Volvo’s first electric car will also be the first vehicle with standalone Android Auto

Polestar

Android Auto support has been put in a large number of cars on the road, allowing owners to navigate to their destination with Google Maps, listen to their playlists and more much. However, all of them require the use of a connected smartphone in order to work, either with a cable or, in a few instances, wirelessly. The good news is Google has been working on a standalone version of Android Auto that will work without a smartphone for a while now. This week, we finally got word on the first car that will have it installed.

The vehicle is the Polestar 2 from Volvo, which will also be the first all-electric car from that company. According to a brief press announcement (via Android Police), more information on the Polestar 2 will be revealed “in the coming weeks”, but the actual production of the car will not happen until 2020. The statement does say the car will be the first with “Google Android HMI, which in turn is also the debut of the in-car version of Google Assistant.”

We got a quick preview of what a standalone Android Auto system might look like, and how it will work, at Google I/O in May 2018, via a Dodge Ram 1500 concept car. We saw how this system could be used by the driver with its large tablet-style display and its voice command features. The driver of such a car could ask Google Assistant to lower the inside temperature of the vehicle or ask when they will need to refuel the car. Because this is a standalone version of Android Auto, it will also have its own version of the Google Play Store, so car owners will be able to download and install apps that could be made specifically for cars.

So far, Volvo is the only car maker to announce plans to support the standalone edition of Android Auto. There’s no word on how many Polestar 2 car units will be made, so its availability could be rather limited. Hopefully, we will learn more about Google’s future plans for Android Auto in 2019.

Source: Android Zone

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Page Builder is the cheap and easy way to build a website

Page Builder Pro

It wasn’t that long ago that you needed coding skills to build a website, which might have meant paying some nerdy kid to do it for you. Well, those days are over. It’s never been cheaper or easier to put a site together, especially with this Page Builder deal we’ve stumbled across.

Page Builder is how building a website should be. You just choose one of the great themes or templates, then fiddle around with it to your heart’s content. If you’re in a hurry you can just throw your own text up there and you’re already done.

If you want to make it a little more personalized, you can utilize any of the hundreds of pre-designed elements to easily modify your site. Essentially, you can customize the site as much as you like, and it’s all very user-friendly.

Page Builder has other great features too. It’s mobile-friendly and it can help you sell products, which is why many people are building a site in the first place. It also helps to optimize the SEO of your site, sending you up the Google rankings and driving more traffic to your page.

Page Builder Pro at a glance:

  • Build your dream website with zero programming knowledge.
  • Choose one of Page Builder’s professional themes and customize as you like.
  • Access thousands of pre-designed elements to add to your page or make your own from scratch.
  • Build the perfect site for your business with mobile and SEO-friendly templates.
  • Run your site with zero hosting fees.
  • Create your own site with unlimited bandwidth, custom popups, online chat, and more.

The one-year subscription to the Page Builder Pro package is worth $150, but this week is your chance to pick it up for just $19.

If you think you might want your site beyond 2019, there are huge price drops on the three-year and lifetime subscriptions too. The longer you sign up for, the better value you get.

The deals are just this week, so time is running out. Hit the button below to find out more.

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.


Looking for a new phone or plan? Start here with the Android Authority Plan Tool:

This smart tool lets you filter plans by phone, price, data tiers, and regional availability. Stop overpaying for cell service you hate and a phone that you’re tired of. Use our Compare Phones & Plans tool to fully customize your mobile experience and painlessly transition from one carrier to another!

Source: Android Zone

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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 still has a very small market share, especially compared to popular lines from Samsung or Huawei.

While Google’s ambitions for smartphone dominance may have a long way to go, it made huge strides in 2018 with Google Home hardware products like the Google Home Mini. It also solidified its reputation as the reigning king of the AI and virtual assistant world.

Let’s take a look at how Google ended 2018, and what’s likely to come in 2019.

Pixels are selling, but market share is still small

The back of the Google Pixel 3.

The Pixel 3 XL was probably the most successful smartphone of 2018 in one metric: organic publicity. While Google likely spent millions promoting the phone, the leak of black market prototype devices gave the Pixel 3 more promotion than Google could ever buy.

Months before the official launch of the Pixel 3 was even revealed, the public had already seen the Pixel 3 XL from every angle. We saw unboxing videos, full reviews, and photography samples before Google ran even one official ad for the device.

However, even with all this promotion, the Google Pixel 3 was no sales juggernaut. According to revenue estimates, the Pixel line — which includes Pixel smartphones, the Google Pixelbook, and the Google Pixel Slate — earned about $1.78 billion in combined gross profit in 2018. It might seem like a lot, but Samsung’s mobile division made $2 billion in gross profit from its smartphone sales in just the third quarter of 2018. That was a bad quarter, too.

The Pixel line is doing well — if you don’t compare it to any other major smartphone on the market.

Granted, Samsung offers many different smartphones, while Google only has one line, but that doesn’t negate how Pixel smartphones don’t earn Google nearly as much revenue as competitors’ devices.

Another metric illuminating Google’s lack of market share is its own Android distribution report. The most recent report from October 26, 2018, shows devices running Android 9 Pie — which would theoretically include every Pixel smartphone at that point — make up less than a tenth of a percent of all active Android devices.

Editor’s Pick

One tenth of a percent of the 2 billion active Android devices is 20 million devices. That means we can estimate there have been less than 20 million Pixel smartphones sold since the original Google Pixel launched in 2016.

Once again, 20 million might seem like a lot of smartphones for two years of sales, but in just the 2017 fiscal year, Apple sold over 216 million iPhones.

All of this data points to one thing: Google’s ambitions in the smartphone market have a very long way to go.

The one thing Google has over its competition is software. Along with a steady stream of Android updates, the Pixel smartphone line has arguably the best camera software of any smartphone in the history of smartphones. It also has unique AI-based features that competitors have yet to match.

We will just have to wait and see if Google can turn those superior products into more sales.

Google’s Chrome OS hardware isn’t gaining traction

Google’s Chrome OS is doing astoundingly well, especially in the education sector. By the end of 2017, in the United States, almost 60 percent of mobile computing shipments to schools from kindergarten to grade 12 were Chromebooks.

School systems love Chrome OS. The operating system is easy for kids to learn and use, and the hardware costs a fraction of what Windows laptops go for.

So why isn’t the Google Pixelbook or the recently-released Google Pixel Slate a best-selling computer on the market?

That answer is simple, too: price.

Google will never gain any traction in the laptop market if it doesn’t release hardware at an affordable price.

Competitor companies like Samsung, Asus, and Acer sell Chromebooks like hotcakes by keeping the devices as cheap as possible. Google is taking the opposite approach and creating top-tier hardware with a top-tier price tag. The entry-level variant of the Pixel Slate is a whopping $800 if you buy it with the (one would say necessary) keyboard sleeve. A maxed-out model of the Slate with its keyboard sleeve would cost you no less than $2,000.

Editor’s Pick

If Google wants to make a dent in the laptop market, it needs to abandon the idea of selling Chromebooks at Apple prices, at least for now. The Pixel Slate is powerful, beautiful, and altogether awesome, but the people ready to spend that much money on a laptop or tablet will just buy a Microsoft Surface Pro or Apple MacBook instead. It seems like the Pixel Slate was simply made for Google fans.

Maybe Google will be able to command $2,000 for a Chromebook years down the line. For now, it’s a fool’s errand.

Smart speakers are Google’s success story of the year

Google Home Hub logo

Despite the ho-hum progress of Pixel smartphones and laptops, Google’s smart speaker hardware is a force to be reckoned with. In 2016, it was estimated Google earned a gross profit of $49 million off its entire line of Home devices. In 2018, Home products will earn Google an estimated gross profit of $847 million, an increase of over 1,728 percent in two years.

If you look at revenues instead of profits, things get even more spectacular. In 2018, it’s estimated Google made $3.4 billion in revenue off its Home hardware, which is about the same amount it made off Pixel hardware.

A Pixel smartphone costs much more than most Google Home hardware. At $50 a pop, Google could potentially have sold over 50 million Google Home Minis in 2018.

Google is moving massive amounts of Google Home hardware — and the numbers are only going to get bigger.

Unfortunately, the two major companies in the smart speaker market — Google and Amazon — don’t report how many products they ship. Using estimates from market research firms and miscellaneous related data, it’s safe to assume Google is gobbling up market share from Amazon.

Editor’s Pick

Additionally, numerous research firms report Google Assistant — which powers Google Home hardware — is the best virtual assistant currently available. Most reviews of smart speakers also conclude that Google Home hardware is the best you can buy.

This is all fantastic news for Google, as AI and virtual assistants are the future. Although Google’s cash cow right now is still Google Search, it won’t be that way forever. Google knows years from now, its virtual assistant will be its cash cow, and the company has already set itself in the lead.

An interesting thing to note about Google Home hardware is price. A Google Home Mini is $50 and a Google Home Hub smart display is $150. Can it be a coincidence that these priced-to-move units are the best thing going for Google’s hardware division right now?

There’s still plenty of competition

The OnePlus 6T next to the Google Pixel 3 XL.

Google Search has little competition around the world. Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Chrome are also practically untouchable in their markets.

This is not the case with Google hardware devices like the Google Pixel smartphone or Google Pixel Slate. Even the runaway success of Google Home faces stiff competition from Amazon and others.

In the smartphone arena, Google faces competitors delivering devices with comparable hardware and lower prices. A phone like the OnePlus 6T undercuts the Google Pixel 3 by hundreds of dollars, delivering more RAM, more internal storage, the same processor, and the same all-glass build. Yes, the Pixel 3 has a far superior camera, but OnePlus understands consumers will buy up a device in droves if it cuts the right corners to keep it cheap.

RELATED: OnePlus 6T vs Google Pixel 3 XL

In the cases of laptops and computers, Google is pricing itself out of the market. The Microsoft Surface Pro tablet is on its sixth generation, which means consumers can find Surface Pros for half the price of a low-end Pixel Slate. To make matters worse, that Surface Pro will be able to run Windows applications which the majority of people are still looking for in a laptop experience.

Editor’s Pick

No matter how fancy of a laptop Google makes, few will buy it if it runs Chrome OS and costs as much as a macOS or Windows device. Consumers will stick with the operating system they know unless Google can give them an incentive to switch — which means dropping the price.

Finally, Google Home hardware is doing incredibly well, but Google’s main competitor Amazon is also doing incredibly well. What’s more, Amazon is doing most things faster than Google. It had its first smart speaker on sale well before Google. Amazon also beat Google to the punch in the smart display market and often releases new features before Google.

It’s a good bet Amazon will launch a new smart speaker product in 2019 and Google will launch its own answer to that product months later.

If Google wants to truly dominate the smart speaker industry, it needs to be faster than Amazon.

Google in 2019

Google is poised to drop some seriously interesting products in 2019. The most interesting is probably the anticipated Google Pixel 3 Lite (which may or may not be its real name).

Up until now, there have been two Pixel phones released each year: the regular Pixel and its XL counterpart. In 2019, however, we anticipate Google will release a mid-range Pixel and Pixel XL, likely delivering the same software experience as the “real” Pixel 3, but with downgraded hardware and specs to make it more affordable.

This could open up the Pixel experience to people in developed nations with more modest budgets, and also potentially allow people in developing countries like India to buy a Pixel. It could be a huge boon for the Pixel line.

For the first time ever, we’ll likely see a mid-range Pixel smartphone in 2019.

We don’t know much for certain about the Pixel 3 Lite, including its price. Google could overprice it and contradict the whole idea. We’ll probably hear more about the Pixel 3 Lite soon.

While we have some info on the Pixel 3 Lite, we haven’t heard anything about Google releasing a mid-tier laptop or tablet. If Google doesn’t have plans to release a Pixel Slate Lite in 2019, it really should. As stated earlier, people who can afford a Pixel Slate probably won’t buy it over a Windows- or macOS-based machine at a comparable price. If Google could deliver a high-end hardware experience in the $500 range (with the keyboard included), it might stand a chance to grab some serious market share.

Editor’s Pick

Google’s Project Stream — which lets you play AAA video games using in your browser — could also help a mid-range Chrome OS tablet sell. If Google could make a Chromebook or tablet run pretty much anything on a virtual server, Chrome OS would really have a chance against Windows and macOS. Project Stream is still in its infancy, though, so it’s unlikely this would make a huge difference this year.

Finally, we didn’t see a Google wearable in 2018. However, with Google’s push of Wear OS and Google Fit, it seems it’s only a matter of time before we see a “Made by Google” smartwatch.

RELATED: 2019 will be a great year for smartwatches and fitness trackers

There’s some truly untapped potential in the wearable market, especially for Google. It could sell a wearable not as a generic smartwatch, but more like a Google Home smart speaker you carry around on your wrist at all times. For that to work, Google would have to adopt the same strategy as it did with its Home hardware: make it great and make it cheap.

Google’s major advantage: Limitless cash

A Google logo.

Unlike pretty much every other hardware manufacturer in the mobile industry, Google practically prints money from its Google Search business. The amount of cash the company pulls in from Search alone helps fund all sorts of risky endeavors (Wi-Fi balloons, anyone?), as well as more straightforward things like the Pixel smartphone.

With that in mind, there really is no excuse for Google to not be one of the best hardware manufacturers in the business. It has the talent, the money, the marketing power, and the infrastructure to do pretty much whatever it wants. That’s why the low adoption rates of the company’s smartphones and tablets are so confounding.

Editor’s Pick

If Google truly wants to dominate the mobile markets, it needs to start from the beginning just like every other company. It needs to release smartly-priced products to get people hooked, and then release better, more expensive products as the business becomes more refined.

This whole strategy of rushing out of the gate charging Apple prices for hardware riddled with problems and out-spec’d by phones half the price simply won’t get the company anywhere. It understands this with Google Home hardware, but not with other divisions.

Google has everything it needs to make 2019 its year. Let’s see if it can do it.

Next: HTC in 2019: Last chance saloon

Source: Android Zone

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UK Deals of the Week: £50 off Pocophone F1 (128GB), 2 Google Home Minis for £59

Android deals Pocophone F1

Welcome to your weekly round-up of the best Android phone deals and offers on Android accessories, Android tablets, smartwatches, general tech, and a little of whatever else is on offer in the world of mobile for buyers in the U.K.!

Editor’s Pick

This week’s deals include a killer sale on the Pocophone F1, big discounts on a Samsung wireless charging stand, two Google Home Minis for less than £60, and much more.

""Amazon Prime Day 2018: Deals, dates, and everything else you should know

Below are the most enticing offers we’ve seen this week hand-picked with a little help from the folks over at HotUKDeals – the U.K.’s biggest deal-sharing community.

Best Android deals Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite

Best Android Deals: Phones

Pocophone F1 (SIM free, 64GB) – £279 (was £329) @ Carphone Warehouse

Pocophone F1 (SIM free, 128GB) – £299 (was £349) @ Carphone Warehouse

Moto G6 (SIM free, 32GB) – £169 (was £219) @ Amazon

Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro (SIM free, 64GB) – £230 (was £249) @ Amazon

Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite (SIM free, 64GB) – £209 (was £259) @ Amazon

Nokia 3310 3G (2017) (SIM free) – £19 (was £39) @ O2

Best Android Deals: Accessories

SanDisk 64GB MicroSDHC Memory Card – £9 w/ Prime (was £19, £10 non-Prime) @ Amazon

Logitech Multi-Device Bluetooth Keyboard – £17 (was £28) @ Amazon

Philips SHB4205WT Flite Hyprlite Bluetooth In-Ear Headphones – £14 (was £59) @ Amazon

Aukey Quick Charge 3.0 USB Wall Charger 18W – £9 w/ Prime (was £13) @ Amazon

Samsung Wireless Charging Desk Stand – £14 (was £59) @ eBay (Samsung UK Store)

Best Android deals Google Home Mini

Best Android Deals: Tech

2 x Google Home Mini – £59 w/ code GOGM2 (was £98) @ Currys PC World

BT Whole Home Mesh Wi-Fi 3 Discs – £148 (was £199) @ Amazon

Samsung Original Level Box Slim Wireless Portable Bluetooth Speaker – £42 (was £99) @ Amazon

Philips Hue Smart Personal Lighting Wireless Bulbs Starter Dimming Kit – £20 (was £29) @ Wickes

More UK content:

Have you seen any amazing Android deals this week? Be sure to share your finds in the comments.

Source: Android Zone

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