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.
Google has updated the Android Compatibility Definition document, and as is the case with every other major release of Android, this means that there are new requirements that manufacturers must follow if they want their phones to pass Google’s Compatibility Test Suite. Among the most obvious changes spotted today are a new mandate that full-disk encryption be enabled by default, as well as requirements for Marshmallow’s new doze mode and fingerprint sensors…
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Google has today, on the press review embargo lift day and available-to-buy-outright day, posted factory images for the Nexus 5X, otherwise known as “bullhead.” They’re all for version 6.0.0, but there’s currently three different builds available. It’s not clear what the differences are between them, but it’s likely that they’re minuscule at most.
You can find the three 6.0.0 images over at Google’s Developers website, or you can find quick links below (clicking them will pull straight from Google’s servers):
If you’re on the fence about buying the Nexus 5X (or you’re considering going with the Nexus 6P instead), be sure to head over and read our review roundups for both devices from earlier today: Nexus 5X, and Nexus 6P. The general consensus, for those that are out of the loop, is that the Nexus 6P is pretty much the Android handset to beat.
If you need help flashing one of these images (it’s pretty sad if you need this already, considering the device has only started showing up on doorsteps today), you can head over to our Android Marshmallow factory image install guide.
Digisfera, a startup that prides itself in “photography, design, and development services for projects involving 360° images,” has been acquired by Google. Financial details of the deal haven’t been revealed, but Digisfera’s website has been updated to reflect the acquisition and states that the group is joining the Street View team at Google to “continue building great experiences using 360° photography.”
Here’s the full statement from the team:
We’re excited to share that Digisfera is joining Google. We started Digisfera almost five years ago and have had the opportunity to work in many interesting projects involving 360º photography over the years. We’re excited to join the Street View team at Google to continue building great experiences using 360° photography.
As we move on to our next adventure, it will no longer be possible for us to keep developing PanoTag, so it is being discontinued. We are planning to open-source our Marzipano viewer in the coming weeks and hope this will benefit the panoramic photography community.
The Portugal-based startup, according to reports, has been part of capturing many significant moments in panoramic photography, including Barack Obama’s inauguration, landmarks in Rio de Janeiro during the 2014 World Cup, and parts of the 2014 Winter Olympics. These skills are going to hopefully translate to making Street View a better product and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that Digisfera could contribute to Cardboard technology as well.
The company says it plans to open-source its Marzipano panorama viewing software.
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Last year we didn’t get a smaller-sized Nexus phone. Since the Nexus 5 came out, if you wanted a Nexus phone any smaller than the Nexus 6, well, you bought a Nexus 5. And since the Nexus 5 is over 2 years old at this point, it makes sense that Google would make 2015 the year that it introduced two handsets — one for those that still want or need a smaller phone in the form of the Nexus 5X, and one for the rest of us in the metal-bodied Nexus 6P.
We told you about the latter, higher-specification brother earlier today, but here’s what people think of the former…
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According to a post made on the Google for Work blog this morning, Google is now giving enterprises a new opportunity to try Google Docs. Google knows that many enterprises likely have previous enterprise agreements with other companies that would make trying out Docs for their organizations difficult, so the company is now offering to pay the usual Google Apps fees until those contracts run out:
In fact, we’re so confident that Docs has all the features you need, without the ones you don’t, that we’re making it even easier to give it a try. If you’re worried about switching to Docs because you still have an enterprise agreement (EA) with another provider, we’ll cover the fees of Google Apps until your contract runs out. We’ll even chip in on some of the deployment costs and set you up for success with one of our Google for Work Partners.
Google says that once your enterprise agreement is runs out, companies can sign up on a simple contract “with no traps or gotchas,” and that many businesses find that Google Apps is cheaper, as well. The company, additionally, points out that many of the features that businesses think are missing from Google Docs are actually present, and that more and more useful tools are being added constantly.
Businesses can head over to the Google Apps‘ website to learn more.
Before today, signing up for Project Fi meant waiting several weeks in most cases before being about to sign up for the Mountain View company’s MVNO. At least for today, you can sign up without a waiting period. To celebrate the shipment of the Nexus 5X, Google says it is today giving out instant Project Fi invites to those that sign up for one…
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Xiaomi has today unveiled its new 60-inch Mi TV 3, the follow-up to the 48-inch Mi TV 2S that it showed off earlier this year. While the set does have features and specs that set it apart from its competitors — especially at its RMB 4,999 price point (~$786) — the TV also ditches its internal main board components, now found in a separate, much cheaper, Mi TV Bar add-on. This is a really interesting move for the smart TV space in general, and of course, the main board powers the set’s OS, MIUI, which is based on Android…
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Google has today announced that its Google Calendar illustrations, which show up as little piece of art reflecting the events that you create, now appear is as many as 30 languages. Additionally, Google says that is adding over a dozen more of these illustrations for new kinds of events, specifically naming weddings and Halloween parties as a couple of them…
Today we’re improving these illustrations in two ways. First, you’ll find over a dozen more of them for events like weddings and Halloween parties. Second, illustrations will now appear in 30 languages–from Dutch and Finnish to Catalan and Korean–giving our global community of users a new way to celebrate their day.
Finally, Google is inviting you to send off some images that could be inspiration for the next round of Google Calendar illustrations. All you have to do is head over to the social network of your choice and tweet a photo of you doing something less mundane than watching YouTube or browsing Reddit, and attach the hashtag #makethemost.
You can grab Google Calendar on the Play Store for free.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk held a press conference a couple of days ago to explain the Autopilot features included in the company’s 7.0 software update, but LIDAR, one of the remote sensing technologies that Google uses in its self-driving car, also came up briefly. Elon Musk had some bold comments about to use of LIDAR in autonomous vehicles, in response to one inquiry from a WSJ reporter, which questioned whether the Model S would need more sensors for greater levels autonomy…
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BlackBerry already made the PRIV official last month, and then followed up with some of the first official images of the device posted to its blog. Not much of what the company has said up to this point though has been new, though. Even the official images it published a couple weeks ago were pretty much the same as the ones we saw four months ago.
And this new video follows in the same vein as that theme. We’ve already seen an in-depth hands-on video with the phone, we’ve seen its specs leaked what feels like a dozen times, pre-registration for the phone opened up a couple of days ago, and just earlier today pre-orders for the phone went live in the UK. I guess it’s just a pretty marketing clip…
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Google earlier this week pushed the Chrome Android app to version 46, and now the browser’s desktop clients and Chrome OS are seeing the update as well. While Google has yet to publish and official list of changes for the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux version (although we have noticed the removal of one major user-facing feature), we do have a quick look at the changes that version 46 is bringing to Chrome OS…
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There are several Nexus devices that just don’t support Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and that fact has left some owners of ancient technology very unhappy. But this is Android, of course, and there’s nothing keeping developers from tinkering with Google’s open source OS. Specifically, owners of the 2012 Nexus 7 should rejoice in this case: It’s definitely at your own risk, but you can now install an early and hacky unofficial build of Google’s latest version of Android on your phone. Here’s how to do it…
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Niantic Labs isn’t part of Google anymore (it’s actually Niantic, Inc. as of this past summer), but it does look like Google still has a marked amount of interest in the famed Ingress maker. According to a report from TechCrunch, Niantic, Inc. is about to secure $20 million in investments from Google, Nintendo, and The Pokémon Company. This comes just a month after the group came out to announce an upcoming mobile game called Pokémon Go that ties in a real-world social aspect much like Ingress…
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This is really important. Google, a company that is definitely no stranger to Easter eggs, is at it again. This time, in the recently launched Marshmallow landing page, the company has hidden a curious chemical equation on an otherwise-blank chalkboard. Usually, these kind of Easter eggs are figured out pretty quick, but as far as I can tell, no one has solved this one yet…
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YouTube has today announced that its Gaming platform is getting a couple of really big updates, just as the service reaches more than 144 billion minutes of gaming videos watched per month. As of today, uers of the newly-updated Android app will be able to stream the games they’re playing on their phones, and certain creators can monetize their viewership with sponsorships…
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Starting on January 1st, Ontario will become the first province in Canada to open its roads to testing of automated vehicles, according to a recent report (via CBC). The province will allow testing of self-driving cars (Google has been a pioneer in the space with both its Lexus models and its smaller, prototype EVs), as well as “related technologies,” starting on January 1st 2016…
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Verizon and Motorola have begun sending out press invites this afternoon for an event to be held on October 27th in New York City. “Everything you expect from a phone will change,” the invite boldly claims. And clearly, the companies are planning to introduce more than one smartphone, as the invite asks members of the press to join as they unveil the newest “DROIDs”…
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You probably know about this little notification center, but it’s very unlikely that you ever use it. That fact is according to data that Google itself has compiled, and — as is definitely not unusual — low usage means cutting features in the name of simplicity…
In some cases, these desktop notifications would appear while users were gone, so in 2013 Chrome launched the notification center, a place for users to find notifications from Chrome apps and extensions that they’d missed.
However, in practice, few users visit the notification center. To keep Chrome simple, it will be removed from Windows, Mac, and Linux in the upcoming release. The notification center on Chrome OS will remain unchanged.
Update: Never mind. Qualcomm says that this is no longer a thing. It looks like the software on the phones being demoed at the India launch event are running old software.
Both the Nexus 5X and 6P are getting some special camera features thanks to improved hardware, and now we’ve learned about one more. Thanks to the device’s launch in India (and one hands-on video in particular), we’re getting another look at the device’s Settings app, and within there’s something interesting: Nexus 6P (and the Nexus 5X) will support “Double twist for camera”…
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A support page showed up yesterday hinting at a new “music gifts” feature coming to Google Play, and now it looks like the feature is launching in some locales. Specifically, Play Music users in Australia seem to be seeing a new option (via Ausdroid) in “Music settings” labeled “Send gift”. Tapping this icon seems to take users to a new page for gifting a Google Play Music subscription…
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