Someone on the Android Wear subreddit was able to obtain a test build of the upcoming update headed to Android Wear. He just published a video that demos some of the new features including an enabled external speaker on the Huawei Watch, Audio Feedback, music playback, call options, emoji picker and more.
WhatsApp suffered a brief outage, possibly due to the massive influx of messages sent during New Years celebrations around the world. This outage has caused WhatsApp messages to fail to deliver, and the areas affected include parts of North and South America, Europe, India and Indonesia.
After turning down the Pakistani government’s request for “unfettered access” to user information (read: backdoor) and deciding to leave the country rather than change its policy, Blackberry has informed that it will continue operations in Pakistan afterall. This comes after talks with the government, which led to the rescission of the previous shutdown order.
Motorola has released the kernel sources for the Moto X 2014 for Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It’s certainly beneficial for developers, as they can update their custom kernels with the most recent changes and fixes. Prepare your terminal and Git book and head over to the GitHub repo to find out what’s new.
With 2015 coming to an end, Huawei has released their official sales numbers for the year. It’s been previously reported that Huawei is now the #3 smartphone manufacturer in the world and these growth numbers show us the why. Huawei saw a 35% increase in revenue for all of 2015 and the company says they also saw a solid increase in profits and cash flow as well.
The OnePlus X has garnered a fair bit of popularity in the smaller phone segment, featuring decent specs in a small package and an inexpensive price tag to play along with it. But as capable as the Snapdragon 801 in the OnePlus X may be, the phone does not bear the latest (and arguably, the best) in the processing department.
To bank upon the lack of spec-heavy competition in the smaller side of the smartphone scale, OnePlus seems to be in the process of releasing their next small phone: The OnePlus 2 Mini. We caught glimpses of the specs when the device hit GFXBench earlier in the month, and now the device has hit Chinese regulatory authority TENAA.
The OnePlus 2 Mini bears a design which is very similar to the OnePlus X, with its glass front and back and metallic frame. On the front of the device is a 5″ FHD AMOLED display, with the overall dimensions of the device being 140 mm x 69 mm x 6.9 mm and weighing 138 grams. Considering that the OnePlus X had a fair few fans for its design language and overall build, the OnePlus 2 Mini is thankfully not trying to fix what is not broken in this department.
On the inside of the OnePlus 2 Mini aka One E1000, we have a quad core processor clocked in at 2.0 GHz. The listing mentions 3GB of RAM, along with 16GB of internal storage and expansion slot for support upto 128GB.
For the camera, the OnePlus 2 Mini will sport a 13MP rear camera with a CMOS sensor, along with a 8MP rear camera. The device will also come with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, which really hurts its chances of being a recommendable phone unless the Android 6.0 update comes along soon.
The TENAA listing deviates quite a bit from the information we had from the GFXBench device spot. However, being the regulatory authority of China, TENAA listings have a very good track record of being on point with regards specs of the device. To add on to the confusion, the OnePlus 2 Mini shares almost all the major specs with the OnePlus X, with the notable point of difference being the processor, which other Android websites are still mentioning to be Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 on the OnePlus 2 Mini. The TENAA listing skimps on most of the details on the processor, but does mention that the device bears a quad-core CPU, which does not line up with the octa-core Snapdragon 810 unless it refers to the A57 cores only. Also, the name of the device does not show up in the listings, so this could very much be a localized OnePlus X with slightly different hardware.
The OnePlus 2 Mini, if this device is called that, should be the first release of OnePlus in 2016. We expect to hear official information on the device soon.
What are your thoughts on the OnePlus 2 Mini? Is it right for OnePlus to make a slightly better version of the OnePlus X so soon in the X’s product cycle? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: TENAA
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The FSF has already raised more than $250,000 toward their goal of $450,000 by January 31st, 2016. They now need your help to raise that last little bit. This of course is an incredibly important charity here at XDA, head over here to find out why.
Google added a floating text selection toolbar in Android Marshmallow to make text selection and processing much more useful. In addition, Google introduced ACTION_PROCESS_TEXT, giving developers the opportunity to directly process any text selected by the user. If you’re a developer looking to add your own text selection option in the floating toolbar, the Google Developers team has posted an instructional on Medium explaining how to do so.
Thanks to iFixit community member Lenka, we now get a detailed teardown of the Nexus 5X from Google and LG. The device is very modular and it is mostly a straight forward process. You will need a heat gun and a sucktion cup if you wish to remove the LCD panel though, as the glue is said to be quite strong.
In the past we have, sort of, reviewed many custom ROMs, like CyanogenMod 12s, Oxygen OS, CyanogenMod 12, OmniROM, SlimKat and more. Here at XDA we live for custom ROMs. Whether they be huge community efforts or the tinkering of a single person, custom ROMs help unlock more functionality to our beloved devices. Now that Marshmallow is out, many ROM based on Android 6.0 are now available.
In today’s video, XDA TV Host TK, shows off Chroma ROM on his Nexus 6P. The main features covered and talked about in today’s video are the Android Pay with Root, layers manager, and more. Mostly, this is a simple stock-based release with a few pluses like the PureNexus ROM we recently reviewed. Grab your favorite beverage and check out this video.
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If you’re a flashaholic, you might have heard of ‘AnyKernel‘ and its successor ‘AnyKernel2.’ These are templates made for kernel developers to create an update.zip file that can be applied to any ROM regardless of the RAMDisk. Kerneller by XDA member someone755 is a new template aimed for the Sony Xperia line, which usually feature the recovery packed into the RAMDisk. Kernel developers can use this template to apply kernel updates without overwriting the recovery.
Reports indicate that India is now the second country to surpass 1 billion mobile users. The first country to do this was China, which reached this milestone around 2012, and India surpassed the US in terms of numbers around 2008. These types of numbers show you why companies like Google, Facebook and even Cyanogen are doing what they can to get a foothold in the country.
You may have heard about Carrier iQ, as there are lots of tutorials here on XDA that show you how to remove and/or disable the analytical and diagnostic software on your smartphone. AT&T signed on as a partner some time ago and used it on their phones, but it seems like they have now acquired the entire company including its talent and their assets.
Xiaomi has a wide portfolio of devices, especially in China. The producer of the Mi Band and Redmi Note has officially announced a 70-Inch 4K TV with Xiaomi-flavored UI. It has some really decent specs and it will cost 9,999 Yuan, which is roughly converted to $1540.
ZUK Z1, a result of a collaboration of a few companies, including Lenovo and Elephone, is set to receive a Cyanogen OS 13.0 update next year. Luckily for its users, XDA Senior Member MrColdbird refused to wait any longer and started to work on CyanogenMod 13.0 for this device. A port is still quite early and contains a list of bugs, but it’s great to see the small Z1’s community thriving.
Evan Blass (@evleaks) has just revealed some details of what could be the upcoming LG G5. We are told the build material will be metal, the phone will have a 5.3″ QuadHD display, a secondary “ticker” screen, dual cameras on the back to give it 135-degree wide-angle capabilities, and have the Snapdragon 820 SoC. The device is also said to have a modular “Magic Slot” and bringing the battery down to 2,800mAh.
Bluboo has just announced the Xfire 2 and claims it is the world’s first 5″ smartphone with three SIM slots. However, 10 seconds into a Google search I have already read about the GooPhone X1+ (which came out in 2013). The Bluboo Xfire 2 will have a 2.5D “arc suspended” screen, a quad-core MT6580 So, will retail for only $69.99 and launch sometime in January.
One of the very first Firefox OS partners – Telefonica – ditched Mozilla’s system in favor of Cyanogen OS. Telefonica joins such companies as OnePlus, Oppo, ZUK or YU which use or have been using Cyanogen’s OS. The first branded devices powered by Cyanogen have started to sell in Spain and will arrive in countries like Germany and theUnited Kingdom soon. Telefonica aims to launch Cyanogen in different countries in 2016.
For anyone with the D855 LG G3 who also doesn’t want to wait for the 30B Marshmallow OTA update to be released in your country, KDZ and flashable ZIP files are now available for you. This is courtesy of XDA Recognized Contributor autoprime and it will work on both the 16GB and 32GB models.
A recent discovery made by Tony Beltramelli, a Masters student at the IT University of Copenhagen, shows how vulnerable smartwaches are. Cyber criminals can gather important data like PIN codes by using the gyroscope and accelerometer. Beltramelli even posted a proof of concept video demonstrating how easy such data can be hijacked. More in the article.
YouTube recently accused T-Mobile of throttling users on their network who were watching videos on the service. This week, T-Mobile has come back and said that throttling is a bad way to describe it, and instead the videos are now “mobile optimized”. YouTube never agreed to be part of T-Mobile’s Binge On service and they feel users should have to opt in to enable it.
OnePlus One is now receiving an OTA update to version 12.1-YOG7DAS2K1. It most likely is one of the last updates containing Android 5.1. A full changelog isn’t posted yet, but according to user reports, this update brings close integration with Microsoft’s Cortana. XDA Recognized Themer Spannaa has managed to capture a link to the incremental update, so get it now.
Earlier this month we’ve learned about WPInternals – a tool able to unlock some Lumia phones. XDA Senior Member werty100 decided to make use of it and ported a Windows 10 (10.0.10586.36) ROM to Nokia Lumia 920. The ROM has root access. If you have got this Lumia, it’s a nice chance to give it a new life.
It has become common to measure battery life in terms of screen-on time, and while such measurement is inaccurate due to many factors, it’s still one of the most mentioned numbers in reviews and online comments. What is your typical SOT at the end of the day (not charge), and, most importantly, how do you think it ranks up (considering your usage)?
There was an Android commit shared on Hacker News this week that showed Google was importing OpenJDK into the codebase. VentureBeat reached out for an official comment and Google said that their “upcoming release of Android” will move Android’s Java language libraries to an OpenJDK-based approach.
Back in 2013, when OnePlus announced the One model, many of us knew almost nothing about this company. We simply heard of a no-name from China with promises of making a “flagship killer”, which was alleged to be competitive against powerful devices made by Samsung, LG and Sony.
This sounded ridiculous, but when the One model was released, many of us enthusiasts fell in love with it almost instantly.
The OnePlus One was a unique smartphone. It’s pretty powerful still, because it sports the really speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 CPU and 3 gigabytes of RAM. The device was available in two variants – white with 16 GB of internal storage, and black with 64 GB. At the day of the premiere, it cost just $349 for the 64 GB variant. It was a dream offer, so even despite the infamous invite system, the One model found thousands of buyers.
To me, OnePlus One is one of the most beautiful Android devices ever released. The rear made of crisp smooth plastic or the sandpaper-like texture feels good regardless of your preference, and the front panel is also beautiful because of its minimalist style and lack of visible hardware buttons. I know that some of you love more premium devices, but the OnePlus One was really fresh and is still one of the prettiest devices around. The OnePlus X might be a contender to become a number one (design) in my subjective opinion, but I had no chance to play with it yet, so my impression is based on videos and images.
Here’s a short hardware specification list (GSMArena):
Pure hardware specifications translated to great benchmarks, as the OnePlus One was a killer machine at the day of premiere. After over a year it’s still a powerful device. You can compare its benchmark results to some newer phones to find out how much of an amazing performer this device was (via PhoneArena).
Benchmarks may not fully reflect a device’s snappiness. OnePlus One is rapid fast and even Cyanogen OS “features” can’t slow it down.
OnePlus One is also unique when it comes to software. This device is maintained by Cyanogen Inc., which uses its own Cyanogen OS (CyanogenMod S, at the time). This “operating system” is nothing less than CyanogenMod with a bunch of extra features, but not much more than a ROM and definitely not a unique OS. This was the first Cyanogen device that became commercially successful, which helped Cyanogen Inc. greatly in making its mark in the mobile industry. The relation between the two is far from perfect, and OnePlus decided to hire almost the entirety of the Paranoid Android team to make Oxygen OS, which is CyanogenMod-free.
In terms of development and flashing, the OnePlus One is relatively close to a Nexus device (as far as a Chinese phone gets!). It’s easily unlockable and doesn’t require any extra hacks to get rooted. Since its premiere, we had the pleasure of seeing almost every major ROM making its way to OnePlus One. You still can download CyanogenMod, OmniROM, SlimROM, AOSPA and many more ROMs for this device. Some kernel developers known mostly from Nexus support also decided to create their own kernels for the OnePlus One. Despite the time, the OnePlus One is still a device with some of the best custom ROM support here on XDA.
We can say a lot of bad things about CyanogenMod and Cyanogen OS, but they keep maintaining their devices. Device tree, kernel and vendor blobs are always up-to-date. The One is set up to receive a Marshmallow update once CyanogenMod 13.0 will become a more mature project. Nightly builds of this system are available to download from the official CM page.
Obviously, CyanogenMod is not the only ROM available for OnePlus One. Its kernel is a base for many projects, but we can name at least a dozen of ROMs worth to be mentioned when we talk about custom ROM development. And if that wasn’t enough, OnePlus also offered ROM alternatives to the Cyanogen solution that comes by default.
OmniROM – unlike most of the projects, OmniROM is not based on CyanogenMod kernel and device tree. Its developers adapted the OPPO Find 7 sources to work with the almost identical OnePlus One hardware. It’s one of just a few projects that uses the name find7op instead of bacon as a device name. A Marshmallow version of the ROM is still at its alpha stage, but we should expect it to become more stable in the upcoming weeks.
Sultan’s ROM — Known for its buttery-smooth performance, great battery life and optimized features, Sultanxda pushed the boundaries of software and hardware through various modifications that improved camera performance and pretty much everything else.
AOSParadox – a ROM that almost makes the OnePlus One a Nexus device. It’s AOSP in its purest form with just a few modifications to make the ROM more complete. If you are not a fan of CyanogenMod, it’s definitely something worth to try on.
franco.Kernel – franciscofranco is a developer widely known on XDA. He creates kernels mostly for Nexus devices. OnePlus is an exception. If you are looking for a stable and battery-friendly kernel, check out franco.Kernel and its dedicated application.
AK – a feature rich kernel which is frequently updated. It’s fully compatible with UKM enhancement suite
Boeffla-Kernel – stable and highly configurable kernel maintained by XDA Recognized Developer Lord Boeffla. If you are looking for a stock replacement, this kernel should definitely go on the “to check” list.
Hydrogen OS — This is an alternative official ROM aimed at Chinese users, with an interesting look and an expanded feature set. We’ve reviewed it and it hardly looked like the Android we are used to.
Of course, OnePlus One is on the nightly lists of such projects as Nameless ROM, Exodus ROM or MultiROM. And if there is a big custom ROM, there is a huge chance that OnePlus One is supported – just like Nexus devices are.
OnePlus One is also officially supported by most teams creating recoveries. Installing the newest version of TWRP or PhilZ takes no longer than a few seconds.
Mentioning every single project on XDA would have taken me forever and a day. OnePlus One has one of the biggest ROM and kernel bases on XDA. If you are looking for a rather inexpensive device with really great support, try to get One.
The OnePlus One is one of the most important Android devices in history. This statement might be bold, however after its premiere, some smaller companies decided to release really powerful models for reasonable prices. There are some Chinese brands like Letv, Elephone, Oukirel or Bluboo that offer cheap and quite decent smartphones but it was OnePlus that started a revolution in mobile tech. Today, you don’t have to buy a device for $600 to have the really high-end specifications, and the mid-range segment has gotten better than ever.
It’s hard to tell whether the OnePlus 2 will ever be at the same level of popularity as its predecessor. OnePlus made some really controversial decisions like leaving NFC out. While it’s not used by everyone, NFC is still an extremely useful feature and lack of such feature is a very controversial move. Nevertheless, the OnePlus One will remain one of our warmest Android memories, and it will likely run the latest and greatest in Android for a good while thanks to developer support.
You can read more about OnePlus and its way to success in one of our previous features. Do you think that OnePlus One is still worthy to buy? Or maybe there are some other devices ready to replace it? We’d love to know your opinions! Share your thoughts in the comments.
On January 11th and 12th in San Francisco, Google will hold a developer conference for the IoT dubbed Ubiquity. Development for Brill, Weave, Beacons, Google Cast, Android Wear, Android TV, and Android Auto will be discussed during sessions throughout the two day event. Registration for Ubiquity is open right now and attendance is free.
Augmented Reality and Android Wear are two technologies that have shown great potential to transform the way we consume content, but thus far have been criminally underused. Ever wonder what it would be like to combine the two? You don’t have to dream anymore, because one developer made a game to show off his proof of concept augmented reality integration with Android Wear smartwatches.
Yesterday we took a moment to reflect on the Top 5 News Stories of 2015. As the year wraps up, it is always fun to look back at what goodies got released over the last 12 months. In today’s video XDA TV Host TK talks about the Top 5 Xposed Mods from 2015.
At the beginning of the years, the future of Xposed was in question. ART and Lollipop completely changed the environment for the Xposed Framework. Thankfully, XDA Senior Recognized Developer rovo89 put in the hard work and released Xposed for Lollipop, and later Marshmallow. Check out the video to see what we thought were the top 5 Xposed mods of 2015. Feel free to let us know what you thought was the top Xposed mod in the comments below.
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Android Auto was announced back in 2014, but if you don’t have a compatible car you’ll find yourself unable to use the app. Thankfully, an enterprising developer named BitSpice released a beta version of an app he was working on called ‘AutoMate’ to bring Android Auto’s functionality to every Android phone. Now, that app is ready to leave its beta status. You can now find it on the Play Store.
The global co-general manager of Samsung Pay just announced that Samsung Pay is likely to come to some lower-priced Samsung smartphones in 2016. Not only this, but we are also told that Samsung will be able to compete with the likes of PayPal when it gains support for online payments. We don’t know when this feature will be launched, but Thomas Ko says it’s coming “soon”.
We’ve featured XenoAmp by XDA Senior Member ssuukk a couple of times before, in 2012 and 2013. It’s come a long way since then, going past the 1.0 release to mark its maturity.
The core is still pretty much the same compared to when it first came out. If you’re used to other music players, this player’s interface will probably feel alien at first (hence the name). While that may discourage you from testing it further, it’s one of the things that make it stand out (in a good way!) from the competition. Despite its differences, the learning curve is not a steep one, and using the app becomes a breeze after spending some time discovering how it works.
XenoAmp’s interface makes it easy to use with one thumb, which makes it possible to use quick actions (once you’ve set your playlist up) in an unobstructive manner. Need to pause? Just tap anywhere. Current song doesn’t suit your mood? Swipe on to the next one. Changing the volume and forwarding is also handled through gestures, to the point where I personally found XenoAmp to be my go-to choice for listening to music while driving: after picking or making a playlist, a quick gesture allows me to do any action I want — without looking at my phone’s screen.
Playlist management is also an easy task, letting you reorder or remove entries by dragging them up and down or swiping them away. Switching playlists or moving tracks between them is also a breeze, and you could use advanced search to quickly add music by tags, genres and more. The playlists pane and the XenoAmp sidebar are accessible from any screen, providing easy access to commonly accessed features (e.g. search or shuffling).
That’s still not all. Want lyrics? You got it. Voice commands? XenoAmp has that as well. Widgets? Yup! Prefer a lighter/more material interface, or would you rather stick with the classic dark one? The choice is yours. Looking for a music player that can handle, manage and automatically download missing tags? You’ve found one. And even though XenoAmp is considered almost complete by now, the developer still has plans for it, such as SoundCloud support, visual tweaks and polishing, a nicer interface for streaming services and Xeno’s own radio station database.
The year is almost at an end, but it doesn’t look like Android’s dominance will subside anytime soon. Although we all share the experience of running an Android device here at XDA, each and every one of us will have a unique Android experience based on his or her device, region, carrier, and more.
But there are some aspects to the Android experience that can result in a shared common experience. That’s why we asked you, our readers, your thoughts on the best and worst aspects of Android throughout the year. Let’s start off with the bad news first, shall we?
The Worst
Heat map of various 2015 flagships
You guys voted, and the results were very clear. The Snapdragon 810 won the “worst of 2015” vote by a landslide. Some commenters were wondering how the Snapdragon 810 is related to Android. It’s a valid concern, given that the chipset is by no means exclusive to Android devices. Yet, the SoC has shown up in so many 2015 Android flagships that it’s hard to separate the “Android experience” with Snapdragon chipsets.
In particular, this beast of an SoC has been engulfed in controversy since the release of the LG G Flex 2 and the HTC One M9, both of which suffered from overheating issues. In addition, Sony’s Xperia Z3+ and Z4 were confirmed by the company to experience the same thermal problems. So what went wrong, and who’s to blame for the poor experience of early Snapdragon 810 devices? We’ve discussed the issue in depth before, and what it comes down to is an issue that both Qualcomm and the OEMs needed to fix.
It simply was not a good year for Qualcomm. In January, the announcement that Samsung was ditching the Snapdragon line in favor of its own Exynos chipset plummeted Qualcomm’s market value. Many in the Android tech scene claimed that the Snapdragon 810 was to blame for Qualcomm losing its biggest customer, but Qualcomm of course denied this allegation. The company released a statement featuring many of its partners showing their intent to continue implementing the 810 in their flagship devices. However, by this point many consumers saw Qualcomm’s defense of the 810 as simply damage control.
In Qualcomm’s defense, it really does seem that the performance issues of the 810 SoC were a bit overhyped (although the GPU performance still left a lot to be desired, particularly on high-resolution displays). Qualcomm’s third iteration of the 810 solved some of the thermal and performance issues plaguing the chipset. We’ve seen that devices such as the Sony Xperia Z5 and Google Nexus 6P were able to tame the 810 beast, while devices like the OnePlus 2 were unable to do the same. The variation in how the later 810 devices turned out gives some credence to the idea that OEMs were partially responsible for the poor performance of early 810 devices. In the end, what really killed the 810 was the marketing fiasco surrounding these early 810 devices that led consumers to lose trust in the company. Qualcomm desperately needs to nail the 820 chipset, especially with the looming threat of competitors such as Huawei’s Kirin and MediaTek entering the market once dominated by Snapdragon.
The Best
Qualcomm might have disappointed many of us with the 810, but this year wasn’t all that bad. Many commenters noted that the mid-range market has been killing it lately.
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