That was quick: Concept for Android on Sony Xperia Z3 is available for download
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Just earlier today, the first screenshots of the Sony stock Android trial known as “Concept for Android” were released, and already, a ROM of Concept for Android on Sony Xperia Z3 is being made available. Made for the Xperia Z3 with model number D6603, a review of Concept for Android was posted up by XDA Contributor, Jozinek, who also made a FTF file available for interested users to download and try for themselves. Check out his review video below:
As you can no doubt tell, Concept for Android appears to be as faithful to the stock Android experience as is probably noticeable by the average person. We were interested to know exactly how many proprietary Sony apps and functions have been left in there, however as XDA member user91 summarizes:
“By the way, the ROM itself is absolutely nothing to excited about. Take any stock Sony Lollipop ROM, take away all the reasons for buying this phone (no double tap to wake, low brightness, no display enhancements, no sound enhancements) – well the camera works, and that’s it.”
Clearly a glowing recommendation. Then again, for some, the possibility of going to stock Android on any phone is always an improvement, so if you’re still interested in trying this out, you’ll want to follow the instructions on the XDA forum page here. What do you think about Concept for Android? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: XDA via XperiaBlog
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New hamburger animation rolls out: Download and install the latest Google Play Store 5.8.8 APK
The Google Play Store has just received a version bump, bringing it to version 5.8.8 and few minor changes. You can probably guess by the small increase in version number that this one is a tiny update but is quite visually pleasing so is alone enough to warrant updating to the new version.
What’s New
– Hamburger-Arrow morphing animation
Of course, there could be more undisclosed under the hood performance enhancements not immediately noticeable.
Why download it?
If like me you like to be on the cutting edge of developments, you can go ahead and grab the latest Google Play Store 5.8.8 APK from here. Running the latest version of the Google Play Store always ensures you have the latest features and experience the changes first-hand into new developments within the APK. Often small incremental updates will lay the ground work for future, more substantial, changes and running the latest APK enables you to see these clues for yourself and experience the fixes Google are delivering to the Google Play Store app.
Notice anything else different in the newest version of the Google Play Store? Drop us a comment below.
The post New hamburger animation rolls out: Download and install the latest Google Play Store 5.8.8 APK appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Android users can now say ‘Ok Google’ to send messages via WhatsApp, and more!
As an avid user of Google Now, I am forever welcoming added additions to the service that make it more useful and especially those that add voice functions. What’s great about this latest update to Google Now is that I have been wanting this functionality for a very long time – you can send a Hangouts message with voice commands so why not WhatsApp, or any other social messaging client? Well, now you can.
Today, that Google Now functionality has expanded to messaging apps, including WhatsApp, WeChat, NextPlus, Telegram, and Viber. If you say, “Ok Google, send a WhatsApp message to John,” you’ll get a prompt asking you to dictate your message. Or, you can just say: “Ok Google, send a Viber message to Ted: What are you up to?”
You’ll need to update both the Google Now app as well as the associated messaging app to see this functionality work. If one is updated but not the other then it’ll error out.
Google continues to enhance their Google Now service having only recently allowed cards from third-party apps to appear in the dashboard. Expect to see further apps added to the supported list, as well as further functionality undoubtedly be introduced over the coming months as we approach Android M.
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Lexus will officially unveil its hoverboard on August 5th
On August 5th, Lexus will finally reveal its hoverboard, which has been in development for the past 18+ months, to the public. Let that sink in for a bit: Lexus has created a working hoverboard in 2015, the year Marty and Doc Brown jumped to in Back to the Future...! Unfortunately, we don’t know if you’d be able to buy one before October 21st — or at all, really — but even if it does become available for purchase in the next few months, you can’t ride it to a B2F anniversary screening. See, it can only levitate over metallic surfaces, so it’s pretty much useless in most places. That’s about the extent of what we know about the device, though Lexus is bound to divulge more info during the event.
Filed under: Transportation
Source: Lexus (YouTube)
GAME to host its own UK gaming tournament in stores
It’s not quite Evo or The International, but today British video game retailer GAME has taken its first tentative steps into the eSports scene. The company is holding a gaming competition called “The Great UK Game Off,” which will culminate in a tournament at the Insomnia gaming festival this November. Players can roll up to more than 30 stores next month and take part in six challenges based around FIFA 15, Forza Motorsport 5, Super Smash Bros, Trials HD, Mario Kart 7 and LEGO Jurassic World. The top scorers in each region will be put forward for the North and South quarter finals, with the eventual winners competing for the “ultimate champion” title and a £5,000 gift card at Insomnia.
The selected games suggest that this will be a casual, amateur-friendly event. While it’s nothing like Gfinity’s leagues, it does indicate how GAME could bring more competitive and community-based gaming into its stores. It acquired Multiplay, a specialist in gaming services, live events and eSports, for £20 million back in March and this is the first evidence we’ve seen of their new partnership. “We’ve been looking at ways of bringing grass roots eSports to our stores and this is the perfect opportunity to give one lucky gamer the recognition of a lifetime,” Fred Prego, marketing and insight director for GAME said.
GAME is one of the few dedicated video game retailers left on the high street. It faces growing competition from online-only businesses such as Amazon, so it needs a way to differentiate and keep customers walking through its doors. Doubling stores as eSports venues — the modern day equivalent of an arcade — could be one way forward.
Filed under: Gaming
Source: GAME
Microsoft has a trick for making holograms from live video
We’ve seen Microsoft’s HoloLens do an awful lot of different things so far, but Halo, Minecraft and even medical applications are just scratching the surface of what the augmented reality headset is capable of. In a new research paper, Redmond outlines how it plans to grab live video that’d work as fodder for the device’s holographic capabilities. Perhaps most importantly these holographic video feeds would be streamable over the internet, as Road to VR points out. By taking advantage of some 106 RGB and infrared cameras and a green screen, Microsoft says that it’s able to capture, compress and recreate pretty lifelike results.
Hands and faces (high-detail spots) get more polygonal attention, while other, not-as-important areas are a bit less precise. The video embedded below says that the current target is a 12 Mbps MPEG file, and the sample footage contained therein is actually pretty impressive so far. Here’s to hoping that Microsoft can expand the headset’s narrow field of view, though: As it stands, the illusion of an awkwardly dancing astronaut in your living room would break pretty easily.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Wearables, Microsoft
Via: Road to VR
Source: ACM Digital LIbrary
Mars Orbiter gets ready for InSight Lander’s touchdown
NASA’s InSight Lander won’t be reaching the red planet until 2016, but the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is already preparing for its welcome party. In order to make sure that it’s at the right place to be able to receive radio transmissions from InSight during the landing process, the MRO is firing six intermediate-sized thrusters (it has one set of bigger and another set of smaller ones) for 77 seconds today, July 29th. Those thrusters are capable of producing five pounds of thrust each, and firing them will adjust the spracecraft’s orbit timing from crossing the equator every 3PM local solar time to 2:30PM. The last time the MRO performed a maneuver of this magnitude was in 2006, and the next instances are scheduled to happen in 2016 and 2017 to return it to its original orbit timing.
When the Insight lander lifts off in March 2016, it will come with two CubeSats that will act as communications-relay satellites that can instantly transmit messages to the ground team. However, the MRO will also record those radio transmissions for later playback, just like it did for Curiosity and the Phoenix lander. That will serve as the official documentation of those critical minutes before InSight touches down and starts digging into the planet’s surface.
Filed under: Science
Source: NASA
LG posts flat Q2 revenue as flagship shipments fall short
Analysts have been gradually reducing their profit and smartphone shipment forecasts ahead of today’s official figures announced by LG. While not as bad as rivals HTC and Sony, LG has also fallen short of expectations so far this year.
Year on year and quarterly shipments have remained virtually unchanged. LG shipped 14.1 million phones in Q2, down from 15.4 million in Q1 and 15.5 million in Q4 2014. However, this includes the launch of its latest flagship G4 smartphone, so Q2 was expected to see a jump in sales.
Overall, the company generated sales worth KRW 3.65 trillion ($3.33 billion), just a one percent increase compared with Q2 2014. This comes in a year when LG had planned to sell over 70 million smartphones. Total company revenue fell by 7.6 percent year on year, suggesting that smartphones are outperforming some of the giant’s other business arms.
LG has been gradually bringing high-end features to its mid-range products, which might be helping sales.
The problem mostly seems to be associated with a lack of demand in the high-end market. No doubt due to the increasing competition from lower cost Chinese manufacturers. LG called the quarter “challenging”, but expects to recover lost ground in the third quarter. On the plus side, LG has seen revenue from North America improve by 36 percent YoY, thanks to strong sales from mid-range phones and tablets.
LG actually managed to sell a record 8.1 million LTE capable smartphones in Q2. Overall, the company’s quarterly sales were only down by 3 percent compared with the same time last year, suggesting that mid-range sales have helped to offset the lack of demand for premium smartphones.
See also: HTC declares unaudited loss for Q2 2015
LG states that it will continue to pursue both the high and mid-range markets going forward, and that the company will be paying particular attention to emerging markets. Perhaps LG’s second flagship this year can turn its high-end fortunes around too.
Samsung’s latest camera sensor is thinner, without compromising quality
The camera on the Galaxy Note 5, coming August 13, might protrude a tiny bit less thanks to the use of Samsung’s new 1-micron sensor.
Samsung announced today the availability of a new 16MP camera sensor for smartphones, featuring 1-micron pixels. Dubbed S5K3P3, the new sensor uses ISOCELL technology, which physically separates neighboring pixels, reducing unwanted crosstalk by 30 percent and increasing the chief ray angle by 20 percent. In plain English, that means ISOCELL sensors can capture colors that are more accurate, with less noise, even when the light in the scene is less than ideal.
See also: Samsung Galaxy S5’s ISOCELL image sensor explained
The new sensor’s 1-micron pixels are roughly 10 percent smaller than the previous step (1.12-micron), but the sensor itself is 20 percent thinner than its predecessor. At less than 5 millimeter in thickness, using the sensor could mean that upcoming smartphones can be thinner or feature camera’s that protrude less from the body.
Normally, smaller pixels result in worse images, simply because a small pixel can capture less light from the scene. But Samsung claims that S5K3P3 performs just as well as the previous generation.
On the highly praised Galaxy S6 camera, Samsung used both its own ISOCELL sensor and the MX240 from Sony (the image quality was largely the same though). It’s very likely that the sensor announced today will find its way in the Galaxy Note 5, either in all units or shared with a Sony sensor.
The S5K3P3 is available to manufacturers from today.
See also: Who’s who in the smartphone camera business
Samsung is one of the largest makers of camera sensors, in addition to systems-on-a-chip, RAM and storage modules, and many other semiconductors. However, Sony leads the industry: its Exmor sensors are found in many high-end devices from everyone from Apple to Samsung, to a smattering of Chinese companies, though ironically, Sony’s own devices don’t necessarily use the best Sony sensors on the market.
We will find out if your hunch about the camera sensor in the Galaxy Note 5 is correct on August 13. The Korean giant will hold its Unpacked 2015 event in New York, and we will be there to report on it.
Which do you prefer? The OnePlus 2 vs the Moto X Style
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In case you missed it, yesterday was a pretty huge day. Two of what look like the best value Android smartphones out there were announced, the OnePlus 2 and the Motorola Moto X Style. The OnePlus 2 we always suspected would be fantastic value, much like its predecessor the OnePlus One, however the Moto X Style was a pleasant surprise, also touting fantastic value for flagship level specifications.
Just to quickly recap the OnePlus 2, for its second device OnePlus released a great package inside a 5.5-inch 1080p package. On the inside, the OnePlus 2 is powered by a Snapdragon 810 processor, with two variants at 4GB RAM and 3GB RAM, and both with a 3,300mAh battery. You’ll get a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera and it perhaps most notably comes with a USB Type-C port, something no other phone has right now. It’s not all great as some unusual omissions like NFC and QuickCharge functionality means that the OnePlus 2 isn’t quite the absolute all-rounder we were hoping for. Still, starting at the price of $329 USD for the 3GB variant and $389 USD for the 4GB version, it’s hard to argue with what you get.
In the other corner, we have the Moto X Style, an unusually massive device at 5.7-inches. It has a Quad HD display, which is powered by a Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB RAM, 16/32/64GB storage with microSD expansion and has a 3,000mAh camera. The rear camera is a 21MP shooter and the front camera is a wide angle 5MP camera with a front facing flash. It’s also customizable on the Moto Maker website, giving it a ridiculous number of custom permutations. At $399 USD outright, we’re a bit stumped as to how Motorola is offering the Moto X Style at this price, but again, we’re not complaining. Oh, and in the US, the Moto X Style is known as the Moto X Pure Edition, in case you were confused.
What we’re really interested in at the moment is which one you prefer: the OnePlus 2 vs the Moto X Style? Let us know your choice in the comments below.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.
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