Category: Android

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.

Back at Google I/O, Google announced that a new centralized subscription page would be coming to the Google Play Store app.  The idea behind is that users will have one place to go and manage their subscriptions, be it unsubscribe, change billing information or the like.  That new page is now live.

If you go to the Play Store app on your Android phone, tap on the hamburger menu in the search bar and you will see a new Subscriptions section.  Tap that and all of your subscriptions are listed for you.

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.

Google’s new cross platform mobile SDK, Google Flutter, has had its first Release Candidate build released for developers to use and test.  Flutter was announced way back in February at Mobile World Congress and it is aimed to give developers a leg up in developing mobile apps that are native for both Android and iOS.

The beauty of Flutter is that it comes packing its own rendering engine and framework which, in essence, bypasses the native UI frameworks in both platforms.  This is not something new for developers, especially game developers who have used different rendering engines.  This allows for significant performance increases (particularly on Android).  When you compile the app with the available Android and iOS SDKs, you get the appropriate app & framework for the respective platform.

Microsoft’s efforts to update and modernize their Android apps continues with a new update to what was known as MSN News.  The revamped app is now under the name Microsoft News and it has a load of changes.  Well really, it is pretty much a new app.

Starting with the new first run experience to help you personalize the news and information you get and when you sign in with your Microsoft account, your interests will follow you device-to-device.  You also have a new dark theme and a revamped look and feel overall.