Android

The Galaxy S7 and its curved-screen sibling are fast phones. Incredibly fast. Despite the demanding QHD panels, 4GB of RAM paired with a snappy processor keep things consistently smooth. However, unlike last year’s entire Galaxy S6 family – which mounted the Samsung-made Exynos 7420 – for 2016 Samsung decided to restore some faith in Qualcomm, whose faulty Snapdragon 810 processor gave certain devices more than one issue last year. In the United States, in fact, both Galaxy S7s use a Snapdragon 820 SoC; a choice which of course needed to lead to some controversy…

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Apple today has released an update to the Apple Music app for Android users. The update over month after the app’s last update that added support for saving music to SD cards for offline listening. Today’s update adds yet another feature that isn’t supported on iOS: the ability for users to add an Apple Music widget to their homescreen. The Beats Music app offered a widget when it was available for Android, but Apple Music has lacked it since release.

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“Be together, not the same” is the mantra Google has been spreading for quite some time now. It’s a good reflection of its intent and purpose; with 1.5 billion active users and a myriad of OEM partners contributing to its growth, the OS couldn’t ask for more diversity. Among Android enthusiasts, however, a vastly shared belief is that the stock, unadulterated, ‘vanilla’ experience delivered by Google is generally superior to basically any of the offerings brought to the table by third parties. This mainly stems from a bad history that saw manufacturers continuously deliver sub-par experiences and often lag far behind in the update cycle, not to mention the numerous design inconsistencies which added up to Google’s own often messy and unclear aesthetics. When Material Design was introduced back in 2014, however, a few things started to change.

For one, notoriously ill-designed UIs such as those from LG and Samsung (as well as from HTC, Sony, and most others) started to follow Google’s now precise and definite guidelines more closely, giving Android an overall sense of basic consistency at least across major instances. Samsung’s TouchWiz, in particular, got often criticized over the years because of its excessive bloatware and poor design choices, but with the massive hardware overhaul brought by the Galaxy S6 last year, software too got a considerable Lollipop-based facelift which went a little under the radar. The Galaxy S7 brought the whole thing one step further, and even coming from a long series of stock Android devices, I have to admit that my experience with TouchWiz wasn’t just not bad, but left me thinking of it as an outright smart, good-looking and overall well designed ‘skin’…

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We told you a few days ago that the troubled LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE — with that mouthful of a name — finally relaunched on AT&T after being pulled from sale just days after it became available in November of last year. Now, the watch is seeing its rebirth on Verizon as well, and the red carrier is also adding to its lineup a new budget handset by the name of LG K4 LTE…

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It’s 2016, billions of smartphones are in use across the globe, and traditional video game companies are only just coming around to the idea that there’s some money to be made from smartphone gaming. Nintendo only recently launched its first mobile app, and plans to release a more familiar character-based game soon. Sony, likewise is about to make another foray in to the world of smartphone-based gaming with its newly-formed corporation, ForwardWorks.

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Verizon has announced today that Android 6.0 Marshmallow will soon start to rollout to users of the LG V10. The update was announced on Verizon’s Advanced Devices Software Updates page and will begin to rollout tomorrow, March 24th. The update comes with build number VS99022A.

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According to a report from VentureBeat, Google is working to compete more directly with live streaming app Periscope. The report claims that Google will launch an app called YouTube Connect that will allow anyone to immediately begin broadcasting live onto YouTube from their smartphone.

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Google is apparently kicking off the April Fools’ Day jokes super, super early this year. As has been noticed by several Android developers (via Android Police), the company seems to putting a new section called “Reviews from Space” in the developer console. The review, as you can see above, comes from one “Alex Scott”, sports 5 rocket ships, and was written on April 1st, 2029. Oh, and the device and physical conditions of the user are hilarious, too…

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HTC seems to be having a lot of fun teasing its next flagship smartphone. The HTC 10 will be unveiled officially at a virtual event on April 12, and is expected to compete directly with this year’s biggest smartphones. While the company has been pushing out its own teasers, leaks and renders have given us a pretty clear image of what to expect from the Taiwanese tech company this year.

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Todoist, one of the best productivity apps released for any platform, has been updated to bring more smarts to its Android app. Unlike the last major update, this version doesn’t include a massive visual overhaul. Instead, the team focussed on bringing more intuitive and productive methods of adding, searching and filtering your projects.

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Update: Speaking to TechWeekEurope, Barclays has indicated it has no plans to support Android Pay in the UK. Instead, it would rather continue with its own apps for contactless payment.

“At this stage we are not planning on participating in Android Pay in the UK,” a spokesperson said. “In January this year we introduced a contactless mobile payment feature to the Barclaycard Android app that allows customers with an Android phone to make contactless payments for £30 and under, and at some retailers for up to £100.”

Recently it was rumored that Android Pay would finally land in the UK, and other international destinations, in March. With this month quickly running out of days, Google has officially announced that its mobile payments service will be launching at some point in the next few months. No specific date has been revealed, but, several banks are already onboard.

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According to a report from The Verge, Google is building its own third-party keyboard for iOS and has been doing so for “months.” While it’s unclear when or if the keyboard will be released, the report notes of several features Google has been working to implement as employees test it.

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The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge has been on the market for roughly a week, and in that first few days, we’ve been testing a number of third party cases to see which we think are the best. Thanks to the phone’s IP67 rating, we know the phone is already pretty well equipped to handle the elements, but a little extra protection from drops and scuffs is always a good thing.

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