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Google is finally about to get the go ahead from the Indian government to run a pilot of Project Loon in India according to a report from the Economic Times. According to the sites source, an anonymous “top government official”, the nation is keen to test as many alternative methods of providing internet connectivity as possible. One of which is Google’s high-altitude balloons.

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The only confirmed launch from Lenovo’s Tech World event on June 9th is a consumer Project Tango-enabled smartphone. An invite from the reliable MotoHK now also points to a reveal of the next Moto flagship at the event. Furthermore, the Moto Z trademark has just passed (via Droid Life) the US Patent Office.

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Over the past few years, we’ve seen a number of projections and claims that we are now in a ‘Post PC era’. But despite the fact that more people than ever are using mobile devices and tablets for web browsing and gaming, when it comes to getting real work done, you can’t replace a physical keyboard with a virtual one.

While using a Bluetooth keyboard with a smartphone or tablet is never going to make for a compelling laptop replacement, it may just be the accessory that saves you in a pinch, especially if you have little space to store gadgets while on the move. The iClever folding keyboard is a wireless affordable keyboard with sturdy metal construction that you can take anywhere.

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UPDATE: It happened really fast, but the 30,000 Loop VR headsets are already gone. However, as per Carl Pei, some of the orders placed didn’t go through fully, and pending, missed payments will result in cancelled orders.

If there is a big trend going on now in mobile, that’s virtual reality. Last week at Google I/O, we saw the Mountain View company announcing its new VR-dedicated platform, Daydream, which will be compatible with Android N and a lot of the devices that will come throughout the rest of 2016 and beyond.

One of those phones will likely be the OnePlus 3, which the company’s co-founder Carl Pei today announced will repeat its virtual reality launch with, and will do so with its own newly revealed Loop VR headset…

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As it often happens with new technologies — especially the ones that aim to replace fundamental, widely used parts of our digital devices — the early implementations are often challenged by a series of missteps and various other problems.

The latest concrete example of this is the promising-yet-troubled USB-C, which led to a few controversies as of late. However, it seems, with its latest G5 flagship, LG may be one of the few manufacturers that got it right (via gtrusted)…

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At Google I/O 2016, the Mountain View company decided — although admittedly not an entirely new theme — that it would be a good idea to spread its announcements across three days. The keynote showed off Google’s vision for the future: virtual reality, its new AI and machine learning initiatives, Google Home hardware to take advantage of them, and a few sprinkles of Android Wear 2.0 goodness. The second day saw the announcement of the Play Store coming to Chrome OS.

But the third day was ATAP day, admittedly my favorite day of Google I/O. Last year the Advanced Technologies and Projects group at Google showed off Project Jacquard, Project Soli, some more details on Project Ara, and more. And then the company went silent. For pretty much an entire year.

Maybe that’s a good thing, as Google tends to show its projects and technologies off a little early in general. It’s not exactly out of Google’s character to show a product or service, say that it’s coming in 6 months, it not arrive for 12 months or 18 months, and then the final product share hardly any resemblance to what was originally announced. Admittedly that’s happening with some of ATAP’s projects either way (I’m looking at you, Ara), but at least it’s not a constant barrage of teases and false hope.

Anyway, Google ATAP finally came out of hiding on the third day of I/O yesterday, and with it came updates on Project Jacquard, Project Soli, Project Ara, and Spotlight Stories. Jacquard brought the announcement of the first retail product based on the tech, Ara brought a little update on how progress is coming including the most current prototype device with new module connectors (and promise of a dev kit coming soon), and the Spotlight Stories mention came with some progress in VR storytelling. All cool stuff.

But Soli is what makes my jaw drop.

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In this week’s top stories we round up all of our coverage from Google I/O, the company’s annual developer conference where it also took the wraps off a number of upcoming hardware and software products. Android N Developer Preview 3, the Play Store comes to Chrome, Google Assistant, the new Daydream VR platform and much, much more.
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This year’s I/O was a big one. Maybe not the largest in terms of new products and services, but definitely not the smallest either. Among other things, the Mountain View, California company announced its Daydream VR platform for Android, an evolution of the Google Now assistant in the form of an AI-powered “Google Assistant,” a couple of new messaging apps and some hardware to play the part of debuting the Assistant, a new version of Android Wear, and more.

The keynote had this overarching theme that Google is no longer just a company that does search and ads. Now, Google is diving head first into artificial intelligence and machine learning, and most of the things that were announced in the keynote fell into that narrative for the most part. This is the stuff that’s not coming out for at least half a year. Most things, from Allo and Duo to Google Home, felt half-baked. It felt like everything was unfinished, and to some degree, that’s true. It’s still early days.

While Google wanted to paint this big picture of what the company envisions for the next few years and beyond, it saved some of the stuff that’s actually really cool today for other events at the conference. The most obvious of these was the press-only event Google hosted on day 2, showing off a huge new feature for Chrome OS: support for the Play Store that has long been tied down to Android. We’ve known this was coming for a long time, but now it’s here — serving as the next move to make Chrome OS and Android more alike than ever…

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After a long wait, Project Ara is now closer to real product with a consumer product finally coming next year. In addition to a new developer kit launching this year, ATAP announced many partnerships with companies to make modules. Google believes that Ara will be the future of computing and is now its own division.

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One of the lesser talked about but more important new features in Android N is seamless updates. Essentially, what that means is that future Android devices running the next version of Google’s mobile OS will be able to download and install software updates in the background without interrupting your use of the phone. Sadly, none of the current crop of Android phones will get the feature.

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At an I/O session this evening, the inaugural winners of the Google Play Awards were announced. With 10 categories, winners were selected by the Google Play team based on launching or having a major update in the past 12 months, app quality, and innovation.

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It was 2006, you were in high school, and everybody had a Motorola RAZR. At least, that’s how Motorola wants you to remember your life ten years ago, in its latest teaser for the upcoming Moto X (or Moto Z) announcement.

Of course, one year later the iPhone was launched and the entire mobile industry was turned on its head. But for that one brief spell, the RAZR was without doubt the most popular phone around, and it turned heads.

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Android Instant Apps may be one of the coolest announcements that Google made during the I/O 2016 keynote yesterday, and now we had a chance to see the new feature up close…

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The Play Store is adding a few features for both developers and users. Betas are now easier to find and join from the Play Store with Google even highlighting beta apps in a new Early Access section. The store also has new smart collections for tasks that require a combination of apps.

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During the Daydream announcement at yesterday’s I/O Keynote, Clay Bavor spoke of how Google is redesigning several of their in-house apps with an interface suited for virtual reality. One of those was YouTube, and now the group has shown off what the YouTube VR app will look in Daydream headset.

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We spotted the event description yesterday, but Google today finally took the wraps off its plan to bring the Google Play Store to Chrome OS. While the event is just now starting, we’ve spotted a support page on Google’s site that says the feature is coming to three Chromebooks in mid-June, with dozens more devices to follow…

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Update 6/27: The Google Awareness API is now available to all developers as part of Play Services 9.2. Using seven types of context, apps can intelligently react to what users are doing. The Snapshot API lets developers request information about the user’s current context, while the Fence API lets an app react to changes in a user’s context.

Google worked closely with several partners, including real estate site Trulia to suggest open houses and SuperPlayer Music to suggest music to match the mood. New developer documentation provides more details on how to implement.

With Assistant, Google wants to build technology that is conversational and helpful. Many of the company’s services are being updated to be more useful and Google wants third-party apps to be the same. With the new Awareness API, developers will be able to build apps that intelligently react to a user’s current situation.

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