Droidcon UK – Europe’s Largest Android Developer Conference Is Bigger and Better Than Ever

Droidcon UK may have been and gone, but the memories of this years event will be with us for a long time to come. The biggest Droidcon UK yet took place in late October and was an exceptional example of what we can achieve together as a community.

With sponsors and attendees covering aspects of the industry including Android security, app distribution platforms, app creation and content management there was something for everyone as the event kicked off. Two of the key highlights of the event were Chet Haase's satirical closing keynote on day one and the more serious opening talk on day two, where he ran through the changes made to Android since the release of Android 7.0.

We took a moment to speak to Wendy from Skills Matter, the organisers of Droidcon UK to discuss the future of the event. Having sold out of tickets to this year's event and having also reached the event space's capacity, Skills Matter has sought to make the large jump from their current location in the Gallery Hall of the Business Design Centre to the much larger 2560 m² mezzanine (which attendees to previous years events will recognise as the centre's main hall.) and convert the old venue in to an additional auditorium large enough to fit 1200 people, ideal for the more popular talks.

This year's event ended with the London Hack Weekend, a two-day hackathon in London's largest tech based venue Code Node. Here entrants were faced with three challenges of which to choose including:

• Creating an app for Zebra's TC8000 an Android-based handheld computer and scanner designed for use in enterprises,
• Build something with FireBase,
• Or build something with Equal Expert's Bluetoothtap, a BLE beacon with the added functionality of  "tapping" in a similar manner to NFC but with the added benefit of being compatible with all Android and iOS devices.

The Winner of XDA's prize at the hackathon, was Daniel Mallcott with his idea to expedite queues at Droidcon in future years.

With so much going on at the event it's hard to catch everything, If you missed one of the talks this year, you can watch the talk again over at Skillscast and watch interviews with the speakers here.

Noah Falstein: VR and AR – Technologies 40,000 years in the making,
Chet Haase: What's New in Android,
Dario Incalza: Android Application Security the Right Way,
Amrit Sanjeev: Optimising Apps For the Next Billion Users,
View the complete list of talks here

Thank you to Wendy and the entire Skills Matter and Droidcon team. Were you at Droidcon UK? Check Skills Matter complete album on Flickr to see if you can spot yourself!

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Official CM14 For OnePlus 3

We finally have an official nightly build of CyanogenMod 14 for the OnePlus 3. Miles loaded it onto his phone for this video ROM review. This is the first nightly, so don't expect everything to be fully working, but it does seem to be ready for daily use.

Going into the settings you'll find all of your customization menus. You'll have the three different OnePlus menus that you're already familiar with. There's also a menu for button settings, gestures, and additional buttons.

Right now the battery icon doesn't change when plugged in. You'll see your battery icon with the percentage enabled. You'll just have to monitor it to make sure it's charging, for now.

In the status bar menu, you're able to tweak the status bar icons as well as modify the clock style. As of right now the battery status style setting does not work. This will most likely be fixed in future nightly releases.

Download this ROM for your OnePlus 3 here.

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Would You Purchase an Updated Variant of Your Current Phone?

Sometimes we just love our devices too much, and do not wish to trade their design or form factor as much as we feel they are running out of life. Iconic devices like the Nexus 5 have endured for years on software prowess alone, but many of us would love to see our favorite phones come back to the market with updated specs.

Would you purchase an updated-spec variant of your current phone? Are you more likely to purchase the phone if there was a trade-in deal with your current phone? At what point in the release cycle (minimum) would you be alright with the OEM releasing an updated spec variant of a flagship? What differences should exist between the specs to make you consider buying the new phone when you already have the older variant?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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ZTE Invites User Opinions on Why They Use Stock Android

ZTE recently held a unique competition where they invited ideas for a phone that would then be produced commercially. The crowdsourced phone that would be the result of Project CSX saw a lot of unique entries, with the finalists being:

1. Eye Tracking, Self Adhesive Phone: Phone with a self-adhesive back that would allow the phone to stick to a wall, and the user can scroll through eye movement.
2. Intelligent Smartphone Covers: Functional cases that expand use-cases of phones, such as a gamepad or an e-ink flip cover.
   [Note: the original idea included stock Android software as part of the whole pitch. However, ZTE's press release does not note anything related to this aspect.]
3. Powerglove: Exo-glove that controls fingers for helping in rehabilitation or learning scenarios, all powered by the Android device.
4. VR-Interactive Diving Mask: Waterproof VR mask for emulating an ocean experience inside controlled water bodies.
5. Stock Android Flagship Phone: A flagship Axon device that runs on stock Android

Some of these ideas might sound simply too niche or unfeasible for commercial production and sale, so it was quite surprising to see that the final winner was the Eye Tracking, Self Adhesive Phone with 36% of votes, while the stock Android phone (Option 5) came in third with just 19% voting for it.

ZTE did see that there is significant demand for flagship grade hardware that runs on software close to stock Android, and this week, they are inviting more users to expand on their opinions and tell them why they prefer using pure stock or a near-stock Android experience. There is a single-choice poll attached, but you are invited to expand upon or choose your top few reasons in the comments. Choices include:

• Quicker updates
• Longer support period
• Cleaner interface and skin
• Better overall performance
• Less bloatware
• Lower defects
• Greater dev support for custom ROMs

ZTE does not immediately promise any fruits out of this opinion poll. However, the findings would be presented to their R&D team, which indicates that they are inclined to consider options beyond what they have stuck to in the past.

The release of the premium Pixels has created a void for affordable flagships with stock-like Android in the Nexus space, and current options for top-notch hardware with such software is restricted to the likes of the OnePlus 3. The entry of a ZTE Axon flagship with stock Android, if it comes to fruition, would certainly help the consumer by giving him more choice, and forcing other OEMs to react to the new competition.

Head on over to ZTE's forums to voice your opinion and let the OEM know!

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below too!

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Prototype for the Canceled Project ARA Modular Smartphone Revealed

Modular smartphones have long been regarded as the pinnacle of futuristic smartphone technology. A video simply titled 'Phonebloks' was published towards the end of 2013 that illustrated one man's vision for the future of smartphones. That video currently has over 21 million views and at the time caught the attention of the entire tech industry. Not long after the video was released, Motorola (at the time under Google's ownership) officially announced plans for a modular smartphone of their own, dubbed Project ARA.

We've covered a lot of the milestones that Project ARA has passed over the years, and it seems like Google was initially making major progress with the project. One of the biggest milestones was the announcement they would be launching a pilot program in Puerto Rico – for what seemed to be the first real-world launch of a modular smartphone. Since then, unfortunately, it seems that the project was starting to hit major roadblocks until finally the project was shelved a few months back.

It seemed that the modular smartphone dream was dead, at least for now. But despite the fact that Google never got around to officially launching a Project ARA smartphone, Phandroid was able to get their hands on what they believe to be a prototype developer device from the first half of this year. This device has the model number A8A01 and was never disclosed to the public. Within this prototype smartphone lies the Snapdragon 810 SoC, 3GBs of RAM, a 5.5″ 1080p display, 32GBs of internal storage, and a 3,450mAh capacity battery. Those specifications seem fairly standard considering the time period the device was being tested in, but keep in mind that the entire premise of the phone is to provide modularity so users can swap out parts in the future.

Phandroid also uploaded 40 photos to present all sides and all angles of the prototype developer device. Thanks to this, we get a look at how the modules were designed, how they were held into place, and how the phone even came with a module release button on the side of the device. Phandroid promises to reveal more details about the phone as well as answer some questions from readers in the weeks to come.

Source: Phandroid

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Nexus 5X & 6P to Receive Night Mode (Again) In a Future Release

With the introduction of the Android N Developer Preview, Google included a new feature called Night Mode which filters blue light from your screen to reduce eye strain. Many users swear by blue light filtering apps because of several studies that suggest blue light affects your circadian rhythm and makes it more difficult to go to sleep. Thus, developers have built third-party applications such as CF.lumen (by XDA Senior Recognized Developer Chainfire) which has placated many users, however, the annoyance of screen overlays with permission dialog boxes on Android 6.0+ has led many to petition Google for a more native, integrated solution. Hence, Night Mode was born.

This Night Mode feature was initially included in the developer previews for Android 7.0, so all supported Nexus devices were able to use it. Many were hoping to see it included in the final release of Android 7.0, but Alan from the Android Engineering Team said the feature needed a lot of work before it could go into a public release. So when the official Android 7.0 updates for the Nexus 5X and the Nexus 6P were released, this feature was removed from SystemUI Tuner just as Google had said.

Fortunately, however, the Night Mode feature itself was actually still present within the final release of 7.0 Nougat, though it was hidden. An application called Night Mode Enabler was released and that restored this functionality on these Nexus devices by issuing an intent to the SystemUI Tuner activity with the extra string show_night_mode:true. So while some people were upset that Google officially removed the feature, many were relieved with how easy it was to restore the functionality. Furthermore, with the introduction of Android 7.1 on the Pixel and Pixel XL, we saw this feature come back with a new name – Night Light. Unfortunately, Google Developer Advocate stated that Night Light would not be released on the Nexus devices due to missing driver support for the necessary hardware composer.

With the situation looking bleak, fans of Night Mode pinned their hopes that the feature would be reintroduced in the Android 7.1 Developer Preview, even if it does not utilize the more efficient hardware composition methods employed by Night Light in the Google Pixel phones. Sadly, this didn't happen and the update also entirely removed all references to Night Mode in SystemUI – preventing even the Night Mode Enabler app from restoring the feature. Although a mod for the Nexus 6P was released that restored Night Mode on Android 7.1.1 DP1, non-root users have been wanting the feature brought back in the official release. Thankfully, we are now aware that yesterday a Google employee marked this request status to be included in a "Future Release" on the AOSP Issue Tracker. We don't know exactly which update will restore Night Mode, but this news should be music to the ears of anyone disappointed by the initial removal of said feature.

Source: AOSP Issue Tracker

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OnePlus 3 to Receive a Nougat Community Build Update This Month

With all of the crazy OnePlus 3T rumors that have been flying around lately, it's nice to see some new information for the regular OnePlus 3 that many feel is the best smartphone of 2016. The OnePlus 3 has received a number of software updates that have improved performance, squashed bugs, and lately have been introducing a new design to a number of stock apps and the UI itself. This new design started as the company decided to merge the Oxygen OS and Hydrogen OS platforms together.

Last month, OnePlus came out and explained how they will be handling their Oxygen OS Community Beta program. Essentially, there will be three tiers: Closed Beta, Open Beta (aka Community Builds), and finally the Official OTA releases. They are aiming to push out ~4 closed beta updates per month, ~2 open beta updates per month, and then one official OTA update every 1 to 2 months.

It was at the start of October that we also learned OnePlus had started to work on Android 7.0 Nougat for the OnePlus 3. Since then, OnePlus has received a ton of questions asking exactly when their first Nougat update would be available to the public. Yesterday, we learned that this first update is scheduled to be released as a Community Build sometime this month. This was reported as confirmed by Engadget from Brian Yoon, the head of OnePlus' software team.

The company hopes to squash all of the bugs and polish the entire Nougat update so that it will be available as an official OTA update by the end of the year. These are just estimated schedules though, so if the team ends up hitting a roadblock or two, it could push the delay back a bit. In the report from Engadget, we also learn that "older devices like the OnePlus 2" will also be receiving the Nougat update. However, they are unable to give us an estimated time frame for when that update might be released.

Source: Engadget

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