With Android Marshmallow coming sometime within the next month or so, the Android Developers Blog has shared the current OS breakdown. These numbers space across any devices running Android 2.2 or higher, due to the fact that the latest Google Play Store app is compatible all the way back to Froyo.
Leading the pack is still Android 4.4 KitKat, with just over 39%, however Lollipop is slowly creeping up on that number. Currently, Lollipop is sitting at 21% combined between Android 5.0 and Android 5.1. These aren’t really that surprising considering the slow roll out that has surrounded Lollipop, and that there are still some relevant devices that have yet to receive the update from KitKat.
Wedged in between KitKat and Lollipop is Jelly Bean, accounting for 31.8% of the pie. That’s a little surprising considering that it’s been a couple of years since Jelly Bean was relevant. But maybe it’s those lower end devices that can’t be upgraded to KitKat/Lollipop.
Hopefully, once Android Marshmallow is released, the roll out won’t be as painstaking as the Lollipop roll out was. Only time will tell, however, if previous experiences are anything to look it, the horizon is looking grim. Unless you’re lucky enough to have a Nexus device, then everything should be peachy.
Drop us a line and let us know what’s the oldest Android OS that can be found on any of your devices.
In this post, I’ll show you how to customize Google Now cards. But first, what is Google Now? The service essentially is a personal assistant. With it, you can get notifications and updates on topics that matter to you, such as apps, websites, sports, stocks, Google Play albums, and even travel notifications and bills. Google Now can also display topics based on searches you’ve made. You have control over these because you can tailor them directly to your needs.
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Customizing
Before you can tweak Google Now, you’ll need to make sure the cards are turned on. Swipe from the left edge of the screen or tap the menu icon at the top left. Next, go to “Settings,” “Now cards,” and “Show cards,” and switch the toggle to on if it is off.
Google Now’s sidebar menu
Next, we can customize the cards. Return to the sidebar menu and click “Customize.” You should see options for apps & websites, sports, stocks, etc., possibly with some numbers next to them.
Clicking on any one will give you relevant options for each. For example, under apps & websites, you can select whether to allow cards from apps and websites in general or even at an individual level as long as Google Now thinks you would be interested in receiving updates from that particular site.
And under anything else, Google Now will list a number of choices it thinks are relevant to your interests. It will ask a question such as, “Continue to get updates about albums?” to which you can submit “Yes” or “No.”
Periodically, Google Now will show these options on the main page if you have not answered them.
Let’s do two tasks for this example: add a sports team and add a stock.
On the “Customize” menu, click “Sports.” Then, tap “+ Add a team.” This will pull up a prompt that allows you to type the name of the team you want to follow. As you do so, suggestions of teams and icons indicating their sport appear. Select one, and it will be added to the “Interested in” section.
The steps for adding a stock are nearly the same. The differences are that you need to click “Stocks” from the “Customize” menu, and then, you have to click “+ Add a stock.”
Moving on, at least most of the cards you see will have three, small circles (…) at their top right corners. Clicking these circles will bring up a yes or no question. If you’ve already answered it, it’ll tell how long ago it was answered. Of course, you can change your response at any time.
Set Reminders
Google Now is able to set up reminders for events manually either from “Reminders” in the sidebar menu or by tapping the microphone icon on the main screen and telling it your command. They will appear on the main screen as their deadlines approach.
Additionally, they can be viewed and edited from “Reminders” or the main screen.
Shipping Information
Google Now also is capable of tracking the shipment statuses of your packages through its integration with Gmail.
The service looks for online orders in your Gmail. When it finds them, it will show you a card including the package’s status (shipping versus delivered, for example), where the item originated from, and the estimated arrival date.
At the bottom, you can track the card directly and view the email that contains information about the order.
Flight Information
This works similarly to how Google Now tracks packages. You’ll receive the name of the flight, its status, the email address of the flight company, and details pertaining to which terminal to go to at which airport at a specific time.
Just as before, you can view the email directly via the “View email” button at the card’s bottom. There also is an option to navigate by GPS, with the estimated arrival time included.
Website Updates
In addition, the service can update you on sites you’ve recently visited when it detects that new content is available. However, this feature is one of the hardest aspects of Google Now to really pinpoint. It isn’t very consistent, and even websites you visit frequently aren’t likely to show up, though they are more likely to show up. See the problem?
As far as I know, you are mostly unable to control directly which sites you want to get updates from, as you can with an RSS feed. If anyone has any tips regarding this feature, shoot off in the comments below!
Conclusion
With these steps, you can make Google Now your very own ecosystem.
If you think about it, the service is not all that different than RSS. Each acts as a hub for potential sources that you want to add in order to follow them.
Google Now is more flexible in the sense that it can do more than give you just news content. However, it probably is not a complete replacement for RSS since it will not always use the same source for a particular topic. It will use the same source only if you specify to receive updates from a specific site. Also, Google Now is not all that time-sensitive with this, which is not desirable for people who like to get their news as it is released.
Alliteration aside (see what I did there?), I had the opportunity to spend some time with the Moto Pulse wireless headset. And let me tell you, I now want to buy a pair. Why is that, you ask? Well my friend, that’s what I’m here to do, to answer such questions!
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[df-subtitle]Setup[/df-subtitle]
Setup was surprisingly easy for a Bluetooth headset. Almost perpetually the first time setting up a Bluetooth device to my phone is an arduous process of turning Bluetooth on and off, searching for a device, making both visible, so on and so forth.
However, turning the Moto Pulse on and pairing to both my smartphone and laptop was an instantaneous action. I was listening to audio without any qualms.
And that, is a beautiful thing.
What’s great about these headphones is you can pair it to two devices at once, and it will almost seamlessly play from each device when you stop audio on one and start audio on the other. I did this with my phone and computer often, and I could pause a video on my computer only to play music on my phone with no problem.
[df-subtitle]Usage[/df-subtitle]
Again, using these headphones could not have been an easier thing to do. Any time I did struggle was because I was actually complicating things (I know, surprising).
On the right-ear cup are a myriad of buttons to control the audio from your device. Starting from the top going down, you have the power button, then volume up/next track, volume down/previous track, and lastly play/pause button, which also acts as the answer/end call button.
Usually when devices have buttons with dual purposes, it is a pain in the butt to perform the action you need. However, again I found that following the directions to perform an action would translate perfectly to the device. Skipping tracks, pausing sound, answering calls, everything was a seamless experience. What’s great is this seemingly works across all apps. At least the play/pause button worked with Google Play Music, Joyride, and YouTube. I can’t guarantee this per se, but it certainly seems hopeful.
Another great thing about these headphones is just how light they are. If it weren’t for the fact that I live in Phoenix, Arizona where the heat makes anything noticeable, I probably would have hardly noticed I had them at all. So, traveling with them was a breeze, whether it was around my neck or in my bag. A neat design choice Motorola added was that the headphone cups will turn so that the headset lays flat, making storage in a bag much better than just about any other set of headphones. I definitely preferred this method over headphones that fold in, but that might be personal preference. Add with all of this the fact that these are wireless headphones, and the Moto Pulse is the perfect set of headphones for travel.
Now one hesitation for wireless headphones is battery life. I’ll tell you straight-up, battery life is no problem for the Moto Pulse. Motorola claims 18 hours of usage for these, and yet, in some miraculous form of black magic, I’ve gotten about 24 hours of use. Generally a manufacturer’s claim for battery life rounds up, but for these they rounded down! Have you figured out yet why I love these so much?
[df-subtitle]Sound Quality[/df-subtitle]
Now, I should front this section by saying this: I don’t necessarily consider myself an audiophile, however, I do drive my wife nuts by complaining that sound from our TV, car, etc doesn’t sound very good when she thinks it’s fine (maybe that’s just typical spousal bickering…). Point being, I don’t want audiophiles to come back with their torches and pitchforks when something I said wasn’t right.
With that out of the way, I thought the Moto Pulse sounds great. I can hear each instrument clearly, with good highs and lows. If anything, there were times where I wanted to feel the bass a bit more, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t fix with an equalizer on my phone. When listening to podcasts (with voices only), I could hear each voice crisply, and never felt as though I was missing something because I couldn’t understand someone.
So, these $60 pair of headphones isn’t going to win any audio awards necessarily, but I think 99% of the world is going to love the sound that come out of the headphones. If you need something more, then stop looking at $60 headphones!
Ask anyone I’ve been bugging the last few weeks, I love these headphones. They sound good, feel good, are easy to setup and use, have a long battery life, and travel well. Further, they look good, and have no wires!
Now I know what you’re thinking: how much do I need to spend to enjoy these great headphones? $60. Yup. When it comes to wireless headphones that work well and sound good you’re generally looking to spend over $100. The Moto Pulse? Nope. $60.
The Google Play Store has just received a version bump, bringing it to version 5.9.11 and gets devices ready for the impending launch of Android 6.0, as well as bringing with it support for fingerprint readers (hello Nexus 5X), a uninstall manager, and more.
What’s New
There’s plenty of new additions to the Google Play Store 5.9.11 and the release is clearly geared towards preparing things for the launch of Android 6.0. You’ll notice a new dialogue appear for apps optimised for Android 6.0 that will notify that such as will start asking for permissions when you start using them.
You’ll also notice that the latest Google Play Store adds in a handful of new permissions to the package, most of which are used for reading SMS messages and the contact list, which is more than likely to do with the app invite system.
Of the changes introduced with this new version of the Google Play Store, the most notable is that of fingerprint reader support. With no native support for fingerprint sensors previously in Android, it was a mystery as to how the much rumored fingerprint reader on the new Nexus lineup would function. That mystery is now cleared up with fingerprint readers officially supported in Google Play, and as such more than likely purchases using the sensor.
There’s a new feature introduced with this version of the Play Store called ‘Uninstall Manager’ that will make it easier to identify those apps that are eating all your storage and get rid of them. It seems that this feature only highlights physical app size, rather than associated media or cache space consumption.
You can read the full APK teardown over at AndroidPolice.
Why download it?
If like me you like to be on the cutting edge of developments, you can go ahead and grab the latest Google Play Store 5.9.11 APK from here. Running the latest version of the Google Play Store always ensures you have the latest features and experience the changes first-hand into new developments within the APK. Often small incremental updates will lay the ground work for future, more substantial, changes and running the latest APK enables you to see these clues for yourself and experience the fixes Google are delivering to the Google Play Store app.
[alert color=”yellow”]Please appreciate the risk when sideloading APK’s onto your device. These are unvetted by Google, which means the source or the code have not been verified. You download and load this onto your device at your own risk.[/alert]
Notice anything else different in the newest version of the Google Play Store? Drop us a comment below.
Best Buy will normally price match Amazon prices but this is more than that. This is an official price cut to $350 instead of just a price match. We don’t know if this is a permanent deal so make sure you get yours soon if you’re interested. We still haven’t seen the Google Store drop their prices past the $499 mark. Google could be holding back on a price drop as to not tip their hand at the incoming new Nexus.
The Nexus 6 is still a very good performer and will stand up to most flagships of this year. While not as popular as it’s little brother, the Nexus 5, the device still has the advantage of a huge development community and fast updates from Google.
On Tuesday, Samsung Electronics announced they have begun mass production on the first of it’s kind 12 Gb LPDDR4 RAM. The new chips will be on their 20mm manufacturing process and offer 50% greater density than the 8Gb ram that Samsung currently produces.
The 12 Gb RAM allows for higher density PCB layout which increases capacity and reduces power demands. The new chip opens up the possibility that we’ll see more phones and tablets move from 2 and 3 GB of RAM to a new standard of 4 and 6 GB of more power efficient RAM. With this new advancement you can now use 6 GB of LPDDR4 RAM in the same amount of space that 3 GB of RAM currently uses.
The new chips will also bring increased speed. There is a 30% increase in speed over the current 8Gb chips that Samsung produces with a per-pin speed of 4266Mbps. Modern phones SoC’s normally have 4 memory dies and 12Gb RAM translate to about 1.5 GB so we’ll be able to see 6 GB of RAM in phones using the same amount of space as currently do.
Do you have a road trip coming up? Maybe an event where you’re in charge of the music and you don’t want to try too hard? Well, Pandora wants to help you get rid of those pesky ads for the day.
On September 9th, Pandora listeners will experience a “Listeners Love Day” which celebrates Pandora’s 10 year anniversary by getting rid of the ads for the day. (Presumably there will still be ads telling you it’s their 10th anniversary and you’re not going to hear ads that day). The next day, on September 10th, Pandora will offer you the same experience for 99 cents a day. Currently Pandora One is $5 a month and offers ad free listening but if that’s too much of a commitment for you, One Day Pass will allow you to go a day at a time for the pleasure of ad free listening.
[blockquote author=”Pandora”]“Some listeners want an ad-free experience every once in a while, and the Pandora One Day Pass offers a new way to effortlessly access the music they love.”[/blockquote]
Honestly this sounds like a low barrier of entry way to get people in the door for their more premium offers. Once you have a taste of the good stuff (ad free listening) you’ll want more and subscribe to something like Pandora One which brings in more money for the streaming service. Pandora has a lot of competitors in the music streaming space so any way to differentiate themselves may be a positive.
Do you think this is a valuable service? Is it something you’d ever consider? Let us know in the comments what you think about Pandora’s One Day Pass.
When Samsung finally became a major player in the smartphone arena, it was with the original Galaxy S phone. The Galaxy S blatantly copied the iPhone’s shape and launcher design. By doing that, they launched themselves onto the forefront of the Android phone market.
The Galaxy S, while somewhat copying the design of the iPhone, brought a larger 4″ screen, removable battery, and expandable memory to the table. This made Samsung the first real competitor to Apple in the smartphone arena.
This continued on as Samsung brought software enhancements to the table with each successive device launch. In late 2011, Samsung launched the Galaxy Note and forever changed the face of the smartphone market. The Dell streak was technically the first phablet, but it wasn’t until the Note, that the large screen phablet market blew wide open.
Samsung moved away from the iPhone styling and began to make their phones distinct. Their phones became faster and their screens grew larger. Their advertising focused on the things that the Galaxy phones could do that the iPhone could not. More importantly, their profits soared sky high.
Fast forward to present day. The Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 sales are not quite up to par. 5 straight months of declining sales have wiped out $40 billion in Samsung’s market value. Their smartphone shipments have been reduced by more than 3 percentage points. They also lose their top spot in China, which is the world’s largest cell phone market.
Samsung’s reaction to all this is to cut 10% of their employees at their headquarters in Seoul. They will focus primarily on workers in their human resources, public relations, and finance departments. As of June 30, 2015, Samsung had nearly 100,000 employees at their headquarters. Do the math. Almost 10,000 people will lose their jobs.
So what changed? What happened that Samsung would fall so far and so fast that they would need to make such drastic changes? I would propose that Samsung has a selling problem, not so much a spending problem, and why aren’t they selling? I would guess that it has something to do with alienating their core fan base. I was a pretty strong Samsung fan and advocate, but two things happened.
The first was that my Samsung Galaxy Note II on T-Mobile was stuck on Android 4.2 Jellybean at the same time that other phones were already getting Android 5.0 Lollipop. The Note II, as all the Note phones have been, was very expensive, yet Samsung a year later comes out with the Note 3 and forgets about everyone who purchased the Note II. After all why release Lollipop or even KitKat when the consumer could just spend more on the newest model?
The second was that Samsung removed 2 huge features that Samsung’s fan base had grown to love. Those 2 features were the removable battery and the expandable memory. I understand why they did it. They had positioned themselves as the premium Android phone, but their devices lacked the finesse and build quality of the iPhone and even other Android phones. So in trying to compete with build quality, they alienated a large part of their fanbase, including myself.
In my opinion, Samsung needs to return to their roots. There is no reason why they can’t offer another version of the Note 5 or S6 with an expandable memory slot and a removable battery. This way they can cater to the iPhone crowd while not alienating their original fan base.
This was originally supposed to be a news piece and it morphed into an editorial hybrid of sorts. You may have a different opinion. Let us know what you think in the comments below.
There’s no concrete info on what the name or specs of these two unnamed devices will be but they may be getting a little brother. There are rumors kicking around that HTC is now working on a smartwatch, codenamed “Halfbeak”. Halfbeak is a type of fish which follows the naming scheme of other Android Wear devices we’ve recently seen. The rumored smartwatch is said to come with a round display that sports a 360 x 360 resolution… and that’s about it. Phandroid is the bringing us the leaks today and they’ve vouched for their source bringing them accurate information in the past but we’re light on details today.
Could a killer smartwatch pull HTC out of the spiral that they’re in? It’s doubtful but we’ll have to see. They’re getting a late start in the smartwatch game compared to competitors Samsung, LG and Motorola but it seems like there haven’t been any killer Android Wear smartwatches out there yet. There’s nothing out there that’s going to make people line up at Best Buy at midnight to pick it up.
Could HTC pull a rabbit out of a hat? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Blu products is known for very cost efficient phones. You won’t find much in their lineup over $300 and they always seem to have great specs. This time Blu is kicking it up a notch releasing a flagship level phone for $350. Let’s take a peek at the specs first.
Blu Pure XL
Dimensions
164mm x 82.2mm x 9.6mm
Weight
202 g
Screen
6” 2K Super AMOLED, 490 PPI
Processor
MediaTek 6795 Helio X10 2.0 GHz
GPU
PowerVR G6200 GPU
RAM
3 GB
Storage
64 GB internal, 64 GB expandable
Battery
3,500 mAh
Rear Camera
24 MP
Front Camera
8 MP
LTE Bands
2/4/7/17
Operating System
5.1 Lollipop
At first glance, this is an absolutely stunner in terms of specs. Only a few phones have broken past the 3 GB of RAM mark at this point in 2015 so the Pure XL is absolutely on par for a top tier device.
The 6″ screen reminds of us of the Nexus 6 and all the complaints we’ve heard of it being too big. And for most part, it really was. The Nexus 6 is a monster. You could adjust but it required compromise and it appears the Pure XL is going to require even more of an adjustment. While it’s not as wide, 82.2mm vs. 83mm or as thick, 9.6mm vs. 10.1mm as the Nexus 6, it’s taller at 164mm vs. 159.3mm. The rounded back of the Nexus 6 definitely helped in handling it, we’ll see if the more flat back of the Pure XL hurts it here.
The fact that the Pure XL is launching with Android 5.1 Lollipop on board is an encouraging sign. Blu has gotten flack in the past about their dearth of updates and the lack of pace in the updates that do see the light of day. Normally you could just flash a custom ROM with a newer version of Android, but since we’re seeing a MediaTek chip here, that might prove challenging. Development for the MediaTek chips comes about slow, or not at all due to poor documentation from the chip maker.
We’re also seeing a fingerprint sensor on the back of the device for added security. This is becoming a pretty standard feature and it’s great to see “Flagship killers” like the Blu Pure XL and OnePlus 2 include it. We high end features like a fingerprint reader on more expensive devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 or Apple iPhone but keeping costs low can force smaller OEMs to leave out such features.
The Pure XL will boast a 24 megapixel camera with a f/2.0 aperture, optical image stabilization, 1/2.3 inch sensor, real time HDR, dual-tone LED flash and phase detection auto-focus. One thing that we’re seeing on the Pure X is a dedicated camera button. Many others claim to care about cameras while throwing out specs and features but only Samsung and LG have risen above the crowd. Now Blu tops them all with a dedicated camera button.
Photography is advancing so rapidly that we’re getting phones that can almost make you justify putting away the point and shoot cameras. The fact that you may be able to get a phone for $350 with these kinds of specs is pretty fabulous. But the proof will be in the pudding. We’ve seen plenty of phones with beefed up specs on paper, so we’re not going to trust those numbers before recommending this camera.
And to top it off, the Blu Pure XL will be made out of a solid aluminum design. It will feature chamfered edges, an “all day” battery with quick charging, and come in gold and grey. We’ve heard plenty of phones talk about all day battery and not deliver so we’re going to have to test this one out before we give it out stamp of approval. 3,500 mAh is an impressive size for a battery but it’s also pushing a decacore processor and 6″ 2560 x 1440 screen. That’s a lot of pixels to power, even if it is an AMOLED panel which turns black pixels off to save power and to sport and impressive contrast ratio.
What do you think about the Blu Pure XL? Does this take the place of the OnePlus 2 as the cheap flagship killer for 2015? Or would you rather spend more money for a name brand phone that more reliably updates their phone? Let us know in the comments what your reaction to the Blu Pure XL is.
However, again I found that following the directions to perform an action would translate perfectly to the device. Skipping tracks, pausing sound, answering calls, everything was a seamless experience. What’s great is this seemingly works across all apps. At least the play/pause button worked with Google Play Music, Joyride, and YouTube. I can’t guarantee this per se, but it certainly seems hopeful.
