Wednesday, April 5, 2017

LeEco’s Financial Issues Delay Payments to US Employees, Hold Up Vizio Acquision

LeEco's financial issues haven't been a secret to the community, but it seems as if this trouble has extended to a much deeper level as of late. LeEco was seemingly on top of the world as they expanded beyond streaming content in China, started offering more products than just TVs and rebranded themselves from LeTV to LeEco. The company planned a major expansion into India last year in April and then opened their own headquarters in the United States that same month.

We often hear about smartphone companies from China and India wanting to expand to the United States. But it is quite rare that it actually happens because most people in the US buy their phones from wireless carriers and they are very strict on which devices they sell in their stores. This didn't seem to phase LeEco in the slightest since days after they opened their HQ in San Jose, they went and purchased over 48 acres of land from Yahoo for additional expansion.

It was as if LeEco could do no wrong and that their cash supplies never ended. That is, until they ran out as they "grew too fast" and the CEO had to publicly confirm they were, in fact, dangerously close to running out of it. LeEco was actually able to get an influx of cash that many had hoped would have solved the issue. However, since then it has been reported that they have fired most of their staff in India, they're trying to sell that same piece of land they bought from Yahoo, and they're now having to delay payments to their United States employees.

The bad news isn't stopping here either as people "familiar with the matter" are telling Bloomberg that the $2 billion acquisition of Vizio is "being held up by tighter controls on Chinese currency outflows." Multiple high profile employees on the US side have left and some current employees are saying year-end bonuses have yet to be paid as well. It's unclear exactly how this will end for LeEco, but it certainly doesn't seem as if they've been able to get back on their feet yet.

Source: Bloomberg



from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2nKm7ex
via IFTTT

Unity 5.6 Released With Tons of Performance Improvements and Support for Vulkan API

After a long beta testing period, Unity has now finally released the latest version of its cross-platform game development tools. The version 5.6 brings in tons of new features, performance updates as well as support for new platforms and Vulkan API.

Speaking of the changes, the 5.6 update brings massive improvements to baked lighting and real-time global illumination (GI) to allow for more life-like lighting. For this, Unity has introduced a new lightmap solution called Progressive Lightmapper. The new solution offers developers almost immediate feedback in different lighting scenarios and also dramatically reduces the time needed to iterate backed lights, the level of bounced lighting and waiting minutes. Progressive Lightmapper will entirely replace the current Enlighten-based lightmap solution once it becomes ready. On top of that, support for new features such as Light Modes, baked LODs, and reduced memory is also on the way.

The new update introduces a new video player which enables support for 4K video playback and allows developers to create 360-degree video experiences for VR.

The update also brings support for the Vulkan graphics API. In case you're not aware, Vulkan is a power-efficient successor to the OpenGL API which boosts graphics performance on mobile platforms while still consuming less in overhead to deliver maximum performance without sacrificing battery life. Of course, to take advantage of the Vulkan API, your device must have support for the API at both hardware and software level.

The new update also adds native support for new platforms to help developers easily build and optimize their games across multiple platforms. Developers can now seamlessly publish their games to Facebook Gameroom, Google Daydream and Cardboard as well as Nintendo Switch console.

Elsewhere, the update also brings in new Light Mode, tons of graphical improvements, new post-processing stack, improved multiplayer and lots more.

If you want to dive deeper, you can read the detailed post explaining each of the changes here.

Finally, this update also marks the end of Unity 5 cycle as the company is planning to introduce a new version numbering system for all new releases in 2017.

After Unity 5.6, we will introduce a new version numbering system starting with the 2017.x cycle for all releases in 2017. We've made this change to clearly mark the end of the Unity 5 cycle, and align with our release cadence.

Source: Unity Via: Venturebeat



from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2oIowqS
via IFTTT

Android Wear 2.0 Starts Rolling Out to Fossil Q Founder (2nd Gen) As Well

It has been close to two months since Google officially launched Android Wear 2.0. The LG Watch Style and Watch Sport were the first to come pre-loaded with this new update. It was not before this month Google finally started the rollout of Android Wear 2.0 for some of the supported watches. Earlier, Google said that a bug found in the final testing was holding up the software rollout delay and promised that it would begin rolling out the update to all devices once the issue gets fixed.

Currently, Android Wear 2.0 is rolling out to only a handful of supported devices, that includes the Fossil Q Founder (Gen 1), Casio Smart Outdoor, Tag Heuer Connected, Polar M600, Fossil Q Wander, Fossil Q Marshal, Michael Kors ACCESS and Nixon the Mission. The "more traditional" smartwatches from Huawei and LG are still waiting.

Now, it appears Google has also started rolling out Wear 2.0 to the 2nd Gen Fossil Q Founder. One of our readers has tipped us with some screenshots which confirm that the Wear 2.0 update is now rolling out for the 2nd Gen Fossil Q Founder as well.

As for the owners of other watches, unfortunately, you'll have to wait a little bit more until Google finds out a fix for the bug. Anyway, if you're sporting a supported watch, you should receive an update notification alerting you to install the update on your watch in coming days or so.

Meanwhile, you can also check out the full list of devices scheduled for the Android Wear 2.0 update, to find out if your watch will receive this update or n0t.

Thanks XDA Member @hm@d@l@me for the tip!

 



from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2nE9OQ6
via IFTTT

It’s Back in Black! OnePlus 3T Unboxing

The OnePlus 3T is holding its spot as one of the most popular phones in the development community, so it seems like the perfect time to come out with a new color. This is the Midnight Black version on the OnePlus 3T. See the video for a a quick unboxing and a side-by-side look at the Midnight Black and Gunmetal Grey.

Home button and bottom bezel of the OnePlus 3T in Midnight Black.

The back is all blacked out. The logo and the lens have a consistent color with the rest of the phone's body.



from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2nDsBv2
via IFTTT

Honor 8 Pro – First Impressions

The Honor 8, released in August of 2016, was a capable flagship and really kickstarted Honor's journey towards offering more appealing and capable devices with less downsides than their predecessors, in the United States of all places.

Well, Honor is back with the Honor 8 Pro, not quite a sequel to the Honor 8, hoping to follow its legacy. While our full review is still a few weeks away, these are our first impressions after about a week with Honor's newest hardware.

Honor 8 Pro Specs
CPU HiSilicon Kirin 960
DISPLAY 2560 x 1440 QHD
RAM 6GB
STORAGE 64GB w/MicroSD Support
BATTERY 4,000 mAh battery
Cameras Dual 12MP w/8MP Front

Last years Honor 8 was a "good looking, powerful and capable" flagship phone worthy of that title. It packed a Kirin 950, 4GB of ram and a 3,000mah battery under it's 5.2" 1080p display along with Honor's dual 12MP camera array in the back. Across the board the Honor 8 Pro is a step up, bringing the newest Kirin 960 found in the P10 and Mate 9, 6GB of ram, a 4,000mah battery and it also scales up the display to 5.7" at QHD resolution; where the Honor 8 was small and mighty, the Honor 8 Pro is large and in charge.

Honor carried forward many design attributes from its smaller sibling, with one major change. Located on the face of the device you have its 5.7" QHD display with beveled 2.5D glass, earpiece with bright multicolor integrated led, front facing 8MP camera, and Honor branding. Down on the bottom you have a USB Type C port, a single downward firing speaker on the right and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the left. The left side houses the dual SIM tray with MicroSD support, the right side has the buttons (power on the bottom of the trio conveniently), and the top has the IR transmitter and microphone. Around back is where you find the largest differentiator from the Honor 8, and that is the removal of the all-glass back.

While the benefits to an all glass back are negligible and ultimately up to personal preference, one cannot look at the Honor 8 Pro and not see its remarkable resemblance to the larger iPhone. While the Honor 8 may have looked like an iPhone under certain conditions, the Honor 8 Pro takes it a step further and removes any doubt with its all metal curved back and iPhone 6'esque antenna bands. In fact the Honor 8 Pro is so close to the iPhone 7+ in every dimension it can actually fit into its slim-fit "skin" cases. 

The in-hand feel of the Honor 8 Pro is quite remarkable considering its price. Like the Google Pixel, and unlike the iPhone, the Honor 8 Pro has a slight chamfer on the side ridge which helps improves its in-hand feel, making it less slippery and easier to hold. While I prefer a curved or tapered back like the Mate 9's for a phone this large and unwieldy, the Honor 8 Pro improves on the iPhone's design in this one main way and it pays off. It has some weight to it, but I have found that a properly balanced heavy device is better than a poorly balanced light device and the weight is not really a concern here.

A phone's exterior is only part of the story and it's when we dig deeper that we really see what the 8 Pro is worth. As I mentioned earlier the Pro is packing the latest in flagship level tech and while our performance review is still a bit off, initial impressions over this past week are solid. The phone is snappy and responsive and EMUI 5.1 is lightyears ahead of EMUI 4.x, and has some significant under-the-hood improvements over the 5.0 version found on the Mate 9. If you buy anything other than a Pixel, Blackberry, Motorola, or OnePlus device chances are you already know what sort of software experience you are going to be getting, so complaining about small changes like the lack of an app drawer as the default setting gets us nowhere. While OEM ROMs are largely up to personal preference, Huawei has made strides over the past year to normalize its experience at least closer to what stock Android provides. Gone is the custom notification panel as it was replaced with a more stock look and feel — however, Huawei decided to go with a rather ugly blue and semi-translucent black theme for its notification shade, but it can easily be skinned through the theming engine and with the help of our forums.

While EMUI has made improvements, some of its nagging faults remain. For instance the lock screen only shows new notifications and causes them to vanish from it when you unlock or the numerous changes for the sake of changing like Default Application boxes, and permission requests. It is clear that Huawei is trying to merge both its global community, that generally prefers a more iOS look and feel, with its western market, which is comfortable with the Google and Samsung experience; something OnePlus has been contending with as well. While my full review will have more insight into this matter, my experience has not yet been lessened by EMUI 5.1's influence in any largely impactful way, which is encouraging.



Personally for me, the camera is one of the primary things I look for on a phone; bring a solid experience and you have won a customer, deliver a shoddy one and I'll show you the door. It is with that said that we are going to need to wait for my full review to get my full thoughts on the camera. I have been both wowed and disappointed by what the Honor 8 Pro has produced in my limited time thus far and need a lot more samples to make a solid decision either way. The above images highlight some of the best I have captured with the Honor 8 Pro with all but the sign being in full auto with no HDR; almost all of them are quite stunning especially when viewed on a high resolution display. The "alligator" sign – welcome to Florida – was taken with the "Wide Aperture Mode" setting that can look great but upon closer inspection does a relatively poor job cropping the different focal ranges in my experience. 

Fortunately though, the times I have been let down have been in tricky conditions and ones where almost any device can have a difficult time. I also have been slightly jaded by the Mate 9 which boasted "Leica-tuning" and a 20MP monochrome shooter that enabled some really astonishing images. While I unfortunately no longer have the Mate 9, the Honor will go toe to toe with the iPhone 7+ during my testing period, truly testing its sensor quality and image processing against one of the best. As I said before, I need more time to truly test out the Honor 8 Pro's camera; while I have had hit or miss shots, my experience so far has been a largely good one.


While I want to go deeper into this phone I will end it here and save the rest for the full review. Things like performance go beyond "it feels smooth and snappy" and require numbers and evidence to back up what I am seeing and reporting. The battery needs still thorough testing, and unfortunately we will have to rely on synthetic benchmarks since the Honor 8 Pro does not support US LTE and could thus be unreliable, so it takes time to build up this data.

So far my time with the Honor 8 Pro has been positive and while I am disappointed to see that there are no US plans at this time, it looks like Honor has another hit on its hands after the minor misstep that was the 6X. The true test of the Honor 8 Pro will be in its competition. Many readers who are considering this phone may also likely be considering the slightly cheaper OnePlus 3T or the slightly more feature-full Mate 9; and it does not look like the Honor 8 Pro will make that decision easy. It packs more raw specs than either phone but falls behind the OnePlus 3T in the software experience and the Mate 9 in its small but beneficial features like dual-speakers, wide-array microphones, and more original styling.

What is important though, is that it looks like the Honor 8 Pro nails down what it takes to deliver a compelling smartphone experience; our full review will let us know if that is enough.



from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2oZXXwS
via IFTTT

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Making The Most of Your OnePlus 3/3T’s Display

AMOLED displays are well renowned across the industry for their deep inky blacks and battery saving benefits. Many users set up their devices to specifically take advantage of these displays, but what can you really do apart from changing the system UI to black mode via the phone's display settings? Here are just a few of the best apps and mods to make the most of your OnePlus 3/3T's display.

Team Black Out

Team Black Out are a dedicated team of app "inverters" who specialise in taking many of the popular apps that we use every day and changing them to predominantly black with white text or transparent allowing you to see your wallpaper while inside the app. TBO provide a simple app that allows you to find and download the apps you need, check for updates and keep up to date with the latest new from the team. The best part is that they also provide detailed instructions on how to invert apps yourself meaning that if you can't find the app you need, it's still possible to make it.

Visit The Team Black Out Thread

Substratum

For those of us who would like more control over how individual aspects of our phones look then Substratum is the answer. With a huge collection of themes across both the forums and the Play Store finding AMOLED friendly options is an easy task, although while perusing the options it is important to remember that these displays look best with a true black (#000000) heavy theme but you may want to consider adding some colour to keep your device from appearing bland.

Substratum offers a wide range of customisation options thanks to the ability to apply separate themes to each app or aspect of the system UI meaning that if you are not happy with how one theme handles an app you can simply apply a different theme for that app. In the event that a theme causes a bootloop or other issues that prevent you from accessing the Substratum app then you can simply head to recovery and flash a file that is downloaded along with the app which should disable your themes.

Visit The Substratum Thread

BADLAND & Limbo

Both BADLAND (right side of image) and Limbo (left side of image) are incredibly atmospheric games. Stark blacks really stand out on this phone and these games showcase them exceptionally, which coupled with the 3/3T's black front often leaves a seamless appearance as the games blend into the bezels. Limbo's free demo is an excellent example of a developer taking advantage of their user's hardware and it is easy to see then why these games have proven to be so popular on the Play Store.
Find Limbo and BADLAND on The Play Store

Cornerfly

You may have heard of this app previously if you were following our coverage of the LG G6 launch. This app places curved black overlays in each corner of your display giving them a nice curved appearance, better yet on the OnePlus 3/3T's AMOLED display, these overlays are indistinguishable from the black front of the phone leaving a better finish than the actually rounded display on the G6. This app is free however advanced settings and customisations will cost you $0.99.

Visit The Cornerfly Thread

App/ROM Specific Options

It can be incredibly useful checking to see if those apps that you use most have integrated theming options. Apps such as Sync for reddit, Solid Explorer, and Textra SMS feature extensive customisation options in the settings allowing users to modify the colours of individual aspects of the UI, usually selecting black as the background colour and white for the text is enough to make an app stand out.

Which mods do you use to make the most out of an AMOLED display? Leave a comment below!



from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2oBdV3N
via IFTTT

How to Control your PC from your Android Device with Tasker [Part 4 – Screen Menu]

Ever used an app such as Join, Pushbullet, or Unified Remote and wished there was more they could offer? Looking for a way to control your PC from your Android device in a fully customizable way? Using the power of Tasker, AutoRemote, and EventGhost, we can integrate our Windows PC with our Android device to do anything we want.

This is the last part of this series. Please make sure you have read at least part 1. Part 2 and 3 expand on this work and are definitely worth checking out, too! There is also a video guiding you through these steps.

This sub-menu will control the screen timeout on a PC. I have added it, as I want to have an easy control over the timeout when I'm using a remote desktop. At the end of the tutorial, I will also show you how to set up other actions. The full project files are available at the end of this article for you to import.


EventGhost

The set up is very similar to the volume menu back in Part 2 of the tutorial. After an AutoRemote action is issued, EventGhost changes the screen timeout option on the PC then reports back to the device. Repeat this for each timeout option you want to have. For the sake of consistency, I have four.

You should know how to set up a trigger and issue the response already, if you've been following the previous tutorials (this is part 4 after all), so here is the screen action:

  powercfg -Change -monitor-timeout-ac 5  

Use the Windows Command option in EventGhost actions. Change the value to any number you wish.


Tasker

Open Sub-Menu Profile/ SubMenu Open

Create a new notification and link it to IF %ancomm ~ openscreen. If the screen icon from the first row is pressed  – this action will be called.

The notification is configured as follows:

  • Buttons – as per your liking, make sure the first row is consistent.
  • Actions – the first row starts with open (see template) but the screen menu icon should have openclose action assigned instead. The second row has actions ending with ''…pc". I used screen1pc,screen5pc,screen30pc,screen120pc.
  • Color – only a second color should be different.
  • Prefix for actions – buttontwo

Submenu Actions/Send AR

Since the framework is already done, we don't need to add anything else. All that hard work from Part 1 onwards finally paid off.

PC Feedback/Notification

EventGhost will issue a reply when the screen timeout is changed through our screen menu. To simplify the process, the AutoRemote message is sent in this form pc=:=screen(value). This means that we have to intercept all the messages starting with (regex)screen.*

In a similar way to the power menu, I'm creating a variable %PcScreen and simply setting the value of it to the %arcomm. The value will get assigned to the default notification. At this stage go and update the default notifications (the ones that have only 4 icons) with this variable. Each notification should have %PcPowerontime,%PcVolume, and %PcScreen in the text field.

And that is all! Here's a bonus "light menu" if you have some smart home lights.


Bonus – Lights Menu

Open Sub-Menu Profile/ SubMenu Open

Create a new notification and link it to IF %ancomm ~ openlight If the lights icon from the first row is pressed, this action will be called. Update the default notification and change the column count to 5 (see Part 1 of this series). You will have to change the following in each notification created so far:

  • Column count (5:4) to reflect number of your menus
  • Actions – add new action everywhere (one for menu, one for submenu)
  • Enabled – 1,1,1,1,1 (equal to number of icons)

Notification is configured as follows:

  • Buttons – as per your liking, make sure the first row is consistent.
  • Actions – the first row starts with open (see template) but the lights menu icon should have openclose action assigned instead. The second row has actions ending with ''…tsk". I used lighttsk as I only have one smart light.
  • Color – only a second color should be different.
  • Prefix for actions – buttontwo

Submenu Actions/Send AR

Our profile can intercept only actions ending with '…pc', therefore we have to modify it. The profile context will respond to the regex "pc|tsk" and the task will contain an IF statement when sending the previously made AR action – IF %ancomm =R pc.

Add another action, Perform Task, and create a condition IF %ancomm =R tsk. The action to perform is %ancomm. It's easier to rename a task to fit the bill than create a name matching profile.

Lighttsk Task

I only control one light at this time. The controller is simplistic as I made the WiFi module myself and I'm currently working on it. Here is how you create a toggle switch.

Create the variable %lightStatus and set it to 0. I'm using the HTTP Get request to turn on/off the light. When the %lightStatus = 0 the light is off, and when it's 1 the light is on. Create the IF condition that checks the value of the variable, and sets the correct action then stops:

Task Description

  lighttsk (26)          A1: If [ %lightState ~ 0 ]          A2: HTTP Get [ Server:Port:192.168.1.163/?pin=ON1 Path: Attributes: Cookies: User Agent:              Timeout:10 Mime Type: Output File: Trust Any Certificate:Off Continue Task After Error:On ]           A3: Variable Set [ Name:%lightState To:1 Recurse Variables:Off Do Maths:Off Append:Off ]           A4: Stop [ With Error:Off Task: ]           A5: Else           A6: HTTP Get [ Server:Port:192.168.1.163/?pin=OFF1 Path: Attributes: Cookies: User Agent:              Timeout:10 Mime Type: Output File: Trust Any Certificate:Off Continue Task After Error:On ]           A7: Variable Set [ Name:%lightState To:0 Recurse Variables:Off Do Maths:Off Append:Off ]     

For any other setups simply run the task that is named in the same way as the %anconn message issued by the sub-menu. If you need more than one menu, rinse and repeat the steps.


Download and Import

As always, I am providing a download link to the Tasker project file you can download and import. Download the below .prj.xml file and save it anywhere on your internal storage. Open Tasker and disable Beginner Mode in Preferences. Then, back at the main screen, long-press on the home icon in the bottom left corner. You should see a pop-up with an "import" option. Select that and look for the project file you just saved and select it to import. If successful, you should now see a new tab/icon at the bottom that contains all of the Profiles and Tasks that we mentioned in this article.

Download the PC Control Tasker Project from AndroidFileHost

The Material Design Icons that I used in this project are also found in this zip. Simply unzip the folder with the icons to the root directory of your internal storage. Finally, the configuration file for EventGhost that you can import is also contained in the above zip. Please note that I've removed my AutoRemote API key from the configuration file. You'll need to enter your own to make this work.

This concludes this four part series on how to control your PC from your phone using Tasker, AutoRemote, and EventGhost. We hope that by this point you've learned how to make your own integrations. The possible customizations here are endless, limited only by your own imagination. While you can go the easy route and use Unified Remote, if you're looking for something more customizable to your own preferences, then hopefully you've found my tutorials useful.



from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2nBGcTf
via IFTTT