Category: Android Nougat

Huawei has become the latest manufacture to announce a new flagship Android phone at Mobile World Congress.  The Huawei P10 will be available in March, sporting a 5.2″ HD display, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.  There will also be a larger P10 Plus which will have a 5.5″ QHD display, 6GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage.  Both devices will have a Leica optics dual-camera configuration for the main camera.  The P10 will have a 20MP monochrome and 12MP RGB camera at f/2.2 while the P10 Plus will have an f/1.8 aperture.  Both will have image stabilization.

Processor wise, both phones are powered by the Kirin 960 processor, an 8-core SoC running at 2.4GHz.  The lineup is a dual SIM configuration with USB-C charging, NFC and MIMO antenna arrays for both LTE and Wi-Fi.

Probably the thing that stole the announcement for Huawei however was the colors available for the P10.  This is particularly true of the Greenery color which seems to have everyone smitten.  The phone will be available in Ceramic White, Dazzling Blue, Dazzling Gold, Prestige Gold (P10), Graphite Black, Mystic Silver, Rose Gold and Greenery.  Finishes on the colors will be High GLoss, Diamond-Cut and Sandblast.  These colors were developed in cooperation with the Pantone Color Institute so clearly Huawei is taking your color choice seriously.

Good news Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge users on Sprint, Android Nougat is rolling your way.  Joining AT&T and T-Mobile, Sprint has released their stable Nougat 7.0 build for the two Samsung flagship devices, starting with those who were in their beta program first.  Those in the program will get a small update (sub-200MB) to update to the stable version while those of you who get it outright, you are looking at a 1.2GB update from Marshmallow.  The update will take a few days to get to everyone of course as these things tend to be phased when the carriers roll out these big updates.

For those curious, a couple of key things to keep in mind on this update.  First, it is Android Nougat 7.0, just like the updates from the other carriers.  It does appear to have the February 2017 Android Security Update but that’s yet to be confirmed by Sprint (they haven’t updated their support page entirely with details).  If that is true, it would be the same as the other carriers.  Further, it is not 100% clear if Sprint has added any additional apps or services to the S7 or S7 Edge but that should become a bit more clear once the support page is updated.

Good news this morning for those of you who have the HTC One A9 on Sprint.  Android Nougat is rolling out to you starting today.  The software update from the carrier is build 2.18.651.2 and it brings Android Nougat 7.0 to your phone along with the January Android Security update.  With it, you get all the goodness that is Nougat including multi-window support, improved data saver and other features.

The OTA update should be hitting devices soon but you can always manually check for it by going to Settings>System Updates>HTC Software Updates on your phone.  As these things tend to go, it will take a few days before everyone sees the update so patience is required.

OnePlus has rolled out another small but significant update to OxygenOS 4.0 for their OnePlus 3 and 3T.  The update bumps the build up to 4.0.3 and contains a number of bug fixes and patches.  Two of the items addressed in the release have to do with Wi-Fi, with IPv6 now supported and an improved Wi-Fi Switcher.  This feature will switch your connection over to data if your Wi-Fi signal is consistently poor.

The camera app has also been updated, increasing stability in the app according to the release notes.

Nextbit has dropped the long awaited beta 3 of Android Nougat for the Robin today.  The update comes some 8 weeks after the release of the 2nd beta, a point at which the Paranoid Android team joined up with them to get the beta built.  This new build is expected to be the last beta as the team has indicated their is just one blocking bug that is preventing it from going public.

The Android Nougat beta is a closed beta for those who have a Nextbit Robin.

The fact a beta came out for the phone is a great sign, especially in light of Nextbit being acquired last month.  It was stated at the time that software updates would continue to come until February of next year and this is a good early indicator that the phone is not abandoned.

As for changes, they are pretty significant in this new build.  First, the build has the January Android Security Bulletin patch so it is relatively up-to-date from that regard.  Multiple bugs and stability issues have been fixed, particularly around Wi-Fi and overall system stability.  Power management has also been improved which should help battery life while running the beta.

To say that HTC has had a challenging time rolling out Android Nougat to their flagship HTC 10 device in Europe would be… well, it would be putting it nicely.  The fact is, it has been a debacle.  It originally rolled out back in November but was stopped due to software issues.  It was resumed, then stopped once again for “technical” issues.  So will this third attempt finally stick?  Let’s all hope so.

If you are in mainland Europe and have a 10, you should start seeing the OTA update to move you to Nougat over the course of the next few days.  That update will require a reboot of course but will not wipe your phone (last week HTC released the update for those who wanted to manually flash that wiped their devices by design).   Overall the update should take you about 30 minutes from start to finish but make sure you are on Wi-Fi to do the download of the update as it is just over 1GB in size.