Author: Clinton

With the OnePlus 3 being two years old and the updated OnePlus 3T being nearly that old, you don’t see many updates for these former flagship devices any longer and that is par for the course for most manufactures these days.  So when an update for an older phone is released, especially one that contains security updates, it gets noticed – or at least it should.

OnePlus has released an update to OxygenOS, their Android variant, for the OP 3 and 3T that brings a handful of fixes as well as the July Android Security Update to these phones.  The updated build is OxygenOS 5.0.4 for those keeping score at home and OnePlus is phasing the roll out to devices.  That means it could be several more days before all owners see it land on their phone.

Another new build of Chrome 68 has arrived in the form of an update to the Chrome for Android Beta app.  The new build is 68.0.3440.70 for those keeping score at home.  This new update marks the fifth Chrome 68-based build for the Beta app in this current cycle.

For readers who may not know, anyone can download and install the Chrome for Android Beta app from the Play Store.  No registration is required and you can have both the stable version and the beta version on your phone at the same time.  Just keep in mind that the key word in all of this is “beta” so you could run into bugs or other odd behavior with the app as it goes through testing.

The Chrome OS Dev Channel has a new Chrome 69 build now available.  The new build is the fourth Chrome 69-based build to land in what is considered the “alpha” testing channel.  69.0.3494.0 (Platform version: 10888.0.0) is the new build that you are looking for and it is available for the majority of devices in the channel now.

As you would expect for a build at this early stage, there are a lot of bug fixes and tweaks in this update according to the release notes.  Doing a quick dive into them, I did not find any new features mentioned.  This looks like a prep build to get it ready to go to Beta testing in the Chrome OS Beta Channel.

After a three year hiatus, Google has announced that they will be hosting an Android Dev Summit November 7th and 8th in the Mountain View, California based Computer History Museum.  The event, as the name suggests, is aimed for Android developers and will provide two days of breakout sessions, keynotes and time to chat with other developers and Googlers.

Registration details and session details have not been announced and readers are encouraged to follow the Android Dev Twitter account for more details (or the hashtag #AndroidDevSummit

A couple of days ago, Google announced Visual Snapshots were coming to Google Assistant for both Android and iOS users.  Those began broadly rolling out yesterday and provide you snippets of information about your day and other things by going into Assistant and tapping the what was known as the Explore icon.

Now it seems that Google has begun quietly rolling this out to the Google app itself.  If you open up the Google app on your phone and tap what was known as the Explore icon, you will be brought to the new visual snapshots and not the old card-style view of the past.

A new flag found in the Chrome OS Canary channel build (based on Chrome 70), points to a Mac-like centering of apps you have pinned to the Shelf in the platform.  The new flag was discovered by the team over at Chrome Story and the flag is named “Newest shelf design”.

As Chrome OS users know, today the Shelf is justified to the left next to the App Drawer button.  This has pretty much been the way that Chrome OS has been since the beginning.

Chrome OS Shelf in Chrome 67

This flag in the Canary Channel shifts it all to the center