If you don’t mind going with the achromatic version of the new Chromecast or Chromecast Audio, then this is one of the relatively few solid deals we’ve seen on the new Chromecast models since they launched last year.

Pick up either the Chromecast or Chromecast Audio at the standard $35 price and you will score a $10 Best Buy gift card to go with it. You can always just turn around and grab a Google Play gift card with that money to load up some content for casting.

Between this and the bevy of offers usually available to Chromecast owners through Google, you will quickly see your cost of ownership drop close to nothing.

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It has been two days since Samsung announced a new set of APIs within its stock web browser that would allow for content and ad blocking. The first app to get attention from that announcement was Adblock Fast, the official launch partner of the new feature in Samsung’s stock app.

That didn’t last long, though. According to The Next Web, Google has already pulled Adblock Fast from the Play Store. The app managed to garner plenty of downloads and shoot up the charts after its unveiling and Samsung’s announcement, so its removal was sudden and unexpected. According to the report, Adblock Fast’s developers were sent an email from Google that stated they had violated Section 4.4 within the Developer Distribution Agreement, and told them it’s a “policy strike” that saw the apps removal from the digital storefront.

Section 4.4 basically reads that developers cannot build apps that interfere with other installed apps on an owner’s device:

“4.4 Prohibited Actions. You agree that you will not engage in any activity with the Store, including the development or distribution of Products, that interferes with, disrupts, damages, or accesses in an unauthorized manner the devices, servers, networks, or other properties or services of any third party including, but not limited to, Android users, Google or any mobile network operator. You may not use customer information obtained from the Store to sell or distribute Products outside of the Store.”

The fact that Adblock Fast was using an official API from Samsung within that company’s own app, sanctioned by Samsung’s own teams, suggests that the app wasn’t doing all of these things. However, it was at least disrupting web pages, as it removed ads and some content, so this is the area that Google could have taken exception with.

However, it should be noted that other apps of this ilk — including Adblock Plus, which even uses Samsung’s API as well — are still available in the Play Store.

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With the amount of promos that T-Mobile runs, it can be more than a little confusing to keep track of the carrier’s current offers. Today brings us yet another T-Mobile promo, with the company reviving its popular “fourth line free” promo for families. Essentially, this means that you have the choice of two plans that offer you four lines for the price of three.

Here’s what it breaks down to. For $120 per month, you can get four lines with 10GB of data each, as well as unlimited talk and text. For $150 per month, you can get four lines with unlimited LTE data, talk and text. All in all, it’s actually one of T-Mobile’s simpler deals.

The especially good piece of news is that the promo is open to more than just new customers. Existing customers can give T-Mobile a call or head into their nearest store to take advantage of this promo for their family. If you already have four lines, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take advantage of this and get the fourth line free. There’s no pre-planned end date to indicate how long you can keep the pricing, but T-Mobile’s policy ensures that you’ll be able to keep the unlimited LTE plan for at least two years.

This offer will only be available for a limited time and T-Mobile hasn’t given a specific close date, so you may want to hurry if you’re planning to take advantage of this.

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While we don’t always pay attention to it, the keyboard on our smartphone is one of the most integral pieces of the device. Manufacturers and software designers have spent many hours studying keyboards trying to make them better, and one company that has made significant strides is SwiftKey, the company that’s created one of the best virtual keyboards to date.

The powerful logarithms within SwiftKey allow it to quickly learn from you and your ways of thinking and typing, personalizing it for you. In the future, SwiftKey may be even more powerful, with SwiftKey now offering its powerful neural network-based keyboard in alpha. SwiftKey Neural is a new project by the company that uses AI to mimic the way the human brain thinks, so as to better predict sentences. One of the downsides, however, is that SwiftKey Neural can’t be customized for users based on things like email and social media.

With SwiftKey leading the pack in terms of innovation, it stands to reason that the company would be a hot purchase opportunity. According to a report from the Financial Times, that’s just about to happen, with the publication reporting that Microsoft is on the verge of purchasing SwiftKey for a whopping $250 million.

What Microsoft will do with SwiftKey isn’t entirely clear. While it’s likely that the computing giant will utilize SwiftKey’s technology in its own keyboards, we can’t be sure that the company will allow SwiftKey to continue to function as its own independent company. Microsoft has a mixed record in this area, sometimes allowing acquired businesses to continue to function on their own, but also occasionally shutting them down after merging the new technology into Microsoft products.

In any case, we’ll let you know if official confirmation arrives.

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Every spring (or winter, depending upon where you live), mobile techies descend upon Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, one of the biggest events of the year for mobile technology. This year’s MWC promises to have plenty of announcements, but thanks to a leak, we now have the details on two devices that were slated for announcement at Mobile World Congress. The Alcatel OneTouch Idol 4 and Idol 4S are two new phones coming from the rapidly growing manufacturer, so let’s take a look at the specs of both of them.

The Alcatel OneTouch Idol 4S is the higher-specced of the two, offering a 5.5-inch QHD (2560×1440) AMOLED display, 1.8GHz + 1.4GHz octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage plus microSD card slot, 16-megapixel rear camera, 8-megapixel slow motion front-facing camera, 3000mAh battery and Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Additionally, the Idol 4S supports AT&T andT-Mobile LTE bands and even tosses in VoLTE capability.

Alcatel OneTouch’s Idol 4 is a slight step down from the flagship Idol 4S, but it still packs some decent specs. These include a 5.2-inch 1080p IPS display, 1.7GHz + 1.2GHz octa-core processor, 2/3GB of RAM, 16GB of storage plus microSD card slot, 13-megapixel rear camera, 8-megapixel front-facing camera, 2610mAh battery and Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Pleasantly enough, the Idol 4 contains the same LTE connectivity and VoLTE support as the higher-end Idol 4S.

This info comes courtesy of Android Police, which was tipped off regarding support pages for the devices on Alcatel OneTouch’s website. The support pages have since been pulled, but the info is out there and now it’s just a waiting game until the official announcement.

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We’re always on the lookout for new deals, and Best Buy has a few of them happening right now. These deals include some of Google’s products, like the Nexus 6P, Nexus Player and the TP-Link OnHub Router. As the Nexus 6P is the most prominent device among them, we’ll begin there. Best Buy is offering purchasers of the gold Nexus 6P a $25 Best Buy gift card, and that’s on top of the $50 savings that Best Buy is already offering on the Nexus 6P.

As far as the Nexus Player goes, Best Buy has once again dropped the price down to $50, just half of its original price. The Nexus Player isn’t the most current Android TV option, but at $50, it’s a hell of a good deal. The final device that’s being offered with savings is the TP-Link OnHub Router, which is $20 off, leaving it at a reduced price of $179. This OnHub router is well-reviewed and reportedly offers powerful range, fast speeds and of course, that unbeatable convenience that comes with Google’s OnHub software.

You can follow any of the links below to see the deals for yourself. Don’t forget, though, these deals aren’t likely to last for long!

Nexus 6P Deal

Nexus Player Deal

TP-Link OnHub Router Deal

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We’ve known since October that support for podcasts would be coming to Play Music, but the when has remained a mystery. Today Bill Simmons, host of the popular BS Podcast, took to Twitter to tell fans that the podcast would be available on the new platform when it launches later this month.

FYI – the BS Podcast will be available on Google Play when GP launches its podcast platform later this month.Bill Simmons@BillSimmons

It would seem odd for Simmons to just take a shot in the dark at this timeline for the release of the product, and it stands to reason that Google would have been in communication with some of the top podcasts producers to make sure they have everything in place for the launch.

Lending further credence to this being a case of Simmons accidentally letting slip more than he was supposed to, he has since pulled the tweet without comment.

As a confessed podcast addict, I’m glad to see Google taking its first real steps into the podcasting arena (No, Listen doesn’t really count.), but I don’t know that I’ll be switching over from my now longtime favorite, Pocket Casts.

Do you have a favorite podcast app right now? What would it take to get you to switch to a native Google solution?

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We all know how large Google is, but the company recently reorganized itself to help ease that burden. Out of the restructuring came Alphabet, a parent company for Google and other companies that were previously under Google’s control. We’ve been waiting to see how the restructuring would affect the company and during yesterday’s earnings call, we found out. Alphabet has now become the world’s most valuable public company.

After posting a total value of $565 billion, Alphabet surpassed Apple as the world’s most valuable public company. In Q4 2015 alone, Alphabet brought in $21.3 billion in revenue, showing how strong the company is. Year-over-year, that’s an increase of 18%, though the increase would have been even greater had the US dollar not strengthened in 2015. Nonetheless, Google still posted a net income of $4.9 billion.

Cash and cash equivalents are also up at Google, at $73.07 billion. Last year’s Q4 2015 results from Google showed cash and equivalents of $64.4 billion, showing that Google has increased its on-hand cash by nearly $9 billion, giving it more money with which it can invest. In the past, Google hasn’t been shy about buying other companies, particularly start-ups that offer innovative ideas. And, of course, we can’t forget about Google’s previous acquisition of Motorola Mobility, which is the company’s largest acquisition to date. Looking to the future, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Alphabet using some of that cash to purchase other companies.

For more detailed info, check out Alphabet’s full Q4 2015 results at the source link below.

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Is it just me or is 2016 already flying by? February is already upon us and the rumor mill is continuing to churn even faster as we grow nearer to the launch dates of this year’s Android flagships. According to the poll that we ran on Twitter, the most anticipated flagship looks to be Samsung’s Galaxy S7, the follow-up to last year’s highly praised Galaxy S6. And like its predecessor, the Galaxy S7 looks to be coming in a couple of different variants, one of which has now been inadvertently confirmed by Samsung.

Samsung will indeed be creating a Galaxy S7 edge, and it’s been confirmed by references to the device on Samsung’s own website. The Samsung Developer website has a detailed section regarding the Look SDK for devices with curved edges on the display. In this section, the Galaxy S7 edge is referenced several times by name regarding new and existing functions that are enabled with the Look SDK.

Even though several rumors have pointed to the existence of the Galaxy S7 edge, it’s good to see information straight from Samsung that confirms it. While the device won’t receive its official announcement until Samsung’s event on February 21, we’ll continue to keep you posted on further news surrounding the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge.

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While it’s a much better showing than the 0.2% movement that Marshmallow saw from December to January, the 0.5% rise this month doesn’t exactly qualify as explosive growth. With that said, it is important to remember that despite the relatively minuscule percentage, that means that Marshmallow is now on over 12 million Android devices.

While both versions of Lollipop saw a slight increase from last month totaling 1.5%, every version of Android below that decreased at least marginally, showing that everything is moving in the right direction. If we see similar change next month, KitKat may at last be toppled by Lollipop as the reigning named version of Android.

Froyo has dropped to just 0.1%, which leaves open the possibility that it may finally disappear from the list completely before celebrating its 6th birthday in May.

The next couple months should finally see meaningful movement for Marshmallow as the Samsung Galaxy S6 family is due for the upgrade and, of course, we will see multiple flagships announced at Mobile World Congress and hopefully launch with Marshmallow in March and April.

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