Here’s how YouTube is making it easier to watch 4K video
It’s one thing to find 4K video, but it’s another thing to play it — the bandwidth needed to play high-quality 4K video could easily crush many home internet connections, let alone your mobile service. YouTube isn’t taking that challenge lying down, though. As the service explains, it has been encoding many videos in its newer VP9 format in recent months to make 4K more viable and improve the picture you see. The codec uses as little as half the bandwidth as the H.264 standard you see on many parts of the web, even as it bumps up the image quality by prioritizing sharp features and taking into account fast-moving elements in the footage, like water spray.
The result is video that not only starts playing sooner (since it spends less time buffering), but runs at resolutions that your connection might not otherwise handle. Even if your internet access isn’t up to handling 4K, this could still make the difference between watching in HD versus blocky standard definition. The real question is whether or not your favorite apps and devices can handle it. Chrome, Firefox and a lot of recent hardware (such as the Galaxy S6) have native support, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll be ubiquitous — not with the industry’s H.265 standard competing for attention, anyway.
Google’s mobile service could include free international roaming
It looks like Google’s upcoming mobile service won’t be the “small scale” experiment Sundar Pichai painted it to be during MWC 2015. At least when it comes to roaming, the service will operate at a global scale, according to UK’s The Telegraph.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, The Telegraph reports that Google is in talks with operators from around the world to create a “global network that will cost the same to use for calls, texts and data no matter where a customer is located.” In other words, Google wants to offer free international roaming to all of its users.
Google is in talks with the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, which owns the operator Three (active in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Indonesia and more), to buy wholesale access to its network in order to provide free roaming to users of its future mobile service. Hutchison, which just bought UK’s O2, is an apt partner for Google, thanks to its global reach and the fact that it’s already offering free roaming to its customers.
Presumably, Google will sign up similar deals with other major carriers, creating a global network that lets users talk and get online without worrying about overcharges and buying local SIMs.
Free roaming appears to be a logical extension to Google’s approach in the US. The company has reportedly already signed deals with Sprint and T-Mobile to buy wholesale data, which Google would resell to its users. Google’s customers won’t have to worry about getting the best signal, as the service will automatically switch to the network with the best reception in the area. Roaming will presumably work in a similar way.
Google confirmed through its SVP for Android, Chrome, and apps, Sundar Pichai, that it’s working on its own mobile service, without providing a timeline for launch. However, the Google I/O conference, in late May, would make a great occasion for the debut of the service.
If Google begins offering free roaming, it will join T-Mobile, which has been giving its customers free voice calls and data (capped to 128kbps) internationally since 2013. We don’t know yet if Google will cap roaming connection speeds as well.
As a side note, The Telegraph reports that Google is currently not working on launching its mobile service in the UK. Like Wallet, it looks like the Google cell service will be US-only, at least at launch.
Android Authority this week
Android fans, this was a bit quiet on the Android front (unless you count the outrageous April Fools’ pranks that made the rounds), but Google made it up to us with some interesting developments on the Chrome OS front. Google and its partners launched cheap new Chromebooks, a new Chromebase, the Chromebit TV dongle, and a tool that allows just about any Android app to run on Chrome OS. In other news, we heard rumors about the Xperia Z4 and the LG G4, Lollipop updates hit several popular devices, Google updated some of its apps, HTC introduced the One E9+ and the One M8+, and OnePlus finally released its new Oxygen OS.
Inside AA HQ
It was no April Fools’ joke, but it was announced on April 1, naturally creating a little confusion. Experienced tech journalist, prodigious Twitter user, and all around jolly good fellow Nirave Ghondia is joining Android Authority. Based in the UK, Nirave will contribute features and opinion pieces on the hottest developments in the tech world. Here’s to a long and fertile collaboration!
Spearheaded by Gary, we’re doubling down on our developer-focused content. By the way, if you’re interested in developing for Android and IoT, you should give our weekly developer newsletter a look. It’s all hand-picked resources that – we hope – will help improve your skills.
We’re also pushing hard with our new app and product database, so hopefully we’ll have some good news to share in the next weeks.
A PSA from my colleagues doing our podcast: we’ve published last week’s edition (Sci-Fi tech of today) – sorry for the delay! We’ve also put up this week’s edition (Chrome OS), so happy listening!
As always, Sunday brings you the chance to win a cool new device from our weekly giveaway (we’ve changed up the raffle widget, by the way, hope you like the new one). This week it’s a Galaxy S6 Edge.
The Friday Debate Podcast
The stuff you shouldn’t miss
Here are some interesting posts for your Sunday reading:
- Review: The Galaxy S6 Edge review: a unique phone, but is it worth your money?
- Opinion: Matt has made up his mind – he’s choosing the Galaxy S6 over the Edge. Here’s why
- Review: Kevin puts the Meizu M1 Note to the test – see what he thinks about it
- April Fools’: The best tech April Fools’ pranks in one place
- Feature: Samsung seems to be moving away from Qualcomm – is it a good move?
- Feature: Which voice call app consumes the most data? Rob put the top 10 to the test
Top news of the week
And here are the top news in the Android world this week:
Xperia Z4 specs revealed?
LG G4 news and rumors
Lollipop rollout
- Verizon LG G2 gets Android 5.0 Lollipop, ahead of the G3
- AT&T HTC One M7 getting Lollipop today, AT&T M8 update on 4/6
- One M7 getting Lollipop in India and other Asian countries
- Galaxy Note 4 getting Lollipop in India, Brazil, UAE and more
- Android 5.0 Lollipop now rolling out to the Verizon Galaxy Note 4
Google apps updates
- New Gmail update for Android brings a unified inbox, conversation view and much more
- Google will now integrate all of your photos and videos from Google+ into Drive
- A Google Now-style facelift is making its way to Chrome OS beta
- Google News and Weather updated, adds new “suggested for you” feature
New HTC devices
- One E9+ launched in China: 5.5-inch Quad HD, MediaTek processor, plastic body
- HTC launches One M8s, a Snapdragon 615-powered version of last year’s M8
Chrome OS in the spotlight
- Google announces the Chromebit, an easy way to bring Chrome OS to your TV
- Google unveils four new budget-friendly Chromebooks for under $250
- Acer Chromebase announced, touchscreen in tow
- Google’s ARC Welder tool makes it easy to run almost any Android app on Chrome
Oxygen OS is here
Sound off
We always want to hear your feedback. Whether it’s criticism or praise, feel free to tell us what you think about Android Authority’s content, design, and community. Comment here or get in touch with us on our social channels:
Happy Sunday!
Antitrust lawsuit against Google gets dismissed
Recently, two smartphone customers filed a class action lawsuit against Google claiming that they were artificially driving up the price of smartphones by forcing Android OEMs to use Google apps as the default on their devices. This made it harder for a company to rely on Bing or Yahoo! Mail instead of Google and Gmail. Kind of a tough argument to prove, but the suit was filed anyway.
Unfortunately for the two customers that filed the suit, they were unable to prove any correlation between bundled Google apps and higher smartphone prices. If anything, Android (and Google, indirectly) has helped push smartphone prices lower than ever. Just look at devices like the extremely affordable Moto X, or Google’s newly launched Android One phones. These phones are significantly more powerful and more affordable than they’ve ever been.
Google still has antitrust legal issues in Europe, but at least in the US, the company’s out of the fire. For now, anyway.
source: Reuters
Come comment on this article: Antitrust lawsuit against Google gets dismissed
[Deal] Best Buy takes $75 off the Nexus 9
Want one of the best Android tablets around? Then head over to Best Buy and purchase the Nexus 9. The electronics retailer is selling Google’s flagship tablet for $75 less than its normal price and both 16GB and 32GB models are eligible. That means the 16GB model costs $324 while the 32GB model has been lowered to $404. The Indigo Black and Lunar White color options are available in either storage size with the discount.
Come comment on this article: [Deal] Best Buy takes $75 off the Nexus 9
Google Wallet gets updated, adds transaction search
Traditionally Google tends to roll out most of its app updates on so-called Update Wednesdays, but there’s certainly no rule saying it has to be that way. With this in mind, Google has brought us version 9.0 of the Google Wallet app. Jumping a whole letter number, you’d probably expect the changes here to be pretty massive, but that’s really not the case. Aside from likely bug fixes and performance tweaks, the new update brings just two new features, transaction search and a Maps widget that shows the location of purchases.
Transaction search is certainly the more useful of the two, placing a search bar on the Transactions screen that lets you type in a keyword and quickly find past transactions. As for the Maps widget, you can now find exact locations where physical purchases were made. In other words, it will track the retail stores you shop at and place them on a map. The idea behind this feature is to make it easy to notice suspicious purchases, like an item that is bought at some random store hundreds of miles away from your location.
Both these additions are nice, though not necessarily game-changing. Oddly enough, Google Wallet is also subtracting a feature, the order screen is no longer present. Orders previously made it easy to track past purchases that were made online and then physically delivered.
As is typical of Google, the rollout here will likely take a few days to reach everyone, though you can always trying checking for the update by visiting Google Play.
Download and install latest Google Play Store 5.4.10 APK (Material Design)
The Google Play Store has just received a version bump, bringing it to version 5.4.10 and few minor changes.
What’s New
– Transparent status bar when viewing listings.
Of course, there could be more undisclosed under the hood performance enhancements not immediately noticeable.
If like me you like to be on the cutting edge of developments, you can go ahead and grab the latest Google Play Store 5.4.10 APK from here.
Notice anything else different in the newest version of the Google Play Store? Drop us a comment below.
The post Download and install latest Google Play Store 5.4.10 APK (Material Design) appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Google+ Stories are starting to appear in Google Now
Last year, Google rolled out a feature to Google+ that would create a travelogue of your uploaded photos and videos based on your location. That tool is called Google+ Stories, and it generally does a great job at compiling your pictures into a nice slideshow. And according to a few Google+ users, Stories are beginning to make their way to Google Now. Once you have the proper settings enabled, you’ll start seeing a Google Now card appear when you have a new Story ready. When you see the card, tapping on it will launch you into Google+ where you can share it with your friends.
If you have yet to see this card, you may need to enable a few settings before it will start showing up. According to Google’s support page, you’ll need to:
- Turn on Google Location History
- If you store photos on Google Drive, show your Drive photos & videos in your photo library
- Use Auto Backup on your mobile device or computer
- Make sure Auto Awesome is on
- Add your home & work addresses in Google Maps
- Take a lot of pictures
If for some reason you’d like these cards to stop showing up, disabling the Auto Awesome feature will do the trick. Have you seen the preview card in your Now feed yet? If so, be sure to let us know!
Could Chrome OS ever become a dominant force in the PC industry?
This week we’ve seen a number of Chrome-related announcements including new Chromebooks, the Chromebit, a revamped Google Now-style UI, and a Google tool that makes it easier to test out Android apps on Chrome OS. It’s pretty obvious that Google has big ambitions for Chrome OS, and 2015 might be the biggest year for the platform yet. But exactly how big will things get for the cloud-centric OS?
For this week’s Friday Debate, we discuss Chromebook’s potential for mainstream success, and what Google needs to do to make it appeal to even more users. Could Chrome OS every become a dominant force in the PC industry? Should Google merge its Chrome OS and Android efforts under one roof?
We’ll first start by hearing from a few AA team members, and then we invite you to participate in the poll below, and sound off in the comments. Also remember that the Friday Debate Podcast should be coming later this evening, or sometime over the weekend.
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Gary Sims
I must admit that when I first heard about Chrome OS, back in 2009, I really didn’t think it was a good idea. However, that all changed when I got my first Chromebook a couple of years ago. Although I was skeptical at first, my Chromebook has become my main productivity device when I am away from home, especially when I am travelling and covering events for Android Authority. At home I still use my PC, but the point is that for everything except editing video or images, I basically use Chrome.
But Chrome OS isn’t yet perfect. Google is obviously experimenting with different aspects of the Chrome OS architecture. There is already some basic support for running Android apps on Chrome OS, and now Google has announced Chromebit. What does this all mean?
The biggest problem with Chrome OS is that all the apps need to be written in HTML5. Without getting into too much detail here, HTML5 has its drawbacks. In 2012, Facebook abandoned the HTML5 version of its mobile app and rebuilt it as a native app. The reason? Speed.
Organisationally Android and Chrome OS are part of the same group within Google. What Google needs to do is add full Android support to Chrome OS, while retaining the Chrome OS UI and approach.
The result will be a true alternative to Windows and OS X. In one sense it will be the vindication of Linux on the desktop. At the core of both Chrome OS and Android is Linux, but the problem with Linux is its diversity. There are too many desktop options, too many SDKs, too many UI libraries. Diversity is good, diversity allows dreamers to dreams and hackers to hack. But in the real world diversity isn’t called diversity, it is called fragmentation. And fragmentation is the death of any ecosystem.
If Google can produce a version of Chrome OS which allows traditional apps to be written via the Android SDK, while maintaining its core principles then Linux could become the dominant laptop OS over Windows and OS X. Why? Because it will be free. It will use a different business model, which doesn’t rely on licenses for revenue and it will be build around the way we work today, not the way we worked back in the 1990s.
So where does Chromebit come into all this. Simple, the more accessible Google can make Chrome OS, the more people will use it. The more people use it, the more the ecosystem will thrive. The more the ecosystem thrives, the more accessible it becomes. And so on.
However, for businesses the problem with a cloud-centric OS is really the word “cloud” means “someone else’s servers.” No organization should store its intellectual property on “someone else’s servers.” And that is where Google will need to work, to strike the balance between its vision to be the world’s largest provider of cloud services and the need of corporates to keep their data on their own servers.
Jimmy Westenberg
When Google announced the first Chromebook, I was instantly hooked. The opportunity to purchase a well-performing computer for around $250 was an idea I could get behind, so being a broke college student, I jumped onboard. I began using the first Samsung Chromebook as my daily computer. I used it for essays, web browsing and for writing tech news. I’ve lived in the Chrome OS world for a few years, and let me tell you, it’s easy. Sure there are a few sacrifices you might have to make, but it’s very possible.
Chrome OS still has a lot of progress to make and we’re just now seeing a turning point for the operating system. Oddly enough, Chrome OS and Android used to be entirely separate entities, and we’re finally seeing them come together. But Android apps running on Chromebooks is just the start of it all. There are people out there who just can’t sacrifice Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or Adobe Photoshop, and that will always be a problem with the platform. If Google could somehow figure out a way to run the essential Windows and Mac applications in Chrome, we’d start seeing the Chrome OS adoption rate skyrocket.
The Chromebit is an interesting piece of tech, as well. For less than $100, people can run the OS on a television or an external computer monitor. That’s huge. If the success of the Chromecast is any indication as to how well the Chromebit will perform, college students who don’t have enough money to afford another computer will likely begin to adopt it in great numbers.
With all of that said, the problem with storing everything in the cloud is still a daunting idea for many consumers. Google is making big progress in the field, but like I said before, we’re still in the early stages of the platform.
So to answer the question, I don’t think Chrome OS will ever directly compete with Windows or Mac. But I do think there’s room for another OS that can fit into a niche market, whether that means strictly for education or just a budget-friendly alternative. I’m excited to see where Chrome OS is headed, and I have faith in Google that they can pull it off.
Bogdan Petrovan
I think Google is playing a very long game with Chrome OS, which seems to be moving at a snail’s pace and even stalling at times. But I think this deceptively slow pace hides Google’s ambition to make Chrome OS the operating system of tomorrow. And tomorrow will be all about the cloud, no matter how firmly we hold on to our microSD cards and local storage today.
I think Google is aiming to create a truly universal operating system. By turning the Chrome browser into a platform capable of running web apps that are very similar to native apps, Google is subverting conventional operating systems like Windows and OS X. Already, I can sign into Chrome with my Google account, and all my extensions, web apps, history, passwords, settings carry over. I can take my wife’s laptop and get my familiar setup from my own laptop in a matter of minutes. As someone who spends 75 percent of their workday in Chrome (and I could easily go up to 100 percent if I needed) this is a hugely valuable feature.
The convergence between the Chrome browser and Chrome OS is happening steadily; I can already switch from browser mode into Chrome OS mode with one click. And it’s only going to get easier and faster to do everything in Chrome, to the point that people will effectively forget what they need Windows for. When that happens, Chrome OS devices will be a tempting choice. Just today one top Microsoft engineer said that Windows could one day become open source. If this ever happens, I am pretty sure Google’s Chrome (and Android) will be a big part of the reason. While Google is working very slowly, the fact that it’s extending Chrome OS to all-in-one PCs and TVs (Chromebit) tells me that my hunch is correct.
And there’s the support for Android apps. Soon Google will be able to make a killer proposition to developers: apps that work on Android, Windows, OS X, or Linux, via Chrome, like magic. That should make the platform even more attractive.
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Google+ Photos now showing stories in Google Now
Google Now continues to add more features to its cards, the latest being Stories from your Google Photos. The stories are auto-generated by having the Auto Awesome feature turned on in photos with your location history as well. If you go on a trip, vacation, hike, etc. where you take lots of photos, Google photos will automatically put them into a “story” where you can see a slideshow of your photos from your recent adventure.
So now rather than having to go to your photo album to see your stories, the most recent one will show up in your Google Now cards.
The post Google+ Photos now showing stories in Google Now appeared first on AndroidGuys.
AIVAnet 