Category: Android Nougat

Good news this morning for those of you who have an unlocked Essential Phone.  The company has begun rolling out an update that brings the December Android Security Update to the device.  It will make Essential one of the first beyond Google themselves to get the December update out to end users.

The update is build NMJ51B for those keeping score at home and, based on Essential’s twitter post about the update, it appears that the update contains only this security patch.

We’re currently rolling out a software update (build NMJ51B) with December security patches.

— Essential (@essential) December 5, 2017

It is possible (likely) that there are some other minor updates in the build but clearly the main focus is on the December security update.

The November Android Distribution Report has been released by the Android team at Google and it reflect improvement in adoption of the latest two major versions of the platform.  Only Android Nougat (7.x) and Android Oreo (8.x) showed gains in this months reports, with all previous versions showing declines.

For those who may be new to Android, each month Google releases an Android Distribution Report that reflects the versions of Android that hit the Play Store over the course of a 7-day period.  This month’s report was for the seven days ending November 9, 2017.

The biggest loser in this month’s report was Marshmallow (6.x).  It saw a 1.1% drop in usage, down to 30.9% over the October report.  Marshmallow remains the most widely used version of Android at that 30.9% with Android Lollipop (5.x) a close second at 27.2%.  Lollipop, like Marshmallow, saw a drop but only by .5%.

As expected with it being the first Monday of the month, Google has released the Android Security Update for October.  While there are still two patches that were released per the norm, they contain far fewer patches and fixes than normal.

The first updated, dated October 1st, is general Android fixes and contains a total of 8 patches and fixes, three of which are considered critical.  The second patch, dated October 5th, has 6 total fixes with 2 of them marked as critical.  As a reminder, the Google Pixel and Nexus devices will be getting the October 5th updates, which are cumulative to the 1st, and is aimed at hardware specific driver fixes for those devices.

Today’s Deal is on the powerful and ultra thin Lenovo Yoga Book Android tablet.  The 10″ 2-in-1 tablet is on sale right now at Amazon for $299.94 in Gunmetal Gray.  That’s a savings of $200.

The Yoga Book has a 10.1″ display that gives Full HD resolution of 1200 x 1920.  It is powered by the Intel Atom x5-Z8550 processor, a quad-core processor that is clocked at 2.4GHz.  That is coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage.  That internal storage can be expanded up to an additional 256GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.  Also, the Lenovo Yoga Book can take advantage of Adaptive Storage in Android Nougat so once you have a MicroSD card installed, it can act as part of the main storage on the device.

What really makes the Yoga Book stand out is its size.  It measure just 6.72 x 10.1 x 0.38 in and weighs 1.52lbs.  That’s 256.00 x 170.80 x 9.60mm and 690 grams in new money.  When you open it up, it is 4mm thin.  It has a beautiful hinge that allows the keyboard to rotate completely around to the back of the tablet to use it in tablet mode.  Camera wise, there is an 8MP main camera and 2MP front camera for selfies and video calls.  All of this is powered by a whopping 8500mAh battery that gets you 15 hours of use between charges.  Charging is done via a MicroUSB connector and it supports Quick Charge 3.0 technology for fast charging.

Late yesterday, Google released the latest Android Distribution Report and it is one of the more positive reports in a while.  While Android Oreo did not make its debut in the report, Android Nougat gained 2.3% in overall install base for this month’s report and was the only version of Android that saw gains.

The distribution report looked at devices coming to the Google Play Store for the 7-day period ending September 11, 2017.  For that time, Android Nougat was seen on 15.8% of devices, an increase of 2.3% over the August report.  That makes Nougat third most installed of Android flavors, behind Marshmallow (32.2%) and Lollipop (28.8%).  Nougat jumped ahead of the long loved KitKat version which now sits at 15.1%.  Jelly Bean continues to hang on at 6.9% while Ice Cream Sandwich and Gingerbread continue to fall, both down to just .6% of devices.

If you are a T-Mobile subscriber and have a Samsung Galaxy Note 5, there is a minor update rolling out that should hit your phone this week.  The update is build N920TUVS4EQG1 for those keeping score and weighs in at only 25MB.  The hint of the type of update is in the size of the install package.  At 25MB, this is addressing minor bugs and issues with the phone and isn’t going to be uplifting big changes.

This is also backed up by the vague release notes from T-Mobile on the update.  They only list “various system improvements” in those notes.