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Google has quietly crept out of the tablet business, removing the "tablets" heading from its Android page. Perhaps it hoped no one would notice on a Friday and by Monday it would be old news, but Android Police caught them in the act. It was there yesterday, but it's gone today.
[...] Google in particular has struggled to make Android a convincing alternative to iOS in the tablet realm, and with this move has clearly indicated its preference for the Chrome OS side of things, where it has inherited the questionable (but lucrative) legacy of netbooks. They've also been working on broadening Android compatibility with that OS. So it shouldn't come as much surprise that the company is bowing out.
[...] Google's exit doesn't mean Android tablets are done for, of course. They'll still get made, primarily by Samsung, Amazon and a couple of others, and there will probably even be some nice ones. But if Google isn't selling them, it probably isn't prioritizing them as far as features and support.
Also at 9to5Google.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Sunday June 03 2018, @04:41AM
The specific functionality that came and went was the visual voicemail. I have a phone that came with Android 5, and it was upgraded to Android 6. For me, a big reason to upgrade is the addition of visual voicemail starting in Android 6. For about a month, I had visual voicemail, then it vanished like it had never existed. There are supposed to be 4 icons in a bar across the top of the various screens, and for a short while I had them. Then without any notice the reel that represents voicemail vanished, along with its functionality, and ever since, there's only been 3 icons, same as in Android 5.