Google launched a carpool pilot program with Waze in the San Francisco area back in May of this year. It was only open to select businesses, but now The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google will take it into open beta this fall. It will still only be accessible in San Francisco for now, but should be cheaper than Uber and Lyft rides.
Qualcomm officially announced the Snapdragon 821 back in July, but they didn't reveal many details about their latest SoC at that time. Now we know the low-power clusters will be a dual-core Kryo CPU clocked at 2.19 GHz, and the GPU will be the Adreno 530 that's clocked at 653 MHz. We also learn it has support for Snapdragon VR SDK (for Daydream), as well as dual phase detection.
We had previously seen the first hint of this "In Apps" feature in the recent LG V20 leak, but now we know what it is. The feature is baked into the Google application, and will allow you to search for content within the applications you have installed. It only supports apps like Gmail, Spotify and YouTube right now, but they'll add more in the future.
When the HTC One A9 came out, HTC stressed that it was not the one "copying" others around. Metallic builds and plastic antenna bands were its gift to the mobile world, and so the A9 was not to be misinterpreted as an iPhone clone, despite its similarities. And with the One A9s, the device is far from the iPhone on the inside as it could ever be.
Sure, design wise, the HTC One A9s looks just like its actual and spiritual predecessor. There's the flat metallic back with side curves, there's the signature antenna bands and the fingerprint sensor on the front. The front and back camera see some repositioning, and the HTC branding below the display is no longer to be found. The display is a downgrade actually, with the One A9s sporting a 5″ 720p Super LCD display, a noticeable step down from the 5″ 1080p AMOLED display.
The downgrade does not stop there. Inside, the HTC One A9s comes with a MediaTek MT6755 Helio P10 SoC with 2x four-core clusters of Cortex-A53's. While the HTC One A9 was not a flagship with its mediocre-at-best Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 with 2x four-core clusters of Cortex-A53, the Helio P10 on the One A9s is very far behind in the current competition against the Snapdragon 650 and 652. The GPU on the One A9s is the Mali-T860MP2, while the RAM and storage situation remains unchanged with options of 16GB internal storage with 2GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage with 3GB RAM. You still get microSD expandability, and the battery gets a slight bump in capacity up to 2,300 mAh now. But if you got too happy with all of this, Quick Charge 3.0 is being replaced with quick charging limited to 5V at 1.5A only.
The camera on the One A9s is a 13MP shooter with f/2.2 aperture, but it loses out on OIS from its predecessor. The front 4MP Ultra Pixel shooter found on One A9 is now replaced with a regular 5MP camera with a f/2.8 aperture and 1080p video recording.
HTC made a 15-day promise of rolling out a new Android version update when the One A9 was launched. But it is unlikely to keep the promise this time around, so they aren't making any new promises either. The One A9s comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box (like last year's A9) but no time solid commitment has been offered for Android 7.0 Nougat.
Pricing and availability of the HTC One A9s has not been released, though the phone is likely to be made available in October. The One A9 was not known for its cheap price and bang-for-buck, so the One A9s will have to do better if it wants to succeed as a successor. Even optimistically, the One A9s feels like another variant of the One A9, one that should have been launched in 2015.
What are your thoughts on the HTC One A9s? Let us know in the comments below!
There's a good chance that the Honor 8 is giving you your first experience with EMUI. While many people might prefer stock Android to what Honor gives you with EMUI, there are a lot of neat features that can be found in Honor's UI that offers battery savings, customization options, and security features. In this article I'm going to go over some of the best ways that you can use the different features in EMUI. Before we get started, be sure to check out the Honor 8 forums on XDA, and read more about the partnership we have with them. We currently have a contest going where you can win an Honor 8.
EMUI has an easy-mode built into their launcher that strips everything down to the basics. This mode even extends into the settings so everything is simple across the board. Obviously this mode is targeted towards people who do better with simple things. Maybe it's not a feature that the XDA audience will use but when you give your phone to the kids to play games or grandpa to take a selfie, they might handle this a little better.
Home Screen Style: Simple
Home Screen Style: Simple
Home Screen Style: Simple (Settings)
Motion controls are often all the same thing. You flip your phone to mute it, pick up to lower the ringer volume, and put it to your ear to answer a call. EMUI has all of this but what they also have is the unique feature of being able to differentiate the touch of a knuckle from your finger. This opens up some new options called knuckle gestures. You can assign a gesture to launch an app. Using your knuckle, draw a letter on your screen so launch the corresponding app that you have chosen.
Motion Gesture Menu
My favorite way to use the knuckle gesture is for the Smart Screenshot option. Check out this video to see how it works.
The shortcuts in the notification menu can be customized with quick access to some of the best features in EMUI. You can put a shortcut to floating dock, screen record, battery modes and several other useful features.
Notification Bar Shortcuts
The smart assistance menu in the settings is where you're going to find the bulk of the awesome EMUI features. The first two features you can setup are the floating dock and the nav bar tweaks.
Smart Assistance Menu
The dock can be placed anywhere on the screen that works best for you. Tap the little circle icon and a menu will pop up with back, home, recents, screen lock and one-touch optimization options.
Floating Dock Menu
It's pretty standard for any good smartphone to come with a fingerprint scanner these days. The Honor 8 has a fingerprint scanner with an extra feature. If you press on the sensor, you'll feel it click. You can assign custom actions to this button for press, double press and press and hold. I would check out this thread here to see how other users are utilizing their smart key.
Smart Key Menu
Your lock screen and security is also very customizable. The smart unlock will use a bluetooth device to unlock your phone. So if you are connected to some headphones or something, you don't need to input your security code/pattern.
Screen Lock and Passwords Menu
There are so many different ways to preserve your battery life in EMUI. The first is adjusting your power plan. You can choose between performance, smart or ultra. Each of these options will show you how much time you can squeeze out of what's left of your charge.
Power Plan Options
Another great way to save some juice is the ROG power saver. This will lower your screen resolution from 1080 to 720. This also helps quite a bit with performance in some situations.
ROG Power Saving Toggle
The battery optimizer will monitor your phone to find out what you can do to get better battery life. It will check to see what apps are still running after the screen is shut off, what screen brightness you should be at and what screen timeout you should use.
Battery Optimizer
Use these features to get the most out of EMUI on your Honor 8.
Honor 8 XDA Review Honor Hub on XDA
