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Pixel 3 and 3 XL phones are getting stuck in EDL Mode and seemingly bricked
There doesn't appear to be any clear solution to the issue
For months users of the three-year-old Pixel 3 series have been complaining of a common and dreadful problem: seemingly random shutdowns that completely lock their devices. The Pixel 3 and 3 XL have been plagued by the "EDL Mode" bug, which locks the device with no screen or button inputs and makes it more or less impossible to use. To date there's no clear solution to this problem, at least not one that's easily available to even advanced users.
Reminders via Google Search are broken again, again
Does Google even care about this feature anymore?
Look, we're not engineers. And we're certainly not responsible for keeping all the various parts of one of the world's biggest technology companies running smoothly. But we can recognize a pattern. like the one where Google's reminders tool in Search keeps breaking. It looks like it's been broken for a few weeks, which will be a familiar state for the admittedly small amount of users who rely on it.
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Strava's one of the most popular tools for runners and cyclists to track their progress, and its usefulness can depend on its interoperability with existing platforms, like Fitbit, Apple Fitness, and Google Fit. Unfortunately, that last one had been presenting something of a problem, as Strava users found themselves unable to sync their fitness data with Google Fit.
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- We got reports this week from our commenters saying that web-based reminders are back again. Lo and behold:
Google may need a reminder on how reminders are supposed to work. Multiple users have complained about not being able to set reminders with Google search — it's a feature that has gone missing time and again over the past couple of years.
This week has been an exciting one for us Android geeks, what with the stable release of Pie and all. For some (including me), however, that enthusiasm for the latest version of our favorite mobile OS was a bit tempered. See, the update messed with our Gear devices (S2, S3, Icon X) and now they won't connect — though, some people are saying their stuff is fine. Thing is, this has been a known issue since at least Developer Preview 2 several months ago, but Samsung says it's working on a fix.
Judging by the Google Assistant help forums, Twitter, and Reddit, a whole lot of people are having trouble getting their phones to respond to voice commands. Twelve of the 20 top posts are complaining about the problem on several different device models and even in several languages. Google says it's on the case, though.
Around a week ago, BLU issued a broken software update for its Life One X2 phone. In at least some cases, users who applied the update were locked out of their phones. Late this afternoon, BLU's official Twitter account—which, much to the chagrin of affected users, was silent on the subject for almost a week—issued a statement that the problem had been fixed via a new update.
As infrequently as budget phones are updated, owners of low-cost phones should be glad their phone is continuing to receive support. However, a software update released on November 28th for the BLU Life One X2 has users less than thrilled. On first boot, the phone displays a new password screen—unfortunately, nobody has the password. Without a way to unlock the phone, users are resorting to factory resetting the phones with mixed results.Multiple user reports on Reddit, iFixit, and Amazon have indicated that the affected phones crash on a screen in which you can enter your email address to receive updates from BLU. However, not all users appear to be affected by this bug—others have reported success after removing the microSD card. Additionally, given BLU's massive product portfolio (the company has released upward of 40 phones this year) and unintuitive naming scheme, it is somewhat unclear what models are affected. One Amazon user wrote a review indicating that the BLU Advance A7 was affected, while another user has posted about the Advance A5 at iFixit.For now, not updating your firmware is advisable. This incident was foretold in 1999 by electronic oracles Eiffel 65, with their song "Blue (If I update, I die)."This incident follows a tumultuous history for BLU Products. In November 2016, some Blu devices were identified by the security research firm Kryptowire as carrying spyware which transmitted user information to a Chinese company. As a result, sales of the BLU R1 HD were suspended for one month at Amazon. Amazon again pulled some Blu devices in July 2017 when the co-founder of Kryptowire claimed at Black Hat 2017 that the apps were still present on the phones, but that "They replaced [the malware] with nicer versions." Amazon restarted sales of the affected phones after a week. BLU has consistently denied responsibility for these vulnerabilities.Android Police has reached out to BLU Products for a statement on this update situation. We'll let you know if we hear back from them.Source: Reddit (1), (2), (3), (4), iFixit, Amazon
For some of us, breaking a smartphone is unimaginable. For others, it's only a matter of time. Either way, it could pay to have your ducks in a row. Samsung has introduced a new device replacement plan, and since no less than 107% of the world's phones were made by the manufacturer, a good number of people could benefit from this. But it won't come cheap.
It was only three months ago that Android got SEGA's latest entry in the obligatory kart racing genre, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. Now the sequel, which came out a year later on the consoles, has graced our platform only a day behind iOS. But don't reach for your wallets just yet: there are some serious issues with Sonic Racing Transformed that might mean it's not worth the $5 entry fee. I'll elaborate below.
Update: The Verge has a response straight from the horse's mouth. It doesn't completely dismiss the idea of local content playback, but it doesn't exactly justify Google's disabling of the feature, either. Basically it's a "hurry up and wait" situation - we won't know exactly how Google intends to go forward until the developer preview for the SDK ends.
CyanogenMod 10 Preview Builds Available For Galaxy S III On AT&T, T-Mobile, And Sprint
CyanogenMod 10 is still cooking, and heck, CM9 isn't even fully baked for all devices yet. That hasn't stopped Steve Kondik, aka the guy who puts the Cyanogen
CyanogenMod 10 is still cooking, and heck, CM9 isn't even fully baked for all devices yet. That hasn't stopped Steve Kondik, aka the guy who puts the Cyanogen in CyanogenMod, from posting preview builds of CM10 over on XDA for the AT&T and T-Mobile Galaxy S III variants. Plus, a third preview build being posted for the Sprint version by another developer. Keep in mind, of course, that "preview build" translates into "absolutely nothing is guaranteed to work." It is exciting, nonetheless.
If you own a Sony SmartWatch, you may want to ignore the impending update to the SmartWatch app on the Play Store right now. Some users are reporting that, after updating the required app, their watches are experiencing random reboots, notifications no longer working, and random disconnects. We've reached out to Sony for comment, but so far we've heard nothing back.
The YouTube app just received an update to bring a few new features, including a +1 button, "watch later" queue, and the ability to upload while editing video info, along with one unexpected issue. The app description now says it's for Android 2.2-2.3.3, and, as a result, isn't showing up on devices running other versions, including Honeycomb tablets. Despite this, I was able to pull the update on my Incredible running CM7 (Android 2.3.7), although Artem couldn't even see YouTube in the Market on his stock rooted Epic 4G Touch (Android 2.3.4).
The Honeycomb SDK preview, allowing everyone to take a peek and play around with Honeycomb using the Android emulator, was launched yesterday, but after we got past the initial excitement, we found that the emulator itself was dog slow and pretty much unusable. In fact, it was so frustrating to use it that I wanted to punch walls and rip out my hair after 5 minutes with it. And I'm not even going to talk about orientation problems - how the Android team managed to ship the SDK with orientation broken by default (there is a fix for it in the Settings > Display) is beyond me and beyond the scope of this article. We're not the only ones who noticed - Engadget's own hands-on says "Honeycomb's is extremely slow -- nearly to the point of uselessness in this case."
Motorola's ruggedized DEFY (which our own Brad Ganley reviewed) is a pretty cool phone. In my book, any time you can stick a gadget in a glass of water (or beer, as the case may be) with absolutely zero negative repercussions, I'm interested. The DEFY is no poser - Motorola's made the first industrial-strength Android.
A few days ago, the code for the Nexus One's 2.2.1 update went AOSP (Android Open Source Project), meaning that the source code became available to developers. It was comprised mostly of bugfixes and other things that weren't major... oh, and it also patched the exploits that allowed Universal Androot to unlock your device. We had a short conversation about it on Twitter with Cyanogen (the conversation starts at the bottom and goes up):
