Samsung Galaxy S21 teaser says “a new Galaxy awaits”

One day before the New Year, Samsung has released a short video teasing the Galaxy S21. “A new Galaxy awaits,” the video says, as Samsung takes viewers through a decade of Galaxy S releases.

Unfortunately, no details for the Galaxy S21 are revealed. Not that we expected Samsung to share detailed information, but it would have been nice to see something, anything.

If you’ve been keeping up with the Galaxy S21, Samsung’s new device has leaked multiple times over the past month, to the point where we know pretty much everything, from the design to the specs. So, while Samsung is playing coy, that doesn’t mean we don’t know what to expect ahead of the Galaxy S21’s official unveiling.

While no details are shared, the new teaser video serves as an official declaration from Samsung that it’s preparing to make an announcement very soon. In essence, it’s time for the marketing machine to kick into high gear and dominate the conversation for the next few weeks.

Samsung is expected to release three new devices at its upcoming Unpacked event: the Galaxy S21, S21 Plus, and S21 Ultra. The latter device will reportedly feature S Pen support, which would be a first for the Galaxy S series. It would also lend support to rumors about Samsung officially nixing the Galaxy Note series, although a recent report threw cold water on that rumor.

Whatever we wind up seeing, Samsung would very much like consumers to know that “a new Galaxy awaits.” From the numerous leaks we’ve seen, Samsung’s Galaxy S21 series looks like its strongest lineup yet. We’re especially excited to see the new design, which now includes a flat display and re-designed camera module. With a rumored January 14 event on the horizon, expect more teasers from Samsung over the coming days.

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Save $40 on the Google Pixel 4a 5G and join the 5G revolution for cheap

There sure have been a lot of smartphone deals this week! With deals on the OnePlus 8 Pro and the TCL 10 Pro, retailers are looking to take those holiday gift cards and cash off your hands. Google isn’t going to sit idly by while others reap the post-holiday benefits, though. Currently, on Amazon, you can save $40 on the new Google Pixel 4a 5G and get yourself a 5G phone for cheap.

You may be asking, well, why the Google Pixel 4a 5G? Why not one of the other 5G flagships, or perhaps a budget 5G phone? Well, the Pixel 4a 5G is more or less the definition of a mid-range phone, so you know you’ll be getting one of the best if for that category. With the MSRP at $499, this is an affordable smartphone for those that want to take advantage of a 5G network without having to shell out $1,000 (or more!) for a higher-end flagship.

Of course, with the $40 off, that means it’s even cheaper to enter the new wave of 5G. The best part about this deal, though, is that it’s on Amazon. Amazon provides some of the most painless smartphone purchases around. There’s no need to do any trade-ins to take advantage of the deal (although you can trade in a device for some credit if you wish), and if you have Amazon Prime, you’ll get your Google Pixel 4a 5G in two business days. Finally, if you have the Amazon Prime Rewards Card, you can sign up to pay for your purchase over 12 months! As someone that uses that feature often, it’s extremely helpful.

So, with the Pixel 4a 5G at only $459, with no strings attached, what are you waiting for?

Google Pixel 4a 5G

For just $459, you can get a quality 5G phone! Head on over to Amazon and pick up your new Just Black Google Pixel 4a 5G today.

Buy at Amazon

Are you interested in other Google products? Head over to Google’s store page on Amazon to see everything they have!

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Huawei P50 Pro’s first leaked render suggests Huawei is sticking with waterfall displays

Huawei has been engaged in a deadlock with the US government for nearly two years now. But that hasn’t stopped the Chinese company from building some of the best smartphones out there. The Huawei Mate 40 series that launched in October this year was the prime example of it, with Huawei flexing its muscles with some of the best smartphone hardware and design on display. And if this new leak is anything to go by, it looks like the company will continue its march forward on the same path next year as well.

The acclaimed leakster Steve Hemmerstoffer has shared the first look of the Huawei P50 Pro, a direct successor to the P40 Pro that launched in March this year. A single render shared by Steve shows off the front of the Huawei P50 Pro. One of the key details revealed by the leak is that P50 Pro, just like its predecessor, will continue to use a waterfall display, with the display steeply curved on its sides while having narrow top and bottom bezels. Moving on, we can also see the dual front camera setup of the P40 Pro has been replaced by a more discreet single punch hole camera. As per Steve, the Huawei P50 Pro will flaunt a 6.6-inch display on the front in a body measuring approximately 159 mm tall and 73 mm wide.

Lastly, the leak revealed the Huawei P50 Pro will no longer use the magnetic earpiece like its forerunner and instead will opt for the more traditional earpiece.

Details about important hardware such as the chipset, camera assembly, battery, and charging speed remain a mystery at this point. On the software front, Huawei P50 Pro could run Harmony OS 2.0, the latest version of Huawei’s own operating system. However, it’s too early to comment on these details. There will likely be more leaks in the coming weeks so we should have more details about this upcoming flagship smartphone.

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Amazon acquires the Wondery podcast network to compete with Spotify

Amazon is the second most valued company in the US. Besides the online and offline retail and logistics business, it has a plethora of entertainment services under one umbrella. Some of these services include established brand names such as Audible, Kindle, Amazon Music, Prime Video, and Prime Music. And now, popular podcast network Wondery is joining the list with the announcement of its acquisition by Amazon.

Wondery is one of the top five podcast publishers in the US and is home to noted podcast shows such as Dr. Death and Dirty John. As per the blog post announcement, content from Wondery will be available on Amazon Music, which received support for podcasts in September 2020. Amazon notes that after this deal, the existing Wondery shows will continue to be available on all of the existing platforms and not restricted to Amazon Music exclusively. This means if you are a user, you can access shows on Spotify, Apple Music, and a whole lot of other podcast streaming services.

The blog notes that the deal completion awaits “customary closing conditions.” Until then, nothing changes in terms of how the platform works. Moreover, there is no clear information on what happens to the existing Wonder+ subscribers once the deal concludes. Meanwhile, Ben Mullin of The Wall Street Journal reports that once the deal goes through, Wondery CEO Hernan Lopez will step down from their existing role and COO Jen Sargent will be filling the position.

While the conditions of the deal have not been made public, previous reports from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal suggest Wondery was valued at a minimum of $300 million. Before Amazon, Apple and Sony were also reportedly in talks to acquire the company.

While Amazon joined the podcast clan late, this deal is expected to put Amazon Music on the same level as competitors such as Apple Music and especially Spotify, which has signed exclusive deals with major creators such as Joe Rogan.

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How to enable the Pixel 5’s Adaptive Sound feature on older Pixel phones

Google rolled out the fifth Pixel Feature Drop earlier this month, which brought a host of new features to both old and new Pixel phones. Some older Pixel phones gained features like Hold for Me and Extreme Battery Saver, while only Google’s latest Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5 got support for the new Adaptive Sound feature. The Adaptive Sound feature is designed to improve the phone’s audio output by tweaking its equalizer based on your surroundings, and thanks to XDA Recognized Developer Freak07, there’s a way to enable this feature on older Pixel devices. If you’re interested in trying it out on your phone, here’s what you need to do:

Enable Adaptive Sound on older Pixel devices (with root)

On rooted Pixel devices, you can enable the Adaptive Sound feature by following a couple of simple steps, and it will remain enabled even after your reboot your device. To do so, you’ll first need to download the Pixel 5-specific version of the Device Personalization Services app from APK Mirror and install it on your device. Yes, you will already have the Device Personalization Services app installed, but the version of the app that Google pushed to your phone doesn’t include the Adaptive Sound feature. Hence, you’ll need to grab the one that Google made for the Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5. You can download that version of the app by clicking this link.

Once you have the app installed, you’ll need to download and install the Adaptive_Audio_Settings_Enabler Magisk module from the Magisk Manager app and restart your device. Alternatively, you can download the module by following this link and flash it manually. A few moments after a successful reboot, you should see the Adaptive Sound option in device settings.

Enable Adaptive Sound on older Pixel devices (without root)

On non-rooted Pixel devices, the process to enable Adaptive Sound is a bit more complicated as you have to execute a couple of shell commands. But before you get to that, you have to install the Pixel 5-specific version of the Device Personalization Services from APK Mirror and install it on your device. You can get the app by following this link.

Once you have the app installed, make sure you have USB Debugging enabled on your device. You can do so by heading over to Developer Options and tapping on the toggle next to the USB Debugging setting. You’ll also need to ensure that you have a working ADB environment on your PC (we have a tutorial on that here). After you’ve done that, you’ll need to connect your phone to your PC and execute the following 3 commands one-by-one:

adb shell
device_config put device_personalization_services AdaptiveAudio__enable_adaptive_audio true
device_config put device_personalization_services AdaptiveAudio__show_promo_notification true

After you execute these three commands, you should see the Adaptive Sound option in the device settings. Unlike the method for rooted devices, though, this method doesn’t enable the Adaptive Sound option permanently, and it’s removed once you reboot your device. So, make sure you don’t reboot your device after following the aforementioned steps, or you’ll have to go through it once again.

Enable Adaptive Sound on older Pixel devices XDA Forums thread

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An Update on XDA Labs

It was five years ago that we launched XDA Labs after hundreds of hours of development. The primary purpose was to create an alternate app distribution platform for developers that couldn’t host on Google Play. Labs had other features such as beta and alpha channels (before Google added the same to Google Play) to enable developers to have more control over their app distribution and testing. Not only that, but Labs let users get early access to new versions of popular apps with an update mechanism that would “push” updates to phones often days or weeks before Google or other big developers did full rollouts of new app versions.

In addition to being an app platform, XDA Labs also included a way to browse the XDA forums through a ground-up forum app we built in house using our own API. However, it’s been five years, and we find ourselves having to make some difficult decisions as we look towards the future of XDA where we plan to make XDA the best place in the world to talk about your tech.

The most significant decision we’ve made recently was to move from an outdated software platform (vBulletin) to something more modern and flexible (XenForo). This undertaking was huge and presented issues that have been resolved (thanks everyone for your patience!), and we’re happy to report that the forums are now stable and relatively fast, and our members have been pretty happy with the upgrade. Along with the migration we recently introduced the new XDA App, built using a platform that allows a combination of native and webviews (for those trying to learn how to use the new app, we have a great guide in the forums).

There’s yet another big change we have to announce, and we do it with a heavy heart knowing that it will affect several developers who have come to rely on XDA Labs to distribute their app: XDA Labs has been shut off and there are no current plans for further development.

Why such a drastic move? There are multiple reasons for it, the biggest of which come down to resources: the team that runs XDA is small and we can no longer dedicate the resources needed to continue running and maintaining Labs. Labs has many inherent costs we are no longer able to support as a business. We always wanted Labs to be free, and we see no path to keep it viable at this juncture.

What about those that have relied on Labs to distribute their apps and will mourn its loss? We’re sorry that we have to pull the plug on this project, and we’re sympathetic to the fact that you put your trust in the Labs platform only to have it unplugged. If it’s any consolation, effective today (12/31/20), we are massively increasing attachment limits in the XDA forums to 2GB. External users do not require an XDA account to download attachments; just share the file URL as you need! While this isn’t the same as the Labs app store, we do hope this still provides you a resource from which to distribute your app.

When we first announced the forum migration a few months ago, we invited anyone interested in continuing to maintain Labs to contact us. Unfortunately, we’ve had no viable proposals. We are willing to open-source the entire project if anyone would like to pick up the mantle. If you’re interested, please contact XDA Admin svetius.

In the meantime, we want to say thank you to everyone who made Labs possible. Many thanks to XDA Recognized Developer blk_jack, who was the godfather and main creator of this app, plus the many other testers, coordinators, and developers that worked on Labs in any shape or form. Many thanks to the dev team at XDA for maintaining it over the years, and to all our forum members who made our Labs dream possible. Labs was born out of a need from our community and while we’re unable to support it going forward, we truly hope that the community will rise up and continue keeping Labs running.

We’ve got lots of special plans for XDA as a whole and the XDA community and we can’t wait to share them with you in 2021 and beyond! Thanks for your ongoing support!

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Sony has still not launched the PlayStation 5 in India

Today is the last day of the calendar year and clearly, Sony’s plans of a late 2020 launch of the PlayStation 5 in India have gone down the drain. While Microsoft started selling its new Xbox Series X and Series S in India last month, we are yet to hear from Sony regarding the official launch date of the PlayStation 5 in the country.

Sony has had a rough time trying to get its new console to India. Earlier in the year, the company had to deal with a patent dispute where the trademark for the PS5 name in the country was filed by an individual three months before Sony filed for the trademark. As of now we only know the India pricing of the PlayStation 5, which was announced back in October, along with a listing on the official PlayStation website. But ever since then there hasn’t been any other communication from Sony India regarding the launch or pre-orders, other than boilerplate responses. Some marketing materials had mentioned an obscure “late 2020” availability, but even those have been cleansed away.

It is quite bizarre that Sony is keeping this quiet when it comes to sharing information regarding the launch date or reason(s) for the delays. Not only is the company disappointing its fanbase in India, but it is also giving Microsoft an upper hand in the console wars. Microsoft claims that it has witnessed a record demand and sales for the new consoles globally, including India, as it was one of the 40 countries where the Xbox Series X and Series S were available on launch day. While the stock situation for all the new consoles are not all that great over the world, interested consumers at least have a chance of landing a PlayStation 5 officially in the regions it has launched, which is something that is missing for the Indian market.

The PlayStation 5 is priced at ₹49,990 in India, while the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition costs ₹39,990. This is fairly competitive with Microsoft’s new consoles. At the same time, Sony is offering you more bang for your buck if you go for the digital edition as it comes with the same internal hardware as the regular version, unlike the new Xbox consoles where the Series S gets less powerful hardware.

Xbox Series S Review: A compact console for the budget conscious

At this stage, we can presume that the launch of the PlayStation 5 in India will happen in early 2021. However, before that happens, a report by The Mako Reactor has revealed that customers in India might not entirely be pleased while buying the new console. The PlayStation 5 will not arrive with any special game bundles at launch, unlike the PS4 launch. Thankfully, you will egt a standard one-year warranty where customers will be entitled to a replacement unit, instead of repair. But then, boxed accessories and controllers will not have any warranty or after-sales support, which is a very odd ommission. Perhaps to make it up to customers, the report suggests that customers buying the PlayStation 5 on Day 1 would be given a token of appreciation (most likely a certificate) to indicate that they were one of the first to purchase the console in India. The big question still remains: When exactly can you buy a PlayStation 5 in India anyway?

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