Author: Kellen
OnePlus is off to a pretty hot start in 2025, first releasing the excellent OnePlus 13 and now dropping an upgraded smartwatch on us. The OnePlus Watch 3 has been available for a few weeks now and we’ve been testing it for longer than that to try to get a true feel for this latest wearable. The OnePlus Watch 3 launched as a $329 Wear OS smartwatch with all of the latest in smartwatch tech. That means the current Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 processor, Bluetooth 5.2, all of the health monitoring systems, an improved display with proper brightness for outdoor use,…
From the moment that RCS went live in iOS 18 and the world of iPhone owners joined the party that we’ve had over here on Android, there has been one missing piece to make this a truly great cross-platform messaging experience. I’m talking about end-to-end encryption (E2EE), of course, which we were hoping would arrive without much of a wait. As it turns out, we should end up seeing that final piece show up within the year. The GSMA announced today that the Universal Profile 3.0 specifications (here), which are the standards for which RCS operates, are now set and…
The latest Android 16 Beta 3 may lack any major features you would want to play with immediately, but there is a new section in the Battery settings area that might tell you how well your battery is holding up. We have a new “Battery health” section and it’s kind of neat. When we first booted up Android 16 Beta 3 on both our Pixel 9 Pro Fold and Pixel 9 Pro XL, this section was not there. However, within the past hour, it popped up on the Pixel 9 Pro XL and has allowed us to capture it for…
Google made several major announcements today that involve Google Play Games, both on PC and mobile. Not only are we getting general availability of Google Play Games on PC, Google is planning to bring PC-level games to mobile, they’ll give users more controls and multi-account access, and Google Play Points will provide exclusive rewards to PC gamers. There is a lot happening with Google Play Games, so let’s lay it all out. Google Play Games on PC hits general availability: At some point this year, Google will fully launch Play Games on PC, which I’m going to assume means it’ll leave…
Need something to look forward to tomorrow? How does a release of Android 16 Beta 3 sound? The official Android developers account on Twitter said today that they are “dropping Android 16 Beta 3 tomorrow!” That would mean a release on March 13. They didn’t give us a specific time for release, but you can probably guess based on previous releases.
At the beginning of the week, owners of the Chromecast 2nd Gen and Chromecast Audio were presented with a message that suggested their devices had “outdated device firmware” and could not be used. There was initial confusion from the message that pushed folks to factory reset their devices in hopes that it would fix whatever was happening. Since that didn’t fix the problem, many were left with Chromecast devices that simply wouldn’t work any longer. Google eventually confirmed that there was an issue and then attempted to tell people to not factory reset, even though the damage was already done for…
Need an incredible deal on a random Tuesday? The Google Pixel 9, the non-Pro model, is $200 off and an absolutely steal. It might be the best price yet, too. Normally priced at $799, you can grab the 128GB model for $599 if you think that will be enough storage, assuming you plan to hang on to it for a while. If you need more storage, the 256GB model is also $200 off and starts at $699. Depending on where you go shopping for this deal, you’ll find varying price drops on select colors. Both Amazon and Best Buy have…