ASUS Chromebook Flip 2 confirmed by Best Buy listing

A newly discovered listing on Best Buy's website has confirmed that ASUS has indeed launched a successor to its older Chromebook Flip, even though the company has yet to officially announce it. The store listing for the ASUS C302CA is also identified as the ASUS Chromebook Flip 2.

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The best Chromebooks

August 10, 2016

The same Chromebook was first listed, and then pulled, at Newegg's site earlier this week, but it did not label it as the Flip 2. Now the new Best Buy listing confirms the official name. The original Chromebook Flip, with its 360-degree display hinge, was first launched by ASUS in July of 2015 for $249.

By contrast, the listing for the ASUS C302CA (Flip 2) Chromebook shows a price of $499.99. The 2.65 pound notebook has an all-metal casing and has a 12.5-inch 1080p touchscreen display that can also flip 360 degrees. Inside, there's an Intel Pentium 4405Y processor and 32GB of on-board storage, along with a microSD card slot for adding even more storage. The listing also shows it has two USB-Type C ports and a backlit keyboard.

One odd thing about the Best Buy listing is that the specs show the Chromebook as having 4GB of RAM, but the listing above claims the Flip 2 has 8GB of RAM. Since ASUS has not yet officially announced the Flip 2, we should hopefully get more concrete info on its specs soon. In any case, you can purchase the ASUS Chromebook Flip 2 right now from the Best Buy site, although it looks like the ship dates will happen sometime in early to mid-January.

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Justice Monsters Five, the Final Fantasy XV pinball game, will shut down March 27

If you've been playing Justice Monsters Five, the mobile pinball game based on Final Fantasy XV, we've got some bad news for you. Square Enix, the game's publisher, has just announced that Justice Monsters Five will shut down after March 27, 2017.

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Tons of Square Enix mobile games are currently on sale

7 hours ago

Justice Monsters Five first launched in the Google Play Store in August, a few months before Final Fantasy XV was released for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles in late November. The mobile game is basically a port of a mini-game inside Final Fantasy XV, where the characters could play a pinball game, Justice Monsters. The smartphone version not only lets players control flippers to hit targets, it also lets players recruit new monsters to fight the game's main villain Lord Vexxos.

Square Enix did not say exactly why the game is shutting down, but it did state that wanted to "apologize from the bottom of our heart" for this decision. It also said would stop selling its in-game currency, Golden Balls, one month before the game shuts down on February 27. Any unused in-game currency will be refunded in some way, but details about how that will be handled will be revealed at another time.

Get it from Google Play

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T-Mobile demos nearly 1Gbps speeds on its LTE network with unreleased phone

With more and more people buying smartphones, wireless carriers continue to try to out-promote each other with claims of faster download speeds on their networks in order to get new customers. Today, T-Mobile released its annual update on its own coverage, which included a video that showed the company getting nearly 1Gbps of download speeds on its current network.

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Best T-Mobile Android phones

2 weeks ago

The post about the network update was written by T-Mobile's chief technology officer Neville Ray. He said the video shown above was taken in the company's labs with an unrevealed, and currently unreleased, smartphone. The company was able to get download speeds to that phone as high as 979 Mbps on its current LTE network, through the use of three carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO and 256 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation). Ray claimed that T-Mobile will be the first carrier in the US to offer 1Gbps speeds to its customers, and added that even more improvements are coming in the future.

Ray also offered T-Mobile's thoughts on future 5G networks. He admits that it will still be "several more years" before those kinds of networks are widely available to smartphone owners. However, he did state that the company has already been testing for that future with "mobile speeds of 1.8 Gbps, fixed speeds of 12 Gbps with latency under 2 milliseconds, 8×8 MIMO and four simultaneous 4K video streams." In the video shown above, T-Mobile offers a possible future based on 5G network speeds, with mobile augmented reality apps that will allow customers to have instant voice translations with people with other languages, a better way to shop for clothes and much more.

Ray also revealed that T-Mobile's LTE network now reaches 313 million people in the US, which he says is close to Verizon Wireless' network reach of 314 million people. In addition, Ray added that the company's Extended Range LTE support is now available for over 250 million people to access in more than 500 metro areas. Finally, he said that 64 percent of all calls on the network use its Voice over LTE (VoLTE) support, compared to just 40 percent at the end of 2015.

T-Mobile's next big announcement is coming next week, as the company plans to reveal yet another "Un-carrier" feature, or more, on Thursday, January 5 at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

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The primary developers behind Android N-ify have ended their involvement

The three main people who helped to create the popular Xposed module Android N-ify have now decided to end their direct development involvement. The main developer behind the software, MrWasdennnoch, stated that the main reason for this decision was that he's "not really interested in the module anymore." He added that the two biggest contributors to Android N-ify, paphonb and Maxr1998, are leaving the project for similar reasons.

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Xposed framework developer gives us an update on Android Nougat support

November 8, 2016

The first version of Android N-ify launched earlier this year, with the goal of giving phones that could not get the update to Android Nougat some of the features of the OS. In his post on the XDA Developers forums, MrWasdennnoch stated that now that he had completed work on the module's new notification design and animations, he doesn't want to work on anything else with Android N-ify.

He added that he had recently flashed Nougat onto his own phone so he had no personal use for the module he had created. It's also quite time consuming, making sure N-ify works on a wide number of devices, which the developer says has turned the project into "a rather boring and repetitive task."

While the main team behind Android N-ify may be moving on, the module is still available for download at the Xposed Module Repository site for anyone to access and use, and the source code is also available at GitHub.

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The best Android phones of 2016, according to you

As you're probably already aware, we've been keeping our best Android phones list updated throughout the year, adding new devices each month as we see fit. Since April 2016, we've been including a poll in our list, asking our readers what they this is the best Android phone out there. Of course, the list changes every month as devices are added and removed, which makes things interesting. So we thought it'd be a good idea to look back and see what you, our readers, thought were the best Android phones of the year.

See also:

2016 in review: 10 defining moments in the world of Android

1 day ago

Below you'll find a list of the top five Android phones of each month, according to our readers. We've only been holding our "best Android phones" poll since April, which is why data from January through March is missing.

Do note that the numbers next to each smartphone represents the number of votes each phone received that month. There are normally around ten phones included in the poll every month, but to save space, we've rounded up the data on the top five phones with the most votes for each month. Also, December's poll is still open, so those numbers may fluctuate a bit depending on when you look at the table.

	1st place	2nd place	3rd place	4th place	5th place
April	Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge - 4,258	Nexus 6P - 3,093	Samsung Galaxy S7 - 1,616	LG G5 - 1,022	Motorola Moto X Pure Edition - 635
May	Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge - 4,433	Nexus 6P - 2,463	HTC 10 - 1,996	Samsung Galaxy S7 - 1,706	LG G5 - 1,234
June	Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge - 5,889	Nexus 6P - 3,730	HTC 10 - 2,212	Samsung Galaxy S7 - 1,451	LG G5 - 845
July	Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge - 4,550	Nexus 6P - 2,455	HTC 10 - 1,322	Samsung Galaxy S7 - 1,277	LG G5 - 693
August	Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge - 4,980	Nexus 6P - 1,386	Samsung Galaxy S7 - 1,147	ZTE Axon 7 - 1,047	Moto Z Force - 1,002
September	Samsung Galaxy Note 7 - 4,180	Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge - 3,173	Nexus 6P - 1,883	ZTE Axon 7 - 1,146	Moto Z Force - 1,135
October	Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge - 4,964	Samsung Galaxy Note 7 - 4,165	Nexus 6P - 2,297	ZTE Axon 7 - 1,340	HTC 10 - 1,338
November	Google Pixel XL - 4,105	Google Pixel - 2,505	Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge - 2,379	LG V20 - 1,409	ZTE Axon 7 - 864
December (still open)	Google Pixel XL - 4,177	Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge - 2,093	Google Pixel - 2,020	LG V20 - 1,086	ZTE Axon 7 - 701

As you can see from the chart above, one Android smartphone certainly stands out above the rest, reaching the top one or two spots every month since we've held these polls. That phone, of course, is the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. Keep in mind that the S7 Edge has been available since the beginning of the year, while others like the Google Pixel, Pixel XL and LG V20 have only just recently become available.

The Galaxy S7 Edge has been voted the best Android phone for most of 2016

So what phones have dethroned the S7 Edge this year? For the brief stint that the Galaxy Note 7 was on the market, according to our readers, it was the best Android phone in September. That is, until it started exploding and had to be removed from our best Android phones list. Then in October the S7 Edge overtook the Note 7 midway through the month, as this was the time the Note 7 was recalled.

Lately, though, the Google Pixel XL has taken the top spot for the months of November and December, raking in a steady 4,100 votes each month. The Google Pixel also managed to achieve a top spot in recent months, receiving between 2,000 – 2,500 votes in November and December.

What about the other guys?

It's clear that the Galaxy S7 Edge, Google Pixel XL and Note 7 (for a brief time) were the very best Android phones according to the majority of our readers, but what about the other guys? The HTC 10, LG G5, ZTE Axon 7 and a few others were good enough to make the list this year.

The Axon 7, HTC 10 and LG G5 made a few appearances, as well

While the Pixel XL, Pixel and S7 Edge took the top three spots in November and December, the LG V20 made the #4 spot both months. The ZTE Axon 7 wasn't too far behind, either, coming in at fifth place. In fact, the Axon 7 managed to achieve the fourth and fifth place spots since it was added to our list in August. Pretty impressive for a phone that costs almost half the price as others on the list.

Up until the Pixel and Pixel XL made the list, Google's Nexus 6P was floating around the #2 and #3 spots from April through September, which is quite impressive considering it was released back in 2015.

Throughout the April-September timeframe, we also saw the HTC 10, LG G5, Moto Z Force and even the Moto X Pure Edition take up the third, fourth and fifth place spots.

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So there you have it, the best Android phones of 2016, according to you. Do you agree that the Galaxy S7 Edge should have made the top of the list for the majority of 2016? Also, how long do you think the Pixel XL will remain at the top? Let us know your thoughts in the comments, and be sure to check out our best Android phones list to vote on your favorite device.

Next:

The best Android phones

4 weeks ago

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Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus Android 7.0 Nougat update rolls out in India

The slow rollout of Android 7.0 Nougat to more and more smartphones continues today, as owners of the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus in India can now finally download the latest version of the OS.

See also:

Android Nougat update: when will you get it?

1 week ago

In addition to the upgrade to Nougat, these new updates for Lenovo's budget-priced smartphones also include the November Android security patches. Since this is a pretty large file to download, Moto G4 and G4 Plus owners in India are advised to connect to a Wi-Fi network to grab this major update. Their phones should also have at least a 50 percent charge beforehand. Finally, the company notes the file could take up to 20 minutes to successfully install on their phone.

If you're a G4 or G4 Plus owner in India and have yet to receive the update, head to your device's Settings menu, then choose About phone, then System update. As always the update may take a few days roll out to everyone, so don't worry if you don't receive the update right away. If you're interested in seeing the full changelog for the update, head here.

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Verizon pushes security patches to 11 phones to close out 2016

2016 is almost over. Finally. Now that we are about to push full throttle into the new year, Verizon is giving the current year one last hurrah, and has begun pushing security updates for 11 of its flagship (and flagships of old) devices.

While these updates shouldn't affect too much aside from small security fixes and improvements, it's always nice to have better software. What is even more surprising is that the company is including older devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 in this update.

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Moto Z gets a new Nougat update, but not to Android 7.1

4 hours ago

Check out the links below to see what is included in the update.

• HTC 10: Software version 1.85.605.9
• Moto Z / Moto Z DROID: Software version NCLS25.86-11-4
• Moto Z Play: Software version MCOS24.104-35-1-19
• Galaxy Note 4: Software version N910VVRS2CPL1
• Galaxy Note 5: Software version N920VVRS3BPL4
• Galaxy Note Edge: Software version N915VVRS2CPL1
• Galaxy S5: Software version G900VVRS2DPL1
• Galaxy S6: Software version G920VVRS4CPL3
• Galaxy S6 Edge: Software version G925VVRS4CPL3
• Galaxy S6 Edge+: Software version G928VVRS3BPL4

As we stated previously, none of these updates appear to bring anything aside from security patches.

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