Open-source WhatsApp Extensions Xposed Module by XDA Senior Member Surajkumar adds in features like reply reminders, hiding last seen and read receipts, zooming profile photos and more!
Some digital board games in the Play Store are very popular and often end up costing around $5 a piece. The latest Humble Mobile bundle helps alleviate this financial burden by offering a number of popular games at a very enticing price. There are three tiers to this bundle with 8 games to start off with. Within a week, the Humble Bundle team will also announce which additional games will be added to the middle tier.
The first tier of the Humble Mobile Bundle features two games that will only cost you $1 combined. The first game in the tier is called Carcassonne and it can be compared to the likes of Civilization as it has you placing tiles with roads, cities, fields, and cloisters. The second game in this $1 tier is called Scotland Yard, a winner of the "Game of the Year" award for its physical version back in 1983 (which sold over 30 million units).
The price of the second tier is at $3, and paying this amount will get you the previously mentioned games, along with 3 more (and more additions that will be announced soon). The first game here is called Splendor, and you play as a merchant during the Renaissance while you acquire mines, transportation methods and artisans. Then there is the strategy game Catan where you'll compete with up to four players for the most settlements, the longest roads and the largest army. Last up for this tier is called THE aMAZEing Labyrinth, which has been out for 25 years, sold over 13 million copies of the physical version and tasks you with navigation various mazes.
The third and final tier of this Humble Mobile Bundle is priced at $5. Paying this much will get you all of the previously mentioned games as well as three more. First up we have Ticket To Ride (which will cost you $7 alone if you buy it from the Play Store right now) and comes with the official Ticket to Ride USA map along with 6 additional maps and 2 expansions. Then there is San Juan, a card game that has you taking on the role of the governor, builder, producer, trader or councilor. Finally there is Galaxy Trucker, a game that has you building space ships, dodge meteors, and fight off bad guys.
LeEco has working hard to expand their company beyond China over the last few years. We've watched as they announced a major expansion throughout India, which was then followed by the launch of their entertainment services in India. The company hired some former Samsung executives for its North American division, opened up their headquarters in the United States, and then purchased 48.6 acres of land from struggling Yahoo.
LeEco then teased that they had something big in store for the United States this fall, which turned out to be the official launch of multiple products within the country. LeEco even went as far as to acquire the TV company VIZIO as a way to get their media streaming services to more homes. It is no secret that LeEco has been working hard, but now it seems the company has been working a little too hard for its own good.
This week, Bloomberg reports that LeEco is running out of cash to "sustain a headlong rush" into the multiple markets they are a part of (electric cars, smartphones, smart bikes, media streaming, TVs, etc.). Jia Yueting, the co-founder of LeEco wrote a letter to his employees and investors to apologize for what has happened. In an attempt to remedy the situation, he has agreed to decrease his income to 1 yuan (15 cents), slow the company's expansion plans, and put in place plans for the company to grow at a more moderate pace.
It's unclear what the future holds for LeEco at this time. We could see them slow everything down and release fewer products, or we could see them try and produce more as they attempt to inject some additional cash into the company. At this time, the only thing that is known is that the company is unable to continue to expand at the rate they were, and these expansion plans are being slowed down due to a cash crunch.
It's no surprise that HTC has been struggling to bring in a profit and increase the company's revenues for a while now. We have been covering this extensively since the company started seeing a decline and there have not been many positive aspects to look at throughout this troubling time for the Taiwanese technology company. Still, after all the issues the company has been having, they still sound very optimistic despite the drop in revenue.
Last month we reported on the company's Q3 earnings report and learned they lost $57 million after taxes. This was actually a loss of $63 million, but once you factor in taxes, the total amount reduced to $57 million. Despite that, they did have some good news for investors last month. They were able to bring in $700 million in overall revenue, which is up 18% compared to the quarter before and up 4% when compared to the same quarter of 2015.
However, things are not looking good for HTC this month. Granted, these monthly financial reports are unaudited, but they do give us a rough idea as to how well, or poorly, the company is doing. In the PDF press release linked below, HTC tells us their consolidated revenue for October of this year is NT$8.17 bn (which is $259.64 million). Then they go on to tell us that their overall revenue for January of this year all the way until October of this year is NT$64.09 bn.
However, what they exclude from this PDF press release is that these monthly numbers are actually down MoM and YoY. When looking at HTC's Investors page, we can see that October's monthly revenues were down 12.43% when compared to September revenues. On top of that, when we compare October's monthly revenues to October of last year, we see the numbers are down 8.66%.
Still, despite all of the troubles, HTC is still optimistic that they will see positive earnings throughout the fourth quarter as the HTC Vive picks up momentum thanks to the holiday season.
Earlier today, The updated Android 7.0 Compatibility Document was released. This document gives an outline to OEMs about what they can and should not change when creating android for their devices. It includes guidelines for Android Auto, Android TV, Wear, and for Phones and Tablets proper.
In the latest update, quite a bit has changed, and Reddit user and r/Android moderator IAmAN00bie took the time to comb through and point out all changes that really stuck out. Below is a list of his findings, as well as the ones we have noticed while reading the document:
APIs
Android Auto
Audio
Package Manager
Display
Android TV
Android Wear
Telephony
Security/Kernel
Data/Storage
This is just a selection of the full document. To read the full document for yourself, visit this link. We will be updating this page with more interesting changes as we find them. Let us know in the comments what you think about the new document and changes!
Way back in July 2015, Sony launched a unique "concept" software update for the Xperia Z3. Ordinarily, Sony Xperia devices came in with Sony's own skin and set of modifications on top of Android, but this concept software update was Sony experimenting with stock Android on its device. The best part about this experiment was that Sony was inviting users to be part of this project, even if Sony themselves did not have plans to abandon their own skin.
If you are a current Sony Xperia X user and are interested to see what the concept ROM experience is all about, there is some good news flowing in for you. The Xperia X is the latest addition to Sony's Concept for Android project, meaning that there will be opportunity for users to try out this ROM on their device. Additionally, since the concept ROM is based on Android 7.0 Nougat and features the stock Android experience without Sony's skin, you are practically getting a Nexus-like experience of the latest software on Sony hardware, provided to you directly by the OEM!
The latest Concept for Android for Xperia X includes:
The initiative is open initially to Xperia X (F5121) users in Europe. To participate in the experiment, download the Concept Installer app from the Google Play Store, and follow along the instructions to guide through the setup process. Perhaps the best part of this experiment is that it does not affect the warranty status of the device. Updates to the concept ROM are promised monthly, but users can opt-in for the alpha and experimental releases as well. You can also roll back to Sony's skin as well. You do lose your data, so users are advised to make backups beforehand.
We appreciate Sony bringing the pure Android experience to a new device and for a new OS version. We hope they extend this onto other devices as well.
What are your thoughts on Sony's Concept for Android program? Let us know in the comments below!
Google just released the November security update and around that time we also see the platform's official distribution numbers as well. This data was recorded during the 7-day period between November 1st and November 7th, and Google reminds us that any version of Android that doesn't make up at least 0.1% of the platform is not represented here in this graph. Yet, we're still seeing Android 2.2 Froyo being used by 0.1% of the people who are accessing the Play Store.
The big question here is how many people have been able to update to Android 7.0 Nougat since it was released, and now we have our answer. We're seeing that 0.3% of the platform has received their update and are using the latest version of Android. This is big as Nougat did not make an appearance in any of the previous Android's distribution reports. This is likely not as high of a percentage as many had hoped, but it's a start and it will continue to grow over the next year.
Next up, we have Android 6.0 Marshmallow, which has reached 24% of the overall user base for Android. This is up from 18.7% when compared to the September reports and was to be expected with it being shipped on new phones and more Lollipop devices being updated. Android 5.x Lollipop has actually dropped from 35% in September to 34.1% in November. But then we see that the Android 4.4 KitKat numbers have increased from 27.7% in September to 25.2% this month.
The numbers for Jelly Bean this month dropped again. They were sitting at 15.6% in September and are now at 13.7%. Both Ice Cream Sandwich and Gingerbread percentages dropped as well with both of them being on 1.3% of active devices in November when they were at 1.4% and 1.5% respectively in September. So most of the changes we have seen this month were expected, but it was a surprise to see the numbers for Lollipop dropping 0.9% compared to September.
