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Nest’s 3rd generation thermostat gets some new views for its Farsight feature

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Nest today has added some new views to the Farsight feature of its flagship thermostat product. Rolling out to all thermostats soon, users will soon be able to show the current temperature and a new animated weather screen from across the room:

People love Farsight. But we heard from a lot of customers who wanted it to show the current temperature in big numbers you can see from across the room. So now, it can. And we’ve also added an animated weather screen. (You know, to satisfy meteorology fans.) Just go to Display Settings on your thermostat and choose your view.


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Verizon’s Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 gets updated to Android Marshmallow

After rolling out a Marshmallow update to the Galaxy S5 yesterday, Verizon is now rolling out the same to its variant of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2. The update carries version number MMB29K.T817VVRU2BPE1 and packs the standard Marshmallow features we’re all accustomed to at this point. Those include Doze, app permissions, and Google Now on Tap among other things…


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Verizon’s Samsung Galaxy S5 gets Android Marshmallow

Android has some problems. One of those is that it takes pretty much forever for its OEMs to update their devices. That trend doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon. But if you’re an owner of Verizon’s Galaxy S5 and have been waiting (un)patiently to have somewhat modern software, worry no more: your phone is finally getting updated to Android Marshmallow starting today…


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List of Android Wear watches getting the Android Wear 2.0 update

Google announced Android Wear 2.0 at I/O 2016, featuring more customizable watch faces, the ability to go without your phone when you are running or want to track a hike, AI-powered Smart Reply, a handwriting recognition mode, and more. But the question remains: which devices are going to get the update? Read on for a complete list of devices we know are getting 2.0…


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Cortana Android app will soon let Windows 10 mirror your phone’s notifications

This is a pretty cool tidbit to come out of Microsoft’s Build conference. Probably thanks to some much more exciting news from Tesla, it went under the radar entirely. Apparently, the Redmond, Washington-based company is planning to soon let a future version of Windows 10 mirror your Android phone’s notifications by way of the Cortana app (via The Verge)…


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Check out these screenshots of super-clean TouchWiz on the Galaxy S7 [Gallery]

TouchWiz was once a complete mess, believe it or not, but the Android skin got much better with the release of the Galaxy S6 and Samsung’s move to using Android Lollipop. Now, most agree that the skin has gotten even better with the Galaxy S7. Thanks to some screenshots (via XDAshared by one Daniel Marchena (who was lucky enough to already have his S7 delivered), we now have a detailed look at the modified version of the OS we saw running on the Galaxy S7 last week


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ASUS ditches some of its bloatware for Google’s official apps in upcoming Android M updates

ASUS’ most recent phone entry to launch may be the much-delayed ZenFone Zoom, but it’s definitely not the most popular offering. Last year, at CES, the ASUS ZenFone 2 was basically the equivalent of this year’s Honor 5X. The phone was praised for its more-than-decent specs at a pricepoint that helped usher in the state of the market today. You can now get a few flagship-level phones at a mid-range price.  And while the ZenFone 2 wasn’t necessarily a flagship or an amazing phone (terrible software and bloatware held it back), it was a great phone for the price.

Now, ASUS has come out to announce the full list of phones that are getting Android Marshmallow in an upcoming update. And in this update, ASUS says it is planning to ditch at least 3 of its default ASUS-branded apps and replace them with official Google apps as default on the phones…


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Android Wear 1.4 is here w/ support for speaker hardware, more messaging apps, new gestures

Google has today launched the latest update to the Android Wear OS, bumping it from version 1.3 to 1.4 (the companion app got an update in November, which tipped us off that this firmware update was on the way). Among other features, this version of the OS enables support for the speaker hardware that was previously discovered on the Huawei Watch and the ASUS ZenWatch 2


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Google blocked more than 17M fake ‘software system warning’ ads, 12.5M misleading medicinal ads in 2015

Google has published a blog post revealing just how many bad ads it removed from the web in 2015. Spoiler: they removed a lot.

There can be all kinds of bad ads, whether they’re ads which falsely claim to help weight loss, or phishing sites that trick unassuming web users to submit personal information. Thanks to a team of some 1,000 employees, and some clever computer algorithms, the company was able to remove a ton of ads and ban a huge number of misbehaving advertisers…


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PSA: ASUS just pushed Android for Work support, bug fixes to the ZenFone 2

ASUS just pushed a maintenance release to the ZenFone 2, according to a thread posted by the company on its ZenTalk forum. The update fixes several issues as you can see below, as well as adds support for Android for Work and a new “Screenshot sound settings” menu.

Here’s the full change log:

1.Fixed video sound issue.
2.Fixed google play stop service .
3.Fixed SD cards issue.
4.Fixed SmartBox not read the phone issue.
5.Fixed can not control the volume of YouTube when using miracast.
6.Fixed the issue of displaying wrong operator name when roaming and searching network.
7.Fixed phone hang-up issue in Russia
8.Fixed PosteMobile NFC issue (ZE551ML only)
9.Support Android for Work
10.Improve ASUS ZenUI Launcher stability
11.Improve Cell Broadcast stability
12.Fix the failure to share Photo Collage picture via Email
13.Several Apps update
14.Improve power usage of Email App

#        New Features
1.Add Screenshot sound settings

As far as we can tell, the update is still Lollipop, and is only going out to the standard ZenFone 2 at the moment. Be sure to let us know in the comments if you’re already seeing the update—my handy ZenFone 2 is still update-less.

Huawei’s Honor 5X is a peek at the future of budget phones, hopefully with better software

I’ve been using my Honor 5X on and off for about a week now, and my thoughts on the phone pretty much align with what everyone else is saying: The phone’s significance is not that it’s an amazingly great phone, but that it’s yet another inch toward driving down the price of good phones in general.

In the future, a “budget” phone (you know, the $150 Moto Gs of the world) will offer everything that today’s flagships tout. They will be made of metal, they will have fingerprint sensors, they will have more than capable processors, they will have great cameras, and they will have good software.

To me, the Honor 5X is our first peek at such a future. But it’s definitely not without its flaws…


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PSA: First CyanogenMod 13 nightly for Nexus 4 released

CyanogenMod 13 nightlies — which are based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow — have been rolling out for a couple of months now, and now you can grab the custom Android ROM for the Nexus 4. While this may not be a vanilla build of Android Marshmallow, it is yet another method of bringing the latest that Android has to offer to a phone that’s more than three years old…


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Here are some of the new Android emoji, and how they compare to iOS 9.1 [Gallery]

A couple of days ago we told you that Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP of Android at Google, announced on Twitter that new emoji recently approved from Unicode 7.0 and 8.0 are soon coming to Nexus devices (specifically, it looks like they should be rolling out starting sometime next week). If you’ve been wondering what these new emoji are going to look like, you’ve come to the right place…

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Android Wear API 23 now available to developers, brings Marshmallow to smartwatches

Google has released API 23 SDK for Android Wear, which means developers can now start optimizing their smartwatch apps for Android Marshmallow. Once apps are updated, it means they’ll be able to take advantage of a number of new Android features, and they’ll be better at automatically detecting if they’re being displayed on a round or square watch face…


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How to: Train your Nexus 5X/6P to recognize your finger even when you miss [Video]

I’ve had a Nexus 5X for just a few days, and one of the biggest things I love about this phone is the addition of Nexus Imprint. I like to keep my phone secure, but I really don’t like having to type a password every time I unlock (because, well, I unlock my phone dozens if not hundreds of times per day). But something I quickly noticed with Nexus Imprint on the 5X — especially since I have fingers big enough for a 6P — is that I simply miss the sensor far too often. I commonly find myself overshooting, sometimes even tapping on the camera since that’s about the distance my finger naturally lands.

So how did I fix this? Well, it turns out that it’s actually pretty simple. Thanks to the fact that you can register up to five different fingerprints in the Nexus Imprint settings, you can make your sensor almost impossible to miss. Instead of adding five different fingers, I decided to try adding five different parts of my right index finger…
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SwiftKey launches world’s first AI-powered software keyboard for Android

If you thought SwiftKey for Android was already smart and intuitive, you’ll be excited to know the company has just finished working on a product which it claims is even smarter. SwiftKey Neural Alpha has made its way to the Google Play Store, and instead of using word frequency calculators (n-gram model) to predict your next words, it’s more contextually aware of the sentence you’re typing…


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Sony wants 10,000 Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact owners to test its Android Marshmallow concept software

Early this summer, Sony announced a new Concept for Android software testing scheme in which it invited owners in specific markets, and with specific handsets, to test out new concept software. Seemingly it went well for Sony, as it announced this morning that it’s opening up a similar program for Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

Users with the Xperia Z3 or Z3 Compact in a number of countries will be able to apply to join the program. This news comes just a day after the manufacturer released its long list of devices which should receive Marshmallow over the coming months.


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Some Nexus 5 owners on T-Mobile reporting worsened reception on Android Marshmallow

Never does a software update — of any kind — land without some group of users believing that it caused more problems than it solved. With Android 6.0 Marshmallow, which Google starting pushing out yesterday, it looks like Nexus 5 owners who use T-Mobile are that minority group of people. Apparently, Marshmallow is causing some problems with reception for these users…
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PSA: Stable release of Android Studio 1.4 now available

Android Studio 1.0

Google has today released Android Studio 1.4 in the stable update channel. As has been the case since the software was first released in beta just about a month ago, the update features new design tools such as vector assets, a theme editor, new project template features, new performance monitors, and more…

Some of the new design tools, as outlined at the Android Developers blog:

Vector Assets:

Starting with API 21, you can use Vector Drawables for image assets. For most apps, using VectorDrawables decreases the amount of density dependent drawables you need to maintain, and will also give you sharp image assets regardless of the screen device densities your app supports.

Theme Editor:

We understand that managing your app theme and style can be a bit complex. With Android Studio 1.4, we are releasing a preview of the Theme Editor to help with this task. This first version of the Theme Editor is focused on editing and updating the material theme colors (colors.xml) in your app project.

Project Templates:

We know many of you use the New Project Wizard app templates to start a new app project or to quickly add an activity to an existing app. To help with the visual design of your apps, we updated the app templates to include the Android Design Support Library alongside the AppCompat Support library.

There are also two new monitors: You’ll find one for GPU rendering and another for networking, which can monitor both GPU rending performance and the network usage of your app, respectively. Finally, Google says that it’s making taking advantage of a Firebase mobile backend even easier with the latest version.

 

You can grab Android Studio at the Google Developer website, and if you already have it installed, you’ll find that version 1.4 should be available right now.

Android Marshmallow on Nexus 5X, 6P shows the date to which your device is secured

You may remember earlier in the summer, Google responded to a serious vulnerability — called Stagefright — by stating that it would commit to regular and consistent security updates for its Nexus devices. This way, customers would update their software every month or so and always be protected against any known-about vulnerabilities. With Android 6.0 and the new Nexus smartphones, Google is giving us a new, simple way to tell how up-to-date our mobile security is.

As you can see in the photo above, heading in to the ‘about’ page in settings on the Nexus 5X reveals a new piece of information: ‘Android security patch level’. This will show when your phone received its last security patch, letting you know how secure the device is. It’s a relatively small update, but one which could be very useful to consumers.

Thanks for the pic, Tom

Android Marshmallow expected to roll out on October 5th for Nexus 5, 6, 7 (2013) and 9

 

Google is in the final stages of preparation for its event tomorrow morning in San Francisco, and just as the company is putting the finishing touches on its presentation, it seems we have a release date for Android Marshmallow: October 5th. Android Police’s sources confirmed the date previously found in a Telus leak, suggesting several Nexus devices will get the software update on that day.

It’s expected that the Nexus 5, Nexus 6, 2013 edition Nexus 7, and the Nexus 9 will all start receiving the Android 6.0 software on October 5. Sadly, however, it seems several older generation Nexus phones and tablets are being left out of the picture. Lollipop will remain the latest (and last) software update we’ll ever see on the Nexus 4, 2012 edition Nexus 7, and the Nexus 10. Although, that really isn’t very bad for 3-year-old devices.

We’re expecting Google to confirm this release date at its event tomorrow, alongside several other updates and some new product announcements. We’ve been building up to Google announcing a pair of new Nexus phones as well as a couple of refreshed pieces of Chromecast hardware. What’s more, recent rumors have predicted we could even see a new tablet named the Pixel C with a 10.2-inch display and a detachable keyboard.  You can read more about all of those in our guide on what to expect from the event.

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