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I responded to the AC above but they did a year ago with the 5x - https://www.androidpolice.com/...

https://www.androidpolice.com/... apparently they did, a year ago.

Three weeks ago it was widely reported that Google had just bought a big chunk of smartwatch tech from Fossil. It's hardly surprising they now would be hiring more people for that.

But here we have a Slashdot article about an Android Police article celebrating their ability to sniff out the next move of the big G through a job posting, when both Slashdot and Android Police wrote about the Fossil acquisition in mid-January.

Great job, super sleuths.

The stupidity of the notch is having the default behavior be allowing apps/photos/video playback to spill over into the obscured portion of the display. It would've been absolutely fine if kept as a reserved area for status indicators and system notifications.

What phone does that? Not my 3xl, at least not on any of the apps I use. Google Play kinda does that, but it quickly goes away when you start scrolling. It does the same thing on a non-notched phone though which has always irritated me as I can't read the status bar until I scroll.

Granted, there is a developer option to hide the notch,

Thanks for that! I need to play with it and see if it disables touch in that are too. I'm finding I hate this "edge to edge" display idea as the touch also stretches to the edges and I'm finding my hand holding the phone is making enough contact to register as a touch and annoying me

The notch is stupid.

The stupidity of the notch is having the default behavior be allowing apps/photos/video playback to spill over into the obscured portion of the display. It would've been absolutely fine if kept as a reserved area for status indicators and system notifications.

Granted, there is a developer option to hide the notch, but it completely negates the purpose of the extra display area.

Apple's implementation is even worse. There is no option to hide the notch system-wide, and it pretty much ruins the experience of looking at photos (videos, however, can be watched in a notchless mode).

Screw picture-in-picture, call me when reflow is back. Once upon a time, back when things were good, you would zoom in and the text would reflow (rewrap). Now, you zoom in a bit to see some small text, then you have to pan side-to-side.

https://www.androidpolice.com/2014/01/28/bug-watch-text-reflow-removed-from-webviews-in-kitkat-probably-not-coming-back/

It looks like that was added in 8.1

Android 8.1 feature spotlight: Emergency alerts get a history list and reorganized settings

And I just finally got updated to 8.0.0.

>"Verizon treated them as the same. There had not been a cap, previously."

Ever since Verizon brought back "unlimited" plans they have been throttled/capped. It really is not related to net neutrality, it is just about them trying to prevent "abuse" (heavy users) and make more money. This is interesting: https://www.androidpolice.com/...

Not sure how well Verizon's throttled service worked, but way before Verizon did it, Sprint was doing it and I was on Sprint's "unlimited" data. On Sprint, the cap was very low and throttling was to force data to *2G* speeds- it was so slow as to be almost totally unusable. A web site could take minutes to load, and usually would just time out. Navigation was also impossible. 4 years ago I switched to T-Mobile, and I opted for their lowest amount limited plan (they had both; I think my cap was 2GB). I had never hit the cap because it was pretty high (and I am not a data fiend). Still on the same plan, the only difference is they keep raising the amount of data in my plan at the same price. It is now 8GB with another 20GB "stashed" of which I typically seem to use about now, of which my peak over the last several months has been 1GB :)

She is even more stupid than you think: https://www.androidpolice.com/...

I need to know when a phone gets a notch, or moves the clock to the left side of the status bar.

wow / so innovate / much phone
[insert picture of shiba inu]

https://www.androidpolice.com/...

https://www.androidpolice.com/...

If Samsung won't come to the party, make sure your next phone supports Project Treble (should be any phone that shipped with Oreo, plus the original Pixels). That finally decouples the OS from the SoC drivers, and means any Treble phone can (theoretically) be upgraded with Google's own OS releases.

Treble has always sounded great but I've always been concerned that there's no authoritative Google source to confirm whether a device is "Treble certified" or "Treble compatible".

Your post reminded me that Treble existed (my partner & I are in the market for new phones & I can't bring myself to buy a non-Google phone because of the operating system issue, and I can't bring myself to pay a fortune for a Pixel after being very happy with the cheap Nexus series for the last several years) so I had a quick search.

I can see no obvious Google-owned/managed resources, though there's this Android police article with an old list that they say is no longer updated, but it points to this github page - which seems to be the most comprehensive list.

So while I really like the idea of getting a Treble phone, there's still not enough info or clarity around the whole thing for me to feel comfortable trying to buy one yet. (e.g., will a Treble phone be Treble for ever? Or can vendors mess with it with subsequent updates of their own somehow? Will vendors & Google work closely enough on Treble standardisation to ensure that future updates won't cripple specific features on my phone?)

The story makes it sound as though Facebook was doing something underhanded and nefarious.

It is underhanded and nefarious to abuse access your app was given for one purpose (e.g. access to your contacts so you can directly go from someone's Facebook post to calling them via the phone's dialer) and use it for something else which the user won't suspect because it's unnecessary for the operation of the app (downloading the entire contact list). Or for a non-Facebook example, you might give an app access to the microphone so it can capture a sample of a song that's playing on your radio, so the app can ID the song. It would be underhanded and nefarious for that app to then use the microphone to spy on everything you're saying. When I give the plumber permission to enter my house to fix the sink, it'd be underhanded and nefarious for him to then go into my bedroom and rifle through my home video collection and take a private sex tape.

BBK Electronics
Markets smartphones under the Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus brands.

Unlike Oppo and Vivo, OnePlus is sold in most markets and was found to have preloaded spyware on numerous occasions.

From the Android Police image, I see they've completely changed the URL even before the ?. Do they have a database of rules for this? I can't see how else it would work.

Verizon promised, when they purchase the 700Mhz spectrum in 2007, not to do this for any device which uses the 700Mhz spectrum.

Verizon has been violating this spectrum license agreement with their prepaid phones for awhile now. But as you said, the current head of the FCC is an industry sock puppet, so Verizon can do whatever the hell they want.

In the grand scheme of things, ignoring Verizon's anti-consumer B.S. is one of the lesser sins of this administration. Some Americans are literally dying because they can't afford healthcare they need. But hey, if phone SIM locking and net neutrality being flushed down the toilet make a few people realize they "did a fuck" in 2016, it's a step in the right (or rather, "left") direction.

Verizon promised, when they purchase the 700Mhz spectrum in 2007, not to do this for any device which uses the 700Mhz spectrum.

ALL their phones use this spectrum.

But it's going to take a class action lawsuit to get them to agree to their own rules, because there is no way Ajit is going to take them to task for violating their agreement.

If Apple cares so little about supporting users on older phones, why does it put so much time into designing OSes that are compatible with its older phones for years longer than competitors do? Hm?

I know it's fun to play the conspiracy game and blame a big company, but do you think they would be bothering to spend years on this stuff if they were trying to disable your phone? There are easier ways to do it, just stop writing iOS updates for out of date equipment. But they don't, they keep supporting it, years after other manufacturers or OS teams would.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2...

Maybe do a little independent thought before signing onto the lazy conspiracy theory and jumping on the mindless bandwagon?

If Apple cares so little about supporting users on older phones, why does it put so much time into designing OSes that are compatible with its older phones for years longer than competitors do? Hm?

I know it's fun to play the conspiracy game and blame a big company, but do you think they would be bothering to spend years on this stuff if they were trying to disable your phone? There are easier ways to do it, just stop writing iOS updates for out of date equipment. But they don't, they keep supporting it, years after other manufacturers or OS teams would.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2...

Maybe do a little independent thought before signing onto the lazy conspiracy theory and jumping on the mindless bandwagon?

I guess it's semantics, but this is what I'm referring to: http://www.androidpolice.com/2...

Sounds like spyware to me.

Apart from a few very early devices sold by U.S. carrier AT&T, essentially all Android phones and tablets have an option to allow installation of applications from outside Google Play Store. This means that Gab can use any or all of three options:

• Submit its app to Amazon Appstore.
• Make its app available for unknown sources.
• Publish an API so that the developer of a microblogging application can make a client as free software and submit its source code to F-Droid.

In fact, Android 8 "Oreo" makes this less monopolistic by letting the user designate any app as a store rather than using the system-wide, all-or-nothing "Unknown sources" setting of previous versions.

But Windows also allows me to install programs that keeps other programs' ability to send stuff out at bay. Care to point me to the phone app that can do that?

OK.

What the article fails to mention is that they also added a toggle to turn off autoplay.

So, yeah, the feature is stupid, but you can turn it off if it offends you.

Source: http://www.androidpolice.com/2...

They specifically mention the YouTube feature in other articles, along with comparison videos. The feature added to Photos is far superior to the implementation in YouTube.

Why would that be, when the average system update support window is 41.2 months for Apple and 21 months for Android (source : http://www.androidpolice.com/2...) To me, an Apple device costing 2x an Android device would still be a good investment, since the $/month with security updates would be the same.It would also be more friendly to ecology, since it's a device less produced and a device less in the drawer or recycled or thrashed.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2...

No. There is an exemption for cell phones.

Yes. That's why my next phone is likely to be a Nexus.

No, it won't.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2...

I loved putting mods with aosp on my phones, and I was actually thinking about a nexus next (although Google constantly deciding not to include a removable battery and at times a microsd card turned me off to them previously).

I'm all for rebranding... But the nexus line was actually good branding for them. I don't see a need for it. Then again, most branding people and designers sometimes find it a bit too easy to switch things up in case it could be better...

But there goes all that free photo storage. I knew it was too good to be true.

Perhaps the Peter principle applies to bad ideas, as well as people. Perhaps a 'headphone-ports considered harmful' meme has arisen to its level of incompetence within Motorola. And it attempts to propagate itself every decade or so...

In 2006, I remember being bugged that my Motorola SLVR required a special USB headphone jack. Plus, you couldn't charge the phone and use the headset at the same time (say, for listening to music). Other people thought so too... from this phone's top rated Amazon review :
"CONS... No dedicated headphone jack ( form over function compromise)"

So the idea failed and Moto went back to headphone jacks.

Now its 2016. Bluetooth and Apple seem to have encouraged this meme to reemerge at Motorola. So we now have ... the Moto Z Force, with its innovative USB headphone port. And it appears you cannot charge the phone and use the headset at the same time. .

Seriously, would a manufacturer stop supporting a product only after a few years? That's just crazy talk :)

I thought the Chromebook Pixel was already some kind of high-end hardware, am I wrong? What more could you want from a $1000+ laptop that runs an android-flavoured OS?

You may have conflated the Chromebook Pixel, which runs Chrome OS, with its successor the Pixel C, which runs Android. To which did you refer?

The QC35 has the following issues.
1. Are headphones that are incompatable with helmets.
2. Not waterproof or rugedized in any way.
3. Are Bluetooth and therefore easily jammed.
4. There are no specs on how well they cancel very loud noises.

The QC35 are just expensive noise cancelling headphones and nothing like the earbuds described.

It could happen: freeform windowed multitasking is an experimental feature of Android N.

You are aware of the work of Benson Leung, a Google engineer who has been doing his own testing on USB C cables and found many of them do not meet the standard specifications and are considered dangerous. He himself fried his computer trying to test them as a sign of how bad the problem is today.

Computer vulnerabilities make money for technology companies. Have an Android KitKat 4.4 phone? Sorry, no updates. Buy a new phone.

Huh... What more do you want? Once it's 2 years old it's well past obsolete, and at 3 years it's unlikely current versions of many popular apps (e.g. what you can get from the market) will run on it.

And, even before that announcement, Google's policy has been to provide updates for 3 years from date of first sale, or 18mo from date of last sale in the Google store, whichever is longer. That sure beats most of Apple's offerings (I think they had one model that had support for longer than 18mo from last sale in an Apple store), and all offerings of any other Android manufacturer.

Of course, the same people complaining that they can't get updates from Google after 3 years are the ones who loudly proclaim that they bought a Nexus device in the first place so they could run whatever ROM they want on it, making manufacturer updates irrelevant for those complaining in the first place.

FWIW, the Apple design patent on the round edges and single button on the iPad was invalidated during the Samsung trial. Their design patent of the same on the iPhone was invalidated earlier this year, although curiously almost none of the mainstream press covered it.

The carriers weren't preventing the application data access, nor were they preventing it from being installed. They ordered Google to block the app from installing based on the devices build properties for "security reasons" since it had to use the secure element for storing card info.

More info here.

However, Android does have a permission model that is all or nothing, where a fleshlight app can ask for everything under the sun and there is no "allow, but not with those permissions" available.

This is changing in Android M

Too bad that pretty much EVERYONE who owns an Android device currently will have to:

1. Wait a YEAR while all the Carriers re-infect it with THEIR Malware, er, Extra Features.

2. THROW AWAY their Current Android Device, the BUY ONE WITH Android "M".

However, Android does have a permission model that is all or nothing, where a fleshlight app can ask for everything under the sun and there is no "allow, but not with those permissions" available.

This is changing in Android M

Android Police did some digging and (ignoring the fact that the Commodore name is currently owned by the creditors of Asiarim Corp - who created a new company called C= and have done nothing more than make a website for it back in 2013) it looks to be a carbon copy of the Orgtec WaPhone.

On the upside, it does have some Amiga emulators loaded onto the phone - but you can easily get them from Google Play yourself.

TL;DR? It's unlikely to be Commodore, its a heavily marked up skinned phone and uses the MediaTek MT6752 chip - so you should probably keep away.

What is lame is people posting ignorant comments as Anon Cowards.

Apple has control of both the hardware & the software & has optimized both to make use of FDE as painless as possible. This is clearly not the case in Android.

Stealing from Seillac's comments on ARS:
"Apparently, Google has not merged the various drivers that optimize Qualcomm's QCE module for encryption and decryption into AOSP. The generally-assumed reason is that this code is proprietary. Without these optimizations, the Nexus 6's hardware decryption module on the Snapdragon 805 is essentially hamstrung."

From: http://www.androidpolice.com/2...

Obama Says He's 'A Strong Believer In Strong Encryption'...

As long as he has a way to defeat it

You mean like promoting internal products in their search results?

http://www.zdnet.com/article/y...

Or forcing a company to use their location services over a competitor (Android has 80% of the worldwide market)?

http://www.androidpolice.com/2...

Or not allowing a company to manufacturer non Google approved Android devices if they manufacturer Android approved devices?

http://marketingland.com/googl...

At first, the Nexus line was aimed at developers and hobbyists. Then they changed the Nexus to appeal to people who were too stupid to use a microSD card.

The Nexus phone was then said to be an affordable device for those who hated long carrier contracts.

What's next? A Nexus phone with carrier bloat and slow updates?

O RLY? Okay then, explain why Groove IP and ObiTalk's Google Voice integration quit working at the same time! Surely Groove IP, at least, didn't do it out of greed since they told people to stop using their app at the same time...

Google Voice integration with Groove IP and ObiTalk didn't "quit working", those developers chose to remove the code on their end. And you are very mistaken about GrooveIP -- they too took this opportunity to push http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/05/16/grooveip-updated-with-support-for-a-new-voip-service-and-makes-paid-features-free-as-third-party-google-voice-access-ends/ people to a partnered alternative VoIP provider.

Also provide a link to this mysterious "GVoice+" APK, because despite my quite decent web searching skills I couldn't find it and I don't believe it actually exists.

Ain't no "apk" because it's iOS only http://lifehacker.com/gv-mobile-gets-google-voice-voip-calling-and-a-brand-585215809. And late night typo, it's GVMobile+.

What I would like to know if there is some "call in" feature, too? Maybe not a phone number, but a way to call and then be connected to Google Hangouts.

Yes, as detailed at Hangouts 2.3 Update Brings Remaining Google Voice Integration ..., you can configure the updated Hangouts app to ring for incoming calls to your Google Voice number.

Don't know what version you're running but android does support multiple accounts since 4.2.
I've being enjoying it for a while now.

AFAIK it's the only mobile OS doing so.

You might consider giving Garmin some money, then. They have a product with offline maps which apparently lets you buy map data and indeed basic functionality piecemeal. It's a dollar right now, but it's supposed to remain cheap. I guess they are or were also offering deals on content. Linked article complains about spending a hundred bucks, but if that were lifetime that would be well worth it. The big problem with buying a Garmin GPS is that the hardware pretty well sucks unless you spend a lot, and your updates are tied to the device so you could get into a situation where you're motivated to give them money to repair a device that was kind of lame (hardware-wise) when you bought it. But if I can take their app to a new phone when I upgrade, then I can let that unit go to a friend and just use my phone, which has a much nicer screen overall. In particular, text input on my Garmin is horrible. I forget what model it is ATM or I'd include that info. Suffice to say it was a cheap refurb.