In a recent teardown of Gboard v9.7, we discovered strings of code regarding a couple of new features making their way to the popular keyboard app. These included a new Ask Assistant button to trigger the Google Assistant, smart completion support, and a feature that would undo auto-correct on tapping backspace. Now, Google has started rolling out some of these features in the latest stable release of the Gboard app.
Gboard v9.7.03 has started rolling out on the stable channel and it brings smart completion support to the app, along with a new undo auto-correct on backspace toggle. Our Editor-in-Chief, Mishaal Rahman, has shared the following screenshots of the new features in action.
As you can see in the attached screenshots, there’s a new ‘Smart completions’ toggle in Gboard settings that you can enable to turn on the new feature. Much like the Smart Compose feature on Gmail and Google Docs, Smart completions in Gboard makes use of machine learning to provide suggestions to help you complete a sentence. The suggestions appear right next to whatever you’re typing in the text box and you can swipe right across the suggested sentence to autocomplete it.
On another device, I’ve also got an “undo autocorrect on backspace” toggle. Because Gboard’s autocorrections sometimes suck. pic.twitter.com/U75lEDh5ay
Along with the Smart completions feature, the Gboard update also brings an ‘Undo auto-correct on backspace’ setting. Once enabled, the setting will let you easily revert back to the original text by tapping the backspace key when Gboard’s autocorrect messes up.
— Sir ‘#EndDiscrimination’ Henry (@TotalSecurily) August 9, 2020
Additionally, Gboard has also started testing a new Google Assistant-powered dictation feature which was first showcased at Google I/O 2019. Strings related to the feature were spotted in a recent teardown of Gboard v9.6.3 beta and it now seems to be rolling out to a few users. While the feature wasn’t available on any of our devices, @TotalSecurily on Twitter has shared the following clip of the feature in action.
As you can see in the clip, tapping on the mic icon in Gboard brings up a new Google Assistant dictation interface that lets you enter text using just your voice. The feature also lets you send the message by saying send or delete whatever is typed out by saying delete. Once you’re done using the feature, you can also close it by simply saying close.
All of the new features mentioned above seem to be a part of a server-side test and they’re only available for a handful of users at the moment. While Google hasn’t released any information regarding a wider rollout, we expect the new features to reach all users in the following weeks.
Xiaomi launched the Mi Note 10 Lite back in April as a stripped-down version of last year’s Mi Note 10. The Mi Note 10 Lite is a photography-centric device with its 64MP quad-camera setup and features a premium-looking glass design. Xiaomi may be thinking of bringing over the Mi Note 10 Lite to India, but only after rebranding it as the Mi 10i.
XDA Member and frequent Xiaomi tipster kacskrz had found evidence that Xiaomi was working on a new smartphone for India with the codename “tocoin”, back in June 2020. This codename was spotted alongside the marketing name of “Mi 10i” indicating that the device will be rebranded to this name in India. The codename “toco” belongs to the Mi Note 10 Lite, and “tocoin” belongs to the Mi 10i, indicating that this is the rebranding that we will see for India for the same device. Twitter user the_tech_guy brought this news back to the spotlight.
Xiaomi India meanwhile has not shared any indications of the device actually coming to the Indian market, so we might have to wait for a while for the device to actually land here.
The Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Lite is a 4G-only device, which should not be any problem for India as the country is still some months and years away from reliable consumer-friendly 5G. Instead of 5G, the Mi Note 10 focuses on photography without breaking the bank, featuring a 64MP Sony IMX686 sensor in the primary camera on the back as compared to the 108MP sensor on the Mi Note 10. It is powered by a Snapdragon 730G chipset. The two variants of the smartphone include 6GB/64GB and 8GB/128GB. The phone’s glass sandwich design and an AMOLED display with curved edges make it a good choice for a phone that also looks premium. The Mi Note 10 Lite also has a beefy 5260 mAh battery and a charging rate of 30W. Most of these features should be retained when the device comes to India as the Mi 10i, though we could see some variations in the RAM and storage capacities.
The much-anticipated OnePlus Nord is finally here and is already on sale in most markets. The device received its first software update last month, which brought several performance improvements and bug fixes along with support for OnePlus Buds. Now, OnePlus is rolling out yet another software update in the form of OxygenOS 10.5.4 that further improves the front and macro camera performance, display performance, quality of video calls, and fixes some bugs. OnePlus notes this update also improves the launch speed of the Gallery app and fixes a bug which stopped the music playback when launching the front camera.
The full changelog for the OxygenOS 10.5.4 update is posted below:
System
Improved launch speed of Gallery
Improved display experience
Fixed issue of being unable to join Red Cable Club
Fixed issue of background music pausing when launching front camera
Camera
Improved quality of video calls
Improved color accuracy and white balance for low-light selfies
Improved vibrancy and color accuracy of macro camera
Cloud Service
Fixed issue of syncing Notes (India only)
The OxygenOS 10.5.3 will be rolling out to OnePlus Nord units gradually over the next few days. However, if you haven’t received the update just yet and don’t want to wait for the rollout, you can also sideload the update by flashing the update package from the below links. We have provided links to both incremental OTA and full OTA zips.
In recent years, Dirty Unicorns has been one of the most feature-packed, stable, and popular custom ROMs available for various Pixel phones, but for a long time, it couldn’t be found on the XDA forums. That changed with an announcement on the Dirty Unicorns Twitter account on Monday, August 3rd and you can now enjoy a traditional Dirty Unicorns forum thread for each supported device.
ATTN: We’re going back to XDA!
No, this is not a really late April fools joke. We wanted to take a moment to briefly explain why. Please read the entire thread of tweets.
For the uninitiated, Dirty Unicorns began nearly a decade ago as an offshoot of the then-popular Ice Cream Sandwich ROM named AOKP. Dirty Unicorns really began to establish its own “personality” during the Jelly Bean era and has become one of the longest-lasting custom ROMs of all time. Though real-life matters have left me running stock on my daily-use devices for at least the past year, I had been a longtime user of Dirty Unicorns before that and even covered major developments in the ROM over time.
Currently, some of the outstanding features in Dirty Unicorns include popular Pixel-specific features unavailable in AOSP such as Motion Sense and Active Edge, and Pulse still brings a graphic equalizer to the bottom of your screen along with a more robust take on system theming than the one that comes standard to Pixel phones. The Dirty Unicorns theming engine basically mimics Google’s approach while adding more options. For example, more accent colors and fonts are available in Dirty Unicorns beyond the ones in the stock Pixel ROM. Also, there are more navigation “pill” options and more icon shapes available. Also, there are four available system themes: light, dark gray (“Google” gray), pitch black, and “solarized dark”. Some of the theming features are highlighted in the following screenshots:
As for their Android 11 plans, I’ve been told by one of their leading developers that the ROM’s most popular features should make the jump some reasonable time after the Android 11/R code is released by Google to AOSP. Of course, it takes time to port these features since Google often moves features around in their code with each major release so don’t expect Dirty Unicorns 15.0 to come out right after the next AOSP push. Such is the case, of course, with every feature-laden custom ROM that adds anything significant to the standard Android source code.
On August 6th, 2020, Huawei hosted their Huawei Developer Webinar that focused on introducing their new e-commerce related services. This webinar titled “Connect LIVEs with E-commerce” is an hour-long and was streamed for free online. If you missed the livestream, you can catch the replay using the link below. In their article, we are going to recap all of the most exciting points from the stream.
Global partners Share their Live E-commerce Experiences
Huawei invited global big names from the e-commerce domain to come share their experiences at this webinar. These experts were able to share their thoughts on the increasingly popular e-commerce livestreaming solutions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have been looking at new ways to have successful online retail events. One of the areas seeing the most growth is in-app livestreams. During the webinar, we got to hear from the following experts:
Roosevelt Nascimento [Head of Product and Business Intelligence for Dafiti]
“We need to take advantage of the Huawei partnership to offer a seamless and better experience. Huawei has a high standard of quality devices using technology like high-quality images for image search, or even HiAI as an assistant to find the right product.”
Andres Cooper O. [CEO and Co-Founder of Chilaeutos]
“Livestreaming allows us to reach more users, position our brand, and strengthen our ties with our community. Livestreams create entertainment and useful information about our industry.”
Amelyn Marin [Marketing Manager for E-fast]
“A key factor with an impact on e-commerce business is the user-friendliness of the platforms that people use to buy products. COVID-19 has forced many stores to close their doors for weeks. As a result, many of them have relied on online broadcasts to connect with potential customers without needing a physical place.”
Larry Lin [VP, Head of Marketing for Zaful]
“This feature brings great profit potential to the livestreaming market. Unlike sellers in China, sellers in other countries are not familiar with the technique of livestreaming… Many players are still entering the industry. Zaful is one of them.”
Roland Ros [CEO and Founder of Kumu]
“It’s not just like the home shopping network. Basically what’s happening is you’re actually selling products to your friends and family like they were in your own home. So that’s something that’s really very interesting for us and E-commerce.”
Each guest explains how COVID-19 has affected their business, while they’ve seen an increase in online sales. Their partnership with Huawei allows them to grow this market using the new livestreaming technologies.
New Trends of Live-streaming E-commerce
Livestreamed e-commerce has become a hot growth area for the e-commerce industry. This area saw the most growth in 2020 as it becomes a strong method for obtaining capital for consumers and investors globally. The live e-commerce experience is far more interactive than your traditional online retail. Engage in real-time questions and answers, related to the current content being streamed. Consumers find this interactive experience much more exciting and make online shopping more fun in general.
If you look at retail trends across multiple industries, we find that those who use live e-commerce are seeing growing conversion rates when compared to traditional retail. Studying the current trend of e-commerce, you can safely predict that this is going to continue to be a growing market for online retail. Many companies will continue to invest in this new trend to gain the significant advantages of this type of content.
E-commerce sales growth
Huawei shared information about the growth of online e-commerce compared to typical retail sales. Huawei says that they’ve personally experienced massive growth in this area, with the launch of 25 new e-commerce stores in several different countries. They have also experienced an uplift in revenue of more than 200% in 2020.
In order to keep up with the change, companies will need to evolve the way they interact with customers. The days of boring texts descriptions and product review videos are gone. Now super interactive livestreamed content can be used to boost product sales.
Huawei went on to give specifics about the success of the different types of products being sold using live e-commerce. Watch the livestream replay for a more in-depth look at all of these specifics.
New Technology of Live-streaming E-commerce
As the webinar continued we got a look at the specific features that will be available through the HMS kits related to live e-commerce. The overall goal of these kits is to make the livestreaming process simple, faster, more cost-effective, and more immersive. The next-gen live studios can consist of as little as one mobile phone and an external camera. This is all you need to get started with your multi-camera livestream.
Digital backgdrops will be another feature that can replace costly sets and locations. Digital backdrops are easy to use and can be changed to fit your specific scenario. Hosts will also be able to show the internal details and parameters of the product. This information will be shown visually as an overlay on the livestream.
The final feature they discussed was a more fluid streaming experience. One of the biggest challenges of online streaming is maintaining a high-quality stream throughout your show. Since this is such an important feature to drive sales, Huawei put a lot of effort into making it easier to maintain your stream quality, even for slower connections. Your phone will be able to detect the quality of your connection in real-time and then adjust the stream quality accordingly.
Huawei proceeded to show their demo video of some of these features in action:
The current platforms that feature Huawei’s versatile mobile phone shooting features are:
LiveMe
Likee
Huawei MeeTime
These camera features are currently compatible with:
Drift action cameras
AIcidae AI panoramic cameras
This is just the beginning, as Huawei says more services and more compatible hardware are coming in the near future.
Collaboration Pilot Program
In the final part of the livestream, Peter Gauden [Head of WEU Eco-Development Marketing for Huawei Consumer Business Group] talked about their collaboration pilot program. The long-term program is designed to support the creation of the next generation of innovative apps and services. This program is open to all developers. Huawei is looking to help fund partners that are looking to implement livestreaming solutions into their platforms.
Banggood is one of the first major companies to join the program. Huawei is looking to fund five select partners in total. If you are a developer and you’re interested in joining this program, you can email Huawei at GlobalBD@huawei.com.
Pilot Collaboration Program
Huawei promises that they are here for the long run, with a goal of seeing the best ideas become reality.
This post is sponsored and written in part by Huawei. Our sponsors help us pay for the many costs associated with running XDA, including server costs, full time developers, news writers, and much more. While you might see sponsored content (which will always be labeled as such) alongside Portal content, the Portal team is in no way responsible for these posts. Sponsored content, advertising and XDA Depot are managed by a separate team entirely. XDA will never compromise its journalistic integrity by accepting money to write favorably about a company, or alter our opinions or views in any way. Our opinion cannot be bought.
Energy Ring is a great app on Android that adds a configurable ring around your device’s front-facing hole-punch camera. It allows users to quickly see their phone’s remaining battery life, making it a nice quality-of-life improvement. We’ve covered it several times in the past, and that’s because the developer keeps updating the app with support for new devices. Following the release of the OnePlus Nord, Energy Ring now supports the new mid-range device.
Some of Energy Ring’s out of box features include the ability to change the ring’s thickness, configurable ring direction, ability to choose colors, and a fun animation when your device is plugged into a power source.
According to the app’s developer, Energy Ring has virtually no effect on battery life. As explained by the developer, the app consumes almost 0 CPU load and is only briefly active when the battery level changes. The app has been in active development for several months, with the developer adding support for many devices from brands like Realme, Xiaomi, Honor, Motorola, OPPO, Huawei,Samsung, and others. You can read more about Energy Ring’s performance and features on the app’s forum thread linked below or download the app from the Google Play Store link embedded below.
In case you’re out of the loop with what’s going on with India and China relations right now, the two countries are not on the best of terms right now due to a border dispute. While tensions are high, the Indian government made a move to initially ban 59 Chinese apps and services followed by 47 more apps from being used in the country, citing national security and privacy concerns. Since some of the apps that have been banned are made by Xiaomi, the company has scrambled to update its MIUI software to comply with the ban.
Some of the Xiaomi-made apps that have been banned by the Indian government include Mi Browser Pro, Mi Community, and Mi Video Call. Xiaomi has now announced that the company will roll out new MIUI updates for its devices sold in India to remove these apps. In a statement posted on Twitter, the company says that a new version of MIUI which doesn’t come with any banned apps pre-installed is in development and will be rolled out to existing and future devices in a phased manner during the next few weeks.
1) None of the blocked apps will be available
2) MIUI Cleaner app is not using Clean Master app banned by Indian Govt.
3) 100% of Indian user data stays in India
Xiaomi also clarified a few details regarding its MIUI software, such as that its Cleaner app is not related to Cheetah Mobile’s Clean Master, another app banned by the Indian government. They also stated that all of their Indian customers’ personal information is stored in local servers and is not shared with anyone outside of India. Xiaomi says they are willing to comply with local Indian laws amid escalating tensions between India and China.
We’ll keep you in the loop on any new developments in this regard.
rns (@_DirtyUnicorns_) 
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