Category: Android

After a trickle rollout last week, Google appears to be more broadly rolling out a new Purchases and Reservations section within Google Assistant on Android.  This, like many changes with Assistant, is a cloud-side update so as long as you have the latest version of the Google app and/or Assistant app, you should be good-to-go.

The new sections are accessed by long pressing your Home button to activate Google Assistant.  Now tap on the blue Explore button in the upper right corner.  Finally, tap on the overflow menu (three vertical dots) and go to Settings.  If it has rolled out to your account, you will see the new Purchases and Reservations sections.

In today’s chapter of “It’s cool living in the future”, Google Lens is now broadly rolling out real time information and text selection features via Google Assistant.  The new features, which were highlighted at Google I/O a few weeks back, trickled out to some last week but now it appears that Google has pushed the cloud-side big button and it is now going out to everyone.

There are few different elements that are rolling out today that are pretty magical.  First, there is real time information element.  When you enable Google Lens (long press your Home button to activate Google Assistant and then tap the Lens icon in the lower right corner), you can point your camera at different objects.  If it recognized that object, you will get a colored bubble over that item which you can then tap and Assistant will give you information about it.

Summer is almost here and that means that it is rumor season for the next generation of Pixel phones from Google.  The Google Pixel 3 lineup is likely a few months away from being announced but already we are starting to get loads of rumors as to what the phones will look like and now, who will be building them.

Roland Quandt of WinFuture and MobileGeekDE took to Twitter today with a rumor that both the phones in flight for release later this year are to be built by Foxconn.

Google really is going it alone: there are two Google Pixel 3 devices in the works, both based on SDM845. One has “new display hardware”, both are built by Foxconn – not HTC, LG or whomever. Launch timeframe is Aug/Sep 2018. https://t.co/CelnTfO5IB

— Roland Quandt (@rquandt) May 30, 2018

If the rumor is true, this would be a significant shift for Google by cutting out a manufacturing partner and having the phones built directly by Foxconn for themselves.

Believe it or not, Google Photos is now three years old.  The photo library app that syncs photos with your Photos online storage, continues to evolve rapidly and remains one of the most popular Google apps out there.  It makes keeping a sync’d copy of your photos and videos online pretty seamless and if you use the High Quality sync setting, doesn’t even consume any of your Google Drive quota (which is great for photos under 16MP).

Photos was announced as part of the original Pixel launch and those devices, as well as the subsequent Pixel 2 lineup, can store photos in original quality without using Drive space.  Other devices can upload in original too, but you start using up your storage.  It was also one of the first apps that has a serious AI integration from Google, with the app able to identify people, pets and look at the overall quality of the photo to recommend automatic improvements (referred to commonly as Auto Awesome), make animations and movies, and create photo books of your favorite photos.

The latest update to the Netflix app for Android brings a lot of improvements that should make it easier to use on touchscreen Chrome OS devices as well as your Android phone or tablet.  The update, which is now in the Play Store, brings bigger controls for those using a Chromebook while everyone gets a Next Episode button and 10-second rewind and fast forward buttons too.

The update to the Netflix app is version 6.3.0 for those keeping score at home and when you start the app and play a television show or movie, the changes are immediately apparent.  For those who use a Chromebook with a touchscreen, like the Google Pixelbook, you will see much larger touch controls for starting and pausing the show, as well as the 10-second rewind or fast forward buttons on the main display.  This makes it much easier to use these controls if you are using our Chromebook, or an Android tablet, as previously these were pretty small and difficult to tap accurately.

Nokia today made a somewhat of a surprise announcement with the new Nokia 5.1, 3.1 and 2.1 phones coming to their lineup later this summer.  Running Android One on the 5.1 and 3.1 while running on the 2.1 will be Android Go, HMD Global has more-or-less given incremental upgrades to the .0 versions of these current phones in their lineup.

By far the biggest upgrade came to the Nokia 5.1.  Sporting a 5.5″ Full HD display, it has an 18:9 aspect ratio and is powered by the MediaTek Helio P18 octa-core SoC.  It comes with either 2GB of RAM with 16GB of storage or 3GB of RAM with 32GB of storage.  IN either case, the storage can be expanded an additional 128GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.  Camera wise, you have a 16MP main shooter with auto-focus while the selfie camera is an 8MP shooter.  All of this, along with the phone running Android One (Oreo) will cost a comfortable $218 when it is released.