Google’s Cyber Weekend Promotion Discounts: Movies, Games, Music, Books and More

Google is hosting a big discount promotion for the holidays that include up to 70% off in in-app purchases for select games, game titles on sale from $0.99, up to 50% off applications and app subscriptions, whole albums discounted down to $0.99, lots of HD movies on sale for $5.99 and sometimes lower, deep discounts on books and a collection of TV shows to choose from too. There’s a lot of material at low price, which should appease a lot of people.

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Samsung Galaxy S6 Boots up its First AOSP ROM

Samsung devices are widely recognized by Android enthusiasts to tout superb hardware but unfortunately acceptable software. Touchwiz – love it or hate it, you’re generally stuck with it if you buy a Samsung Galaxy device.

Thanks to the efforts of the development community on XDA, you can have the option to switch over to an AOSP-based ROM – if you’re willing to wait. Most flagship devices on the market have been blessed to operate on Snapdragon SoCs, making it easier for developers to port AOSP over to their hardware thanks to the extensive documentation provided to developers on the hardware. However, Qualcomm’s blunder with the Snapdragon 810 caused Samsung to drop its use of the SoC in favor of exclusively using its own in-house Exynos SoC.

Enthusiasts looking to use Google’s stock Android software in place of Touchwiz have generally had to wait many months for the developer community to port AOSP to their hardware, thanks to complications arising from a lack of documentation for Samsung’s Exynos brand of SoCs. That hasn’t deterred developers from tackling the issue anyways, and thanks to XDA Senior Member tdcfpp we now have our first AOSP-based ROM booting on the Samsung Galaxy S6.

According to a post by the developer responsible for the initial port, the major hurdle that they have yet to get past is getting multi-boot working because the developer cannot continue testing the port as it would require removing the Android HardwareComposer (enabling GUI rendering via the GPU) in order to check the FrameBuffer. Doing so would currently cause the device to enter into a bootloop, making further testing more difficult for the developer.

Clearly, the team’s work is far from over, but it’s important to show them your support if you’re interested in eventually tasting the Marshmallow-flavored fruits of their labour.

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Huawei Launches the Huawei Mate 8 with Kirin 950 SoC

Huawei has made the Huawei Mate 8 official at an event held in China earlier today. The device is the successor to the Huawei Mate 7, and sports Huawei’s new Kirin 950 SoC.

Starting off, the Huawei Mate 8 sports a large 6″ IPS LCD display with 2.5D curved glass. The display is surprisingly still 1080p with a ppi of ~367. The choice of FHD instead of QHD on such a large display does seem questionable, but it should help with the battery life and graphics performanc without sacrificing too much quality.

The Mate 8 bears a metallic body, with a curve on the back of the device to make it a bit easier to hold in the hand. The device press images look like they are bezel-less, but there’s a good chance it has a manageable amount of bezel all around, all of which were photoshopped away to make the device look more appealing. The speakers of the device find themselves on the bottom edge, while the back of the device carries a circular fingerprint reader, much like the new Nexus.

On the inside, the Huawei Mate 8 bears HiSilicon’s new Kirin 950 SoC, which is an octa-core chipset based on the popular big.LITTLE design. It has 4x Cortex A53 clocked at 1.8 GHz along with 4x Cortex A72 clocked at 2.3 GHz. The device rocks a Mali-T880MP4 for the GPU, along with 3GB/4GB of LPDDR4 RAM depending on which storage variant the user opts for. It comes in storage variants of 32GB, 64GB and 128GB, along with a slot for microSD expansion which users can choose if they are willing to give up dual SIM functionality.

Camera wise, the Huawei Mate 8 packs in a 16MP Sony IMX298 sensor with a f/2.0 aperture, OIS, PDAF and dual-LED flash; but supports only 1080p video recording with no 4K option. The front shooter is a 8MP Sony IMX179 with a f/2.4 aperture.

The Huawei Mate 8 packs in a 4,000 mAh non-removable battery (supporting Quick Charging up to 2A at 9V), and runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, albeit with Huawei’s EmotionUI 4.0 skin on top. The device will be available for purchase in China from Q1 2016, and will cost CNY 2999 ($470) for the 32GB/3GB variant, CNY 3699 ($580) for the 64GB/4GB variant and CNY 4399 ($690) for the top tier 128GB/4GB variant. Global availability of the device will be announced at CES 2016, so be on the lookout if this device appeals to you.

What are your thoughts on the Huawei Mate 8? Will you purchase a 6″ LCD device with a 1080p display in 2016? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Read on for related content:

• Leaked Render Allegedly Reveals the Huawei Mate 8
• Huawei Demonstrates Next-Gen Charging, Powers 3,000mAh Battery to 48% in 5 Minutes
• Huawei Officially Announces the Kirin 950 SoC
• Huawei’s Kirin 950 SoC Gets Benchmarked
• Huawei is Now the 2nd Largest Android OEM in Europe

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