Thank you.

Hi, I am Lance. You know me as one of the writers on this website. I am happy to be working with Joey, Carly, and all of the other amazing people that keep this site up and current. But, it is with sad news, I am announcing that I am leaving this website.

Due to circumstances that have arose over the time that this website has been established, I am no longer able to continue contrubiting to this website. I do not know the future of this website, and I do not know what will happen.

I may come back in the future, but it depends on the conditions.

Thank you for a great time,
Lance.

Opinion: A letter to Instagram.

Dear Instagram peoples,

You are awesome. You are the main reason why I am on my phone, and I love the way your new app looks. The white bottom nav looks great and the new user interface all around is pretty okay. Except for one major, major thing. Your icon.

I am not even proud to have that piece of garbage icon on my home screen. That gradient[?] on behind a rather attractive new icon is awful. It makes my eyes crawl into the back of my head. It is the reason why I want to drink bleach.

Please, re-do your new icon. And don’t go back to the old one, just re-do this one. Please.

Please.
Please.
PLEASE.

PLEASE.

A (somewhat) happy user,
Lance

The Google I/O 2016 app has hit the market

The Google I/O app has hit the play store for those of you that are heading to the conference.

One thing that is always hard about going to these conferences is that it is hard to schedule so many things and go to them. This app helps to make that a little easier on your frail little heart.

Google has still been updating their I/O event website with new information as we start to get closer to the event. The app has a few Material elements that we haven’t seen before, so that means that we could see an update to some Material stuff in one of the sessions.

The app looks very similar to last year’s. You are able to navigate to things such as the explore, where news is going to be posted, your personal schedule so you know where to be and when, and videos of previous sessions.

It’s going to be a great year for tech!

Tune in to my channel (PurifyHD) to see a live stream of the keynote. Not the keynote itself, more rather my initial impressions live.

Hope to see you there!

Beme is now on Android

I am a huge Casey Neistat fan. That means that I watch his vlogs, and I know about his company, Beme.

What is Beme?

I don’t really know how to explain it, so let Casey Neistat (the creator) explain it…

You don’t stare into your phone when you’re recording something, you just go like this… [holds phone to chest], and Beme captures whatever is in front of you, and then when you take the phone away, it shares it. It’s pretty much magic.

–Casey Neistat

Want to follow? Sure! @5_cent_nickel

Oh, and you can follow on Android!

Apple begins to charge WWDC lottery winners

Since 2014, Apple has moved their WWDC registration from first-come-first-serve to a lottery system. In 2013, WWDC sold out in 70 seconds. In the years since that developers entered a random lottery, and they were selected to go. Your card is only charged when you are a confirmed winner.

This puts developers on common ground, which gives them all a fair chance to grab a ticket to this year’s conference. Apple stated that they are planning on sending winners notifications on 25 April, some people have already begun to see charges on their cards for $1,599. If you have not received a notification just yet, do not give up. Apple says that all attendees will be final at 17:00 (5pm) on Monday 25 April.

Along with the entry lottery, Apple is proving scholarships to 350 students and STEM organization members. Apple is also providing assistance for travel for up to 125 of its scholarship attendees with financial issues.

Be sure to stay with Currently Techie as we give you news and updates in the upcoming weeks. And go and check out our WWDC 2016 breakdown page.

Header image screenshotted from Apple’s WWDC registration page.: 22 April 22:30.
Information learned from 9to5Mac.

WWDC 2016 dates announced

Apple announced the dates of WWDC ’16 today. That also means that the ticket lottery has started today. If you go, the price is $1,599 USD.

Things that are expected to come out at this year’s conference includes OS X 10.12 [Big Sur?] as well as iOS 10.

The “kickoff” event where all of the new features and the main keynote for releases is not taking place at Moscone west this year. It is taking place at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. All other sessions will be held at the Moscone West Center. The annual WWDC bash will be taking place at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium as well.

Features to OS X could include Siri on the Mac. Since the release of Siri back in 2011 it has been a dream of all Mac users to see the personal assistant implemented on Apple’s desktop operating system. A dedicated music app, and a few other features such as backing up your time machine recovery disks to iCloud are high up on the “likeliness list”.

iOS 10 could see a new “Rootless” system that is aimed at prevented even adminstrator level users from gaining access to certain file systems on the iPhone, iPad, or even Mac, but is expected to be able to disabled on OS X. It could make jailbreaking in the future a challenge for those of you who do. A new app on the home screen [great] could be the “Home” app. This would make all of your home automation appliances (The Internet of Things) through Apple’s HomeKit would be able to controlled from one app instead of separate apps such as “ADT” for your home alarm or “Wemo” for your light switches and outlets.

Not a lot is known about other things, and we will continue to look at the rumour mills.

Header image thanks to Apple.

Android N Developer Preview 2 is out

Written by Lance Nickel

On Wednesday, Google pushed Developer Preview 2 for Android N, the latest Android release, expected to be announced at I/O 2016, to their developer platform.

There are a few new things that are worthwhile to talk about, amongst the inevitable bug fixes and security updates.

One of those is called Vulkan. It is a new 3D rendering API, which is aimed at providing low overhead GPU control to developers. It allows for nicer graphics, especially in games, and with the style of Material Design, will probably bring faster speeds of which you didn’t think was possible. This is kind of like Metal from Apple.

Another feature is some new launcher shortcuts. Apps can define shortcuts which the user can make available in the launcher to perform some quick launching actions quicker. These shortcuts come in the form of jump lists to thing such as recently sent messages to people, or to go to a specific section of an app, like your home feed on Instagram.

Unicode Emoji 9 support also comes to this update, with a few new emojis, and a new design for people emojis. These emojis were redesigned by Google to “look more human”. They also seem to have skin tones that were updated as well.

Other than that most of the other things were just things that were expected to come out of a developer preview update.

Header image icon by Google for Android N

Blackberry planning on releasing two mid-range Android devices this year

Written by Lance Nickel

Last year, Blackberry made a name for themselves in the Android world with the Blackberry Priv. The device has the same type of curved AMOLED display used in the Galaxy S6 Edge, but also has a slide out QWERTY keyboard.

Last week, Blackberry released a quarterly guidance report, which showed them failing to meet sales expectations, and confirmed the suspicions that the Priv failed to make a name for itself in the market. They showed a total sale of 600,000 devices, whereas the forecasted sales at this point was to be around 850,000 units.

CEO John Chen sat down with The National on the 7th. He said some things about the plan for 2016: Two mid-range devices will come out, one with a physical keyboard and the other with a touchscreen. There were no specifics like specs or release dates.

Header image thanks to The Verge.

Google Play app icons are getting updated

Written by Lance Nickel

The Google Play Store, and other Google Play products such as Play Music, Games, and Movies. They are really what makes media consumption on Android awesome.

But the icons have fallen behind. When these were designed Google was in the ‘gradient phase’, everything had a shadow, and everything had a gradient.

Google has moved on and they are now using flatter colours. The Play icons have remained in the past, until now.

Google has finally updated their icons. Just for comparison, here are the older icons.

Header image icons by Google

Oops: Samsung accidentally confirms the S7 Active

The Galaxy S7 was announced last month, and as we all know, it has regained its water and dust resistance. Because of that, we were a little fearful for the release of an S7 Active. It seems that it may be a thing.

In a recent update to the “Samsung Level” app, Samsung themselves accidentally confirmed it in the changelog section. They stated that among all of their other phones, the “Galaxy S7 Active” appeared for a bit of time. That leaves the question… What will this phone have that the S7 doesn’t?

samsung-galaxy-s7-active-sm-g891a-400x711 — Image thanks to Phandroid

They both will be waterproof and dust proof… It is expected that this phone may have a longer duration of submersion, and a bit more tolerance to dust. And as always the Actives, a slightly beefier battery and a more rugged design.

We will have to see.

Header image thanks to Android Central