The IT Nerd

Google today launched the first Android P developer preview which available for download now at developer.android.com.

Some notes on what’s on offer for download:

The preview includes an updated SDK with system images for the Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, and the official Android Emulator. Unlike last year, there is no emulator for testing Android Wear on Android P.

Interesting that there’s nothing there to test Android Wear devices. I guess that has something to do with the fact that Android Wear devices pretty much got hammered by Apple Watches in the marketplace. Or they haven’t gotten around to it yet. Who knows?

But I digress.

Why should you care? Here’s what Android P…. One has to wonder what food item that will be used to market this OS…… Popsicles perhaps?…… Has going for it:

• Android P offers support for “the latest edge-to-edge screens with display cutout for camera and speaker,” with a new “DisplayCutout” class for outlining the size and shape of a notch on an Android device. Seeing as Android device makers are copying the iPhone X and its notch.
• Indoor positioning APIs so that your phone will more accurately grab a location indoors.
• Enhanced notifications
• Multi-camera support
• HEIF image support
• Restricted access to the mic, camera, and other hardware
• Open Mobile API for NFC payments and secure transactions

Expect this OS to ship sometime in Q3.

Google has a new initiative to reduce malware in the Android ecosystem. Called Google Play Protect, it’s supposed to catch the bad stuff before it ends up on your Android  smartphone. Because lots of bad stuff ends up on Android smartphones. And that’s a big problem.

However, it appears that it will not do much for you. Tests by German malware experts AV-Test indicate that Google Play Protect detected just 65.8 percent of recent malware samples, rising to 79.2 percent of malware of around a month old. Meanwhile, third party solutions caught pretty much everything that was thrown at it. The net result was that Google Play Protect finished dead last in this test.

I’m not sure what Google is going to do about it, but I know what you should do. Forget Google Play Protect and invest in a third party anti-virus app that was tested by AV-Test as it seem Google can’t protect you from the bad stuff that’s out there.

Well, this is potentially going to be a problem for reasons that I will get to in a bit. If you’re using an Android device and it’s not running Android Oreo which is the latest and greatest from Google, then you’re vulnerable to an “Overlay Attack” as per Palo Alto Networks who spill the details here. Here’s how the attack works in short:

1. Download a malicious app from the Google Play Store.
2. The app draws a bogus screen for users to click on (for example, to install an app or accept a set of permissions), hiding what’s really happening.
3. Users accept the permissions that the malicious app serves up.
4. Pwnage.

Android is supposed to prevent this happening. But any Android device not running Oreo doesn’t. Thus there need to be patches for this and soon. Here’s the problem. The Android ecosystem is notorious for being slow to deliver patches because of the diversity of devices and quite frankly the manufacturers of these devices not having security as a top of mind item. So it is entirely possible that this threat might be out there for months before devices get patched. If they get patched at all. And that ignores the fact that the malicious apps are being served up from Google Play which is another huge problem. Clearly Android users have something to worry about.

Google has announced the next-generation version of its Android operating system. The name will be Oreo as in the cookie. Much like with Kit Kat, there’s a clear tie in with the product in question as evidenced by this video:

Key features include:

• Notification Dots to make it easier to see which apps have new content to display.
• A long tap on an app icon now displays information like the last notification received.
• App widgets which is much like 3D Touch does on iOS.
• Picture-in-picture support allows users to watch video content while using other apps, which is coming to iOS.
• A new autofill feature remembers login information to allow for quicker username and password entry.
• Support for new Unicode 10 emoji is included.

You can see the full feature list here.

The update is available today through Google’s Android Open Source Project, with Google planning to roll it out to Pixel and Nexus devices in the near future as soon as carrier testing is complete. If you own some other Android phone, you may have to wait a while for it to appear on your device as device manufacturers in the Android space tend not to be too quick to roll these updates out.

Some Android phones come out of the box with the TouchPal keyboard (which for the record is also available for iOS). The cool thing about this keyboard is that it allows for quick and easy typing and ease of entry of Emojis. Plus it allows for the usage of languages such as Chinese and Arabic among many others. The not so cool thing is that while it is a free keyboard, it has an ad based model. In other words, ads display as you use the keyboard and even on the lock screen. HTC got blasted by users for this recently as their phones come with the TouchPal keyboard. But this isn’t a new issue as blogger Dan Levy noted when he reviewed the ZTE Axon back in 2016. He also noted the fact that when he reached out to TouchPal on Twitter, their response to is query as to why there were ads was to say that they had to make money somehow. Seriously, they did say that and he has the screenshots to prove it.

#PRFail

Here’s the biggest problem with the whole TouchPal ad issue. I think it’s one thing if you choose to download a “free” keyboard that is ad supported. After all, Google Play tends to warn you about that sort of thing and you’re making a choice to use a product that is ad supported. But when it comes bundled with a smartphone that I just paid a lot of money for, I think you should have a reasonable expectation to get something that is ad free. After all, why should I be effectively paying a smartphone vendor to display ads on my brand new smartphone? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

As a result, you may be thinking that you want to ditch this keyboard if you either installed it from your favorite app store, or you got it with whatever Android phone you have. The question is, what are good replacement keyboard options? I’ve complied four very replacement options for your perusal:

Google Keyboard: The best option for Android uses may be to simply use the Google Keyboard which is also free. The Google Keyboard has gesture typing, a learning dictionary that saves words you introduce to it, text expansion built-in, personalized predictive text based on your typing habits, speech-to-text features, and support for 120 languages.

SwiftKey: SwiftKey uses Artificial Intelligence to automatically learn your writing style, including the emoji you love to use (if you use emoji), the words that matter to you and how you like to type. That means autocorrect and predictive text that actually works because it adapts to you. It supports a large number of languages as well. It’s also free without relying on ads.

Swype: This was the original swipe-to-type/gesture-typing keyboard, and it still comes on a number of Android headsets by default. It supports a ton of languages and gets high praise from Android users. The company does have free and paid options. But the paid option is beyond cheap being under $2 so I would seriously recommend going that route.

Fleksy: It’s a minimalist keyboard with insanely great accuracy, high customization, and support for 47 languages. This is a keyboard that is designed for tap-typists, not people who love or are used to gesture-typing. If that’s you, the $5 that this app is worth is money well spent.

Are there other Android keyboards that you would recommend? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

UPDATE: I got a Twitter direct message from Dan Levy pointing out that TouchPal is capable of taking over your lock screen and serving up ads even if this isn’t your default keyboard. He pointed me to a thread on Android Central that discusses how to disable this “feature.”

UPDATE #2: ZTE reached out to me to say the following:

The version of TouchPal’s keyboard that is pre-installed on ZTE devices does not contain or display advertisements. Users will only see ads in the TouchPal theme store if they install/update to the Google Play version of TouchPal. The two versions are different, with the Google Play version being ad-supported. Of course, users are also free to install other keyboards on any ZTE device

This story is still in flux, so I will likely be updating it during the day. But based on commetary from Reddit, Android Pay seems to be available in Canada. But at the present time, Scotiabank seems to be the only bank in Canada that has support for Android Pay. No other bank in Canada has support at this time. What’s also strange is that a look at the Scotiabank website doesn’t have any mention of Android Pay support. That’s odd. Maybe the website is being updated or this is an unintentional activation of the technology?

If you feel like being an early adopter, feel free to try out Android Pay. You need to have Android Pay, version 1.12.141346482 on your Android device. If you do try it, please let us know how it goes by leaving a comment below. In the meantime, I’ll be working my sources to see if I can get additional details.

UPDATE 11/13/2016: A number of readers have reached out to me stating that it’s no longer possible to use their Scotiabank card with Android Pay. So it looks like this was a mistake of some sort.