Discord alpha hints at upcoming Pokémon GO collaboration, and surfacing COVID-19 channel

Discord began its journey in 2015 as a chat service that primarily focused on gamers, providing VoIP services to supplement real-time strategies in MOBAs. Over the years, the service has solidified its place as a chat platform, and it has also emerged as a good alternative to IRC. Discord as an app and service allows users to create different servers for a dedicated umbrella topic, and then create different channels within the server for further topic bifurcation. Users can then talk to each other within these channels, and you can keep track of the expected conversation topics within the channel. Discord has been growing in popularity recently, adding in features like displaying game activity to friends, AMOLED dark theme, temporary muting, slash commands, QR Code logins, and more. The latest Discord alpha reveals that the app is working on a collaboration with Pokémon GO, as well as surfacing helpful COVID-19 channels to more users through the Discover feature.

An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.

Pokémon GO – Discord Collaboration

Discord v16 alpha 7 is working on a possible collaboration with Pokémon GO, as these strings suggest:

<string name="invite_pokemon_go_announcements_label_long">Get latest announcements for Pokemon GO raids in Los Angeles!</string>
<string name="invite_pokemon_go_announcements_label_short">Get latest announcements</string>
<string name="invite_pokemon_go_friendship_label_long">Make new friends who are also passionate about Pokemon GO in your area!</string>
<string name="invite_pokemon_go_friendship_label_short">Make new friends</string>
<string name="invite_pokemon_go_strategy_label_long">Share tips and strategy so you can train the strongest Pokemon!</string>
<string name="invite_pokemon_go_strategy_label_short">Share tips and strategy</string>

Pokémon GO is working on bringing the ability to explore the virtual map and participate in Raid Battles from your home, in light of the health advisories issued for COVID-19. This proposed change presents an interesting problem for Niantic to tackle. Pokémon GO, so far, has avoided implementing any means of P2P communication within the game (which in our opinion is a good thing if the Ingress COMM experience is any benchmark). Thus, players had to rely on bumping into other players at Raid Battles, and then sharing contact/IM details with each other at their discretion.

With the Raid Battle experience moving from outdoors to indoors, this opportunity to communicate and work with other local players will be lost. 4-star and 5-star Raid Battles need teamwork to complete as they cannot be successfully completed by a single player working alone. If the strings found in Discord’s latest alpha are any indication, Discord is collaborating with Niantic to provide an IM medium outside of the game for players to communicate with each other. The strings suggest that the feature will first see a test in Los Angeles, where Niantic has an office. The Discord server will be local in nature, focusing on Raid Battle coordination primarily.

The thought to collaborate Pokémon GO with Discord is actually very good. Discord has plenty of VoIP features, which can help during short-manning Raid Battles. Users also need not share their personal identities on Discord, as the service uses usernames and numeric identifiers, unlike currently-popular alternatives like WhatsApp. It remains to be seen how Pokémon GO will handle Discord and its servers — whether there will be any integrations within the game, whether Niantic will create location-based regional servers or if users will be able to create regional servers and then submit it to Niantic. Niantic has not confirmed any aspect of this collaboration, but they did hint at something in their announcement post with this statement: “we’re enhancing our in-game virtual social features to enable players to stay in touch when they can’t meet in real life“. The final implementation remains to be seen.

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COVID-19 – Server Discovery

The latest alpha also contains these new strings:

<string name="guild_discovery_covid_body">Visit the community-run Coronavirus Discord to talk about COVID-19, and head to [CDC.gov](%1$s) for more information.</string>
<string name="guild_discovery_covid_button">Visit COVID-19 Discord</string>
<string name="guild_discovery_covid_title">Stay safe and informed</string>

These strings indicate that Discord will be making use of the Discover feature to direct users to visit the community-run COVID-19 server, where they can find more information on the topic.

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Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications.

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Samsung Galaxy S20 has a hidden 96Hz display mode: Here’s how to enable it

Samsung recently unveiled their Galaxy S20 lineup of smartphones. They have all of the bells and whistles you would expect from a Samsung flagship by now, including decently-performing cameras as well as top-of-the-line internals, but they also have one notable key feature, which is a high refresh rate display. The Samsung Galaxy S20 series has a display that supports a maximum resolution of 3200×1440 (WQHD+) and a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz. Despite some limitations, such as the fact that the 120Hz mode is limited to an FHD+ resolution (WQHD+ is limited to 60Hz, so you either have one or the other), it was a first and a major milestone for Samsung.

120Hz will clearly make your phone look really smooth, but with one downside: battery life. In display settings, you can choose to make the Galaxy S20 run at 2400×1080 (FHD+) and/or 60Hz: unlike many other smartphones from other manufacturers, there is no midway 90Hz option, leaving 60Hz and 120Hz as your two only options. 120Hz refreshes your display twice as quickly as 60Hz does, taking a toll on your battery life in the process. However, we recently discovered that these aren’t the only modes that the display supports: there are other hidden display modes you can set in the Galaxy S20s.

If you run the shell command “dumpsys display,” you’ll find that the Galaxy S20’s display actually supports the following modes:

[{id=1, width=1440, height=3200, fps=60.000004}, 
{id=2, width=1440, height=3200, fps=48.0}, 
{id=3, width=1080, height=2400, fps=120.00001}, 
{id=4, width=1080, height=2400, fps=96.00001}, 
{id=5, width=1080, height=2400, fps=60.000004}, 
{id=6, width=1080, height=2400, fps=48.0}, 
{id=7, width=720, height=1600, fps=120.00001}, 
{id=8, width=720, height=1600, fps=96.00001}, 
{id=9, width=720, height=1600, fps=60.000004}, 
{id=10, width=720, height=1600, fps=48.0}]

Here, we can see that there are several resolutions and refresh rates that are not accessible to the user: 1600×720 (HD+) resolution, 96fps, and 48fps. Despite the fact that these modes are not toggleable through the phone’s Settings, though, the fact that they show up here means that the phone supports these modes, and as such, we can force the Galaxy S20 to run in one of these modes.

By changing the value of Settings.System.peak_refresh_rate and Settings.System.min_refresh_rate to 48.0 or 96.0, you can set the refresh rate of your Galaxy S20 to one of these hidden values. Setting your phone to 96Hz will give you a slight bump in battery life as your display won’t refresh content as often, while still getting the advantages of having a high refresh rate on your display: it’ll still look considerably smoother than 60Hz. It will still not work with WQHD+, though, as that combination is not listed as one of the supported display modes.

To save you the hassle of running shell commands, though, XDA Senior Member sathishtony has put together a simple app that lets you change between 96Hz and 120Hz. The app even adds two Quick Setting tiles to toggle between the refresh rate modes. The app is open source and extremely simple because all it does is change the peak_refresh_rate and min_refresh_rate settings values for you. You can confirm if the change is working by going to testufo.com.

Check out the app on XDA Labs right now!

S20 Refresh Rate Controller (Free, XDA Labs) →

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Huawei P40 Pro allegedly still contains US-made components

After months of leaks and teasers, Huawei finally announced its flagship P40 series earlier this month. As you’d expect, the latest flagships from Huawei packed in some impressive hardware but they lacked one key component on the software front — Google Mobile Services. Instead of running Google Mobile Services (GMS) like all other Android devices, Huawei’s P40 series featured Huawei Mobile Services — an in-house alternative that was developed as a result of the trade ban imposed on the company. Interestingly though, a recent report from the Financial Times claims that the Huawei P40 Pro still makes use of some US-made components.

For the unaware, the trade ban on Huawei restricts US companies from conducting business with the Chinese company. As a result, the Mate 30 series and the Huawei Y9 Prime from last year were released without GMS. Back in December last year, we also learned that the two devices didn’t make use of any US-made hardware. However, things seem to have changed over the last couple of months. A teardown of the Huawei P40 Pro conducted by Shenzhen-based XYZone, which disassembles smartphones and identifies the suppliers of their components, reveals that the device’s radio-frequency front-end modules were produced by US-based chip manufacturers Qualcomm, Skyworks, and Qorvo.

While the report further reveals that the Qualcomm component in the Huawei P40 Pro is covered by a license from the US Department of Commerce, there is no indication from Qorvo or Skyworks if their parts are covered by a similar license. Even though the Huawei P40 series does make use of some US-made components, to its credit the company has successfully managed to replace some prominent US-based suppliers like Micron, which supplied flash storage chips from the P30 series. Instead, the P40 series makes use of storage chips made by Samsung. It’s also worth noting that Huawei’s flagship SoC, the HiSilicon Kirin 990, makes use of ARM Cortex-A76 and ARM Cortex-A55 cores from ARM Holdings, which is another US-based company.

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Source: Financial Times

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Niantic considers adding options to explore and raid from home in Pokémon GO

Pokémon GO began its journey in July 2016, building upon Niantic’s Ingress and the infrastructure the game put in place. Much like Ingress, Pokémon GO focused on exploring real-world locations to play the game. The initial response to the game was historic, as it fundamentally changed how geolocation-based games, as well as AR-based genres, are experienced by the public. While the focus has always been to go outside, there may be many reasons why someone cannot go outside — which is why we saw a great increase in activity on our threads that discussed location spoofing. Niantic clamped down on the idea of playing the game without moving, and one of the first steps it took was to block rooted devices (usually a pre-requisite for location-spoofing) from entering the game, and more recently, check aggressively for even hints of root or modifications. Now, COVID-19 health advisories have enforced the ideas of social distancing and staying indoors. Consequently, Niantic is being forced to rethink how players enjoy its geolocation and community-focused games in such difficult times. The company is now considering allowing players to explore areas and do Raid Battles with other players from the comfort of their homes.

In an announcement post titled “Embracing real-world gaming from home”, Niantic, Inc. has shared its product roadmap with a focus on enabling more ways for players to play its portfolio of games from inside their homes, in the coming weeks. Pokémon GO’s Adventure Sync feature will get improvements that will make it work even better with indoor movement and activities. The game will also see an enhancement on “in-game virtual social features” that will enable players to stay in touch when they can’t meet in real life (we have some more information on this, which we will shortly detail in a separate article). The post further goes on to say that “you’ll soon be able to team up with friends and take on Raid Battles together in Pokémon GO from the comfort of home“, and “we’re also looking into how we can help players virtually visit and share memories about their favorite real-world places until they can once again visit them in person“.

Do these changes mean that Pokémon GO will officially provide a way to spoof your location? We don’t really know since the wording is up for interpretation. The announcement explicitly confirms the upcoming ability to participate in Raid Battles together — which is needed because 4-star and 5-star Raid Battles cannot be successfully completed by a single player, by design. Raid Battles occurred at Gyms on the map, which corresponded to a physical location in real life. So there will be some form of location manipulation feature at play here. However, you may not necessarily be able to virtually run around the world and catch Pokémon as one could through location spoofing apps.

Current screenshot from Pokémon GO. A Raid Battle is underway at the Gym, but one needs to physically reach there to participate. Similarly, one needs to physically reach Pokéstops to receive in-game items.

Curiously, Pokémon GO showed a very strong week-over-week growth of 67% for the week beginning on March 16. The game grossed $23 Million in gross revenue in the week, accounting for 13% of all total revenue earned in 2020 for the game. Downloads also spiked, with 1.6 million first-time installs over the week of March 9.

Report by SensorTower (via Gamesindustry.biz)

Despite the increase in activity and revenue, COVID-19 has forced Niantic to rethink its gameplay, and one can hope that the company has finally realized that moving around may not be a feasible option for many — COVID-19 or otherwise. Niantic did make changes earlier that made it easier to play the game indoors, such as introducing a new GO Battle League for PvP battles across the world, reducing walking requirements in-game, and deeply discounting in-game items to make it easier for players to play the game without needing to move out too much. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Ingress also received similar tweaks, offering an alternative gameplay style when community-play is not entirely possible. These changes are, however, temporary, as Niantic does mention that it will return back to its original vision once the pandemic has passed. We hope Niantic receives enough positive feedback to consider making some of these changes permanent.

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Pokémon GO (Free⁺, Google Play) →

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Whatsapp Beta v2.20.110 hints at upcoming multi-device support and expiring messages

WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app. But it has several limitations as compared to other messengers that bind you to a particular phone or Android tablet. This may change soon as WhatsApp is reportedly working on support for simultaneous usage on multiple devices. Other than supporting multiple devices, WhatsApp might also allow users to send self-expiring messages in the near future.

Multiple devices

In the latest WhatsApp beta version 2.20.110, WABetaInfo discovered new references to multiple device support. WhatsApp appears to be working on this new feature that will allow users to log into the same WhatsApp account on different devices. They will be able to chat using the same account on more than one device at the same time. Unlike WhatsApp Web or desktop apps, this feature would not require a host and a dependent device and it will be available on both Android and iOS.

Every time a new device is added to an account, the encryption keys will update in response to the change. All of the user’s contacts will be notified of this change, although the messages might be different for stable and for beta versions of WhatsApp.

The feature is still under development and will be available in the future.

Expiring messages

We’ve been hearing about WhatsApp’s intention to add self-destructing messages. The “Disappearing Messages” feature was first reported last October and was only applicable to groups. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, the feature was spotted again, this time with a different name – “Delete messages,” and with support for private conversations besides group chats. Now, the feature has popped up again; it is now called “Expiring messages” and is now targetted at both – groups and private messages.

Expiring messages can be visible for either 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month and the messages disappear from the chat automatically after the completion of this duration. In previous versions, there was a “1 hour” option as well but, it now appears to have been removed.

Expiring Messages are only visible to administrators in the group. For individual chats, a timer icon will be used to represent that the feature has been toggled on. This icon can be seen along with the profile picture in the chat list and inside the chat and also on each chat bubble.

Like Multiple device support, Expiring messages are also under development and may be available in the future.

Video status limitations in India

In India, WhatsApp is apparently limiting the duration of the video status to 15 seconds and videos longer than that will not be published. This is apparently to prevent local servers from overloading amidst the nationwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

ANNOUNCEMENT:
You can no longer send videos to WhatsApp Status if they are longer than 16 seconds: only videos having a duration of 15 seconds will be allowed.
This is happening in India and it’s probably an initiative to reduce the traffic on the server infrastructures.

— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) March 28, 2020

This limit is likely to revert back after the lockdown ends.

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Xiaomi releases the Redmi K30 Pro kernel source code

Xiaomi first unveiled their Redmi K series last year with the Redmi K20 and the Redmi K20 Pro. While the former was an upper-midrange flagship, the latter is the one that got the most attention, since it fit very snugly into the “flagship-killer” category. Early this year, we got to know the Redmi K30 lineup, first unveiled with the standard Redmi K30 (which then went on to launch in India as the POCO X2) and the Redmi K30 5G. More recently, Xiaomi also announced the Redmi K30 Pro, which follows the footsteps of its predecessor in bringing a flagship processor (the Snapdragon 865 in this case) to a competitive price point.

Just like all other Xiaomi devices from 2020, the new Redmi K30 Pro (which might launch under the POCO branding in India just like the Redmi K30 did) launched with Android 10 with MIUI 11 on top, but MIUI might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Luckily, just like other Xiaomi phones, developers can start custom development projects for the Redmi K30 Pro since Xiaomi has just released the Linux kernel source code for the device, code-named “lmi”. This comes as no surprise since Xiaomi has lately been on top of their game in timely kernel source code releases. They also recently released the Linux kernel source code for the other devices in their recent lineups, such as the Redmi K30 5G and the Xiaomi Mi 10 series.

If you’re a developer and you’re interested in building TWRP or AOSP for this device, then you can go ahead and download the kernel source right now from GitHub. Given that this is one of the cheapest devices to launch with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, it’s likely that development for it will flourish once the device makes its way outside of China.

Redmi K30 Pro Kernel Sources

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Redmi Note 8 Pro Custom Developments: LineageOS 17.1, Google Camera port, Pixel Experience, and more

For Xiaomi, India is the company’s most successful foreign market, and the Redmi Note lineup has undoubtedly contributed a lot behind this monumental accomplishment. Despite facing cut-throat competition from other companies, both the regular and the Pro variants of the Redmi Note 8 managed to make their way into the global top 10 list of best-selling smartphones on Q4 2019. Xiaomi’s decision to incorporate the gaming-oriented MediaTek Helio G90T SoC inside the Redmi Note 8 Pro (our review) did raise some eyebrows in the aftermarket development community, but the company addressed those concerns by publishing the kernel source code for the phone rather quickly. In a bid to make the device more attractive to tinkerers, we collaborated with Xiaomi to ship units to custom ROM and kernel developers. Owners of the phone will be glad to know that many custom developments have popped up for the Redmi Note 8 Pro over the last few weeks, including OrangeFox Recovery (fork of TWRP), a Google Camera port, and unofficial builds of several custom ROMs such as LineageOS.

Redmi Note 8 Pro Forums ||| Buy Redmi Note 8 Pro from Amazon.in

While official TWRP support for this phone arrived months ago, the nature of MediaTek codebase, as well as the controversial EDL Lockdown, made it quite hard for developers to muck around with the otherwise capable device. Even the stable Android 10 update package released by Xiaomi can cause a hard brick in some scenarios, which significantly slowed down the pace of third-party development. Fortunately, a leaked factory firmware helped modders find out a way to partially bypass the roadblocks. You can find out more about the unbrick process in this thread, and we strictly advise you to give it a thorough read before playing around with the custom ROMs listed below.

Redmi Note 8 Pro Mods

LineageOS (Unofficial)

XDA Recognized Developer TheImpulson was among the list of developers to receive a device from us, and thanks to that, we now have an unofficial build of LineageOS 17.1 based on Android 10. Although the ROM is fairly usable, the list of caveats is significantly long at this stage. VoLTE and NFC (on global variant) are not working and the full resolution of the camera sensor can’t be utilized at this moment. Moreover, the fingerprint sensor and the hotspot functionality can be glitchy from time to time. You can try it out on your phone by following the link below.

Download unofficial LineageOS 17.1 for the Redmi Note 8 Pro

POSP (Official beta) and Pixel Experience (Unofficial)

If you’re a fan of barebone stock Android, you can also try out the Potato Open Sauce Project, AKA POSP. The AOSP-based ROM is created by XDA Recognized Developer Agent_fabulous, who is also the maintainer of this particular phone. If you want some Google Pixel goodies on top of vanilla Android, you can also give the Pixel Experience ROM by XDA Member ZIDAN44 a go. According to the developers, the current build might not be suitable as a daily driver due to a partially working radio interface layer. If you want to bite the bullet anyway, grab the builds from the following links.

Download official (beta) POSP v3.1.3+8 for the Redmi Note 8 Pro

Download unofficial Pixel Experience 10 for the Redmi Note 8 Pro

CesiumOS (Unofficial) and Evolution X (Unofficial)

If customization is your thing, then you can also check out the CesiumOS v2.5.2 and Evolution X 4.1 ROMs for this phone, as both of them pack in a ton of features. You get access to everything from status bar customization options to lock screen personalization features with them. However, the aforementioned issues are also present in these ROMs. Try them out by following the links below.

Download unofficial CesiumOS v2.5.2 for the Redmi Note 8 Pro

Download unofficial Evolution X 4.1 for the Redmi Note 8 Pro

OrangeFox Recovery (Unofficial)

Besides cooking up CesiumOS, XDA Senior Member Sahil_Sonar has also released an OrangeFox Recovery build for this phone as well. This popular fork of TWRP fully supports MIUI update zip flashing as well as an integrated Magisk flasher. The developer has also added support for Android 10. Download the OrangeFox Recovery package from the link below.

Download unofficial OrangeFox Recovery R10.1 for the Redmi Note 8 Pro

Google Camera port

If you want to get the most out of the camera, you can check out the Google Camera port for this phone maintained by XDA Senior Member Wyroczen. Even the auxiliary camera sensors reportedly work fine with the latest ported version. Try it out by following the link below.

Download Google Camera port for the Redmi Note 8 Pro

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