Here are Google’s most popular search terms for 2016

Stranger Things, Pokémon Go, and Donald Trump dominated search in 2016.

Google has rolled out its top searches for 2016, highlighting the people, topics, news, musicians, TV shows, and tech products we searched for the most this year. As you can probably imagine, Niantic’s Pokémon Go led the way for global searches, followed by the iPhone 7, and Donald Trump.

Global

Top searches of 2016

• Pokémon Go
• iPhone 7
• Donald Trump
• Prince
• Powerball

Top people searches of 2016

• Donald Trump
• Hillary Clinton
• Michael Phelps
• Melania Trump
• Simone Biles

Top consumer tech searches of 2016

• iPhone 7
• Freedom 251
• iPhone SE
• iPhone 6S
• Google Pixel

Top TV show searches of 2016

• Stranger Things
• Westworld
• Luke Cage
• Game of Thrones
• Black Mirror

USA

Top searches of 2016

• Powerball
• Prince
• Hurricane Matthew
• Pokeman Go
• Slither.io

Top people searches of 2016

• Donald Trump
• Hillary Clinton
• Michael Phelps
• Bernie Sanders
• Steven Avery

Top consumer tech searches of 2016

• iPhone SE
• iOS 10
• Google Pixel
• iPhone 7 Plus
• Nintendo Switch

Top TV show searches of 2016

• Stranger Things
• Making a Murderer
• Fuller House
• Westworld
• The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story

Canada

Top searches of 2016

• Donald Trump
• Pokémon Go
• Toronto Raptors
• Fort McMurray Fire
• Prince

Top consumer tech searches of 2016

• iPhone 7
• Samsung Galaxy S7
• Samsung Galaxy Note 7
• Google Pixel
• Nintendo Switch

Top TV show searches of 2016

• Stranger Things
• Westworld
• Girlmore Girls
• Fuller House
• Luke Cage

UK

Top news searches of 2016

• Brexit
• US election
• Hurricaine Matthew
• Zika virus
• Clowns

Top consumer tech searches of 2016

• iPhone
• Samsung Galaxy
• Google Pixel
• Sky Q
• Amazon Echo

India

Top searches of 2016

• Rio 2016 Olympics
• Pokémon GO
• EURO 2016
• Sultan
• Kabali

Top people searches of 2016

• Donald Trump
• P.V. Sindhu
• Sonam Gupta
• Dipa Karmakar
• Disha Patani

See at Google

What is RCS and why is it important to Android?

We all want a better way to do messaging and calls on our Androids, and RCS is the best way to make it happen.

Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T have all jumped on the RCS bandwagon in one way or another. Sprint has gone all-in with Google behind them and you have probably seen people talking about RCS recently. Both are very cool things — Sprint and Google using new standards that make text messaging better than ever and people being interested and talking about it.

But like all things, it helps when you have a basic understanding of what people are talking about. There’s plenty of information about RCS out there on the internet, but let’s try to sort it all out in one place and talk about what RCS is and why it matters to everyone.

What is RCS?

In a nutshell, RCS is a set of communication standards for SMS, MMS and calling that will make text messages look and feel more like Google Hangouts or Facebook Messenger.

In 2007 a group of telecommunication industry companies founded the Rich Communication Suite industry initiative to use new technologies to create inter-operator communication services based on IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). Text messages and phone calls generally work well, but they’re pretty bland and don’t make use of the full capabilities of the network they’re being sent on. They had three primary goals:

• Use a better contacts list that included things like more information about your people, if they were available and if they have seen the message you’ve sent.
• Build a better messaging system that enables extras like instant chat, emojis and sharing data between the people participating.
• Support enhanced calls with features like video calling and data sharing in real time.

That sounds like things your phone already does (and does well) without any new communications standard, but the secret sauce here is that this is all part of your phone service and will work the same way on any phone that can call or send texts — which is all of them.

RCS makes your texting better with rich messages and a great real-time experience with the person you’re texting.

The GSM Association (the folks who run Mobile World Congress every year) thought it was a great idea, too, and formed the RCS Steering committee a year later to push the idea of supporting this to phone carriers all over the world. They’ve since refined and expanded the standards and have been releasing them under the RCS blanket (RCS now stands for Rich Communication Services) for a while. The technical parts of the standards have adapted and changed, but the core goals remain the same: making phone service have a better way to communicate without adding anything additional from any app stores or carrier download sections.

Unfortunately, there has been a mixed response from carriers and companies making things that connect to them like phones, tablets, and computers.

Who uses RCS?

A lot of cellular carriers all over the world use RCS, but not all of them use all of it and provide a service you can use with everyone else. For this to work the way it was designed, all the carriers involved and all the devices being used have to support all of the standards. Of course, companies usually only support what makes them money or what they are forced to support and RCS is no exception.

The GSMA has a handy list of which companies support which parts of the RCS standards that they publish online. Have a look at it (it’s a .pdf file).

RCS launches and support (as of October 2016)

Remember, this is a tool to make others see how popular RCS is in order to entice them to support it. That means it doesn’t tell the whole story. So we’re going to.

Sprint supports the RCS Universal Profile, and nobody else in the states does.

For starters, since we’re based in the U.S., let’s talk about Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T. Only Sprint supports the full Universal Profile for RCS. (In Canada, Rogers has launched the same thing.) This means it works the way you and I think it would work when they say they support it. Sprint’s network supports all of the standards the GSMA has put out, and Android phones sold on their network since adoption have the hardware needed to send and receive better texts and calls. Software support is provided for existing Android phones — Google Messenger now supports everything you need here if you’re using Sprint — and will be included on all new Androids sold after November 2016.

T-Mobile’s RCS support is limited to in-network messages sent using an Advanced Messaging capable app. Metro PCS had full network support for RCS as of the 2012 spec (they were the first in the U.S.) but further data since being acquired by T-Mobile isn’t available in full detail. To me, that means it probably doesn’t support the latest RCS standards network wide.

AT&T’s RCS support is limited to in-network video calls and in-network messages sent through an advanced messaging app.

Verizon supports RCS, but not officially in any way that the GSMA feels is compliant. That’s not really surprising because this is Verizon we’re talking about and they don’t like to play nice with anyone until they have to.

Carrier network support is more important than device level support, but you still need both. Android and iOS both support what you need.

So in the United States, we can pretty much say only Sprint supports RCS the way we want it to be supported. That’s awesome for Sprint — they are totally on the right track here lately in a lot of ways — but pretty useless if the people you’re talking to are on another network that isn’t supporting the RCS initiative. Worldwide, we see a handful of carriers — India’s Jio, Claro and Telcel in the Americas, and Orange in Europe fully supporting the standards while plenty of other networks support it partially or are getting ready to support it.

More: Google’s iMessage competitor isn’t Allo, it’s texting

On the device side, Android, iOS, and Windows 10 all can support the full RCS standards when using a capable app. Chrome and Mac OS don’t offer the same support, which puts another hurdle in front of RCS — Apple would rather keep using iMessage because it works on MacBooks, too. But honestly, device support isn’t as big of a problem as network support and even Apple would quickly offer an iMessage replacement that uses RCS if people wanted it and were using it.

That means worldwide, a whole lot of people have access to RCS. And a whole lot of people don’t have access. For things to work the way the Rich Communication Suite industry initiative intended, everyone needs to support it.

Why is this important for Android?

This is the easy part. RCS is important to Google (and all of their partners) because iMessage exists.

RCS can make all your texting as good as iMessage.

It’s cool to hate on Apple, but if you’ve ever used iMessage you know what I mean here. Combined with FaceTime, iMessage already offers exactly the things RCS is trying to achieve. Voice and video calls are simple and messages are rich with great media sharing and read receipts and typing indicators and everything else. And it uses SMS in tandem with regular data to do it. It’s the best SMS app you’ll ever use until RCS becomes ubiquitous (if it ever does.)

Google knows this and they are doing everything they can to get carriers to adopt RCS. Including buying Jibe in February 2016. Jibe is a service that carriers and phone makers and everyone else involved can deploy that brings everything RCS offers in one compliant package. AT&T or O2 or anyone else can use Jibe to make phones on their network send and receive messages and calls that offer the same features as iMessage does with anyone else on a carrier that supports RCS.

Since about 80% of the phones in the world use Android and can’t use iMessage, this is a big deal.

Google offers Hangouts as a way to have rich messages and calls through SMS and IP connections from your Android, but to get full support you need to be using Project Fi or a Google Voice number. That doesn’t help most people, and it seems that Google is focusing Hangouts more as a corporate tool (and it’s pretty excellent for that) while they build full RCS support into Google Messaging, along with their own rich messaging client (that doesn’t tie into your SMS) in Allo as a capable substitute to WhatsApp.

iMessage is probably never coming to Android so RCS is Google’s best hope to bring a great experience to every phone.

They’ve got Sprint on board. As mentioned, Sprint fully supports everything about RCS, and we’re pretty sure they will support future enhancements to the standards to remain RCS complaint. That’s awesome, but having AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon out of the picture makes it a lot less awesome. You can be sure Google is courting the other players in the States as well as the rest of the world to get on board along with the GSMA, and if it can happen we all get a better experience.

Now TV Smart Box review: A scrappy blend of on-demand and live TV

Now TV is pivotal to Sky’s future success. More people than ever before are eschewing big, expensive TV packages for lighter, on-demand alternatives such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. For the last few years, Sky has been refining (and heavily marketing) Now TV in response. The platform has a number of “passes” which, for roughly the price of a Netflix subscription, cover either sports, movies or TV shows.

Now, Sky is pushing forward with the Smart Box, a set-top streamer that comes with the Now TV app and a coaxial port as standard. That means it can handle both free-to-air TV channels and Now TV’s content, which includes live channel streaming and catch-up programming. The idea is that the box (which is basically a Roku in disguise) will appeal to cord-cutters who fancy an affordable streaming service or two on top of their traditional TV experience. With the new Smart Box, you can alternate between them without switching inputs or grabbing another remote.

Hardware

The Smart Box, like most streaming hardware, is a black slab designed to fade into the back of your entertainment center. It’s a flat, squarish puck measuring 165mm by 165mm on top, which is about the same size as Amazon’s Fire TV and Google’s Nexus Player. Given its low height (20.5mm), I found it simple to slide the box in between a few dust-covered consoles beneath my TV.

Around the back you’ll find a handful of ports for power, HDMI, microSD cards and Ethernet. There’s also the aforementioned coaxial port, however you won’t find a TV cable in the box. If you just have a port in the wall, rather than a permanent cable trailing into the room, you’ll need to dash to somewhere like Maplins or buy one online. (I moved house recently and had to do just this.) It feels like an oversight on Sky’s part, even if most people probably have one kicking around in a cupboard.

The Smart Box remote is a tiny piece of kit with just a few buttons. A directional pad sits in the center, with back and home options up top. Three navigational arrows (rewind, pause/play and fast-forward) sit underneath, followed by an options button and two shortcuts for Now TV and the Sky Store. There’s no search button and no microphone, meaning you can’t bark for “action movies starring Tom Cruise” like you would with the latest Apple TV. It’s a serviceable remote, but could use a numerical keypad — scrolling through more than 60 TV channels gets pretty tiresome with bog-standard arrow buttons.

On-demand

The Smart Box feels like three separate experiences stitched together with gaffa tape. The first is the Roku-powered interface, dominated by a six-option menu that sits on the left-hand side. The “Home” is your starting point, with a grid of square thumbnails highlighting TV shows and movies you might like to watch. The first suggestion is always your last live channel, which provides a quick shortcut into free-to-air television.

There are several sub-categories present on the home screen, such as “highlights” and what “you might have missed.” I rarely use these, however, because while Sky suggests programming from a few different places, including BBC iPlayer and the ITV Hub, there’s no personalisation. The picks are seemingly based on what’s popular at the moment, so you’ll see a lot of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and Teen Mom UK. Yuck. Occasionally I’ll stumble on a gem — a nature documentary by the BBC, or a new movie added to the Sky Store. But these moments are rare and I’ve long stopped looking beyond the first row of suggested viewing.

One step down from Home is the “Best of Catch-up,” another grid showcasing VOD content. Now TV sits at the top, followed by BBC iPlayer, the ITV Hub, All 4 and Demand 5. A row is dedicated to each service, with a few programme choices and a shortcut to launch the app itself. It’s a functional, if bland interface which I use only to launch apps that I know have a particular show or movie I want to watch.

Continue scrolling through the core menu and you’ll find “My Apps,” which, well, should be self-explanatory. Now TV has a dedicated button on the remote, so I only used this menu to launch Crunchyroll, Vimeo and TED, which are available to download through the App Store. These applications — which are the same as those found on regular Roku players — vary wildly in quality. Each has a different design and interface, and it’s clear some are updated more frequently than others.

Then there’s Now TV. With “Home” and “Best of Catch-up,” Sky makes it seem like everything is just a click away. Tap once and your show or movie will start immediately. But that’s not the case — Now TV is actually a separate app, with its own menu hugging the left-hand side of the screen. In the context of the Smart Box, it’s an interface inside an interface. Sure, the two are visually consistent, but it’s wildly disorienting when you drill down into the Now TV app and then hit the “Home” button on the remote, only to find yourself in the similar but ultimately different Roku menu.

The Now TV app is perfectly functional on its own. That’s because it’s the same app you’ll find on other streaming devices, such as the PlayStation 4. Clearly, Sky has put a lot of time and money into its development. The problem is that it’s not cohesive with the rest of the Smart Box experience. It’s a silo — a brilliant one, but a silo nonetheless. As I mentioned earlier, this makes it feel like the two have been virtually gaffa-taped together.

Live TV

While I mostly stream my favourite TV shows, I still use free-to-air TV channels for sports and political events. International football matches, parliamentary debates — I could always stream these live, but there’s a convenience to doing it the old-fashioned way. The experience is mostly stellar on the Smart Box, thanks to three different types of navigation. You can tap up and down on the remote, which lets you scan available channels as a slim sliver at the bottom of the screen. It’s useful if you want to keep the current channel in view, while seeing what else is available at the time.

Alternatively, you can tap left on the D-pad to activate a larger TV guide. The expanded feature takes up half of the screen and lists eight channels simultaneously. You can scroll through with the remote; a thin white bar appears underneath each show, denoting how long is left until the next programme starts. Finally, you can head back into the Roku interface and select the dedicated ‘TV Guide’ option. I wouldn’t recommend it, however, as it takes a second to load and doesn’t offer too much more information. Still, it’s there if you really need it.

You can’t record with the Smart Box, but you can rewind. Sky lets you scrub back to the moment when you first selected the channel — 30 minutes is the maximum, however — and fast forward once you’re done. It works well, although a “jump to live” shortcut would have been nice.

A Now TV subscription will grant you access to some of Sky’s premium TV channels; the Movies pass, for instance, lets you livestream everything related to Sky Cinema. Annoyingly, all the live channels are listed in a TV guide that’s separate to the free-to-air TV channels. That’s because the functionality is contained within the Now TV app, rather than the top-level Roku-powered interface. These isolated experiences add to the overall feeling of disharmony. They’re strong on their own, but rarely work together in a way that feels smart or cohesive.

Content

Unsurprisingly, the Smart Box gets better as you subscribe to more of its monthly passes. If you have all four, you’ll find an excellent range of sport, movies and TV shows to dig into. But that’s an expensive way to go, and almost defeats the purpose of avoiding a Sky TV subscription. I normally have one or two active — I subscribed to the Entertainment Pass while Game of Thrones was airing, then activated the Sports pass once the Premier League was back in full swing. Now, I’m rinsing the Movies pass in the run up to Christmas.

The problem is that there’s no way to filter what’s shown in the top-level interface. You’ll always see suggestions tied to the Entertainment, Movies and Sports passes, regardless of which ones you have access to. It’s an obvious ploy to tease more money out of you — the hope being that you’ll see a TV show you want to watch and pay for the relevant pass out of convenience. As a stubborn customer, however, I found myself irritated by the wealth of irrelevant content. I only want to see what I have access too, otherwise the process of deciding what to watch is extended unnecessarily.

While Now TV is decent, it doesn’t make up for the absence of Netflix and Prime Video. These are huge services with vast libraries. I’m signed up to both and enjoy some of their shows immensely, which means I always need another box connected to my TV. I don’t mind switching — my PS4 is always plugged in — but it defeats the purpose of having a single TV and streaming box. Sky’s device is supposed to be a silver bullet solution, handling free-to-air TV and streaming with grace. If you need another box for Netflix and Amazon, you might as well use it for every streaming service, including Now TV, which is available as an app elsewhere.

Wrap up

The Smart Box, despite its navigational niggles, is a capable device. If you mostly watch free-to-air TV, but want to compliment it with a streaming service or two, this is a solid option. It’s fast and responsive, with plenty of shows and movies to peruse. The problem is that it doesn’t accommodate people who have already signed up to Netflix and Prime Video. If you love these services and their libraries, you’ll need to switch inputs.

Sky’s strategy does make sense. Offering Netflix and Prime Video would mean risking its Now TV subscribers. Each service offers different content, and few people want to pay for them all at once. If the apps were available on the Smart Box, people would be compelled to at least try them and see how they fare against the Now TV passes. Sky built the hardware to push its streaming services and “Combo” TV, broadband and phone packages. Not to give customers a free or vastly discounted Roku. (It’s available for £40 on its own, or cheaper with one or more Now TV passes.)

If you want to stay platform agnostic, you might be better off with a regular Roku, or any other set-top streaming box. The compromise is the coaxial cable — most, like the new Apple TV, don’t support free-to-air channels — but in return, you’ll have better access to VOD services. The value of that trade-off will vary depending on your personal viewing habits, of course. If, like me, you’re addicted to BoJack Horseman, Stranger Things and Mr. Robot, you might want to consider another TV streamer, and relying on your TV (even if it has a crummy interface) for traditional channels.

Amazon Prime Video is now available in India with tons of regional content

Prime Video is the best streaming deal right now in India.

Amazon’s streaming video service Prime Video is now available in India. The service offers a healthy mix content — including recent Bollywood movies along with Amazon’s original content like Transparent, The Grand Tour, The Man in the High Castle, and more.

If you’re already a Prime subscriber in India, you’ll be able to access Prime Video at no additional cost. A Prime subscription costs just ₹499 per year ($7.5), which comes out to less than $1 a month for Prime Video as well as all the benefits of the regular Prime subscription — early access to deals and free two-day shipping. That’s a significantly better deal than Netflix, which costs anywhere between ₹500 and ₹800 a month. That’s less than Hotstar as well, which costs ₹150 monthly.

While it’s great that Prime Video is available in the country, you’re short of options if you want to stream The Grand Tour on your TV. Prime Video isn’t available for Android TV, and the app doesn’t support the Cast protocol. You’ll have to wait for Amazon to bring the Fire TV Stick — its version of the Chromecast — to India.

Amazon is set to invest $300 million to bolster original content to Indian subscribers, so stay tuned for new additions over the coming months. The company has tied up with Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions, T-Series, Arka Mediaworks’ SS Rajamouli and others to roll out local content.

Download Prime Video from the Play Store right now to see what’s on offer. If you’re already signed in to the Amazon app on Android, you’ll be automatically signed into Prime Video, and can get started with watching shows right away.

See at Amazon

LG has a new army of K- and X-Series mid-range smartphones on the way

According to Venture Beat, LG is expected to unveil a whole host of new smartphones at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2017. The K-Series and X-Series mid-range handsets are the ranges said to be getting new models, and LG also plans to introduce the third-generation of its Stylus phablet phone.

• CES 2017: What is it and what to expect

The K-Series phones will be the K3, K4, K8 and K10, but only a few specs have been leaked for now.

• K3 – 4.5-inch display, 5-megapixel rear camera, 2MP front camera, 2100mAh battery
• K4 – 4.7-inch display, 8MP rear camera, 5MP front camera, 2500mAh battery
• K8 – 5.0-inch HD display, 13MP rear camera, 5MP front camera, 2500mAh
• K10 – 5.3-inch HD display, 2.5D glass on front and back, 5MP wide-angle front and rear cameras.

The LG X Calibur will debut as an entirely brand new model at CES and will come sporting military grade durability, IP68 water and dust-resistance and a 4100mAh battery. Screen and camera specs haven’t been revealed.

A second X-Series phone, the X Power 2, will launch at MWC 2017 instead with a 5.5-inch HD display, 4500mAh battery and 13MP rear camera and 5MP wide-angle front-facing camera.

• Mobile World Congress 2017: Smartphones, smartphones, smartphones to expect

Finally, the LG Stylus 3 will feature a larger 5.7-inch HD display, 32GB of onboard storage, 13MP rear camera and 5MP wide-angle front-facing camera with flashes for both, a 3200mAh battery, fingerprint scanner, rear-mounted buttons and because of its name, a digital pen stylus.

All K-Series phones are expected to ship from the middle of January, the Stylus 3 in mid-February, X Calibur in March and finally the X Power 2 in April.