XDA Recognized Contributor aukhan has modded the Note 5 Launcher to now support 6 icons in the homescreen dock. The mod also adds news new launcher effects, along with a modified icon size to better suit the phone.
CNet recently interviewed Unity CEO John Riccitiello and gave us a little more insight on the company behind the popular game engine. Unity powers roughly 30% of all games on Android, 25% of all games on iOS and more than 75% of all games on AR and VR.
Quarterly financial reports have been going out lately and Huawei had some impressive numbers to reveal when they released theirs. The company has had an 81% year over year growth when it comes to smartphone shipments. This is very impressive and it was enough to take the throne away from the previous top smartphone OEM, Xiaomi.
Google has announced a subscription service for YouTube called YouTube Red. For $9.99 per month, you can watch ad-free videos, the ability to play those videos in the background, a save offline feature and more. Early next year, the subscription service is said to get better with exclusive access to new shows and movies made by YouTube’s biggest creators.
Google has been working with Udacity to develop Android development courses for a while now. A new announcement has been made today about a course specifically for Android Wear. This is meant for those who are already familiar with developing for Android but just need that extra help to start working on applications for Android Wear.
BlackBerry has just posted the Android powered PRIV smartphone in their online store. It looks like the PRIV will start shipping on November 16th and it will cost $749.00 to pre-order directly from their online store. We also get a shot spec sheet that details the 3,410mAh battery, 18MP rear-facing camera and the supported cellular bands.
Netflix has only been around since 1999, but today accounts for nearly 35% of Internet traffic in the U.S. with a whopping 43 million subscribers. Even wonder how Netflix manages to stream so much content like it’s magic? You can thank Falcor for that. No, not the lovable dragon companion from the 1983 movie Neverending Story, but the Javascript library that Netflix named after him. Designed to effortlessly deliver cloud content to your local storage for a seamless video-watching experience, Falcor is now used for delivering video content for all Netflix-compatible platforms.
Falcor Magic
Developers looking to use some of Netflix’s magic were teased with a developer preview back in August. In a blog post, Netflix now describes its implementation of Falcor for Android. If you’re interested in using the Falcor Javascript library in your application to better deliver your cloud content, Netflix has provided some starter guides that could prove useful. If you’re thinking why you should implement Falcor to handle your backend data, Netflix also has an answer for that. Keep in mind that Falcor may not be suited for variable data sets, as detailed by Modus Create, which means you may not want to implement it if your cloud platform relies on user collaboration that sends data back to the cloud rather than serving static data to an individual user. Nevertheless, the Falcor Javascript library is fantastic at what it’s designed for, and it’s hard to argue with its efficiency considering the hugely successful streaming platform that Netflix has built.
