Huawei opens up their own app store with the Huawei P20

Huawei is a giant in the smartphone world. They are in the same conversation as Samsung and Apple in terms of sales and market share. One thing Apple and Samsung have that Huawei doesn't is a proprietary app store. Apple, of course, has the App Store and Samsung has the Galaxy Apps store. Huawei is launching their own app store called AppGallery and it will be on the Huawei P20.

AppGallery will be available to all existing Huawei smartphones, but the Huawei P20 and P20 Pro will be the first to have it pre-installed. The app store is primarily geared towards the Asian markets with apps like Amap and WeChat. Common apps like Facebook and YouTube will also be available. The store is organized into five tabs: Featured, Category, Top, Manager, and Me. Users can rate and leave reviews in the store as well.

If you own a Huawei device, you can download ApGallery right now. Make sure you have 3rd-party app downloads enabled and visit this page on your phone. The app store will automatically start downloading. The app store should be a great addition to Huawei devices, especially those in the Asian market. Users in some areas of the world don't have access to nearly as many apps on the Play Store. The AppGallery can help to fill that gap.

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Source: Instagram Via: GSMArena

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How to Fix the Multi-Touch Bug on the Google Pixel 2/2 XL running Android 8.1 Oreo

Do you own the Google Pixel 2 or Google Pixel 2 XL? Are you trying to win some chicken dinners in PUBG Mobile? If so, you may be at a disadvantage. No, I'm not talking about the rampant use of keyboard and mouse users in-game, but rather a bug that may be causing some frustrating touchscreen issues. For the past few months since the release of Android 8.1 Oreo, many users have reported erratic multi-touch behavior. The issue is widespread judging by the number of reports on the Google Issue Tracker page, but there's still no official fix available for it. If you're looking for a way to fix it, there's an unofficial method that involves flashing a Magisk Module that we would like to share with you today.

Before we dive in, let's be absolutely clear about what issue we're talking about in the first place. In short, what happens is that when two fingers are placed on the screen, the phone might have erratic touch events generated between the two fingers. This is very noticeable in FPS games but can also be replicated elsewhere such as in Google Photos according to our tipster. Here are two videos which should help you visualize what we're talking about:

A fix is in the works by Google, but it isn't yet available. According to two recent commits to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) gerrit, the fix involves resampling for multiple pointers. Rather than wait for the fix to roll out with the next update, XDA Senior Member Freak07 compiled the updated libraries (specifically, libinput and libinputflinger) against the latest April security patch builds for the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL so you can install the fix right now. Since you will be replacing system files, you will need to have a rooted device.

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Fix Multi-Touch Bug on the Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL running Android 8.1 Oreo

1. Unlock the bootloader of your device and install Magisk.
2. Download the Magisk Module from here.
3. Install the Magisk Module using Magisk Manager.
4. Reboot your phone.

Your erratic multi-touch screen issues should now be fixed! Let us know in the comments if this fix worked for you. This fix also supposedly works on other Android 8.1 Oreo devices such as the Google Pixel, Google Pixel XL, and OnePlus devices such as the OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T however it has not been tested on them. The fix currently causes a bootloop on Pixel devices running the Android P Developer Preview, so we caution against flashing it right now if you're running that build.

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“Atlas” is the codename for a Chromebook with a 4K display

Chromebooks are about to get even more high-end specs. Back in February, we wrote about Chromebooks with 4K displays being on the horizon. A commit from the Chromium Gerrit mentioned "secret upcoming 4K Chromebooks." This could have been a joke, but it did seem inevitable that a Chromebook would get such a high-resolution display. We now have a codename for such a device.

Reddit user -nbsp- discovered a few lines from the Chromium boards.yaml file. All it says is a name and screen resolution, but the resolution is 3840 x 2160, which is indeed 4K. Here's the section that mentions the new codename and resolution:

  atlas:  # 3840x2160, boots recovery image on USB ports.  screen: [3840, 2160]  sdcard: False  hi_res: [en, es-419, pt-BR, fr, es, it, de, nl, da, nb, sv, ko, ja, id,  th, ar, ms, zh-CN, zh-TW, fi, pl]  

That's literally all we know right now. People will argue that Chromebooks don't need displays with such high resolution. This is true for most Chromebooks, which are meant to target low prices. However, devices like the Pixelbook have their place. Some people want Chrome OS on the best specs possible. It's possible we will see a new 4K Chromebook at Google I/O this year, but that's just speculation at this point.

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OnePlus 6 will have the option to “hide” the display notch

Without a doubt, the most controversial smartphone trend of 2018 has been the display notch. Essential and Apple kicked this off last year and we've already seen it on plenty of devices this year. Xiaomi, Huawei, and ASUS have already shown off notched devices. The LG G7 and OnePlus 6 will soon join the notch squad. Every manufacturer has a different reason for adopting the notch, and we're seeing different approaches to how the software handles it.

Last week, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei attempted to get ahead of the potential backlash by explaining their reasoning for the notch. He argued the display notch essentially moves the notification bar higher up, which allows more content to be displayed. A lot of users aren't convinced by this reasoning. They say the notch gets in the way when watching videos or using the phone in landscape mode. As a compromise, Pei says the OnePlus 6 will include a feature we first saw in the Huawei P20. Users can "hide" the notch with software.

Hide notch feature on Huawei P20

"Hiding" the notch simply puts a black bar on the sides. This makes the phone look like it has a more traditional bezel at the top. The notification bar is directly below the notch. You lose a small amount of screen real estate, but it's not really a big deal if you're coming from a phone with traditional bezels. When the OnePlus 6 becomes available, we recommend giving the notch a fair shake before hiding it. Carl Pei says they are taking great care to make sure the notch doesn't interfere with things like video. Will you opt to hide the notch?

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Source: OnePlus Forums

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The Samsung Galaxy S III & Galaxy Note II may succeed the legendary HTC HD2

Technology-oriented websites tend to focus only on the latest smartphones (and that includes us), but a large number of users choose not to upgrade their devices for one reason or another. Perhaps for financial reasons, there are hundreds of thousands of users who stick to older devices. Custom ROMs such as the now-defunct CyanogenMod have kept older smartphones alive for ages, but there comes a time when even unofficial support must end—for most devices, at least. The legendary HTC HD2 was launched in 2009 with Windows Mobile 6.5 at a time when Android 2.1 Eclair was the latest Android release, but the device has received ports of every version of Android up to Android 7.0 Nougat (not to mention multiple other operating systems.) Now, it appears that the HD2's torch will be passed on to the Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II.

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Legends Never Die: How The Samsung Galaxy S III And Galaxy Note II Live On

The Samsung Galaxy S II and Samsung Galaxy Note were the last Samsung Galaxy flagships to feature the company's rectangular design. Starting with the Samsung Galaxy S III in mid-2012 and later the Samsung Galaxy Note II in late-2012, Samsung revamped their smartphone design language to incorporate their now-iconic curved edges. Traces of the original Samsung Galaxy S III design are present in every Samsung Galaxy S device released since 2013, and it wasn't until the Samsung Galaxy S8 that Samsung would radically change the design language.

Left to right: Samsung Galaxy S III, Galaxy S4, Galaxy S5, Galaxy S6, and Galaxy S7. Devices are not to scale.

Both devices were launched with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, with official updates extending all the way to Android 4.4 KitKat. Thanks to CyanogenMod (and now LineageOS), the devices have an unofficial upgrade path to Android 7.1 Nougat. Compared to the ridiculous specifications of some modern Android smartphones (8GBs of RAM on the OnePlus 5T and Razer Phone versus 1/2GBs of RAM on the international Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II respectively), it doesn't seem like these two devices should be able to run more modern versions of Android.

And yet, they do. They are not only able to just boot Android 7.1 Nougat, but they run it so well that the international Samsung Galaxy S III is the second most popular device running LineageOS according to the ROM's official statistics page.

LineageOS active installation statistics as of April 3rd. The international Samsung Galaxy S III is surpassed in usage only by the equally legendary OnePlus One.

While the latest iterations of Android software releases and system-on-chips have reduced the popularity of custom ROMs on flagship smartphones, these older devices (and some newer budget devices like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4) are kept alive by custom ROMs. Barring hardware failure, many of these devices may still have years of use ahead of them because, to their owners, they still work just fine. (Having a removable battery definitely helps for longevity, too.) The one thing that might convince the tens of thousands of users to finally lay their old device to rest is if unofficial software support ends for the foreseeable future—something that is almost a guarantee to happen as device maintainers move on to greener pastures.

However, a recent development has been brought to our attention which will help pave the way for the prolonged life of these old Samsung Galaxy flagship devices. According to XDA Senior Member forkbomb444, the official LineageOS maintainer for the Samsung Galaxy S III, Google Nexus 7 (2013), and the Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017), version 4.17 of the Linux kernel will add support for the Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II.

The Samsung Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II: A Device Reborn

One of the biggest challenges facing developers looking to keep older devices updated is maintaining the kernel. As new Android operating system are released, developers may need to make many changes to ensure that the existing HALs work with the latest Android Framework.  The problem is that, without official manufacturer support, it can be a nightmare to keep things like the radio and graphics drivers up to date. (Project Treble is supposed to help with this process by allowing for the Android Framework to be updated without requiring changes to existing HALs, but this major re-architecture only arrived with the release of Android 8.0 Oreo—5 years after the release of the Galaxy S III.)

Yet, it's not impossible to still port the latest releases of Android if you have the know-how and are willing to invest blood, sweat, and tears into the initiative. It also helps if others kickstart the effort. In this case, Samsung's testing of Tizen 3.0 on the Galaxy S III helped the Exynos 4 Quad become better suited by the Linux kernel. forkbomb444 states that his work on the audio and some Galaxy Note II specific hardware (the touchscreen, display, and other components) are being upstreamed to the mainline Linux kernel, which means that the two devices "will be able to boot the kernels released by Google/kernel.org with no changes, which makes it a lot easier to keep up with newer AOSP versions" according to forkbomb444. (forkbomb444 also credits Replicant with reverse-engineering the RIL, making it easier to support newer versions of the Linux kernel without employing a ton of hacks.)

All 4 Exynos variants of the Galaxy S III/Galaxy Note II (i9300, i9305, n7100, t0lte) are able to boot a single set of software with kexec. With a bit of modification, forkbomb444 states that any regular GNU/Linux distribution can be installed on the device. Now, there's no particular benefit to being able to install a GNU/Linux distribution on your device. Yet, in the spirit of the HTC HD2, it's not about actually running the software, it's about proving it's possible.

Demonstration of a working camera on the Galaxy S III with the upstreamed changes to the Linux kernel

forkbomb444 says that he is still working on getting the notification LED driver submitted upstream, and that Linux kernel version 4.18 should bring support for it along with the hardware back and menu keys. He estimates that the changes he has submitted already should land in the mainline Linux kernel source tree by next week. As for getting Android Oreo running on the devices, that's still a work in progress. Android Oreo might even run even better on the devices than Android Nougat does thanks to Android Go.

In summary, official support for nearly all critical hardware components in the Linux kernel will pave the way for future versions of Android, and other Linux kernel-based operating systems, to be ported to the devices. The HTC HD2 is a legend in the community because of its immortality. Perhaps the international Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II may join the pantheon of Android smartphone gods.

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Huawei releases the HiAI Engine with the Huawei P20

Huawei launched the Mate 10 series in October with the HiSilicon Kirin 970 system-on-chip. The Kirin 970 notably has dedicated hardware for AI, in the form of a Neural Processing Unit (NPU). Last month, we also showed how Huawei was developing HiAssistant (powered by HiAI), a Google Assistant + Google Lens competitor for the Chinese market. Now, Huawei has released the HiAI Engine alongside the Huawei P20.

HiAI is Huawei's AI computing platform. Currently, the dedicated NPU on the Kirin 970 phones is used for features such as real time object and scene recognition in the camera app, as well as accelerated offline translation in Microsoft Translator. However, these capabilities are a small part of the overall potential of machine learning and neural networks. It's fair to say that it's early days yet for AI in smartphones, but the potential capabilities are promising.

According to Huawei, the HiAI Engine opens application capabilities, integrates "a plurality of AI capabilities and apps [that make] the apps more intelligent and powerful." Developers can now download the DDK (Driver Development Kit), SDK, and IDE for the HiAI Engine.

The application capabilities of the HiAI engine include a Computer vision (CV) engine. A Computer Vision engine refers to the "capabilities by which computers simulate the human visual system to sense the ambient environment, and determine, recognize and understand the composition of space," according to Huawei. The capabilities of the CV engine include Image Super Resolution, Facial Recognition, and Object Recognition (which are explained in more detail below).

The HiAI engine also includes an automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine. It's not open outside China, though. An ASR engine is what converts human voice into text, and its capabilities include speech recognition, speech conversion, and text-to-speech (TTS).

A Natural language understanding (NLU) engine is also part of the capabilities of the HiAI engine, but like the ASR engine, it's not open outside China. It enables computers to understand human voice, which allows them to perform communication or natural actions. Its capabilities include word segmentation, text entity recognition, emotive tendency analysis, and machine translation.

The features of the HiAI Engine are:

• Scene Detection: It "rapidly categorizes" images by recognizing the scenes in the content of the image. Huawei states that recognition of multiple types of scenes is currently supported with high accuracy.
• Document Correction and Document Detection: It's an assistant enhancement function which can correct the angle of the document. It can also automatically recognize the location information of the document in the image.
• Face Detection and Facial Comparison: Huawei states: "In face detection, information about the location, characteristic points, and postures of the human face in a given image is detected, and high-precision facial rectangular coordinates are returned."
• Image Category Label: It identifies information such as objects, scenes and behavior in an image on the basis of the deep learning method.
• Image Super Resolution: It's said to intelligently enlarge an image based on deep learning. It can also suppress artifacts while keeping the resolution unchanged for a clearer, sharper image.
• Character Image Super Resolution: It can enlarge an image including characters by nine times. It can also "enhance" the definition of the characters on the image.
• Code Detection: According to Huawei, "Code detection reads quick response (QR) codes and bar codes to obtain information included in the codes, thereby providing related services subsequently. The code detection capability is integrated in applications."

Developers can now download the DDK, SDK and IDE of the HiAI Engine via the source links.

Thanks to XDA Member Evolutios for the tip!

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Source: HuaweiSource 2: HuaweiSource 3: Huawei

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Google is Testing a Horizontal Tab Switcher in Chrome for Portrait Mode

Google really, really loves their A/B tests. While the vast majority of users might be seeing one shade of green in the Play Store, another set of users might see a totally different color. Google Chrome for Android works a bit differently, though, as its open source nature and feature flags allow for anyone to participate in the company's public A/B tests. Today, a new commit has appeared on the Chromium gerrit that aims to revamp the tab switcher in Chrome for Android.

As shown in the image above, the tab switcher shows cards lined up horizontally when the user is in landscape mode. On the other hand, the tabs are lined up vertically when the device is in portrait mode. This new commit adds a feature flag (chrome://flags#enable-horizontal-tab-switcher) to always show the horizontal tab switcher when the phone is in portrait mode. The commit description states that a future commit will refine the tab UI in preparation for a "public experiment," so it's clear that Google intends to A/B test this on a segment of its users.

If we might speculate a bit, I think this sort of change lines up nicely with the rumors that Android P will offer navigation gestures. According to 9to5Google, the next major Android version will offer gestures to navigate the interface like the iPhone X. We've already seen phones like the OnePlus 5T offer similar gestures, and with the recent push towards almost entirely bezel-less devices, we wouldn't be surprised if Android starts to natively offer such a feature. A revamped horizontal tab switcher in Chrome might go along with a horizontal recent apps screen in Android P if this rumor is true.

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