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Google's been working on a call recording feature for its Phone app for some time, and it looks like the wait is almost over. As previously anticipated, the feature has started rolling out in India, seemingly beginning with Nokia's Android One phones, according to an announcement from the company today.
Nokia adds 3 more devices to its Android 10 upgrade plans (Updated)
Some late releases hop onto the list
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- With Android 10 Go edition made official, Juho Sarvikas has clarified Nokia's plans for its Go devices. The newer 1 Plus will get it first in Q1 2020, while the older 2.1 and 1 will receive their updates in Q2 2020.
Quick to promise software upgrades when Android 10 was announced, HMD Global has since revised its update roadmap for its Nokia smartphones with more of them expected to make the jump than initially claimed last fall.
Nokia 9 PureView gets its Android 10 update, 7.1 to follow next week (Update: Available for 7.1 now)
Earlier this week, Nokia held its anticipated Nokia Mobile Live event in Cairo, Egypt to discuss its hardware and software efforts for the immediate future. In addition to unveiling the new Nokia 2.3 smartphone, the once-prolific phone manufacturer officially released Android 10 for the 9 PureView and provided an update on the OS roadmap for its newest devices.
TWRP is a popular and powerful custom recovery tool used by thousands of Android enthusiasts around the world to create full phone backups, flash custom kernels and ROMs, and more. Since the last time we visited this topic, a dozen phones and tablets have been added to the TWRP support list, including the Snapdragon family of Galaxy S10, Note 10, and Galaxy Tab S6 devices.
The Nokia 7 Plus is one of HMD Global's higher-specced phones. Although still technically mid-range with its Snapdragon 660 chip and 6" IPS LCD display, it's one of the best Android One phones you can get. The Finnish company has now published the kernel source code.
After some delays, HMD Global is rolling out the stable Android 9 Pie release for the Nokia 7 Plus after a somewhat long beta period. That means you get all of the goodies, like a refreshed UI, further notification improvements, Digital Wellbeing, and all the rest that comes with the latest Android experience.
Google unveiled Digital Wellbeing at I/O this year and strongly implied it would be part of Android Pie. However, the feature only launched on Pixel devices as a beta at first. Now, Digital Wellbeing has expanded to its first non-Pixel phone—the Nokia 7 Plus.
A couple of days after the final version of Android 9 Pie hit AOSP, the Nokia 7 Plus is getting an update — to another Developer Preview. Yes, HMD Global Chief Product Officer Juho Sarvikas has announced on Twitter that Android 9 Pie Beta 4 (that's Developer Preview 5) is rolling out to 7 Plus devices enrolled in Nokia's preview program.
This year Google announced that third-party hardware would be able to get in on the Developer Preview fun, with almost a dozen handsets getting Android P—assuming their owners were willing to be guinea pigs. Nokia allowed for 7 Plus owners to opt-in and try Android P, and now the consecutive update for the next preview is rolling out in a surprisingly timely manner. DP4/Beta 3 is landing via both image sideloading and OTA.
Google surprised everyone at I/O 2018 when it announced that, unlike all previous Android Developer Previews, the Android P Beta would be available on a wide variety of phones from different manufacturers. The third Developer Preview of Android P, also known as Beta 2, was released for the Pixels earlier this month.
It feels a little bit surreal to see the Nokia name become relevant again in the smartphone market. Two years ago, I had thought the beloved mobile brand that I grew up with was hopelessly lost, and yet here we are today, devouring every piece of news to come out of HMD Global. The Finnish company has been doing an excellent job of reviving the brand by sticking to a few core guidelines: good hardware, competitive prices, pure Android software, and fast updates. That bet has paid off so far and, with one full generation of devices under its belt, HMD kicked things up a notch with the announcements it made at MWC this year. Alongside the news that all of its devices will be Android One (or Go), it introduced several new smartphones including the Nokia 7 Plus that I've been using for the last three weeks.
A June security patch has caused serious problems for Nokia 7 Plus users who are running the Android P beta. Some users report that the update has completely corrupted their system, forcing them to restore. Others are repeatedly seeing error messages.
Many moons ago, Nokia's Lumia (later Microsoft's Lumia) devices were lauded for one feature: the camera. The Carl Zeiss optics mixed with the beloved Nokia Camera / Lumia Camera / Nokia Pro Camera app (goodness knows how often the name changed) made for one powerful package that was still unparalleled in the Android world: in August of 2013, Pro Camera had manual focus and shutter speed when, for comparison, the Note 3 released one month later, had neither.
The Nokia phone brand has been on quite a journey since its heyday in the late nineties and early two-thousands (or aughts, as David would have me write it). After Nokia's smartphone business was sold to Microsoft and became the Windows Phone flagbearer while that was still a thing, the baton has now been passed to HMD Global. HMD has been releasing Android phones under the Nokia name for just over a year now, and it's fair to say the brand is stronger than it has been for a very long time.
HMD Global had a good first year making Nokia-branded phones. In 2017, the Finnish company sold 70 million devices across its portfolio of six different Android smartphones and other low-cost feature phones such as the throwback Nokia 3310. HMD is confident of an even better 2018, starting with the launch of four new (well, mostly new) Android phones at MWC in Barcelona.