Mint Mobile’s Super Bowl deal gets you three months of service for $20

While you are watching the Super Bowl today and checking out the commercials, the folks at Mint Mobile are launching their newest promotional deal. The carrier is offering three months of service for just $20, and that includes unlimited talk, unlimited text, and a whopping 8GB of LTE data.

Get this Super Deal

You may remember a similar deal over the holidays from Mint Mobile that offered the same three months of service for just $20, but that promotion only included 5GB of monthly LTE data. This new three-month deal, which will expire on Feb. 28, gives you 8GB of LTE data per month, along with unlimited talk and text, for $20.

What are the terms of this new deal? Besides the fact that it will end on Feb. 28, here is the fine print:

• Customers on a trial plan will need to convert to a full plan prior to the end of the promotion period.
• There is a limit of 4 plans per order.
• In this case, “3 months” is the same as “90 days”.

So what exactly is Mint Mobile?

Mint Mobile is a T-Mobile MVNO (mobile virtual network operator), which means that when you sign up for service, you will be using T-Mobile’s network.  You can also use any unlocked smartphone that’s compatible with T-Mobile’s GSM network. The Mint Mobile site has a page that will allow you to check to see if your phone will work with its service.

In case you haven’t guessed, Mint Mobile is one of the few carriers that lets customers pay for more than one month of service at a time. It offers not only three-month service plans but also six-month plans and even 12-month plans so that you can organize your budget accordingly.

Remember, this special Mint Mobile promotion plan, which again offers three months of unlimited talk, unlimited text, and 8GB of monthly LTE data for just $20, ends on Feb. 28.

Get this Super Deal

And just for fun, here’s Mint Mobile’s first Super Bowl television ad, which will be shown during the game today.

Source: Android Zone

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Learn the entire Adobe Creative Cloud for just $39

Not everyone has artistic talent. But even if your magnum opus is a stick man drawing, you can still become a creative professional. From graphic design to video production, there are countless ways to express yourself while making a living.

The Complete Adobe Mastery Bundle helps you get started, with 11 courses and over 70 hours of video tutorials on the software used by top creative professionals. Right now, you can pick up the training for only $39 with lifetime access included.

As machines start to take over mundane tasks, creative skills are now more valuable than ever. This training puts you in prime position to find a job or start your own freelance hustle.

The courses cover a huge range of topics, from outdoor photography to web design. You learn through hands-on video lessons, with loads of projects to try. Along the way, you will get to grips with Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, and other key tools.

You don’t need any previous experience to take these courses, and you should come away with professional-level skills. What’s more, you get advice on finding clients and building a business.

The training is worth $2,189 altogether, but you can get all 11 courses now for only $39.

Check it out!

The AAPicks team writes about things we think you’ll like, and we may see a share of revenue from any purchases made through affiliate links. To see all our hottest deals, head over to the AAPICKS HUB.

Source: Android Zone

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Huawei MateBook 13 review: A beautiful, premium laptop targeting Apple’s MacBook Air

Buy the Core i5 Model

Buy the Core i7 model

Right now, Huawei’s biggest hurdle is public perception — the news is hard to avoid. However, the bottom line is Huawei also makes great products. The Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro are great examples, but there’s more to the company than mere phones.

It also offers Windows-based laptops like the new MateBook 13, something you need right now. Why? Keep reading our Huawei MateBook 13 review to find out.

The model supplied for this Matebook 13 review includes Intel’s Core i7-8565U processor, though the company sells a second version with the Core i5-8265U chip. Complementing the Core i7 is Nvidia’s GeForce MX 150 discrete graphics chip, which isn’t in the Core i5 version. Rounding out the Huawei Matebook 13 review unit is 8GB of LPDDR3 memory at 2,133MHz, 512GB on a NVMe PCIe stick-shaped SSD, and a one-touch power button with a built-in fingerprint reader located in the top right corner of the keyboard area.

Available now through Amazon and Newegg, the MateBook 13 packing Intel’s Core i7 retails for a decent $1,299, while the Core i5 model is a lower $999. You can also purchase both versions through Microsoft’s online and brick-and-mortar stores within the next few weeks.

Let’s dig into our Huawei MateBook 13 review!

A beautiful display powering a beautiful design

The Huawei MateBook 13’s super-slim display measures 13 inches diagonally, with a native 2,160 x 1,440 resolution and a pixel density of 195ppi. That’s a 3:2 aspect ratio, meaning videos and games formatted for the typical 16:9 widescreen will render with black borders along the top and bottom edges.

The screen itself relies on a touch-enabled IPS panel offering 178-degree viewing angles and 100 percent of the sRGB color space. It also has a 1,000:1 contrast ratio and a maximum brightness of 300 nits, which is decent enough for working outside on an overcast day. The colors remain beautiful and vivid even at the laptop’s peak brightness setting.

Surrounding the screen are 4.4mm black bezels on the left and right along with a slightly wider black bezel along the top hiding the 1MP camera. According to Huawei, the new laptop boasts an 88-percent screen-to-body ratio — you’ll hardly ever notice the frame — which provide a clean, nearly edge-to-edge viewing experience. Wide frames are so 2000-late.

You won’t find legacy ports here

Connecting the screen to the base is a black hinge consuming most of the rear workspace, which actually looks nice. When you lift the laptop to view the hinge straight-on, you’ll barely see a sliver of space separating the hinge from the base frame. The screen’s bottom bezel even extends down beyond the keyboard area’s viewing surface, so you won’t see any visual “disconnection” between the screen and base.

It’s a little worrisome that the screen’s bottom bezel and hinge cover the cooling system’s vents. There’s definitely enough room for hot air to escape, but when the fans are full throttle and pushing hot air from the CPU and GPU, is that narrow space wide enough to properly vent all the heat? Does this design affect performance when using the MateBook on your lap?

On the laptop’s left side, you’ll find one 3.5mm audio jack and one USB-C port capable of data transfers at 5Gbps and charging the MateBook. On the right you’ll find a single USB-C port at 5Gbps capable of data transfers and DisplayPort output. That’s right, even though this laptop provides two USB-C ports, you can only charge it using the the left one.

There isn’t a standard or microSD card slot for extra storage, which can be problematic for photographers and video editors on-the go. There also isn’t any USB-A connectivity, forcing you to purchase a USB-C to USB-A adapter or USB-C hub to support your peripherals and external devices. Leaving out USB-A connectivity to keep the laptop at 0.59 inches thin is understandable, but we’re definitely surprised by the lack of a card reader.

There isn’t a standard or microSD card slot for extra storage, which can be problematic for photographers and video editors on-the go.

The Core i7 model ships in a space gray finish, while the Core i5 model arrives in mystic silver. The space gray exterior on our Huawei Matebook 13 review unit is simply beautiful and complements the black screen bezels and keyboard keys. There’s nothing “cheap” about its appearance. It’s a sleek and sexy premium design pulled from Huawei’s flagship MateBook X Pro family. Consider the MateBook 13 a half-step down.

You’ll love the edge-to-edge keyboard

The MateBook’s keyboard mostly stretches edge to edge across the base, save for an eighth of an inch on each side. The keys are pleasantly large with a travel distance of 1.2mm, providing a great typing experience. White backlighting provides two brightness levels to illuminate each letter, number, and symbol with white light. It doesn’t include a number pad, but you’ll find controls for brightness, backlighting, media, and more tied to the function keys.

Meanwhile, the MateBook provides a rectangular precision touchpad, a rising standard for Windows-based laptops. Unlike the touchpads of old, which relied on hardware drivers, Windows now does the heavy lifting when manufacturers install specific touchpads. Ultimately, this means Microsoft will continue to improve support long after hardware vendors would have stopped issuing driver updates.

In our testing, the MateBook 13 touchpad was smooth and highly responsive. The wide, smartphone-like surface is ideal because there’s more room to completely push the cursor across the screen without lifting a finger. It also supports two methods of selection: Double-tap on a shortcut / link or push down on the touchpad twice for a tactile-based approach. Left- and right-click inputs are unmarked in their typical designated corners.

Decent audio despite speaker placement

This laptop relies on a pair of two-watt speakers on the bottom, projecting sound away from your ears. The ideal scenario is having speakers mounted in the keyboard area, but since the design includes a discrete graphics chip, a two-chip cooling system, a 0.59-inch form factor, and an edge to edge keyboard, the bottom was likely the only place engineers could mount the speakers. Had Huawei taken the MacBook Air route and shortened the keyboard width, facing speakers may have been possible.

Still, the sound isn’t bad. Audio not only bounces off your lap or desktop surface but pushes through the keyboard area with surprisingly very little metallic interference. In other words, what you hear isn’t full like speakers blasting audio into your face, but it isn’t horribly muffled either. Even at full blast, audio is stable, rich, and untouched by vibrating components and metal.

Processor performance rivaling the Road Runner

Intel’s Core i7-8565U is an eighth-generation “Whiskey Lake” four-core chip that launched during the third quarter of 2018. Its base speed cruises at 1.8GHz  and tops out at 4.6GHz. Drawing an average 15 watts of power, this chip targets thin and light notebook designs providing loads of performance without generating loads of heat.

Intel’s latest Core i7 CPU scored a 5120 in the Geekbench single-core test and a 16983 in the multi-core test, higher scores than most tests performed on this chip. It clearly beats the Core i5-8250U processor in Acer’s recent Chromebooks, and even surpasses the Core i7-6820HK processor in our Alienware 17 R4, indicating we might need to refresh and re-test the gaming laptop in the near future.

Another benchmarking method is using Handbrake to convert video. Here the Core i7-8565U fell behind our Alienware’s sixth-generation Core i7 processor, converting video in 248.87 seconds versus the Alienware at 231.09 seconds. Just for giggles, we ran the same conversion on a 2017 HP Notebook 15 with a Pentium N3540 chip. It converted the same video in 1,383.72 seconds. Ouch.

Backing the CPU is crazy-fast storage provided by a Samsung NVMe PCIe SSD. It has an average sequential read speed of 3,521MB per second and an average sequential write speed of 1,884MB per second, faster than the stick-shaped SSD installed in our Alienware laptop, and both Acer’s Chromebook Spin 13 and clamshell Chromebook 13.

The combined CPU and SSD enable programs and apps to load near-instantly.

The combined CPU and SSD enable programs and apps to load near-instantly. The laptop itself reaches the Windows 10 login screen in just over five seconds after powering on. Touch the power button and Windows Hello logs you in just under another second.

Overall, if you want a zippy Windows 10 laptop, the MateBook 13 is the perfect solution. If you want a thin and light notebook capable of playing games at 1440p, you’ll need to look elsewhere, despite this laptop’s standalone GeForce graphics chip.

Take a break from work with the MX 150

Nvidia’s discrete GeForce MX 150 graphics chip includes 2GB of dedicated GDDR5 video memory. It’s the mobile version of Nvidia’s budget-oriented GT 1030 graphics card for desktops. The chip is definitely good to have for video and photo editing, along with 3D animation. You can play games too, just don’t expect high resolutions and details.

The MX 150 generates high framerates in Rocket League. With a 1080p resolution, we experienced an average of 61.18fps using the “performance” preset, and a slightly lower 57.68fps using the “high” preset. Increase the resolution to the laptop’s native 1440p resolution, and the average dips down to 49.88fps using the “performance” setting and 40fps using the “high” setting.

For something new like Far Cry 5, the best you’ll see is a 23fps average running at 1080p on the “low” graphics preset. Crank that resolution up to 1440p and the average framerate drops to 13fps. In comparison, the GTX 1080 in our Alienware laptop manages a 76fps average at 1080p and a 71fps average at 1440p using the “low” setting.

Huawei doesn’t pitch the MateBook 13 as a gaming laptop, but Rocket League is a good example of what this device can do.

The Windows Edition of Final Fantasy XV is just as brutal on the MX 150. Using the “lite” setting at 1080p, the laptop managed framerates between 18fps to 30fps. Increase the details to “standard” and you’ll see the framerate drops between 13 and 21fps. Don’t even attempt to run the game on “high” or crank the resolution to 1440p.

Of course, Huawei doesn’t pitch the MateBook 13 as a gaming laptop, but Rocket League is a good example of what this device can do if you need a break from work. Lightweight games are fine but heavy-hitters like Far Cry 5, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, and Destiny 2 won’t run very well. Get a notebook from MSI or Alienware if that’s what you want.

Battery life could be better

Rounding out the Huawei MateBook 13 review is its 41WHr battery. Huawei says you can get up to 9.6 hours on a single charge while playing local 1080p video. We tested that claim and looped the recent Aquaman 1080p trailer until the laptop switched off. With the display set at 50 percent brightness, we hit nine hours and 19 minutes, nearly reaching Huawei’s reported duration. When we cranked the brightness up to 100 percent, the battery lasted seven hours and 20 minutes.

With the display set at 50 percent brightness, we hit nine hours and 19 minutes, nearly reaching Huawei’s reported duration.

However, our web browser test — we put a web browser in a page loading loop until the battery died —revealed slightly lower numbers. With the screen brightness set to 50 percent, you can search the web up to four hours and 41 minutes. Increase the brightness to 100 percent and battery longevity falls back to three hours and 44 minutes.

We saw better numbers with the Lenovo Chromebook C330 and the Acer Chromebook 13 across both tests, though they have slightly bigger batteries. Given you’ll do more than binge-watch local video all day, mixed usage could land you six hours or more on a single charge at 50 percent brightness. To get the best battery life, make sure Windows automatically changes screen brightness once you unplug the laptop.

The battery life could have everything to do with the laptop’s overall portability. It’s extremely thin, after all, and weighs a mere 2.86 pounds. It’s the ideal solution for on-the-go workers. It’s not horribly bulky and doesn’t weigh your shoulders down in a backpack during long treks through airports and convention halls. The only drawback is you’ll need to carry that extra USB-C hub or adapter if you have peripherals.

A surprisingly clean Windows 10

The Huawei MateBook 13 review unit shipped to us with the Signature Edition of Windows 10 Home Build 17134. That means Huawei provides a “clean” Windows 10 installation, unlike other well-known PC manufacturers. The only out-of-the-box “bloatware” we found were the typical junk apps pre-installed in Windows 10 like Candy Crush Saga, Cooking Fever, Royal Revolt 2: Tower Defense, and a few others. We didn’t even find McAfee’s dreaded “trial” present gobbling up system memory.

However, the MateBook 13 isn’t without proprietary software. Huawei supplies its own PC Manager tool for checking the laptop’s overall health. With the click of a button, you can test the hardware for any issues and update any out-of-date driver. PC Manager also provides the user manual and a link to Huawei’s online troubleshooting database.

Huawei MateBook 13 review: Final thoughts

The MateBook 13 has nothing to do with with what you’ve heard about Huawei in the news. It’s a great thin and light Windows 10 notebook packed with loads of power, making it a great on-the-go solution for professionals and media editors. It’s decent for gamers, though playing the latest titles like Far Cry 5 and Final Fantasy XV — even at 1080p — isn’t ideal.

The two real big complaints about this laptop relate to connectivity. The MateBook 13 really needed at least a microSD card so photo and video editors don’t need to juggle hubs and adapters. A full USB-A port for standard mice and keyboards would be ideal too, though given the slim form factor, that’s not physically possible. In both cases, customers will need to purchase and carry adapters and hubs to support their external devices.

Outside those two gripes, we love this notebook. Just like Huawei’s two Mate 20 phones, it’s sexy and powerful. You’ll fall in love at first sight and want hold it close and feel its cold metal against your cheeks.

Okay, maybe not.

Regardless, you simply can’t go wrong with Huawei’s MateBook 13. It’s definitely a great Windows-based alternative to the latest MacBook Air.

Buy the Core i5 Model

Buy the Core i7 model

See also:

• The best laptops of CES 2019
• The best Chromebooks of CES 2019
• Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite is aimed at families, featuring kid-friendly UI

Source: Android Zone

The post Huawei MateBook 13 review: A beautiful, premium laptop targeting Apple’s MacBook Air appeared first on TuneMaster.ml.

10 best NFL apps and football apps for Android

American Football is vastly popular in North America. The NFL is, by extension, among the most profitable and popular professional sports organizations out there. Most enjoy the sport either via television, live events, or playing pickup with friends outside. Football season is long, and includes both professional and college level sports. Your smartphone can help make sense of all of the action. Here are the best football apps and NFL apps for Android! It’s not listed, but of course, YouTube is an excellent app for football fans as well for highlights and such!

Here are some more football apps for you!

10 best sports news apps for Android

10 best European football apps and soccer apps for Android!

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ESPN

Price: Free / $4.99+ per month

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

ESPN has a ton of content for football fans. In fact, it’s probably the sport that ESPN takes most seriously. It covers the basics, such as scores, schedules, news, rumors, trades, and stuff like that. ESPN also has a fairly decent fantasy football option. Their newer streaming service, ESPN+, also streams a variety of sporting events. They don’t do NFL streaming, sadly. However, you can see some college football there. The app is a little heavy. Those looking for a more minimal experience won’t enjoy this. However, if you don’t mind that ESPN has a ton of stuff, it’s not a bad way to go.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Feedly

Price: Free

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

There are a ton of NFL and football news sites. Most of them have dedicated apps with a ton of extra features. Feedly helps simplify the experience. It’s an RSS news app. You can add all of the football blogs and sites you enjoy. The app provides a single feed for all of those sites. It can’t do stuff like schedules, live scores, or anything like that. However, it’s probably the best way to get news from everywhere without downloading a bunch of apps for each website. Plus, Feedly is free and cross-platform. It also works with iOS devices.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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NFL Mobile

Price: Free / $99.99 per year / $24.99 per quarter

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

NFL Mobile is the NFL’s official app. It has a decent amount of content. You can find schedules, news, stats, highlights, trades, rumors, and more. The app also lets you follow specific teams and news for only that team. It’s a little clunky, but nothing too bad. This is also the home of NFL’s Game Pass streaming service. It costs $99.99 per year or $24.99 per quarter of a year. You can watch every non-blackout football game. That means you can’t watch home team games, but you can watch anything else. There are other options for live streaming, but the content and news is fairly top notch.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Sling TV (or similar apps)

Price: $20+ per month

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Sling TV (and similar services) stream live television. They don’t stream football specifically. However, all of them come with football packages and most of them come with local sports channels at the very least. You can watch home team games this way as well as college football. Plus, there are all of the other cable channels for the days of the week without football. There are five major options in the United States. They include PlayStation Vue, Sling TV, Hulu, YouTube TV, and DirectTV Now. We have a comparison video linked just below if you want to see what they can all do.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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theScore

Price: Free

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

theScore is a decent sports news app. It offers up news on a variety of sports, including the NFL and NCAA football. It shows the usual stuff, including scores, stats, schedules, lineups, and news. You can also customize the experience with your favorite teams and/or sports. It’s a solid source of news. The app’s UI is in the middle of a revamp at the time of this writing. Some people like it while others don’t. The app is entirely free, though.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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We have some more app list recommendations to check out!

10 best NBA apps and basketball apps for Android!

10 best fantasy sports apps for football, baseball, basketball, and hockey

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Thuuz Sports

Price: Free

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Thuuz Sports is another excellent sports news app. It comes with the basics. You can find schedules, scores, stats, and more. The app also rates live games on a scale from 0-100. The hotter and more exciting the game is, the higher the rating. It also has a fantasy sports tracker, alerts, social features, and more. It covers far more than just football or the NFL as well. The app is free with no in-app purchases. It does have advertising, though.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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SofaScore

Price: Free / Up to $2.99

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

SofaScore is a sports scores app and one of the best. It covers sports from all over the world, including hockey, soccer, football, and many more. The app even covers niche stuff like rugby, volleyball, and others. It’s a fairly simple app. You pick the sports you want to keep track of and the app does the rest. You check scores and schedules as needed. This is an excellent football app for fans that also like other sports. It’s also relatively cheap, easy to use, and it even looks nice.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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TuneIn Radio

Price: Free / $9.99 per month

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

TuneIn Radio is one of the better radio apps. It has a variety of stations, including talk radio, comedy, AM radio, FM radio, audiobooks, and more. That includes sports talk radio stations, local sports radio stations, and even live games. There is an optional subscription service. It boasts live football and NFL games. It has other sporting options as well. The UI is nice and the streams are high quality. This is an excellent way to catch a game while driving or at work. However, it does not do video streams. There are other apps for that.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Twitter

Price: Free

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Twitter can be a horrible place. However, if you can avoid the terrible parts, it’s a great way to check the news. Most NFL teams, NCAA teams, and sports writer personalities have Twitter accounts. You can follow them to get up-to-the-minute scores, news, and updates. There are hundreds of Twitter profiles that deal almost exclusively with sports. You follow them and you’ll see what happens in football before the 11 o’clock news. It’s about the only social network worth using for football and NFL news.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Yahoo Sports

Price: Free

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

Yahoo Sports is among the largest NFL and football news sources out there. It has all of the stuff you’d expect. That includes lineups, stats, schedules, news, scores, trades, rumors, and more. Yahoo also has one of the best fantasy football options, but that does require a different app. Yahoo Sports streamed the Super Bowl in 2018. We don’t know if it will in 2019 also. However, it should be an above average experience for football even without it. Plus, it works well for other sports too.

DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY

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Thank you for reading! Here are some final app lists to check out!

10 best American football games for Android!

10 best sports apps for Android!

If we missed any great NFL apps or football apps, tell us about them in the comments! You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists!

Source: Android Zone

The post 10 best NFL apps and football apps for Android appeared first on TuneMaster.ml.

We ranked 50 failed Google products from best to worst

Google services and products have enriched the lives of tech fans, businesspeople, and basically anyone who’s ever been curious enough to ask a question on the internet.

We all know about Search, Gmail, Maps, Chrome, YouTube, and, of course, Android. We’ve recently seen new names added to the Google hall of fame too — most notably the Pixel smartphone brand and Google Assistant-powered Home smart devices.

Editor’s Pick

Google in 2019: All in on AI

With the release of the Google Pixel 3 in October, Google reaffirmed its position as a worthy contender in the bloody war of the smartphone industry. However, despite the handset’s glowing reviews, the Pixel line …

What about Google’s epic fails?

For all the Mountain View company’s many, many successes, a bunch of apps, devices, and other products it birthed or acquired ultimately floundered and died, often killed in unceremonious fashion.

Websites like Google Cemetery and Killed by Google (as well as Ars Technica‘s Google Kills Product series) are dedicated to tracking the big G’s dead products, so we thought it’d be fun to sift through the corpses and put together a list of the most interesting failed Google projects.

Here are the top 50 products in the Google Graveyard, ranked from best to worst!

Google Nexus (2010 – 2016)

Oh, Nexus. One of the saddest casualties of Google’s axe, the Nexus smartphone series should require no introduction to regular Android Authority readers. While the “core” Android experience lives on with the Pixel line and Android One phones, the Nexus brand gave us some of the greatest handsets ever made, offering killer specs at affordable prices. Google never officially killed the Nexus series, but after three years in the wilderness, it’s time to say goodnight, sweet prince. We miss you.

Related: The most important Android smartphones since the Google Nexus 5

Project ARA (2014 – 2016)

This short-lived project was definitely one of the best concepts nuked by Google. The idea was to divide all major smartphone components into modular parts. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars upgrading the entire phone, customers would simply upgrade a specific component. The ambitious blueprint was diluted over time until Google eventually pulled the plug altogether. This hurts even more in hindsight, as phones continue to surge past the $1,000 mark.

Google Reader (2005 – 2013)

Google launched Reader in 2005 as a free tool to easily aggregate RSS-enabled feeds from multiple sites. Google admitted Reader had “a loyal following,” but still decided to shut down the service as part of its brutal Spring cleaning in 2013, citing a decline in usage. You can still aggregate your content feeds using Feedly and other RSS platforms on desktop, and on Android thanks to a bunch of RSS apps available via the Google Play Store. Many still mourn its loss.

Google Talk (2005 – 2017)

Before Hangouts, Allo, Messages, and Duo, we had Google Talk — Google’s first and probably best messaging app. The service was free and integrated into Gmail, letting you send and receive instant messages within Google’s email client from any device. There were also Google Talk apps for Android, Windows, and Blackberry phones. You could even use Talk to place a real-time video call with a paid Google Voice account. Times changed, though, and Google’s (doomed) desire to plug everything through Google Plus spelled the end for Talk. It was slowly phased out for Hangouts, which later evolved into an enterprise-focused pair of apps for G Suite. Don’t worry, Google has plenty of other apps and services for your messaging and voice needs — too many.

Chromecast Audio (2015 – 2019)

Chromecast Audio was an offshoot of Google’s popular media caster that let users syphon digital music libraries through to non-smart speakers via a 3.5mm jack or mini-TOSLINK socket. The Chromecast Audio was discontinued in January 2019. I still use mine almost every day.

Inbox by Gmail (2014 – 2019)

Google launched Inbox as a Gmail offshoot with a more experimental slant. Innovative features like Smart Reply, snoozing, bundling, and much more gave the Inbox app an AI-powered edge over the standard Gmail client — at least until 2018. Gmail’s redesign incorporated most of Inbox’s smarts. Promises that the product would carry on as normal proved hollow as later that year Google called time on Inbox. Users have until March 2019 to switch to an alternative email app. Sad times.

Google Play Editions (2013 – 2015)

The precursor to Android One, Google Play Edition phones were essentially regular smartphones made by Samsung, HTC, and other OEMs  with stock Android. Almost exclusively available to buy direct from Google, the series included Google Play versions of beloved phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4, Moto G, and HTC One. We don’t necessarily want Play Editions back in their previous incarnation, but we’d sure love to see more Android One-ified models hit the market.

iGoogle (2005 – 2013)

The horribly-named iGoogle was an interactive home page for your browser packed with web-based “gadgets.” You could add and remove gadgets (simple widgets) or move them around within the browser window to fit your needs. Google said the need for iGoogle “eroded over time” due to the maturing capabilities of websites and mobile apps. Plenty of websites and Chrome extensions attempt to recreate iGoogle’s widget-based pages, but they’ll never match the magic of the real thing.

Project Tango (2014 – 2018)

Tango was another stepping stone project for Google. Sensing the dawn of an augmented future for consumer tech (which still hasn’t really arrived), Google built the Tango API for its AR ambitions. We got two Tango phones — the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro and Asus Zenfone AR — before the project was canned in favor of ARCore, an SDK far less hardware-reliant than Tango that only needed a decent smartphone camera to work.

Read more: Tango was Google’s too soon moonshot, but ARCore can do better

QuickOffice (2004 – 2014)

Before Google acquired it, QuickOffice was the go-to office suite for Symbian and Palm devices. It also delivered the de facto document, spreadsheet, and presentation editing apps for Android, before Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides came along. A redundant service by today’s standards, QuickOffice was a superb alternative to Microsoft Office for mobile platforms.

Bump! (2009 – 2014)

If you ever owned an Apple smartphone between the iPhone 4 and iPhone 6 eras, you’ll probably remember Bump! As the name suggests, Bump was a clever little app that involved bumping two phones together to share photos and files with other users. The app sat at number eight in Apple’s all-time top ten charts for free apps in 2011 and amassed hundreds of millions of downloads. It also released on Android, but all versions stopped working after Google bought Bump Technologies and terminated the app’s functionality, all within the space of around four months. A sad end for a hugely popular and incredibly useful app.

Google URL Shortener (2009 – 2018)

Created as a simple tool to shorten web addresses, Google shut down goo.gl just shy of its tenth birthday. As well as shortening URLs, goo.gl links could also send web surfers directly to specific apps on iOS and Android. Google cited changes to how people access webpages and content as its reason for discontinuing the URL-shrinking service, but it’ll be sad to see the funky-looking short URLs go offline for good on March 30, 2019.

Google Desktop (2004 – 2011)

This was a nifty sidebar program you could install on Linux, MacOS, and Windows. It placed a search toolbox on your desktop for scanning through local files, and offered quick access to a clock, weather, news feed, Gmail feed, and photos stored locally on the PC, among other things. Google killed off Desktop as it began to focus more on cloud storage. It was a useful bit of software that naturally became obsolete as desktop OS’ began to offer similar built-in features.

Google Fast Flip (2009 – 2011)

Before Google News, the Mountain View firm had a news aggregator called Fast Flip. The Google Labs project collected news from across the world and presented them in a clever, microfiche-esque style using text and images.

Google Labs (2006 – 2011)

Google Labs was a playground for experimental projects and was responsible for a lot of the abandoned projects listed in this article. The platform ran for five years, during which time “adventurous users” got to have some fun testing Google’s experiments and provide direct feedback to the engineers and researchers. At the time, Google’s stance was to “launch early and often,” but that seemingly changed when former CEO Larry Page said the company needed to put “more wood behind fewer arrows.” Several days later, Google announced the closure of Google Labs, citing Page’s cumbersome wood-based analogy.

Google SMS Search (2004 – 2013)

For a time, Google SMS Search was the company’s solution to wanting to look things up without having internet access. It let mobile phone users text queries (weather reports, sports updates, currency conversions, and the like) to a pre-set number. That number was 466453, which just so happens to spell Google on alphanumeric keypads. Clever!

Google Gears (2007 – 2011)

Gears was an open-source browser extension that enabled web-based apps to run offline. That sounds great, so why is it dead? All those features were built into HTML5 and hard-coded into web browsers, which completely eliminated Gears purpose for existing when the new platform launched. At the time, it was a noble solution to a common problem faced by web app devs.

Google Now (2012 – 2016)

A necessary evil to get us to the promised land of Google Assistant, Google Now was a Search feature with nascent voice support that bombarded Google app and Android users with predictive information cards. Assistant’s improved AI would eventually streamline all of Now’s more cluttered UI elements and transform Now’s stilted, one-way conversations into something a little more natural. It was still way better than Siri though. Siri sucks.

Nexus Player (2014 – 2018)

After failing to get the Nexus Q off the ground (more on that later) and with its semi-replacement Google Chromecast flying high, Google turned to Asus and Intel for help with its efforts to bring its nascent Android TV platform to the masses. Despite receiving support for two years after its discontinuation, Google never really got behind its full-fledged digital media player, instead focusing on Chromecast and letting other, better Android TV boxes represent the OS.

Google Moderator (2008 – 2015)

Made famous by then President-elect Barack Obama, Moderator was designed to aggregate a huge pool of user-submitted questions and suggestions based on crowdsourced feedback. A smart idea for sure, but Google eventually took the site offline citing low usage.

Panoramio (2005 – 2016)

Panoramio was a service purchased by Google in 2007 that relied on user-submitted geo-located tagged photos. Google incorporated Panoramio into Google Earth so that users could see additional views of a specific area. Despite the high volume of image uploads by 2016, Google decided to sunset Panoramio in favor of Google Maps for mobile and the Local Guides program. Not a bad product by any means, but certainly a redundant one by the time of its demise.

Urchin (2005 – 2012)

Urchin was the precursor to Google Analytics, a service which would become far and away the most useful web analytics program on the market. Mark this one up as another product on this list that’s more notable for what came after it.

Helpouts (2013 – 2015)

Not to be confused with Hangouts, Helpouts was basically a user-led online helpdesk for anything and everything where “providers” could get paid for offering online support and tutorials. Another service shuttered due to lack of growth, Helpouts was a great idea and, in theory, paved the way for altruistic apps like Be My Eyes. In reality, it was too closely linked with Google Plus’ lackluster ecosystem. It also forced experts to cough up 20 percent of their revenue, which was as unpopular as you might expect.

Orkut (2004 – 2014)

One of the many failed social media apps from Google to make this list (shoutout to Jaiku, which narrowly missed a spot), Orkut gets a higher spot than the others because it enjoyed a brief spurt of popularity in Brazil and India in the late noughties before going right in the bin like every other Google social media platform.

GOOG-411 (2007 – 2010)

GOOG-411 was a telephone directory service that connected callers to relevant business in the U.S. and Canada using voice recognition technology. Unsurprisingly, most people carried on using the traditional 411 line, but apparently the voice data Google collected was integral in early development of voice services like Google Now and, eventually, Google Assistant. It gets a slightly higher ranking just for that.

Google Allo (2016 – 2019)

What if WhatsApp had a digital assistant? It’s a question no one asked, but Google answered it anyway. The Allo messaging app suffered from a serious identity crisis. It wasn’t quite a typical instant messenger, but also definitely wasn’t built for SMS. Many of Allo’s features — like Smart Reply and desktop support — have transferred to Google’s Messages app, and Allo itself will perish for good in March 2019.

Related: How to export your Google Allo chat history and media files

Picasa (2002 – 2016)

Originally developed by Lifescape, Picasa was a free image organizer and editor for Linux, MacOS, and Windows that Google purchased in 2004. Google discontinued the desktop program in 2016 to focus solely on its successor, Google Photos. While some desktop users still mourn Picasa’s loss, the cross-platform support of Google Photos is a huge improvement.

Google Latitude (2009 – 2013)

Latitude allowed smartphone owners to disclose their current location on Google Maps via a Google account. This opt-in service was a good way to keep up with friends and family wherever they were, but only if they shared their location. As part of a Maps redesign, Google chose to discontinue Latitude and integrate its check-in and location features into Google Plus — and we all know how that worked out. Unfortunately for Google, Latitude has become something of a footnote for online check-ins as Facebook’s equivalent feature — introduced in 2010 — is now the de facto way of letting folks know where you are in the world.

Google Code (2006 – 2016)

Google shut down its project hosting service in 2016. For ten years the platform served as a hub for developers, giving them tools to store their code, control revisions, document the project’s progression, and more. Google decided to shut down the service a decade after its creation and moved around 1,000 of its own projects to GitHub, which continues to grow in popularity, and is unquestionably a far superior platform.

Google Body (2010 – 2011)

You’ve probably heard of at least a handful of entries on this list, but there’s a good chance you had no idea Google had a web app for showing 3D models of the human body. You also probably didn’t know that on April Fools’ Day 2011, the site showed a cow instead of a human body. That’s right, there was a Google Cow. It’s honestly a crime this got shut down.

Google Spaces (2016 – 2017)

Yet another Google messaging app that died a quick death, Spaces let users create private group chats for sharing links, photos, and videos. The big selling point was direct integration with YouTube, Chrome, and Search, but no one took any notice and carried on using Messenger, WhatsApp, and other non-Facebook owned social apps. It’ll officially be dead in April 2019.

Dodgeball (2005 – 2007)

Dodgeball was a text-based predecessor to Google Latitude. It let users know when friends and interesting places were nearby. One of the original creators, Dennis Crowley, went on to co-found Foursquare (which built on Dodgeball’s core concepts) after becoming frustrated by Google’s lack of support for the service. Dodge, dip, duck, dive, and dead.

Google Chrome Apps (2010 – 2017)

Google’s attempt to create a utopia of Chrome-based web apps fell on deaf ears, with the company admitting that only one percent of Windows, Mac, and Linux users used Chrome packaged apps a year before its death. Progressive Web Apps are the future, don’t you know?

Google Video (2005 – 2012)

Google Video was a free platform where users could upload video clips for the whole world to see. Google Video came up against impossible competition from YouTube, so Google did what Google is wont to do — it bought YouTube.

Google Listen (2009 – 2012)

The release of Google Podcasts in 2018 saw the big G entering the hotly contested podcast app arena, but it wasn’t Google’s first stab at podcast apps on the Play Store. Google Listen didn’t last long, however, as other, better podcast apps pushed it down the charts and eventually into oblivion.

Google Catalogs (2011 – 2015)

Back when tablets were the hottest new thing in consumer tech, Google waded into the space with Catalogs — a tablet-focused app hosting virtual product catalogs for a variety of retailers. Those same retailers quickly realized they were better off having their own apps, leaving Catalogs as something of a forgotten relic.

Google Schemer (2011 – 2014)

Imagine a bucket list site your friends and family could see online and you’ve basically got Google Schemer. The service was another victim of Google Plus’ unfulfilled ambition to be the Next Big Thing.

Google Answers (2002 – 2006)

Intended for inquisitive people to ask the internet hive mind questions for cash bounties, Answers eventually devolved into a mad house dominated by trolls and spammers. It was replaced with Google Questions and Answers, which also shut down in 2014. Nowadays we have algorithm-based Google Search Answer Boxes for all of our quick-fire questions.

Google Ride Finder (2007 – 2009)

Did you know Google had a ride-hailing service before Uber was even a thing? Ride Finder used the user’s geolocation to find nearby taxis, shuttles, or carpools in 14 U.S. cities. The limited service meant it never really caught on. Uber was formed the same year Ride Finder died and the rest, as they say, is history. It gets some bonus points for being first though.

Google Health (2008 – 2012)

Google Health was a centralized personal health record service where U.S. users could upload their medical data. It was beset by privacy concerns and closed by Google after failing to make a “broad impact.”

Google Sidewiki (2009 – 2011)

Confusingly not a wiki-like platform in the slightest, Sidewiki was essentially a comment section for any website hosted by Google as a browser extension. Website owners hated it.

Nexus Q (2012 – 2013)

Hailed by Google as the ultimate digital media player, the Nexus Q was intended to showcase the magic of technologies like NFC and Android Beam to control all media within the home. Less than a year after its grand reveal at Google I/O 2012, the spherical “social” hub was quietly nixed before it even hit shelves. Preview units were sent out to those who pre-ordered the $300 device for free, but a commercial release was quietly abandoned after the Nexus Q received a truckload of criticism over its high price tag and comparatively limited features.

Google Wave (2010 – 2012)

In the dark days before Slack, we had Google Wave. The web-based collaborative tool borrowed its name from the (excellent) Firefly TV series, enabling users to work together in so-called “waves.” Everyone accessing a single wave could see the other participants type letter by letter in real time as if chatting through an instant messenger. All edits were stored via a timeline, allowing you to see what was edited and when. If that all sounded a bit convoluted and open to abuse, that’s because it was. Google abandoned the project shortly after Wave’s public launch and handed it over to the Apache Software Foundation, which rebranded the service Apache Wave — which it eventually retired in 2018.

Google Offers (2011 – 2014)

After trying and failing to buy Groupon in 2010 for a reported $6 billion, Google decided to take a crack at the deal-of-the-day-style coupon market with its own service, Google Offers. Groupon is still going (for now), Google Offers was canned after three years. That tells you all you need to know really.

Google Dictionary (2010 – 2011)

Why would you need a Google-made Dictionary when websites found through Search already provide all the answers? You wouldn’t!

Google Goggles (2010 – 2018)

A dumb version of Google Lens, Google Goggles was the company’s first stab at creating an image recognition app for smartphones. No one used it. Ever. If anyone says otherwise they’re lying.

Google Hands Free (2016 – 2017)

Do you ever feel a slight pang of embarrassment as you reach for your expensive smartphone or watch to pay for a bag of chips with Google Pay instead of using a card or cold hard cash? Imagine that multiplied by a hundred and that’s Google Hands Free, a Bluetooth-enabled mobile payment system where you had to actually say “I’ll pay with Google” out loud to confirm a transaction.

Voice payments are a great idea in theory, but can we make the activation phrase a lot less cringey next time, please.

Google Plus (2011 – 2019)

Google’s long-awaited answer to Facebook, Google Plus (or Google+) launched in 2011, but never gained even a fraction of the latter’s popularity. The experience was just plain weird, with the final redesign turning the social site into something akin to a tile-based news feed. The final nail hammered into the Google Plus coffin stemmed from a serious need to overhaul the platform’s privacy and security components after a massive security hole was discovered. Of all of Google’s many social projects, Google Plus represents its most high-profile failure. The doomed social network will be erased from existence for good on April 2, 2019.

Opinion: Here lies Google Plus: Why it never scored (a lasting audience)

Google Lively (2008 – 2008)

Back when creepy virtual life simulators like Second Life and Habbo Hotel took the internet by storm, Google attempted to cash in on the hype with Lively — a virtual world sim with user-created avatars and virtual chat rooms. It lasted just five months.

Knol (2008 – 2012)

It’s deliciously ironic that the first search hit you get for Knol — Google’s answer to Wikipedia — is a Wikipedia entry about it written in the past tense.

Google Buzz (2010 – 2011)

Buzz was the search giant’s major attempt at social networking before Google Plus. Serving as a social component within Gmail, Buzz was a bit like Twitter, allowing users to post status updates, photos, videos, and links. Google retired the service just over a year after it launched due to privacy issues that cost Google a hefty $8.5 million lawsuit settlement. The crime? Using Gmail information for a social platform without asking users for permission. Oops.

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That’s our list of failed Google products! Are there any projects we missed that you love(d)? Were you disappointed to see your favorite rank lower than expected? Be sure let us know in the comments below.

Source: Android Zone

The post We ranked 50 failed Google products from best to worst appeared first on TuneMaster.ml.