A little more than a year ago, Google revealed plans to bring one-click subscriptions to its Android TV platform. The feature has been missing in the long months since then, something that has finally changed in a small way. The company has confirmed that it is testing one-click subscriptions with "select" partners; it has also published a support document related to the feature.
The OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro are about to get a new stack of abilities for both Fortnite and Dolby sound. The Fortnite part is an update thanks to a partnership between OnePlus and the folks at Epic Games. The Dolby bit is an unofficial unlock of full Dolby Atmos equalizer settings on OnePlus 8, OnePlus 7T, and OnePlus 7 series phones.
T-Mobile USA introduced RCS (rich messaging) to T-Mobile users back in the year 2015 for their USA-based network. Here in 2020, T-Mobile USA and Google teamed up to expand T-Mobile users' ability to work with RCS "when texting with Android users on other networks across the globe." This system will be interesting to see expand, as it requires a smartphone that supports RSC Universal Profile 1.0 while the person receiving messages to have the official Google Messages app.
This week Spotify began rolling out an update that'll remove limits on "Your Library." Before now, you were limited to a total of 10,000 items in your Spotify library. Once you'd reached that point, the Spotify tracker system would send you a message - that message will no longer be sent, after this update is fully released.
It might no longer be named after a dessert but owners of OnePlus' older phones are surely getting a sweet treat. Although already beyond the customary two-year support period, the OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T have been promised to get one more gift before they reach EOL. That gift is finally arriving in the midst of these uncertain times with the surprisingly quiet rollout of OxygenOS 10 stable to these phones.
The mobile chip market has largely been dominated by Qualcomm's Snapdragons but it's hardly the only game in town. In fact, that game is going to be a bit more interesting if not dramatic due to factors outside of the smartphone and silicon industry. Other players, especially MediaTek, are rising up again to nibble away at Qualcomm's part of the pie and Samsung is once again here to remind everyone that it, too, has a thing or two up its sleeve.
Some were disappointed in hearing about the Surface Duo's 2019 specs but that might be missing the point of the device entirely. In addition to having been in development way back in 2019, the dual-screen Android phone from Microsoft is focusing on a different metric for success. It is, in effect, promising a totally new mobile experience and it apparently won't stop just at the two screens. Even the Surface Pen stylus could offer something few can, including Samsung.
Motorola seems to be bent on launching as many phones as it can this year but the real highlight of its new lineup so far is undoubtedly the Razr. You can argue about its practicality and price but it's hard to deny how huge it was in terms of design and even execution. Unsurprisingly, Motorola is reportedly already working on a successor that, from the looks of it, should have been what it launched first.
In a bit of a shock result, the May voting for June and July Pokemon GO Community Day featured monsters are... Weedle and Gastly! While the Gastly line - leading to Haunter and Gengar - has one of the biggest Glass Cannon Pokemon in the game, Weedle remains a mystery. Could it be that the Pokemon GO universe finally reached the point at which they're only trying to Catch Em All?
If you've been wondering if HTC is still alive, don't worry, you're probably not the only one thinking that. Of course, the company is still alive and kicking but you probably only hear about it if you've been following the VR market. As far as smartphones go, HTC has not launched a single notable phone in more than a year. That could be changing in July when it launches its first 5G phone but you might not want to hold your breath if you live outside of Taiwan.
Honor has been aggressively pushing an image of an independent company but, looking inside its phones, no one will be able to miss Huawei's DNA in almost every aspect. That includes one of the most components in Honor's products, the HiSilicon Kirin processors that are now at the heart of the latest battle between Huawei and the US government. It seems that Honor will slowly be moving its future phones over to MediaTek chips to steer away from that controversy, or at least until Huawei also gets blocked from using those as well.
You have to give Motorola props for being persistent, pushing out phone after phone despite less than encouraging sales numbers on all tiers. That, however, also comes at the price of confusion when there are too many options to choose from, especially when the choices are too similar to each other. That hasn't exactly stopped phone makers and Motorola doesn't seem to be interested in bucking that trend. Just two months after launching its flagship Edge pair, Motorola is expected to launch the One Fusion+ and One Fusion to target mid-range market this time.