Covers everything Applish and Googlish
Google keeps eliminating apps from the Play Store that do not adhere to the guidelines. Some of these apps were removed due to orders by the Indian Government while others were banned worldwide as they failed to meet Google’s directives. The tech goliath has now removed 29 more apps consisting of adware that was identified by White Ops’ Satori threat intelligence team as a part of their “CHARTREUSEBLUR” investigation. Read More
The Pixel 4a was expected to arrive in May but was hit with multiple delays. As per the new leak, the smartphone is supposed to be unveiled in the first week of August. Google also lately discontinued the Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL, which hints that the successor is on its way.
Tipster John Prosser confidently stated that the phone would be launched on August 3 but the consumers have already started losing interest. It will be the third postponed date if the August 3 launch of the Pixel 4a shifts further. Earlier, Google was expected to launch the Pixel 4a series at the Android 11 launch event on June 3. It was not possible due to the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement rife in the US. Later, Prosser announced the Pixel 4a will debut on July 13 which didn’t happen either. Read More
‘Google’ and its parent company- ‘Alphabet,’ will permit its employees to continue working from home until July 2021. The chief executive officer of parent company Alphabet Inc, Sundar Pichai, unilaterally made this decision after discussing it with the internal group of top executives. He notified his employees by an email stating: “To give employees the ability to plan, we are extending our global voluntary work from home option through June 30, 2021, for roles that don’t need to be in the office. I hope this will offer the flexibility you need to balance work by taking care of yourselves and your loved ones over the next 12 months.” Read More
The upcoming Android 11 update will bring a host of new features to your smartphone, including a built-in screen recording option. The feature was introduced in Samsung and LG phones running Android 10, but it was quite buggy and ultimately removed. There are still few models running the feature but it’s hidden. You could give it a shot! Google is now back with the feature and there will finally be a way to get the option without downloading a third-party app, irrespective of the phone you are using as long as you are running Android 11. Here’s how to use the screen recorder in Android 11 when it arrives: Read More
The affordable OnePlus Smartphone lineup, OnePlus Nord, is all set to release on July 21. The launch event is the world’s first augmented reality smartphone launch. OnePlus has designed an invitation which can be bought from Amazon to experience the launch event through the OnePlus Nord AR App available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The phone will be launching in India and Europe for now, and will eventually release in the US, only if it’s successful elsewhere. The smartphone is expected to be priced under $500, much lower than the OnePlus 8 series. But the phone will retain premium features that OnePlus is known for and that’s exactly why there’s a lot of buzz around its launch. Read More
Google is creating an integrated workspace environment for G Suite business users. The tech giant announced that it is unifying core communication medium like Chat, Meet, Rooms and Gmail on desktop and mobile. The update will be made available in the G Suite Early Adopter Program and roll out to all G Suit customers later this year. Google integrated Meet into Gmail in May as part of its response to virtual meetings becoming a new way of working. As far as the new update is concerned, the aim is to avoid constant switching between different communication modes. So, the company is bringing email, chat, voice or video together at one place, with Gmail being the focal point. Google says that the integration will let users to “quickly join a video call from a chat, forward a chat message to your inbox, or create a task from a chat message.” Read More
Google Play Pass launched in 2019 in the US, allowing subscribers to access to hundreds of select Android apps and games without ads and in-app purchases for a monthly fee. With the latest update, Google is expanding the subscription-based game store by entering into new markets, adding more titles and a new subscription plan. The Android alternative to Apple’s game store Apple Arcade, will now be available to users in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, and the UK, this week. Read More
With online classes becoming the new normal for students, video conferencing services are constantly adding new features to make the service more user friendly and secure. Talking about security, the term “Zoombombing” became popular as students started using the platform to disrupt the class by exploiting the features made available to them, for instance using the share screen feature that isn’t locked by the host to display sexually explicit content or inviting unknown users to have access to the meeting who in turn cause disturbance. In the light of this, Google is set to add new security features in its Google Meet video conferencing service to protect educator subscribers. As announced by Google, anonymous users will be blocked from Google Meet for G Suite for Education meetings by default. Read More
Google first detected apps with the Joker malware, a premium subscription bot in 2017. As of January 2020, Google has removed more than 1,700 apps from Play Store over the past three years that had been infected with the Trojan. Joker Malware tactically simulates interaction with ads, steals the victim’s SMS along with the OTP to authenticate payments, the contact list and device info. The majority of the discovered apps target the EU and Asian countries. Most of the discovered apps have an additional check, which makes sure that the payload doesn’t implement while running within the US or Canada. The UI of C&C panel and some of the bot’s code comments are written in Chinese, which could be a hint in terms of geographical origin. Read More
Google and Microsoft have joined forces to bring more Progressive Web Apps into the Play Store by making sure their tools co-exist and help developers to do so. In a blog post on July 10, Microsoft’s Builder Community Member Judah Gabriel Himango announced, “We’re glad to announce a new collaboration between Microsoft and Google for the benefit of the web developer community. Microsoft’s PWABuilder and Google’s Bubblewrap are now working together to help developers publish PWAs in the Google Play Store.”
PWABuilder is Microsoft’s open source developer tool that helps developers build high quality PWAs from existing websites and publish them in app stores, while Bubblewrap is a Google command line tool and library used to generate and sign Google Play Store packages from PWAs. PWA is using Bubblewrap to give integration features to PWAs on Android. Both the companies in collaboration announced significant features for PWA developers including web shortcuts standard and advanced Android features & customization. Read More