Leaked Images of Upcoming ASUS ZenFone 5 Phone Show Dual Rear Camera, 18:9 Display

ASUS has been selling smartphones under the ZenFone 5 umbrella brand since the Android Jelly Bean days. Most of them used Intel Atom system-on-chips, but the company's last couple of models shipped with Qualcomm chipsets. Now, with Mobile World Congress 2018 on the horizon, ASUS has been sending out press invites with the slogan "Back To 5", coyly suggesting a new lineup of ZenFone 5 smartphones are on the way. And thanks to a few leaked images from a user manual, we have our first good look at one of the company's upcoming flagships.

The ZenFone 5 series has historically been a mid-range offering. The ZenFone 5 (A500CG), which shipped with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, had a starting price of around 8202 Rs. (~$127), and the ZenFone 5 (A500KL), which shipped with Android 4.4. KitKat, was less than $200. There hasn't been a ZenFone 5 phone since 2014, though, and this time around, Asus will reportedly launch three new phones in the series.

The ZenFone 5 phone revealed in the leaked manual, which bears the model number "ASUS X00PD", has the series' signature curves. The unibody design's rounded corners and exposed antenna lines carry over to the back, where there appears to be a dual rear camera module and a fingerprint scanner.

The new ZenFone 5's display has a 5.7-inch 18:9 aspect ratio, the corners of which are slightly curved, too. The bottom sports two cutouts for the speaker and the microphone, which flank a microUSB port, and on the top sits what looks to be a 3.5mm headphone port.

There's some speculation that benchmarks for the ZenFone 5 were published on Geekbench earlier this year. If true, the upcoming X00PD will have a Qualcomm octa-core Snapdragon 430 system-on-chip clocked at 1.4GHz, at least 3GB of RAM, and will ship running Android 8.0 Oreo.

We're expecting to learn more about the ASUS X00PD and the rest of the ZenFone 5 series ahead of MWC 2018.

---

Source: WinFuture

from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2BRIk0y
via IFTTT

Sony’s Open Devices program now supports the Xperia XA2 and XA2 Ultra

The Sony Open Devices Program offers AOSP configurations on GitHub for supported Sony devices, which allows developers to build and configure custom Android software with relative ease. This week, the newly released Xperia XA2 and the Xperia XA2 Ultra are joining the program, meaning that you can flash your own ROMs for them based on Android Oreo.

"As you may know, the Open Devices program is our way to provide access and tools to build and test your custom software on a range of Sony devices," the company wrote in a blog post. "As part of our Open Devices program, projects for the Xperia XA2 and Xperia XA2 Ultra are now available via GitHub where you can contribute and take part in our open source community."

If you're wondering where to start, don't fret. Sony has published guides on how to build your own version of Android for the Xperia XA2 and XA2 Ultra, so you aren't left wondering what to do with the files that the company released. You'll find all manner of resources for the phones, including bootloader unlock tools, kernel compilation guides, and even step-by-step instructions on how to access the UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitters) ports on Xperia XA2 and Xperia XA2 Ultra. If you have any lingering questions or issues, of course, you can ask them on the relevant Sony Xperia Developer World GitHub pages.

It's great to see Sony supporting its newest devices and allowing developers to get in on the action. The Sony Xperia XA2 and the Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra are some of the first mainstream devices to launch with Android 8.0 Oreo, and they have fully unlockable bootloaders and support for Project Treble. In theory, that should make developing AOSP builds even easier than on other phones in Sony Open Devices Program.

---

Source: Sony Developer Blog

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

Chrome 66 for Desktop will Introduce the Keyboard Lock API for More Immersive Full-Screen Games and Websites

The web has evolved greatly. It used to be the case that most traffic originated from PCs, but over the past decade, it's shifted to laptops, smartphones, tablets, smart displays, and even smartwatches. That's empowered developers to create rich and immersive content, but also presented new challenges — especially when it comes to content designed with keyboards in mind. To help ease the transition, Google engineers have been working on implementing a new API called the Keyboard Lock API into Chrome 66.

One limitation we've seen with complex and immersive websites, lately, is that they lack access to special keys and keyboard shortcuts in fullscreen view. Take for example a website that uses keyboard inputs for shortcuts, navigation, menus, or in-game functionality. Right now, it's impossible for that website to recognize certain inputs because they're captured by a machine's browser or operating system.

That's where the Keyboard Lock API comes it. It can allow websites to capture keys and key combinations that are normally reserved for other programs, like the Esc key or Cmd/Alt-Tab.

While digging through the Chromium Gerrit repo, we discovered a merged commit that shows Google's experimenting with the Keyboard Lock API in Chrome. As of right now, it's implemented for development and testing, but the goal is to make it available in version 66 Chrome.

It won't necessarily be plug and play. The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) abstract on Keyboard Lock notes that most platforms will require a special system key press handler that can filter keys at the platform level, and that said handler will have to be registered whenever a new key or key combination's processed. Also, the API only operates on a "best effort" basis — it won't override the default OS behavior for every possible key combination.

But if all goes according to plan, a future stable version of Chrome might support custom key combinations that were never before possible on the web.

from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2E9cwcv
via IFTTT

Exclusive: Huawei P20 will launch with Android 8.1 Oreo and EMUI 8.1

After Huawei's disastrous attempt at launching the Mate 10 Pro in the United States, the company is hoping to make waves with its upcoming P series flagship devices. Rumored to come in 3 variants according to WinFuture writer Roland Quandt, the Huawei P20 is expected to be unveiled on March 27th at an event in Paris, rather than at Barcelona during Mobile World Congress as previously reported. We have quite a bit of time until the official unveiling, so there is bound to be more information on the device as the weeks go by. For now, we can provide one piece of additional information about the device: the fact that it is running EMUI 8.1 on top of Android 8.1 Oreo.

Previously, we exclusively reported on a potential design aspect of the upcoming P series flagships. We noted that the devices may feature an iPhone X-style notch, and speculated that notch area would contain what Huawei calls its "Point Cloud Depth Camera." Our report was based off of firmware files I obtained for the device code-named "EMILY" with assistance from FunkyHuawei.club, a service which lets you install pre-release Huawei firmwares, recover bricked devices, and rebrand/convert phones to different variants/regions.

Huawei's Point Cloud Depth Camera

At the time, those firmware files pointed towards the Huawei P20 running Android 8.0 Oreo and EMUI 8.0.1. Now, however, we have obtained updated firmware files for the very same device which suggest the phone is running Android 8.1 Oreo with EMUI 8.1. This isn't surprising considering the fact that last year's Huawei P10 and P10 Plus both launched with EMUI 5.1. We do not have any information on any new features that EMUI 8.1 will bring to the table (unfortunately, flashing the firmware onto an existing HiSilicon Kirin 970 device such as the Huawei Mate 10 resulted in an unrecoverable hard brick), but we will certainly share any further details that we come across.

As a reminder, Google released Android 8.1 Oreo back in December. On the surface, there aren't that many new features for users to get excited about. However, Android 8.1 Oreo introduced the Neural Networks API (which is getting an upgrade in Android P)—a significant development because it will allow for third-party developers to take advantage of the Kirin 970's Neural Processing Unit (NPU). Given Huawei's marketing of the Mate 10's camera AI features, the introduction of Android 8.1 should allow for more innovative use cases of the device's NPU to emerge outside of first-party (and in my opinion, gimmicky) applications.

from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2Exjfe9
via IFTTT

Apple Briefly Surpasses Samsung as #1 in Smartphone Shipments, While the Market Declined 6.3% Overall

Android might have been able to capture over 80 percent of the worldwide smartphone operating system market, but that number's deceiving — Android's highly competitive at the OEM level. In Q3 2017, IDC reported that Samsung was the top smartphone manufacturer in terms of shipments for the quarter, which has historically been the case. But in Q4 2017, during which smartphone shipments reached 403.5 million, Apple was able to edge out Samsung by less than 1 percent market share.

Samsung still holds the crown when it comes to yearly smartphone shipments and market share due to its expansive release cycle. Apple experiences more of an ebb and flow, because it releases one new series of smartphones each year. In Q3, however, Samsung shipped 83.3 million units while Apple shipped 46.7 million. But in Q4, holiday sales of the new iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X drove Apple's shipments to 77.3 million compared to Samsung's 74.1 million.

Source: IDC

Samsung beat out many of those competitors by a substantial margin, though. In Q4 2017, Huawei shipped out 41 million smartphone units, Xiaomi shipped a total of 28.1 million units, and OPPO shipped 27.4 million units. The last category in the report, which lumps the rest of the market into a single "others" category, represented 151.3 million out of the quarter's total shipment volume.

Every company except Xiaomi saw negative year-over-year growth. For example, Apple saw its shipments drop by 1.3 percent, and Samsung saw a 4.4 percent dip. Huawei's dropped 9.7 percent, meanwhile, and OPPO's declined by 13.2 percent.

But Xiaomi bucked the trend — in Q4 2016 compared with Q4 2017, its shipments climbed 96.9 percent. It doubled its share to 7 percent from 3.3 by focusing on growth outside of China, according to IDC — India and Russia are its two largest markets, and it's dramatically expanded the number of its brick-and-mortar Mi Stores and Mi Service Centers. (One of its most popular devices, the $78 Redmi 5A, saw more than a million devices sold within a month.)

Overall, though, smartphone market shipments declined 6.3 percent.

Source: IDC

---

Source: IDC

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

Chrome OS 64 Rolling Out with New Screenshot Shortcut, Android VPN Integration, and More

As we comb through the plethora of commits that Google makes to their open source projects, we tend to discover some features that are being worked on. This is somewhat similar to the various APK Teardowns we've done where you can find new code that has has been added to the codebase that has yet to be activated for public use. We've been watching over the changes happening with Chrome OS behind the scenes lately, and a couple of features we reported on earlier have now made it into the stable branch of Chrome OS in version 64.

So for example, back in September 2017 we discovered a new commit that indicated Google was working on adding tighter VPN integration when it came to Chrome OS and Android. Because of the way Google implemented Android applications into the OS, there was a conflict when applying a VPN with an Android application as traffic from Chrome OS wasn't routing through the VPN like one would expect. This was an issue and that commit we discovered aimed to resolve the issue.

Another commit that we discovered showed evidence of Chrome OS getting Android-like screenshot functionality. Before, Chrome OS had two different ways of taking a screenshot with ctrl + switch window key taking a complete screenshot, and ctrl + shift + switch window key taking a partial screenshot. Google wanted taking screenshots to be as easy on Chrome OS as on Android and the new commit showed they wanted to use the power button + volume down button combination for taking a screenshot when in tablet mode.

So with the latest stable update for Chrome OS that is rolling out right now, these features and more have been added to the platform. We have the full changelog for the update detailed down below.

Chrome OS v64 Changelog

• Take screenshots faster on Chromebooks with a 360-degree hinge by pressing the power and volume down buttons at the same time
• Revamped Intent Picker for Play Applications (Same window by default with override)
• Lockscreen Performance Improvements
• Enable VPN for Google Play Apps
• Enhancements to our protected media pipeline for Android
• Android Container Auto Update Optimizations
• Touchscreen pairing settings

---

Source: Google

from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2nE8M8D
via IFTTT

Google Assistant can now wake you up with a song and look up TV show schedules

The Google Assistant is incredibly versatile, providing literally a million different features while coming pre-installed on nearly every modern Android device. It can set alarms for you, play music for you, roll a magic 8 ball for you and even tell you your position in the Harry Potter game of Quidditch. While it provides all this functionality, one of the things that it couldn't do for you, strangely enough, is let you set a custom song as an alarm, instead requiring you to use a default provided alarm sound. Google is fixing that, and while they're at it they're also introducing a feature to allow users to look up TV show schedules on all your favorite channels.

It doesn't stop there as you can ask the Google Assistant when your favorite show will air, but you can ask it to remind you just in case you forget. When it reminds you, you can then use Google Cast (provided you have a supported device) and ask Google to play the show for you. With the introduction of these new TV show features, Google has also partnered with Netflix to ensure that you can pick up where you left off if you want to use voice functionality to play a show. Simply link your Google account to your Netflix account and get playing!

These features have been added to the Google Assistant, meaning that they won't only work on your Android phone but will work on any of your Google Assistant enabled devices like the Google Home or Home Mini. Google is continuing to add even more features to the Google Assistant in an attempt to make it the most powerful virtual assistant on the market and surpass its competitors like Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. You can check out the announcement below.

---

Source: Google

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