZenFone 5Z, might sound like a great value for the specifications, but it hasn't been an omnipresent part of the Android conversation for the last week online just due to pricing. At its launch event at MWC last week, ASUS didn't only reveal a new phone, it also showed off a big new iPhone X-style sensor/earpiece cutout.