From an email obtained by Business Insider, it’s alleged that the time-honored tradition of launching a Google April Fools’ Day joke won’t happen this year. The email states that, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it would be in poor taste to have the usual jokey and sometimes-outrageous prank event. Google has canceled its primary prank for 2020, but since the company is so large, the email is encouraging divisions to cancel any of their own smaller Google April Fools’ events they may have had planned.

The changelog is just the obligatory bug fixes and performance improvements, but it looks that Google took advantage of the opportunity to refresh the Dialer and People apps as well, bringing them in line with the design of the Gmail app. Starting with Dialer, Google changed the way it displays the thumbnails of recent contacts – instead of the three most recent contacts at the top followed by a list of other contacts, Dialer now shows the last call at the top, followed by a Speed Dial interface made of two larger card columns, showing the name of the contacts and – in case they had one – their thumbnail picture.

The Android 9 Pie release is the proof in the proverbial pudding that Android as an operating system has hit its stride. Lacking neither underlying features or surface polish, Android 9 Pie is the most complete, comprehensive and consistent version of Android yet. It delivers on many of the promises of Android versions past, bringing us a new navigation system and app overview, better notification handling and resource management, and more embedded AI than you can poke a stick at.

The Asus ROG Phone 2 was already a spec beast, but the company upped the ante earlier this year by revealing the Asus ROG Phone 2: Ultimate Edition. The device is essentially the same as the standard edition (now branded as the Elite Edition), but with some improved specs. So what do you get with the Asus ROG Phone 2: Ultimate Edition? As we mentioned, the device looks very much the same as the vanilla variant, but it does feature a new coat of paint: matte black paint, to be precise.

TL;DR Black Shark has confirmed that its newly launched flagship phone is out of stock due to the chip shortage. This means the chip shortage is affecting current devices too rather than just upcoming phones. We’ve already heard suggestions that upcoming device launches could be affected by the ongoing chip shortage, but it looks like the supply issue is affecting newly released devices too. Black Shark CEO Luo Yuzhou revealed on Weibo (h/t: Gizmochina) that the Black Shark 4 series and the Black Shark 4 Pro in particular is out of stock due to the chip shortage.

Unless you’re strict on spring cleaning, chances are you’ve got a lot of stuff lying around that you really don’t need. If you’ve finally gathered the strength to part with them, there are a number of options available to you to get rid of them. You can give them to friends and family who need the items more than you do, for example. You can also donate items to the less fortunate.

Plan Picks is back with some great new savings on Sprint Flex Leases. You can go big with the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus or cutting-edge with the new iPhone SE. The first option, and best price, is the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus for free. That’s right, zero dollars. Isn’t it great when new phones come out? It almost always means great savings on slightly older devices. Why lease the Galaxy S10 Plus?

It’s that time of year again. Christmas is just around the corner, and in anticipation of the holiday season, Google’s Santa Tracker is back. With it comes new games, a new design, and much more. Perhaps the biggest news this year is the most obvious one — the new design for Santa’s Village. The village got a big makeover in 2019, including a new greenhouse, a reindeer gym, and a new toy factory.

Seen through the eyes of the Huawei P30 Pro, the streets of Paris are beautiful, vibrant, and full of life. It doesn’t take an amazing camera to make Paris look glamorous, but it doesn’t hurt that the P30 Pro is one of the best mobile cameras yet. From the urban skyline to street portraits, from architectural detail to everyday selfies, the P30 Pro can do it all. It has its limitations, but what we’ve seen so far is very impressive.

TL;DR You can now summon Google Assistant with the command “Hey Google” on your phone The hotword began rolling out in October but now appears to be hitting more devices You can now choose between “OK Google” and “Hey Google” to activate Assistant There’s an advert currently doing the rounds for Google Home devices that plays up the smart speaker’s ability to recognize more natural sentences rather than rigid command lines.