Xiaomi’s phones are heading to 5,000 retail stores across India

Xiaomi is partnering with Indian brick-and-mortar distributors Just Buy Live and Innocomm to significantly expand its offline presence in the country. The manufacturer has thus far offered its phones exclusively online, but with companies like Oppo and Vivo making a lot of headway in the offline space in Tier 2 cities, Xiaomi is following suit by making its handsets available at chain retail stores like Sangeetha Mobiles, Lot Mobiles, Big C, and more. The Redmi 2, Redmi 2 Prime, Redmi Note Prime, Redmi Note 3, and the Mi 5 will be accessible from over 5,000 retail stores across India.

The company is following a direct-to-retail strategy with Just Buy Live and Foxconn-owned Innocomm, cutting out intermediary distributors. Commenting on the partnership, Xiaomi India head Manu Kumar Jain said:

We are primarily an e-commerce company and we have brought our learning from the online model to our offline model. We have chosen Just Buy Live and Innocomm because of their unique models that distribute directly to retailers.

I believe that this strategic alliance will strengthen Mi India’s presence across India. As we expand to more than 5000 offline outlets, it allows more people to experience our products and purchase them easily.

How to get a curveball bonus in Pokemon Go!

Squeeze every last drop of XP out of your Pokemon captures!

Capturing Pokemon of every power level and classification in Pokemon Go requires a little bit of finesse, especially as you reach the higher levels. You need to throw the ball when the colored ring is at its smallest to increase your chances of a successful capture, or you’re going to be spending a lot of time hitting PokeStops to make sure you don’t run out of Pokeballs.

Once you’ve mastered capturing using the standard flick of the screen, and most of your captures earn you Great or Excellent bonuses, it’s time to give curveballs a shot. Curveball captures earn you an extra 10XP per successful capture, and that can add up quickly especially in the early levels. Here’s how you nail a successful curveball while trying to capture a Pokemon.

Press and hold on the pokeball
Drag that pokeball in a circle on the screen until it starts spinning and sparkling
Flick the pokeball slightly to the right of where you’d normally send the ball
Repeat until you’ve captured the Pokemon

The curveball capture takes some getting used to, but it’s well worth the extra bonus especially if you’re out capturing with a Lucky Egg enabled on your account. Can you throw a curveball in Pokemon Go while holding your phone with one hand yet? Share your experiences with us in the comments!

Pokémon Go

• Requirements to play Pokémon Go
• The Ultimate Pokémon Go Game Guide!
• How to play without killing your battery
• Be careful where you download from
• Join our Pokémon Go forums!

Where to buy the Sony Xperia X Performance in the UK

It’s not easy or cheap, but it is possible to track down Sony’s high-end Xperia X Performance in the UK.

As the Sony Xperia X Performance isn’t getting a full launch in the UK, your options for getting hold of one are relatively limited. None of the major UK networks are picking up Sony’s higher-specced variant of the Xperia X, and you’ll find it much easier to track down a regular X than the X Performance. Nevertheless, if you’ve gotta have that faster CPU and water resistance, here are your options right now.

Clove

Though technically still a pre-order, Clove expects stock of the Xperia X Performance to arrive July 13. It’s offering the phone in black only for £549 SIM-free.

See at Clove

Amazon UK

Amazon UK has all four Xperia X Performance colors — rose gold, lime gold, black and white — for a whopping £599.99. Unlike the regular Xperia X, there are no contract deals available through Amazon UK, so you’re limited to buying SIM-free.

See at Amazon

We’ll continue to keep this page updated as more outlets offer the Xperia X Performance in the UK, so stay tuned!

Also see: Our Xperia X Performance review!

The ultimate Pokemon Go trick — score a Pikachu as your starter Pokemon!

Thanks for nothing, Professor Willow.

It takes about 20 seconds of playing Pokemon Go for your starter capture to become mostly worthless, but that doesn’t mean everyone who played the original games didn’t think long and hard about choosing between Squirtle, Charmander, and Bulbasaur when going through the initial tutorial in Pokemon Go. The decision is of far less consequence than it seems initially, and that’s because you have no way of knowing there’s a fourth option waiting for you. That’s right, if you know what you’re doing you can catch a Pikachu as your starter Pokemon instead of the classic three, and this is how you do it!

Create your Pokemon Go account and Log In.
Create your character and outfit
Walk away from the three Pokemon Professor Willow asks you to choose.
Keep walking until you see Pikachu appear beside you, next to the others.
Tap on Pikachu and capture it.

As you walk away from the classic three, your phone will vibrate and those Pokemon will jump to your location. Just keep walking, and they’ll keep jumping to your side. After the fourth or fifth time, Pikachu will pop up next to you. This means you’ll get a block or two of walking in before that Pikachu shows up, but it’s guaranteed to happen and well worth rubbing it in everyone’s face when you capture your first Pikachu!

Pokémon Go

• Requirements to play Pokémon Go
• The Ultimate Pokémon Go Game Guide!
• How to play without killing your battery
• Be careful where you download from
• Join our Pokémon Go forums!

Are all Androids created equal? Software makes a big difference

Software is the brains of your phone. And just like brain surgery, fixing it isn’t easy.

We’ve talked about how the hardware inside your phone can make a difference when it comes to the user experience. Now it’s time to talk about the software.

Software is the single-most important piece of any computer. Whether we’re talking about the small computer you keep in your pocket or the room-sized clusters that do things like manage space missions, without software all of those circuits and wires and chips would do nothing. It even takes software to turn your phone on and start it up before you can see it doing anything. No matter how expensive or new the hardware inside your phone is, it would be useless without all the work that went into programming it to do something.

We’re going to focus on Android with this because that’s what we do here, but a lot of the ideas we’re going to talk about are the same for any computer you can buy or make yourself. The biggest differences (and challenges) are that our phones are mobile devices that aren’t very big, and that means everything is done with an eye for power efficiency. Extreme power efficiency. After the right parts are designed and assembled to try and provide the best user experience with a tiny power supply, it’s time for the software teams to get to work.

What is Android

Image credit: Android Open Source Project.

We’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth covering again — Android probably isn’t what you think it is. The word gets used in quite a few different ways — Android is a brand, Android is an operating system and Android is source code. What Android is, at the basic level, is a bunch of code that can be used to run applications. It comes with a basic user interface to its core features but it requires a lot of time and development to make it run on whatever device it’s intended to run on.

While everything you need to have to create a bootable software image is included in the Android source code, you can’t create a single image and installer that can be used for all hardware. Support for the specific hardware needs to be declared before you try to build it into something that will actually run. Once that is done you can build a running Linux operating system and install it to the intended target.

Before you can ship anything, though, you’ll need to tweak and twiddle a lot of it — that’s what we mean when we say optimization.

The operating system

There are two levels of software — the operating system and its associated extras and applications that are installed to run on it. The people who made your phone not only have to worry about making the operating system perform well, but have to maintain compatibility with a million or so applications. Notice we said “maintain compatibility,” not optimize anything for third-party apps. That’s an entirely different matter, and Google does most of the work there with the Android application framework — all the phone manufacturer needs to do is try not to break any of it. And that is more work than you think it is, because of the way these companies change the way Android looks and feels.

Every Android model is running different software.

No two Android models are the same. Even phones from the same manufacturer with the same name can run different software in different regions (or for different customers — your phone company), and they do. And that makes sense. We don’t have gigabytes of storage space so support for every different model of Samsung Galaxy S7 — there are more than 30 versions of that one phone — built into one piece of software isn’t practical. This is why, for example, you can’t download the Verizon update for the S7 and use it on your AT&T model. But outside of the small changes made for different SKUs of the same model, the base software used across every Galaxy S7 (with the Qualcomm CPU) is the same.

To keep with our Galaxy S7 example, you need to remember also that “Touchwiz” is not a skin or a launcher. It is the operating system. Samsung takes that base software provided from Google and changes it to better suit its needs. The way it looks, the features it has and the options and settings are all built by Samsung and added into Android in a way that will still allow third-party apps to install and run. There are a lot of parts of the Android code that Samsung doesn’t alter (or can’t alter) because Google requires certain things to be kept in order to use their store and applications. It’s up to Google to improve and maintain those portions, but a large part of the operating system is left to Samsung to optimize for the specific hardware it is to be installed on.

What is optimization?

Software optimization is a necessary evil. It’s time-consuming and difficult. But without it, the user experience would suffer. Google continuously optimizes Android code on a hardware-independent level. Techniques like loop unrolling, using fewer function calls and more memory efficient routines are things that benefit every device that runs Android. But Samsung (in our example) has to further these for the hardware they are using to reduce the total instruction path length (the number of CPU cycles required goes down with fewer instructions) and reduce the memory footprint, as well as build on things like scheduling and cache optimization for their specific model of CPU. All while adding more features and functions to the user and maintaining compatibility with Google Play. Generally, the process goes something like this:

• Decide what features your customers want. Then throw 80% of them away and decide what features are feasible.
• Define the specific hardware that will be used.
• Build a bootable version of the operating system with the required features all working.
• Find the bottlenecks, try to fix them, rinse and repeat.

Finding those bottlenecks is difficult. Fixing them is even more difficult. And there are several ways to tackle it all. One way is to not add features to the operating system that create overhead, which gives you fewer things that can go wrong. That’s where the 2015 Moto G shined. It was a very basic phone, with very basic software. After a talented team optimized the software that shipped on the phone, it was one of the most fluid Android experiences of the year — until you added a handful of apps from Google Play into the mix. Then it was apparent that the hardware inside wasn’t as capable of doing many things at once as more expensive phones were. The hardware used was inexpensive so that the phone could be inexpensive, and the software optimization on just the operating system was excellent.

A second way is to continue to optimize your platform while not stripping out any important features, and letting better hardware help minimize the impact. The Galaxy S7 is a product of every bit of work the software development team at Samsung has done since the original Galaxy S was introduced, running atop hardware powerful enough to deliver it in a smooth and friendly package. The result is a phone that is universally praised by both the industry and users alike. Missteps with memory management and sluggishness we saw up and including the Galaxy S6 are all but gone, and whether you love or hate the final product you can’t say that it’s not one of the best Android phones you can buy today when it comes to performance.

Memory management

We can’t walk away from this topic without addressing memory management. It’s one of those terms that gets thrown around because some people see some sort of problem when they are doing some things, and the bandwagon gets rolling. It can (and has) been a real issue, though.

The operating system decides when to kill (as in close and not run in the background) applications and processes that are stored in the RAM. Writing to and reading from RAM is fast — much faster than writing and reading from storage. But it’s limited. Even a phone with 6GB of RAM still has to have parameters set for best performance. And not all of the RAM installed inside of your phone is available for the operating system to use. Portions are reserved for the kernel to run in, the GPU to use and the cellular radio. At boot-time, it’s common to see at least 512MB (or more) of RAM in use and unavailable. That’s a good thing — those functions need “instant” access to the CPU.

What’s left is managed in a tiered way. Certain apps and processes have a higher priority than others, and they will be assigned to a higher tier than other, sometimes optional, things that are running in the background. When the total amount of free RAM shrinks to a pre-defined level, processes are killed according to priority. The goal is to keep as many things alive in the background as possible while leaving enough room to start new things. While those new things are starting, RAM is flushed until they have enough to load and a free buffer is maintained. That’s why you hear people say “free RAM is wasted RAM” when talking about Linux — Android runs atop the Linux kernel.

Tweaking RAM management is a trial and error process. Then more trial and error. It’s hard.

All these parameters (outside of the reserved area for the kernel) are adjustable by the people who built the operating system. They can decide how much RAM needs to stay free, and how much RAM can be used by each tier of processes. They also can write their software so that portions are assigned to a specific tier in the tree. A handy trick is to keep the launcher — what you see on the home screen(s) and application drawer — in RAM at all times. This means that the user interface for the things you’re likely to spend the most time interacting with are always stored in the RAM and will be more fluid because no time is spent reading from storage and writing to the RAM when you are swiping and tapping.

Issues can happen when too much or too little RAM is kept free or too many things are “marked” as essential and kept resident in RAM. That’s why, for example, you can start typing something into a form on a web page, switch to another app, and come back to see everything you wrote is gone because the page had to refresh. The system still will try to keep the things you use the most in RAM, but it’s unable to do so.

This is all fixable, provided there is enough RAM installed. It’s another part of the optimization process, and a difficult one to get right.

All Androids are not created equal

And we shouldn’t want them to be. The software is tailored to the specific hardware used, and trial and error and Red Bull are part of the optimization process. This is part of what makes every Android phone unique and allows a choice for everyone.

Gym Battle freeze in Pokemon Go? Here’s how to deal with it!

That feeling when you realize the last little red sliver of health isn’t going away? Yeah, we know those feels.

Is there anything worse than the realization that a Gym Battle has frozen and all of your hard work is now totally wasted? Yes, of course there is, but that’s not what we’re talking about right now. Niantic is having a lot of trouble keeping up with the demand Pokemon Go users are putting on their servers right now, and when combined with unreliable cellular data connections you get a Gym Battle system that is filled with problems. The most frustrating of those issues is when the health of the Pokemon you are fighting stops going down at 1% remaining, and when the timer for the battle counts down to zero the game just sort of freezes. It’s a pain, but there’s two things you can do about it right now.

Check for the spinning Pokeball

Before you give up hope entirely, check for the spinning Pokeball in the top left corner of the game. If you see that, it means the game is trying to sync with the Pokemon Go servers and your data connection may be the problem.

If the game has frozen but you see this spinning ball, give it a minute. In many situations, the battle will return to a functional state and everything will be fine. Check your data connection, and get ready to jump back into the fight if everything comes back.

Restart your game, and try again later

If the game is well and truly frozen, you’re going to need to force the game closed and restart the app.

Tap your Recent Apps button
Swipe away Pokemon Go
Tap your Pokemon Go app icon

If you needed to restart the app, jumping right back into a Gym Battle isn’t going to yield a different result. Your best bet is to circle back to this gym in 10-15 minutes, once the Pokemon Go servers have had a chance to catch back up.

Report the issue to Niantic

If there’s a repeat issue with this Gym, it’s time to tell Niantic. Take a look at the exact name of the Gym you are trying to play at, and follow these steps:

Tap the Pokeball
Tap Settings.
Tap Report High-Priority Issue
Tap Yes when asked if you want to report an issue
Tap Report an issue with a Gym or PokeStop
Fill out the form with your Gym information
Tap Submit

Niantic has been responding to these report quickly as long as they are filled out thoroughly, so get it reported and get back in the game!

Pokémon Go

• Requirements to play Pokémon Go
• The Ultimate Pokémon Go Game Guide!
• How to play without killing your battery
• Be careful where you download from
• Join our Pokémon Go forums!

Use a Galaxy S7 edge for the best Pokemon Go experience

Ready to upgrade your phone for a better Pokemon Go experience? Look no further than the Galaxy S7 edge!

There’s no doubt that Pokemon Go has had an explosively popular start. The game is being played by folks of every age, and that means there are a lot of users who were perfectly happy with their phone but are now starting to see the need to upgrade. Maybe your battery doesn’t last long enough for a full Pokemon Go session, or you’re struggling to see the game in sunlight because your display is a little on the old side.

There are plenty of reasons Pokemon Go users are considering an upgrade to make playing the game a little more fun, and after testing the game on all of the current Android phones, it’s clear Samsung’s Galaxy S7 Edge is the best phone to use for Pokemon Go. Here’s why!

Dat screen tho …

Samsung’s phones are frequently among the bust in the industry, but the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge have an incredibly ultra-brightness mode that kicks in when standing in direct sunlight. It keeps you from needing to squint at the screen or hide in the shade, which is critical when trying to walk around and catch Pokemon out in the wild. The screen also gets nice and dim when playing late a night, which means you’ll be consuming less power when going on an evening stroll to your favorite PokeStops.

Seriously, the screen on these phones really is that good. It’s worth upgrading to the Galaxy S7 edge just for that super nice screen. The edge version of the Galaxy S7 also has some nice special features that will make accessing other parts of your phone while playing Pokemon Go a little easier.

Read More: A closer look at the Galaxy S7 Edge Screen features

You’re gonna want that bigger battery.

There aren’t a ton of differences between the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge, but the two biggest differences are the screen size and the bigger battery. The Galaxy S7 edge is going to offer you a bigger screen for a nicer look at the virtual world around you in Pokemon Go, but the phone is also going to last longer than the smaller Galaxy S7.

You’re still probably going to want a battery backup for your Galaxy S7 edge just in case you decide to spend an entire day hunting for a complete Eevee evolution set, but the larger battery is a good place to start!

Read more: The Best External battery packs for the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge

Take the best Pokemon photos!

Samsung’s camera in the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge are among the best you can use in any phone available today, which is a big deal for a lot of things. Taking photos with your phone has become more common than using real cameras, but with Pokemon Go there’s now a massive group of users taking fun photos with Pokemon in them!

If you’re going to be taking photos of Pokemon, you might as well be using one of the best cameras you can buy on a phone. That means using this phone, and having a great time while doing so!

Check out our best smartphone camera showdown for more!

What are you waiting for? Go get one!

If you’ve been waiting to upgrade but Pokemon Go has pushed that urge right over the edge, this is absolutely the phone you need to get. It’s an all around great phone, but will also give you that competitive edge as you fight your way to becoming a true Pokemon Master!

Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge

• Galaxy S7 review
• Galaxy S7 edge review
• U.S. unlocked Galaxy S7
• Should you upgrade to the Galaxy S7?
• Best SD cards for Galaxy S7
• Join our Galaxy S7 forums

Unlocked
AT&T
Sprint
T-Mobile
Verizon

Pokémon Go

• Requirements to play Pokémon Go
• The Ultimate Pokémon Go Game Guide!
• How to play without killing your battery
• Be careful where you download from
• Join our Pokémon Go forums!

The Superbook will turn your Android phone into a laptop for $99

If you have dreams of running Android on a laptop, a product that’s in the works called Superbook is worth a look. Similar to some implementations we’ve seen from Microsoft’s Continuum feature on Windows 10, the Superbook will allow you to power a laptop shell using your connected Android smartphone for the horsepower.

The Superbook packs an 11.6-inch display running at a resolution of 1366 x 768, along with a keyboard and trackpad. Simply attach your Android phone running Android 5.0 or later over USB-C or microUSB and you’re good to go. The whole experience is then powered by Andromium OS, an app meant to translate Android into a big-screen experience.

While certainly not the first attempt at an Android-powered laptop by any means, the Superbook is definitely an interesting analogue to what Microsoft has been doing with Continuum. The Superbook isn’t yet available for purchase, but it’s due to launch soon on Kickstarter for the price of $99.

If you’re interested, you can learn more and sign up to be updated when the Kickstarter launches at Superbook’s website

This one post nails the popularity of Pokémon Go

You can’t go anywhere right now without running into Pokémon Go. Or running into someone playing Pokémon Go.

Simple fact is there are a ridiculous number of people playing this game right now. And that means there’s an even more ridiculous number of folks reading about it. So we’re writing about it. A lot.

I started a thread in our Pokémon Go forums to warn folks that, yes, there’s going to be a deluge, and that we’re not forgetting about everything that’s not Pokémon. And there’s been some great discussion in there. But member danhund nailed it in his response.

This is more than a game. It is an event.

I’ve spent the past four days with my kids hiking through parks and strolling downtown (without pulling teeth to get them to go along). Seeing 30-40 other people (teens, young adults, parents, etc.) doing the same things almost everywhere we go. Not sitting on the couch, or at a bar, or wherever. But outside, walking around, hanging out, talking, laughing, meeting strangers. All being polite, respectful, having a good time.

It won’t last forever. But it sure is fun to be out there and be a part of it right now.

He’s right. It won’t last forever. At least not at this level. It simply can’t. But it is a hell of a lot of fun — my eldest daughter is getting into it, too. It is getting more folks out in ways they might not have been before.

We might as well try to enjoy it. And be sure to swing by our Pokémon Go forums.

Pokémon Go

• Requirements to play Pokémon Go
• The Ultimate Pokémon Go Game Guide!
• How to play without killing your battery
• Be careful where you download from
• Join our Pokémon Go forums!

GM and Lyft’s Express Drive rental service expanding further

GM and Lyft teamed up a few months ago to bring consumers Express Drive, an atypical car rental service that basically pays you to keep driving. The program is being expanded to California and Colorado, past its initial launch in Chicago and pushes in Baltimore, Washington, DC and Boston.

Anyone in Los Angeles and Denver will soon be able to get involved in the Express Drive program, which takes an unusual approach to car rentals. The more trips you complete for Lyft while using the rental car, the less you pay as far as rental fees go. Anyone who completes 65 trips or more for the week as Lyft drivers will only be responsible for gas as well, making it pay to do the job you were already planning on doing anyway.

Available vehicles include the upcoming 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV and electric 2016 Chevrolet Volt. The program thus far has earned up to $2 million since it launched, with 30 percent of Lyft drivers in Chicago, where the program launched, requesting Express Drive vehicles to date.

Via: The Verge