Firefox today has started rolling out an update to its Android app, bumping it to version 40.0. The update includes your normal host of bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as a pair of new features.
The latest Pushbullet update adds a handful of new features, but perhaps the most interesting is end-to-end encryption. For the longest time, many Pushbullet users have been hesitant to rely on its file-sending abilities due to the fact that a lot of data was sent unencrypted. As of today, Pushbullet for Android supports end-to-end encryption for Notification Mirroring, Universal copy & paste, and SMS…
And while that’s the big feature that Pushbullet is pushing (heh) on its blog, today’s update also packs some other minor changes. With version 16.5.4 of the app, you get improved SMS that’s faster and uses less data, the ability to select and delete more than push at a time, a new “Clear history” button on the Settings page, and the usual bug fixes and improvements.
Here’s the full changelog:
WHAT’S NEW
16.5.4• End-to-end encryption support!• More improvements to SMS, faster and uses less data• You can now select and delete multiple pushes at once!• “Clear history” button in Settings• Crash and bug fixes
Material Design brought a lot of changes with Android Lollipop, but there’s nothing that says things can’t be improved. Designer Miroslav Vitula thinks he can improve the rotation animations in Android, specifically giving the OS a smooth transition not unlike the one found in iOS. Here’s what he had to say about his concept:
There are a bunch of smooth interactions in Android but sadly, rotation isn’t one of them. I’ve been craving the “smooth rotation” (as seen on iOS) since ICS. Well, let’s hope that one day, this will become an actual thing.
The example he uses is the Google+ app, which offers several Material Design tabs along the top as well as a cover image and a profile picture. As you can see below, rotating the device would smoothly transition between the two views. This would perhaps be nicest on big-screen devices like the Nexus 6 which are more enjoyable to use in landscape.
Like he says, hopefully this could one day be reality.
Update: The HBO Now APK with Chromecast support is now available to download. It should be rolling out over the next several hours on the Play Store.
Yes, it’s true. Following the service’s introduction on Android and some of Amazon’s platforms a few weeks ago, Google has announced today that HBO is now rolling out support for Chromecast as well.
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Google has announced today that, thanks to a recent update to Google Slides, users can now quickly and easily share their presentations over Hangouts video call.
Google Slides helps you share your big ideas with the world, but sometimes presenting these ideas can be challenging. In June, Slides added support for Chromecast and Airplay, which made it easier to project your slides on the big screen. Now there’s another new way to share your work: easy presenting to Hangouts video calls. Teammates, partners, clients and classmates can see your ideas, even if they’re on the other side of the planet.
As you can see in the below video, all you need to get started is an Android phone or tablet. Tapping the play button along the top bar of the app will let you present to a new video call or one that’s already ongoing.
Earlier this year Google unveiled its new YouTube Gaming service to rival Amazon-owned video game streaming site Twitch after several months of speculation. Today, Google has released the version of the YouTube Gaming app for Android, albeit in an early “Creator Preview” form. The changelog of the app reveals that the app is capable of many of the features previously announced.
It’s been possible on the web for quite a while, but a recent update to the Google Keep app now lets you quickly export your notes to a Google Doc. To do so, make sure you have the latest version of the app, and then select the notes you’d like to export. Then tap the drop down menu at the top right of the screen and tap “Copy to Google Doc”. It’s pretty nifty.
You can grab the app from the Play Store for free of course, and if you’d like to try out the feature right now, open this page on your Android device. All you have to do is tap below to download the APK (via APKMirror), and then tap the notification on your phone once the app is done downloading. You’ll be walked through a couple steps, and then you’ll be on the latest version.
Not quite in time for the influx of visitors that surely happened earlier this summer, Disney has now released an official Disneyland app for Android. As you might expect, the app is intended to basically be your companion during your visit, allowing you to do everything from buy your tickets in advance to browse detailed maps of the park…
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Chrome v44 hit the beta channel last month and today the update is rolling out to the stable app via the Play Store. While Google isn’t very specific in what has changed, there are usually several hidden features in Chrome version bumps.
We saw leaked screenshots of both the upcoming Hangouts Android app and its Android Wear counterpart, and now the app has leaked again (via Phandroid). Everything looks basically the same, and there’s not much new to see in this leak. And while Phandroid seems to claim that their version of the app is somehow special, the currently-available build of Hangouts now lets users send messages from Android Wear…
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StubHub is rolling out an updated version of its Android app today that adds integration with Uber for requesting rides to events.
With the udpated app, users can now request a vehicle directly from within the app when purchasing event tickets or setup a reminder to do so for an upcoming event. Once you’ve booked a ride with Uber, StubHub automatically provides the location of the event venue to the driver:
After completing a ticket purchase on StubHub, fans will now be able to set a reminder to arrange transportation through Uber when the event is imminent. Users who purchase tickets within two hours of the event will be able to order an Uber directly from the order confirmation page.
The Uber integration is available for users in the updated Android StubHub app on Google Play alongside a few other fixes and improvements. The Uber feature, however, is available only for users in the UK, US, and Canada.
If you travel internationally, you’re well aware that Google Translate’s visual translation features — which originated as the Word Lens app — are invaluable. Today, Google announced that the app has added support for 20 new languages, bringing the total up to 27.
Today, we’re updating the Google Translate app again—expanding instant visual translation to 20 more languages (for a total of 27!), and making real-time voice translations a lot faster and smoother—so even more people can experience the world in their language.
The app originally supported English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
As of today, you can now translate to and from Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. You can also do one-way translations from English to Hindi and Thai.
Fallout Shelter, a mobile game companion to the much-anticipated Fallout 4, was brought to iOS last month with no word on when it would be arriving on Android. Today, the company behind the game, Bethesda, has come out on Twitter to announce that it should be hitting Android devices in less than a month — on August 13th.
The game was met with mixed reviews despite the hype, so Android users anticipating the game became much less excited with iOS players commented on its repetitive gameplay and stability issues. That said, Fallout 4 is definitely one of the most eagerly-awaited games of the year, and until it hits in November, players will have to take Shelter for what it is.
Attention overseers: learn what's new in #FalloutShelter arriving on Android on 8.13 pic.twitter.com/pTEKrNAH6d
— Fallout (@Fallout) July 24, 2015
Pebble has announced today an update to the firmware of the company’s smartwatch, bringing several features that the community has oft-requested. Most notably, the new firmware brings settings for adjusting font size, backlight, and vibration. Pebble also released an updated version of the Pebble Time’s Android app counterpart, bumping it to version 3.2.0, which brings a new search bar, preserved notification preferences, and other minor changes…
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As more and more Internet usage shifts towards mobile, particularly to smartphones, app developers are recognizing the phone number as an ideal identifier for new users. Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger are just three examples of hugely popular apps which support signing up using your phone number in lieu of an email address, and which can also use the contact list to build up a network of connections within their apps. Now Amazon is jumping into the fold.
In the newest version of Amazon Shopping for Android, the company’s main mobile experience through which customers can purchase items and track orders, the onboarding flow for new customers has been updated to support signing up using just a name, phone number, and password. New customers who’d prefer to use an email address can click “Use your email instead.” The update hasn’t fully propagated in the Play Store just yet, but can be downloaded right now through APKMirror (click here). For that to work you need to visit Settings > Security on your device and toggle on “Unknown sources.”
This shift to phone number-based identification for apps makes total sense. Phone numbers are a native feature on smartphones – I like to call them an “atomic unit.” SMS and phone calls work right out of the box, whereas with email you have to launch an email app and then sign up and/or authenticate with a third-party provider, just to begin receiving messages. At the very least, by allowing onboarding with phone numbers, app developers make the onboarding process much faster, tremendously reducing the friction and bounce rate (users who download an app but leave before signing up). That’s what Amazon has done here.
We told you in May about a new app from Microsoft called “Hyperlapse Mobile” (not to be confused with Instagram’s Hyperlapse), but it was at the time only available to an exclusive set of beta testers. Now, the app is publicly available to any and all that might want to give it a try, and — aside from its horrendous icon — I’m decently impressed.
Not much has changed since it was first introduced, and it’s still a little on the buggy side according to reviews, but overall users — myself included, briefly — are satisfied with the app’s resulting video footage. You can import existing video into the app, choose between multiple speeds, create selfie hyperlapses, and more.
You can get Microsoft Hyperlapse Mobile right now on the Play Store for free.
Microsoft announced last month that its Cortana voice assistant would be coming to Android in beta at some point in July, but it looks like the APK has managed to leak out a bit early. We grabbed it as soon as we could, and decided to give it a look. And our first impression, frankly, is that there’s not really anything special about Cortana — especially when Android has Google Now, Hound, and other competitors to pick from.
VLC pushed a major cross-platform release in February, and at that point the company’s Android app finally left beta for the first time. VLC for Android has definitely been getting a lot of attention since then, though, and version 1.5 — which packs some notable improvements — was released today.
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Google today announced a useful new feature that is now available in its Inbox email app. Starting today, when users “snooze” an email that has dates and times, they will be presented with a one-tap option to snooze to a specific time further in the future. For instance, you can snooze an event confirmation email until the day of the event. Another possible instance is snoozing a shipment confirmation email until the day of the package’s arrival.
It wasn’t that long ago that Google opened up its Clock app to be downloaded on just about any Android device, and now a very minor update released today has refreshed the app’s color scheme. While the previous version sported a pink-and-blue look that was reminiscent of cotton candy, the app now looks a lot more like a patriotic red, white, and blue.
Those who weren’t avid users of the previous version might not notice the difference, because in the grand scheme of things it’s definitely not a huge change. But if you were a fan of the light-hearted and unique colors of the app, you might be disappointed that Google has now gone with something more “neutral” in version 4.0.2. The update also packs a few bug fixes.
You can get the latest version of the Clock app over at APKMirror right now, or you should see it rolling out via the Play Store any minute now.
Google said back in February that Android Wear support would be coming to Ingress sometime “soon” (with some assuming March), but it looks like the app missed that launch date by, well, a lot. As of today, version 1.81.0 of Ingress is starting to roll out on the Play Store, and with it comes Android Wear support as well as the usual bug fixes…
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Google has quietly launched a new iOS app today called Ivy that it describes as an experimental big number calculator.
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Google has today updated its default Messenger app to version 1.4, bringing some minor enhancements along the way. In the new version, you’ll find you can now send cute little animated stickers as well as more easily send your location to others…
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After around seven million downloads of its popular third-party keyboard app, Fleksy is today announcing that its mobile apps will be completely free for all going forward.
The company was originally charging $4 for the app but had dropped the price to $1 and even made the app free temporarily a couple times in the past. Starting today, however, Fleksy says its apps for both iOS and Android will be free forever.
For everyone that has paid for the app and feels left out, Fleksy is offering a free gift that it says is worth $8 to make up for it. The in-app download includes a selection of new themes and extensions, which also arrive with today’s update. While the app is going free for all to download and use, the company will continue offering premium themes and extensions as paid in-app purchases.
In addition to going free, the company highlighted some other new features and improvements arriving today:
Going free is not the only big update today. We also launched an improved rich content view called Highlights. Meaning, Fleksy will better assist with GIF, sticker and other content discovery based on what you type. Instead of manually searching for stickers and GIFs on separate pages, now you’ll only need to tap on the auto-recommended hashtag (Highlight) and Fleksy will take you to an integrated page of relevant content all in one convenient place.
The Fleksy Keyboard app for Android is available now. A full list of what’s included in the update below:
