Author: Clinton

The latest update to Microsoft Teams for Android has made its way into the Play Store, bringing several improvements and updates to the meeting and messaging app.  The update is version 1416/1.0.0.2018062101 for those keeping score at home or who like version number BINGO!

The headline new feature is the ability to share a video while you are in a meeting.  Sharing of content in Teams hasn’t been much of an issue to this point, especially Office content like Word docs and the like.  But you couldn’t share a video that you had on your phone while in a meeting.  That changes with this update as you can now share video content while in your call directly from your phone.

When the OnePlus One, the first phone from OnePlus, was released back in 2014, it was an almost instant hit.  The price for what you got in the phone was hard to beat and it had almost a cult-like following from fans.  But, like all manufactures, OnePlus eventually dropped support for the phone as new models were released.  In other words, there was no chance it would ever see Android Oreo 8.1.

Fast forward to 2018 and the OnePlus One lives on.  LineageOS, the company that rose from the ashes of CyanogenMod (which is what was originally running on the OnePlus One ironically), has just added support of Android Oreo 8.1 for the OPO along with a handful of other devices.  The support comes to LineageOS 15.1, the build which is based on Oreo 8.1.

Microsoft has updated the Microsoft Bing search app for Android and iOS, bringing a new visual search functionality to it.  The feature works very similar to Google Lens (albeit not real time) by allow you to snap a photo of an object, bar code or a photo from your phone to identify objects in it.

The feature is also part of Microsoft Launcher and Microsoft Edge for Android with the feature coming to Edge for iOS shortly.

After trickling out over the course of the past few days, it looks like Google has pushed the big red button and the broad release of Continued Conversation for Google Assistant on Google Home is happening.  The feature, which was highlighted at Google I/O, is aimed to create a more natural conversation between you and Assistant without having to issue a “Hey Google” for every command.

Now you can say “Hey Google” once, issue a command (or a series of up to three commands) and Assistant through your Google Home will execute them.  Then it listens for another few seconds for a follow up command.  If you don’t issue a follow up command, or if you say “Stop” then it no longer listens and goes back into waiting for you to say “Hey Google”.

The third Chrome 68 build has arrived for the Chrome for Android Beta app in the Play Store.  The app, which anyone can download and install on their phone, is now running build 68.0.3440.33.  If you already have the app installed, you should have the OTA update ready to install on your phone.

The focus of this update, as per the norm, is bug fixes and performance improvement in the browser.  As you may recall from the first beta release from a couple of weeks back, there are a slew of changes coming to Chrome for Android with Chrome 68.  A new horizontal task switcher is available, a new Home screen mini bar instead of a banner has been added as well as new identifications for non-HTTPS sites that you visit.

Good news this morning for those of you who have the Samsung Galaxy S7 Active on the AT&T network.  Your Android Oreo 8.0 update is now starting to roll out.  The update, according to AT&T, is build R16NW.G891AUCU3CRE7 and it is about 1.5GB in size.   The update brings the April Android Security Update and is version 8.0 of Oreo, not the more current 8.1.

Fundamentally, the update is the same that has been rolling out on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint for the normal Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge which brings all the Oreo updates along with the new Samsung Experience 9 user experience.