Happy Friday! Hope you all have fun plans for the weekend.

Amazon Prime price increase

• For the second time in a decade, Amazon is increasing the price of Amazon Prime in the United States.
• The last price increase was in 2018, and the time before that was 2014, we’re seeing a trend!
• Your bill is about to go up by $20/year, or $2/month, depending on your plan.

We totally understand if your instinct is to be mad at Amazon, nobody likes paying more for a thing, especially if that thing feels almost essential in today’s online shopping world. Amazon makes some solid arguments for the price hike, and it’s a fair argument that the price is still worth it for the service, but we can’t help but look at Amazon’s soaring profits and wonder.

Check your Prime status, if you can renew your subscription soon, you can postpone the extra expense until next year.

I want a new tablet

We were happy to see the results of a recent poll on Android Authority, we asked if you plan to buy a new tablet in 2022, and many said yes. Better yet, most want an Android tablet! With over 7,000 respondents, the results were as follows:

• 44.73% plan to buy an Android tablet
• 23.79% can’t decide between an iPad or an Android tablet
• 11.85% are planning to get an iPad
• 11.49% do not plan to get a tablet this year
• And 8.14% are waiting to see what tablets become available

I am part of that 8.14%. The sad part is that I’ve been in that position for several years now. I’ve been waiting for a viable tablet to hit the market. Sure, there are some great 10-inch and larger productivity tablets out there, but what I want is a new Nexus 7. More specifically, a 7-inch or 8-inch machine that has some horsepower. Give me an Android-powered iPad Mini, is that too much to ask for?!? Please forgive my frustration, I just hope that the manufacturers see these poll results and are inspired to make some cool new media consumption devices.

Roundup

• 📱 How many Pixel phones are in use today? Let’s dive into the Android 12 numbers to see what we can learn. (Android Authority)
• 💲 There’s a new A-series Samsung phone available. It won’t compete with the upcoming S22 series in terms of performance, but the Samsung Galaxy A53 should prove to be a top selling mid-range device for those on a budget. (Android Authority)
• 🐅 Speaking of the Samsung Galaxy S22, how about that tiger in Times Square? (Samsung)
• 🕊 We might not yet be over YouTube’s move to restrict downvote information, but that’s not stopping Twitter from adjusting their downvoting tools. Reportedly, you’ll soon be able to downvote comments on posts. The numbers will be private, but at least you’ll be able to help influence the algorithms. (Engadget)
• 🎮 Apex Legends Mobile went live for some users. (Phone Arena)
• 📆 Three year contracts are the new normal over at Verizon. That should lower your monthly price, but makes it a little tougher to upgrade frequently. (Android Authority)

Friday fun!

I hope I’m not letting you down, Tristan normally puts a fun space video or joke or something here, but I’d like to talk about the intelligent Android lock screen that Google never gave us!

Rita goes into great detail about this missed opportunity, as it turns out that Google had developed a very functional widget ecosystem to adorn our Android lock screens, but they axed the program, for some reason.

Perhaps the issue was security. The example functions include access to your media streaming services, payment information and loyalty cards, recent navigation information, and more.

Personally, I miss Google Now, and I’d totally accept a few of the less-sensitive cards landing on my lock screen. As Rita put it, “Our entire smartphone experience in 2022 is still app-centric instead of context-centric like Google had originally envisioned.” However, I totally understand that people may have been creeped out but it all, isn’t that the fear, that technology always knows where we are and what we’re doing?

Spoiler alert, the tech still knows where you are and what you’re up to, it’s just not giving you this level of relevant contextual information during your travels. Hope that thought doesn’t ruin your weekend.

This has been Jonathan Feist, hoping for a more contextual future! Tristan shall return next week.