News and notes on the latest from Google.
After adding support for Android Auto and Android tablets late last year, signs indicate that Apple Music will soon support the Google Assistant and Google Home speakers for music playback.
Continue reading “Apple Music will soon support Google Assistant and Google Home”
Although YouTube Music aims to be the new, first-party music streaming service from Google, many features have been missing from the time it was revamped in the spring of last year. Most notable was Android Auto support, which even Apple Music beat YouTube to adding. However, with version 3.03, Android Auto support has finally arrived.
Continue reading “YouTube Music v3.03 finally adds Android Auto support”
Ever since the iPhone X was announced back in 2017, marking the iPhone’s 10th anniversary in typical fashion, people have been raving about the all-new navigation gestures that Apple employed. Truth be told, there was undeniably a learning curve for most new users, if not all of them. However, it is fair to say the ice broke quite quickly.
Continue reading “App Reviews: Fluid Navigation Gestures — gesture nav for everyone”
Just yesterday, Facebook had its developer enterprise certificate revoked by Apple after news broke that it was using the program to distribute a research app to consumers that tracked all network data on their iOS device in exchange for gift cards. Apple’s policy for the Developer Enterprise Program states that it’s “solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organization.” Apple also added that “any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers [would] have their certificates revoked.” Google also had a similar app that used the same bypass as Facebook, and now, The Verge is reporting that they too are having their enterprise certificates revoked.
Last year, Gmail for the web got a complete makeover, and while Google has been bringing Material Theme to nearly all of its apps and services, Gmail on mobile has been left behind—until now. And it’s pretty bright.
Continue reading “Gmail app v9.1 rolling out now with Material Theme”
The At A Glance widget on Pixel phones and as a widget through the Google app is a nifty and minimal tool that displays the date, your current location’s weather, and (sometimes) notifies you of traffic updates. However, since about last Friday, I and many other users on the beta for the Google app noticed that the weather part went missing.
Continue reading “It’s not just you—the latest Google app beta broke the At A Glance weather widget”
Recently, Privacy International analyzed 34 apps on Android, each with downloads from 10 to 500 million, and found that at least 61 percent of those apps automatically transfer data to Facebook the moment a user opens the app. This happens whether people have a Facebook account or not, or whether they are logged into Facebook or not.
Continue reading “Some popular Android apps send user data to Facebook without consent”
Back in March this year, Huawei shook the tech world with its then-flagship smartphone, the Huawei P20 Pro. Most notably was its camera capabilities especially in challengingly low light conditions. Indeed, Huawei was ahead of the curve in night photography, where the phone would tap into the dedicated NPU to take stellar hand-held low shutter speed photos no matter how shaky your hands are. Certainly, this left a lot of users in awe. But we all knew it was a matter of time before other manufacturers catch up with the trend.
Continue reading “OnePlus Nightscape vs. Gcam Night Sight: Which one is better?”
Any video calling app is incomplete without the support for group calls. Since the release of Duo, this was one of the most requested features, and according to the leaks uncovered by Android Police, it might be coming soon to Duo as well.
Continue reading “Google Duo is testing group video calls and low light mode”
Google is rolling out spam protection in Messages. Messages can now detect suspected spam and let you block and report spammers. The change seems to be a server-side rollout, and not everyone’s getting it right now.
Continue reading “Google is rolling out spam protection in Messages”
