Google Android discussion - Page 71

It’s an occupational hazard among gadget geeks to fixate on new hardware, and yesterday’s introduction of the gorgeous Galaxy S8 by Samsung made that easier than ever. I could write for days about how pretty and pleasant that new handset is. But I also notice that the traditional competitive narrative of my smartphone versus your smartphone is starting to fade out of relevance. Samsung may still measure its mobile ventures by the iPhone yardstick, but its bigger challenges these days are coming from Google’s suite of connected services. Yes, the same Google on whose Android shoulders Samsung's Galaxy S8 stands.

To appreciate the importance of software today, ask yourself what was more disruptive: Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant or the Echo speaker that was its first home? Is it Snapchat’s social sharing or the Spectacles camera-glasses that Facebook is trying to copy to death? And, as nice as the Nintendo Switch hardware may be, isn't it the marvelous Zelda: Breath of the Wild (and the promise of more excellent Nintendo games) that's pulling in the majority of new customers? Hardware serves as the foundation for each of those experiences, but it’s in the software that the biggest changes and revolutions happen. Software and the services it enables will be the thing that keeps Samsung going once all of its design and hardware optimizations have been tapped out.

As far as hardware and spec battles go, Samsung is a grizzled veteran. It outlasted HTC, outdid LG, and easily outsold Sony. The Galaxy S is deservedly held up on the same premium tier as the iPhone, however the old idea that consumers are making a free choice between the two is now retrograde. In mature smartphone markets, most people have laid down roots inside either the iOS or Android ecosystem, and that familiarity — along with the timing of when their mobile contract expires — carries great sway in their ultimate purchase decision. The iPhone 7’s record-breaking sales were in part driven by the built-up demand of millions of iPhone 6 owners coming off two-year commitments and looking for an upgrade.

There’s enough ecosystem and brand inertia in the mobile market for us to already know that both Apple and Samsung will sell hundreds of millions of phones this year. And though the cross-comparisons between their devices will be fun, most purchasing decisions will ultimately rest on more practical considerations than the beauty of their design or pixel-level differences in camera quality. Life would be easier for Samsung if the iPhone didn’t exist, of course, but that challenge is familiar and has gone relatively unchanged for a few years now.

More interesting than the Apple rivalry is Samsung’s increasing confrontation with Google. At yesterday’s event, Samsung announced a slate of new features to enhance its ecosystem, each of which had an already existent Google alternative. Samsung Bixby is unmistakably a competitor to Google Assistant, executing voice commands from the user, automating some basic tasks, and generally performing the Alexa / Siri / Cortana role. Samsung Connect Home is a smart router that looks like a Google Wifi and functions rather like a Google Home: its purpose is to unify and organize all the various Samsung appliances and other connected gadgets you have dotted around your home. And yes, it will support Bixby commands too.

Samsung Pay is like Android Pay, only done by Samsung. Automatic multi-frame shooting in the Galaxy S8’s camera is the same thing as the auto HDR mode on the Google Pixel. And the updates to Gear VR go directly against Google’s Daydream virtual reality initiative, support for which was notably absent from Samsung’s S8 presentation. Even Samsung’s DeX desktop dock for the Galaxy S8 runs along parallel lines to Google’s gradual combining of Android and Chrome OS into a multi-platform operating system. At every software turn, Samsung finds a Google alternative ready to spirit away users and siphon away brand loyalty. It’s hard to build a sticky ecosystem that way.

The final, and probably most frustrating part, of Samsung’s competitive struggle with Google is the abundance of high-quality Google apps on the iPhone. Google’s pursuit of the maximum number of users for its services has led it to enhance Apple’s software ecosystem, to the cost of its own Android hardware partners like Samsung. It must grate, but that’s the reality of the situation. And hey, a more competitive environment only serves to improve the services you and I ultimately get access to.

On March 28 2017 05:51 R1CH wrote:
Are there any decent 9-10" 16 : 9 tablets these days? The battery on my Nexus 10 has gone to the point where it shuts down at 75% and I'd also like to be able to play 1080p60 Twitch streams.

Samsung unveiled its new Desktop Experience (DeX) during its Galaxy S8 launch in New York City yesterday. It’s designed to turn a Galaxy S8 into a PC, with Android apps running in a desktop-like environment. To work well, it will ultimately require apps to support larger displays. But out of the gate Samsung’s DeX already overshadows Microsoft’s Continuum.

Microsoft first unveiled its Continuum feature, to turn a phone into a PC-like interface, nearly two years ago at its Build developers conference. At first it felt like the future, but after two years of little progress it has very much stalled. During my recent experience with Continuum, I was surprised that Microsoft still hasn’t enabled basic windowing for apps or a feature to at least let two run side-by-side.

Continuum has also failed to progress because very few applications on Windows 10 Mobile support it. App developers have to specifically build support for Continuum, and most haven’t bothered. DeX on the other hand will support regular Android apps out of the box, and even companies like Adobe and Microsoft have worked with Samsung directly to optimize their apps for larger displays. That means that Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will all run just as well on DeX as they would on Continuum. Microsoft Office integration is a key selling point for Continuum, and Samsung now has that exact selling point with Microsoft’s help.

One of the big advantages DeX has over Continuum is fairly basic. Samsung has implemented its own windowing system in parallel to the one found in Android Nougat. That means you can actually multitask with apps in DeX, unlike Continuum which restricts you to one app on screen at any given time. It’s stunning that Microsoft, the company behind Windows which brought windowed apps to the masses, has still not implemented this basic user interface in Continuum. Samsung even added the ability to unlock the PC-like interface through facial recognition (like Windows Hello) on the Galaxy S8. The angle of the DeX dock means you can simply look at the phone and it will unlock the desktop interface.

Microsoft’s issues aside, DeX isn’t perfect, and will struggle with some of the same problems Continuum does. This isn’t a real desktop experience with powerful desktop apps that you might expect on a Mac or PC, it’s mobile apps stretched out on a bigger screen. You can use a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, but most of these apps won’t have keyboard shortcuts, the ability to drag and drop, or simply the scale to make use of a bigger screen. Samsung does have the advantage of Android behind it, meaning there will be more apps available, and possibly some developer incentives to optimize apps for the desktop experience.

Microsoft will likely counter this in the future with support for desktop apps on ARM processors, but the software giant is only talking about ARM-powered laptops right now. It’s clear those emulated traditional x86 apps will eventually make their way over to Windows-powered phones, but it all depends on how long Microsoft takes to make this a reality. Windows Phone users spent years waiting for Microsoft to catch up, but the company has practically given up instead.

Outside of Microsoft and Samsung, the one company that could make this phone-as-a-PC experience more of a reality is Google. Apple hasn’t shown interest in turning iPhones or iPads into full PCs just yet, apart from an early patent filing, but there are persistent rumors that Google is merging Chrome OS and Android. All we've seen so far are some rather lackluster Android apps on Chrome OS, but a broader merger could open up the idea of the phone as a PC to millions of Android devices.

Google turning phones into PCs is pure speculation right now, but Samsung and even Microsoft have to first prove that consumers and businesses actually want this. If they do, then of course Google, and perhaps even Apple, will follow Microsoft and Samsung’s early footsteps.

Google and a group of top Android phone makers have sealed a new agreement to collectively defend themselves against patent lawsuits.

The group, which also includes Samsung, LG, and HTC, have agreed to share patents covering “Android and Google Applications” on any device that meets Android’s compatibility requirements. The patents will be shared for free, and the group is supposed to be free and open for any company to join.

The agreement’s proper name is the “Android Networked Cross-License,” but the group is calling it PAX for short. “Pax” means “peace” in Latin, and Google says the agreement is about reaching a legal peace within the tech world.

“In the world of intellectual property, patent peace often coincides with innovation and healthy competition that benefit consumers,” writes Jamie Rosenberg, an Android business VP with Google. “It is with a hope for such benefits that we are announcing our newest patent licensing initiative focusing on patent peace, which we call PAX.”

It’s not entirely clear what types of patents will be shared through this agreement, or what threats these companies hope to defend against. But generally speaking, the agreement ought to help participants defend against patent trolls — companies that own patents make nothing, and only bring in money through lawsuits — and potentially even other large tech companies should they get into a standoff over intellectual property. The PAX group writes that they believe signing up “materially reduces patent risk.”

We’ve reached out to Google for more information on what the agreement covers.

The agreement could be a big win for Samsung and Google. Samsung makes and sells more Android devices than any other company on the list, and this pact makes it a harder target for patent trolls to hit. For Google, this agreement also helps to open the Android ecosystem up to smaller companies that may be interested in making a device but fear litigation.

While this agreement should help to defend Android manufacturers against some lawsuits on its own, its scope is fairly specific and seems to be limited to software. This isn’t the only licensing agreement of its kind, though. Google previously started a group that pledges to only use patents defensively, while another group it co-founded, the LOT Network, prevented companies from buying up patents just to sue others.

Even though Allo has practically fallen off the face of the planet for most, Google continues to update the app with new features. The latest update bumps Allo up to version 9 and prepares for the addition of various features.

<string name=”restore_backup_body_backup_found”>”Looks like your chats have recently been backed up. To prevent losing previous chats, restore them now. If you don’t restore now you won’t be able to restore chats later.“</string>

According to the APK Teardown by 9to5Google, Allo is being prepared to support Google Drive or external storage backups. This was found after a popup message was found in the code which will activate when Allo has found a recent backup. Furthermore, according to the APK Teardown, the future update to Allo will also allow you to backup “images, video, and other content”.

Found in the teardown are also other features that have been mentioned within the code, which aren’t available yet. These include – Quick Selfie, Group incognito chats, and selfie-generated sticker packs.

The Quick Selfie feature was first mentioned a few weeks back, but Google has seemingly added a few more lines of code. This feature will allow you to quickly take a selfie using the camera icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.

All of these features will likely be added at some point in the future, but we’ll have to wait to see when Google plans to implement them. Plus, we’d like to see Google either release an Allo web client or finally add SMS support.

Google just sent out invites for a pre-Earth Day event in New York City next week. In keeping with the obvious theme, the search giant is promising to take the lid off of a "brand new experience" for Google Earth.

While Google doesn't offer many details aside from the time, date and location -- April 18th, 8:30 AM ET at New York's Whitney Museum of Art -- the Earth team did launch a virtual reality version of the planet-visualizing app onto Steam late last year. The app was only available for HTC Vive headsets at the time, but the team promised to add support for additional platforms in the near future. So we'd be surprised if next week's event didn't come with an update for Google Daydream, which would make it much more affordable as a VR educational tool. Google has also been developing its stand-alone virtual tours and augmented reality museum experiences for years now and could be incorporating more of those "on-the-ground" kinds of VR experiences directly into its incredibly detailed whole-Earth model.

On March 28 2017 05:51 R1CH wrote:
Are there any decent 9-10" 16 : 9 tablets these days? The battery on my Nexus 10 has gone to the point where it shuts down at 75% and I'd also like to be able to play 1080p60 Twitch streams.