Category: Android Marshmallow

After months of delays and after many other manufactures have rolled out Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 to their devices, Samsung has finally started releasing it for the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge… if you live in South Korea.

The news of the release came out late on Friday of last week and while there is no indication of when it will hit the rest of the world, it hopefully won’t be long.  The UK will likely see the update first given that country was part of the beta program for the release.

For the second time in three weeks, Google has dropped the price of the Nexus 5X.  Back on January 12th the company dropped their entry level Nexus phone by $30 and now have lopped off another $50 which brings the 16GB model to just $299.  The 32GB model has also dropped by $50 and is now $349.  For the specifications of the device, that is an excellent price and you will have Android Marshmallow already on the device.  Plus, as we all know, Nexus devices get Marshmallow updates first and faster than anyone else.

Nexus 5X – 16GB – $299 / 32GB – $349

Owner of the unlocked variety of the HTC One A9 should start seeing the January Android Marshmallow update hitting their devices starting today.  The news comes from the companies Vice President of Product Management, Mo Versi, via Twitter earlier this morning.

HTC One (A9) unlocked owners! The Jan security updates and bug fixes is being updated via OTA this morning! Thanks.

— Mo Versi (@moversi) January 22, 2016

The update comes about 3 weeks after the update was released from Google as HTC continues to push to be one of the fastest manufactures out with Android Marshmallow updates.

While the news has not come directly from Verizon, multiple sources are reporting that users of the LG G3 on the US-based carrier are starting to see Android Marshmallow come to their devices via an OTA update.  The original source of the news came from Reddit and the original poster included a screen image of the update on their device.  If this is legitimate, this is really good news on a lot of different levels.  First, it is reasonably fast for a carrier to get the update out.  It’s not great but it is certainly better than Verizon has done in the past on updates.

Second, and perhaps equally as important, the update appears to be Android Marshmallow build MRA58K which is the January 2016 update.  That means that this update to the LG G3 is going have the latest security updates from Google.

Last week I reviewed the great podcast app Pocket Casts, an app that I have no hesitation in recommending to anyone who is looking for a solid podcast app for the Android (or iOS or Windows Phone) devices.  This week, as these things go, the developer of Pocket Casts, Shifty Jelly, has released a significant update to that app that brings a host of new features and improvements.  Two of the big ones are time-based filters and support for Android Marshmallow data backup.  The update is version 5.3 for those keeping score at home and it is available now in the Google Play Store.

“You can now filter episodes by time. In the filter settings page there is a new option called “Released in the last” which you can set to 24 hours, 3 days, 1 week etc. We have changed the episode filters new users will have and this update will also add them to your list of filters.” according to the release notes from Shifty Jelly.  The best example of when to use this is if you have a lot of podcasts to listen to or watch and you only want to catch up on the last 2 or 3.  It makes searching and sorting much easier.

Pocket Casts – $3.99 – Download Now

From time-to-time as with your PC, Mac or any other mobile platform, you will have an app that misbehaves.  It doesn’t load or it crashes or, worst case, it loads and runs but consumes a huge amount of memory on your device.  This is often referred to as a memory leak and it can cause other apps to misbehave and for your device to run sluggishly.  In Android Marshmallow there is a way to see not only the amount of memory you have available on your device but also the ability to see individual apps and the amount of memory they are consuming.  If you have an app that is consuming all your available memory, you can even force it to stop so you can regain the memory.