Evening brief: Between a Note and a hard place

Software updates, hardware recalls, and Allo's essential features!

Earlier today, I spoke to Samsung Canada's COO about the Note 7 recall, and he told me the same thing I've heard the company's executives say in every market: Samsung dealt with the recall properly, quickly, and safely. And that it is sorry.

The question of whether this is going to have lingering negative effects on the Samsung brand isn't in question: it's for how long, and how severe. The consequences of a recall like this reverberate for months, maybe years, largely because people — the average buying public — now balances the strength of a product against the trustworthiness of a brand. There isn't much more to say about this, either: soon, people will start receiving their replacement units, if they haven't already, and many will likely forget that this issue arose in the first place. But what about the 100 or so people injured or traumatized by a phone that was safe one moment and ablaze the next? Let's hope they're not forgotten once things get back to normal.

And with that, tonight's news.

Allo is here. Let us show you why you should care

Allo was released at midnight eastern last night, which meant we on the AC team spent the day sending each other weird stickers and trying to trip up Google Assistant. If you're not yet convinced why you should about Allo, let us show you. More

Galaxy Note 7 sales to resume mid-October in Canada

The Galaxy Note 7 is sporadically back on sale in the U.S., but isn't expected to be widely available until mid-October. The same is true of the smaller Canadian market, which bodes well for anyone looking to buy some new handwarmers before the cold season. More

Verizon pushes out security patches for Moto Z, Galaxy Note 5, and Galaxy S6 Edge+

Midway through the month, Verizon is finally pushing out the September security patches for the Moto Z and Moto Z Force. Look for software version MCLS24.246-36-3 as you refresh for the update. Last year's Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+ are also receiving patches today, labeled as VRS3BPI1. You can read more about those respective updates here and here. Happy updating!

Alcatel's BlackBerry is coming to Canada later this month

Alcatel is bringing its Idol 4 to Canada this month with a single regional carrier, Videotron. The phone has been available in the U.S. for a few months now — and even in Canada as the DTEK50 — but it appears that at least one carrier is interested in the real McCoy. No word on pricing just yet, but you can expect it to come in around $350 to $400 CAD. One piece of good news, though: each unit will come with Alcatel's cool VR headset in tow. More

HTC 10 down from "crazy expensive" to "too expensive" in Canada

HTC must recognize that even with the poor exchange rate, $1000 is just too much to charge for its HTC 10 flagship in Canada. To wit, it is putting the thing on sale, offering 20% off until September 29 with offer code ufo7ebpb3. The device is still $599 in the U.S., which is a pretty good price.

Wi-Fi Calling and Advanced Messaging come to AT&T's 2015 Galaxy lineup

It's not Nougat, but the 2015 lineup of Galaxy devices — the S6, S6 edge, S6 edge+, and Note 5 — are all getting nice updates on AT&T. Specifically, updates issued yesterday and first spotted by the good guys at Android Police, offer Wi-Fi Calling, a super useful feature made famous by T-Mobile, and support for Advanced Messaging, which is basically the bloatware version of SMS.

Nougat not so sweet for some Nexus 5X owners

Google has acknowledged that a small number of Nexus 5X owners are getting stuck in boot loops after upgrading to Android 7.0. According to a Google employee, it is "strictly a hardware related issue." In other words, the problem was going to happen, it was just a matter of when.

Google's latest Android Experiment is, like, totally awesome

Fancy sending a virtual paper airplane to someone around the world? The latest Google Experiment, which was first shown off at Google I/O in May, is now available available to all Android users in app form. Paper Planes is a great showcase for the marriage of web and native code to live in harmony — and it's also really fun to receive plane notifications. More

Have a great evening!

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