Technical Hits

Just over a year ago, Google authorized the Allo messenger for the public, and initial criticism was somewhat scathing. Nonetheless, Google never abandoned its baby and has been consistently working on Allo, which is why I am celebrating its one-year anniversary. it may sound harsh but somewhat good is not good enough nowadays. Google had to take note of this when it presented its new messenger, Allo, at Google IO 2016. Hangouts, the established messenger, will continue to serve business purposes, while Allo was intended for consumers. Thanks to Assistant and stickers, Allo was meant to make a big splash in the market. I can already say with confidence that this plan has not succeeded. Complaints in about about flawed SMS integration are common in its comments section, as well as confusion over the stickers or privacy. Even after a year, Allo is doomed to a shadowy existence and, well, I recently stopped using the messenger app. At the beginning, I quickly installed it, reg

Despite its size and increasing popularity, the drone market is far from being on the same level as the smartphone market. Nevertheless, many people now own a drone and enjoy spending countless hours flying the drones in their back yards or at a local park - perhaps unbeknownst to many is that this is sometimes against national regulations. Anyway, let's assume you've found a big field somewhere that you can legally play with your drone. Which apps should you use? We’ve put together a short list of apps that anyone interested in drones should try out. Google Earth " Google has nothing to do with this, good grief!”. If you’re an avid AndroidPIT reader, you’ll know that Google is trying out many projects linked to this technology. It’s been a few years since it acquired the work done by Keyhole and turned it into Google Earth Viewer as we know it today, an app that allows you to view landscapes, buildings, vehicles and even people, all in 3D. Thanks to its precise

BlackBerry has posted higher than expected profit in the second quarter of the year thanks to record software sales. The company generated a net income of $19 million, compared to a loss of $372 million a year before, while software and services revenue stood at $196 million, or 26 percent more than in the same period in 2016. BlackBerry was able to beat market expectations thanks to its licensing deals, which brought it $56 million — $40 million more than last year. As you may know, BlackBerry has exited the smartphone market and now sells software to governments and corporations. Additionally, it’s also  licensing its brand  to TCL Communication, which now owns the rights to make, market, and sell smartphones under the BlackBerry name t’s great to see that things are turning for the better for the Canadian company, which has struggled financially for quite some time. Its revenue has declined for seven straight years and has now not only increased, but also exceeded expectatio

Why does the Samsung Galaxy S8 Active exist? Don’t get me wrong, there is always something good about having choice in the Android space, but more so than any other year before it, this Active version of the original Galaxy S smartphone seems redundant. The Active line used to bring some different features underneath a dramatically different design which set it apart, but now it feels outdated. In this piece, we’re going to look at a few of the reasons why I personally think the Active line has lost its way. I used to be a huge proponent of this version of Samsung’s flagship lineup. Back at E3 2015, the  Galaxy S6 Active  was what was on my mind. It had just been announced a couple of months earlier and it seemed to look much better than the  Galaxy S5 Active  from the year prior. Once I got my hands on it, I understood another reason why I wanted the Active – the  Galaxy S6  that year was a stark change from the plastic designs of Samsung’s recent past, as glass and metal bodie

Want to hit the ground running? Check out our  Kotlin samples ! Kotlin is fully supported in Android Studio 3.0 ( get the canary version here ), so it's easy to create new projects with Kotlin files, add Kotlin files to your existing project, and convert Java language code to Kotlin. You can then use of all Android Studio's existing tools with your Kotlin code, such as autocomplete, lint checker, refactoring, debugging, and more. This page shows you how to get started with Kotlin in Android Studio. To learn more about the Kotlin language, take a look at  Resources to Learn Kotlin . Create a new project with Kotlin Using Kotlin with a new project requires just one extra click in the New Project wizard: In Android Studio, click  File > New > New Project . Or if you've just opened Android Studio and see the  Welcome to Android Studio  window, click  Start a new Android Studio project . On the first screen, check  Include Kotlin support . That's the o

We have been watching Kotlin adoption on Android steadily rise over the years, with increasing excitement among developers. Kotlin is expressive, concise, extensible, powerful, and a joy to read and write. It has wonderful safety features in terms of nullability and immutability, which aligns with our investments to make Android apps healthy and performant by default. Best of all, it's interoperable with our existing Android languages and runtime. So we're thrilled to make Kotlin an official language on Android. If you're interested in using Kotlin, it's easy to get started because it works side by side with Java and C++ on Android. So you can keep your existing code, continue to use the various Android libraries, and incrementally add Kotlin code to your project. Unlike almost any other language, Kotlin is a drop-in replacement you can use bi-directionally—you can call into the Java language from Kotlin, and you can call into Kotlin from the Java language. Of c

Details found in the latest Google app beta suggest a new version of Android is on the way. The new version number – 8.1 – was spotted by the folks at  9to5Google  in version 7.11 of the Google beta app, which is just rolling out to enrollees. The relevant string shows that Android 8.1 will be accompanied by a bump in the SDK version, which is a sign that Android 8.1 includes enough changes to the API set to warrant a new SDK number. platformBuildVersionCode=”27″ platformBuildVersionName=”8.1.0″ Android 8.0, which  launched on August 21 , was based on version 26 of the SDK. The Android SDK (software development kit) is the collection of APIs (application programming interfaces) that lets developers create apps that plug into the OS’ features. It looks like at least some Google devs are already working with the unreleased SDK version 27. The teardown also shows a few other changes, including a new icon for the  Google Lens  visual search feature that’