In this week’s top stories: Google Photos regains an operator-exclusive unlimited backup plan, Weather Frog jumps into the 2nd generation Nest Hub, Waze gets a “Retro Mode” and more.
Once an exclusive benefit of the Pixel series before it retired, Google has announced the upcoming return of an unlimited backup plan for Photos. The option will apparently only be available to T-Mobile customers through Google One, adding $ 5 to the $ 10 2TB monthly plan.
Behind the scenes, T-Mobile is likely to subsidize the new inventory level in one way or another as part of the broader partnership. As such internally, the pricing of this new perk is most likely not just an extra $ 5 for Google.
Nearly a year after arriving at Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max, owners of the 2nd generation Nest Hub this week gained access to the Weather Frog dial. As the name suggests, when activated, your Nest Hub will display artwork themed to the current weather, featuring a prominent part of the Google Weather frog mascot.
Some examples include Froggy camping and looking through a telescope, lying in a hammock, reading on a mountaintop and splashing in puddles while wearing a yellow raincoat. It is very nice and gives a great deal of whimsy all day long.
Waze, Googles Other things traffic and navigation app, launched its own bit of the whim this week with a new “Retro Mode.” Once enabled, the app offers navigation voices, themes and in-app car designs based on the 70s, 80s and 90s.
All of these individual items are also interchangeable. This means you can choose the 90s PC vibe with the red sports car and 70s DJ. The voices sound pretty good and have their own quirks that can do a lot to keep someone entertained on the road.
This week, our Ben Schoon shared his review of the Bellroy leather case for the Pixel 6 series. While it is certainly one of the best leather cases for the phone on the market, the material used does not naturally form a patina as you would expect from genuine leather.
But the hard part right now is that if you want a leather cover for a Pixel 6, Bellroy is pretty much the only choice. A quick search through Amazon shows a lot of leather cases for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, but you would be hard pressed to find well-known names outside of Bellroy. dbrand is one of the only names that comes to mind to add a leather look to the Pixel 6, but the company case is only leather on the back, not the sides, and it’s also a thicker design.
Google is preparing to launch an “Switch to Android” app for iPhones, and our team was able to get started with the app prior to its arrival. As you might expect, the application is designed to make it easy to wirelessly copy your most important data from your old iPhone to your new Android device.
All in all, Switch to Android is a nice straightforward experience that makes it as easy as possible to leave the walled garden of the iPhone ecosystem. It’s not clear at this time when Google intends to launch Switch to Android widely, but given how long Apple’s own “Move to iOS” app has been in the Play Store, Google’s alternative will come years later. , than it should have.
The rest of this week’s top stories follow:
Android |
Apps and Updates |
Google Assistant |
Made by Google |
Wearables |
Videos |
FTC: We use revenue-earning auto affiliate links. More.
Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news: