What happens if you take Google’s smallest smart speaker, and stuff it inside an old-fashioned rotary-dial smartphone? That… is a question that honestly never occurred to me. But now we have an answer anyway, and it’s actually kind of cool. Redditor Movieman_75 took a Google Home Mini, put it inside a rotary phone, and even […]
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11 Comments on [Updated – replacement hardware on the way] Google bricks some Google Home devices with software updates (and inadvertently highlights conflict between auto updates and short user warranties)
[Updated – replacement hardware on the way] Google bricks some Google Home devices with software updates (and inadvertently highlights conflict between auto updates and short user warranties)
11 Comments on [Updated – replacement hardware on the way] Google bricks some Google Home devices with software updates (and inadvertently highlights conflict between auto updates and short user warranties)One of the key selling points of Chromebooks, Chromecasts, and Google Home and Nest devices is that they receive automatic updates delivered straight from Google’s servers. The devices download and install the latest bug fixes, features, and security patches automatically on smart home devices and media streamers — although you’ll need to reboot your Chromebook occasionally […]
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Lilbits 377: Signs don’t look so good for Gemini
Remember that GST Gemini dual-screen laptop crowdfunding campaign I told you about the other day? Indiegogo has put it “under review,” and stopped accepting contributions. It’s unclear at the moment if this has anything to do with the product itself, the name (it’s hardly the first “Gemini” device to show up at Indiegogo), or something […]
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Daily Deals (7-09-2019)
Amazon Prime Day approaches… and a whole bunch of other retailers are trying to get your attention in the meantime. One of the latest is Dell, which is running a Black Friday in July sale at the moment, which lets you save on a bunch of laptops and 2-in-1 computers. Another is Google, which is […]
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Daily Deals (1-02-2019)
2018 has come and gone, and so have many of the end-of-year sales that had been running in recent weeks. But one thing that’s remained unchanged? Amazon and Google still really want you to buy one of their entry-level smart speakers. It’s January 2nd and Google Home Mini is still on sale for $29 and […]
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Lilbits 341: You can still install Google Play on the latest Fire Tablets
Amazon’s new Fire HD 8 tablet went up for pre-order about a month ago and started shipping today… and of course the first thing some folks did was try to figure out if you could install the Google Play Store on the tablet. You can. While Amazon’s tablets ship with an operating system called Fire […]
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Daily Deals (10-03-2018)
Amazon is running a bunch of different promotions on Amazon devices at the moment. You can pick up last year’s Echo Dot for just $30, an Echo Dot Kids Edition for $60, or a pack of two Fire HD 8 Kids Edition tablets for $195, just to name a few. But if Google Assistant is […]
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Canalys: Google sold more smart speakers than Amazon in Q1, 2018
Amazon pretty much invented the smart speaker category when the company introduced the Amazon Echo in 2014. And Amazon has pretty much dominated the space ever since… until this year. According to research from Canalysis, Google took the top spot in smart speaker sales for the first time in the first quarter of 2018. Amazon […]
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Hackers gives the Google Home Mini a line-out jack (that kind of works)
The Google Home Mini is to the Google Home smart speaker what the Amazon Echo Dot is to the original Echo: a smaller, cheaper model for folks that want an always-listening voice assistant that can play music and respond to questions… but who don’t want to spend a lot of money. But there are two […]
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Google Home Mini regains (some) touch controls
Google’s entry-level smart home speaker provides a simple and affordable way to interact with Google Assistant by voice. But shortly after the Google Home Mini was released, Android Police reported an issue that caused it to record users’ voices even when it wasn’t supposed to… and Google responded by disabling a key feature. Basically you […]