According to a report this morning out of The Information, AT&T is in talks with Cyanogen to launch a phone running a version of Android made by the company, purportedly on ZTE hardware. This is notably the first time that a US carrier has considered selling a phone running the less-Google-controlled version of Android that powers phones like the Yu Yutopia and the WileyFox Swift…
Cyanogen has today announced a new platform called “MOD,” giving developers deeper access to the Android operating system and allowing them to take advantage of platform APIs that are otherwise out of reach. Microsoft, for example, has built a Skype mod that allows users to add VoIP calling functionality directly to the Android dialer, as well as a Cortana mod that replaces Google Now on an OS level…
This one has been a long time coming.
According to a report this afternoon from The Wall Street Journal, Google is — finally? is this worth a finally? — planning to fold its Chrome desktop OS into Android. The new, single operating system will be unveiled sometime in 2017 according to people familiar with the matter, but the Mountain View company reportedly has plans to show off an “early version” as soon as next year…
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Many OnePlus One owners have been settling lately, and it looks like OnePlus — after many attempts — is still trying to finally put the phone’s touch screen issues to rest. A new build of Cyanogen OS was pushed just a couple of days ago to fix issues for those on that OS, but now OnePlus is pushing out an update to its OxygenOS as well, bumping it to version 1.01.
The announcement post, sadly, doesn’t have a full change log. It only mentions this one touch screen fix that many OnePlus One owners have been waiting for. You can head over to the OnePlus forums to grab the firmware. The company did, however, mention a new tool that lets those on Cyanogen OS easily flash a build of OxygenOS without losing your data:
In addition, our friends over at Fastboot Mobile and XDA actually worked on a migration tool that will allow those of you who haven’t tried OxygenOS yet to easily flash from CM 11 or 12 without losing your data. The tool is in beta but we thought it was pretty cool so why not share it and let you play with it.
Proceed with caution and follow the instructions carefully. It’s beta so it’s not guaranteed to work 100%.
Prerequisite:
- .Net 4.5 download – https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/Download/details.aspx?id=30653
- You must be running this on a locally installed version of Windows 7 or Windows 8
Tool download:
http://eu-oxygen.cust.fastbootmobile.com/OnePlusOneMigration-logging-Beta1.zipSteps:
- Unzip the above into its own folder
- Copy the flashable OxygenOS zip and MD5 into the “download” folder contained in the above
- On the device go to Settings > Developer options and uncheck Update CM Recovery (CM has this checked as default which causes issues)
- Make sure the device is plugged into the computer
- Run the “OnePlusOneMigration.exe” file as Administrator
- Accept any prompts to confirm the drivers – they are ours and are signed
- Follow the prompts (as prompted) and you should end up with OxygenOS installed. The ADB sideload process can take awhile to finish.
If you found moving to OxygenOS daunting before, this might be your opportunity to try out OnePlus’ almost-stock OS.
Dropbox has today updated its Dropbox for Gmail Chrome extension with several new features, including—most notably—the ability to attach folders and several files at once. The update also includes the ability to more easily send larger files, send files to anyone (regardless of if they have the extension or a Dropbox account), and the ability to quickly save files that you receive via Gmail to your own inbox.
Here’s the full change log:
- Easily send large files. Just click the Dropbox icon in the compose window, select files or folders, and click Insert Link(s). No waiting for uploads to complete, no file size limit, and no eating up space in your inbox.
- Say goodbye to zip files. Attach folders and multiple files instantly, without having to zip files up.
- Send files to anyone. Even if they don’t have Dropbox or the extension, recipients can see and download the attachments you send them.
- Quickly save files sent to you. Add files to your Dropbox with a click so you can access them anywhere.
You can grab the Chrome extension in the Chrome Web Store right now for free. It’s still in beta, so don’t expect everything to work perfectly, but it looks like the app is nearing a full release soon—as today’s release is version 0.9.6.
Google has bumped the Chrome OS beta channel to version 43 this afternoon, and it’s actually a pretty substantial update. Among other features, the new version includes credit card autofill from Google Wallet, always-on “OK Google” on the new Chromebook Pixel, a new Material Design overhaul for the virtual keyboard user interface and more.
Here’s the full change log:
Some highlights of these changes are:
- Autofill settings for credit cards from Google Wallet
- Enable always-on “OK Google” from anywhere when screen is unlocked on new Chromebook Pixel
- Physical keyboard auto correction
- Material design for Virtual keyboard UI
Update: Chrome 43 beta for Android has rolled out too.
OnePlus missed its March 27th goal for bringing its new Oxygen OS to the public today, and the company has now taken to its forum to apologize. It’s not exactly surprising to see this happen as OnePlus definitely hasn’t been known for being the most reliable deliverer of software, but it’s unfortunate nonetheless.
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Cyanogen recently gave itself a rebrand, and now the company has come out to share the new boot animation shipping with its upcoming Cyanogen OS 12. It’s definitely sporting the company’s slick new logo which, according to Cyanogen, “celebrates space, with minimal letterforms that don’t quite connect, giving the logo a sense of motion and a feeling of inherent energy.”
Google made its Mobile World Congress presence clearly known this morning in the form of a Sundar Pichai interview (which included some really interesting tidbits), but that’s not the extent of the company’s involvement this year. The Mountain View, California company is very much pushing its “Be together. Not the same.” mantra at MWC in many of ways (like they did at CES 2015 with the pins), and those Androidify characters are popping up left and right…
Old vs new (via <a href="http://www.omgchrome.com/chrome-os-roboto-font-made-default/">OMGChrome</a>)
While Roboto has been around since the launch of Android 4.0, it still has not to this day been added as the font used within Google’s own Chrome OS. It looks like this is going to change—if a Chromium issue tracker report is to be believed—and the font is going to jump straight from its current Noto Sans fashion to the second iteration of Roboto that launched with Android L.
1) Can we add Robot (and all weights etc) as default font to Chrome OS
2) Can we make it controllable by a flag in about:flags so we can test it and file specific design bugs where the new font will need adjustments
@Sebastien, can you provide a link to the latest Roboto font resources?
At first it appears that the font will be controllable via a Chrome flag so that the Chromium team can make sure the bugs get worked out before the font goes prime time. Notably, this new font is going to be slightly different than the Roboto we’ve known in the past, with Google saying the new version is “slightly wider and rounder, giving it greater clarity and making it more optimistic…” to match the design aesthetic of Android L.
(via OMGChrome)
Google has pushed an update to Chrome OS this afternoon, bringing a variety of interesting new features to the stable channel. Of those packed in this update include the oft-requested ability to sign in to multiple Google accounts, a new “App info” page in the OS app launcher, the separation of the Settings page into its own window, and more.
IDC released its second quarter report for worldwide smartphone shipments by operating system today and in it noted iOS and Android accounted for 96% of the global market. That number, however, comes only as Android grew on the strength of higher sales of low-cost devices abroad.
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After Google made its new Android L developer preview available to Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 last month, it wasn’t long before we saw an unofficial port to other devices. First we got the Nexus 4, and now a user at the xda-developers forums was able to get the developer preview up and running on an HTC One (M7).
Not many expected to see a HTC One (M7) port, but XDA Senior Member ssrij and a team of developers managed to port the Android L Developer Preview to this former flagship device… The port is still in alpha stage, and some things simply don’t work. Running Android L on first generation HTC One was made possible thanks to ramdisk and kernel modifications, so it might not run as it should. However, the Developer Preview was made to show people how the Android L will look like and what functions we should be expected.
You can expect lots of stuff not to work at the moment, including: WiFi, Bluetooth, data, camera, and sound, but the developers are working to fix some of the issues with the initial alpha release for the M7. More info on the original forum post here.
According to a new report from Forbes, Microsoft’s rumored smartwatch is going to be compatible with not only the Redmond, Washington corporation’s own Windows Phone operating system, but Android and iOS as well (via The Verge). Other details from the report include a release date for the watch potentially slanted for this Summer, as well as battery life that lasts upwards of two days.
Microsoft has been rumored to be working on a smartwatch for quite some time, but today’s report corroborates some information that was previously assumed, and adds a few details that we haven’t yet heard. The device will apparently be a sensor-rich device (as is expected from Apple’s iWatch as well), featuring a heart rate sensor that synchronizes data to the above mentioned variety of devices.
Supposedly, Microsoft is pulling some engineers from the Kinect side of the company to make sure this feature is running 24 hours a day. Microsoft was already rumored to be working on a health rate monitor called the “Joule” in 2012, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Microsoft is taking advantage of Xbox experts to help put this product together.
The report suggests that the device may land as early as this Summer, but Forbes — as might be expected — says that the timeline is “unclear.”
Image: The Independent
Research firm comScore is out today with its usual report covering U.S. smartphone subscriber market share for the three month period ending in May. Over the last three months Apple has gained in both categories including ‘top smartphone OEMs’ and ‘OS usage’, continuing its lead as the top smartphone manufacturer and growing its share of the market by platform.
The previous three month period had Apple at 38.9% of the market, making it the number #1 smartphone vendor in the US over second place Samsung. In May, Apple continues that lead by increasing its share 0.3 percentage points to 39.2% of the market. That’s significantly higher than the 23% Samsung grabbed despite growing 1.7 percentage points during the quarter. In a close race for third place is HTC with 8.7%, Motorola with 7.8%, and LG with 6.7%, all of which dropped less than a percentage point since last quarter.
When it comes to the market by OS usage, Android is still on top, growing 0.7 percentage points to 52.4% this quarter. Apple experienced slightly less growth at 0.3 percentage points to capture 39.2% of the market up from its 38.9% share last quarter. That means the majority of the growth, once again, comes at the expense of BlackBerry and Microsoft.
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In a surprise announcement made at the Chromium Blog today, Google announced that Chrome OS, Chrome, and Opera will use a new rendering engine titled ‘Blink’. Blink is based of the current rendering engine WebKit. Google states the change is “not an easy decision,” but the change is necessary due to a ‘slow down of innovation.”
Google seems quite apologetic in the blog post, noting it understands the change may have significant implications for the web, but hopefully, in the long run, it will improve the health of the open web ecosystem.
It noted that the change will have little impact in the short-term to developers and Internet users, but Google hopes that the removal of the “multi-process architecture” will simplify the engine’s code and ease the difficulty required to develop for Chrome and Chrome OS. Ultimately, Google also hopes the new engine will speed up Internet load times.
The full press release via the Chromium Blog is available below.
Google has released a new extension this weekend for Chrome fans. Chrome Remote Desktop Beta (what a mouthful) allows you to connect to other computers across the network in a Chrome window.
Where we can see this coming the most in handy is with a Chrome OS laptop. Being able to connect to your main computer when you’re away from it is definitely necessary for numerous tasks. When it comes to security, each session has to be granted each time you connect.
Interested in how this all works? Check it out after the break:
Did you land your hands on the HP TouchPad this weekend, and not satisfied with WebOS? We understand the WebOS part of things, but the TouchPad could actually be considered a pretty nice piece of hardware..if it’s running the right stuff. While we mentioned an Android port was in the works this morning, the folks over at HacknMod are holding a little contest to see who can successfully do the port first. Total prize money tops $1500.
The basic Android port is going for $450, Wi-Fi is going for $350, both audio and camera are going up for $300, and lastly, MultiTouch is going for $100. Devs, that’s $1500!
If you think your dev skills are up to the challenge you can get started by posting your first bit of code into GitHub (full directions here). Note, all code developed for this project must be licensed under open-source. May the best coder win!
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