Gadgetory

hello again ladies and gentlemen I'm Joe handy the Android authority app guy and welcome back to Android apps weekly this is episode number 155 so let's roll that intro Google toooo has been out for a week and it has already surpassed 5 million installs that's pretty impressive for a video calling service looking to usurp all of the other options out there the launch hasn't been perfect and duo has experienced release bugs but it should be a fairly strong competitor in this space as the platform matures you can pick it up right now for free if you want to reportedly Pandora is close to launching a new music service to compete with the likes of Spotify and others according to The Wall Street Journal the company has been silently negotiating rights with record labels over the last few months pandora seems to be about finished with this process this has been rumored for a long time so it's not a huge surprise however it will definitely be interesting Lenovo and Microsoft announced a new partnership this week the resulting partnership will have future Lenovo devices shipping with Microsoft applications including Skype onedrive and Microsoft's Office suite also this deal covers all of the smart phones under lenovo's umbrella and that includes Motorola devices we don't know which phones will be the first to ship out with these apps installed but we can't imagine that it will be too far off Samsung announced this week that they have processed over 100 million transactions on Samsung pay which has resulted in one point seven eight trillion dollars this info comes a short time before the apps first year anniversary even if you don't like Samsung pay you have to admit that those numbers are pretty impressive if nothing else it serves as proof that mobile payments are taking off in a big way and here's hoping ubiquity comes sooner rather than later Samsung also announced that they were shutting down milk music next month it was announced late last week that Google is retiring from apps for Windows Mac and Linux versions of Google Chrome Google's reasoning for this is twofold the first is that no one's really using these applications outside of Chrome OS and Google Play is likely going to take over in the app department there anyway the second is that the chrome team wants to lighten up Chrome a little bit which is great news the process will start later this year and will complete itself by early 2018 for even more Android apps and games news releases and updates don't forget to check out this week's newsletter which is linked in the description below there you'll find all of the latest news including the latest Pokemon Go news you can use the forum in the written companion which is also linked in the video description below to sign up for the newsletter which we send out every single Sunday and don't forget to check out the android authority app for even faster updates alright folks to take a look at the apps and games that made a big splash over the last week if you want to check out any of these apps or games for yourself you can find those links in the video description below Thrones kingdom at war is a new kingdom building game similar to the likes of clash of clans it features above-average graphics for that genre although many of the feature mirror those of existing games for instance guilds are called orders in this game and the bulk of your experience will be finding and attacking other players you'll also get to choose a hero and find gear for them to equip there is also an including quest system to help keep things a little interesting you should check it out if you're a fan of the genre wall ray is a wallpaper application that boasts a variety of high quality images nature scenes and people photos round out it's fairly large selection and the service boasts about 10,000 photos right now the images are large enough to work on 1440p displays which is great news because not many wallpaper applications focus on providing content at that high of a resolution you won't find any super unique or abstract images which is a little bit of a bummer however if you like nature and need a crispy wallpaper this one is free with no ads and a cheap pro version Agricola is a well-known board game and now it's been ported over to mobile players of this game will be facing off against one another to see who can build the largest most productive farms within the time limit of the game each game lasts 8 rounds and you'll only have 3 workers to play with like most board games the gameplay is mostly centered around strategy but it's not every day you get to create farms on a competitive level it's $4.99 with the only in-app purchase being for DLC opera released a free VPN service this last week and that's kind of a big deal it's fairly difficult finding a VPN service let alone a free one that works as well as this one does creating a VPN is as easy as pressing a button and opera includes a guardian feature that blocks add trackers from following you around the web the whole thing is done through an opera subsidiary called surf easy and it really doesn't take long to learn users have expressed a concern about operas logging practices but you can find their policies online if you're worried see if this will work for you Riptide GP renegade is the latest racer out of one of the best racing franchises out there like his predecessors you'll be racing waverunners against AI opponents in a variety of offense in career mode and there is a PvP mode Bri can race other players if you like if you have a device and multiple controllers you can even play split-screen multiplayer witches awesome the graphics are great and this one has an actual story line which is appreciated it's also relatively inexpensive it's going to be one of the best racing games that's here and it's definitely worth picking up and that about does it for this one folks if you want to keep watching I've linked our Android nougat complete overview up there on the screen and in the video description below don't forget to sign up for that newsletter and keep it tuned to Android Authority because we are your source for all things Android thanks again for watching everybody and have a wonderful day