HTC will take the wraps off a smartphone with Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box next month, on October 20. The announcement will take place online and will start at 12:00 noon Eastern Time.

The smartphone in question is all but certainly going to be the extensively leaked HTC One A9. As you probably know by now, the handset has a metal body with iPhone-like design, coupled with mid-range hardware.

Rumored specs of HTC One A9 include include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 chipset, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable memory, 13MP main camera with OIS, 4MP front-facing snapper, and 5″ 1080p AMOLED display. The handset’s metal body will be available in six colors….

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As most of you surely know, Google’s Nexus lineup spans across handsets as well as tablets. All of those are created in close collaboration the online giant’s partners and tend to offer the cleanest Android experience in the realm, just like Google intends it to be.

However, every now and then Google also puts out products that it develops in house from beginning to end. The latest such addition comes in the shape of the Android 6.0 Marshmallow-powered Google Pixel C. Like the name suggest, this new devices comes from the very same team behind the Chromebook Pixel, so we can only expect it to be a benchmark for how far technological advancements have come.

The Google Pixel is a tablet and from the looks of it, one of the most powerful of its kind to date. As far as we currently know, it is equipped with a 10.2-inch display with a resolution of 2560 x 1800 pixes and a density of 308ppi. It has powerful internals – Nvidia’s Tegra X1 chipset with a quad-core CPU and Maxwell GPU, paired with 3GB of RAM.

A USB Type-C port will be in too, as in fact it plays a central role in Google’s future plans for unifying and standardizing both charging and IO.

The Pixel C is geared towards advanced productivity on the go, which is why it launches along with a dully adjustable keyboard combined with a stand. It attaches to the tablet seamlessly and also charges wirelessly when you fold the Pixel C over it, so you don’t have to worry about juicing up one more device. To be even more convenient, it is designed to simply fold and attach to the back of the tablet – always there for your convenience.

The Pixel C asking price is $499 for a 32GB model and $599 for the 64GB one. Sadly, that doesn’t get you the keyboard. It is sold separately for an additional $149.

Availability and release dates are yet to be detailed, but Google promises the Pixel C will be on sale in time for the holidays….

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Google unveiled brand new optional premium warranty for the freshly announced Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P. Dubbed Nexus protect, the plan adds two years of coverage for the smartphones, including accidental breakdowns.

Nexus Protect costs $69 for the LG Nexus 5X and $89 for the Huawei Nexus 6P, though Google didn’t specify if there will be a deductible in case you total your device. For comparison, AppleCare+ for the iPhone 6s family costs $129, and requires $99 deductible in case you need a new device.

For the time being, Nexus Protect will only be available in the United States. The service is expected to expand to more markets in the…

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Google’s Chromecast was the best-selling item on Amazon at one point and now there’s a new one. There’s also Chromecast Audio with multi-room support. The Chromecast app has been redesigned too.

Google Chromecast

With a £30 the Chromecast can smart up any TV – it supports video streaming and screen mirroring. There’s already a great roster of apps, but now Spotify, BBC iPlayer Radio and Chrome Photos are joining the party.

The Chromecast comes with a new design, new colors too (Black, Lemonade and Coral), and the much requested Wi-Fi ac at 5GHz (great for apartments with congested Wi-Fi traffic).

Unfortunately, the resolution is still capped at 1080p – there’s no 4K UHD video support. This is quite disappointing since 4K streaming services are picking up speed and, of course, the new Nexus phones (among many others) can shoot 4K video.

As before, you can use Android (4.1+), iOS (7.0+), Windows (7+) or Mac OS X (10.7+) to connect to your Chromecast.

Google Chromecast Audio

If you’re lusting after a multi-room speaker setup but a Sonos is out of your price range, you can grab a £30 Chromecast Audio. You can use a Cast-enabled app on your phone (Android or iOS, tablets and desktops work too) to search, play and queue songs.

The gadget has an optical out, RCA and 3.5mm AUX connectors to hook up just about any speaker. If you use multiple Chromecast Audios around your house they will sync playback between them so you can move between rooms and keep listening. Well, you would be able to do that later this year (an update is coming).

Spotify, Google Play Music, Deezer, BBC iPlayer Radio and others are available natively for music streaming. Another option is to mirror the audio from your Android device your laptop’s Chrome browser to a Chromecast so you can use pretty much any music service you like. You can use your local collection too, of course.

Either way, the streaming is done over Wi-Fi so no quality is lost (rather than the lossy Bluetooth). And friends and family can easily share music from their devices too without any setup required….

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Google announced the official rollout of Android 6.0 Marshmallow – there aren’t any new features but soon a lot more people will get it (so far it was only available as a developer preview).

Starting next week, the Nexus 5 and Nexus 6 phones plus the Nexus 7 and Nexus 9 tablets will start receiving the new Android version.

As a reminder of the new features, Google really stepped up the new voice assistant game. Google Now on Tap is a full-blown digital assistant and can answer questions and understand natural language questions. Third-party app developers can tap into that too.

Further, there are granular permissions, native support for fingerprint readers to help with Android Pay and Play Store payments, Doze (which improves standby battery life on the Nexus 6 by 30%). Notifications are less intrusive since you can swipe them up to hide them without dismissing…

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Just as rumored yesterday, the Google Play Music All Access streaming service is getting a family plan soon. And the details in that leak have panned out too, including the fact that the pricing and user limits are exactly the same as the ones for Apple Music, surprisingly or not.

For $14.99 per month, up to 6 family members will all be able to use Play Music All Access, each with his or her own account. Each person will have access on any device he or she owns. Tailored recommendations will be individualized for each account, so as not to confuse people with the music that other family members like.

Google is apparently still working on this feature, so it won’t be available immediately. Instead, look for it to be out before the end of the…

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This year we get double the Nexus phone action – the 5.2″ Nexus 5X and the 5.7″ Nexus 6P, brought by LG and Huawei respectively. They come to replace the two-year old Nexus 5 and the fresher Nexus 6. There’s a new Android tablet too, but it’s not a Nexus!

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Following the Nexus 6P promo video, Google also launched a promo clip for the Nexus 5X. The phone builds upon the foundation set by the Nexus 5 in 2013 and keeps the soft-touch polycarbonate unibody.

In the video below you can check out the USB Type-C port, fingerprint sensor, IR laser-assisted autofocus and 12.3MP camera.

For a full list of specifications follow up with our announcement…

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Google has unleashed a promo video of the Huawei Nexus 6P. The video is short and sweet, but showcases the aluminum unibody of the phone from some cool angles.

The phone rocks a 5.7″ QHD display and a Snapdragon 810 (v2.1) chipset. For more information on the device, check out our announcement…

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One of the first things that Google announced at its big event today is that Android just keeps on growing. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on stage that at the moment, there are more than 1.4 billion active Android devices in the wild. “Active” in this context means that they’ve been used within the last 30 days.

This number is up 40%, from 1 billion, back in June of 2014. Keep in mind that this doesn’t represent the total number of Android devices that were ever sold, it’s just those that are still active, or have been so in the last month.

Moving on, the Google Play Store is now being used on more than 1 billion devices. Again, this means 1 billion phones and tablets have used Google’s content store in the last 30 days. So it appears that the Play Store either isn’t installed or simply isn’t used on a staggering 400 million devices out…

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