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Huawei has lowered the price of the Huawei Mate 10 Pro for the next couple of weeks and now is the time to seriously consider it.  Normally the 6″ phablet is $799 now through June 30th you can pick one up on Amazon for just $549.  And this isn’t a stripped down version either.  It has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of built-in storage.  The $549 price represents the lowest price by far that has been available on the Mate 10 Pro here in the US.

I reviewed the Huawei Mate 10 Pro earlier this year and as I put in that review, it is one of the best phones out there right now.  Huawei has done a fantastic job with the overall design of the phone and the Android Oreo built EMUI 8 user experience is excellent.

Huawei has announced this morning that the company’s MediaPad M5 lineup is now available in the United States.  Coming in both an 8.4″ and 10.8″ with 2D curved glass – a first for tablets, the Huawei MediaPad M5 brings a powerful Android tablet experience that really no other manufacture can match these days.  Both tablet sizes are powered by the Kirin 960 SoC built by Huawei, 64GB of storage and 4GB of RAM.

The MediaPad M5 lineup will be available from Huawei’s Amazon storefront.  The 8.4″ model is $319.99 while the 10.8″ model is $359.99.  Both models are currently in stock.

Sony has announced on their Google+ beta community page that the development of their Xperia Home launcher for their phones has entered maintenance mode.  The news was a bit of a surprise for some, especially given that Sony has a reasonably robust beta community for the launcher.

Despite that community however, Sony clearly sees the writing on the wall.  There are far superior launchers available in the Google Play Store such as Action Launcher, Nova Launcher and the new Lawnchair Launcher that offer more customization and personalization than the Xperia launcher.

A new Material Design look is in the process of rolling out for Google Maps on Android devices.  The update is a cloud-side change but you’ll want to make sure that you have the latest version of the app installed on your phone.  For those curious, that’s version 9.79.2.  Since this is a cloud-side update to Google Maps, not everyone is seeing the changes just yet.  It will likely be several days before all accounts get it.

Once you do, the changes will be immediately noticeable.  Gone are the square information blocks and icons on the Explore tab, replaced with bright, rounded corner information boxes and round icons.