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Lifx has just announced five new products that join the company's burgeoning ranks of smart lighting gadgets. The additions include a new Edison bulb-style filament smart light, a minimalist 4-way smart switch, and new kits to add backlighting to your TV or monitor. A redesigned Lifx app is also in the works.
As part of its CES announcements, Google is taking the wraps off a bunch of new and upcoming Assistant functionality, like the ability to schedule actions, a new "Read It" command that dictates text content like news in a more natural voice, plus new Smart Display features like sticky notes and speed dial. While much of it won't land until a nebulous date "later this year," it gives us a peek at what to expect from the Assistant in 2020, and a reference for when Google re-announces half of it as new later once it's been in silent public testing for a couple months.
Not long after it revealed its high-end 5G-integrated Dimensity 1000 chipset, MediaTek is now announcing a chip for mid-range phones: the Dimensity 800. Like its bigger brother (and its biggest competitor, Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 765), it packs an integrated 5G modem that claims to offer improved battery live compared to existing external modem solutions. The biggest catch — outside it being a MediaTek product of unknown performance — is the fact that it won't work with the 5G mmWave solutions US carriers are pushing.
Google Pixel security patch updates have been nothing short of a wreck since late 2019. There was the delayed November patch for the Pixel 4/4XL, Pixel launcher crashes on some devices following the December patch that was ultimately put on hold, and a very slow rollout for the first Pixel feature drip drop. To help clean up the mess, Google is rolling out its promised cumulative update that combines December and January patches into one.
Pixel 4 owners using Simple for their banking needs will soon have a much more convenient time checking their balance or transferring cash into savings "Goals." The latest beta release of the Simple app now supports the Android 10 biometrics API, signing you in with just a glance and a tap — almost as convenient as your fingerprint.
JBL has announced a whole pile of new home audio products at this year's CES. By far, the lion's share of the new gear is bluetooth headphones (both truly wireless and over/on-ear), but the company is also debuting a new high-end soundbar. The JBL Bar 9.1 is the company's first to support Dolby Atmos, and it even has a built-in Chromecast.
Moen, of kitchen and bathroom fixture fame, has released a handful of new smart home connected products at this year's CES. In addition to the U by Moen Smart Faucet, the company has also announced a new Smart Water Detector meant to work with its already-existing (but for some reason re-announced) smart water valve. They're all part of the "Moen Network," a connected system for your home's plumbing.
Following the Readers' Choice award and our holiday hiatus, the Android Police weekend poll is back. The first question of 2020 is simple: Do you have the Play Store set to automatically update apps on your phone or not?
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- There is also a new "One-handed mode" which was announced in a separate post to the related thread (Thanks: Amralomari), and which is able to pull screen elements down for easier thumb access via a swipe down the left or right edge of the screen. In effect, it crops the active app/window's view so stuff moves down, all while showing your wallpaper behind/above it — neat. Hopefully the new gesture doesn't interfere with any others, like the navigation gestures in Android 10.
OnePlus 7 and 7 Pro owners that jumped onto the Open Beta release cycle have a new build that's rolling out today. Open Beta 8 includes a handful of fixes for issues you might have experienced on Beta 7, including accidental touches in pockets and a fix for some crash/black screen problems some ran into with the camera. Security patches have also been bumped to December 2019.
Chrome OS may have supported Linux applications since 2018, but it debuted with quite a few limitations. Though GPU acceleration finally started to land for some Chromebooks in the middle of last year, the Linux container still hasn't been able to capture audio input for things like microphones. Or, at least, it couldn't until the feature silently landed with Chrome OS 79.
Details surrounding a new Skagen Falster 3 Wear OS device have just leaked courtesy of Amazon. Although there doesn't appear to have been any announcement for the new device, a listing for it has silently appeared on the retailer's site, revealing photos of the watch, a handful of specs, features, physical dimensions, and price: $295. In fact, you can even pre-order it now, with an expected release date of January 25th.
😮 Google Duo video messages now let you respond with emoji reactions 😗👌
😮 Google Duo video messages now let you respond with emoji reactions 😗👌
Whether your reaction to the brand-new decade is excitement, fear, or entirely understandable anxiety, now you have one more method of expressing that emotion to others. At least, if you use Google Duo. Google's video messaging app has just added support for emoji-based reactions. 🎉
On the first day of the new decade, we all anticipate the promise and potential of a new year. If you're a fan of the messaging service Telegram, you also have a new update to look forward to. The latest v5.13 release includes support for gradient/pattern themes, message scheduling that targets a contact's online status, easier access to the Night Mode toggle, some new animations, and plenty of other improvements.
Some folks see the Chinese budget brand Realme, a BBK subsidiary and OPPO spin-off, as something of a Xiaomi/Redmi clone — even just the names share more than chance would allow. Whether they are or aren't, true to that badge, they're set to ape one unappreciated feature from those devices: ads built right into the OS. At least you can turn them off if you want to (for now).
Today US President Donald J. Trump has signed into effect the TRACED (or Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence) Act, aimed to prevent unwanted spam/robocalls, authorizing fines up to $10,000 per illegal call with no advance warning, extending the statute of limitations for violations to four years, and imposing a requirement that carriers implement call authentication solutions, like the existing SHAKEN/STIR verification tech.
One of the biggest problems in tech right now is privacy, and the general lack thereof when it comes to using most modern apps and services. Companies collect more data about us than we're probably aware of, and even if we don't think we have anything to hide, that information can be used in ways we don't anticipate, and often not to our benefit. That's why services like ProtonMail exist, and why we've started a series on open source alternatives to Google apps. Now the folks behind ProtonMail are expanding their portfolio G Suite-style with a new ProtonCalendar app.
Google announced that it was killing Inbox all the way back in 2018. Though its death would ultimately be delayed until April of 2019, the news still hit hard for those that had grown dependent on the service's many exclusive email-managing tools — especially "bundling," which automatically sorted emails into adaptive categories for easy organization. In 2018, Google said that some of Inbox's features, including bundling, would be coming to Gmail, making our forced migration a little easier. But here we are a mere day from 2020, and Gmail still doesn't have it.
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Reports have been trickling in for the last couple of hours that the stable Android 10 update for the OnePlus 6T has been rolling out — apparently without any fanfare or an associated announcement at the OnePlus forums, as is customary. In addition to bringing all the Android 10 features you can expect, the OxygenOS 10 update for the 6T also includes the company's Game Space feature and the "Contextual display" ambient display feature.
There are only about two weeks left in 2019, and before we all go our separate ways for the holidays, there's one last thing that needs to be decided. You've had a week to nominate phones, now it's time to choose. Vote now to crown the Android Police Readers' Choice Smartphone of the Year.
Spotify is already killing it when it comes to dynamic recommendations and frankly incredible data visualizations, though other imitators like YouTube Music are trying to step up with their own feature clones. Other platforms have a long way to go before they beat it on social tools, though, and the company may have a work-in-progress ace up its sleeve: Spotify may be working on a new feature called "Tastebuds" which promises improved social discovery of music "through friends whose taste you trust."