Samsung's Bixby smart assistant finally comes to Canadian Galaxy S8 phones

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

A long six monts after it was unveiled alongside the Samsung Galaxy S8, Gear 360' Camea and Gear VR, the Bixby smart assistant is finally coming to Canadian Galaxy S8 devices.

Bixby rollout was off to a shaky start. It was key differentiator for the Galaxy S8 (Samsung even built-in a proprietary button for the service) but didn't appear on devices until last month. While Samsung touts Bixby's capabilities and advanced assistant features. Bixby is expected to transcend mobile devices and be integrated into other appliances. Samsung likely got Bixby out of the gate today because it will be included in the Galaxy Note8, which is the phablet they are launching this week and is the successor to the faulty and exploding Note7.

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New Android 8.0 Oreo feature will help save your phone from bootlooping

Bootlooping, or having your phone stuck in reboot loops, isn’t an uncommon experience. And while certain phones and models are more prone to this, when you’re it with bootlooping, it can be very frustrating and a hassle if you’d have to contact the manufacturer or carrier. That’s why Google is including a feature it calls “Rescue Party” in Android 8.0 Oreo to help you get out of crash loops. Google explains the feature as: “Android 8.0 includes a feature that sends out a ‘rescue party’ when it notices core system components stuck in crash loops. Rescue Party then escalates through a series of actions to recover the device. As a last resort, Rescue Party reboots the device into recovery mode and prompts the user to perform a factory reset.”

There won’t be any activation from your end, Rescue Party will activate itself if its sees that there’s an issue. It’s turned on by default and won’t need any special hardware to work. Each rescue level it goes through will take around five minutes and Google hopes your device will self-recover instead of you needing to get in touch with the phone’s manufacturer or your carrier.

Source: Android Authority

There might be Google Assistant-powered headphones in our future

With Apple’s success with the AirPods, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Google might be thinking of offering its own pair. 9to5Google’s teardown of the Google app APK shows the possibility of a pair of “magic pairing” headphones that will be powered by Google Assistant. Codenamed Bisto, Android Authority says it first appeared back in April but it wasn’t clear what kind of device it could be. Strings of code show that it could possibly be a pair of headphones that work with Google Assistant: <string name=”bisto_magic_pairing_assistant_prop_text”>”Your headphones have the Google Assistant. Ask it questions. Tell it to do things. It’s your own personal Google, always ready to help.”</string>. It might also be able to read incoming notifications to you has these strings suggest: <string name=”expand_bundle4_1″>To hear them, press the Google Assistant button” and “<string name=”expand_bundle_1″>=”expand_bundle4_1″>To hear them, press the Google Assistant button” and “<string name=”expand_bundle_1″>.

These lines of codes show the headphones (or earbuds) could have two physical buttons: one activates Google Assistant, while the “top button” will activate verbal notification alerts. There are other strings in the teardown that say Bisto will get OTA software updates, which could probably be through Android Wear. If this does come to fruition, will you get a pair?

OnePlus now offers 8GB RAM/128GB storage configuration in Slate Gray

Previously an exclusive configuration for the Midnight Black model, the 8GB of RAM with 128GB of storage is now available for the Slate Gray version of the OnePlus. It’s available at the same price as the Midnight Black at €559 (around CA$830). But if you’re okay with 6GB of RAM with 64GB storage, you can get that at €499 (around CA$740). OnePlus is also still selling Midnight Black in the same configuration. If you’ve had your eye on the Soft Gold version, unfortunately, you’re going to be stuck with 6GB of RAM with 64GB of storage for now.

Source: GSMArena