About Scott Scrivens
Senior UK Editor — My interest in Android began with the beautiful Nexus 4 and the less-ugly-than-before Jelly Bean. Right now, I'm probably watching Black Books, playing football (soccer), or listening to Answer Code Request.
Latest Articles
It's been a strange year for smartphone design. The notch has infiltrated pretty much every major OEM at every price point, yet everyone seems to hate it (or at least those most vocal on the internet). Manufacturers keep plowing on, however, with even Samsung jumping on the camera cutout bandwagon ahead of the Galaxy S10 launch. If you're patiently waiting for the display cutout fad to end, it's good to know some Chinese smartphone makers have already come up with alternative solutions for bezel-free phones.
Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi is a jack of all trades. It makes a variety of connected gadgets, including TVs, toothbrushes, scooters, and even kettles. Yet, we know it mostly as a smartphone maker, and it’s now the fourth-largest in the world. It’s reached those lofty heights thanks to a simple promise: quality hardware at rock-bottom prices, and its flagship Mi 8 lineup is a prime example of that.
Qualcomm is undeniably the darling of Android OEMs, with their chips being the only viable option for flagship smartphones and tablets. That's something MediaTek would obviously like to change with its latest premium SoC, the Helio P90.
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Google says it has been paying attention to your feature requests since the redesigned Fit app was launched in the summer and it has a new update just in time for the holidays — ready for you to watch the pounds pile on thanks to yet another leftover-turkey sandwich your body didn't ask for.
The latest update to the music discovery app Pandora finally adds a much-requested feature — podcasts. More than 100,000 episodes across a wide range of genres are available through Pandora as of the latest version, so if you're a heavy user of the app who's been going elsewhere for your pods, you no longer need to.
Not to appear to be outdone by the View 20 introduction from Huawei sub-brand Honor, Samsung also took the wraps off its first phone with a hole-punch camera cutout, the Galaxy A8s. Using the Infinity-O screen design unveiled by the company last month, the mid-range device also features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 SoC and triple rear cameras.
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- Ishan Agarwal on Twitter has posted images of the McLaren Edition phone. Compared to the regular OnePlus 6T, it seems have a carbon fiber back and an orange streak around the bottom and lower edges of the phone.
OnePlus is to host a 'Salute to Speed' event in Woking, UK, on December 11th in conjunction with Formula 1 team McLaren. It seems likely that we're about to see the release of a limited edition device in the same vein as Huawei's Porsche Design models.
Chinese technology companies have faced numerous difficulties overseas this year owing to a lack of trust, particularly in the US where Huawei's proposed carrier deals with AT&T and Verizon fell through due to political pressure and ZTE was forced to pay huge fines and sack board members to resume trading. US government agencies were then banned from using technology made by either firm, and it looks like Japan may be following suit with similar sanctions.
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Chinese AI company Mobvoi hosted an event in London today, in part to raise awareness for digital wellbeing, but mainly to make two announcements. The TicPods Free true wireless earbuds that we first heard about in April are now on general sale, but the main attraction is the brand new TicWatch C2.The timepiece is a spiritual successor to the original TicWatch (C2 stands for Classic 2), except this time it runs Wear OS by Google. It features a 1.3" AMOLED (360x360) display with a stainless steel case (rose gold, black, and platinum) and genuine leather strap (20mm or 18mm). The rose gold model is the thinnest Mobvoi has made at 12.80mm. It includes a heart rate monitor, GPS (+ GLONASS + Beidou), accelerometer, gyroscope, and NFC, plus it's also IP68 rated.
Some of you may have recently encountered an annoying bug in Google's SMS app Messages (formerly Android Messages) whereby the search function would no longer work — ironic when your company is primarily known as a search engine. Thankfully, a fix has now been released and the issue should no longer present itself.
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- Feedly pushed the redesign, including its lovely new dark theme, out to stable just yesterday. You no longer need take the not-really-adventurous risk of joining the beta testing program to use the new layout.
It's important to be kept abreast of the latest news, and the best way to do that is with an app that compiles it for you and makes it easier to digest. Feedly is one such app, and a favorite of many here at AP. While it still works fine, it has been looking a little dated recently. Not anymore, though, as a redesign has just landed with the latest beta update (version 51).
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Pixel season wouldn't be complete without a bunch of complaints from early adopters of possible hardware and software faults. Last year, the main controversy surrounded the terrible LG OLED panels used for the Pixel 2 XL. This year, there are a few early contenders, including what we may be calling 'buzzgate.'
Yesterday, at a dev-focused event at the Science Museum in London, UK, Google announced the 1.0 release of its cross-platform portable UI toolkit. Flutter has been in development since in 2015 with several betas being going out in the last year and a preview release this summer. It will allow developers to build apps that seamlessly work on both Android and iOS without maintaining separate codebases.
Google is always keen to encourage more people to use its contactless payment service, which often means enticing promotions for us to make the most of. The latest such opportunity in the UK offers up to £50 in Google Play credit or the chance to win a Google Home Mini.
Don't use images taken from vastly more capable photography equipment and try to pass them off as phone camera samples — it's a pretty simple rule, yet Samsung just can't seem to get the hang of it. Earlier this year, its Brazilian marketing department tried to fool potential Galaxy A8 buyers with stock photography in lieu of actual samples, and now it's happened again.
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It may have a stupid name, like all of LG's recent phones, but the G7 ThinQ isn't a bad little device. LG may not be in the position it was a few years ago, but its flagship G-series is still worth looking at, especially if you can get a really good deal on it.B&H is currently offering 0 off the LG G7 ThinQ — it's just $530 and that represents the best price we've seen for it. The same retailer had it down to $570 a month ago, and others such as Amazon and Best Buy are currently selling it at $599, for reference.The $530 gets you a 6.1" QHD+ FullVision display with 1000-nit brightness, a Snapdragon 845 SoC, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. The dual cameras on the rear offer solid performance, while quad DACs make for decent audio. For what it's worth, B&H is also throwing in a clear case and glass screen protector to sweeten the deal.
Google Play 'Best of 2018' winners announced, including fan favorites PUBG, YouTube TV, and Avengers
It's that time of the year when 'best of' lists are simply unavoidable — even we have our Most Wanted series where we call out the best products from 2018. Google also likes to point to the most popular content it sells on the Play Store, including the best apps, games, movies, and more. This year there's also a new 'Fan Favorite' category, as voted for by you.
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- Google has begun rolling out the Call Screen transcript feature, though so far it appears to be far from widespread. To see if it's gone live for your phone, under "Recent calls" tap "Call history" and then look for a new "See transcript" option.
Call Screen was arguably the most impressive feature Google debuted at the Pixel 3 launch event. Google's AI can answer the phone and ask what the purpose of the call is, providing an on-screen transcript of the conversation so you can decide if you want to talk to them or not. Right now, the transcripts disappear as soon as the call ends, but the ability to save has been confirmed for arrival later this year.
It's been a tough year for Google in Europe, and it doesn't look to be getting any better. The Mountain View company was slapped with a record $5 billion antitrust fine by the EU Commission this summer, and now it could be in hot water once again due to its location and online activity tracking practices.
Connected security cameras from Arlo are some of the best on the market — Ryan called the Pro 2 the best wireless camera in his review, despite a couple of drawbacks. With Cyber Monday deals you can still get some substantial discounts on Arlo products (like at Amazon and Costco), and thanks to a tweet from the company's CEO, there will soon be even more features to make it worth your while.Only a few days ago, Arlo's latest update went live. It included animal, vehicle, and package detection to go along with the person detection features already available. According to CEO Matthew McRae, there's plenty more on the way, particularly when it comes to the UX of the service's apps.[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/mbmcrae/status/1066481015655358464[/EMBED_TWITTER]2FA is something Arlo probably should have already, given that it's a security product, so that will be more than welcome. As will embedded time stamping and better notifications. Temporary notification muting also seems like a good idea, especially if you've got a party going on in the garden or there's a lot of expected activity. Then there's the good old widget, an all-time favorite feature of Android users — who doesn't love a homescreen widget.McRae went on to call these "long-standing requests" and said they would be prioritized for a Q1 rollout, with many more improvements also on the roadmap for the rest of 2019.Source: Matthew McRae on Twitter