A new version of the extremely popular Xposed Framework module GravityBox is now available to download. XDA Recognized Contributor C3C076 fixed many issues discovered since the last release. Get the version 5.1.2 for Android Lollipop now!
The post GravityBox v5.1.2 appeared first on xda-developers.
Black n Blue defines itself as a modern and elegant theme. Maintaining Lollipop’s light UI, the theme decorates the system elements with black as the primary color and bright blue as the accent color, and should work on all devices running CM12.
The post ‘Black n Blue’ Theme for CM12 appeared first on xda-developers.
Another week, another recap, right? Not so fast; this week was home to Google’s annual developer conference, and announcements ran wild! We have a lot of line-items to cover, including the deluge of features in Android M, a suite of assorted Google product updates, Android Pay, stereoscopic 3D virtual reality, and more. Without further ado, let’s get down to business and see what goodies Google brought the developer community this year.
This has been a very busy week in the tech world, and not all of of the news came from Google. However, only so many line-items will fit in one roundup, and I/O is the largest and most densely packed story of the year. To fill in the gaps, here is a quick summary of developments in the wider Android ecosystem provided by Jordan Keyes.
Annotations for this video can be found in the main XDA TV post from Friday. Now, let’s get on with the main event: Google’s yearly two day developer conference, Google I/O.
Read more about the XDA TV feature on its dedicated and annotated page.
The full Google I/O keynote can be found here, but it’s two hours long and you surely have better things to do on a Sunday afternoon. With this in mind, here’s the rundown of everything Google announced this week.
Android M, codenamed Macadamia Nut Cookie in internal repos, is finally here! System images have been posted for the latest preview build (links below), so let’s unpack what the newest Android version is all about.
Fingerprint Support – Android now comes with API hooks to support a variety of fingerprint sensor tech. The move comes as part of the larger push for Android Pay, but also allows for device unlocks and Play Store purchases thanks to integration with open authentication APIs. Learn more!
App Permissions – grant (and revoke) permissions on demand in Android M. Starting with this preview build, Android will no longer ask about permissions when installing or updating apps. Instead, permission popups will appear as each service is needed, and decisions about each can be changed through system settings after the fact. This approach may finally smooth out the app update process and give users the granular control for which we have spent years pleading. Is this the Xprivacy killer, or just a neat extension of App Ops? Learn more!
App Link Enhancements – As it stands now, links to Twitter.com and other websites with app counterparts are handled by the cumbersome “App Chooser” dialog through a system of intents. Starting with M, developers can choose to bypass this dialog by using a string of code to “verify” that certain links should redirect to specific apps. Details on precisely how this will work are still a bit fuzzy, and this is a topic that deserves further scrutiny, but a good place to start is reading our primer found here.
Custom Chrome Tabs. Color the toolbar, add custom buttons to the address bar and menu items to the overflow options, and tweak the enter and exit animations to fit your apps native feel. The feature is available on the Chrome dev channel now, with wide scale release scheduled for the third quarter of this year. Read more on the Chrome Developer blog.
Multi-Window Mode (Experimental) – Google stayed silent on the topic of this highly anticipated feature, but Android M appears to ship with a rudimentary multi-window mode. The current version pales in comparison to the more elegant solutions from Samsung, LG, and others, but we are excited to watch the feature progress on our own handsets. You can try out multi-window for yourself by installing M and modifying your build.prop file, so follow the link to take this buggy multi-tasker for a spin today.
Now On Tap – context-aware searching on any screen. Are you reading an email that suggests a movie? Hold the home button for a card that shows everything you need to know. Have you come across a word you can’t pronounce? Google knows the word is on-screen when you fumble through asking for a definition. Some may rightly argue that having this level of access to the contents of your screen is a serious privacy concern – stay tuned for an upcoming analysis – but it’s hard to deny the utility of Google Now showing up when and where it is needed. Learn more!
Automatic Backup of App Data – Google has backed up data for some time, but Android M will finally add app data to the mix (for better or worse). Currently, users rely on third party solutions like Titanium Backup to safeguard game saves, user dictionaries, and other local information, but now that Google is getting involved it is time to revisit the security concerns implicit in handing over more information to the search giant. For more, check out Pulser’s words of caution, here.
Settings toggles can be rearranged! Not much more to say about this one.
Dialer has been replaced with voice search on the lock screen
SD cards are treated as internal storage The KitKat microSD crackdown is finally at an end, full stop.
Text selection now jumps by word and adds a floating toolbar.
Volume Controls add media and alarm sliders
Dark theme! Unfortunately the theme only covers Google’s settings menu for the time being, but watch this space for future developments.
For more information about Android M, keep an eye on the XDA Portal over the coming weeks as we work our way through the preview build and the finer points of I/O. If you would like to get a jumpstart on the process and dive straight into the features outlined above (and more) here are the links to get you started:
M will officially launch later this year, and OEMs are already pledging support for their current lineups. First up, HTC’s Senior Global Online Communications Manager took to Twitter to share that the One M9 and One M9+ will make the jump. No timeline has yet been given. Expect other OEMs to follow suit in the near future.
Check out Google’s video streams for the full I/O experience, but here’s the brief rundown:
Two Google apps saw significant updates as well – Google Photos and Inbox by Gmail. The former ups the resolution of pictures stored for free, and puts a machine-learning spin on finding faces, places, and things through search, while the latter comes out of Beta and is available to all. Check them out in the companion recap of notable app updates.
Brillo is Google’s answer to the Internet of Things. Projects Brillo and Weave function as scaled down operating systems and communications schemas (respectively) based on the Android kernel. Through these systems, connected devices like thermostats, security cameras, refrigerators, and remote sensors can talk to one another and to Android itself using a shared kernel, Hardware Abstraction Layer, and suit of communications standards. Learn more!
Android Auto comes to the Hyundai Sonata – The 2015 Sonata becomes the first car to run Google’s automotive infotainment system. Learn more!
Project Tango – Pick up a dev edition of the 3D mapping Tango tablet for $512 here.
Android Developer Nanodegree – Aspiring developers now have a new resource for getting up to speed with Android. Udacity and Google collaboratively launched the new Android Developer Nanodegree at Google I/O, and the flexible 9-12 month course covers everything a novice programmer with some Java background will need in order to build an Android app. Enrollment ends on June 8, so check out the course page now if you’re thinking about signing up. Fees will run $200 per month while enrolled, but the end result is an official certification from Google.
New account management page for Google accounts. The new manager divides content into sign-in & security, personal info & privacy, and account preferences to simplify navigation. All of the usual features and data logging toggles are included, though we’re still sifting through the menus to compare the old with the new. Check it out!
Google Maps Works Offline – We will have to wait for the switch to be flipped on this one, but voice search, place search, and navigation will all work without a data connection in the near future.
Projects Soli and Jacquard – new and intuitive input methods anywhere you need them. Soli is a miniature radar device small enough to fit inside a smartwatch, and can interpret any finger gesture imaginable in thin air. Jacquard, on the other hand, is a smart fabric that can be made in any color, sewn into any pattern, and acts as a clothing-size touchscreen that senses depth as well as position. In other words, Google is working with Levi’s to make your clothes smart.
Project Abacus – enhanced password-less security through analysis of webcam footage, typing patterns, and other factors. The best part? Abacus could be enabled through a simple software update. Like all projects coming out of the advanced research group ATAP, this one is a little ways off, but has on the edge of our seats.
Project Ara, now with hot swapping demos.
The world is coming online fast; here’s how Google is preparing to bring the next Billion people online and into the Android ecosystem. The strategy? Polymer 1.0 to make the web more material, a consistent API chain to ease the development burdon, Cloud Test Lab to automate app testing, developer pages on Play to market your brand, family friendly filters to target different age groups, and more. This topic is too expansive to cover in just one blurb, so read on for more in-depth coverage.
That is it for this week, but you haven’t heard the last of the Google news. Stay tuned to the XDA portal as we unpack the Android M preview and learn more about each service listed above, then come back next Sunday for another round of recaps. It’s an exciting time to be part of an Android development community, and we’re here to deliver the action right to your front door.
The post XDA Recap: This Week At Google IO (May 24 – 30) appeared first on xda-developers.
Join us in a fun Sunday Debate on phone cameras. Come with your opinions and feel free to read some of our thoughts, then pick your side or play devil’s advocate to get your voice heard and engage in friendly discussion. You can read our food-for-thought or jump straight into the fray below!
It’s fair to say that Android is the platform of choice in this site, at least when it comes to mobile technology. And the name “Google” is a word that is seemingly inseparable from the little green robot… yet despite this, many Android fans feel that the company has been abandoning their creation – the actual platform – in some ways. Most of these complaints come from Google’s focus their services, but it doesn’t stop there.
Play Services are, indeed, a huge aspect of commercial Android, and plenty of users consider them inseparable from the Android experience. Those who don’t can easily find many alternatives to the missing apps, but things like Google Now or the Play Store offer invaluable tools when it comes to making your life easier. However, living without GApps and Play Services altogether is more complicated for technical reasons. So far there is no personal assistant like Google Now, and this remains one of the strongest points for consumers. And with the upcoming improvements, it is only bound to get smarter and more useful.
So, without considering things such as privacy concerns, is Google’s change of focus as clear as some other people make it out to be? Where can we expect the platform to head towards if they do focus more on their proprietary services than their open platform? What do you personally want Google to do? Feel free to read some of our thoughts below, or jump straight to the comments to start discussing!
All of these developments are complex and take away resources that would otherwise be spent on improving the platform. As it is, Android smartphones exist amongst Android smartwatches, cars, TV sets, and more. Maintaining and updating every branch is an increasingly complicated task, and it would be so for any company. And more importantly to some, we don’t have full control of their services, which can be detrimental in many ways – from privacy to performance. The latter is a common annoyance for many users, as Play Services are known to go on a battery murder spree every now and then, further adding to the inconsistencies that we dislike so much about our beloved platform.
The company does also open up some of their other apps and products. as seen with their latest announcements for Android’s Chrome. But at this point in the race, they must keep up with the competition in the service space, as it is furiously picking up. Apple keeps growing and expanding in both hardware and software, but their biggest worry should be Microsoft, who’s been releasing more Android apps than we can keep track of, some being surprisingly good at that. Knowing that this company is backing up Cyanogen and making lots of deals with OEMs, Google needs to make sure that they can muster polished and original functionality to keep up and keep a tight hold on their platform to not let it slip – whether that is good or bad is up to you.
On one hand, Google’s services are a core part of the Android experience to many users around the globe, and a huge part as to why Android is what it is today. They also must be kept strong in order to compete and sustain the future of the platform in smartphones and other devices. On the other hand, much of Google’s latest developments are not on the Android platform itself, and thus we can’t modify it the way we can AOSP. It also brings freedom and privacy into the question, but a more direct downside is that it leaves developers having to pick up Google’s slack when it comes to features and polish. Living without Gapps gets harder every day for many of us, but plenty do try to make it easier.
So we ask you:
Do you think Google is focusing on Android enough?
Are their current developments good for the Android open source platform?
After these changes, what do you think about Google as a company?
Do you live without Google Apps or Services?
The post Sunday Debate: Is Google Focusing Enough on AOSP? appeared first on xda-developers.
The NVIDIA SHIELD console, Razer Forge TV, and Nexus Player, all running on the Android TV platform, represent the latest efforts by Google and its OEM partners to morph Android into a competent and complete living room entertainment experience. Android TV can be seen as Google’s first serious attempt at incorporating console-quality gaming into the idea of a living room device. Other companies, however, explored their own ideas as to how to produce a gaming console powered by Android. The most notable and most infamous of these devices is known as the Ouya.
The Ouya. A product that, when mentioned today, often leads to either quieted laughter or angry thoughts of failed potential and promise. A product that did ten things wrong for every one thing it did right. A product with failed leadership, lead by clueless executives and an even worse marketing team. A product that game developers ended up ignoring, and consumers mostly rejected. A product that lead to this hilarious unboxing .gif:
But it was also a product that lead to some really neat, albeit niche, use cases, and a product that became important to the idea that Android has no bounds and can run on anything. With the recent news that CEO Julie Uhrman is looking to put the company up for sale after failing to restructure its debt, it’s time to take a look back at the history of the Ouya, as well as list some of the more useful and interesting ways to tinker with, exploit, and use the hardware to its greatest potential.
The announcement and pre-release era of the Ouya wasn’t seen as a joke, as it garnered a lot of consumer and market interest. It was announced on July 3rd, 2012, and a Kickstarter campaign launched on July 10th. The date is notable, as Google had just gotten done revealing the Nexus 7 2012 tablet at Google I/O the week prior, and the Ouya shared very similar specs with Google’s latest, creating a lot of buzz within the Android community. Furthermore, the company advertised that the Ouya was going to be “hacker friendly” by being easy to root (and not voiding any warranties in the process), as well as employing a design that made the hardware itself easy to open and tinker around with. The gaming community was also intrigued by the promises of the device to bridge mobile and console-style gaming, as game developers were starting to shift away from the high costs and burden of making console games in favor of mobile, leaving anything other than the most casual gamer frustrated with the quality of newer titles.
Source: Wikipedia
The marketing thus far had worked wonders, as the Ouya became a record-breaking project on Kickstarter, raising nearly $8,600,000 dollars when it ended on August 9th, and holding the record for the best first day performance of any Kickstarter project. Indie game developers and major publishers alike flocked to make announcements of their games being made available on the platform. In October, announcements of the physical hardware being produced, as well as the SDK being released, had consumers and project backers hopeful that a release wasn’t too far off. This is the point in time when things started to turn sour for the company.
While developer units started starting shipping on December 28th, units to Kickstarter backers did not start shipping until the end of March 2013. Reports had started to flood the internet of shipping errors and delays on these units, with some users stating that they had not received their devices until after it went on-sale to the general public, a full 3 months later. These pre-release Kickstarter units received by the tech press were not reviewed well, either. Problems with the wireless controller design, including buttons that got stuck underneath the aluminum plating and input lag that made playing games impossible, were reported by just about everybody. The TV interface was slow, confusing, and ugly, and serious concerns about the viability of the platform were starting to become apparent.
After a delay to re-work the controller, the Ouya was released to the general public on June 25th, 2013, costing $99. Availability had continued to be limited, with not much in the way of actual product able to be shipped out to retailers. Early adopters had quickly figured out that this device could have used more time in the oven. The controller, while improved physically from the Kickstarter units, still exhibited a tremendous amount of input lag and connection problems to the device. The WiFi connection was so terrible that a user’s wireless router needed to be placed in the same room. The UI was hideous and slow, with some poor decisions being made in regards to organization of both the store and the user’s installed applications. Many users returned their devices, and the early woes of the launch caused some of the launch partners to scale back or cancel their plans for Ouya support. Many of these issues needed to be resolved by hardware revisions, as the aluminum plating of both the device and controller interfered with wireless signals, and while the software had gotten better with numerous system updates, the UI remains confusing and unorganized to this day.
Months after launch, consumer and developer complaints alike continued. The propriety Ouya store remained barren, outside of a handful of key game releases from the likes of Sega and Square Enix. The hit indie game Towerfall was first released on Ouya as a 6-month exclusive, but was later re-worked and ported to the more popular game consoles. The store had become littered with low-quality games, and the platform had stopped attracting high-quality developers, mostly due to lack of consumer interest. Developers also scoffed at ridiculous policies, such as the requirement to release a “free-to-play’ component to each and every game found on the store, a policy that was later reversed with little to no impact. An ill-thought marketing scheme entitled the “Free the Games Fund”, where the company would match the Kickstarter funds for any Ouya exclusive title being developed, was abused by scammers and further damaged the integrity of the company and its relationship to consumers.
Furthermore, some users had felt that the company was backtracking on the “truly open” philosophy that was detailed on the company’s Kickstarter page. Root access on later software revisions became hit-and-miss, as OS updates which ran automatically acted to strip root away, requiring exploits in order to restore it. While SU access is available out-of-the-box on early units, doing anything useful with it requires workarounds to install SuperSU and busybox. Side-loading .apk packages, while the ability is there, is cumbersome and time-consuming, and there is no guarantee of app compatibility. ADB and fastboot access is granted natively, however the bootloader remains locked. And since there is little consumer or developer interest in the device, the Android community at large is vastly uninterested in finding new exploits.
By the time the device was released and major bugs worked out, the internals were completely obsolete. The entire company structure from top to bottom was seen as incompetent at best, and consumer trust nosedived. In the end, the company decided to allow the Ouya experience be embedded onto other Android devices, such as the Mad Catz M.O.J.O console, and into televisions sold in the East. And now, we’re left with news stories regarding the financial collapse of the company. Claiming that the Ouya was a disastrous failure is not a far-reaching or untrue statement to make.
While the device can no longer be recommended for purchase (if it can even be found for sale, as it has been removed from most retailer shelves), there are some neat things you can still do if you happen to own one.
Notes/Warnings: Some of these use cases require the use of root access and a custom recovery. Most of the root and recovery installation guides and software out there are out-of-date and were written for earlier versions of the firmware. If your console has not been updated in a while, turning it on with an active internet connection might trigger the automatic download and installation of the recent firmware images, which can remove previous root access and/or make it impossible to regain root in the future. The legality of software emulators and ROM images for classic console games varies by country, so please consult your local laws before obtaining such software. You assume all responsibility of your device moving forward.
Natively, while the Ouya platform itself offers very little compelling games, the store does contain some useful stuff. Emulators for classic consoles are plentiful, and most run fairly well on the platform. You’ll find both free and paid emulators, including Super GNES, FPse, NES.emu, Mupen64, MAME4droid, and reicast, among others. The app Nostalgia serves as a unification hub that merges all of your emulators together into a single app. While the paltry built-in storage won’t hold much in the way of ROM images, external USB storage is supported by most, and some will even access them over cloud storage accounts such as Dropbox. It is also recommended to use a USB controller to get around the input lag issue if you own the first revision of the device. Also found on the store are media applications such as XBMC, Plex, VLC, TwitchTV, Vimeo, TuneIn Radio, and Pandora. FilePwn is great if you need a basic file manager app.
You can also natively side-load, install, and execute .apk files to your Ouya with varied results. Going to Make->Upload allows you to remotely upload an .apk file from your computer’s web browser, but I’ve yet to get this feature to work reliably. You can also transfer via ADB command, or load the .apk file onto a USB storage device and install from there. A helpful trick is to install the Dropbox app via this method and use the cloud storage platform to transfer .apk files with little hassle.
On the more advanced side, there does seem to be a bit of developer activity on-going in the form of custom recoveries, mods, and ports of popular Android ROMs. Our XDA sub-forums for the Ouya, while not listed on the forum’s main page, contain some recent activity, and can be found by visiting these direct links:
Ouya General
Ouya Q&A, Help, & Troubleshooting
A couple of good threads to get you started:
[HOWTO] adb / sideloading / superuser access
[HOWTO] Installing Superuser/busybox for Mac
Included in the Development sub-forum are a myriad of different hacks and ROM ports in varying states of completion. Most recent of these is a work-in-progress ROM port by XDA Senior Member werty100 of the popular OmniROM, based on Android 5.1.1. You can follow the progress of this port here: [5.1.1][LMY47X] OmniRom UNOFFICIAL
There is also a great community to follow all things Ouya at the Unofficial Ouya Forums
You can also visit the official Ouya site
Are you an Ouya owner, or do you develop for the Ouya platform? Do you know of any other cool tweaks, hacks, or mods that aren’t listed here? Is your console currently being used, or is it collecting dust at the bottom of a closet? Please let us know in the comments below!
The post A Look Back at the Ouya: A Tale of Failure appeared first on xda-developers.
Google has made Android Studio 1.3 Preview 1 available in the canary channel. Discussed during I/O 2015, Android Studio 1.5 is a huge update to the IDE, and Preview 1 contains many new features, including a new Allocation Tracker, new heap dump viewer, M Preview data binding support, and more.
The post Android Studio 1.3 Preview 1 Now Available appeared first on xda-developers.
During Google I/O, Android developers were given many new tools to make better apps. This article shows every single change without a need to watch all the keynotes. If you develop Android applications, it’s a must to read.
The post What’s New in Android Development Tools appeared first on xda-developers.
Famous football (or soccer) club F.C. Barcelona announced a partnership with Chinese phone manufacturer – Oppo. Its banners will be visible during the first team matches and commercials linked to the club. Oppo will be a new Barça sponsor for the next three years.
The post Oppo Becomes A Sponsor of FC Barcelona appeared first on xda-developers.
So far details about Project ARA have been few and far between, we have seen plenty of concept modules but not much in the way of functionality. At Google’s ATAP talk we finally got a chance to see the phone being assembled and how it handles new modules being added whilst powered on.
The post Project ARA Assembley and Booting appeared first on xda-developers.
XDA Recognized Developer Tasssadar managed to enable Wi-Fi connectivity on the LG G Watch R. Fix is a combination of custom kernel and WLAN driver files. After flashing the provided ZIP file, you are able to connect your watch to your local network. More instructions available in the thread.
The post Wi-Fi Enabled on the LG G Watch R appeared first on xda-developers.
Google I/o 2015 has come and gone. The biggest celebration of Google by Google has wrapped up. They announced a bunch of exciting information, and to our delight, there were a lot of Android announcements. Additionally, there was a lot of information about other exciting and mobile related Google goodness. Here at xda-developers we have written a lot of articles breaking down those announcements. You can find links to those articles down below.
However, if you wanted to get a quick recap of the exciting news from Google I/O 2015, but can’t find the time to read our great articles, we have a solution for you. On this episode of XDA TV, Producer Jordan created a video where he provides all the exciting information in a quick and easy to digest form. Pull up a chair and check out this video.
Be sure to check out other great XDA TV Videos
Check out Jordan’s YouTube Channel and Jordan’s Gaming YouTube Channel
The post Google I/O 2015 Recap – XDA TV appeared first on xda-developers.
Apps are at the front and center of any smartphone experience, and with over a million apps on the Google Play Store and new apps being submitted to our forums every day, staying up to date on the latest apps and games can be a hassle. At XDA we don’t discriminate apps – if it’s interesting, innovative, original or useful, we mention them. The XDA Portal Team loves apps too, and here are our top picks for this week.
Honorable Mentions:
Notable Updates:
That is it for this week. We hope that you might have found some of these apps as interesting, useful or entertaining as we did. Whether you are a student, a developer, a designer or a gamer, Android has you covered. We will try to reflect that each week with a variety of picks to spark your interest, and If you see (or publish!) any new apps that you think are worthy of a feature, be sure to send us a tip and we’ll give it a look. Until next time!
The post XDA Picks: Best Apps of the Week (May 15 – 30) appeared first on xda-developers.
Micromax’s Unite line of phones has seen some excellent and affordable entry-level handsets, and last year’s offering, the Unite 2, which was announced in May 2014, is receiving an over-the-air update to Lollipop. The update is sized at around 413MB and upgrades the device to Android 5.0.
The post Micromax Unite 2 Receiving Android Lollipop OTA appeared first on xda-developers.
Android M is finally announced and the source code of the preview release is partially pushed. That gives us a bigger picture on how big M’s release actually is. Take a look at the lengthy changelog between android_5.1.1_r4 and android-m-preview. It’s over 35 thousands commits long.
The post Android-m-preview AOSP Changelog appeared first on xda-developers.
Amazon.co.uk has listed the Oppo R7 for pre-order on its website. The phone is priced for £259 ($400) and will be available on sale from July 21st onwards. The Oppo R7 comes with the octa core Snapdragon 615, a 5″ AMOLED display, a micro-sd card slot for expansion upto 128GB and is 4G ready.
The post Oppo R7 16GB Dual Sim Available For Pre-order In UK appeared first on xda-developers.
Qualcomm has announced that the Snapdragon 810 will be powering the next gen Project Tango Dev Platform, which uses device sensors to create a 3D map of the environment. Developers will also be able to utilize tools from the Qualcomm Developer Network to take advantage of features of the SD 810 Processor.
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OnePlus Co-founder Carl Pei spoke to Ausdroid editor Daniel Tyson to give us a glimpse of what to expect. He clarified that the new device will be called the “OnePlus 2″ which will be launched in Q3 2015 with the same invite system and low budget strategy. Carl also mentioned that the June 1 teaser “is not a new device”.
The post Carl Pei Speaks About OnePlus 2 And June 1 Teaser appeared first on xda-developers.
In a not entirely surprising move, Google announced that it’s putting an end to SMS notifications for Google calendar as of June 27th. They stated earlier, “SMS notifications for Google Calendar launched before smartphones were available. Now in a world with smartphones and notifications, you can get richer, more reliable experience on your mobile device, even offline”.
Google Drive for Work, Google Apps for Work (paid edition), Education and Government customers will not be affected by these changes and can continue using the feature as normal. For the rest of us it is highly recommended that you install and configure the calendar app of your choice to continue to receive notifications.
While we imagine that this will not have a significant impact on many smartphone users, it is nice to see Google paying attention to some of their older features, even if it just for a ‘spring clean’.
Do you still use SMS notifications? Leave a comment below!
The post Google No Longer Sending Calendar SMS Notifications appeared first on xda-developers.
Back in March, Microsoft announced that it would be working closely with user groups within the Xiaomi fan community to create a true Windows 10 ROM. The user group has now revealed that the ROM will be available for public use from June 1 for signed up users. You can view a video demo of the ROM here.
The post Official Windows 10 ROM On Xiaomi Mi4 appeared first on xda-developers.
What was not mentioned in yeterday’s keynote was Android M’s multi-window mode, this was due to it not yet being shown in user builds. You can however edit your build.prop to enable it with relative ease. If you are running the developer preview this is a feature you don’t want to miss!
The post Enable Multi-Window Mode on M Developer Preview appeared first on xda-developers.
Version 5.3 Update to Swiftkey brings along support for 9 new Indian languages along with extending adaptive layouts and Emoji support to other languages. There’s also a new “Carbon” theme, Swiftkey HUB and Password Management with Dashlane.
The post SwiftKey Keyboard Update appeared first on xda-developers.
One year ago, Google introduced cardboard. Amazingly enough, that was all it took to fire up the Virtual Reality scene on Android, and what began as an open design concept exploded into thousands of apps and dozens of headsets from big and small vendors alike. Now, there are more than 1 million cardboard viewers/handsets – a Google-quoted number that might not even be accurate given the ease with which headsets can be rigged through off-the-shelf equipment. This year, cardboard returned to steal the show once again, but this time the updated peripheral is not alone.
The new Cardboard design mercifully supports screens up to six inches in diagonal, such as that on last fall’s Nexus 6, and the upgraded control button works with even the oldest of handsets. In short, nearly every smartphone on the market can run Cardboard, including Did I say any phone? That’s right, the Cardboard SDK for Unity now runs on iOS as well as Android.
The company has built a set of these cameras and sent them across the world to begin a YouTube video collection in stereoscopic 3D, allowing users to explore places like never before. The full experience is coming to a screen near you this summer, but non-stereoscopic versions will land on YouTube sometime this week; stay tuned to the XDA portal for links as soon as they are up.
We will no doubt eventually see stereoscopic 3D pop up in Google’s other services soon (like street view), so treat this announcement as the beginning of a much larger story. It may not be the rumored Android VR we were expecting, but it’s impressive none the less.
For more Cardboard news, check out the 16 minute keynote clip below, and remember that I/O is an ongoing event full of techies – we likely haven’t heard the last of VR this week.
Do you use Google Cardboard? Will you buy (or build) a VR camera rig? Leave a comment below!
The post I/O Summary: Google Cardboard Virtual Reality appeared first on xda-developers.
On June 1st, Xiaomi will officially launch in the US, UK, Germany and France. Don’t expect phones just yet, for the foreseeable future the store will only be selling accessories such as earphones, fitness trackers and power banks. If they see good feedback we could in the future see their phones come to the west.
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After quite some teasing, OnePlus has made the Bamboo Styleswap cover available for purchase on Amazon.in for the price of Rs. 1,499 ($25). The covers are uniquely patterned amongst themselves, with the retail packaging also containing two bamboo themed SIM card trays for micro and nano SIM cards.
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HTC’s Senior Global Online Communications Manager, Jeff Gordon took to Twitter to share that the HTC One M9 and One M9+ will both be receiving Android M. While no exact timeline was given on this, Jeff did promise that more HTC devices will be added to this list, hopefully ones that still boast capable hardware.
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Android M preview images are available. That and much more news is covered by Jordan when he reviews all the important stories from this week. Included in this week’s news is the announcement of Google’s Project Tango going on sale and be sure to check out the article talking about Google’s Roboto font going open source. That’s not all that’s covered in today’s video!
Jordan talks about the other videos released this week on XDA TV. XDA TV Producer TK released an Xposed Tuesday video covering XPrivacy. Then rirozizo reviewed the Doosl FM Transmitter. Also, TK gave us an app review of ChronoSnap. Pull up a chair and check out this video.
Be sure to check out other great XDA TV Videos
Check out Jordan’s YouTube Channel and Jordan’s Gaming YouTube Channel
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In the spirit of improving the core Android experience, Google is changing Android M to be smarter about managing power. Their new Doze feature comprises of two primary roles which allow Android to use motion detection in order to predict activity, and go into deep sleep at the right time based on accelerometer readings.
In order to extend your screen off battery life, Android M will now monitor your activity levels and if it detects that your device has not moved in a while will start to “doze”, this means that the device will then wait longer to wake up for scheduled repeating events, whilst not affecting GCM and alarms. When your device is moved, used or plugged in the device will wake up and normal usage will resume.
The second power saving method they have implemented is app-standby whereby if an app is not used for a significant length of time the app will be put into a lower powered state and lose network access until it is used again or your device is plugged in, rather optimistically the length of time they stated during the “What’s new in Android” talk before apps enter standby was measured in days.
They are happy to say that devices running M can last up to two times longer on standby than those running Lollipop. It is important to note that Doze only benefits phones that remain motionless. USB Type C will bring faster charging (according to Google, anywhere from 3 to 5 times as much). And they are, of course flippable and reversible. You can also use your device to charge whatever is plugged in as well.
Hopefully this will see a large increase in the battery life of devices with less screen on time and could have huge ramifications for battery life in tablets which may see much less time being carried around than phones whilst remaining on.
What do you think to the new Doze feature? Leave a comment below!
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At I/O 2015, Google tackled the information problem in mobile once more, this time through pictures: “how incredible is it that we all have a camera in our pockets at any moment? (…) These moments tell your story (…)[but] taking more pictures and videos makes it harder to relieve memories due to the sheer volume”. This is why they are revamping Google Photos and centering it around 3 big ideas:
Google photo automatically backs up and syncs all photos and videos with Google Drive, and it understands their time and context to arrange them in a timeline that allows you scroll back as far as possible (depending on earliest file) in time. Google wants to make every interaction feel fast, and by swiping to the right you can access your collections which include montage movies that you have saved.
The app also helps you organize and bring moments to life. Using machine learning, it understands what’s truly important and organizes pictures by people, places, and everything that matters in your life. You can select a person and go all the way back to the first picture you took or saved of said person – and from what was shown, even when they were babies (if that part was automated, we should be pretty scared). Easy video editing is included as well, and it is easy to change the theme, soundtrack and reorder clips.
There are new gestures for multi-picture selection. Google also wants to make it easy to share what matters, “no strings attached”. You just tap “get a link”, and in less than a second you get a link to all selected items. You can also share it anywhere without worrying about the recipient having a particular app. This ultimately means you are sharing high quality content without needing to login or download any app. And on top of that, Google Photos will offer unlimited online storage for free, at a resolution of 16MP for pictures and 1080p for video. However, the pictures might still get compressed on unlimited storage, as their support page states that they “Save high-quality photos and videos while reducing size”.
The new Google Photos begins rolling out today, but you can grab the APK here. We will review the application in-depth in the following days.
What do you think about Google’s new gallery and its design and technology? Let us know below!
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