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Prices subject to change

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Google News tests dark theme for articles and upvote/downvote buttons in the feed

Based on your interests and some machine learning, Google News provides you a curated feed of news articles crawled from different publications and blogs across the Internet. You can also subscribe to specific publishers or read more about a specific topic with a simple tap of a button. To put it simply, it’s a hub for all the news the average user may care about. The app is slowly being improved with new features; most recently, for example, the app gained the ability to let you view news articles in two languages. Soon, the app may add two new features to improve the reading experience: dark theme for articles and voting buttons to manually curate your feed.

An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.

Dark Theme in WebView

Last year, Google News got a dark mode just like most other Google apps on the Play Store. However, this dark mode was confined mostly to the app’s own UI. Menus were displayed in dark colors, and so did some news articles as long as they were rendered natively by the app and not the Android system WebView. For articles that open in a WebView, the background color is still light. If you use the app to browse the news at night, then this can be annoying. In the near future, though, the app will open WebViews with a dark background. XDA’s Mishaal Rahman activated this feature manually in the latest version of the News app.

The AMP version of our website forced dark by the Google News app.

It’s likely this feature requires WebView versions based on Chromium builds that have the latest force dark mode code. Force dark mode in Chrome is still hit-and-miss, though, so it may take some time for this feature to roll out for users.

Voting in the Feed

Google is also planning to add an upvote/downvote function to the Google News app that takes the form of a thumbs up and a thumbs down. These will essentially help you curate your feed as you can easily tell the app which news sources/topics you like and which ones you don’t like.

Upvote/downvote buttons in the Google News app. Tapping the thumbs up will make the app show you similar stories, while the thumbs down button will indicate it that you don’t want to see content like this.

These features aren’t available yet for users and there’s no guarantee that they will become available anytime soon. However, given that they’re mostly complete, we expect them to become available to the wider public in a future version of the app.

Google News: Top World & Local News Headlines (Free, Google Play) →

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Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications.

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Samsung Unpacked 2020 may take place on February 11th

Samsung Unpacked is Samsung’s big event for its flagship phone launches, and this year the brand is expected to unveil the Galaxy S20. While Samsung hasn’t officially confirmed when the Samsung Unpacked 2020 event will take place, we think we now have a good idea.

In an unlisted video posted by Samsung Korea on Samsung’s Vimeo account (first spotted by Twitter user @water8192), we can see an animation teasing 2 squares wrapped in plastic saying “GALAXY.” At the end of the video, we can see the date of the event and how to watch it. While the official press release announcing Samsung Unpacked 2020 isn’t up yet, we can probably expect the press release to go live soon with confirmation of the location and time of the event. The event is rumored to take place in San Francisco, California on February 11th.

 

The two squares in the video are likely teasing two major launches at the event. The left square seems to resemble the camera square of the Galaxy S20 Ultra, the highest-end model of the upcoming S20 series. This square is about the same size and shape that we have seen in the leaked renders. The right square is likely teasing the new clamshell Galaxy Fold. This is the Motorola razr-style foldable phone that recently leaked. According to a report from SamMobile, it will cost under $1000 as it’s a more mass-market foldable.

The Galaxy S20, S20+, and S20 Ultra are rumored to launch with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 and Exynos 990 depending on the region. The S20 Ultra is the only model expected to feature a 108MP main camera, though the S20 and S20+ cameras will still have high MP sensors. There are multiple new camera modes in the works that we previously detailed if you want to learn more about the camera software. Of course, we’ll keep you up to date on Samsung Unpacked 2020, the Galaxy S20, and the new Galaxy Fold as we learn more.

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[Update 4: TENAA listing] Realme X50 will be Realme’s first smartphone with 5G

Update 4 (1/4/19 @ 1:15 AM ET): The Realme X50 has passed through TENAA, confirming its final specifications.

Update 3 (12/26/19 @ 1:32 AM ET): Realme has released official renders of the Realme X50 5G in Polar White color.

Update 2 (12/24/19 @ 3:50 AM ET): The Realme X50 5G will be launched at an event in Beijing, China on January 7, 2020.

Update (12/10/19 @ 00:30 AM ET): The Realme X50 will be powered by the Snapdragon 765G SoC. Scroll to the bottom for more information. The article as published on November 25, 2019, is preserved as below.

Following the recent launch of its first true flagship — the Realme X2 Pro — Chinese smartphone manufacturer Realme is prepping up to launch its first 5G enabled handset. As per a recent teaser shared by the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, Xu Qi Chase, the upcoming device will be called the Realme X50. The teaser image shared on Weibo further reveals that the Realme X50 will offer support for dual-mode 5G, which means that the device will support both 5G Standalone (SA) and Non-Standalone (NSA) networks, just like the upcoming Redmi K30 5G. However, it isn’t clear whether the Realme X50 will make use of a MediaTek SoC or a Qualcomm SoC to offer 5G support.

The image also gives us our first glimpse at the device, highlighting its pill-shaped punch-hole display which will house dual selfie cameras. This is another feature that the device shares with the Redmi K30, which will also feature a punch-hole display with a similar design. However, the cutout on the Redmi K30 is on the opposite end of the display. It’s worth noting that back in September this year, Realme released a statement confirming an upcoming 5G smartphone based on the Snapdragon 7 series, so the Realme X50 could feature a Snapdragon 7 series chip. While we don’t have any further information on the specifications or release timeline for the device, Realme India’s CEO Madhav Sheth has previously confirmed that the company will launch its first 5G device this year. This, along with the recent teaser, leads us to believe that the Realme X50 might be launched in China in the next few weeks.

Source: Weibo

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Update: Realme X50 5G confirmed with Snapdragon 765G

Earlier this month at the Snapdragon Tech Summit, we learned that the upcoming Xiaomi Redmi K30 and OPPO Reno3 Pro will be powered by the all-new Snapdragon 765G processor. Now, the Realme X50 is joining the lineup of upcoming 5G phones to features the Snapdragon 765G chip. The chip brings support for 5G connectivity, high refresh rate displays, and high-quality imaging to the mid-range price tier.

The Snapdragon 765G boasts of slightly higher single-core CPU performance  (Prime core clock speed increased from 2.3GHz to 2.4GHz) over the regular Snapdragon 765. It also offers slightly faster GPU performance (15% speed-binned) and select Snapdragon Elite Gaming features including Game Smoother, Game Fast Loader, Game Network Latency Manager, Jank Reducer 2.0, and Predictive Game Auto Tuner. For 5G connectivity, the Snapdragon 765G features the Snapdragon X52 5G Modem-RF System which supports dual-mode 5G.

Source: Weibo

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Update 2: Realme X50 5G launches in China on January 7

Through its official Weibo account, Realme has announced that the Realme X50 5G will be launching at an event in Beijing, China on January 7, 2020.

Source: Weibo

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Update 3: Realme X50 5G official renders

Realme has released official device renders of the Realme X50 5G on Weibo.

These renders give us our first complete and official look at the upcoming device, now confirmed to be sporting a quad-rear camera setup. Alongside the mesmerizing white color and pattern, you can also notice the volume rocker on the left side and the power button on the right side of the device. Oddly, the power button looks recessed into the frame, which is a sign of a side-mounted fingerprint scanner — this is just a guess though, so wait for more confirmation on this end.

Source: Weibo (1, 2)

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Update 4: Realme X50 passes through TENAA

The upcoming Realme X50 has passed through TENAA, revealing and confirming most of the specifications of the final product that consumers can expect to receive in their hands.

The TENAA listing for the Realme X50 RMX2051 reveals that the device will measure 163.8 × 75.8 × 8.9 mm and weigh 202 g. The phone will come with a 6.57″ FHD+ display, which TENAA mentions as “TFT”, and which we know through earlier teasers, will have cutouts in the display for the dual front cameras. The listing also mentions that the phone will have an under-display fingerprint sensor (“fingerprint recognition under the screen”). While TENAA listings are accurate, they are in Chinese, so context does sometimes get lost in the translation process. So either the Realme X50 comes with a TFT LCD display and an in-display fingerprint scanner, or it comes with an AMOLED display and in-display scanner, or it comes with a TFT LCD and side-mounted fingerprint scanner — all of these still remain possibilities.

The device will come in RAM options of 6GB, 8GB, and 12GB, and internal storage options of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB; but with no expandability. The rear camera setup on the device involves a 64MP main sensor, and auxiliary sensors of 8MP, 12MP, and 2MP resolution; while the front camera setup has 16MP and 8MP shooters. The phone also has a 4,100 mAh battery, but no headphone jack as the TENAA listing explicitly mentions the same. The Realme X50 5G also launches with Android 10 out of the box.

We expect to learn more when Realme officially launches the Realme X50 5G.

Source: TENAA

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Xiaomi will pre-install Google Phone and Messages apps on all Global and European phones

Xiaomi’s MIUI software experience is one that invites polarized opinions. Compared to Android on the Pixel, MIUI provides a very different experience from the way it looks to the way it behaves with apps and notifications. It is certainly polished in many areas and has improved greatly in the past few years, but it’s still a heavily customized experience as of MIUI 11. In most versions of MIUI, Xiaomi usually includes its own suite of apps to streamline the user experience, but now, it seems that Xiaomi will be borrowing taking a few pages from the Pixel experience as well.

Going forward, Xiaomi devices sold outside of China, India, or Indonesia will include Google’s Messages and Phone apps instead of their MIUI equivalents. Xiaomi says that this move was made to abide by privacy laws and restrictions in certain regions, which likely refers to regulations in the European Union. We should note that Xiaomi has shipped these two Google apps on some of their phones already. For instance, in my Redmi Note 8 Pro review, I noted that the device came with Google’s dialer and messages app out of the box. The same is true for the Mi 9T Pro that launched in Europe in late August of 2019. What this announcement means, therefore, is that all new devices sold with the European Economic Area (EEA) or global (Global) MIUI software builds will have these two apps pre-installed.

While many of you will appreciate having Google’s dialer app on board (even if you can’t access some of the Pixel-exclusive features like Call Screen), there is one downside to note of this transition: you won’t be able to record calls anymore. That’s because the Google Phone app doesn’t support call recording, whereas its MIUI equivalent does. The forum post does state that this feature will be “obtainable again in 2020,” though, so that means call recording will be available sometime later this year.

Source: Xiaomi

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Update 1: Shortly after publishing this article, we were informed that Russian versions of MIUI also have Google’s dialer app pre-installed. We have corrected our mention of this.

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Forums are open for the Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite and Galaxy Note 10 Lite

The Galaxy S10 Lite and the Galaxy Note 10 Lite have now been announced. They are two peculiar devices, to say the least, but one thing is clear: they’re aiming at being slightly more affordable or lower-end remixes on Samsung’s current flagship phones. The Galaxy S10 Lite features, among other things, a triple rear camera setup, a centered punch-hole display both taller and bigger (6.7-inch, 20:9), a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, a 32-megapixel camera setup, and more. The Galaxy Note 10 Lite, on the other hand, features similar dimensions, a smaller punch hole, a 2-year-old Exynos 9810 processor, and an S-Pen.

The differences between these two phones are odd, to say the least, but they are cheaper: the Note 10 Lite starts at €599 while the S10 Lite starts at €649. So if you can’t afford the full-fledged flagships, maybe this could be an option worth considering. And if you get one, you might as well get started with modding it and tweaking it so it’s really your phone. Luckily, we’ve opened forums for both the S10 Lite and the Note 10 Lite so you can find the latest on custom ROMs, rooting, modding, and more.

If you’re planning on getting one of these phones, then be sure to check out the forums now!

Galaxy Note 10 Lite XDA Forum | Galaxy S10 Lite XDA Forum

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Skagen’s Falster 3 smartwatch leaks on Amazon with Wear OS and late January release

Wear OS may not be a super popular smartwatch platform, but it does have some big names behind it. One of the manufacturers that is most responsible for pumping out solid Wear OS watches is Fossil. People may not know that Skagen is a subsidiary of Fossil, and the Skagen brand has also been responsible for some very nice smartwatches. The next device appears to be the Skagen Falster 3, which leaked on Amazon.

The Skagen Falster 2 was a very well-designed smartwatch and the Falster 3 doesn’t change a whole lot about that. It retains the same flat sides, pronounced watchband lugs, and three buttons along the right side. Unfortunately, the Amazon listing doesn’t give much information about specifications. We can see is it will be available in four color options: Black Silicone, Blue Silicone, Gunmetal Steel Mesh, and Leather – Silicone Backed. It will be water-resistant to a depth of 50 meters with NFC and GPS as well. The listing mentions “24 hours of battery life based on usage.”

It should be safe to assume the Skagen Falster 3 will feature the Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor and 1GB of RAM to match the Fossil Gen 5 series. Skagen watches are typically more expensive than the regular Fossil watches, and that’s the case here as well. The Amazon listing shows a price of $295 and a release date of January 25th.

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Source: Amazon (removed) | Via: Reddit

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