NVIDIA Shield TV and Xiaomi Mi Box shown running Android Oreo at MWC

At Mobile World Congress this year we saw a huge amount of Android device unveilings. We saw the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, the Sony Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact, the Asus Zenfone 5 and 5Z, and a lot of other devices as well. What we didn't see much of were announcements for improvements to existing devices. In the case of the NVIDIA Shield TV and the Xiaomi Mi Box, though, they were both shown off running the Android TV Oreo update.

We saw what Android Oreo would look like on Android TVs at Google I/O nearly a year ago, but with no timetable of when to expect the update to reach the first Android TV-enabled set-top boxes.

A video showcasing how the new update looks

At MWC, we finally got to see the new update in action on the NVIDIA Shield TV and the Xiaomi Mi Box, two of the most popular Android TV sets. Complete with a new UI and the newest features of Android Oreo in tow, the update was highly anticipated. Previously, the update was only available on the Nexus Player, which hasn't been available for purchase for well over a year now.

With Android TV, Google Assistant is already integrated on Xiaomi set-top boxes. Now we have announced that we will be working with @Google to bring all the capabilities of Google Assistant to life on Xiaomi smartphones. Do look forward to an amazing user experience! pic.twitter.com/GEUpo8fLE8

— Wang Xiang (@XiangW_) February 26, 2018

It's always a pleasure to be at #hbbtv interop workshop @IRTpresse for @TARASystems pic.twitter.com/CiJruqfEWt

— Michael Schäfer (@de_m_schaefer) February 27, 2018

It's great to see updates in the works for both devices, especially the NVIDIA Shield TV which launched in May of 2015. It's a nearly 3-year-old device, and thanks to its Tegra-based chipset the hardware is controlled by NVIDIA who can continuously update it without relying on a third-party to provide drivers like is the case with Qualcomm and MediaTek devices.

As for the Xiaomi Mi Box, the device was promised to quickly receive an update to Android Nougat shortly after launch, yet an official update to Nougat has yet to arrive for the device. There's a beta build available, but quite a few things are broken so it isn't suitable as a daily driver for many people. Xiaomi's lateness in delivering updates to the Mi Box has soured our opinion on the device, but an update to Android Oreo may salvage some of their standing here.

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Via: /r/AndroidTV [1] Via: /r/AndroidTV [2]

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Honor View 10 may launch with Android 8.1 Oreo in the U.S.

The Honor View 10 is the latest smartphone in the company's V series and it's a smartphone we have been hearing a lot about lately. The device was originally launched in China, but this year at CES we learned it would be making its way internationally as well. While the device has yet to go on sale in the United States, we're learning that Honor may be shipping the device with Android Oreo based on Android 8.1 when it does.

As of January 8th, Honor began selling the View 10 in India, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain from HiHonor.com. Since launch, the device has shipped with Android 8.0 Oreo, but when it becomes available in the United States it could have Android 8.1 Oreo instead. We learned about this possibility thanks to the work that Honor has been doing with the developer community. Lately, we've seen a lot of developer support for the device including the availability of LineageOS 15.1, CarbonROM, official TWRP images, and support for Magisk.

There are a lot of factors that come into play when determining how well received a device is from the developer community. Honor has done a lot of work to reach out and connect with the community with the Honor Open Source Program. Along with providing the much-needed kernel sources in a timely fashion and APIs so developers can leverage the AI capabilities of the SoC, they have been sending out devices to a number of developers within the community.

One of the developers who was chosen to receive a device, a member of Dirty Unicorns, is showing that their U.S. Honor View 10 is running Android 8.1 Oreo with EMUI 8.1.0. This is interesting because until now we were under the assumption that it would be shipping with Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box.

Thanks @Honor_USA pic.twitter.com/RimYMGaZM8

— Dirty Unicorns (@_DirtyUnicorns_) February 28, 2018

We'll have to wait and see if this is what customers in the United States receive when the device is made available for sale at HiHonor. The build number listed in the tweet is listed as C567log, and that tells us that it's a beta build. It could be that the device launches with 8.0 Oreo as expected, but will quickly receive an update to 8.1 soon after. We suspect that EMUI 8.1 won't be released to any Huawei or Honor device until the upcoming Huawei P20, P20 Lite, and P20 Plus are officially announced.

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Pixel 2 Experience is a Magisk Module that adds Pixel Features to any Rooted Smartphone

There have been many ports released of various software features that Google has included in the Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL. This includes the exclusive wallpapers, the multiple ports and mods of the Pixel launcher, Google Lens, and many others. So for anyone wanting the full Pixel experience, XDA Senior Member joeyhuab has combined a number of these features into a single Magisk Module. The module is called the Pixel 2 Experience and it works on Android 8.0+ devices with Magisk 15.0+ installed. It comes with the following features:

• Modded Pixel 2 Launcher by @paphonb
• Google Wallpapers app
• Pixel Launcher Icons (from the regular GApps packages)
• Pixel system accent theme (in system/vendor/overlay/Pixel)
• Google Lens feature enabled in Google Photos app
• Adds Pixel-exclusive wallpapers via Google Wallpapers app (download Google Wallpaper Images to add more wallpapers)
• Google Sans font family used in Google Assistant, Pixel Launcher, System Update window, SetupWizard text, number texts in Settings app in 8.1+ (Storage usage, Data usage, Battery percentage)
• Audio files (ringtones, notifications, UI, alarms)
• Enable Google Assistant via build.prop
• Camera2 API Support – to check if working, install the Camera2 Probe app via the Play Store

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Download the Pixel 2 Experience Magisk Module

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The Samsung Galaxy S9 Display is Almost Perfect According to DisplayMate

Samsung has officially launched their latest flagships, the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ (hands-on). Like clockwork, DisplayMate has published their review of the displays. There are some websites out there that review as many devices as they can get their hands on, and then there are some that have chosen to keep their selection quite limited. DisplayMate's mobile reviews focus on the best Samsung and Apple have to offer and their new review of the Galaxy S9's screen says it's virtually indistinguishable from perfect.

We've covered a number of DisplayMate's reviews for Samsung flagships and each time they've had great things to say about the displays. Samsung gets a lot of flack from the enthusiast Android community for a variety of reasons, but it's incredibly difficult to find faults in their displays. The company is great at listening to feedback in this regard. They were quick to add different display modes when people complained about their stock calibration being too saturated.

Some will say the screen looks the same as their other flagships. However, DisplayMate's review shows there have been major display performance improvements when compared to the Galaxy S8. They believe that OLED is now a highly refined and mature display technology. This has allowed Samsung to focus on enhancing and optimizing the picture quality and color accuracy of the Galaxy S9. It has also allowed them to implement precision factory display calibration which has resulted in a display that is virtually indistinguishable from perfect.

DisplayMate's review of the Galaxy S9 screen says Samsung has been able to bring the level of quality to outstanding levels. Their tests show the new flagship has been able to set many new display performance records, including Absolute Color Accuracy and the smallest shifts in brightness and color with viewing angles (including White). The display of the Galaxy S9 is up to 20% brighter than the Galaxy S8, it's certified by the UHD Alliance for Mobile HDR Premium, and has earned DisplayMate's highest A+ grade.

Their in-depth review also dives into some of the phone's new features, such as user-adjustable white point (with color balance slider controls), vision accessibility display modes to help those with vision impairments, and its luminance independence with varying picture content. We have some of their graphs embedded below, but potential customers (and display enthusiasts) will definitely want to read through this massive review from DisplayMate.

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Source: DisplayMate

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The Samsung Galaxy S9+ has the best Camera of any Smartphone according to DxOMark

The moment Samsung started to tease the release of their upcoming flagship smartphone it was clear the company wanted to highlight the camera. As we got closer to its official announcement, we learned various details about the camera hardware including the Galaxy S9+ variant coming with a dual rear-camera setup, the variable aperture, and MP specs. It looks like the work done by Samsung's engineers has paid off for them too as DxOMark's review of the camera puts it at the top of the pack.

Camera reviews from DxOMark have become a hot-button issue within the Android community. Some people dislike the idea that the company offers a paid service to teach OEMs how to improve their camera performances. Others dislike the discrepancies that have surfaced when two reviews are compared to each other. Still, the company clearly has a lot of talent on staff and we can learn a lot from the reviews they publish (even if we ignore the numbered rating system entirely).

DxOMark's reviews are divided between still photos and videos and it was the still photo section where Samsung showed a lot of improvements this year. The company notes that the visible noise is very well-controlled in all conditions and images showed fairly good detail in outdoor and indoor shooting conditions. However, they felt they needed to take off some points due to the occasional exposure instabilities, some noticeable ringing, color fringing, loss of sharpness in the field, and a slight color cast that can be noticed on occasion.

As we turn to their video review portion we see more of a mixed bag when compared to the still photo section. On the plus side, the review notes that the Galaxy S9+ camera shot videos which had bright and vivid colors, had a stable and fast autofocus, and generally had good target exposure and fast exposure transition. Then again, the videos from the Galaxy S9+ also resulted in strong ringing and moiré, a loss of fine details in most conditions, and visible stepping during exposure convergence on occasion.

As with all reviews, there's more to it than just the highlights and we definitely recommend you take a look at the in-depth explanation (along with the sample photos) in DxOMark's review. At the end of the day though, the device received a total of 99 points in its combined review which dethrones the Google Pixel 2's score of a 98.

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Source: DxOMark

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Using the Nexus 4 in 2018

 

The Nexus 4 was one of the all-time favorites from anyone who loved to modify their phone. In this video, Rawad looks at the Nexus 4 to see how it has held up over the years.

The development community has kept this phone up to date with Oreo ROMs bringing the latest Android features to the phone. You can find plenty of active development projects for the Nexus 4 in the XDA forums.

With the phone being nearly 6 years old now, it takes you back to a time when wireless charging was a new standard, design was something people cared about, and the best phone on the market could be yours for $299. In late 2013 the price was dropped to $199 which seems like a deal we will probably never see again in the Android world.

If you still own a Nexus 4, lets us know how it's doing and what ROM you're running.

Check out the Nitrogen OS Oreo ROM for the Nexus 4

Nexus 4 Forums

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Razer Phone likely skipping Android 8.0 Oreo and going straight to Android 8.1 Oreo

The not-gaming-but-marketed-at-gamers smartphone from gaming hardware company Razer Inc. was announced back in November. Called the Razer Phone, it hits most of the right marks when it comes to hardware specifications with its large 5.7″ 1440p 120Hz LCD panel (the first of its kind in western markets), the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, 8GBs of RAM, 64GBs of internal storage expandable via a microSD card, and a 4,000 mAh battery. One of its biggest shortcomings is the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack, though its best-in-class speakers may somewhat make up for that. Software-wise, the phone launched with a near-stock build of Android 7.1.1 Nougat, but many owners have been wondering where in the world the Android 8.0 Oreo (or even Android 8.1 Oreo) update is.

The Razer Phone's support page states that the phone will receive an update to Android Oreo in Q1 2018, which means the company plans to release an update by the end of March. It's entirely possible that the first Android P Developer Preview may land on the Google Pixel and Pixel 2 before Razer releases Android Oreo, but if it's any consolation it appears that the Razer Phone's Android Oreo update may be based on the Android 8.1 Oreo release rather than Android 8.0.

While we don't have direct evidence for this (à la firmware files such as in our recent leaks), the evidence that we have is pretty strong since it is based off of code submissions from Razer engineers.

These three code submissions all come from Razer engineers, but it's not the code itself that is interesting here. In fact, they're not something that the vast majority of you will care about—they're just routine bug fixes for Google's Compatibility Test Suite (CTS), the tool that Google uses to certify that a particular Android device is compliant with the Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) for a particular Android version.

What is interesting is the version of CTS that these Razer engineers state they are testing the Razer Phone against. The branch of the CTS that the engineers submitted bug fixes for is "oreo-mr1-cts-dev." In other words, this is the Android 8.1 Oreo CTS. What this means is that the Razer engineers, presumably while testing Android 8.1 Oreo on the Razer Phone, encountered bugs that caused their devices to fail CTS.

This is significant because it signals that the Razer Phone will indeed likely jump straight to Android 8.1 Oreo rather than Android 8.0. Engineers from Razer likely wouldn't be testing Android Oreo Maintenance Release 1 (Android 8.1) CTS if they weren't planning on having their device pass CTS for this version of Android. Considering the fact that the device hasn't even received 8.0 yet, that means 8.1 is the update that'll likely be coming soon.

This wouldn't be the first device to skip 8.0 in favor of 8.1. On the contrary, this actually seems to be a growing trend among manufacturers. Nokia skipped 8.0 with the Nokia 8 and plans to do the same with the Nokia 2, Essential skipped 8.0 for the Essential Phone after encountering unspecified issues, and the BQ Aquaris X/X Pro also seem to be going straight to 8.1 Oreo.

So what difference does going straight to Android 8.1 make for Razer Phone owners, exactly? Admittedly, there aren't many new user-facing features in 8.1 compared to 8.0 to get all that excited about. Sure, there's a fancy new power menu, the ability to hide that annoying persistent notification without a third-party app, Bluetooth battery level indicators, and some under-the-hood tweaks, but the main benefits such as notification channels, picture-in-picture mode, the Autofill API, and more are staples of Android 8.0.

Ultimately, though, having the phone be updated to the latest SDK level is still a plus. It means that Razer may have a bit less work to do when they eventually re-base on Android P, though the question of whether or not the Razer Phone is Project Treble-compatible is still up in the air. Regardless, with the availability of kernel sources (which we hope are updated for the Oreo release!), official TWRP, and factory images, the phone is likely to have a long life ahead of it.

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