Nexus 9 listed on Google Play

Just a day after its global unveiling, Nexus 9 tablet has been listed on Google's Play Store website in India. However, the new Google phone, named Nexus 6, and Google Player has not been listed on the site as of now. 

Only two of the four variants of the Nexus 9 tablet are listed online - with the 16GB WiFi-only model (the basic version) priced at `28,900 and the 32GB cellular model at `44,900. The devices are listed as "coming soon" and there is no information as to when they will go on sale in India. But speculations are that the devices will be available in India in the month of November itself, in line with the global launch. 

The 32GB WiFi-only and the 16GB cellular models are currently not available in the country. 

Following specifications are of Nexus 9 

• Display: 8.9-inch IPS LCD 
• Battery: 6700 mAh 
• Camera: 8MP rear camera, 1.6MP front camera 
• Processor: 64-bit Nvidia Tegra K1 processor clocked at 2.3 GHz 
• GPU: Kepler DX1 
• Memory: 16 GB and 32 GB 

“Nexus 6 will come to 28 countries, including India, across Europe, Asia Pacific and North America, starting later this year and as we head into Q1,” Motorola said in a statement. So we hope along with global launch it too will be available in India. Check out the full coverage here. 

Among the chief competitors of Google Nexus 9 in India are Apple iPad Air 2, Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 and Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet. So let’s wait and watch.

Source: Google Play

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Google and Airtel to allow Operator billing for Google Play

Who needs a credit card when one can pay directly through their mobile operator. This is probably going to happen as the search giant Google and India’s biggest operator Airtel are in talks to allow users to pay for services like paid-apps, in-app purchases, e-books etc., through their operator. 

At present, Indian mobile users can pay for their purchases from Google's apps store Google Play through credit cards, debit cards or gift cards. Operators have been traditionally taking over 50% of the revenues. However, over the years, operators have been under pressure to pay out more to publishers and developers. Recently, Vodafone made changes to its revenue sharing policy and said it will share revenues on a 70:30 basis in favour of the content creator. 

Currently, it offers carrier billing option to customers in 26 countries, including the US, UK and Singapore. In June, it tied up with UAE-based telco Etisalat to offer carrier billing in the region. 

Airtel has about 40m subscribers out of which 12.5m are on 3G. 4G is also available in certain regions and is gradually spreading. So if the deal works out, it may increase Google’s paid service customers as Google's digital goods and apps business is expected to bring in over $5 billion in revenues by 2017 worldwide. 

Google and Airtel are expected to announce a deal once they agree on revenue sharing and receive regulatory clearance. 

Source: ET

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Google Play Newsstand now in India

Google Play Store in India already had the Books, Movies and Devices. Music and Newsstand were missing. Now Google today launched Google Newsstand in India. It’s coming with 30 Indian publications and will be available starting tomorrow. 

Among the Indian publications that will be offered include Times Internet’s Indiatimes, Zigwheels, Luxpresso, Healthmeup, MensXP, iDiva, NDTV’s NDTV Movies, NDTV Gadgets, NDTV Sports, Anandabazar Patrika’s ABP News & ABP Majha, Missmalini.com, HT Media’s Mint, Hindustan Times & Desimartini, Jagran, ESPN Cricinfo and TV9 Telugu. 

Magazines include India Today, Vogue India, GQ India, Cosmopolitan India and Business Today. 

Apart from Indian magazines and publishers free & paid newspaper content from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, news sites like ABC News, The Atlantic, CNET, Huffington Post, The Guardian and Reuters among others and magazines like Forbes, The Economist, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and Wired will also be available. In fact Google is giving free access to NYT for 60 days. While web version wasn’t available its app has been in the Indian Play Store for quite some time. Google has informed that users can also purchase magazine subscriptions through this service. 

Play Newsstand was introduced by Google in November last year, by combining two of its services – Google Play Magazines and its social news reader apps Google Currents. The company had then claimed that the service will offer more than 1,900 free and paid full length publications to which users can subscribe on the web, Android and iOS. 

So get ready for premium content from Google starting tomorrow. 

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Google Play Store Update with Material Design Rolls Out

Well as was evident from earlier leak about a new updated Google Play Store turns out to be true. Google has officially released an updated to the Google Play Store app from version 4.8.20 to 4.9.13.

Our latest update is rolling out right now! We're excited to share a sneak peek of what you’ll get in the coming days pic.twitter.com/k5BidxR4Vu
— Google Play (@GooglePlay) July 23, 2014

The major change is the use of the new Material Design which was introduced at Google I/O and has now made its way to the Google Play Store app. Well the update first doesn’t look like a big deal but once you dive in to the various sections of Apps, Books, Movies you can see the whole UI redesigned. There are beautiful sliding animations, big imagery and an overall cleaner layout. Cover art plays a much larger role, and details like rating overviews and genres have been moved into easy-to-read icons. 

Aside from the major changes to the app information pages, the rest of the Play Store app remains unchanged. We suspect that this update is only a sign of what’s to come for the Play Store and Material Design. The rest of the app will probably get redesigned eventually, as well.

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Google Play Store to get Material Design as well

We are already familiar with Google’s “Material Design” which was introduced as a part of Android L Preview and is expected to infiltrate all the Google’s app. We’ll have to wait until Google’s public launch of the OS but if the rumour is to be believed Google’s Play Store will be getting a complete the Material Design as well.

New Look of Play Store

Current Look of Play Store

Google+ was the first were we saw a touch of Material Design and the trend continued in apps like Sheets and Docs.

Listing are more immersive and colourful using video/trailer/app icon or movie/album/magazine cover as immersive hero image. To anyone who watched the design sessions from this year's Google I/O, the last screen should look familiar. 

The Grand Budapest Hotel listing in particular was shown off during a session about Material Design in Google Play, and the demo screen looks extremely similar, but carries a considerable lot of information compared to what we see above.

The whole store listing page has changed, to one that uses artistic layout on a largely white canvas with the new Roboto font highlighted during the Google I/O conference. However, this design is still under wraps and could change entirely by the time it is launched.

Source : AndroidPolice

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