Author: Clinton

The latest update to Gmail for Android is making its way out to the Play Store and it brings a new Tip setting for users.  The new build is version 8.6 for those keeping score at home and when you get the update, you will have a new Inbox Tip inside settings for your Gmail account.

The setting is enabled by default and when you tap it, you see the Unsubscribe tips.  With this turned on, you will get occasional tips to unsubscribe to bulk email that you rarely read.

A fifth Chrome 68 based build has arrived in the Chrome OS Dev Channel, the platforms alpha build channel.  Build 68.0.3440.25 (Platform version: 10718.22.0) is the new version and available for the majority of Chromebooks that are in the channel.

For those that are new to Chrome OS, the Chrome OS Dev Channel is considered the Alpha channel for the platform.  Normally this channel has a fair number of bugs or performance issues as it gets refined prior to be releasing into the Beta channel for broader testing.

Just a few days after announcing that the Sony Xperia Home launcher is going into maintenance mode, the company has now posted in their Google+ Beta Community site that there is a new Xperia Home launcher in the works.

The news came from Sony’s Erika Prymus who is a member of the launcher’s development team.  In a comment replying to the original post announcing the discontinuation, Erika points out that a new launcher is in the works and that is why the old version has been discontinued.

Sony Comment on Xperia Launcher

So the question becomes, why discontinue in the first place?

The new Google Tasks app & service will become a core service of G Suite later this month.  Tasks, as you may recall, is a replacement for setting up tasks in Google Calendar and has a stand alone app for both Android and iOS.  Google has announced that starting June 28th that Tasks will be an on-by-default service in G Suite.

The change makes sense in that Google is trying to get everyone to move over to Tasks instead of using the task settings in Google Calendar, despite the fact that Google Tasks is still limited when you compare it to the old reminders feature in Calendar.  Tasks, for example, won’t let you setup recurring tasks while you can do that in reminders in Calendar.

One of the more popular Chromebooks of 2017 was the Samsung Chromebook Plus.  Now as we get an improved version of it for 2018, the Samsung Chromebook Plus V2.  Sporting a slight redesign, the big news on this update is the internals have been improved for better performance.

Internally, the Chromebook Plus V2 is powered by the Intel Celeron 3965Y clocked at 1.5GHz.  It is coupled with the Intel HD Graphics 615 but still has 4GB of RAM and 32GB of Storage.  While still very much entry level processors and graphics, it is a jump up from the previous version which was ARM based.  This should improve overall performance in Chrome OS but also should improve Android app performance.

A small update is rolling in the Google Play Store for Google Sheets that brings improved support for pivot tables.  The new build is version 1.18.232.03 for those keeping score at home and should be hitting everyone this week.  With the update, you can now expand and collapse pivot tables in the app.  This a pretty big deal for those who use pivot tables as you no longer have to go into the web version of Sheets to do this activity.

While doing this on your Android phone can still be a bit tricky simply because of screen size, if you are using the Google Sheets app on a Chromebook, this will be hugely handy.