OnePlus 5 Receives an Update to OxygenOS v4.5.10, Improves the Camera and More

Earlier today, OnePlus announced they were starting to roll out a new OTA update for the OnePlus 5. This update will bring your software up to version 4.5.10 of OxygenOS and it comes with a number of changes that will likely make a lot of OnePlus 5 owners happy. There still isn't any mention of a fix for the jelly scrolling effect that so many customers have complained about, but the update touches on the camera quality, WiFi stability, bug fixes and more.

The highlight of this update, similar to its last OTA update earlier this month, is the camera. Camera quality in a smartphone is becoming more and more important these days since the competition is heating up and people want their photos to look as good as possible. This update to OxygenOS 4.5.10 is said to reduce noise in a photograph during what we assume is low-light conditions. The OnePlus 5 camera generally performs well when there is a good light source so this improvement is very welcomed.

The changelog also mentions improved camera stability as well as improvements to noise and textures when recording videos at 60 frames per second. The launcher received a change with this update that adds country information of photographers in Shot on OnePlus. The phone application also received some attention by fixing a bug that caused accidental touches after you hung up from a phone call. The team says they have improved Jio call functionality, and fixed a display issue on the calling screen.

WiFi stability is said to be improved as well, but the team didn't go into detail about what exactly was improved. There was a bug that was fixed in regards to the new font they added, and one for a scrolling issue for the Google Play Music application too. Lastly, those who use the SnapShot application should notice that their videos are much more clear than before.

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Source: OnePlus

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App Categories in Android Oreo Will Allow for Better Organization

Here at XDA we have been monitoring the Android developer site and the Android Open Source Project for changes and new API additions, and so far we have found many new additions and changes. These include commands to customise battery saver, a command line interface for theming (which led to rootless Substratum on Android Oreo) and now something else – Google has created app categories which are defined within the app's manifest file.

Now, you're probably familiar with the fact that the Google Play Store already allows applications to be categorized. However, currently this category is only useful to the user before installing the app. Once the app is installed, neither the Android system nor any other third-party app on your device will know what category that app belongs to. But that will change with the addition of app categories to Android 8.0 Oreo.

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App Categories in Android Oreo

This change can be observed on the Android Developer site, added to the Package Manager class. The example use mentioned in the documentation is that apps, or perhaps the Android system itself, can use the categories to provide more meaningful data such as when summarizing battery, network, or storage use. This means that, perhaps in the future, the Android Settings app could show you battery statistics grouped by different app types. So if you play a lot of games, then the game category may dominate your battery statistics. Or if you listen to a lot of music, the apps in the music category will dominate your network statistics.

There are some other interesting scenarios where these new app categories may be useful for certain third party applications. For instance, a third party launcher can use the app categories to automatically create folders or drawer tabs filled with games or social apps.

Google's addition of categories.

That being said, this addition will only be active for apps built targeting SDK26, or Android Oreo. Furthermore, there are only a handful of predefined categories that apps can define in their manifest file. Currently, the following categories are supported:

• Audio
• Game
• Image
• Maps
• News
• Productivity
• Social
• Video

Otherwise, the app is in the "undefined" category. If an app does not specify which of these categories it fits in, then the installer package (AKA the Google Play Store in most cases) may define the category for it using setApplicationCategoryHint.

Although the current category list is not very large, especially when compared to the extensive list of categories in the Google Play Store, it's certainly a start. We hope to see more categories being added as well as apps start to categorize themselves, but given that Android Oreo will only be on a handful of devices by the end of this year, there isn't much incentive for developers to start.

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Google Talks About YouTube’s New Logo, Recent Changes and Future Ideas

YouTube was launched 12 years ago and since then they've essentially had the same logo. Sure, the logo has evolved from one with a more 3D-esque red tube for the word Tube to sit in to a flat one, but for the most case the idea behind the logo hasn't changed. Today, the company has announced the new logo redesign, which still isn't a huge change, along with talking about some of its more recent changes and some of their upcoming changes too.

If you've been watching, YouTube has been changing recently. Two years ago they launched their initial redesign plans in an attempt to tie in multiple products that are being offered. Remember, there's YouTube Red, YouTube Kids, YouTube Gaming, YouTube TV and their goal was to integrate all of these services for those who used them. If you don't use YouTube Kids then you won't see it in your viewing experience but that is now different for those who use it.

The team feels the red TV that surrounds the word Tube just isn't relevant anymore. Sure, there are some who watch YouTube videos from a smart TV (and that user base is growing), it doesn't help to identify what the product is to the 1.5 billion monthly users. So they're evolving the logo yet again by moving the red tube part to the front and adding in the iconic white play button that most people can recognize. This then enables them to use a black font color for all of the text instead of just the word You.

This new logo is just the latest of the changes that have happened to the service lately. We've seen the application move the navigation bar to the bottom, double tap gestures have been added to the app to make it easier to skip back or forward through a video, and they recently added the ability to set the playback speed in the application as well. The company is continuing to do work and says the YouTube player will seamlessly change shape in the future so that it matches the video format you're watching. Their example here is that this feature will let you watch vertical videos without any black bars on the sides.

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Source: The Verge

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Source: Samsung Galaxy S9 Launching with Snapdragon 845, Android 8.0.0 Oreo

Samsung is on a roll recently with the well-received Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ and the newly-introduced Note 8 breaking pre-order and sales numbers. While they had a rough end to 2016 they are quickly building pace and putting the past behind them. The Galaxy S9 is still 6 months or more away, but that does not stop the rumor mill, and we have some information which helps us to see some of what Samsung will be bringing to the table with its 2018 flagships. If you were hoping for a major redesign of the Samsung flagship you might be disappointed, but why fix what isn't broken? As always keep in mind that leaks and rumors are just that, leaks and rumors —  these details are subject to change since we are still months away from release, and the device remains in development.

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What's New?

As one would expect the Galaxy S9 carries the SM-G960 internal designation, the natural evolution from SM-G950 and 955 from the S8 and S8+. Our leaks only give us information about the specs for the base S9, but at this time there really aren't any reasons to doubt a S9+ will be released as well. Since the phone will be shipping early next year it will naturally bring Android 8.0 Oreo, likely with a new version of the Samsung Experience UI which should be at version 9.0 at the time. The Snapdragon 845 will be powering the phone much like the 835 this year and Sammobile wrote about rumors that suggest Samsung will be securing the first batch of this new chip, possibly delaying other 845 phones by a few months again. Finally, our source tells us that the fingerprint sensor will be in a centered rectangular cutout  — while this seemingly rules out an in-display fingerprint scanner, keep in mind the device our source is acquainted is essentially an early prototype, and this might change further in development.

This bit is a little confusing still, though if they intend to bring dual cameras for the S9 it's possible that mounting placement will be similar to that of the Note 8, if you were to rotate the entire camera and sensor array 90 degrees clockwise. We haven't heard rumors that the Galaxy S9 will ship with the dual camera array from the Note 8 so far, but it is highly likely that it will.

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What's staying the Same?

Not everything is looking to change with the Galaxy S9. The phone looks to still retain its QHD+ display at 1440×2960 with its 18.5:9 ratio and the Infinity Edge. The phone will largely retain its shape and form factor, but it is not indicated if it will have the rounder Galaxy S8 display or the more-squared Note 8 display. Finally, our sources indicate that the Galaxy S9 will offer 4GB of RAM with 64GB of internal storage. It would be safe to assume the return of expandable storage and the IP68 water-resistance rating. If the Galaxy S9 indeed retains 4GB of RAM, it would be a disappointment since RAM management is one of the worst aspects of Samsung's current phones, especially with such a heavy-handed UX.

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As we mentioned earlier, these are rumors and leaks and many things can change between now and the usual release period of March/April. It is sad to see that the phone looks to retain a physical fingerprint sensor, but at least it could be mounted in a better orientation this time — it seems like Qualcomm's under-display solution is not quite ready for prime time. We aren't looking at a radical redesign but it does look like Samsung is keeping what works and changing what doesn't on its 2017 flagships. It is also likely that we won't see a modular design coming with the Galaxy S9 which makes sense since that would likely require a total redesign and Samsung traditionally does this every two years. That is all we have learned so far about the Galaxy S9 ,and we will keep you updated on the XDA Portal as we learn more about the phone.

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What appeals to you about the Galaxy S9 rumors? Would you have liked to see a 4K display, modularity, or anything else? Let us know in the comments!

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Zero Camera Mod Enables 1440p Video Recording at 60FPS on the Galaxy S8 and S8+

The hardware in our smartphones is generally capable of more than what the company enables via the software. OEMs hold back these feature for a number of reasons but the developer community is great at unleashing that power. XDA Senior Member zeroprobe has been working on the Zero Camera Mod for the Galaxy S8 and S8+ since June and its latest update brings 1440p video recording at 60 frames per second. Other features available here include 4K HDR photos, autofocus tracking for all modes, no recording time limits and more.

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Check out the Zero Camera Mod in our Galaxy S8+ forum

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Unofficial LineageOS 15 Beta Build Available for the Pixel C

The LineageOS team was among the first ROM development teams to begin working on their Android Oreo ROM. After all, they've started putting together "lineage-15.0" mere hours ahead of AOSP drop, on August 21st. During the last few days, we've seen many people booting AOSP Android Oreo/LineageOS 15 on devices like the Xiaomi Mi3/Mi4, the Nexus 5, the Moto G line, among others. But only some of them made testing or alpha/beta ROMs available to the public. Today, we're seeing yet another device join this family: the Google Pixel C.

An unofficial LineageOS 15 beta build has been released by XDA Senior Member followmsi. The Pixel C received an official Android Oreo update this week, but since it's probably one of the last updates the device will see in its lifetime (it launched with Android Marshmallow back in 2015 together with the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P), LineageOS support is essential for owners planning to keep it for longer. And since this ROM takes advantage of the Oreo bootloader and kernel, it should be mostly bugless. However, the dev said that the ROM is untested, and as such, any bugs will be documented and fixed later. So, if you want to install and test it, do it at your own risk.

The developer has also included an unofficial ARM64 stock OpenGapps build, along with a config file for the Pixel C. It should be enough for Gapps support on Lineage, however, it's also untested. He also said that the official LineageOS 15 kernel is ready to be uploaded to Lineage's GitHub, and that will be done in the following days. The dragon device tree will obviously need some work on parts like fstab and overlays too, but nothing too important.

If you're ready to give this unofficial Oreo build a shot, you can find the download links in our forums. Have in mind, as we said above, that this is an untested build and there are probably bugs here and there. It's still unknown when will the LineageOS team start rolling out Oreo weeklies, but it's still too early to tell. So this unofficial build is a great starting point.

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Source: Forums

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ARCore is a New Augmented Reality Platform from Google

Google announced Project Tango back in 2014 and it sparked a lot of interest within the Android community. The company then launched a dev kit that cost over $1,000, but soon other OEMs stepped up and brought the technology to a consumer level. Google's initial approach required special sensors to work and this has had an adverse effect on the design of these consumer devices. Google has learned a lot since the inception of Project Tango (now known simply at Tango), and has released a new AR platform for developers called ARCore.

This is interesting because recently, Apple announced they wanted to get their feet wet in the augmented reality market. They did so in a big way too with what they call ARKit. Unlike Google's Tango technology, ARKit from Apple is able to work on millions of devices that are already available in people's hands. They found a way to implement convincing AR software into current smartphones without needing special cameras and sensors.

You would think this would put them at a disadvantage and it was in a way, but not so much in other ways. Sure, Apple's ARKit can't do as much as a dedicated Tango device, but it was good enough. That, coupled with the fact that it could be rolled out to current devices made it a major win for anyone interested in augmented reality. Google has taken note with what Apple has done and today has announced ARCore, a new augmented reality developer platform for Android devices and it's already being supported by the Unreal Engine.

Similarly to ARKit, ARCore does not need special cameras or sensors in order for it to work. There will likely be some limitations as far as hardware is concerned, but Google is confident that this platform will let developers create AR experiences for virtually any Android smartphone. This includes devices already in the hands of consumers as well as devices that will be released in the future. This is being launched in a preview phase with Google's Pixel and Samsung's S8, but Dave Burke says they're "targeting 100 million devices at the end of the preview."

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Source: Fast Company

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