HTC Edge Launcher Updated with Support for HTC U11 and Customization Options

The HTC U11 and U11+ are departures from their predecessor, the HTC 10. Both drop the aluminum unibody construction in favor of a 3D glass back and a metal frame, and have another unique feature, Edge Sense, which actives shortcuts when you squeeze the phones' sides. Unlike the Active Edge functionality on the Google Pixel 2, HTC's Edge Sense is highly customizable, and it's only gotten better since its release.

On Friday, HTC updated the Edge Launcher — the small menu of apps and quick settings that triggers when you squeeze the sides of the HTC U11+ — with support for the HTC U11. It's optional — you can choose not to enable the Edge Launcher on the HTC U11 if you prefer the default Edge Sense behavior.

The core functionality of the Launcher hasn't changed — squeezing the sides of the HTC U11 and HTC U11+ brings up apps, contacts, and quick settings. The radial menu can be customized up to five levels, and the update adds the ability to tap and hold icons to edit their position. There are more shortcut options now, too: You can choose from shortcuts that activate battery saver, auto-rotate and Wi-Fi hotspot.

The new Edge Launcher also adds the ability to open the radial menu from the lockscreen — before, it could only be opened when the phone was unlocked. It's worth mentioning that you still need to unlock your phone if you want to launch an app or shortcut from the lockscreen, unless Smart Lock's Trusted Places feature is turned on.

HTC U11 and U11+ owners can download the updated Edge Launcher from the Play Store.

HTC Edge Launcher (Free, Google Play) →

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Source: Google Play StoreVia: Android Authority

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Alcatel’s upcoming flagship, the Alcatel 5, gets leaked in new renders

Alcatel Mobile hasn't achieved the popularity its China-based competitors Huawei and Xiaomi have, but that isn't stopping the Nokia-owned company from releasing new phones. In November, Evan Blass published a series of renders for upcoming Alcatel smartphones, including the Alcatel 1X, Alcatel 3, Alcatel 3C, Alcatel 3V, Alcatel 3X and the Alcatel 5, and a new leak sheds more light on the highest-end of the bunch: The Alcatel 5.

The Alcatel 5 is said to be the flagship of Alcatel Mobile's series, the spiritual successor to last year's Idol series. It received FCC certification in December, and on Friday Mr. Blass posted a render of the device's final design. They show a metal (or a polycarbonate body with a metallic coating) and a single rear camera.

Final design of the upcoming Alcatel 5 flagship. http://pic.twitter.com/2D3kgyXlMI

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) January 4, 2018

Judging by the render, the fingerprint sensor is below the camera, on the back, and the Alcatel 5's front has an asymmetrical design — that is to say, the side bezels are incredibly narrow, and the top bezel is much larger than the bottom bezel. It also appears to have dual front cameras.

Unfortunately, not much has been revealed about the Alcatel 5's specifications so far. It's expected to have a 3000mAh battery and a screen with an 18:9 aspect ratio display, and was previously rumored to launch at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show next week. But there's a possibility it might be revealed at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which starts February 26.

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Source: Evan Blass on Twitter

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Amazon Alexa coming to Wearables & Headphones with Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit

We've seen wearables with Amazon Alexa integration, but they've been few and far between. That's because the software development kit wasn't built with portable devices in mind, but that's changing. To help usher in a new wave of Amazon Alexa-enabled devices, Amazon on Friday announced the Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit.

The Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit is designed for portable, on-the-go gadgets such as wearables, headphones, smartwatches, and fitness devices. The goal, Amazon says, is to make it easier for developers to add Alexa to devices — particularly lightweight devices which don't have that much processing power — with "minimum investment in hardware or integration efforts."

Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit works by sending voice requests from a wearable or activity tracker to the cloud-based Alexa Voice Service (AVS) via the Alexa app on a paired iOS or Android handset. The smartphone processes the request and sends the result back to the wearable device.

Amazon says the Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit later this year, and that it'll support features such as calendar management, weather updates, and Alexa's thousands of skills. The company's already working closely with third-party companies including Bose, Beyerdynamic, Jabra, and iHome.

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Source: Amazon Alexa Blog

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Nokia 6 (2018) Official with Snapdragon 630 SoC, Bothie Camera Mode and OZO Audio

After weeks of leaks and rumors, HMD Global on Friday finally took the wraps off the Nokia 6 (2018), its latest mid-range smartphone for 2018. It's the successor to the last year's Nokia 6, which was announced in China around the same time a year ago, and it improves upon its predecessor while offering a more competitive package all-around.

At first glance, the new Nokia 6 (2018) looks just like the old Nokia 6, but there are a couple of key differences worth noting. For instance, the fingerprint scanner has moved to the back, and the capacitive navigation buttons have been replaced by standard Android software navigation keys. In addition, the stereo speakers found on the original Nokia 6 have been replaced by a single bottom-firing speaker.

Source: Nokia

 

The Nokia 6 (2018) sports a metal unibody design made out of 6000-series aluminum with chamfered edges and rounded corners, which makes it easier to grip. The front of the device boasts a 5.5-inch Full HD IPS LCD display protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3, with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 and an aspect ratio of 16:9. On the inside, the Nokia 6 (2018) packs a Snapdragon 630 octa-core system-on-a-chip (SoC), featuring eight Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 2.2GHz and an Adreno 508 GPU, coupled with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64GB of eMMC 5.1 internal storage.

Unlike much of the mid-range competition, the Nokia 6 (2018) doesn't have a dual-camera setup on the back. Instead, it features the same 16MP f/2.0 sensor found on its predecessor, with a 1.0μm pixel size, phase detection autofocus (PDAF) and a dual-tone LED flash module. The front camera setup is also unchanged from the previous model — a 8MP f/2.0 shooter with an 84-degree wide-angle lens. However, the Nokia 6 (2018) supports the Nokia 8's Dual-Sight mode, which lets you capture "Bothies" using both rear and front camera simultaneously.

Source: Nokia

Powering the Nokia 6 (2018) is a 3,000mAh non-removable battery with support for fast charging, which can charge the battery from 0 to 50 percent in just 30 minutes, according to HMD Global. The phone also supports OZO Audio recording, which uses two of its microphones to capture high-fidelity 360-degree audio.

Other highlights include support for Bluetooth 5.0, an LTE Cat 4 radio (150Mbps DL / 50Mbps UL), dual-SIM support, a microSD card slot, USB Type-C and a 3.5mm audio jack.

On the software front, the Nokia 6 (2018) is launching with Android 7.1.1 Nougat out-of-the-box. That might sound a bit odd considering that Android Oreo has been out for a while now, but HMD Global says it's planning to issue an Oreo update in the near future.

 

The Nokia 6 (2018)'s available in black and silver, and it will go on sale in China starting January 1o for a retail price of 1,499 yuan (about $230) for the 32GB model and 1,699 (about $260) for the 64GB variant. As we have seen with previous Nokia devices, the device will likely make its way to other markets in the near future.

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Source: Nokia (in Chinese)

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New Leaked Android Oreo Build for the Snapdragon Samsung Galaxy S8 Adds Dolby Atmos

Samsung has been rolling out incremental beta updates to Android Oreo for the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, and Note 8 smartphone models over the past few weeks, and just today, a Reddit user named /u/Child_Kicker_16 noticed a new official OTA update is starting to roll out for the Snapdragon Samsung Galaxy S8.

This update includes the January Android security patch update, which notably provides protection against the potentially nasty exploits caused by CPU speculative execution. We'll post another article on that vulnerability and how it may affect your devices, but according to Google, the January 2018 security patch protects Android devices from this kind of vulnerability.

Software Information, screenshot by /u/Child_Kicker_16

Other additions include a new boot logo and most notably Dolby Atmos audio integration. Dolby Atmos is a popular surround sound technology that provides audio enhancement to devices whose maker has licensed the technology. Atmos, along with Viper4Android, is an incredibly popular audio tuning feature on our forums, so this inclusion is bound to be welcome by Samsung Galaxy S8 owners.

To sideload this update onto your Samsung Galaxy S8, your device must be of the Snapdragon variant and must currently be on the previous Android Oreo beta BQL1 update. Rest assured, sideloading this update via your SD card or through ADB sideload in recovery does not trip Knox as this is official firmware from Samsung.

The new update with Dolby Atmos and January security patches isn't yet available for the newer Galaxy Note 8 model, but we're sure that  update isn't too far behind. Given the recent news that the Oreo beta program may end on January 15th, it's likely that the official Oreo OTA update for the Galaxy S8, S8+, and Note 8 is just around the corner.

If you would like to read up on all the changes that Samsung's Android Oreo update brings, you can read our previous article that documents most of the important changes. Those Samsung-specific changes are in addition to standard 8.0 platform features such as picture-in-picture mode, support for the Autofill Framework, notification channels, stricter background app limitations, and also native support for OMS—the theme framework behind Substratum.

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Substratum Theme Manager Gets a UI Revamp & Performance Improvements

Substratum, a mainstay in Android system theming since the Marshmallow days, received a major design revamp this week along with some security improvements and a new default theme compiler to improve performance. The new design, first teased last month, has been long-anticipated and has finally arrived.

The improvements to the user interface (UI) are designed to make the app more user-friendly, and include the ability to show your installed themes in a multi-column grid to save some scrolling and the ability to return to the theme list by simply swiping down on whichever theme you currently have open. Below is a screenshot gallery of the new UI in action.

When you open a theme, Substratum colors the action bar and the navigation bar to match the dominant color of the theme's header image. One caveat applies though: when a transparent/translucent theme is applied, the Substratum app overrides such transparency with that same solid color. Substratum Development Leader nicholaschum assured me that the team is aware of the issue and is currently working on a solution. You can see the dynamic coloring in action in the screenshots below with no theme applied.

On the performance front, the default theme compiler was changed from the AAPT (Android Assets Packaging Tool) from the Marshmallow era to AOPT (Android Overlay Packaging Tool). When I asked nicholaschum about the difference, he said the latter compiler was built from Oreo sources, enabling it to compile more API-level specific resources such as the downloadable fonts API available starting in Android 8.0.

There are, of course, plenty of other changes introduced in Substratum 930, which you can read about in detail in nicholaschum's Google+ post. There was another interesting statement made in that post: with Samsung beginning to roll out Oreo updates to its latest devices, the Sungstratum plugin will soon no longer be necessary. Users will thus be transferred over to the Andromeda plugin for unrooted devices running Samsung's stock Oreo ROM.

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Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ Oreo Beta Might End on January 15

The Android Oreo and Samsung Experience 9.0 beta for the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, which kicked off in November 2017, might finally be drawing to a close.

On the Galaxy S8 subreddit Thursday, redditor shivamchinu posted a screenshot of an updated onboarding message in the Samsung Experience app's Notices section. It contains new language that points to January 15, 2018 as the program's end date.

Source: Reddit

We've yet to see a corroborating source, though. And even if the notice is accurate, it isn't clear whether it's referring to the end of the beta program altogether, or the rollout date for new beta software (one of the newest releases, beta 4, hit devices on December 14).

In any case, the beta's progressing at a steady clip. Beta 4 of the Galaxy S8 and S8+'s Oreo update included a fix for flakey Bluetooth connections, excessive battery consumption, non-responsive iris scanners, and unstable Galaxy Apps. It also shipped with Google's December Android security bulletin.

If you haven't registered for the beta program yet, it's not too late. Open the Samsung Members app on your Galaxy S8 or S8+ and look for the Register for Galaxy Beta Program message in the app's Home tab. (You'll only see it if you're in one of the program's supported countries and on a supported carrier.)  Tap on it and agree to the terms, and you're golden — you'll see an option to enroll. Shortly after, you'll see get a notification prompting you to install the newest beta firmware.

Can't install the beta? Don't fret. We recently checked out all the forthcoming software has to offer in a thorough hands on.

Samsung hasn't announced a release date for the stable Android Oreo update, but it might not be too far away. The South Korea-based smartphone maker recently launched an Android Oreo beta program for the Galaxy Note 8.

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Source: Reddit

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