Android

Update: Samsung got in touch to say they’d read the article, and to assure me that steps are in place to improve its returns/exchange process for customers.

In respect of the other points raised we do empathise with your frustrations and can assure you that actions are underway and, in some cases, in place (the Samsung Shop is now able to offer exchange products for failures within the returns period) to ensure that we improve our service and support moving forward

It’s hard to imagine there was once a day when Android flagship phones performed noticeably worse than an iPhone. A few years ago, if there’s one thing Android OEMs were known for, it was pushing the most specced-out plastic phones possible. Most of the time, the specifications didn’t translate to a much better experience.

Despite more impressive-sounding specs, the Android flagships were noticeably slower than iPhones, their cameras were terrible and the fit and finish, or build quality was — quite frankly — woeful. It wasn’t true for every phone, but it was a prevailing theme.

A lot has changed over the past 4-5 years. Android phones have caught up with, and arguably, surpassed the iPhone. They have the best cameras, they’re fast, have useful tech like fast/wireless charging, big batteries, SD Card slots, waterproofing, crazy high def OLED displays and are somehow more affordable. What’s more, Apple’s cloud services which underpin its hardware leaves a lot to be desired, especially in staples like photo management, maps and messaging.

But there’s still one major area that Android manufacturers need to get their act together on: Customer Service.

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In 2015, Samsung changed its approach to smartphones. Instead of just packing in the most powerful components in to a hideous plastic shell, the company actually gave a damn about design for once. It delivered the stunning glass and metal S6 and S6 Edge, but compromised maybe a little too much on some aspects. Most notably, the battery and lack of external storage.

This year, the manufacturer took what was great about last year’s phones and improved upon the compromises. What that means is that this year, the S7 Edge is easily one of the best phones on the market.

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ProtonMail has announced the official launch of their mobile apps for iOS and Android today. ProtonMail brings seamless PGP end-to-end encryption to emailing, making it significantly more secure for those looking for an extra layer of privacy.

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Oppo has taken the wraps off its latest premium mid-rangers, the R9 and R9 Plus, just days after they showed up on TENAA. Both are Android 5.1-based phones running Oppo’s Color OS 3.0, a new, lighter and brighter version of the Chinese manufacturer’s custom user interface. Both also have front and back cameras packed with pixels, relatively capacious batteries, edge-to-edge displays, fingerprint sensors and fast charging.

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Uber is beginning to test a new feature that will make it easier for family and other close-knit groups to share an Uber account. That means that your family could use a single credit card for Uber across several devices, making it easy for parents to pay for their kids or other family members, for example.

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Following the introduction of the TAG Heuer Android Wear watch late last year— the first of the major Swiss brands to launch a full-fledged smartwatch— TAG’s parent company says Hublot will likely be its next brand to receive smartwatch features. Bloomberg reports:

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For the past few years, most of the major manufacturers have embraced a war on specs — which ultimately led to an incredibly fast-paced evolution of the smartphone. Unlike any other tech-related market before it – think desktop computers or laptops – however, the smartphone has proven to be disruptive in a different kind of way; it became truly universal, and capable of becoming an intimate part of virtually every aspect of people’s lives, from their jobs to personal hobbies to more practical utilities and a myriad of other use cases enabled by its mobility.

We had mobile phones before, sure, but the smartphone arrived and put a small computer in our hands, one that would eventually allow us to do a million things on the go that we would have only dreamed of a few years prior, literally outgrowing the tech industry and making companies like Google, Amazon and Apple among the highest valued in the world. So naturally, with such a big, expanding and opportunity-rich market, manufacturers and other tech giants alike put all of their effort into improving and refining these experiences, ultimately taking us where we are now.

The spec-war has been furious: each year’s imperative was a constant impel to cram in the newest and best components on the market in the smallest, most elegant package possible. More pixels, more megapixels, more cores, more RAM, more everything. While users — at least on Android — most notably complained about the lack of a polished experience to match the sheer capabilities of these internals, looking at it in retrospect we can see just how far we have come…

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Earlier this year, Googler Max Braun created a bathroom mirror that essentially displays Google Now cards and other useful ambient information. In a post, he detailed the basic hardware setup and the Android and third-party APIs behind it. Now, Smart Mirror is an Android Experiment with the source code available on GitHub.

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Nixon is the latest traditional fashion watch maker to announce an Android Wear product, joining the likes of Fossil and Casio in hopping onboard the smartwatch train. And if the promotional pre-launch media is anything go by, this will be a beastly device built for those of us who like living on the edge.

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Huawei’s next flagship smartphone will be the P9, and if rumors and leaks are anything to go by, we’re expecting a phone which looks very similar to the P8 released last year. With that said, there will undoubtedly be some differences shown off when the device gets unveiled to the media at a London event on April 6th. Now, the family of P9-series phones has shown up on Oppomart, an online store which specializes in importing Chinese smartphones to the US.

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Following in the footsteps of Facebook, Instagram today announced in a blog post that it will soon adjust the way in which content is presented in its iOS and Android apps. While content is currently shown in chronological order, Instagram will soon switch to a new personalized algorithms based on each user…

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Google Maps is adding new ride options on mobile devices today as it turns the former Uber-only feature into a section dedicated to several car services. It’s launching today for Android users and coming soon to other platforms. 

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Both Google+ and Google Photos have been updated with a bottom bar in the past few months. Google is now officially embracing bottom navigation with an update to the Material Design spec.

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While Google surprised us all by releasing the Android N developer preview last week, it hasn’t seen fit to announce a name for the software yet. Of course, that could simply be because it hasn’t thought up a name. After all, it didn’t see fit to finally confirm that Android 6.0’s ‘Tasty Treat’ name would be Marshmallow until late August last year, a couple of months after the dev preview dropped at Google I/O 2015.

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The first Android N dev preview dropped last week, and since then, we’ve been digging in to the new operating system to find out what’s new. We’ve already covered the biggest changes, but here’s a list of 14 slightly less obvious and hidden ones.

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