Google Android discussion - Page 85

Samsung Electronics is expected to announce its first foldable smartphone at its upcoming Developer Conference, which is set to take place on November 07 and 08 this year. Ahead of the big event, a report published by Korea’s The Bell claims Samsung has confirmed the display specifications of its foldable smartphone. As expected, the report claims the Samsung foldable phone will have two OLED smartphones. Thanks to the two displays, the smartphone can be used as a smartphone when folded and as a tablet when opened.

Samsung’s first foldable smartphone will come with two Super AMOLED displays. The main display is said to measure 7.29-inches diagonally, while the secondary display will measure 4.58-inches. Samsung will be marketing the displays as being 7.3-inches and 4.6-inches, respectively. When folded, the smartphone can be used as a regular smartphone, although the 4.6-inch display size may feel a little small for most users. When the foldable smartphone is opened, it can be used as a tablet, thanks to the large 7.3-inch panel on the inside. Samsung Display, which is the manufacturer of both panels is expected to begin mass producing them this month. The initial volume will be around 100,000 units a month. Samsung Display expects to produce between 500,000 to 1 million units per year. Since Samsung will be the first major manufacturer to release a foldable smartphone, the company plans to sell only a limited number of units initially.

Samsung was reportedly unable to decide whether or not it should add a 4.6-inch panel on the outside. On the plus side, a panel on the outside would allow users to perform basic smartphone tasks such as making phone calls and chat with friends without having to open the phone. On the other hand, the addition of a display on the outside would make the phone thicker and also increase power consumption. It would also raise the overall cost of manufacturing the device. In the end, however, Samsung decided that it would be advantageous to have a smaller display on the outside.

To ensure that its foldable smartphone is highly durable, Samsung is using a hinge developed by KH Vatec, a Korean company. When folded, the KH Vatec hinge ensures that there is a minute space between the two panels, preventing them from breaking upon impact. The hinge will also allow users to fold out the main display at various angles, similar to a notebook hinge. More details regarding the foldable smartphone will be revealed at the 2018 Samsung Developer Conference (SDC) in San Francisco, USA.

Ever since Google bought Waze, we've been waiting for some of its more popular features to worm their way into Maps. A few months back, we got a hint from an APK Teardown that Google was preparing to add incident reports to Maps. Now, this feature seems to be appearing for at least some Maps users.


At least one person on Reddit has noticed this feature in addition to our tipster, but the functionality is probably only showing up for a small number of users. Take a peek at the Maps UI the next time you're navigating, and you may have a new report button down at the bottom of the screen. Tap that, and you can tell Google you've encountered either a crash or a speed trap (see above). Currently, this only works in navigation mode, but it's just a test.

Since most people don't have the reporting feature, you're unlikely to benefit right now. If Google decides to move forward with this for everyone, Maps might be able to alert you when you're approaching a speed trap or route you around crashes more effectively.

Samsung is going to start letting app developers plug into Bixby, and hardware companies will be able to build the voice assistant into their products, too.

In the year-and-a-half since Bixby launched, Samsung has already brought the assistant to phones, fridges, TVs, and more, but they’ve all been Samsung’s own devices. With today’s news, other companies will be able to start building it into their own hardware as well, either as an alternative to Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant — or, more likely, as an additional option for users who want to live in Samsung’s ecosystem.

Consumers may have more reason to embrace Bixby in the future, too, since third party developers will start being able to build services that plug into it. It’s not entirely clear what to expect or what they’ll look like — Samsung showed a demo of Bixby pulling up the various interfaces you’d need to book a hotel stay — but Samsung is promising to make Bixby so open that developers will be able to make anything that Samsung itself could.

Dag Kittlaus, CEO of Samsung-owned Viv Labs, says it’s the most powerful assistant toolkit ever made. “Way ahead of the other guys,” Kittlaus says. “And it’s not even close.”

Samsung also plans to launch Bixby in a few new languages in the coming months, including German, Italian, and French. It’ll also launch Spanish localized for Spain and English localized for the UK; those two languages are already available, but only with US localization.

Smart assistants as a whole still aren’t all that smart, but Bixby in particular has been seen as among the weaker options. It was criticized at launch, and owners of some of Samsung’s newest phones still complain about a dedicated Bixby button that they can’t remap.

Samsung is moving quickly — much quicker than Apple, for instance — to build out what Bixby is capable of doing by granting deep access to third parties. It’s not clear how it’ll distribute these third-party Bixby features or how it’ll ensure that they’re safe and functional. But if it works out, Bixby could start looking a lot more like Alexa, which has more than 50,000 third-party skills.

On December 21 2018 21:12 Acrofales wrote:
My GF is looking for a new phone. I was thinking she can have my current one and I buy myself the Pocophone F1. It seems like one hell of a phone for its price. What am I missing?

Korean tech-giant Samsung has agreed to acquire Israeli company Corephotonics for $155 million, sources inform "Globes." Three weeks ago, "Globes" was the first to report that Samsung was in advanced talks to buy the Israeli smartphone camera technology developer.

Corephotonics has developed a camera with dual lens technology for smartphones, which is designed to improve the quality of smartphone images. According to IVC, the company, which was founded in 2012, has raised a total of $50 million, which will give the investors a fine return. Corephotonics declined to respond to the report.

Corephotonics was founded by CEO David Mendlovic, a professor of electrical engineering at Tel Aviv University and former Ministry of Science and Technology chief scientist; chief development officer Dr. Gal Shabtay; chief registration officer Eran Kali; Dr. Noy Cohen; and Ephraim Goldenberg. The company employs a staff of dozens in its facilities in Tel Aviv's Ramat Hahayal.

The main investors in Corephotonics are Samsung Ventures, one of Samsung's investment arms in Israel; Foxconn, a large manufacturer of electronic components; Taiwanese company MediaTek, the world's largest manufacturer of mobile communications chips; Israeli fund Magma Venture Partners; the Amiti Ventures fund; Horizon Ventures, controlled by Chinese billionaire Li Ka Shing and Solina Chau; crowdfunding platform OurCrowd; flash memory company SanDisk; and Chinese telephony provider CK Telecom.

Corephotonics works with all of the large smartphone companies. Shabtay once told "TheMarker" that the company had realized thatת "There are several large gaps, above all an optical zoom lens. Real zoom does not exist in a smartphone camera, which only has a digital zoom that is actually a manipulation of the image." One of the challenges faced by the smartphone manufacturers is the need to making the devices thinner. Samsung is also planning to launch a folding smartphone in the coming months. It was previously reported that Corephotonics was planning to expand its activity to the vehicle, drones, and security systems markets.

Corephotonics does not manufacture the camera itself; it only designs it. Reuters reported in November 2017 that the Israeli company had filed suit against Apple Computers for using the technology it had developed, for which Corephotonics said it had a registered patent, in the iPhone 7 plus and the iPhone 8 plus. The fate of this lawsuit is unknown.

In the deal, Corephotonics was represented by Advs. Sharon Amir, Idan Lidor and Daniella Ben-Shalom of the Naschitz Brandes Amir law firm and Samsung was represented by Advs. Janet Levy Pahima, Asher Sacks and Benjamin Pask of the Herzog Fox Neeman (HFN) law firm.

On the eve of Google’s GDC announcement, a new report provides some details on what is expected from the game service. The “main focus” will be on what new features a “streaming platform” allows, though a Google-made controller is also expected.

According to Kotaku, the “focus tomorrow” is on the underlying streaming service, with Google leveraging its backend infrastructure to solve latency. With the Project Stream “technical test,” the company did describe the “challenges” associated with streaming something as intensive as games, but not its solutions. Hopefully, Google will detail tomorrow how exactly its overcame those issue.

Like with other product areas, Google is entering because the company believes its scale will bring high-end gaming to hundreds of millions of players that don’t own dedicated hardware, which still costs upwards of $250 today.

In terms of features, this evening’s report describes being able to watch live gameplay and jumping right to that moment yourself after buying the game. Along with the fact that purchases could reportedly be possible from ads, this suggests that users will have to buy games, rather than getting an unlimited pass.

Many of these features are described as requiring the game developer’s approval. However, Kotaku reports that “Google has been funding its own video games.”

In terms of availability, the service will work on Windows, Mac, phones, and TVs. The two laptop and desktop platforms are not surprising given that Project Stream just required the latest version of Chrome and a 25 Mbps internet connection.

We’ve been told by a source in the past that Yeti will work with Android phones, while television support comes via a Chromecast. Kotaku also has more details on the Google-made controller, which was first mentioned last February by The Information. It will reportedly have “streaming capabilities” that bring the service to televisions, and is in line with patents that emerged earlier this month.

SAN FRANCISCO—At the Game Developers Conference, Google announced its biggest play yet in the gaming space: a streaming game service named Google Stadia, designed to run on everything from PCs and Android phones to Google's own Chromecast devices.

As of press time, the service's release window is simply "2019." No pricing information was announced at the event.

Google Stadia will run a selection of existing PC games on Google's centralized servers, taking in controller inputs and sending back video and audio using Google's network of low-latency data centers. The company revealed a new Google-produced controller, along with a game-streaming interface that revolves around a "play now" button. Press this on any Web browser and gameplay will begin "in as quick as five seconds... with no download, no patch, no update, and no install."

"With Stadia, this waiting game will be a thing of the past," Google's Phil Harrison said. He then demonstrated Stadia gameplay on a Pixel 3 XL, followed by "the least-powerful PC we could find." The following gameplay was advertised as "1080p, 60 frames per second." Harrison confirmed that existing "USB controllers and mouse-and-keyboard" will function with Stadia games as well.

But you'll want that Stadia controller if you'd like to access both a "capture" button, for immediate capture to YouTube (to either livestream or save for later sharing), and a Google Assistant button, which lets Stadia players access the controller's built-in microphone. Google didn't confirm whether existing controllers' "share" buttons will work with any of the Stadia platform's custom button functions.

Harrison confirmed one interesting Google-tinged combination of the Google Assistant and a live-streaming service: tap the button if you're stuck mid-game and ask out loud for help. But we'll simply have to take Harrison's word for it, in terms of how that actually plays out and how intelligently Google Assistant will translate users' mid-game requests.

The keynote included Google's pledge that its network infrastructure includes "7,500 edge nodes closer to players to provide better performance." Stadia's stacks at Google's data centers are powered by AMD hardware, the company said, with "10.7 teraflops of power in each instance."

A Google engineer insisted that "at launch," Stadia will support "4K, 60 frames-per-second performance." If you don't have a 4K set to enjoy that gameplay with, Google says its capture button will save and stream your gameplay content at that resolution, should the game in question support it.

Unreal and Unity were announced as supporters of the Stadia platform. Vulkan is joining the party, too, as confirmed by id Software. The game developer said that it needed "a few weeks" to port its current, unfinished code for the game Doom Eternal to Stadia's platform, and it confirmed that the upcoming game will work on Stadia at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second. (GDC attendees will get to see the game in action on the show floor later today.) id did not confirm whether the game will appear on Stadia day-and-date with existing consoles and PCs.

In one curious moment, Harrison told viewers that Stadia games' effects and features could vary, should a game be rendered on multiple GPUs within Google's cloud system. This seems to imply that there will be an option to request more or less infrastructure dedicated to a single streamed game, but it's currently unclear whether that will cost developers or players more money to access those.

Google has expressed interest in and support for cross-platform play, and the company insisted that its cloud-based platform will not be vulnerable to cheating or hacking due to multiplayer instances that aren't exposed to "the public Internet." We'll have to wait to see how big console and PC platforms react to Google's call for cross-platform support, however, especially if Stadia games revolve around their own walled multiplayer-server gardens.

As part of the Game Developers Conference, the event made sure to emphasize trippy features that game makers might access through Google's cloud infrastructure. These included the ability to access intense physics systems, place thousands of cameras in various places in a game's world, and re-skin games with a huge variety of machine-generated images. One example included a modern, 3D Tequila Works (makers of RiME) video game smothered in a seemingly endless swirl of Pac-Man images.

Stadia players, meanwhile, will be able to access a new twist in gameplay: "state share." As introduced by legendary game developer Dylan Cuthbert, this feature will "let a player instantly share a playable moment from a game." Think of a "save state" within a classic emulator, which starts a player at a certain point in a quest with certain equipped items and progress; then imagine a modern game maker letting players click a URL (or share it on social media) and try those things out for its titles. (Nintendo has toyed with something similar in the NES classic library on Nintendo Switch Online.)

On March 20 2019 20:10 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Depending on the monthly cost, and the ability to get game studios on board as well as porting a decent number of games. Google could create the Netflix of games. But we'll see.

https://youtu.be/BeFnQrgtZ9k



Source

According to Samsung, the Galaxy Fold was supposed to be revolutionary. The futuristic $2,000 phone was positioned as the first foldable smartphone from a major manufacturer, allowing Samsung to leverage its display leadership into a hybrid phone/tablet device that no one else could produce. The Galaxy Fold's early media-review period was a disaster, though, with social media quickly filling with photos of dead and dying Galaxy Folds. After several phones died in the hands of reviewers, Samsung was forced to cancel the launch, and many pre-orders were refunded.

That was all in April. Now it's July, and there's still no sign of the Galaxy Fold actually making it to market. Speaking to The Independent, Samsung Electronics CEO DJ Koh gave the press an update on the device, though there is still no firm re-launch date.

Speaking of the Galaxy Fold launch, Koh said, "It was embarrassing. I pushed it through before it was ready." For now, Koh says the company is "in the process of recovery" and doing lots of testing. "At the moment," Koh said, "more than 2,000 devices are being tested right now in all aspects. We defined all the issues. Some issues we didn't even think about, but thanks to our reviewers, mass volume testing is ongoing."

As for why the Galaxy Fold was rushed to market so quickly, there's a good chance that Samsung was caught off-guard by its competition and wanted to beat everyone else to the foldables market. Samsung probably didn't envision having to fight anyone for the first foldable-smartphone launch. Samsung is the undisputed leader in smartphone display technology, and the company spent six years and a $130 million dollars to make foldable displays a reality. Samsung alleges that its folding display technology was stolen, though, and sold to two unnamed Chinese companies.

Elsewhere in the market, two Chinese companies, Huawei and its display supplier BoE, have been the closest to beating Samsung to a foldables launch. The Huawei Mate X was announced just days after the Galaxy Fold, with a bigger screen and an even more futuristic design. With Samsung's foldable-display exclusivity evaporating, the theory is that the company chose to rush the Galaxy Fold out the door with inadequate testing.

Koh still sees a Galaxy Fold relaunch on the horizon, with The Independent quoting him as saying, "The last couple of weeks I think we defined all of the issues and all of the problems we couldn't find [before sending to reviewers]."

When asked when the Galaxy Fold would actually come out, Koh only said, "In due course. Give us a bit more time."