Amazon’s excellent kids portal, FreeTime, comes to Android

Parents with Android phones and tablets can now use Amazon’s FreeTime service and get some much-needed quiet.

Amazon is expanding its excellent kids portal, FreeTime, to Android, moving over from the smaller, more limited confines of the company’s own hardware.

The free app is now available for Android phones and tablets in the U.S., and provides a number of books, television shows and movies, with a $2.99 monthly subscription ($4.99 for non-Prime members) adding considerably to that number.

The upside is that Amazon gets another sizeable revenue stream without alienating its core hardware audience, since FreeTime and its Unlimited subscription service still work a bit better on its Kindle tablets, sticks and e-readers, since external kid-approved apps will need to be added manually through the settings. But Android users get the same options that parents have loved about the service so far, including extensive filters and content controls, along with a dashboard that lets them monitor what kids are reading, watching and browsing on the service.

To that end, FreeTime has a SafeSearch browser that Amazon curates, including a selection of YouTube content that has been approved for kids.

The selections for FreeTime Unlimited are from well-known publishers like Disney, Nickelodeon, Amazon Studios, PBS Kids, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster, and include:

• Books: Splat the Cat, Little Blue Truck Leads the Way, Frog and Toad Are Friends, Curious George Goes to the Hospital, Caps for Sale, Inside Out Junior Novel, National Geographic Readers: Mummies, Big Nate: Game On!, Beezus and Ramona, Bridge to Terabithia, Star Wars: Before the Awakening, The Princess Diaries, and many more
• Videos: Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, If You Give A Mouse a Cookie, Wishenpoof!, Fireman Sam: Ultimate Heroes—The Movie, The Gruffalo, Odd Squad: The Movie, Just Add Magic, Happy Feet, LEGO Friends, Pokemon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire, An American Girl Story—Melody 1963: Love Has to Win, Tarzan, and many more

Are you going to subscribe to Amazon FreeTime?

Amazon Fire Tablet 7 vs Fire Tablet Kids Edition: Which should I buy?

Samsung Gear VR (2017) vs. Gear VR (2016): What’s different, what’s better

About that “New Gear VR” Samsung unveiled with the Galaxy S8.

Alongside the launch of the new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, Samsung unveiled what they called the New Gear VR with Controller. It’s available for free to anyone that pre-orders the Galaxy S8 from just about anywhere, and after the phone has launched this bundle will be available for $129. Since the previous Gear VR was priced at $99, and the Gear VR Controller is available separately for $39, it sounds like this new bundle will be a pretty good deal for future Samsung phone owners.

But when we started digging into what was actually new about this new Gear VR, that deal started to sound less and less like a good thing.

Read More at VR Heads!

Get an HD dash cam for your car for only $24!

We’ve all seen some stunning dash cam footage posted online. As dash cams have come down in price, they’ve become more widely available. The practical uses for them are plentiful, from recording an epic road trip to documenting traffic accidents.

Get an HD dash camera for only $24.99! Learn more

If you’ve been thinking of picking one up for your vehicle, have we got a deal for you! You can get this high definition dash cam or only $24 from Android Central Digital Offers! Featuring 4x digital zoom, motion detection, and infrared night vision, this camera will be your expert witness in a fender bender no matter what time of day it happens.

This compact camera shoots in 1920 x 1080 resolution and features a built-in microphone. To get set up in your car you’ll need to supply your own microSD card (the camera supports up to 32GB), and then it’s simply a matter of connecting it to your dash via the included suction cup mount in your car. The back features a big vibrant screen so you can see what you’re camera sees when you’re setting things up.

Get an HD dash camera for only $24.99! Learn more

These cameras are regularly sold for $59.99, but you can get yours for 50% off! Don’t miss out on this great offer!

Google Wallpapers just got a huge update with lots of new goodies

Not even a smiley face in the changelog, Google? Alright, that’s fine. We’re not mad.

If you haven’t thumbed through the Google Wallpapers app recently, or you don’t have it installed at all, today might be a good day to rethink that. A huge update to Wallpapers has added tons of new incredibly high resolution images in several categories. Like the originals, they’re all amazing and there’s bound to be something there for everyone.

Take a look in the Cityscapes, Life, Textures, and Landscapes categories for the bulk of the new images, and drop us a comment with the name of your favorite!

Check out Google Wallpapers!

Hey Alexa, let’s save some money on a refurbished Echo!

Our friends at Thrifter are back again, this time with a great way to pick up a discounted Amazon Echo!

The Amazon Echo has been quite a hit since its release, but one of the stopping points for many was its price point. Amazon is now offering refurbished versions of the popular speaker for just $134.99, which is $45 cheaper than buying a new one. This is a certified refurb unit, which means it will look, act, and feel like it is brand new, but you get to save a bit of cash on it. Amazon usually sells the refurbished versions for anywhere from $150 – $165.

You can use the Echo to control various smart home accessories, check on the local news, and even order pizza if you wanted to. Amazon has been adding new features to Alexa just about every week so it continues to become smarter and smarter. If you’ve been interested in checking one of these out and have been looking for a discount, this is the perfect way to see what all the hype is about.

See at Amazon

For more great deals be sure to check out our friends at Thrifter now!

Video: The best Android phone in spring 2017

Since it launched late last year, the Google Pixel has been our pick for best Android phone. And, assuming you can actually find it, it’s still a great option. But with a new generation of phones comes a new overall champion. And right now, in spring 2017, the Samsung Galaxy S8 is the best Android phone you can buy.

Whether you’re looking at the 5.8-inch Galaxy S8 or the 6.2-inch S8+, these are two phones that feel like they’ve arrived straight from the future. It sets new standards in smartphone design, nails important areas like performance and software, and matches its best rivals in camera quality. The Galaxy S8 is a little odd in that it has a couple of obvious weaknesses — the awkward fingerprint scanner placement and the currently-useless Bixby AI. Even so, the S8 as an overall package is worthy of the massive hype surrounding the phone.

It’s going to be a long year full of many great Android flagships, but if you’re after the best phone of the here and now, there’s no question that’s the Samsung Galaxy S8. Check out our video feature for more!

• Android Central on YouTube
• Samsung Galaxy S8 review
• Google Pixel / Pixel XL

Hulu’s ridiculously pretty new UI is rolling out alongside Live TV features

The original Cable Cutter service just clapped back in a big way.

Hulu just unveiled a massive redesign to its user interface and added the most important feature it’s had in years. The massive streaming service now offers Live TV streaming and a personalized recommendation engine that filters down the things you like to watch on a per-device basis instead of per-account. It’s a huge change from the way Hulu has been doing things for years, and super visually appealing to boot.

You can sign up for a free trial of the new streaming service on the site now, and before you do there’s an option to check out exactly what channels are available in your area. Included in the $40/month service is a 200 hour Cloud DVR with unlimited simultaneous recordings, which can be streamed to anything with Hulu support (which, lets be honest, is everything). The service claims support for unlimited screens when you’re at home and up to three screens when you’re away, but it’s not totally clear how that will be monitored or limited.

Hulu has obviously been working hard on this in the background, because many of the locations we looked up included local stations and sports networks and all of the most popular cable channels. Compared to the recent beta for YouTube TV, Hulu is clearly ready to dominate this space and offer something unique.

Is this enough to make you switch from your current service? What do you think of the redesign? Sound off in the comments!

Ecobee’s new smart thermostat has Alexa built in

Ecobee has unveiled its latest smart thermostat, and it boasts the intelligence of Alexa.

Ecobee, the company behind the popular ecobee3 smart thermostat that has, over the years, rivalled Nest, Honeywell and others for dominance in the home temperature control space, has unveiled its latest product, the ecobee4.

The new product looks very similar to its predecessor, featuring a 3.5-inch touchscreen with a squircle outer design, but adds super sensitive far-field microphones and Amazon Alexa support. Ecobee announced the product alongside Amazon, in fact, and is working with the company to ensure that Alexa on the thermostat can do everything it can on the Echo.

There’s also a new smart light switch coming this year, so you can talk to Alexa anywhere.

Ecobee’s advantage over Nest has heretofore been its compatibility with external sensors placed throughout a home that report back to the main hub to determine overall ambient temperature. Ecobee says that the reasoning is pretty obvious: most thermostats are placed in front hallways where the temperature is often a few degrees cooler or warmer, depending on the season, than the upstairs. For many people, this means that the heat or air conditioning doesn’t work as long, or as intelligently, as it could. Ecobee4 works with those smart sensors, but also has another trick up its sleeve.

To further the whole-hole intelligence angle, ecobee plans to come out with a new smart light switch later this year that integrates the same ultra-sensitive microphones as the thermostat itself, allowing users to make changes to settings and temperatures, as well as communicate with Alexa, from anywhere in the house. According to ecobee, “this product will mark the company’s first venture beyond smart thermostats and is expected to lead the smart home category into a whole-home-voice future.”

The ecobee4 will be available on May 15 in the U.S., and pre-orders begin May 3. It costs $249.

See at ecobee

Six Awesome Amazon Alexa Skills You Might Not Know

Are you getting the most out of your Amazon Echo?

Amazon’s Alexa service has the most skills to enable and have fun with, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to find the good ones. There are a lot of duplicate skills from multiple developers all claiming to offer the same basic features, which makes finding the truly great skills difficult. It’s the kind of think you’d need to spend way too many hours talking to Alexa all by yourself to find out, which is why we did all of the chatting for you. Alone. With no one around but Alexa. Alone.

Anyway, what we have here is a collection of hidden gems we’ve unearthed in the Alexa Skill store. These aren’t the most popular skills you’ll find, but they’re unique and you’ll probably find at least one worth enabling for yourself.

See at Amazon

Find your missing phone

While your phone has its own “Find My Phone” service, it’s nowhere near as easy to enable as just using your voice. Being able to call out to Alexa for help when you were supposed to leave ten minutes ago and just need to find your phone is a real lifesaver, and it’s the kind of thing you’ll be able to enable and forget about until it’s important. Give it a try!

Check out the Find Phone Skill

Tune your instrument

Who needs an actual pitch pipe when you have Alexa around? Tune your instrument by calling out the individual notes you want to tune to, and never worry about needing to carry around extra hardware.

Check out the Pitch Pipe Skill

Store your Wi-Fi password

You went through the trouble of creating a password-protected network you’re alright with letting friends and family use, but having to stop what you are doing to enter that password in for them every time is a hassle. This skill lets you store your Wi-Fi password so your friends can just ask Alexa when they need it.

It’s probably not a good idea to use this skill on a Wi-Fi network with important things, but if you have a guest network in your home and you want to make things a little easier on yourself this is a nice feature to have.

Check out the WiFi Password Skill

Air quality in your area

Not everyone thinks about the quality of the air until it’s too late. This skill will get you in the habit of checking to see if it’s going to be so humid out you feel like you’re breathing water, or so dangerously dry that you should make extra sure that bottle of water is full before heading out. Either way, make sure you’re covered with this skill.

Check out the Aether Air Quality Reporter Skill

Headlines from way back in time

A nice way to start the day is peering back in time and seeing how things were before you were even born. Time Machine picks a random year from 1851 onward and reads you headlines from that same day. It’s a fun add-on for history fans, and a great way to get kids interested in learning over breakfast.

Check out the Time Machine Skill

Play a game

Easily the most undersold feature to Alexa is the ability to play games. Alexa becomes the storyteller, the dungeon master, whatever you want to call it, and walks you through interactive stories that require your participation to complete. There are quite a few of these games out there, some of which have been designed around hit movies and shows to give you some additional insight before you watch. Here are some of my favorites, enjoy!

Check out the Earplay Skill

Check out the RuneScape Quests Skill

Check out the Wayne Investigation Skill

[custom:amazonecho]

Amazon FreeTime for kids comes to Android phones and tablets

Amazon’s child-friendly content portal, Amazon FreeTime, is now available as an app from the Google Play Store, making it available on Android phones and tablets. FreeTime is already available as a service on Amazon’s own Fire and Fire Kids Edition tablets, but this is the first time it’s been available on a phone.

• Tablets for kids: How to setup an Amazon Fire tablet for children

FreeTime gives access to over 40,000 YouTube videos, hand-selected websites and full parental controls to make sure children stay safe when they’re surfing online or watching videos. Everything that’s made available to view through the app is age appropriate, so parents can be safe in the knowledge that their kids are only viewing the content they should be.

For further peace of mind, parents can personally select books, videos, apps and games to add to available content within the FreeTime app. The Learn First feature will hide access to various types of content until daily educational goals are met, and Bedtime will automatically prevent access to the FreeTime app at night, and will only be accessible in the morning at a time set by parents.

Extra content from third-party content partners can be yours for a $2.99/month subscription fee as part of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited. Brands including Disney, Nickelodeon, Amazon Studios, PBS Kids, HarperCollins and Simon&Schuster have all provided videos and books to the Unlimited service.

A recently introduced feature for Amazon’s Fire tablets has made the jump to Android too. Discussion Cards help parents to interact with their children, based on the content they’ve viewed. They provide open ended questions to ask children and get them thinking and talking about what they’ve seen.

• Amazon’s new Parent Dashboard and Discussion Cards will keep you engaged with your child’s development
• Kindle FreeTime arrives on Kindle Paperwhite: Helps parents encourage children to read

Amazon FreeTime for Android is currently only available in the US, but we’ll keep an eye out to see if and when it will be available in the UK.