Expanding on their previous guide, XDA Senior Member Honestly Annoying has demonstrated how to get full ADB root access, system read/write permissions, and disabling dm-verity protection for all variants of the LG G5. This was previously released only for the Sprint model, but is now available for all variants.
Qualcomm has faced antitrust accusations in multiple countries over the last few years. The company recently settled a big one within the country of China, and they were accused of similar allegations in the EU back in 2015 as well. Today, it's been announced that a regulator within South Korea wants to fine Qualcomm $853 million over its own patent-licensing business. This announcement comes after a 3-year investigation completed by the Korea Fair Trade Commission.
The Korea Fair Trade Commission feels that Qualcomm has violated the country's antitrust laws by limiting competing chip makers' access to its patents. The commission also feels that Qualcomm ended up forcing smartphone OEMs into unfair license agreements by refusing to supply important chips for phones to companies who didn't agree with their terms (which includes purchasing licenses the OEM didn't need). Lastly, they're accused of using their market position as a leveraging tool in an attempt to force smartphone OEMs into accepting unfair terms.
As mentioned, we've seen these accusations come up before in regards to Qualcomm, as other countries have come to the same conclusion as well. In previous cases, Qualcomm has gone ahead and paid the fine so they could continue doing business in the country. However, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Qualcomm will contest the decision. Qualcomm doesn't feel they have hindered other chip makers from selling their own products within the country.
Qualcomm also says their licensing deals have existed in South Korea, and all over the world, for decades. Since South Korea hadn't felt the need to complain about their business practices before, they question the legitimacy about this recent accusation. This recent ruling won't go into effect until the commission issues a formal written order, which is said to take anywhere from weeks to months to put together. It's at this point where Qualcomm will have 60 days to either pay the fine or initiate the appeal process.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Back in October, Samsung announced they were acquiring Viv Labs and their entire AI platform. For those who are unaware, the founders of Viv Labs were the same group of people who worked on Siri (before Apple acquired them back in 2010). The big product from Viv Labs is an AI-powered voice assistant known as Viv. This voice assistant AI excels in natural language processing and is said to be more powerful than Siri is today.
It's no surprise that Viv Labs was on Samsung's radar, as we've been seeing a lot of companies wanting to get into this market. Amazon's Alexa personal assistant has found success in the company's Echo products, Google dove into the market with Google Home, and even Apple has started focusing on expanding the capabilities of Siri lately. Since the original announcement, it's been rumored that Samsung will replace S Voice with this new tech from Viv Labs, and it will debut with the launch of the Galaxy S8.
It's believed that Samsung will call their new personal assistant Bixby, thanks to a trademark that was filed in their home country of South Korea. As we've seen with the success of Amazon's Alexa assistant, the more things it can do the better experience the user will have with the service. Google Home has been struggling in this area, but Google has launched Actions on Google that open up the platform to 3rd-party developers.
Yesterday, SamMobile's sources have told them that Samsung is working hard to make sure most of their native applications will support this Bixby personal assistant feature. The article didn't go into much detail about how powerful it will be, but uses the Gallery application as an example, saying we can ask Bixby to show us photos or videos that match a particular criteria. We'll likely have to wait until Samsung's official launch event before we learn more details about Bixby, though.
As we enter the final days of the year, it's time to get your opinion on all the events, news, releases and controversies that we witnessed so far in 2016.
While all price points of the smartphone market saw fierce competition, one segment which was once hotly contested barely saw any attention this year. We're talking about tablets, a segment that stayed out of the limelight for the most part. Few OEMs seem willing to dip their toes back into the tablet market, and stock-Android tablet enthusiasts have to contend with just rumors of an Huawei-made "Nexus" tablet coming in 2017.
Our question to you is,
What did you think of the tablets released this year? Why do you think tablets saw such little attention? Why are OEMs unwilling to release tablets? Have our use cases for tablets vanished, or have OEMs grown wary of investing into the tablet space? How big of a contribution did software have in their decline? Is there hope for tablets to make a comeback in 2017?
Let us know in the comments below!
In this video, TK takes us through an unofficial CM14.1 ROM for the Honor 8. This ROM is currently in the beta stages, so not everything is working yet.
Currently Working:
Currently Not Working:
Follow the development of this ROM in the XDA thread here.
Details about the LG G6 have been pretty scarce this year. A rumor earlier this year claimed that LG would be ditching the metal build material next year for a glass one. Even though the LG G5 was built with metal, it received a lot of complaints in reviews for not feeling as premium as other devices on the market. We even just heard about the possibility of LG releasing the G6 earlier than usual so they won't have to deal with certain competitors at launch.
Other than that, we've heard the LG G6 would adopt MST technology for their mobile payments system and another rumor claiming they're ditching the modular design (even though they have come out and said otherwise). With a bunch of reports and rumors going around the community, the only thing that is clear is that LG wasn't happy with how the LG G5 sold. Oddly enough, a new rumor suggests the LG G6 will have a similar design to the LG G5.
This rumor comes to us thanks to a collaboration between Android Authority and @ShaiMizrachi. The leak suggests the LG G6 will be 149.4mm tall, 72.4mm wide, and then says that while they're unable to "confirm exact numbers," we can expect it to be a little thinner than the LG G5. We're not sure if the LG G6 will have the modular design, or even a removable battery (like we saw in the LG V20), but the wide camera cut out suggests it will have 2 rear cameras.
The cutouts also suggest they will likely stick with a metal build with the LG G6, unlike we heard with previous rumors. Technically, they could use a rear panel of glass with this design, but the cutouts being so close together would likely make the glass very brittle. As with all rumors, we should take this with a grain of salt, but we could be looking at the design of LG's upcoming flagship.
