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vendredi 13 janvier 2017

Over 100,000 People Pre-Ordered the Nokia 6 in China

In case you missed it, HMD Global recently launched a phone with the Nokia branding. We covered the release last weekend, but the most important news at the launch was the Nokia 6 will only officially be sold in the Chinese market. The new Nokia phone will be made available sometime in "early 2017," for a price of 1699 CNY (which is around $250 right now).

We'll have to wait and see when HMD Global will be ready to start selling the phone to the general public.

In China, smartphone companies like to ask potential customers to pre-register for a device that they're interested in buying. This is different than an actual pre-order, as the person is generally not expected to pay any money to register their interest in the phone. It just gives the OEM an idea as to how many people are interested in a certain product of theirs. It was reported that over 250,000 people pre-registered for the Nokia 6 within the first 24 hours.

Some companies in China also do pre-orders though, and that does generally require that the person pay in full to reserve their own device. So early this morning, we started to see reports that HMD Global had been able to get over 100,000 full pre-orders for the Nokia 6 within the first 4 days. While not record breaking numbers, it's definitely impressive for a company to achieve this when they were founded in May of last year, and when this is their first notable release.

The device definitely has some decent specs for the price it is available at, and the design isn't anything to scoff at either. The type of software made available in the Nokia 6 will surely make or break this device though. That, and we'll have to see if they actually have plans to support the device (with both software patches and major version updates) once the device has actually been made available.

What do you think of the Nokia 6's specs, design and price? Will this be something you try to pick up from a reseller, or will you wait and for the flagship Nokia 8?

Source: DigiTimes



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Google Adds Private Channel Apps to the Managed Play Store

Towards the end of last year, Google rebranded their Google Apps for Work platform into G Suite. They've been doing this to a few of their technologies lately, for whatever reason, but things have been business as usual for the Mountain View tech giant.

They recently announced App Maker for their G Suite customers, acquired a company to help improve the audio quality of their Hangouts users, and this week they've announced a change to the managed Play Store.

Google allows companies who pay for G Suite services to develop unique applications for their employees. This is where the App Maker came into play as it helped these businesses deploy an application much faster than before. These applications were considered private, but were still available in the Play Store application. They were just hidden in a secret tab that was labeled the same name as the company.

Google wanted to make these applications easier to access, so they have moved them into a category called Work Apps. Instead of being the last category within the Play Store, this category has moved into the 3rd position (which is right after Top Charts and Games). They want to use this Work Apps category as a place to store all the applications your employee may need in order to get their job done.

So instead of only listing private applications here, the G Suite admins will be able to add in a list of public applications as well. Google has also made it so that there is no longer a need to manage different access controls for employees. The controls for the private and public applications within this Work Apps category will be consolidated in the managed Play Store and there will be a simplified whitelisting process for mobile applications.

Source: G Suite



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Galaxy S7 & S7 Edge are Finally Receiving their Android 7.0 Nougat Update (Currently for Beta Testers)

Samsung has been doing a beta test for their Nougat update for a couple of months now. Many people hoped that they would have started this beta test earlier (since Android 7.0 officially released in August of last year, after all), but they didn't announce their first beta test of the update until around November.

This seemed a big strange since Google began doing developer tests of the update all the way back in March of last year.

Google did this to let Android developers test out the new software and get their apps ready for the update, but they also did it so that OEMs could get their hands on the update faster. Their attempt to help OEMs push out the major update wasn't as successful as they had hoped, though. Samsung waited a little over 2 months after the official release to even publicly beta test their update, and it took them an additional 2 months to start the official roll out.

But thankfully that time has come. We're starting to see screenshots circulate around the community that show the new OTA update is being pushed to them. The screenshots SamMobile has published showcase an update from the Nougat beta to the final version (which is just under 215MB in size). We haven't seen any screenshots showing that they are pushing out the Nougat update to current Marshmallow users though. If you were on Marshmallow and received the Nougat OTA update, we would love to hear from you.

So even though Samsung delivered the update later than some were hoping for, they actually beat their own schedule. The beta software team over at Samsung said they were planning on rolling out the update sometime around the 17th of this month. This could be when Marshmallow Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge owners start getting their OTA update, but either way it looks like they were done a week early.

Source: SamMobile



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Galaxy S8 Expectedly Coming with IP68 Rating for Dust and Water Resistance

The Korean news outlet The Investor has reported multiple sources as saying that the much-awaited successor to the Galaxy S7 and the iPhone 8 are both going to have IP68 rating for dust and water resistance.

Applying an IP68-level of dust and water resistance to the Galaxy S8 and iPhone 8 means that they are both dust sealed (not just resistant to external damage), and will also be able to face sustained submersion under water. The Galaxy S7 also has an IP68 rating, so this news is something we've been expecting — however, the article also states that Samsung is looking to bring water and dust resistance to other, cheaper smartphone lines it offers.

The Investor doesn't specify the submersion depth or duration that the S8 will be rated for either; however, the current generation S7 is rated for 1.5m and a duration of 30 mins with a IP rating of 68, so we can similar or better protection than that.

The actual depth and duration are specified by the manufacturer so it will be interesting to see how far of both these companies are willing to push their devices. Managing to waterproof a smartphone while also keeping a thin and attractive is no easy feat, and some of Samsung's products may have just failed under such pressure — here's hoping the Galaxy S8 does just fine!

The Investor



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jeudi 12 janvier 2017

What Do You Look Forward to in 2017?

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has just recently wrapped up, and at the event we caught a glimpse of what many key players in the industry are planning for this year.

Besides many new smartphones coming soon we'll inevitably see new versions of Android for smartphones, smartwatches, televisions, and even automobiles. Plus, we're seeing growing interest in home automation thanks to the competition between Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant ramping up.

So, our question to you is,

What do you look forward to in 2017?

Let us know in the comments below!



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OnePlus Assures Fix for OnePlus 3/3T Bootloader Vulnerability in Next OTA

Just yesterday, we highlighted a bootloader vulnerability that affected the OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T. This vulnerability made use of the fastboot mode on the device to toggle SELinux status from Enforcing to Permissive.

This state toggle can be done on both bootloader locked and bootloader unlocked devices. The issue was further complicated by the absence of an SELinux entry in the 'About Phone' screen, thus giving us no easy way to figure out if a device had been manipulated.

We had reached out to XDA Recognized Developer Sultanxda to shed some light on the issue:

The way that the "fastboot oem selinux <state>" command works is that it adds an extra argument onto the kernel command line when booting Linux. The extra argument comes in the form of "androidboot.selinux=<state>", where <state> can be "permissive". There's where things get funny: "androidboot.<something>" arguments on the kernel command line are parsed by Android's init. In a normal Android production build (a "user" build), the "androidboot.selinux" argument is totally ignored and selinux is always forced to enforcing.

So this bug is composed of two issues: One, users can make the bootloader pass a flag that would normally make selinux permissive on an engineering/debugging ROM build. And two, OnePlus modified Android's init in order to honor the "androidboot.selinux" flag even for production ROM builds.

Sultanxda suggested a few ways to fix the issue. You can read up on the suggestions and more on the vulnerability in our original post.

OnePlus has responded to the existence of the vulnerability. The company has assured that the vulnerability will be patched for the OnePlus 3 and the OnePlus 3T. Both the devices will be receiving this patch as part of their next OTA update.

We value the quick response received from OnePlus. Here's hoping that the next round of OTA arrives soon for both the devices!



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Gmail 7.1.1 Hints at Integrating Tasks and Reminder Snoozing

Reminiscent of Google Inbox, a new version of Gmail is rolling out soon that hints at integrating tasks and reminders. Gmail 7.1.1 will be available soon in the Play Store, but some users have already received the update and pushed it to APK Mirror earlier today. We've taken a look inside the APK file, and there are indeed some interesting changes to note.

Although the strings and files contained in the APK hint at the inclusion of a new feature, it is always possible that Google may not actually implement these features.


Gmail 7.1.1 with Inbox Features?

Within the APK, there are some additional strings we have found that suggest two additional features will soon be integrated into Gmail. The first is Tasks integration:

Gmail Teardown

  <string name="mailbox_name_display_t4">Tasks</string>  <string name="t4_section_title_no_due_day">No due date</string>  <string name="t4_section_title_overdue">Overdue</string>  <string name="t4_section_title_later_this_week">Later this week</string>  <string name="t4_section_title_next_week">Next week</string>  <string name="t4_section_title_later">Later</string>  <string name="t4_section_title_done">Done</string>  <string name="t4_list_t4_due_date_label">Due %1$s</string>  <string name="t4_compose_button">Compose Task</string>  <string name="t4_detail_high_priority_label">High priority</string>  <string name="t4_detail_low_priority_label">Low priority</string>  <string name="t4_detail_body_content_description">Notes: %1$s</string>  <string name="t4_detail_notification_time_content_description">Reminder: %1$s</string>  <string name="t4_detail_recurrence_content_description">Repeats: %1$s</string>  <string name="t4_detail_mark_as_done">Mark as done</string>  <string name="t4_detail_mark_as_not_done">Mark as not done</string>  <string name="t4_toolbar_title_create_task">New task</string>  <string name="t4_toast_bar_title_mark_as_done">Marked as done</string>  <string name="t4_toast_bar_title_mark_as_not_done">Marked as not done</string>  <string name="tasks_edit_segment_title_hint">Title</string>  <string name="tasks_edit_segment_due_date_label">Due date</string>  <string name="tasks_edit_segment_reminder_label">Reminder</string>  <string name="t4_edit_segment_priority_label">Priority</string>  <string name="tasks_edit_segment_body_hint">Add note</string>  <string name="t4_edit_segment_recurrence_none">Does not repeat</string>  <string name="t4_edit_priority_label_high_priority">High priority</string>  <string name="t4_edit_priority_label_normal_priority">Normal priority</string>  <string name="t4_edit_priority_label_low_priority">Low priority</string>  <string name="t4_edit_priority_label_abbrev_high_priority">High</string>  <string name="t4_edit_priority_label_abbrev_normal_priority">Normal</string>  <string name="t4_edit_priority_label_abbrev_low_priority">Low</string>  <string name="t4_edit_error_empty_title">The task title cannot be empty.</string>  <string name="t4_edit_error_invalid_reminder_time">The reminder cannot be after the due date.</string>  <string name="t4_edit_discard_dialog_message">Discard changes?</string>  <string name="t4_edit_discard_dialog_keep_editing">Keep editing</string>  <string name="t4_edit_access_label_due_date">Due Date %1$s</string>  <string name="t4_edit_access_label_reminder">Reminder %1$s</string>  <string name="t4_view_conversation">View conversation</string>  <string name="empty_t4_folder">Nothing in Tasks</string>  <string name="t4_sync_off">"Task sync is off. Turn on in &lt;a href='http://www.example.com'>Account settings.&lt;/a>"</string>  <string name="t4_list_low_priority_content_description">Low priority</string>  <string name="t4_list_high_priority_content_description">High priority</string>  <string name="t4_list_recurrence_content_description">Repeats</string>  <string name="t4_list_reminder_set_content_description">Reminder</string>  <string name="t4_list_mail_content_description">From email</string>  

We can clearly see that Gmail will allow us to create and edit Tasks. These tasks can be set based on priority and can be given due dates. Furthermore, users will be able to set reminders to complete these tasks. At any time, a user can go in and mark the task as done or not done. If a user receives a reminder to complete a task but has not yet been able to complete it, the reminder notification will allow you to snooze the reminder as well, as evidenced by some more strings found within the APK:

Gmail Teardown

  <string name="t4_snooze_activity_label">Snooze</string>  <string name="t4_snooze_dialog_10_minutes">10 minutes</string>  <string name="t4_snooze_dialog_30_minutes">30 minutes</string>  <string name="t4_snooze_dialog_1_hour">1 hour</string>  <string name="t4_snooze_dialog_tomorrow">Tomorrow</string>  <string name="t4_snooze_dialog_snooze_button">Snooze</string>  <string name="t4_reminder_notification_snooze_button">Snooze</string>  <string name="t4_reminder_notification_done_button">Done</string>  

The notification button will expand to a dialog allowing you to snooze the reminder until 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, or 1 day later. If you are done with the task, you can mark the task as "done" straight from the reminder notification.

We believe it is highly likely that these features will make it into Gmail, given that we found not only strings within the Strings.xml file, but when performing a diff of the files present within each APK we discovered that much of the layouts have already been included. Within /res/layout of the new Gmail APK, we found the related XML files for editing the task and creating a task from the floating action button within Gmail. Furthermore, within the AndroidManifest file, the appropriate Alarm services and receives have been defined, so that the application will be able to notify you for any reminders you have set.



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