Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 update adds voice guidance when exercising

Samsung has started rolling out a firmware update for the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 which adds voice guidance when you’re exercising. The update, spotted by one of our forum members, Galaxea, is version R820XXU1CTJ5 or R82O0XA1CTJ5 depending on what variant you have.

The new firmware, clocking in at 61.39MB, sticks with Tizen version 5.5.0.1, but adds voice guidance to exercise routines through a headset, even if that headset is connected to your phone handset and not directly to the watch. The addition will be a boost to runners, for example, who can now get information on how they are doing without having to touch their watch or phone, leaving them to stay “in the zone”. In addition, there’s a new option to get a voice prompt about cumulative data and your heart rate at the start of each lap.

Adding this feature reflects well on Samsung’s commitment to improving feature sets for its watches without a paid premium tier for end users. The voice coaching feature was baked into the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 but has been backported to the Active 2, as the company promised earlier in the year.

The only other notable change is for users of the Always On Display (AOD). Samsung has removed the second-hand sweep from the AOD, presumably in order to conserve battery life by a factor of 60. This could lure back some users who have turned off AOD in the past to save the constant battle to stay charged.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Forums

Other than that, it’s the usual “Improved system stability and reliability” – which is a nice way of saying “bug fixes”, but as it’s the second major update in as many months, there’s still much to smile about for owners.

Credits: XDA Senior Member Galaxea

At present, the update is only available in South Korea, and only for the Bluetooth variant, but other territories and the LTE version are seemingly incoming, too. Just keep checking the update screen on your device.

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Samsung rolls out the November 2020 security update to the Galaxy Z Fold 2

Besides Google’s generic Android Security Bulletin (ASB), Samsung also maintains a separate bulletin for assessing the impact of any actual or potential security vulnerability in the context of their ecosystem. A quick look at Samsung’s Mobile Security portal reveals all the disclosed security vulnerabilities affecting closed-source vendor components, the underlying Linux kernel in Android, and various OS frameworks that have been fixed by the company till date. At the time of writing this article, the latest monthly security patch level (SPL) is still listed as October 2020 on both Google’s and Samsung’s bulletin, but the Korean OEM has already started rolling out the November 2020 security patchset to the Galaxy Z Fold 2 in some regions.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 XDA Forums

The version number of the new build is F916BXXU1BTJB, which is meant for the global variant of the Galaxy Z Fold 2 (model number SM-F916B). The size of the incremental update package is about 350MB, and the FOTA is currently available across a number of European countries, including but not limited to Germany and the Nordic region.

Credit to XDA Senior Member henklbr for the screenshot!

Other than bumping the Android Security Patch Level, the new build also updates the stock camera app of the Galaxy Z Fold 2. The bootloader version remains unchanged, though. As a result, users can theoretically perform a downgrade and revert back to older builds even after installing this update. We would still advise caution before doing so.

As always, the OTA update is rolling out in batches. You might have to wait a couple of days before the update notification pops up on your device. However, if you are accustomed with manual flashing, you can skip the queue and use tools like Frija or Samloader to download the appropriate firmware for your device variant directly from Samsung update server.

Samsung continues to impressively roll out security updates in a fairly quick manner, often before Google. For more information about monthly security patches, be sure to read our overview of how the monthly patch process works.

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Google tests head-to-head comparisons of similar apps on the Play Store

Google Play Store is home to close to 3 million apps, making it the biggest mobile app store in the world on the scale of app numbers. With so many apps flooding the app store and new apps being regularly added, discovering the perfect app can be a little cumbersome for users. Google is well aware of the problem, and to tackle it, the company is testing a new feature in the Play Store app to make it more convenient for users to choose the right app that meets their needs.

Android Police reports that a new section called “Compare apps” has begun showing for few users which display similar-looking apps in a horizontally scrollable list. The section is visible when the user scrolls down to the bottom of the app listing they’re currently viewing. The comparison section showcases parameters such as rating & downloads, ease of use, and whether the apps support certain features. For example, if you’re looking for a video player with casting support, you can quickly glance at various apps and see which ones have it — rather than gleaning over the lengthy app description of each app.

A very neat feature if you ask us, but obviously it’s far from perfect and quite basic in its current state. At the time being, the feature only works with video player apps, but we expect there will be more categories once the feature makes its way to a wider user base. That leads us to the obvious question: when will it be rolled out to all users? And as is customary with every Google A/B test, the answer is: we don’t know for sure. Google regularly conducts various A/B tests in the Play Store app, and there’s no guarantee these experiments will make it to the final product. We’ll keep a close eye on this feature’s development and will sure to let you know if we learn or discover something new.

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Source: Android Police

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PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite will stop working in India from October 30

India recently banned 118 apps in the third wave of bans against apps operated by Chinese entities. What surprised a lot of individuals was the fact that this wave actually caught popular gaming titles PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite in the crosshair. Now, PUBG has confirmed that both PUBG Mobile and PUBG Lite will stop working in India from October 30 onwards.

Consequent to the instructions from the Government of India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT, both Google and Apple removed PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite from the Play Store and App Store respectively. This meant that users could no longer download them from the official app stores on Android and iOS. On Android, players could still sideload the APK, and even updates could be delivered in this way. Everyone presumed that the games would shutter their servers pretty soon, as had happened with TikTok and other apps, in compliance with the instructions from the Government of India. However, surprisingly, the games have continued to work up until this point. If you had the games installed, you could log in normally and play the games without any impediment.

This changes from October, as confirmed by an announcement on PUBG Mobile’s official Facebook page.

Consequent to the latest announcement, Tencent Games will terminate all service and access for users in India for both the games from October 30, 2020. The announcement does not mention if any player data will be preserved, or where it will be preserved. It also does not mention of any intentions from PUBG Corporation to resuscitate the game in India by choosing a different publisher.

This move comes after PUBG Corporation revoked Tencent Games’ publishing rights for the games in India. The revocation was widely presumed to have addressed some of the Indian government’s security concerns. But now it appears that that may not have been entirely sufficient. With the server access being revoked, it’s time for players in India to move on, even if they know all the tips and tricks of the game.

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Source: PUBG Mobile Official Facebook Page

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OxygenOS code hints the OnePlus 9 may return to Verizon

The US smartphone market is inextricably linked with telecom carriers, with neither able to survive on its own. While smartphone brands have had decent success in other regions when selling unlocked and independently, the dynamics of the US market are such that OEMs need to court carriers to place their phones in carrier stores, where the average consumer is much more likely to pick them up. That’s the reason why a lot of Chinese OEMs have failed to make an in-road in the US market. For OnePlus, the company could be returning to carrier stores for its upcoming smartphone, as code within OxygenOS suggests that the OnePlus 9 might return to Verizon.

When OnePlus launched the OnePlus 8T earlier this month, it was not launched on Verizon Wireless in the USA. The last phone from the Chinese company to launch on Verizon was the OnePlus 8 5G UW, which was a special version of the OnePlus 8 with mmWave antennas for supporting Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network. The phone also had an IP68 rating, something that the global OnePlus 8 lacked.

Early last month, XDA Senior Member Some_Random_Username spotted what is likely the codename for the OnePlus 9 series — lemonade. Specifically, there are five variants of lemonade, and based on our understanding of OnePlus codenames, we presume these devices would be:

• lemonade — OnePlus 9
• lemonadet — T-Mobile OnePlus 9
• lemonadev — Verizon OnePlus 9
• lemonadep — OnePlus 9 Pro
• lemonadept — T-Mobile OnePlus 9 Pro

Now, within the latest APK for the Settings app from Open Beta 3 for the OnePlus 8 series, XDA Senior Member Some_Random_Username also discovered more evidence that lemonadev will be a OnePlus smartphone for Verizon’s network.

How do we know that lemonade is actually a OnePlus flagship and not another product in the mid-range/budget Nord lineup? Evidence at hand dictates that this phone (series) will come with a flagship processor from Qualcomm.

A method called isSM8X50Products returns true if the board name matches the value returned by another method called isLemonadeProducts. The other names mentioned between the ‘or’ operators, namely msmnile and kona are codenames for SM8150 (part number for the Snapdragon 855) and SM8250 (part number for the Snapdragon 865). Lemonade‘s presence within this method gives us plenty of confidence that the device will be running on the SM8350, or the Snapdragon 875 as it would be more popularly known.

While the adoption of Qualcomm’s next flagship processor on the next flagship series from OnePlus should come as no real surprise, readers in the USA can look forward to picking up the devices from their carrier stores. If the past phones are any indication, the Verizon OnePlus 9 could also be featuring mmWave and possibly other changes (such as different button placement).

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Thanks to XDA Senior Member Some_Random_Username for the tip!

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The Pro1-X will help support FOSS by donating to the Linux Foundation

After years of rumors and plenty of April Fools’ jokes, we actually made a phone! The new Pro1-X is an adaptation of the Pro1 launched by our friends at F(x)tec last year and features more RAM, more storage, and more importantly, it runs a different platform. The first smartphone to run LineageOS out of the box, there’s plenty of reasons to like the Pro1-X but here’s one that we haven’t revealed until just now: we will be donating an amount per device to the Linux Foundation, to go towards supporting free, open-sourced software.

Considering that LineageOS, Android, Ubuntu Touch, and more are all ultimately powered by Linux, we felt that this was the best foundation to help give back to the FOSS community as a whole. Liangchen Chen – the co-founder of F(x)tec and an all-around lovely guy who’s passionate about LineageOS, Ubuntu Touch, Sailfish, and other alternative platforms – provided the following quote to help outline our approach to giving back to the open-sourced community:

We want to ensure that we give back to the community for helping us achieve our goal of creating a device made for the enthusiasts. We will be donating a small amount per device sold to the Linux Foundation once the campaign concludes, to help support free and open-sourced software.

That’s not all though: the Pro1-X is also only available via the Indiegogo campaign, and will not be available to buy afterward. Miss it, and well, you miss the world’s first smartphone running LineageOS out of the box. As if that wasn’t enough, it’s also the most powerful Ubuntu Touch OS smartphone ever made, with the HDMI-out allowing you to just plug a cable in and use a full Ubuntu desktop experience using nothing more than the keyboard on the phone, and the screen as a trackpad.

You can find out more about our new phone at the Indiegogo page below, but as a quick reminder, there’s an exclusive XDA early-bird price that’s also only available in limited quantities via the direct link below, so get yours now!

  Get yours at Indiegogo now!

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Save $300 on the Surface Duo in this early Black Friday deal!

Are you intrigued by the foldable phone market, but not really wanting to drop two thousand dollars on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2? You’re definitely not alone there. As well-received as the Fold 2 is, it’s hard to spend that much money on one phone, even with monthly payments and trade-in discounts. Besides, it’s not the only great smartphone of its type on the market, with Microsoft’s Surface Duo being a big competitor.

The Surface Duo’s MSRP is $1,400, which is much less of a sticker shock over the Galaxy Z Fold 2 and puts the smartphone more in line with other high-end flagships. But, Best Buy doesn’t want you to pay the full price for this phone this holiday shopping season! If you activate the phone today, you’ll able to save $300 on the Surface Duo, making it only $1,100. This is the 128GB model of the Surface Duo, so while you don’t get as much space, that should be more than enough to store all your apps and downloads. Also, if you don’t want to activate the Surface Duo now, you’ll still save $200. But if you have a carrier plan or a carrier in mind already, why wait and pay more?

Of course, as stated in our Surface Duo review, Microsoft’s phone is not a true foldable and is described as a dual-screen phone, but it’s pretty close to the same experience, and more importantly, at a more reasonable price. It really comes down to what you’re looking for – this smartphone is great for multitasking and productivity, so if you find you’re doing a lot of work on a cramped smartphone, this will be a great upgrade. I love clam-shell designs and the Surface Duo looks particularly nice.

Save $300 on the Surface Duo

Need a phone that'll work as hard as you do? Then the Surface Duo is for you! This dual-screen phone is a half-step away from a foldable, but it's built for productivity and multitasking.

$1,100 at Best Buy

This deal is part of Best Buy’s Prep for the Holidays event, and this price is guaranteed for Black Friday!

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