School and nonprofit customers stop Sprint from shutting down WiMAX
Sprint announced back in 2014 that it will shut down its WiMAX data network today, November 6th, 2015. That’s not going to happen now, though, because a Massachusetts court has put a stop to the carrier’s plans, according to Recode. Judge Janet Sanders has decided that Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen — groups that provide WiMAX connection to schools and nonprofit organizations — have been able to at least show that they can prove shutting down the network completely constitutes a breach of contract on Sprint’s end.
Source: Recode, Mobile Citizen (PDF)
Google chip-maker partnership is more about control than manufacturing
It was only a week ago that we learned Google is in talks to partner with chip manufacturers on future processors. As this was most directly tied to the Pixel division, speculation was that Google was looking to build their own chips for their own hardware. While this may still be true, it is only a small part of the story.
As it turns out, Google may be looking to do more than just put processors in their Pixel hardware, they are looking to take some control of the entire Android device market.
Controlling the hardware
When it comes to taking control of Android hardware, decisions are mostly left in the hands of the manufacturers. Google creates the software, but your favorite brand of phone maker puts it into some metal, glass and plastic and off to the store it goes.
In contrast, Apple takes nearly full control of their hardware. The ability to control almost all aspects of a device allows Apple to better control the overall experience of products, like the iPhone and iPad.
You don’t have to build it, just implement standards
Google has been diversifying its technologies across things like phones, tablets, laptops, watches, smart glasses, VR gear, drones, self driving cars and so much more. When it comes to Android phones and tablets, however, they have had little to do with the hardware behind the majority of devices on the market.
With efforts like the Nexus program, Android One and the old Google Play edition phones, Google was able to team with manufacturers and/or set standards for the development of hardware. The result enabled a fairly satisfactory control of the experience, but left manufacturers mostly at the mercy of Google for approval of products.
With this new information, Google is partnering with chip makers to build standards, more than chips. The idea is simple, Google knows what it has in the pipeline for future tech and desired capabilities of Android devices, more importantly, they have a clear picture of what Android should look and feel like on a phone or tablet.
Google simply needs to establish chip designs, not make them, then manufacturers can build a device around the processor standard.
What can the new chips do?
Chips may be diverse in design based on their application as well. For example, a smartphone chip may need to include several high powered cores to handle strenuous tasks, several low power cores for behind the scenes, low priority or screen-off functionality. In addition, a very low power core or two can handle full time voice recognition, syncing tasks, location services and more.
On the other hand, an Android tablet may require fewer cores, eliminating dedicated processing for the non-existent cellular connectivity or perhaps gesture recognition. The same holds true of virtual reality gear, with next to no stand-by activities, aside from updates, a VR processor can focus on handling the active user experience, but otherwise using as little energy as possible when not on a user’s head.
While this may not be the best news for manufacturers, especially those like Samsung or Huawei that build their own processing units, it could be a great thing for the end user.
With this all said and done, we have yet to see what Google and the chip manufacturers come up with. From there, we’ll have to see if device manufacturers conform to the new standards, or if this venture proves as successful as Android One. While manufacturers of Android One devices are sticking to the guidelines, the end result is a phone that is now outdated, or otherwise being undersold by heated competition in the inexpensive phone space.
We like the idea of Google taking efforts to improve the end-user experience, as we like our Nexus devices, but we also worry that competition will cry foul. Terms like ‘monopoly’ are already applied to Google’s business, putting strict controls on the processors of future Android devices may prove too much for the governing bodies to allow. But that is another battle for another day.
What do you think, can Google improve your Android experience by leading the way in future processor design?
Cell 411 is an app designed at cutting down on police brutality
Police brutality has always been a hot issue, but now there is an app to combat it. Cell 411 makes it easy to report or help others from police brutality.
Cell 411 is a free app made to solve the question, “Who do you call when the police are the ones attacking you?”. With the app, you can respond to urgent situations in real time. You can do things like send alerts to friends or family if you are being abused, alert others of criminal activity, and it can even live stream video.
When live streaming video, the video is stored on a third party server making it impossible for the police to get rid of it by breaking your phone or deleting the video off of it. There is also “Patrol Mode”, which allows users to patrol a 50 mile radius and respond to any alerts within that area.
Press Release:
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 5, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — November 5th is a meaningful day for activists throughout the world and on this day SafeArx, the makers of premium app Cell 411 have decided to make the app free in order to promote awareness about police brutality and encourage users to adopt disruptive technologies in order to hold police accountable. The app answers the question, “Who do you call when the police are the ones attacking you?”
Cell 411 is a platform and mobile app which allows users to manage and respond to potentially urgent and dangerous situations in real times. Users of Cell 411 can issue alerts to their friends, neighbors and family members if they are harassed by police, have car problems or observe criminal activity, including GPS coordinates with turn-by-turn directions to their locations.
The app also allows users to stream live video and save the video to a third party server where it cannot be removed by authorities even if the phone is destroyed or maliciously wiped. A “Patrol Mode” allows users to even patrol a 50 mile radius and respond to alerts issued by other individuals in the area who may be in need of help or rescue from police abuse.
Users can issue and respond to alerts from neighborhood watch groups, family members and school friends, all without the involvement of police officers.
“The idea behind the app is that we eliminate police involvement as much as possible and we encourage individuals to use the app to hold police accountable instead of calling upon them to respond with violence when a situation does not necessitate the use of force,” said Virgil Vaduva, founder and developer of Cell 411. “We are hoping that this type of technology will encourage both activists and also police officers to use peaceful and non-violent ways to solve problems while promoting accountability,” said Vaduva.
The app is now free to download in the Google Play Store and waiting to be approved by Apple in the Apple App store.
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Judge forces Sprint to keep WiMax network open a little longer
Sprint has owned WiMax network for a few years now, but had planned to shut it down tonight at midnight. However, a judge has stopped that decision by ordering Sprint to keep the network open until a nonprofit groups lawsuit is over.
The lawsuit was brought upon Sprint last month and accuses Sprint of shutting down the network before nonprofits can switch to the modern LTE standard. Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen are two Educational Broadband Services that made a deal with Clearwire to let them access their internet for schools and libraries. However, Sprint took over Clearwire and WiMax in 2013, but Sprint allegedly throttled the speeds.
Sprint has said that other customers have had no problem making the switch. Unfortunately for Sprint, the judge disagrees and sided with the nonprofits, forcing Sprint to keep the network open until the lawsuit is settled.
Source: Injunction
Via: The Verge
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Google plans on attempting to end fragmentation in Android by controlling the hardware
Fragmentation in Android is a huge problem. As I mentioned in my things Android should steal from iOS article, fixing fragmentation was a big part of it. Google agrees and plans on fixing the situation by co-developing new chips and other sensors.
Google has reportedly talked to some microchip makers about developing chips based on Google’s own preferred designs. The main reason for this is to make Android a little bit more like iOS. They figure that if they can control the hardware and the software, Android will be a much simpler OS to update and keep control of.
In theory, it should work pretty well, Apple is doing a great job at it. However, Android has many other manufactures using it, while Apple is the only one using iOS. I’m sure any sort of effort to uniform the updating process will be beneficial to Android users, but I just don’t see it ever being as easy as how Apple makes it seem.
Source: The Information (1), (2)
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LG rolls out the Android Marshmallow update for the LG G4 in South Korea
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Late last month we heard that LG was putting the brakes on its
Android Marshmallow update for the LG G4 due to some “technical issues”, however, it appears all is well now as reports are coming in that the update is being seen in LG‘s native South Korea. If you have a model number LG-F500K, LG-F500L or LG-F500S, you’ll likely start to see the update very soon.
LG was very proud to announce that it would be the first manufacturer to roll out Android 6.0 to its flagship device, and it seems to have gotten there with a big margin compared to other manufacturers even with the technical issues. We wonder if they can keep it up and whether LG’s older devices will also benefit from LG’s proactivity.
What do you think about the Android Marshmallow update for the LG G4? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: LG via TalkAndroid
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The Vaporcade Jupiter is the world’s first smartphone crossed with a vaporizer
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“Vaping” using vaporizers is increasingly becoming a popular way to consume various legal drugs (i.e. nicotine and marijuana), particularly given its health benefits over the paper-burning variety. To be honest, it’s almost surprising that somebody hasn’t previously combined a smartphone and a vaporizer, but we can rest easy knowing that Vaporcade has us all covered. The Vaporcade Jupiter has just been opened up for pre-orders, charging $499 USD for the LTE version and $299 for the 3G version – note however that neither device has been approved by the FCC and at the very least you’ll be waiting until that happens – if it happens.
Unfortunately, we know very little about the device besides the fact that it only runs Android 4.4 Kitkat (“Hello? 2013 called, they want their Android operating system back”) and that it will come in the two connectivity variants. It would be very cool indeed if there were integrated smartphone functions that linked up with the vaporizer, but we’ll have to wait and see before we see anything more concrete than that. We’ll also have to wait and see exactly how useful it is to actually combine the two – you aren’t exactly going to be texting while you’re vaping, at least, not how the Jupiter is currently designed.
What do you think about the Vaporcade Jupiter? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Vaporcade via Connectedly
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Selfie message board with Tasker – Android customization
Did you get a start on a custom control panel using Scenes in Tasker last week? It was a simple Android customization project designed to help you learn Scenes, which is Tasker’s ability to create custom popups and full windows. We are continuing with Scenes this week.
Today’s project was inspired by a recent video put up by Adafruit, using a cool project from HannahMitt on Github. Their project created an Android Smart Home Mirror, placing a Nexus 7 tablet behind a two-way mirror so that you can see the display through the glass. Check out the video here.
HomeMirror by HannahMitt on Github: https://github.com/HannahMitt/HomeMirror
We are going to make our own version of this, excluding the mirror and the custom software, let’s just use Tasker. Our version will be a little more interactive as well, adding in a fun way to leave a message for others to see.
Before we begin
Nothing we are doing today is free. You will need to start with an Android device, preferably a tablet, that is not your daily driver as you will be mounting this to a wall or your fridge or something once the project is running. I too have a Nexus 7 designated for this project, but you can use whatever device you’d like to make this work.
Tasker – Google Play StoreNext, and I hope this really goes without saying, you’ll require Tasker installed on your device to follow along today. Tasker is $2.99 in the Google Play Store. be sure to check out some of our previous Tasker projects as well, if you are still debating the purchase.
Selfie message board
You watched the video above, it’s pretty cool, I think, so let’s make our own version. If you are like me, you are not dedicated enough to the project to want to buy a two-way mirror. With your Android device then exposed to the world, it serves to reason that we should add some touch functionality to our project.
What we are building, exactly, is fairly similar to the project in the video, we want a clock and the date to show, we’ll skip the weather, but only because there is nothing new to learn there, and we’ll add an image.
Now, we are not adding just any image, our project will allow anyone walking by to leave a selfie and annotate it with a recorded voice message. I hope this impresses you, it’s the best part of the project today.
As you can see, I’ve added music playback info and controls to mine, this is simply because I have my device hooked to speakers. You may leave your device by the front door and use it as control for your smart lighting, or to control the temperature through your smart thermostat, you’d probably put those controls here in place of my music buttons. Point is, the sky is the limit when it comes to things you might make your device do.
Enough explanation, let’s do this!
Tasker Scene
First things first, you will need to design and build your display in Tasker. You are going to want a full screen layout and full black background. From here forward, I will build this project with just the time, date, image, voice message and the time the image and message were created.
Fire up Tasker and head over to the Scenes tab.
Tap the “+” button to get started, provide an appropriate name to your Scene, I’ll call mine “SmartMessage“.
In the design stages, expand the active area to cover as much of the display as possible.
(If you are watching my dimensions carefully, you’ll see my display is 1280×720, I’m not actually building on the Nexus 7 to take the screenshots for this tutorial. Your display resolution and all related element sizes will likely be different than mine.)
Tap the triple dots menu icon in the top right of your display.
Choose Properties.
If you were unable to drag the active area to your full display size, you can manually edit those dimensions here. I’ll bump my 720×1184 up to the full 720×1280.
Tap the magnifying glass icon beside Background Colour.
Use the color picker to select complete black with full opacity. Hit OK.
If you didn’t get it right, or you don’t want to mess with the color picker, just enter the text #FF000000.
Tap the system Back button to save and back out of preferences.
Now that you are back on the Scene Edit screen, do you notice that my active area resolution dropped back to 1184px tall? Tasker is smart enough to max out the available size based on the available screen area. My display may be 1280px tall, but the usable area is, as I just learned, only 1184. Do not fret, this confirms that we are using the full display for our project, and that’s what we where shooting for.
Tap the magnifying glass icon with the “x” in it, located in the bottom right of your screen.
Now, as it states, long press on a desired area of the display, or tap the “+” button to add your first element.
Select Text.
Change the Name from “Text1” to “txtTime“. We’ll need to know which text element is which later on, so let’s act like proper programmers and use accepted naming conventions for once.
In the Text field, replace “optional” with the time variable, “%TIME“. This is not going to show up in your variables list, but many other things do, keep that in mind when you come back to create other Text elements in a future Tasker Scene.
Finally, increase your Text Size value. 16 is a good size for normal text, but this is the clock, we want it big. I suspect we’ll have to come back and adjust later, so let’s just start with 75 for now.
Hit the system Back button to save and exit back to the designer.
You’ll notice your time text element does not look so good. No worries, tap and drag the sides and corners of the box to re-size, then drag from the middle to position as desired.
If your text is not sized to your liking, tap on it to head back into the properties and change it up. I landed on 100 myself.
With the clock in place, I will leave it to you to go ahead and replicate all of the above steps in order to add the date, weather, song title, current smart bulb power level, or really any info that you desire. If you are truly building a selfie message board, however, I suggest keeping it really simple.
Add the image block
Now for some fun stuff, let’s add the selfie window.
Long press or tap the “+” button to add an element.
Select Image.
Optionally, change the Name from “Image1” to something like “imgSelfie“.
Tap the crossing arrows icon to the right of the image square in the Image field.
You are greeted with a notification that you can use variables to designate the URI of an image. That’s good, but too complicated. Let’s use variables.
Now, in the Image field, enter “%FOTO“.
If you know what you are doing, go ahead and adjust your location and dimensions manually, or, if you are like me, just hit the system Back button to go back to the visual editor.
Chances are, the default image size is not going to work for you, go ahead and drag it about to fit as desired.
It is important that you keep in mind display orientation at this stage of the game. I will mount my device in portrait, so all of the selfies will display in portrait as well.
For my layout, I will leave a bit of room at the bottom for my ‘message sent’ time.
Did you happen to notice a little something in my image there? Our sister site TabTimes is giving away a Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet in the November giveaway. Ok, go sign up, but make sure you come back here to finish your project. I dare say, while the Xperia Z4 Tablet would be under-utilized, it would be a great display size for this project.
With the image aligned nicely, we are going to add a couple more text elements quickly before finishing the steps for the selfie.
Text Elements
Add a new text element, name it something like “txtMessage“. Give it a Text value of “Tap to get started.” Then Back out and re-size it to fit nicely across the bottom of your image, or elsewhere as you see fit.
Leave the new Text element tall enough to fit at least two lines of text, just in case.
Add another Text element, call this one “txtMessageTime” and just leave the value blank for now. I’ll then align mine to take up the very bottom space of my display. Small and out of the way.
Image Element actions
Now we will go back and finish with the image.
Tap on the image to re-enter the properties pages.
Head over to the Tap tab and get ready for some serious Tasker work.
Take the picture
We need to do a few things here, first, we’ll take the picture, then we’ll collect voice input and the time of the message. Last, we have to display all that info in the Scene.
Tap the “+” button to add your first action.
Select Media.
Select Take Photo.
Change Camera Rear to Front.
Add a base file name for the project, keep it simple, something like “SelfieMessage” will do.
I’ll provide my Naming Sequence as Chronological, but you can leave yours on None or Series, as you see fit.
I will turn off Insert in Gallery. (I don’t want these images jumping up to my Google Photos.)
Adjust the Resolution value by tapping the magnifying glass icon to see what your device supports. I’ll opt for the largest available size.
Tap the system Back button to save.
Tap the “+” button to start your next action.
Select Input.
Select Get Voice.
Provide an optional Title, I’ll put “What’s your message?”
Tap the system Back button to save.
Now we apply the image and text to the Scene.
Tap the “+” button.
Choose Scene.
Choose Element Image.
Notice that under Scene Name you can change elements in different Scenes on your device. How fun.
If it is not there already under Element, tap the magnifying glass icon to find your “imgSelfie” image.
Now, repeat the steps we used previously to enter the Variable “%FOTO” in the Image field.
Tap the system Back button to save.
Tap the “+” button to add our voice input as text.
Select Scene.
Select Element Text.
Under Element, ensure that your “txtMessage” is selected.
Under Text, tap the labels icon and find the entry Voice Results. Or, simply type in the variable “%VOICE“.
Hit the system Back button to save and exit.
We now want to update our “txtMessageTime” with the current date and time as well, just so the next person that comes along knows when things went down.
Follow the same basic instructions as above, this time under Text enter a string something like “Message Saved: %DATE, %TIME.”
Notice the warning symbols on a couple of the actions? Don’t worry, they’ll go away after you run the project the first time.
We are now ready to go test our project. Be forewarned, we may now be exiting out of the Scenes section, but we’ll probably be back soon, this project will require a bit or fine tuning before it’s done.
Exit all the way out to the main tabs of Tasker and head over to the Tasks tab.
Start the Scene
We need to create a new Task that starts up the Scene, you may remember how to do this from last week, but let’s go over it again quickly.
Tap the “+” button to add your Task, name it something like “StartSmartMessage“.
Tap the “+” button again to add an action.
Choose Scene.
Choose Show Scene.
Under Name, tap the magnifying glass or manually type in your “SmartMessage” Scene.
Under Display As, choose “Activity, Full Display, No Bar“.
Tap the system Back button to save and exit.
That’s it, at least for now. Hit the Play button or add an icon then add this Task to your Homescreen as a Tasker Task shortcut.
Once running, you should see a full black display, except for your text elements and the last image that you took.
Follow your own instructions, tap the image to get started.
What’s next
I imagine you have some tweaking to do to perfect the project. Feel free to go back and re-size and re-position the elements. Also, don’t be afraid to add color to the text, whatever makes you happy.
Did your project exit out of the Scene instead of updating the images for you? Don’t worry, it happened to me on my Nexus 5 as well. To fix this, go back into your Scene, into the Tap actions of the image. After your Get Voice action, add in the same Show Scene action as you did in the Task near the end of this project.
I added different functionality on the Nexus 5 while I was at it. A single Tap toggles on and off the last image taken, for the shy folks in the crowd. Then, a Long Tap triggers the desired photo and message input. Oh, and I added an Alert -> Say “smile” to give warning that you are about to have your photo taken. It’s the little things that add the polish (and complications) to a project, never forget that.
Next week
I hope you enjoyed this project. I can’t deny that this Android customization led us down a lengthy and sometimes confusing Tasker rabbit hole. I hope you at least had as much fun as I did. Next week will be a little easier, we haven’t decided what our goal is, but we will continue to work with Scenes and some of the remaining elements.
Be honest, do you prefer this touch capable interactive approach, or is the touch restricted mirror project more to your tastes?
Deal: Pick up a 6,000mAh Jackery Bar battery pack for just $15.99 from Amazon
Battery packs are some of the greatest technology accessories to have around. They’re compact, sleek and can really save your phone from going dead when you’re low on battery. If you’re looking for a new high-quality external battery pack that won’t break the bank, Amazon has quite the deal for you. Right now, you can grab a 6,000mAh Jackery Bar external battery pack in Orange for only $15.99. But you better act fast, because this deal is only going on for a few more hours.
The Jackery Bar battery pack is compact in size and very sleek. There are a few color options to choose from, but Orange is the only one that’s discounted for today. It also comes with a 6,000mAh cell, which will be more than enough to charge most mobile devices two times over. It also features three little LED lights that will let you know when your device is done charging. And much like other battery packs on the market, this one comes with a built-in flashlight if you’re in a pinch.
This battery pack has managed to achieve an impressive 4.6/5 star rating on Amazon, with most customers saying it’s a pretty great device for the money. If you’re interested, be sure to head to the Amazon link below. This deal will only last for another 10 hours, so you’ll need to act fast if you want it for the discounted price.
Google Play services 8.3 brings simplified sign-in with Google accounts, app sharing, and Android Wear improvements
Google has updated their Google Play services framework, bringing things to version 8.3. The update brings a handful of new APIs for developers to implement, including some things to streamline the sign-in process using a Google account and some better ways to save power and performance on smartphones and wearables.
Currently, it takes several steps to sign into an app or service using your Google credentials. With the new Play Services, that’s cut down to a single step to allow apps to access your basic profile info. There’s also a new API to pull data like your name and profile picture to set up accounts in apps based on your Google info.
There’s a brand new app sharing API, too, that will allow users to quickly share apps with friends and family. It integrates with Google’s deep linking activity to speed things up for all users involved.
The rest of what’s included is mostly under the hood stuff, touching on everything from wearables to Google Play Games. The newest version for Play Games offers a signal as to when a player is about to “churn,” or stop playing a game. This lets the developer dish out some promotional offers to keep the player hooked, so if you start to see some irresistible offers for games you haven’t played recently, you’ll know what’s going on.
There are also improvements to wearables, including an API to set the urgency for data to be synced. By default most data is marked as non-urgent now, and specific info will need to be marked as urgent to have it immediately synced from a phone to a device, which should theoretically help smartwatches and wearables squeeze out a little extra battery life.
source: Android Developers
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AIVAnet 