Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. You can find his current work at 9to5Mac, 9to5Google 9to5Toys, Electrek, and more. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twitter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.
Nova Launcher is one of the best-known and most-praised third-party launchers out there, and today it’s getting a huge Material Design aesthetic refresh and several other new features…
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(image via Wikia)
The Moto Maker has long been a great way to build your own custom Moto X, but now Motorola is letting you customize your Moto 360 smartwatch much the same way. We told you in February that the feature would be coming in March, and this morning it looks like Motorola has pulled the trigger…
With the Moto 360 Moto Maker, there are three main sections: case, band, and face. You can choose between three cases, including dark, light, and a “Champagne Gold” option—which is an additional $30. Bands come in a variety of options, including a 22mm Leather band (in 3 colors), a 24mm metal “Mono link” band, and both 18m and 23mm “Metal” bands available in a few colors.
Finally, while this may seem silly, the Moto Maker also lets you pick which watch face is going to be seen by default when your first turn the device on. You can pick between 6 “light” watch faces and 5 “dark” faces, all of which you’re probably familiar with if you’ve ever used a Moto 360 before.
To get started building, head over to Motorola’s website.
The same guy that leaked the HTC One M9 in late January, Steve Hemmerstoffer of the well-known French site Nowhereelse.fr, has today come out via his new “OnLeaks” Twitter account to share what he says are some “early” renders of the LG G4—and the device pictured looks a lot like the LG G Flex 2 that was announced earlier this year at CES…
Android Wear is about to receive a very notable software update, and sources who are reportedly familiar with the smartwatch operating system’s roadmap (via The Verge) say that that it’s going to include support for WiFi among several other new features.
It looks like Google might be moving Android Wear to be more app-centric…
I love my Android Wear smartwatch—it’s a great extension to the Nexus 6 I use daily. But not many people I know have an Android Wear device, even fewer have reason to use one every day, and basically no one (outside of my circle of geeky friends) really understands why they’re useful when I try to explain what they do. My LG G Watch R is seen as cool, because I can flip between a couple dozen watch faces and reply to texts with my voice, but these things don’t really make my peers feel like they’re missing out. It’s cool, but that’s about it.
The Apple Watch was shown off again today—this time in a bit more detail—and it’s clear that the device is going to be competition to the half-dozen-or-so Android Wear devices that are on the market. It’s priced a bit higher, and that’s typical when it comes to Apple products, but there are definitely things that this device offers that Google hasn’t yet introduced. The big one—in my opinion—is Digital Touch, which Apple describes as a “fun, spontaneous way to connect with other Apple Watch wearers, wrist to wrist.”
The rollout of Android Lollipop continues today, as various reports on Twitter and elsewhere have confirmed that the latest major update to Google’s mobile operating system is now hitting the HTC One (M7) for T-Mobile. A couple of days ago, HTC’s Mo Versi confirmed on Twitter that the company had received approval for the update and that it would be rolling out over-the-air on Tuesday. But now, a day early, many users are already receiving the update.
@moversi Finally getting Lollipop On T-mobile HTC One M7!! pic.twitter.com/CSVBqT4Gei
— JIm (@JDWUe) March 9, 2015
HTC announced in February that it had missed its 90-day goal for bringing Lollipop to owners of the HTC One (M7) and (M8) (with the obvious exception of the Google Play edition which got the update in early December). In mid-February, the update started rolling out to those using the HTC One (M8) on T-Mobile, and now about a month later, those who have the HTC One (M7) are seeing the update.
HTC One (M7) T-Mobile Owners! We've received technical approval on the L OS and OTA will start on Tuesday. #htcadvantage
— Mo Versi (@moversi) March 7, 2015
Google has published an Android Wear commercial to its YouTube channel this morning, and it fittingly features the company’s smartwatch platform on the day Apple is scheduled to kick off their “Spring forward” event—which is widely assumed to be Apple Watch-focused.
There’s definitely nothing completely conclusive about this, but the upcoming HTC One M9 flagship showed up on online retailer B&H’s website (via PhoneArena), sporting a price tag of $649 and an “available for purchase” date of Wednesday, March 25th. Since earlier this morning, both of these tidbits have been stripped from the page, and replaced with “Price not available yet” and “Coming soon” placeholders…
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It’s been a long time coming for the Verizon Nexus 6, but several new pieces of information that popped up this morning and over the weekend (including a quote straight from a Verizon customer service representative) suggest that the device should be seeing a public launch—at least via Internet sales channels—on March 12th. We now have some information on pricing as well, and it looks like the device might just be shipping with Android 5.1 on the Big Red…
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Many Android smartphone manufacturers have already entered the Android Wear race, with the latest entry—the aptly-named Huawei Watch—coming from Chinese company Huawei at Mobile World Congress last week. Today, it looks like the first evidence of an Android Wear device coming from another Chinese OEM, Oppo, have surfaced on the web via a couple of different sketchy Chinese sources.
The above smartwatch, sporting a fairly traditional design, might just be Oppo’s upcoming entrant…
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Jeff Gordon is probably one of the most vocal HTC higher-ups on Twitter, being the source of many a tease about the company’s continual smartphone endeavors. He’s also very often the first to tell the world about software releases and other important HTC-related updates. Today he was especially engaging, coming out to talk a bit about the company’s flagship smartphone line, but specifically on the origin of the HTC One Mx naming scheme…
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Onkyo 7.2-Ch. A/V Receiver w/ WiFi and Bluetooth $270 shipped (Reg. up to $500) http://t.co/MZBN8CdEps pic.twitter.com/YEk03Aqdds
— 9to5Toys (@9to5toys) March 6, 2015
A rumor began circulating the Android blogs a couple of days ago that the Huawei Watch is going to cost about a grand when it launches. Intentionally or not, the original source of this rumor didn’t exactly specify which model of the device would cost this much, saying only that the “Huawei Watch price is $1,000”.
While we still don’t know what the different variants of the device will cost—as Huawei hasn’t announced pricing for any of them yet—we now have confirmation from the Chinese company that the base model will most definitely not cost $1,000…
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Google announced a couple of weeks ago that it had acquired some technology and IP from Softcard, and today the company has taken to its website to announce that the service will be getting shuttered completely as of March 31st.
This news comes after rumors started spreading that Google would be re-introducing its payments service at Google I/O under the name “Android Pay“. Google’s Chrome and Android lead Sundar Pichai confirmed the existence of such a service earlier this week at Mobile World Congress.
The update, seen on Softcard’s website, reads:
Important News! We are pleased to let you know that Google has acquired technology from Softcard to power the next generation of mobile wallets.
What does this mean for you? As of 3/31 your Softcard app will no longer work. You can continue to use the Softcard app until 3/31. After that your Account will be closed.
To keep using a digital wallet app download Google Wallet now.
For more information read our FAQs.
For those that still use Softcard, the company recommends that you head over to Google’s website to download Google Wallet.
Google has been beefing up Knowledge Graph a lot lately, and now it appears that they’re adding yet another useful set of information to the top of your Google searches: cocktail recipes. Most recently, the Mountain View company added social links for brands, fact-checked health information, and even full song lyrics.
As more information is being added to Knowledge Graph, users going to Google to search for information are needing to go past the search results much less often. This has been a problem particularly with the introduction of lyrics to the Graph, after which many sites that depended on Google traffic surely saw a significant dip—and some may have even gone out of business.
While cocktail recipes in Knowledge Graph may not be as comprehensive of a substitute as lyrics were, there’s probably a little bit of threat here to sites that servce up cocktail recipes as well.
According to “solid sources” for Artem Russakovskii, the long-awaited Android 5.1 update (which has been rolling out to Android One devices for about a month now), should be coming to an Android device near you sometime before the end of the week. Considering Russakovskii’s track record, it’s probably fairly likely that we’ll see the update start rolling out soon barring any unforeseen circumstances…
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Back in stock! WD My Passport Ultra 2TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive $80 shipped (orig. $140) http://t.co/fb0lXR6ioQ pic.twitter.com/Z4EnlDn0TR
— 9to5Toys (@9to5toys) March 3, 2015
A couple reports out of Korea today highlight some of LG’s plans for the relatively near future, including a statement (via Korea Times) from the company’s mobile chief Cho Jun-ho suggesting that the upcoming LG G4 is going to be “radically different” than its predecessor. The device will reportedly feature a “metal-mixtured” body and sport the company’s LG UX 4.0, which Cho says will be announced sometime before the new phone.
Also, LG also reportedly has a completely new device series in the works (via Korea Herald), featuring more powerful specs than the current top-of-the-line G series…
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If you’ve been anxiously awaiting your chance to get the YotaPhone 2, today comes with great news. The device isn’t launching today, but Yota Devices has announced that its super-battery-saving e-paper back YotaPhone 2 will indeed be coming to North America this Summer. And it will be doing so via an Indiegogo campaign that’s scheduled to launch in April.
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OnePlus has been rumored to be working on some kind of new product for a while, and guesses tend to bounce back and fourth between it being a smartwatch and a tablet. Today, OnePlus founder Carl Pei has reportedly come out to say (via GSMArena) that the company is indeed planning on soon entering a new product category, but—hilariously enough—it’s not going to be a smartwatch—nor will it be a tablet.
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The HTC smartwatch—specifically one running Android Wear—has been rumored for a long time now. In fact, many were expecting the Taiwanese company to introduce it at the company’s press event a couple days ago. Obviously that didn’t happen, and the company instead told us about another wearable—its GRIP fitness tracker. Don’t be too worried, though, because HTC has told CNET that they’re still working on their smartwatch; they just want to be careful to get it right.