Nextbit Ends Customer Support for the Robin

Crowdfunded products have a bit of a stigma to them as they are generally plagued with issues right from the start. This didn't happen with the Nextbit Robin though. In fact, the company did a great job at not only delivering the product they advertised, but they didn't disappear after it shipped either. However, there was the issue of the cancelled CDMA version of the Robin, and that did bother a lot of people. But for the most part they did what they set out to do.

The Robin was a polarizing device right from the outset. Some absolutely loved the design and idea of its cloud storage features. While others felt the design wasn't that inspiring and felt these cloud features weren't really needed right now. No matter how you felt about the phone itself though, it's clear the company was dedicated and even embraced the developer community. It wasn't too long after release when we heard they were working with the folks at Paranoid Android and helped the team getting a custom ROM out for the device.

Then earlier this year the company announced they had been acquired by Razer and that made current owners wonder what would happen to their phone. The CEO of Nextbit said they would continue to offer hardware support for the Nextbit Robin for the next 6 months, and would offer software support for another 12. It's been well over 6 months since that announcement was made and recently they confirmed customer support had officially ended.

For those who still own the device, they will keep their online help website up here, so you can refer to that if you need help with something. They kept up their promise about continuing software support too and started rolling out Android 7.1.1 Nougat to the Robin a few months ago. They have even confirmed that they still plan on supporting the software, as promised, and that will last until around February 18th, 2018.

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Source: @nextbitsys

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OnePlus 2 Boots with a Tampered Secondary Bootloader

It's fair to say the OnePlus 2 doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to the Android enthusiast community. It used the Snapdragon 810 SoC (which has had a ton of criticism), never received Android 7.0 Nougat (even though it was promised), and has been shown to have vulnerabilities in the past that OnePlus refuses to fix. Now, a new discovery from Aleph Security again shows the OnePlus 2 boots with a tampered Secondary Bootloader.

This means that OnePlus has designed the Primary Bootloader of the OnePlus 2 to not do any validation of the Secondary Bootloader at all. Speculation from the research team says this may be due to a lenient hardware configuration. So this vulnerability allows an attacker to tamper with the secondary bootloader partition and then completely disable the signature validation of the rest of the bootloader chain. Not only that, but this can also result in signature validation being disabled for other SBL-validated partitions such as TrustZone and ABOOT as well.

They continued working with the vulnerability and were able to easily pinpoint the exact SBL function that validates the rest of the chain. After a quick patching of the call @ 0xFEC0E90C they avoid the failing path and booting with tampered aboot and tz now succeeds. The team then proceeded to modify one of the fastboot oem commands. This enabled them to temporarily unlock the bootloader and turn off the device tampering flag.

They also confirmed equivalent partitions of older OnePlus devices (OnePlus One and OnePlus X) have no digital signatures at all so they are vulnerable as well. When they got in contact with OnePlus about this OnePlus 2 vulnerability, they were told the device would not be fixed since it is "about to reach the product's lifecycle."

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Source: Aleph Security

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Motorola Responds to Complaints About Moto Z2 Force Screen Scratches

Motorola is proud of the ShatterShield screen that they use on the Moto Z2 Force. The company used it last year with the Moto Z Force and put the device through a number of durability tests directly on stage right when it was announced. They advertise the screen as being shatterproof since so many people drop their phones which results in a cracked glass screen. Motorola says they've been evolving the technology over the years but some are complaining about how prone the Moto Z2 Force is to scratches.

When Motorola first launched the technology with the Droid Turbo 2, they were happy to tell people how it worked. The materials start with a rigid aluminum core for structural integrity and durability. Then they add a flexible OLED panel to help absorb the shock of a drop and then put two touch layers on top of that in case one of them breaks. They call the next layer an interior lens that's purpose is to provide a clear protective shield that won't crack or shatter.

Then they add an exterior lens on top of that that is supposed to be harder and help protect the display from normal wear and tear. With the Moto Z2 Force, this exterior lens can be replaced by Motorola only (they let customers replace it before), but it's this exterior lens that has been shown to be scratched very easily. Pocketnow reached out to Motorola to ask why this was happening and their response seems to indicate that it shouldn't be this way.

The company said the ShatterShield display of the Moto Z2 Force now uses a 3D design in an attempt to compete with other flagships. Motorola claims to have done durability tests that shows it is as durable as last year's product too. They believe the Moto Z2 Force unit that is easily scratched "was one of the very first production units" and that they "do have an improvement in the works that consumers will see shortly after launch."

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Source: Pocketnow

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Custom System Animations for the LG V10, LG V20, and OnePlus 3/3T

LG might be disappointed by the lackluster sales of their most recent flagship, the LG G6, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of satisfied customers of LG smartphones. Sometimes, even if you are mostly content with the stock experience of your device, you want to play around with custom themes, modifications, ROMs, etc. If you are one of those people, then check out this set of custom system animations for the LG V10 and LG V20 called the oZoP Project by XDA Recognized Themer stangdriver44. The developer is hard at work porting it over to all kinds of devices, and he's also been able to get it working on the OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T.

This is a flashable, AROMA-based installer which lets you pick from a multitude of system animations such as iOS, FlymeOS, Google Pixel, or MIUI animations. You can also adjust the animation duration of popups and dialogs. These system animation packs have been confirmed by various users to work on the LG V10, LG V20, OnePlus 3, and OnePlus 3T, but progress is being made to get this modification working on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ as well. In case it doesn't work, there's also a flashable restore zip in each thread linked below.

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Custom Themes for OnePlus 3 Custom Themes for OnePlus 3T Custom Themes for LG V10 Custom Themes for LG V20

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Xposed Module Brings Reading Mode on MIUI 8 Devices with Custom Kernels

If you are using a custom kernel on a device with MIUI 8, then the stock Reading Mode feature may be unavailable. This feature tints the screen to filter blue light from the display so you can read easier at night. If you would like to use this feature on your MIUI 8 device, then check out this Xposed Module called PM Back by XDA Senior Member S0bes. It hooks into the KCAL advanced color control kernel interface and forces the MIUI 8 Reading Mode to operate based on KCAL. This means you can use the feature again without changing the display calibration mode through a kernel tweaking application.

MIUI 8 Reading Mode with a Custom Kernel

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Grab the PM Back Xposed Module for MIUI 8

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Overlay Adds Ambient Display for Sony Xperia Z5 and XZ on Nougat

Ambient display is one of the best features found on Android devices, but unfortunately not every device has this feature available for it. Typically, the feature is available only for those devices with OLED displays (due to battery drain concerns) as the feature lights up a part of the screen to show incoming notifications. Some OLED devices even support an always-on mode, though this is rarer. But since the feature is available in Android's source code (AOSP), developers can include the feature on any Android device they choose.

To that end, XDA Recognized Developer Rizal Lovins created an overlay that can be installed on rooted Sony Xperia Z5 and Sony Xperia XZ devices that are running stock-based Android 7.1.1 Nougat ROMs. The overlay enables ambient display mode when a notification is received. Be warned that enabling this feature on an unsupported device with an LCD display may cause more battery drain than you might think.

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Get Ambient Display on the Xperia Z5 and Xperia XZ

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Google Announces Nearby Connections 2.0, Adds Offline, High Bandwidth Communications

When Google started to roll out version 7.8 of Google Play Services back in 2015, it came with an API called Nearby Messages. This Nearby feature allowed your Android device to listen for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and inaudible sound to find out if you were in the proximity of other capable devices. This could be other Android devices (so they can communicate with each other) as well as BLE beacons that would start to become used by brands in public areas.

At Google I/O 2016, the company announced an update to Google Play Services that included some usability improvements to the Nearby API. This change would automatically equip applications with fine-grain location permissions the ability to use scan for BLE beacons using the Nearby API. The change upset a lot of people since the permissions were granted automatically and didn't prompt the user to manually decide whether or not they wanted an application to function that way.

Now, Google has launched Nearby Connections 2.0 to include some of the features they spoke about at Google I/O earlier this year. This new update allows for Android's Nearby API to provide fully-offline high bandwidth, low latency, encrypted data transfers between nearby devices in a P2P manner. Devices which are capable of receiving the update to Google Play Services version 11.0 and up will automatically gain this new functionality to the Nearby API.

To help get the ball rolling with these new features, Google has partnered with some 3rd-party companies to showcase what the API update is capable of. This includes The Weather Channel, Hotstar, and GameInsight by building an on-demand mesh network, enabling offline media sharing, and providing them ways to find new players close by (respectively). Google's Android TV team is even working on using it to build a new remote control application that simplifies the initial setup process.

Google recommends developers check out their overview page and code samples as a quick way to get started with the update.

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Source: Android Developers Blog

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