Android News

... Android is full of wonderful little touches here and there that we either forget or have never come across in the first place. One of these is the very neat time-saving ability to double tap the Recents button to switch to your previous app. The functionality was added way back in 2016 with Android N , and has been saving us time for two years now. If you didn't know about it though, and many of you did not , this will be your new favorite thing. Double tapping Recents / Overview works a little bit like Alt-Tab on a computer. It switches to the previous app you had open on Android, then double tap again and you're back to your first app. I use it daily when I'm taking notes while editing Android Police posts: going back and forth from Chrome to Google Docs would be a chore otherwise. On phones, I find it's a lot better than multi-window since it gives me the full screen estate of the two apps with an easy way to switch between them. O

... Despite doing a pretty good job on keeping its phones up to date, HMD Global has until recently had a bit of trouble with releasing the kernel sources for its devices. But in a "finally" moment, the exclusive manufacturer of the Nokia brand has released the Nokia 8 source codes to the developer community. Having this code allows developers to start tinkering with custom software for the device(s) in question. These kernel sources for the Nokia 8, which was very well-received by our very own (awesome) Rita , have often been requested by the dev community since the phone launched. Though this is a big step in the right direction, HMD still does not permit the Nokia devices to be bootloader-unlocked. That severely hampers the benefits of developers having the kernel sources, but perhaps HMD will reverse its policy if the community asks enough for it. #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #And

New day, new info on the seemingly inevitable, yet never actually happening , Android 8.0 Oreo updates for the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge. This time it's courtesy of the Samsung-run Turkish website that translates to "Are we up to date?" which we've referenced in the past , again in connection with the S7. Well, the quoted date is now May 18 for the S7 and S7 edge (up from April 13 last time). The Galaxy A3 (2017), A5 (2017), and A7 (2017) will follow next, on June 1 (previously May 25). Obviously, as with last time, those deadlines may or may not be met. Additionally, the dates for one country don't necessarily apply for the rest of the world, but we're still hoping that once it's all finalized, there's no stopping the global rollout. Source | Via #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews

My new apartment is laid out in a longitudinal way with the master bedroom on an opposite end of the living room/balcony. This makes the terrible internet situation in Lebanon even more challenging because finding a router system that reaches both ends is tricky. After a lot of research, I opted for a TP-Link Archer VR2600  that we had to place toward the living room side of the house. On paper, it seemed to fit the bill with speed, dual-band, guest network, parental controls, and a neat Android app. Most importantly, it had an RJ11 port, which is how our ADSL internet is delivered. But in reality and with several months of use, the situation wasn't completely perfect. I can't make full use of the dual bands because some of my smart home gadgets only support 2.4GHz and if I want to control them locally, I'd have to keep my phones on the 2.4GHz band, which means that my Google Homes have to be on it too, and so on. Needless to say, the 2.4GHz network is being overw

ZTE no longer has a viable smartphone program thanks to U.S. sanctions, but was it a fair decision? The U.S. government has basically killed ZTE's smartphone business by blocking access to Google's services. There are a lot of headlines that talk about the ban in different ways, but when you get right down to the nitty-gritty that is what you are left with. The short version is this: ZTE was caught (and admitted to) selling mobile equipment to Iran and North Korea, which are two of the very few countries that the U.S. considers the "enemy," and a company isn't allowed to do business with either if it wants to do business with U.S. based companies. A punishment was set for this, which ZTE agreed to, and the U.S. says that ZTE did not adhere to it so the Secretary of Commerce issued a denial order against the company that says in part: [ZTE] may not, directly or indirectly, participate in any way in any transaction involving any commodity, software

The Autocomplete feature of Google Search saves some 200 years of typing per day, Google said Friday, citing its internal research and estimates. Likewise, the functionality reduces the amount of typing one has to do to perform an online search by approximately 25-percent, the company claims. The Mountain View, California-based Internet giant is quick to point out that Autocomplete-generated results are meant to be referred as "predictions" instead of suggestions given how they were designed to guess one's query and not make any kind of content recommendations that would by definition have a bias. The system still isn't perfect and can occasionally lead to what Google deems are inappropriate predictions, with the firm encouraging users to report any such results if they're certain they shouldn't be shown, even though the existence of a prediction or lack thereof doesn't affect one's ability to search for anything. What constitutes an inappropriate

American audio equipment manufacturer Bose is pondering the concept of wireless earbuds capable of cooling themselves, as indicated by a new patent awarded to the company by the United States Patent and Trademark Office earlier this week. Officially published on Thursday, the patent and its designs seen in the gallery below describe a pair of headphones coming in the form of a fitness-oriented offering made of elastomer, i.e. rubber, filled with materials capable of changing their state of aggregation from solid to liquid and vice versa. The idea is that the solid matter inside the earbuds would turn into liquid once the user's body reaches a certain temperature and the device itself starts heating up so as to stop the change or at least slow down the temperature increase until the earlobe cools down. The materials themselves would be able to change their state of aggregation at specified temperatures, the patent reveals, meaning Bose could deliver a lineup of headphones that ha

The LG Q7 is methodically gathering the certifications needed before official launch. After it became clear a couple of days ago that it's been certified in Russia alongside the G7 , the Q7 has now cleared the US FCC - or at least that's what we're making of the ZNF Q7 10TS model name that's popped up in the regulator's database. Details on the handset's specs have been scarce, and that's not going to change with this FCC filing. Occasionally, we've been lucky and the FCC ID location in the menus has revealed something like battery capacity, but not today. In any case, if the G6 / Q6 pair is any indication, we're expecting a significantly cheaper G7 lookalike with midrange internals. And hopefully no ThinQ in the name - imagine a ThinQ7. As usual, such developments serve mainly to prove a phone's existence and its nearing announcement, though there's obviously nothing along the lines of a time frame. Source | Via #Googl

Huawei wants its next AI-powered voice assistant to be more aware of human emotions. #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews

The new video editor in Google Photos brings simpler UI and more advanced tools to the app. #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews

Facebook will soon see changes to their privacy settings, but American users won't see exactly the same thing as their European counterparts. #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews

Flickr will continue to operate as a separate entity after the deal closes, SmugMug said. #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews

OnePlus 6 India launch will be "soon", Amazon said in a releasing; it will also launch the dedicated webpage for the handset at 12am on April 22. #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews

Security updates for Moto G and Moto E series will reportedly arrive every 60-90 days, and not monthly. #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews

Walmart's purchase of new equity is likely to value Flipkart at at least $18 billion. #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews

Verizon recently started pushing out an update to Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge units on its network, with its official changelog claiming the software package brings Android 8.0 Oreo to Samsung's 2016 flagships, yet numerous owners of the two devices soon started reporting that the firmware ships with nothing but the new April security patch. The largest wireless carrier in the United States apparently attached the wrong changelog to the update and has rectified the mistake in the last 24 hours, with all references to Android 8.0 Oreo now being removed from its patch notes. The gaffe is an uncommon one and comes at a time when owners of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge are anticipating the major operating system upgrade to hit their Android devices any day now. Samsung itself already confirmed it's developing an Oreo build for its 2016 flagship lineup, with a recent premature listing from the company's Turkish arm suggesting the new software will begin rolling out by la