Google Android catch-all

You're on the right track. I'm looking for a replacement for my pebble that will do notifications for things like incoming calls, emails, texts, or app alerts, with some built in fitness monitors (heart rate, etc.)

Taharka wrote:

You're on the right track. I'm looking for a replacement for my pebble that will do notifications for things like incoming calls, emails, texts, or app alerts, with some built in fitness monitors (heart rate, etc.)

Oh yeah, it gets all those notifications too.

Let us know what you get. When I need to replace my Pebble I am going to need some help.

One thing that is really tempting about Samsung's newest watch, it's tap to pay feature works on all card readers, even ones that don't have NFC. It will send out a magnetic signal that it can read.

IMAGE(http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/288/653/844.jpg)

Yeah, I have a Samsung phone, and I use Samsung pay all the time. Works a treat and blows people's minds when they go, "we don't have apple pay" and I say, "watch this"

Anyone used a Chromebook? I've never considered one, but now they can access the Play Store. That makes it compete directly with tablets IMO. They are bigger than I like, but the main reason I like the smaller tablets is because they are easier to hold in bed. A laptop is even easier to hold because you don't have to hold it

I've used ones that will probably never support the Play Store. They're fine, but by the time you get a good quality high resolution screen, you're into fully capable PC pricing, and they just can't do all the things I'd need a system to do. I do admit, though, Samsung's newest are often being positioned against the iPad Pro and larger Android tablets instead of traditional PCs, and from that angle they look pretty darn nice.

I have one and prefer it to a tablet for 'wasting time on the internet while watching a baseball/football game' because I can actually type on it. Other than that the only other major use it gets is when I travel since I couldn't care less if it gets stolen.

I've actually been using a small Chromebook for work over the past 18 months. Our company uses G Suite, Slack, and a few other apps, and I can do everything I need for work on a Chromebook.

It only cost $150-$200, so I figured it would tide me over until I decided on a better machine, but I haven't felt pressed to upgrade it yet. It's also robust enough that I can hook it to my TV and stream shows from FX, TBS, and other sites that don't have great apps yet.

Polliwog wrote:

I've actually been using a small Chromebook for work over the past 18 months. Our company uses G Suite, Slack, and a few other apps, and I can do everything I need for work on a Chromebook.

It only cost $150-$200, so I figured it would tide me over until I decided on a better machine, but I haven't felt pressed to upgrade it yet. It's also robust enough that I can hook it to my TV and stream shows from FX, TBS, and other sites that don't have great apps yet.

What make and model do you use? I've already got a big beefy laptop that I use as my main work machine, but it's portable only by courtesy; I'm looking for something that I can easily slip into a messenger bag and take to work lunches and stuff to take notes on. Has to have a keyboard that's at least usable, has to be able to run off battery for a decent running time, and has to run Google Docs / Drive and Slack, and that's about all it has to do, so what you've got sounds perfect.

I had been looking at some of the lower-end Surface Pros on the theory that nobody has ever regretted buying too much computer for themselves, but even so, that might be overkill for my needs.

My work will pay for it whatever I get, so price isn't THAT much of an object, but it's a small business with fewer than 10 employees and every bit of budget that goes into one thing can't go into another, so I don't actually want to make them pay for a new toy. I'm more concerned with getting something that will have legs so that I don't wind up wanting to replace it in a year and spending more money than I saved by buying something cheap.

Taharka wrote:

Does anyone happen to have a Samsung Gear Fit 2 and could opine on it? I'm looking at it as a replacement for my Pebble.

I had one. I liked it. Does some nice stuff. Good interface, battery is 1.5-2 days. I ended up returning it, though, and bought a used S2. They both do about the same fitness wise but the S2 does a bit more. The rotating bezel is a great way to interact with the watch and I wish companies would steal it. Both use the same basic software, though. The Fit is slightly more comfortable and more fitness bandy. They both allow you to decide to put apps on the watch. There isn't a ton of apps out there but there are enough. For me, that's a good thing. I don't want to check stocks on my watch, shop on amazon, or search for homes with Zillow. I want basic stuff. Notificatons, responding to notifications, and voice calls/texts. That and good fitness tracking. I don't know if it's a good replacement for a pebble. I was looking at the Pebble 2 but, thankfully, didn't bite and then they went under.

Nevin73 wrote:

Having a use case for new technology is the exact thing I ask anyone wanting something new, so good point there.

I guess I'm most excited about a verbal AI helper. The phone-based Google Assistant is only usable when my phone is unlocked so an always available AI would be useful, especially since I work from home. Also, since I utilize Google for contacts, calendar, and notes (Keep), the integration with should be more seamless. I don't care about buying stuff through Alexa since I prefer to read reviews and whatnot prior to my buying decisions.

I don't buy anything through the Echo but I love it enough that I bought two dots. The speech recognition is better for me than any other phone out there. I have an android phone and use android auto. The VR is unreliable for me while Alexa can hear and understand me with music playing at high volume. I did some research when Google home came out and the conclusion was that it wasn't quite ready to take on the Echo. Then I bought two dots.

hbi2k wrote:

What make and model do you use? I've already got a big beefy laptop that I use as my main work machine, but it's portable only by courtesy; I'm looking for something that I can easily slip into a messenger bag and take to work lunches and stuff to take notes on. Has to have a keyboard that's at least usable, has to be able to run off battery for a decent running time, and has to run Google Docs / Drive and Slack, and that's about all it has to do, so what you've got sounds perfect.

I had been looking at some of the lower-end Surface Pros on the theory that nobody has ever regretted buying too much computer for themselves, but even so, that might be overkill for my needs.

My work will pay for it whatever I get, so price isn't THAT much of an object, but it's a small business with fewer than 10 employees and every bit of budget that goes into one thing can't go into another, so I don't actually want to make them pay for a new toy. I'm more concerned with getting something that will have legs so that I don't wind up wanting to replace it in a year and spending more money than I saved by buying something cheap.

I picked up an Asus Zenbook Flip from someone on Craigslist for $350 a while back. It was brand new, never even opened, but the price was an anomaly--from a privileged high school girl who got it, plus some flavor of MacBook, for her birthday. She wanted the Mac and never looked twice at the Asus.

I really like it. Slim, Win10, touch screen, can fold into humongous tablet mode (good for comics), powerful enough for light gaming, and battery lasts a good 12 hours even under heavy use. Weighs about 3 lbs, slips into my work bag and I barely know it's there. Still, it's not as powerful as a serious laptop, and I'd hesitate before dropping the normal $800 that a new one goes for.

My employer offered to buy me a new Surface tablet, but they load it with enough bloatware and "security" junk that it's not worth having. The hard drive is 80% full by the time you get it, and whatever they're doing to secure the Chrome browser will cause a high-end desktop to hang for a full minute when you launch a Hangouts video chat. I'd rather use my own device, have it be more functional and less prone to malware.

What's the deal with Google Auto? Aside from linking up with a compatible car display, is it just Google Maps?

Nevin73 wrote:

What's the deal with Google Auto? Aside from linking up with a compatible car display, is it just Google Maps?

If you mean Android Auto, it's a new interface that you can run independent to a compatible display. I've been trying it out, and like it for the most part. Neither of our cars has Android Auto. I assume if you did, it would be nicer with a bigger display. I have it set up in my wife's car to automatically load Android Auto on the phone screen when it connects to the car's bluetooth, so I just plug in for power and set it in the mount.

Compatible apps will run in simplier interfaces, I assume to reduce distractions. It's quick to use the interface to pop from maps to media to a kind of simplified dash board.

Perfect? No, but not too bad. It's nice to be able to use it without having it built into a car now.

I've generally had a good experience with Android Auto. My biggest complaint is that it often doesn't load when it connects to the car and the voice recognition isn't as good as it should be. Dictating texts and responding to texts simply hasn't worked well for me.

Music works well and navigation works well, too. The interface is fairly uncluttered and the icons are generally large so they are easy to hit.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

I've generally had a good experience with Android Auto. My biggest complaint is that it often doesn't load when it connects to the car and the voice recognition isn't as good as it should be. Dictating texts and responding to texts simply hasn't worked well for me.

Music works well and navigation works well, too. The interface is fairly uncluttered and the icons are generally large so they are easy to hit.

Interesting about the text problems you have. I've used "OK Google" "Text _____ mobile" quite a bit even before Android Auto, and it's worked pretty well for me. And my car's pretty noisy. That could be affected by the phone's mic I suppose.

Yesterday I did have a UPS notification text come in that the dictation function tried to read to me. All the URL's and tracking info was kind of funny to hear out loud.

MannishBoy wrote:
EvilHomer3k wrote:

I've generally had a good experience with Android Auto. My biggest complaint is that it often doesn't load when it connects to the car and the voice recognition isn't as good as it should be. Dictating texts and responding to texts simply hasn't worked well for me.

Music works well and navigation works well, too. The interface is fairly uncluttered and the icons are generally large so they are easy to hit.

Interesting about the text problems you have. I've used "OK Google" "Text _____ mobile" quite a bit even before Android Auto, and it's worked pretty well for me. And my car's pretty noisy. That could be affected by the phone's mic I suppose.

Yesterday I did have a UPS notification text come in that the dictation function tried to read to me. All the URL's and tracking info was kind of funny to hear out loud.

My car is also pretty quiet. I had horrible problems with it not hearing me at all but traced that down to the car mount having a piece directly over the mic. I put it in backwards now but still can't get it to work reliably.

We got a Moto X Force on the cheap for my wife, who's 2nd Gen Moto G was getting a bit long in the teeth.

Weirdly enough though, the Moto X Force refuses to automatically install the old Moto's apps and personal settings. It never asked me to choose an old phone to backup from either, like it did when I replaced my Nexus 5 with a OnePlus 3 a few months ago.

Both have backups activated, both are running Android 6.x and the Google apps are all updated. It did import the non-phone related stuff like contacts, gmail, photo's etc. but nothing from the phone itself (old apps and stuff like background).

Anybody have a guess as to what's going on?

Where's emoji 4.0 at Google?

Last Friday, I decided to just bite the bullet and get a new smart watch.
Went with the Samsung Gear S3 Frontier, and now that I've spent a week with it, I want to give you my impressions.

First, the good. It looks gorgeous, much more like an actual watch than, say, my Pebble Steel. The screen is incredible, it's a very nice, high resolution, color touch screen. The watch faces, and there are a very wide variety of both analogue and digital built in, look like real watches. In watch mode, you would be hard pressed to tell it isn't just a normal watch. But then, when you switch to notifications, or one of the apps, the text is crisp and completely readable, no issues at all. Scrolling through the widgets, you get a snapshot of whatever the widget is for, and then you can tap on the screen to open the app, where you can see more details. For example, if I scroll to the weather widget, I get a screen with some nice, compact information:
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/mrUd49S.png)
But then, if I tap the screen, I get a long list of detailed information (it scrolls down from here, giving today's weather, and then a 5 day prediction, plus other goodies):
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/3fIpdH3.png)
This works with basically every app, including messaging, emails, etc.

Speaking of navigating, the USP for the Gear S2 and S3 is the watch bezel, which you can use to scroll through the widgets or text, or whatever. It's such an intuitive way of moving around the watch, even more so than swiping. It's amazing. I never understood the purpose of the moving bezel on a normal watch, but evidently it was just a precursor to navigating the smart watch. There's also a back button and a home button, which can be configured to directly open specific apps.

Health tracking is what I expected, which is to say, "sufficient". If you're a hard core workout enthusiast who wants a really accurate measurement of your heart rate, etc, then the S3 is not going to do it for you (neither is any optical heart monitor). I compared my heart rate on my S3 to the stationary cycling machine (which has some metal grab handles that will also track heart rate), and the S3 was within +/- 5 BPM, so I think that's sufficient for my needs. Its built in location tracker will automatically track some things, like walks/runs, etc, and you can manually turn it on for other activities. Again, if you need really accurate tracking, it's not going to be enough, but it's fine for my needs. The sleep tracker is interesting, and wearing the watch hasn't bothered me at night, just make sure you set up the auto do not disturb function!

You can respond to texts and emails from the watch itself with either pre-made responses (which you can change through the phone), a t9 predict keyboard (remember those?), and "draw letters" option (which I turned off, because it was highly inaccurate). I have larger hands, but the T9 keyboard works just fine. It's slower than using the keyboard on my phone, of course, but is great for quick responses to texts. Also, though the Samsung app will yell at you for not using the default phone messaging app, but you actually can use hangouts just fine, as long as you install the Android Wear app on your phone (don't need to set it up, just install it).

Now for the bad. The battery life isn't fantastic. I realize that, compared to the Pebble Steel, which could go a whole week between charges, nothing is going to be great, but I did have to do a fair bit of tweaking to get the S3 to even go two days. In the end, I turned off both the "always on display" (which drains battery like a sieve drains water) , and even the "Wake up gesture" (which turns the watch face on when you turn your wrist up, but has a tendency to trigger at unwanted moments, draining battery). So now, I have to manually turn the watch face on, slightly undermining the point of wearing a watch. Charging is easy enough, there's a magnetic contact charger, and I can go from 10% to 100% in a little under 2 hours. Also, the selection of apps (the S3 runs on a closed store, not the android store) is thin, but I got everything I want on there for free, so it's not a big deal.

Overall, I'm happy with the S3. The battery life could be better, but for something that fits on my wrist, I'm not too upset. The S3 is an expensive investment ($350), but I can see this lasting for years (gorilla glass and good metal body construction), so I'm ok with that.

Is there a reason you went with the Frontier? Are you missing out on anything if you don't have a Samsung phone?

Frontier vs. Classic:
The frontier can come with LTE built in, the classic can't. That didn't factor in to my decision, because I didn't want LTE (and it's not offered on Sprint).
The only real difference is the look. The Frontier is a little more rugged looking and comes with a silicone band (note, both watches will take any 22mm band). The classic is a little more formal. Both will work fine in business situations, though.
Ultimately, I went with Frontier because I liked the look better.

As for missing out if you don't have a samsung phone. Not really. You can download the Samsung Gear app from Google's playstore (and that app is required), and you can even set up and use samsung pay (in theory) even if you don't have a samsung phone. You'll still be locked into the Samsung app store for all your watch apps, but having another android phone won't limit you.

So you can only use Samsung Pay with it? No Android Pay?

I believe that's correct, but I haven't checked.

With the Samsung S3 watch, yes. Only Samsung Pay. With the phone either.

hbi2k wrote:
Polliwog wrote:

I've actually been using a small Chromebook for work over the past 18 months. Our company uses G Suite, Slack, and a few other apps, and I can do everything I need for work on a Chromebook.

It only cost $150-$200, so I figured it would tide me over until I decided on a better machine, but I haven't felt pressed to upgrade it yet. It's also robust enough that I can hook it to my TV and stream shows from FX, TBS, and other sites that don't have great apps yet.

What make and model do you use?

Sorry, I'm way late responding to you (travel and work ate up the rest of January for me).

I've got this one: ASUS C201PA-DS02 11.6 inch Chromebook

Polliwog wrote:

Sorry, I'm way late responding to you (travel and work ate up the rest of January for me).

I've got this one: ASUS C201PA-DS02 11.6 inch Chromebook

It's all good. I wound up getting a very similar model, the C100. Nearly identical specs, slightly smaller screen, but it's got a touchscreen and you can flip the keyboard all the way around and use it as a tablet.

It's been doing what I need it to do so far. It's not quite as snappy as I'd like-- web pages take just a liiiiiiiiiiiittttllllleee longer than is comfortable to load-- but it's light and small, the keyboard / trackpad are pretty good for the size, the battery lasts forever, and the aluminum chassis means it feels sturdy, not like something I have to handle with kid gloves lest I snap it in half.

As something to throw in a bag and take to lunch meetings, etc., it's pretty much perfect.

My Nvidia Shield K1 just started downloading the update to Nougat. This thing is like the little tablet that could. Just keeps on going!

LouZiffer wrote:

My Nvidia Shield K1 just started downloading the update to Nougat. This thing is like the little tablet that could. Just keeps on going!

Yeah I really like it. Just bought one a month or so back.

Baron Of Hell wrote:
LouZiffer wrote:

My Nvidia Shield K1 just started downloading the update to Nougat. This thing is like the little tablet that could. Just keeps on going!

Yeah I really like it. Just bought one a month or so back.

After the first several hours of use, Nougat is making this thing act like it's brand new again. Task switching, starting apps, interface, etc are noticeably faster. Usually I'm killing Facebook and Chrome (I know I know, folks... use Firefox) because they bog things down a bit even when in the background. So far that's not the case on Nougat.

Lenovo just released a budget version of their Yoga Book. It's called the A12. It's a 12 inch Android 2-in-1. This has jumped to the top of my list of Shield replacements. I wonder if I am too indecisive.

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreak...

EverythingsTentative wrote:

Lenovo just released a budget version of their Yoga Book. It's called the A12. It's a 12 inch Android 2-in-1. This has jumped to the top of my list of Shield replacements. I wonder if I am too indecisive.

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreak...

I created a price watch for $250 on Amazon when I saw it

I really don't want a 12" screen Android device. However, I could see it to read some stuff on I guess. So curious. Might play with one at Best Buy or something.