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Google's smart speakers can now answer incoming phone calls in Australia (Updated)
Telstra officially announces inbound calling to Google Home and Nest speakers
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Google Assistant-enabled smart speakers have been able to make calls for a while now in countries like Australia, Canada, and the US. But the functionality was limited to outbound calls placed from the speaker itself. Now it looks like inbound call support is coming to Google's smart home products, but only on a single carrier in Australia.
A few days ago, some users started receiving update notifications on their Pixel 2 and were wondering what was happening since, according to the official documentation, they were seemingly on the latest build number. Now Google's official pages have been updated to include these new factory images and OTA files for specific devices on certain carrier versions.
Together with Australian network Telstra, Ericsson, and Netgear, Qualcomm announced today at the 4G/5G summit in Hong Kong that it has developed the first device that can reach gigabit LTE speeds. The resulting product, the NETGEAR Mobile Router MR1100, is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X16, the first modem with gigabit LTE class speeds, which was announced back in February. As a bonus, Qualcomm has also announced the first modem that can reach 5G speeds, the X50.
Living in Australia seems rough. Not only does every animal on the continent want to kill you, but you usually have to wait longer to get your hands on new electronics gadgets than folks in other regions. Google's Pixel launch is an exception, though. Pre-orders are live via the Google Store and on carrier Telstra, and the carrier managed to screw that up in the best way possible by sending out pre-orders a week early.
As expected, both the 5-inch Pixel and the 5.5-inch Pixel XL are compatible out of the box with Project Fi, Google's MVNO (it would be news if they weren't). Google also announced just over a dozen of other international partners around the world.
If you're in Australia, a Telstra customer, and own a Nexus 6P, today is a good day for you. As we reported earlier, the Nexus 6P has been suffering from widespread issues connecting to Telstra's LTE network. It would appear that the OTA to fix this is now rolling out.
Do you ever feel left out because of all the US-only news we post? If you live in Australia, then you're in luck, because this one is just for you! Now those Americans can finally experience what you have to go through on a daily basis, right? Actually, probably not, since this is likely not the kind of thing over which you want exclusivity.
Update: It looks like Telstra has had carrier billing for a couple of months, and Google is just now getting around to updating the support page. Thanks to Adam Ricket (@onlineadr) for the heads-up.
One of the biggest problems with the Play Store is that, compared to certain other platforms, its international support for both products and payment systems is comparatively meager. This is, of course, one of the main reasons that earning revenue on Android seems harder for developers. Starting today, though, if you live in Australia and use Telstra, you have one more way to pay: carrier billing.
We've all heard the old saying "better late with a newer version of Android than never," right? That's how I've always heard it said, and apparently I'm not alone. Telstra just announced its own variant of the Samsung Galaxy S III, which will be available beginning October 9th.
Sure, DisneyWorld may seem like a great place of family, fun, and joy, but Australia's Tesltra is looking to one up Walt's fun-filled world in the hearts and minds of geeks across the globe with Androidland. With a name like that, you can only imagine what sort of amazing things await behind those doors, but, luckily, that won't be necessary - check out the video:
Last week, HTC dropped the bomb: "due to memory constraints," Gingerbread would not be coming to the Desire. Then, less than 24 hours later, it flipped the script and said that Gingerbread will hit the Desire, minus a few apps. It appears that Australian carrier Telstra doesn't want to deal with the flip-flop, according to a statement on the software updates page of its site: