OnePlus recently debuted the OnePlus 5T ‘Star Wars’ edition in India and select markets around the globe and, for good reason, fans are fascinated by it. Now, it’s been discovered that OnePlus has hidden a clever little Easter Egg in the box with the phone.  

First spotted by Android Central, there’s a “hologram” prism in the box with the OnePlus 5T “Star Wars” edition. But, you won’t find it without first being a clever codebreaker.

 A greeting card in the box which reveals the clue “scribble with pencil” when you look at the first letter of each line on the card. Once you perform that action, another clue is presented. "Find the secret compartment and check the weather forecast on Ahch-To."

Once you find the prism hidden in the box (it’s at the very bottom), you’ll then want to construct it according to the included instructions, and then head over to your phone. Once you open OnePlus’ weather application, do a search for “Ahch-To” (the planet Luke is on in The Last Jedi), and you’ll see R2-D2 appear. When that happens, simply align the prism and suddenly, you’ll have a hologram message from everyone’s favorite droid.

Google today is launching a trio of new photo apps – a part of new series of what it has dubbed photography “appsperiments.” (Get it? Ha ha.) 

The apps, some of which are available on both the iOS App Store and Google Play, give Google a way to test out more experimental features to see how users respond, the company explains in an announcement on its Google Research blog.

The apps involve a number of technologies now in development at Google, including those focused on object recognition, person segmentation, stylization algorithms, efficient image encoding and decoding technologies, Google says.

Specifically, the three apps in question are called Storyboard, Selfissimo!, and Scrubbies.

The first, Storyboard, turns videos into single-page comic layouts on your device. Turning photos into images inspired by art – including comic book art – is something that grew popular with the launch of the A.I.-powered editing app Prisma.

The second app, Selfissimo!, is designed for selfies, as the name implies. In this case, the app is an automated selfie photographer that takes black and white photos of you every time you pose. Whenever you stop moving, a new photo is taken.

The third, Scrubbies, is designed for video. This app lets you change the speed and direction of video playback to create looping videos. Instead of looping apps like Instagram’s Boomerang, Scrubbies has you go hands-on.

Google is about to launch a small but useful update to Google Maps that will give you live guidance and interactive real-time notifications during your journey.

The idea here is to give you real-time updates while you are on your transit journey. These updates will appear in the Google Maps app and, maybe most importantly, on your Android lock screen.

To get started, you search for your transit directions in Google Maps as usual. So far, so good. What’s new here is that you’ll soon be able to tap a “start” button at the bottom the screen with the details about your transit journey and then get live updates as you walk or ride on your local buses and trains.

Our understanding is that Google Maps will even remind you to get off your bus or train when you get close to your stop. That’s definitely useful when you’re traveling somewhere new (or sleepy).

The notifications on the lock screen are also new. One nifty feature here is that they are interactive, so you can scroll right through your journey’s steps.

While Google Maps always did a good job of giving you detailed transit directions (though it’s often nowhere as good and useful as CityMapper’s more detailed directions), the process generally involved keeping track of your own progress along the route. With this update, transit notifications become a bit more like using Maps for walking, biking and driving.

We expect this update to go live soon — and Google may already be testing it outside of its trusted tester community. If you’re already seeing it in Google Maps yourself, let us know in the comments.

Motorcycles have the ability to drive through places where a car typically wouldn’t be able to fit, so Google Maps’ new mode for motorcycle riders understandably cuts off a fair amount of time versus a car route.

As pointed out in screenshots provided by Android Police, this mode cuts off a few minutes off of shorter rides, and up to an hour off of longer ones.

So far, this feature seems limited to India only, but it may expand to other areas where motorcycles are a more prevalent mode of transportation.

The first new Stories feature is called Highlights. The basics of what this allows you to do is take Stories that you’ve shared and group them into a featured post right on the top of your profile page.

Highlights will show up right underneath your bio and they’ll stay there until you remove them. What’s really cool about this feature is being able to single out specific events, like a concert, or specific people! Here’s how Instagram describes this new feature:

From there you will be able to view, share, or add to a highlight right from your archive. For those that don’t want the auto-archive feature, you will be able to turn it off

This news comes after rumors that a “regram” button was being tested. While the Archive feature is now available from those tests, there is no news on the status of the other features that are being piloted.

What confectionery is Google cooking this time, after Nougat?  Since the release of Cupcake (Android 1.5) in 2009, Google has maintained a regular naming pattern for all the subsequent versions of the Android mobile operating system, following an alphabetical list of sugar and flour confections.

Expectedly, the name of the next Android operating system (version 8.0) which will be released later this year begins with an “O ” and is currently referred to as “Android O” as we await its name. Rumors, however, suggest that our mystery “ O”will be “Oreos”

At the Google 1/O 2017 held this month, the beta version of the Android O was made publicly available. These are some of the new features Android O comes with and you can check them out if you own a compatible Nexus or Pixel device.

Background apps are a major cause of battery drain and Google is boosting the battery lives of phones running the Android O by limiting the activities of background apps.

In previous versions of Android, apps running in the background are able to create background services that can be promoted to the foreground.  According to Google, with the Android O, once an app is not being used but remains in the background, it can only use or create services for several minutes, after which the app shuts down any background service.

There will also be a limit to how long an app working in the background can retrieve a user’s location. Currently,  background apps can only update location only a few times per hour.

Picture in Picture, a feature which is already on Android TV running Nougat,  will be coming to Android phones running the Android O. Now users can play videos on their phones while using another app. A YouTube window and other supported video apps can be shrinked into a small window that will remain on your screen as you use other apps. This small window can also be positioned anywhere on the screen.

Even though we have seen this feature on some video players like the Gplayer and a few smartphones like the LG L90, Android O is bringing this to all devices.

Android is also introducing notification dots on the Android O, a small circle that sits on top of an app when there is a new notification. By long-pressing an app icon with a notification dot, a preview of the notification is shown which also allow users access the app. Notifications can still be viewed via the notification panel by sliding down from the top of the screen.

Users can also snooze notifications and have them re-appear  later with the Android O

Android O is also extending autofill to apps. Just like password managers, with the Autofill Framework on Android O,  users can avoid entering login details and other repetitive information when filling out forms in apps.

Google’s machine learning can also detect when addresses, phone numbers or email addresses are selected and automatically open an appropriate app. This eliminates the need to copy and paste these information. For example selecting a phone number will automatically launch your dialer and selecting an adressing will launch Google Maps.

This feature is especially useful for users that switch between cellular and Wi-FI networks. With the Android O, users can set their phones to automatically turn on Wi-Fi network when they are close to trusted networks that have previously been saved by simply going to internet > WiFi > WiFi Preferences.

If you own any of these Android O compatible devices; Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, Pixel, Pixel XL and Pixel C, and you are curious enough to check out these and other new features of the Android O,  find out how to enroll in the Android beta program here