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Showing posts from May, 2011

Phone Hacks - Honor View 10 Updated with Face Unlock and More

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Google Camera Port with Portrait Mode now works on Samsung Galaxy S7, S8, and Note 8 (Exynos) Popular ports of the Pixel 2’s Google Camera bring Google’s post-processing technologies to a wide range of high-end devices. It took a few iterations, but the most recent releases support lens blur, bokeh adjustment, and high-resolution video recording modes on phones such as the OnePlus 3 , the Samsung Galaxy S8 , and the LG V30 . This week, XDA Senior Member miniuser123  fixed a niggling issue with Exynos-based devices: Portrait mode. His modified Google Camera app gets portrait mode — the camera effect that blurs out your selfie’s background and brings your face into focus — to smartphones with Samsung’s in-house Exynos processors, which include the international editions of the Galaxy S7 , S8, and Note 8 . With the app installed and a few tweaks applied in the Settings menu, it’s seamless — albeit a bit slower than devices with Qualcomm Snapdragon system-on-chips. And for now, it onl

Phone Hacks - Meizu Introduces the M6s with a Side-Mounted Fingerprint Scanner

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Samsung Bixby Will Soon be Able to Count Calories in Food Applications such as  MyFitnessPal and other calorie counters help people monitor what eat throughout the day, which makes it easier to see how many calories they have left in their daily allotment. But measuring food portions on the go can be tough, which is why Samsung’s updating is Bixby assistant with the ability to estimate calories from photos of food. At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung’s demoing Bixby’s calorie-counting feature to attendees. It’s still in development right now, and occasionally has trouble identifying foodstuff — especially when there are multiple items on a single plate. But the company showed that it can tell the difference between dishes like a margarita pizza and a steak. Since Bixby isn’t using a special sensor to analyze nutritional content, there’s a bit of a variance in the actual calorie count versus what’s reported, and Samsung’s using “generic data” for food items. Still, it’s fas

Phone Hacks - These Xiaomi Devices are Slated to Receive the MIUI 9 Update

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Motorola Releases Android Oreo Kernel Sources for the Moto Z2 Force When it comes to releasing kernel sources, some manufacturers have a better track record than others. Android’s use of the GPLv2 license requires that all sources be released in a timely manner, but we continue to see violations . They’re bad for the affected devices because they hinder development, but they also harm Android and the open source community’s integrity,  which is why we’ve requested multiple OEMs to comply with the GPL and release kernel sources in the past. Motorola, which is owned by Lenovo, generally releases kernel sources for its devices on time — but  the company’s occasionally slipped . The Moto Z2 Force ‘s sources were released in September, two months after its launch. It’s the company’s newest flagship phone, and the Verizon and T-Mobile variants of the device recently received an update to Android 8.0 Oreo. That necessitated another release of kernel sources, and Motorola’s compiled, publ

Phone Hacks - "OnePlus Announces OxygenOS Open Beta 4 for the OnePlus 5, Adds New Clipboard Actions and the OnePlus Switch App"

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LG Pay Might Launch in the US in June as “LG Wallet” The mobile payments market is about to get more crowded: LG plans on bringing LG Pay , its payments platform, to the US sometime in June, according to Yonhap News . It’ll go head-to-head with solutions from Google, Samsung, and Apple, which have a substantial head start — Apple Pay is already available in 25 countries and regions, and Android Pay works in 17 countries. LG Pay launched in South Korea in June 2017. It uses LG’s proprietary Magnetic Communication technology, which is similar to Samsung’s Magnetic Secure Transmission Technology, and allows phones that support it to transact with card readers that don’t have NFC radios. LG is reportedly planning to launch its mobile payment service under the name “LG Wallet” in the US, and the initial rollout will be limited to high-end devices such as the rumored G7 . It’ll eventually trickle down to mid-range devices. Source: Yonhap News Agency tags : android auto, android wear, andro

Phone Hacks - The Google Home has an undocumented local API that you can now access

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Samsung Galaxy A8+ (2018) Launched in India for Rs. 32,990 ($518) Samsung is one of the largest smartphone vendors in India, but it no longer dominates the market. Competition from the likes of Xiaomi and OnePlus has forced it to target budget and mid-range price tiers. As a part of that effort, it launched Galaxy A8+ (2018) in India for Rs. 32,990 ($518) on Wednesday at an event in New Delhi. To recap, the Galaxy A8+ (2018) is the higher-end model in A8 (2018) series. It’s the only variant that Samsung’s launching in India for now, and it’ll be available exclusively from Amazon India starting January 20. Source: Samsung The Galaxy A8+ (2018) looks similar to the Galaxy S8 series, with a metal-and-glass design that’s IP68 rated for dust and water resistance and a tall 18.5:9 aspect ratio display. However, there are a few important differences. The 6-inch display is flat instead of curved like the Galaxy S8, and has a lower resolution (Full HD+ vs. WQHD+). The fingerprint sensor is

Phone Hacks - Oppo A83 to be Launched in India on January 20

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Honor to Launch a Smartphone with Dual Cameras in India in January Honor has stated that its aim is to become India’s top smartphone vendor . The brand, a subsidiary of Huawei, launched the affordable Honor 7X in December  in the country, and the flagship Honor View 10 , on Monday . And this week, Honor said that it intends to launch a smartphone with dual cameras on the front and rear in India later this month. Huawei didn’t reveal a lot about the upcoming device’s details, but it won’t be the first of its kind. Honor already sells the Honor 9i in the country for Rs. 17,999 (about $283), which has dual front and dual rear cameras. The company didn’t reveal the price of the upcoming smartphone, or any of its key features. But it could be the Honor 9 Lite , which has quad cameras. The Honor 9 Lite was released in China in December , and at the time, Honor said that it would come to 14 additional countries later in the year, including India, Russia, and the UK. India might be its firs

Phone Hacks - Vivo X20 Plus UD with Synaptics In-Display Fingerprint Sensor Passes Through TENAA

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Facebook Tests “Today In” Local News Feature in Select US Cities The internet is a great source for news, but getting details about local events can be a challenge. Luckily, Facebook’s testing a new feature — “Today In” — that’s designed to make it simpler. It’s from the company’s News Partnerships team, which is overseen by former NBC news anchor Campbell Brown, and part of Facebook’s Journalism Project initiative. Starting this week, people who live in New Orleans; Little Rock; Billings, Montanna; Peoria, Illinois; Olympia, Washington; and Binghamton, New York will see a new “Today In” tab in the Facebook app’s left-hand menu. Source: Recode The goal’s to aggregate local news stories from vetted sources, and the social network’s using a mix of humans and machine learning software to accomplish it. The new Today In feed consists of breaking news, upcoming events, and community announcements, plus hyperlocal information such as emergency updates from authorities. Facebook says it w

Phone Hacks - "ZTE Axon M Launches in China, Available Soon in Europe"

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Qualcomm Makes the Snapdragon 845 Official, Talks 5G It’s finally official: At the 2017 Snapdragon Developer Conference in Maui, Hawaii, Qualcomm took the wraps off the Snapdragon 845 , the newest flagship in its 10-year-old Snapdragon system-on-chip series. The San Jose, California-based company wasn’t willing to spill  all  of the beans just yet — it’s hosting a talk exclusively about the Snapdragon 845 on Wednesday — but it gave a tantalizing glimpse of its latest and greatest chip on Tuesday. Here’s everything you need to know. Snapdragon 845 Qualcomm’s the largest fabless semiconductor company in the world, and its chips power billions of devices. But it has its eyes on the estimated 8.6 billion smartphones that are expected to ship between 2017 and 2021. The Snapdragon 845 was three years in the making, Qualcomm said, and the development team honed in on five core features: Content creation, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, wireless, and power consumption. It’s designed

Phone Hacks - [Update: OnePlus halts credit card payments] OnePlus is Investigating Alleged Credit Card Fraud Stemming From its Payment Portal

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Google Flights and Google Trips Gain Price Tracking, Deal Alerts Just ahead of the holiday season, Google’s rolling out updates to Google Flights and Google Trips that’ll make nabbing last-minute deals on airline tickets, hotel rooms, and local goings-on easier. Starting Thursday, Google Flights, Google’s Search -powered airfare search tool, will start to analyze historical pricing data in order to predict when fares might rise or fall. Using some of the same machine learning techniques employed by Kayak, Hipmunk, Hopper, and other price-predicting travel planners, Flights will notify you when airline prices reach certain predefined thresholds. You’ll see a tip at the top of your Google Flights results if prices to a destination “won’t drop further”, for example, or “are less than normal”. Source: Google The artificial intelligence-powered predictions are heading to Google’s hotel-searching tools, too. When you’re searching for a room, you’ll get messages about events that might be im

Phone Hacks - Facebook Messenger to be Streamlined and Massively Simplified This Year

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Snap’s Lens Studio Lets Anyone Design Custom Snapchat Lenses Snapchat Lenses come in all shapes and sizes. Dancing hot dogs, rainbows, and rabbit ears are just a sampling of the augmented reality (AR) camera filters you’ll find in the application’s growing gallery, and starting Thursday, anyone will be able to contribute new ones. Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, took the wraps off Lens Studio, a design program for Windows and Mac that lets users fine-tune, render, and publish the Lenses of their dreams. Studio — which resembles the internal tool that Snap uses to build Snapchat Lenses, according to The Verge — is chock full of templates and guides for three-dimensional and two-dimensional lens designs, and has a application programming interface (API) that lets budding Lens designers add animations and touch interations. Right now, users are limited to creating World Lenses, or AR layered on Snapchat’s rear camera feed. But in the future, they might be able to make face filters and

Phone Hacks - OxygenOS Open Beta 2 on the OnePlus 5T Brings Clipboard Actions and Performance Optimizations

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T-Mobile Will Launch its Own TV Service in 2018 AT&T has DirecTV. Verizon has Go90. And starting next year, T-Mobile will begin offering an over-the-air, direct-to-consumer premium video service of its own. In an announcement published to YouTube on Monday, T-Mobile CEO John Legere said that the carrier had finalized the acquisition of TV tech company Layer3 TV, and that it’d begin to secure the necessary content deals, contracts, and services for a competitive TV service launch in 2018. It’ll be one without “long-term contracts” or “complex bundles and billing,” Legere said, and one that’s priced disruptively. “We’re going to build TV for people who love TV — TV you’ll be able to watch on every connected device you have wherever you are,” Mr. Legere said. “[We’re] about to ‘un-carrier’ your TV. [We want] to take the fight to big cable and satellite TV on behalf of consumers everywhere.” T-Mobile didn’t hint at the forthcoming service’s subscription tiers, features, or availabili

Phone Hacks - Google Pixel 2’s Now Playing feature has been ported to AOSP ROMs

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Qualcomm’s QCC5100 Bluetooth Chip Hones in On Power Efficiency If you own a pair of Bluetooth headphones, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve had to put up with subpar battery life. But you might not have to for much longer. At the Consumer Electronics Show on Monday, Qualcomm announced the QCC5100, a low-power Bluetooth system-on-chip that’s designed to deliver best-in-class features without compromising on power efficiency. The QCC5100 supports data transfers up to 2Mbps and a Bluetooth 5 dual-mode radio that lets you stream audio to multiple devices at once. There’s also proprietary technologies like Qualcomm’s TrueWireless Stereo which eliminates the need for wires between left and right earbuds, Qualcomm’s high-quality aptX HD audio codec , and enhanced Qualcomm cVc and Fluence active noise cancellation (ANC) technologies. All the more impressive is the claim that the QCC5100 is up to 65 percent more efficient at handling voice calls and music streaming compared to previous sin

Phone Hacks - "Samsung Galaxy S9 S9+ Rumored Launch, Pre-Order, and Ship Dates Revealed"

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Google Home Sales Top 6 Million, Over 400 Million Google Assistant-Enabled Devices Shipped Amazon’s Echo may be the smart speaker market’s top dog , but Google Home is nipping at its tail. Lifetime sales of Google’s AI-powered speakers — which include the Google Home , Home Mini , Home Max — topped six million this holiday, according to the search giant. “All told, Google Home usage increased 9X this holiday season over last year’s,” Google wrote in a blog post. “And in fact, we sold more than one […] device every second since Google Home Mini started shipping in October.” Google’s accomplishments don’t stop there. It also shipped tens of millions of “Google devices for the home” in 2017, a category that comprises speakers, appliances, and peripherals with the Google Assistant , Google’s voice assistant, built in. And it’s enabled the Assistant support on more than 400 million devices, including Apple’s iPhone and Android smartphones and tablets running Android Lollipop and newer.

Phone Hacks - Reliance Jio in 2018: What to Expect from India’s Fastest-Growing Carrier

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Honor View 10 arriving internationally January 8th, Honor 7X Red Model coming to U.S. At a press conference during the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Honor , an offshoot of smartphone maker Huawei , announced that the Honor View 10 will head to new territories starting January 8. It’ll precede the launch of a limited-edition Honor 7X Red, which will hit U.S., U.K., and international shores in the coming weeks. Honor View 10 Source: Honor Starting January 8, the Honor View 10 will go on sale in India, U.K., France, Germany, Italy, and Spain from HiHonor . It’ll be available in Malaysia and Russia in late January, Huawei said. The View 10’s specs are nothing to scoff at. It has a metal unibody and a 5.99-inch FullView Full HD+ resolution (2160×1080) 18:9 display. Under the hood, the handset packs an octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 970 system-on-chip (four ARM Cortex-A73 cores paired with four ARM Cortex-A53 cores) with an i7 co-processor and a dedicated NPU (Neural Processing

Phone Hacks - Honor India Confirms That the Honor 8 Won’t Receive Android Oreo

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Google AMP Will Soon Show Publisher URLs on Supported Web Browsers Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) speed up websites in part by caching contents with AMP Cache, which stores them on Google’s servers. It generally works pretty well, but there’s a pretty annoying side effect: Every page’s address is replaced with an AMP-specific URL, which makes sharing and bookmarking them a tad inconvenient (unless you use an app like DeAMPify ). Luckily, that’s finally changing. This week, Malte Ubl, Tech Lead for the AMP Project, announced that the team will introduce a new version of the AMP Cache based on the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Packaging standard. In plain English, current and future AMP URLs will look and act like normal, non-AMP addresses, but take advantage of Google’s preloading and performance technologies behind the scenes. “When we first launched AMP in Google Search we made a big trade-off: To achieve the user experience that users were telling us that they want

Phone Hacks - Motorola Moto E5 Render Reportedly Leaked

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Samsung Teams up with TagStation to Enable FM Chips in Phones Rare’s the flagship smartphone with FM radio, but there’s a push to change that. In September 2017, Federal Communications Chairman (FCC) Aji Pai penned a letter requesting that phone manufacturers enable FM in wireless chipsets, and carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint are actively encouraging phone makers to activate them. Now, Samsung’s recommitting to supporting FM radio in its upcoming handsets. On Tuesday, TagStation, the developer of NextRadio , announced that the handset maker would unlock the necessary chips in upcoming phones bound for the US and Canada. “Samsung should be lauded for taking this important step,” said  Paul Brenner , President of NextRadio. “They are providing their customers a more engaging, immersive radio experience and, as importantly, a means to connect with life-saving information in emergencies.” So what’s that mean? Samsung smartphones in the US and Canada this year will ship wi

Phone Hacks - Google Home Mini Wall Mount Now Available on the Google Store

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LG Support Page Suggests its New Flagship Will be Called the LG G7 In early January, an LG official told members of the press that  the company would ditch its G series smartphone brand for something new . LG’s said to be tossing around new names, and reportedly plans to launch the rebranding effort sometime during the first half of 2018. Some folks took the reports to mean that LG’s next flagship — the successor to the LG G6 — wouldn’t be called the LG G7, but a support page on LG’s UK website points to the contrary. The support page was quickly taken down (you can see a screenshot below), but it talked about which version of Qualcomm’s Quick Charge technology the company’s smartphones support. A chart showed the LG G5 and the LG G6 , which have Quick Charge 3.0, and the “Future LG G7”, which it listed as supporting Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4.0 technology. Source: Androidu It’s not LG’s only recent slipup. The company prematurely published the LG Wallet application in the Play Sto

Phone Hacks - Report: US lawmakers pushing for ATT to cut ties with Huawei over building a 5G network

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Keyboard and Biometric Moto Mods Coming in 2018 Motorola’s Moto Mods have allowed the Lenovo-owned company to expand the functionality of its Moto Z smartphone lineup without having to introduce new hardware. Peripherals like the JBL SoundBoost 2, Moto Power Pack, and Moto Insta-Share Projector snap onto the smartphones’ magnetic connectors and add functionality. And at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, Motorola took the wraps off new Moto Mods for the Moto Z series: A keyboard mod and a biometric mod. The Livermorium Slider Keyboard Moto Mod , a project from Motorola’s Accelerator Program, attaches to the back of the phone and wraps around it, angling the keyboard at a 60-degree angle (maximum) with the keyboard facing flat upwards. It’s aimed at folks who use their phone for productivity, and it’ll launch later this winter at a retail price of $99. Next is the Lenovo Vital Moto Mod , which looks like a cool piece of health-tracking technology. It can measure five key vital signs

Phone Hacks - OxygenOS Open Beta 30/21 with Face Unlock Rolling out to the OnePlus 3/3T

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Report: Samsung to Start Production of a Foldable Smartphone in November Foldable smartphones are becoming a reality. In 2017, we saw the ZTE Axon M launch in the US with dual displays, and Samsung confirmed that it was working on a flexible device pegged for release in 2018 . We’ve also recently seen a patent that potentially describes Samsung’s user interface for its foldable device , as well as a patent for a fully curved device . Now, according to a report by  ET News,  Samsung is expected to start production of its first foldable smartphone in November ahead of a mass-market debut in either December or in early 2019. The report, quoting unnamed sources, states that the company has recently settled on the phone’s final specifications and production plans. The crucial part of display development is will be completed by March, so that panel production will be able to start in September. ET News  says that the phone “is likely” to have a 7.3-inch OLED display that “folds inside”. Sa

Phone Hacks - Google Denies It’s Launching Optimized Google Maps for China

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Facebook Set to Reveal “Portal” Device With Video Calling and Facial Recognition Facebook is set to unveil a hardware product code-named Portal that’ll compete with smart home devices such as the Amazon Echo Show , according to a report from Cheddar , Portal will make video calls and use a wide-angle lens that’ll recognize faces tied to Facebook accounts, according to the report, and it’ll accept voice commands a la the Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa assistant. The social network intends to pitch it as a way to keep in touch with friends and loved ones. Facebook’s also secured licensing deals with Sony/ATV and Universal Music Group to build out a music streaming service for Portal, and plans to support third-party services like Netflix and Spotify. Portal will retail for $499, but that pricing’s subject to change prior to launch. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s reportedly told employees that he doesn’t care if it generates a profit, but hopes that it’ll “change user behavior” to encourag

Phone Hacks - Download the Android One Launcher from the Xiaomi Mi A1 with Google Feed Enabled

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Huawei Mate 10 Pro is coming to the U.S., but not on AT&T Given the focus, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas isn’t a place where you would expect to be surprised by an announcement. However, yesterday several news outlets shared a shocking revelation: that AT&T would no longer carry the Huawei Mate 10 Pro . Leading up to CES, Huawei was expected to unveil a partnership with U.S. carrier AT&T to carry the company’s latest flagship smartphone . Now that this deal has fallen through, the Mate 10 Pro will only be available through online retailers such as Amazon and some brick and mortar stores such as Best Buy. Huawei already confirmed that they would be expanding into the U.S. Indeed, Huawei has been eagerly pushing the news that the Mate 10 Pro would be coming to the U.S., with more details to come at CES. The company has repeatedly confirmed on their U.S. social media accounts that the new Mate smartphone would be unveiled on January 9. Are you ready for #HUAWEI

Phone Hacks - Honor 9 Lite Giveaway Coming Soon

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Vivo Showcases the World’s First Smartphone with an In-Display Fingerprint Sensor We’ve been hearing about in-display fingerprint sensors for quite a while. Notably, Samsung was rumored to include an in-display sensor in the Galaxy S8 , but reportedly opted not to because the tech wasn’t ready. Vivo, though, has made real progress. In July 2017, the China-based company teamed up with Qualcomm to demo an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor — one of the first commercial examples of in-display fingerprint scanning. Then, in November, Synaptics announced its Clear ID in-display fingerprint sensors , and said a “top five” smartphone OEM would use it in 2018.  Some analysts predicted that the OEM was Vivo, and the company confirmed those suspicious at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show. “Today’s showcase of a ready-to-produce in-display fingerprint scanning smartphone featuring an optical fingerprint sensor is a big leap forward in bringing consumers this long-awaited, futuristic mobi