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Every gift is twice as nice. Support special education with every Android Pay purchase. ‘Tis the season to give back. Android Pay and Google.org are teaming up with DonorsChoose.org to support the 6.4 million children in the US education system with special needs. Over the last month, Google.org has been shining a spotlight on teachers who are using innovation in the classroom to improve learning and inclusion for kids with special needs. This is part of Google’s focus on improving the lives of people with disabilities through their Global Impact Challenge: Disabilities . Now,  Android Pay  is extending that effort. Starting today through December 31st, we’ll donate $1— up to $1 million — to special needs education projects. And as we kick off the season of giving, we’re doubling our donation for every Android Pay purchase made on Black Friday (November 27th). There’s never been a better time to give — twice. Android Pay is accepted at over a million locations across the US

When it comes to fitness, every effort counts: each step, sit-up, snack, and good night’s sleep. That’s why Google Fit ’s latest update recognizes all your healthy choices: from cardio to strength training, what you eat plus how you rest, and coaches you every step of the way.  Instant insights. See real-time stats for your runs, walks and rides on your phone. Google Fit will record your speed, pace, route, elevation, and more so you can stay motivated and on track. Strength training. Want to add push-ups to your routine? If you have an  Android Wear  watch, you can start a daily challenge and your watch will automatically detect and count each sit-up, push-up, and squat. They'll be added to your daily activity, so you get credit for each one. The whole picture. Google Fit will now show you info from your favorite nutrition and sleep apps. Monitor your diet with MyFitnessPal , Fatsecret , Lifesum , or LoseIt . Or track your sleep with Sleep as Android , Xiaomi Mi Band a

Posted by, Jamal Eason , Product Manager, Android One the most requested features we receive is to make app builds and deployment faster in Android Studio. Today at the Android Developer Summit , we’re announcing a preview of Android Studio 2.0 featuring Instant Run that will dramatically improve your development workflow. With Android Studio 2.0, we are also including a preview of a new GPU Profiler. All these updates are available now in the canary release channel, so we can get your feedback. Since this initial release is a preview, you may want to download and run an additional copy of Android Studio in parallel with your current version. New Features in Android Studio 2.0 Instant Run: Faster Build & Deploy Android Studio’s instant run feature allows you to to quickly see your changes running on your device or emulator. Getting started is easy. If you create a new project with Android Studio 2.0 then your projects are already setup. If you have a pre-existing app ope

The Amazon Black Friday Deals are now official, as the online retail giant just announced that they will start the sale event this Friday and that it will last for eight days. Starting November 20, they will start listing new deals “as often as every five minutes.” Furthermore, on Thanksgiving and Black Friday they will add 10 […]

A few weeks back, rumors surfaced on the web claiming Pepsi is likely to launch its first Android smartphone soon. Back then most of you may not have taken the rumor very seriously, but the rumors were actually quite accurate. Pepsi has just unveiled its very first Android smartphone in China, dubbed the Pepsi Phone […]

Posted by Alistair Pott, Product Manager, Google Play Available in more than 190 countries, Google Play is a global platform for developers to build high quality apps and successful businesses. But every market has its own unique challenges and opportunities. Purchasing behavior, in particular, varies significantly between markets. So to provide developers with more flexibility, we've worked to adapt Google Play pricing options to better suit local consumers and make content more accessible. Following a successful pilot in India earlier this year, today, developers have the option to reduce the price of their premium titles and in-app products in 17 more countries to these new minimum thresholds: Countries affected: Brazil: R$ 0.99 (was R$2.00) Chile: CLP $200.00 (was CLP $500.00) Colombia: COP$ 800.00 (was COP$ 2000.00) Hungary: Ft 125.00 (was Ft 225.00) Indonesia: Rp 3,000.00 (was Rp 12,000.00) Malaysia: RM 1.00 (was RM 3.50) Mexico: MXN$ 5.00 (was MXN$ 9.90) Peru: S/

Back in April, Acer announced the Predator 8, then, in September they previewed it at IFA, in Berlin. Now the company’s first gaming tablet is available for pre-order at Newegg. Acer’s Predator 8 gaming tablet comes with a hardware platform comparable to the one of Nvidia’s Shild gaming tablet. Predator 8 is underpinned by an Atom […]

The Big Red carrier announced today that a new tablet will join it’s line-up. It’s called Ellipsis 10 and we first heard about it early last month when it was spotted on Twitter. Back then it was reported that Verizon will, by the end of the year, release another self-branded Android tablet. It appears that the reports […]

This year, Google released two Nexus phones to glowing reviews, and as we've grown to expect, the Android community wasted no time in coming up with a root method for both. In fact, legendary root developer Chainfire even devised an entirely new "systemless" method for rooting that should make updating a bit less complicated, along with a few other benefits. Don't Miss: All the Android Terminology You Need to Know The new method roots your device without modifying Android's system partition at all—hence the systemless root moniker. This means that fewer of Android's built-in security ... more

If you exceed your monthly mobile data limit, your cell phone bill can skyrocket pretty quickly. This is why a lot of people vigilantly monitor internet usage and even uninstall apps that use too much background data. Don't Miss: 10 Tricks for Conserving Data on Android Up until now, you couldn't selectively block an app's internet traffic on Android without being rooted, but thanks to some innovative work from developer Marcel Bokhorst, this has finally changed. His latest app allows all users running Android 5.0 Lollipop or higher to prevent any app from accessing the internet and sucking ... more

With every version bump, Android gets a new Easter egg that can be accessed by tapping the "Android version" entry in Settings. For the most part, these have generally been little animations or live wallpapers that depict the Android code name, but starting with version 5.0 Lollipop, things got a bit more interesting. With Lollipop and Marshmallow, the Android version Easter egg was turned into a Flappy Bird-clone mini game. On the surface, you'd think this was all good news, but the game is so frustratingly difficult that it makes you want to throw your phone out of the window. Don't Miss: ... more

Hearthstone 's latest single player adventure, League of Explorers, is now available. The popular battle card game from Blizzard has added new, treasure-filled areas, features like class challenges, and of course, new cards.

Modern planes are a marvel of engineering. But inflight internet has gone from marvel to frustration. Gogo's new 2Ku system aims to fix that. Flying isn't anything special anymore. In fact, between airlines squeezing more seats into planes, nickel-and-dime charges for bags and refreshments, and the dehumanizing and ineffective theater of airline security, flying has gone from amazing to nothing special to frustrating. One of the few solaces has been the expansion of customer options for connectivity — you can use your phone or tablet through the entire flight now, and bust out a laptop and hook up to in-flight Wi-Fi and get some real work done.

Earlier today we told you guys about the new — more comic-focused — update headed to Google Play Books. Apparently Google wants you to try out the update so bad, they’re now giving away 44 comic books for free via Google Play to help get you started. All you have to do is sift through them and add ’em to your library. There’s a pretty good variety here too, with my #1s of The Walking Dead, Batman, Robin, and Spawn being offered up to suck you in. The offer is only good for a limited time and the Google Play team recommends checking back every Thursday for new deals. I mean, it’s pretty hard to beat free . Link to the promotion provided below. Download on Google Play: Free Comics Issues Promo

Posted by Laurence Moroney, Developer Advocate With Google Play services 8.3, we’ve been hard at work to provide a greatly improved sign-in experience for developers that want to build apps that sign their users in with Google. To help you better understand some of these changes, this is the first in a series of blog posts about what’s available to you as a developer. In this post, we’ll discuss the changes to the user experience, and how you can use them in your app, as well as updates to the API to make coding Sign-In with Google more straightforward. On Android Marshmallow, this new Sign-In API has removed any requirement for device permissions, so there is no need to request runtime access to the accounts on the device, as was the case with the old API. User Experience Improvements We’ve gotten lots of feedback from developers about the user experience of using Google’s social sign-in button. Many of you noted that it took too many steps and was confusing for users. Typically, t