Much to the distain of many smartphone manufacturers around the world, it's not unusual for celebrities and people in positions of power to be caught using one smartphone over another when they've been paid to endorse a particular brand, or even worse, when they are the executive chairman of a company that actually produces a rival platform. As an example, many people would expect Alphabet/Google Chairman Eric Schmidt to use an Android-powered device given his position of authority within the company that actually builds the Android OS, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
Apple is working on a device that will see it enter the home assistant game, with a competitor for the Amazon Echo and Google Home devices said to be on the way.
It turns out that Google's Project Ara might actually be about to turn into a real thing after Google today announced that it would be in a position to ship developer hardware to those who need it as soon as Q4 of this year, with consumer version set for release in 2017.
At it's I/O 2016 conference, Google has announced that it will be bringing Google Play Store and Android apps to the Chrome OS. It will be detailing the project to developers at a session to be held today at the conference.
Google has made available for download Android N beta (Developer Preview 3) build NPD35K for Nexus 6P, 6, 5X, 9, Pixel C, Xperia Z3, Nexus Player, and some Android One devices.
Google has announced Android Wear 2.0 for smartwatches and wearables. Here are all the new features in one single place, along with a video demo showing them all in action.
The goodies just keep on coming out of this year's Google I/O conference. Developers and technology aficionados will get to spend the rest of the week meeting Google engineers and dropping in on a variety of workshops designed to introduce the future of technology. However, the opening keynote is generally the place where the magic happens, and yet again it hasn't disappointed with the introduction of Google Allo and Google Duo, two new apps coming to iOS and Android this summer.
Google has used the opening keynote of its I/O 2016 conference to announce two new offerings. The Alphabet-owned company has introduced its own Siri/Cortana/Alexa-like personal digital assistant called Google Assistant, as well as an Amazon Echo rival called Google Home. Google CEO Sundar Pichai described the underlying technology within Google Assistant as a "conversational assistant", whereas Mario Queiroz - VP of product management at Google - claims that the Home will come equipped with "strong bass and clear highs" that should eclipse the performance of the Amazon Echo from a musical enjoyment perspective.
Google has revealed plans for its Chrome web browser that will hammer yet another nail into the coffin that has been engineered to be the final resting place of Adobe's Flash technology. The behemoth company, and developer and publisher of the Chrome web browser, has announced plans to phase out support for Adobe's Flash Player. The announcement means that Google hopes to disable support for Flash content on all websites by the end of the current calendar year, though it will have a caveat built into the browser in the form of a white-list exemption rule for the world's top ten domains still using Flash. This whitelist will expire after one year.
With the Google I/O 2016 conference to begin in a few days, the search giant has released an event-companion app for iPhone users. Here are the details.