Google deepens Progressive Web Apps integration with Android

Improvements coming to the integration of Progressive Web Apps on Android.

Google is continually looking to empower developers with more tools to help deliver great web apps for Android users. It began back in 2015, when Google first introduced Progressive Web Apps as a feature in Chrome for Android, which allowed developers to create web apps that prompt users to add a site shortcut to their Home screen while offering features such as push notifications.

Google is ready to introduce the latest version of this experience which will start rolling out to the Chrome beta over the next few weeks. The aim is to make things much more convenient for users by improving the overall integration with the Android OS.

From the Chromium blog:

For example, Progressive Web Apps will now appear in the app drawer section of the launcher and in Android Settings, and will be able to receive incoming intents from other apps. Long presses on their notifications will also reveal the normal Android notification management controls rather than the notification management controls for Chrome.

The goal here is to get more developers invested into developing quality web apps for Chrome. Once this new version of Progressive Web Apps is fully integrated into the Chrome on Android experience, web apps added to your Home screen or app drawer will be handled by Android more like the apps found in the Google Play Store.

This move will also help to blur the line between web apps and apps downloaded from the Play Store, as Google ultimately move towards creating a harmonious experience across all types of apps within the Android experience. Also expect these new web app features to eventually make their way to all browsers available for Android.

Android Central 323: The BlackBerry drinking game

This week, Jerry, Daniel, Andrew and SPECIAL GUEST Phil Nickinson (aka Modern Dad) start talking about the Google Pixel and end up arguing about BlackBerry. Is this 2011 all over again?

With the Pixel getting an update to Android 7.1.2, it seems that Google is ending updates for the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9, two devices released back in 2014. How does that affect you?

And check out Modern Dad to learn more about what’s Phil’s been up to!

Podcast MP3 URL: http://traffic.libsyn.com/androidcentral/androidcentral323.mp3

Our favorite Android devices through the years

Looking back, everyone has a point where they started loving Android. Often those products became sentimental favorites. These are some of them as told by the AC editors.

Android is quite amazing. Not only is it nearing its 10 year anniversary, but the platform has dwarfed any reasonable expectation of success the founders must have had when developing the software.

It’s also why, and how, many of the writers on Android Central got their start in the industry — by trialling new phones and tablets and offering their opinions online. We asked them to highlight some of their most memorable devices — not necessarily the best (as you’ll see) but ones that had the most impact.

Andrew Martonik: Motorola Xoom

I’m only kind of joking here. Back at the start of 2011 there was so much hype around Google properly joining the tablet game, launching Android 3.0 Honeycomb alongside this wonderful-looking Motorola tablet. It was very much a “Nexus” tablet without the branding, and for the time it was glorious. A big display, typical great Motorola hardware and most importantly the “cool factor” of having a sleek tablet that felt very futuristic right alongside the iPad 2.

Most important was the “cool factor.”

I snatched one up as soon as I could despite its super-high price and unproven software that had literally no app support at the time. I just wanted to be on the bleeding edge of Android, and the Xoom certainly felt like it. We all know now that Honeycomb was eventually a failure, and the Xoom itself basically went nowhere, but for the time it was the most exciting development in Android. Motorola moved on to do better things (yet never another tablet ed. note: how could you forget the Droid XYBOARD?) in Android, and Google took the lessons it learned with Honeycomb and shifted its tablet strategy starting with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

The Xoom was extremely exciting at the time, and I think proved to be an important step in the growth of Android.

Alex Dobie: HTC One (M7)

Oh, HTC. Back in the glory days, nobody in the Android space came close to the build quality of HTC’s aluminum unibody designs. And the pinnacle of that was the M7 — the original HTC One. No phone since has wowed me quite the same way the M7 did when I first unboxed it.

The original HTC One had the best hardware and the best software.

I’d used it in a private pre-briefing before then, and at its launch event, and it still astounded me when I picked up my own HTC One for the first time. Samsung (and almost everyone else in the Android world) was still doing plastic back then, and this thing felt like it’d landed on my desk straight from the future.

What also impressed was the sheer speed of the HTC One. The company banished lag entirely from its Sense UI, purportedly using some of the tech it had licensed through a deal with Apple the previous year. Back in 2013, buying a flagship Android phone by no means guaranteed you a smooth and enjoyable software experience. The original HTC One had the best hardware and the best software, and it was the best Android phone by a country mile. That I still see people using their M7s today is a testament to that quality.

Ara Wagoner: Moto X Pure Edition

Don’t get me wrong, the Moto X Pure Edition wasn’t a perfect phone by any means, but this is a phone that took what I already loved and admired from the original Moto X and brought in a few underrated and frankly perfect features that I still miss to this day on my current crop of phones.

This phone felt magical…

When they announced the 2015 Moto X, I didn’t intend to upgrade. I liked – no, I loved my 2014 Moto X, with its Turquoise backplate, white front, and red accents. It was my treasure… but an RMA saw me receiving a code to customize a 2015, and so I traded in begrudgingly, not wanting a larger phone that I themed darker so as to avoid a dorkishly pimpled face.

And when that phone came, I fell in love all over again. I could kiss the standard OK Google Now launch phrase for Moto Voice goodbye, and I could launch voice commands with foreign phrases that sounded like magic spells. If I waved my hand in front of my phone, I could summon my notifications, at my desk, on my nightstand, in its dock in my car. This phone felt magical, and it proved that custom launch phrases were possible for voice commands, something we’re still waiting for on the Google Home and the Pixel. I laughed at IR sensors on the front of a phone, now I wish that every manufacturer would include them again, because I miss the magic that I felt and saw every time I interacted with my Moto X Pure Edition.

Daniel Bader: Motorola Milestone

I am going way back with this one — back to the early months of 2010, to the early days of Android 2.1, and to the nascent communities of rooting. With the Motorola Milestone, I became instantly addicted to the notion that Android was both flexible and immutable, that in its changeability was a permanent notion of ownership: this phone was mine because I changed it.

In 2010, rooting a phone was neither easy nor fulfilling, but it was addictive.

In 2010, rooting a phone was neither easy nor fulfilling, because there wasn’t much you could do with it once it was accomplished. But it was addictive. The sense of accomplishment was worth the sleepless nights of searching for custom ROMs, and turning the idea of a mobile operating system on its head. The Milestone itself was hugely flawed — as was its Droid-based counterpart on Verizon — but it was important, and a critical first step towards my Android indoctrination.

The photo pictured above is the original Motorola Droid for Verizon, since it’s difficult to come by a decent quality photo of the Milestone.

Florence Ion: HTC Incredible

Look at that watermark!

It took me a while to think of what my favorite Android thing has been thus far. I waffled between choosing the Pixel or the Asus Nexus 7, arguably one of the best tablets I’ve ever owned. But as I thought through the list of devices I’ve owned and cherished since Android’s inception, I kept going back to the HTC Incredible.

You don’t forget your first love, and for me — at least in regards to Android — that was my first smartphone. The HTC Incredible was my companion through some of my most formative years. I was freshly out of college and new to the work force, and I had no idea where I belonged. It was also my first time living entirely alone, and for a person who thrives on being social but isn’t good at leaving the house, I knew it would be a challenge.

The HTC Incredible helped me find my way.

The HTC Incredible helped me find my way. I used it to stay privy with pals, find things to do and clubs to join around San Francisco, and document everything. And if it weren’t for Google Maps and its turn-by-turn navigation feature — which the iPhone did not offer at the time — I would have never had the courage to embark on my first solo road trip. I felt incredibly empowered by this handheld device; I could use it to call it for help, find my way out of situation, and discover things worth seeing. As a result, I’ll always feel a bit wistful about Android, because its mere existence in my life helped me experience what life is like when it’s enhanced by a mobile device. It sure is less lonely.

Harish Jonnalagadda: Nexus 4

The Nexus 4 was the first phone in the Nexus series that felt like a consumer product and not a reference tool for developers. From the subtly-curved edges at the front to the soft touch plastic on the sides and that stunning glass back with the checkerboard pattern, LG nailed the design of the Nexus 4. That’s why the first thing I did after buying the phone was put a case on it. The glass back was great to look at, but it had the tendency to shatter if you glanced at it wrong.

The Nexus 4 paved the way for future phones.

Buying the phone itself was an arduous process. The Nexus 4 didn’t make its way to India until seven months after its U.S. release, but as Google started selling the device from the Play Store in the U.S., I was able to get my hands on one a month after its launch.

For $349, there wasn’t anything else out there at that price range that offered quite as much as the Nexus 4. The 720p display was great, the camera could hold its own next to the Galaxy S3, and the Snapdragon S4 Pro was a beast. Sure, the lack of LTE was a dealbreaker in the U.S., but in India, 3G networks were taking off at the time, so it was a non-issue. And the fact that it was a Nexus device meant that it was easy to flash custom ROMs on it.

The Nexus 4 paved the way for future phones in the lineup that offered high-end specs for mid-range prices.

Jerry Hildenbrand: NVIDIA Shield Android TV

NVIDIA took Android TV and actually gave it the hardware to do the things we wanted it to do, then kept making it better. Anyone who bought into the Shield TV when it originally launched has all the features and gooey goodness that’s inside the latest model, with NVIDIA working on refining the platform further and adding more features as time goes on.

Everything just works.

And everything just works. You see something in an ad online that your Shield TV can do — like stream games from your computer to your television — and set things up as directed then play or watch. It’s refreshing to not have to sacrifice a chicken to get things to work properly.

I have two TVs in my house, and a Shield TV is attached to both of them. They’ll stay there until the next Shield TV comes along, unless NVIDIA gives me that software update, too.

Russell Holly: Samsung Galaxy Camera

Stop laughing. Samsung was really on to something with the Galaxy Camera. As someone who has to use the absolutely awful interfaces Olympus and Sony and every other company includes in their big-kid cameras, Samsung had the right idea.

It wasn’t executed super well, but think about a refresh in 2017 with something that isn’t a mobile camera sensor and proper RAW support. It could have completely changed the way we use real cameras if Samsung had stuck with it, which is why I think it’s the best.

Your turn What’s your favorite Android device?

Tell us your favorite Android device and help maintain our obsession with tech nostalgia!

Sony Xperia sales slump 33% in final quarter of 2016

Despite slumping sales, Sony says they’re still on target for an operating profit.

2016 was not a good year for Sony’s smartphone division.

The company closed out the third quarter of its financial year by shipping 5.1 million Xperia smartphones — down from 7.6 million in 2015 over the same quarter. Sony CFO Kenichiro Yoshida explained this 35% decrease in year-on-year sales was due to weaker sales in Europe, which is typically one of the more popular markets for Sony smartphones. In response, the company has downwardly revised its annual smartphone unit sales forecast by 2 million units.

Image credit: Xperiablog

Sony ended the quarter generating 249 billion yen (US$2.1 billion) in sales — down from 385 billion (US$3.4 billion) in 2015. But while sales and revenue income were down, the impact was partially offset by cost reductions in unprofitable markets such as Latin America and the Middle East, along with a positive impact from foreign exchange rates. As such, Yoshida says the company is still on target to maintain an operating profit by the end of the fiscal year.

You can grab an unlocked Sony Xperia X Compact on Amazon for a smooth $350 right now, or wait to see what Sony has in store for us at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at the end of the month.

If you’re interested, you can read more about Sony’s latest financial results.

FCC drops all inquiries into Binge On and other zero-rating programs

The FCC has dropped all inquiries into one of the most contested parts of net neutrality.

As the FCC moves into a new era that, under new Chairman Ajit Pai, looks to cut down on regulations that purportedly impede innovation, it has reported that all inquires into sponsored data programs will be stopped.

Under Tom Wheeler, who former President Barack Obama appointed Chairman in 2013, the FCC began sending letters to the top U.S. network providers, including T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon, on their use of “sponsored data programs” that either allowed companies to pay for the right to forgive the cost of certain blocks of traffic, or “zero-rate” traffic from an entire website or app.

T-Mobile has made this the most consumer-facing with its Binge On promotion, which under its new T-Mobile One plan doesn’t count any video from most sources, including YouTube, towards one’s monthly allotment. That video, however, is streamed at a lower bitrate than it otherwise would be, and preferences large media companies that have the power to negotiate deals with T-Mobile and its competition.

In a letter sent to the companies above, and a statement posted on its website, the FCC makes its intentions under this administration very clear:

Today, the Commission finally puts an end to the past Commission’s zero-rating inquiries and recommits to permissionless innovation. While this is just a first step, these companies, and others, can now safely invest in and introduce highly popular products and services without fear of Commission intervention based on newly invented legal theories.

That it “recommits to permissionless innovation” is a good thing for consumers in its eye, but the language around “just a first step” implies that under Pai, the FCC will dismantle Title II and the net neutrality clauses that are held within it.

Researchers discover a better way to make ammonia

For the past century or so, we’ve been making ammonia the same way that Nobel-prize winning chemist Fritz Haber did: by smashing hydrogen and nitrogen gas together at 250 atmospheres and heating them to nearly 1000 degrees F. But a new method developed at the University of Utah turns that process on its head.

Rather than brute force the gas’ ionic bonds apart to reform ammonia (NH3), the Utah method breaks them apart with nitrogen-fixing enzymes called nitrogenases. These are the only known enzymes that naturally convert nitrogen to ammonia and are used by a number of anaerobic bacterial species. These enzymes not only create ammonia at room temperature, they also generate a small amount of electricity.

The team hopes to use these enzymes, as well as another hydrogen-fixing variety known as hydrogenase, to create fuel cells. These devices would strip electrons from hydrogen gas and feed them into a the nitrogen-reducing reaction to create ammonia and power. However, before the team can scale up the technology to a viable level, they’ve first got to figure out how to deal with nitrogenases’ sensitivity to oxygen and how to keep the process going without relying on ATP to drive the enzymic action. Those are both daunting challenges. Still, at least we now have an easier means of making ammonia.

Source: PhysOrg

‘Fallout Shelter’ arrives on Windows 10 and Xbox One next week

Mobile games have been making their way to consoles at a semi-regular clip lately. Most recently it was Square Enix Montreal’s series of Go titles moving to PlayStation 4, and now Fallout Shelter is making its way to Xbox One and Windows 10. Now, it was already available on Steam, but this version offers Play Anywhere features like cloud-sync and shared achievements between the platforms. So, it’s a little different.

Overall, the game might feel a little bit backwards considering Fallout 4’s “Vault-Tec” add-on pack tasked players with creating their own vaults. But unlike that, Fallout Shelter — out February 7th — will be available for free and its load speeds will almost assuredly be faster than booting Fallout 4 proper. Best of luck guarding against super mutants, Overseer.

Source: Xbox Wire

‘Psychonauts’ in VR is a story Tim Schafer never planned to tell

Tim Schafer’s Psychonauts is the definition of a modern cult classic. Despite winning multiple awards and the adoration of critics, Double Fine’s first game sold poorly. Good games, however, don’t go unplayed. Over the course of a decade, Psychonauts sold over a million copies in digital redistribution, and left fans clamoring for a sequel to wrap up the game’s loose ends. Now a satisfying conclusion to the original game’s story is finally here, but it’s not Psychonauts 2 — it’s Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, a virtual reality spin-off heading exclusively to PlayStation VR on February 21st.

It’s almost poetic. Just as Psychonauts was Double Fine’s first game as a new development studio, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin is the company’s first game made exclusively for virtual reality — and it picks up the story exactly where the original game left it. Rasputin (or “Raz” for short) has officially been inducted into a group of psychic secret agents and is heading out on his first mission: to rescue Truman Zannotto, the leader of the Psychonauts. For anyone who played the original game, it seems like an obvious place to resume the narrative. Schafer, on the other hand, says it’s a story he never planned to tell.

“We weren’t going to tell the story about you running off to save the head of the Psychonauts,” he told me in an interview this week at the company’s San Francisco office. Schafer always imagined the rescue operation happening off screen, with any prospective sequels picking up after the team had returned to headquarters. “We thought it would just be referred to,” he said. “Oh, remember that time we went and saved the president of the Psychonauts?” That’s still the plan for the game’s crowdfunded sequel, but the company’s VR project gave Schafer a new platform for storytelling. “It seemed like a natural fit. “We could actually tell this story, this secret mission you go in-between these two games and still make it a standalone, fun spy adventure.”

Adventure is the key word, too. Unlike the original game, a 3D platformer, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin is a first-person take on the point-and-click adventure akin to Broken Age or the SCUMM games Shafer used to make at LucasArts. The player wears the PlayStation VR headset to settle behind the eyes of Raz, and uses his psychic powers to interact with the world. You can use telekinesis to open doors, flip switches and interact with items, distract enemies with PSI-blasts and light things on fire with pyrokinesis. It works surprisingly well, locking the power to the center of your vision. As I watched a book I was intently staring at lift-off of the ground, I almost felt like I actually had psychic powers.

The psychic make-believe works great, but as a player you don’t move much. The game is played entirely from a seated position, a restriction imposed by Schafer himself. “I get really uncomfortable and have simulation sickness,” he said. “We wanted to know our game would be playable to everybody, including people susceptible to that.”

Rhombus gets around Schafer’s movement constraint by using Raz’s power of clairvoyance to let the player see through the eyes of any character in their vision. It’s a twist on the “teleportation” gimmick common to seated VR experiences, backing up the warp-based travel mechanic with the game’s lore. “It’s not just a random teleportation,” Schafer said. “You’re using clairvoyance to see the world from someone else’s point of view.”

It’s more than just an excuse to let the seated player see more of the world, though — it’s an empathic experience. Some characters in the game perceive the world differently than Raz, and while using clairvoyance, the player can see those discrepancies first-hand. “Everyone doesn’t just see the world from a different 3D space,” Schafer said. “They see it from a different emotional place, too. We try to show that with the gameplay.”

This adds a new twist to the traditional adventure-game mechanics Rhombus thrives on. Sure, you’re looking for clues for physical puzzles in the game world, but you’re also looking for clues on how to help other characters based on how they personally see that world. “You have to understand what they’re going through in order to figure out what would help them get out of it,” Schafer said. It adds a layer of empathy to the game’s puzzles. “Getting inside someone’s mind helps you see their world, feel their pain, see what scares them.” Schafer describes it as the game’s emotional core. “I think at its root, Psychonauts has always been about empathy.”

Tim Schafer adds one more thing as I pack up and leave his office. “Did I mention the game’s fun?” It is.

The Google Now launcher for Android may be discontinued soon

One of the most annoying things about Android has long been the custom skins that manufacturers would slap on top of the operating system. Things have gotten better in recent years, but plenty of users would be happier using Android as Google intended. Fortunately, Google has offered a home screen launcher based on the software it put in the Nexus series of phones for a while now. But now that the company has moved on to the Pixel smartphone line, complete with its own redesigned launcher, the old “Google Now” launcher is being put out to pasture.

According to Android Police, Google has sent emails to partners using Google Mobile Services (GMS) to let them know the Now launcher will be removed from the Play Store as well as the GMS package in Q1 of 2017. However, the company notes that those who still want the search and card feed you get when swiping right on the Android home screen can get that using the “Search Launcher” app that is found in GMS.

As for how this will affect Android users, those who might buy a phone and want to replace its launcher with Google Now are out of luck. Fortunately, almost every Android phone out there has adopted the “swipe right on the home screen for Google search” UI convention, so you can get the most important feature of the Now launcher right there. There’s also a chance that the company will open up the Pixel launcher to work with other Android phones sooner or later — that’s exactly what it did with the Google Now launcher, after all. You just might need to wait a bit before you can have an official way to re-skin your phone to match the Pixel, that’s all.

Source: Android Police

The way to a man’s heart is actually through WiFi

They say you can’t hide what’s in your heart, but the saying is doubly true for an Ohio man whose pacemaker data has been used to indict him on felony charges of aggravated arson and insurance fraud.

Police investigating a fire at Ross Compton’s house said he gave statements that were “inconsistent” with the evidence. Compton didn’t reckon on authorities obtaining a search warrant for all electronic data stored in his cardiac pacing device, and now he’s going up the river for burning his own house down.

According to court documents obtained by press, the data from Compton’s pacemaker, examined by investigators, included his heart rate, pacer demand and cardiac rhythms prior to, during and after the September 2016 fire.

A cardiologist who reviewed that data concluded it was “improbable Mr. Compton would have been able to collect, pack and remove the number of items from the house, exit his bedroom window and carry numerous large and heavy items to the front of his residence during the short period of time he has indicated, due to his medical conditions.”

Meaning, they looked at the time window of the fire and his tale of escape along with his heart rate, and decided that his story didn’t add up. That’s as far as we know, anyway. If we learned anything from the St. Jude stock debacle, it’s that implantable medical devices and their home monitors probably carry (and probably leak) data that could pin a person down more than a few heated beats at the wrong time. Like transmitting activity records, heart rate logs, and sensitive patient information.

Last September short-selling firm Muddy Waters and its business partner, security company MedSec Holdings, released a scathing and now-contested company report saying that pacemakers and heart devices made by St. Jude Medical had critical security flaws.

Effectively, it’s only thanks to hackers that the general public has learned that pacemakers have built-in functionality for wireless communication. This means a lot can be learned about our activities by what networks they connect to, and when. The interface is largely for remote monitoring purposes, where a device connects to a server at the vendor to transmit device logs and patient information.

This is the medical Internet of Things. And now it’s a tool for authorities and insurance investigators.

His heart wasn’t in it

Mr. Compton had originally told officers that when he realized there was a fire he packed a suitcase and some bags, then broke his bedroom window and threw everything out of the house before packing up his car. He claimed to have escaped with his belongings and his life. A neighbor told press that when he saw Compton carrying a computer tower, Mr. Compton asked him for help putting it into his car.

According to a search warrant obtained by media, fire investigators said there were multiple points of origin of the fire from the outside of the residence. Compton’s statements to 911 also conflicted with what he told police, and he was arrested just two days after the fire. It’s likely he never thought that in a million years his pacemaker would rat him out. And why would he?

It was just a matter of time until we started to find out if medical device data is protected by the Fifth Amendment’s safeguards for self-incrimination. Those following the fingerprint-password debates know that a Virginia Circuit Court judge ruled in October 2014 that giving biometric data is not the same as divulging knowledge.

Compton’s heart condition was well known by investigators from the get-go: He was briefly hospitalized after the fire with a related medical issue. So it’s not too much of a leap for someone to wonder if there was a way to track his movements after a fashion with the constant record being created by his pacemaker.

Sounds like a pretty damning avenue for investigation, using pacemakers to catch criminals with an ironclad dataset for prosecution. Except as one hacker found out when she had to be kitted out with a heart device, these internal trackers don’t always give off the correct data.

Infosec professional Marie Moe got her pacemaker in an emergency procedure to save her life, but it wasn’t long before she realized the pitfalls of these deeply personal IOT devices. Soon, she was debugging her own heart, which sounds almost romantic, except it’s not. Because she was younger than the typical pacemaker user, hers required a lot of adjusting.

Moe experienced months of trial-and-error tweaking from doctors who couldn’t quite get her heart’s tuning right. She said: “This was complicated by a software bug in the programming device that they used to adjust the settings of the pacemaker. The bug caused the actual settings of my device to differ from the those displayed on the screen at the hospital that the pacemaker technician was seeing.”

The impact of this was significant, as Moe explained. “The consequence of this greatly affected my well being. If I tried to run after the bus or climb up stairs I would suddenly get out of breath. The pacemaker was detecting my pulse to be outside the upper heart rate limit, which was erroneously configured to 160 beats per minute. When I reached this heart rate, the pacemaker would suddenly cut my pulse in half to 80 beats per minute due to a safety mechanism.”

Not only could the device be performing improperly and sending incorrect information “home” to its servers, Moe discovered that she wasn’t allowed to access her own data. Along with other pacemaker users, she started fighting for her rights to get access to the data that their devices are collecting.

It feels very ominous and Big Brother-y, that authorities can just grab data from devices inside your body without your consent.

Of course, it’s not just implanted medical devices that monitor people’s heart rates, transmit device logs and bodily information — and snitch out anyone with something to hide. Fitness trackers like Fitbit, Garmin, and Jawbone are increasingly being used as admissible evidence in court cases. The difference here is, that you can’t just leave a pacemaker on the bedside table when you want.

If we were all living in a dystopian fiction novel, Mr. Compton’s crime getting foiled by Big Brother’s access to the actual inner workings of his heart would be somewhat chilling in its implications.

Good thing our current climate doesn’t feel dystopian or unreal at all right now.