The Mandalorian has been the highlight of streaming service Disney+ during its first year, and as we approach Christmas, supplies of toys and other merchandise are already running out in many places. But no such problem for Google’s Mandalorian Augmented Reality Experience (AR), which launched yesterday. The collaboration between Google, Disney, and Lucasfilm lets you place life-sized virtual characters from Season 1 of the hit show into your real-world environment and interact with scenes from the story.
The app is available primarily for the Google Pixel 5 and 4a 5G, but Google has also made it run on a number of other “5G Android phones”. That’s by no means all of them, but we’ll come to that in a moment. Early reviews from users have been mixed, with reports that it’s fairly sluggish and laggy. We suspect that might be the reason that it hasn’t been released as a free-for-all for all handsets. We’d also venture that the recommendation that you use a 5G connection might have some effect, but with some of the issues, therefore, caused by the relatively limited 5G service in many areas. If none of that has put you off and you want to recreate the taking of The Child or the downing of Moff Gideon’s X-Wing, then ‘This Is The Way’. Ahem. Sorry – couldn’t resist. You can download the Mandalorian AR Experience on these handsets:
Mandalorian AR Experience Compatibility List:
Google: Pixel 4a 5G, Pixel 5
LG: G9/Velvet, K92, V60 ThinQ 5G, Wing
Motorola: Edge+, One5G, Razr 5G
OnePlus: 7 Pro 5G, 7T Pro 5G, 8, 8 Pro, 8T
Oppo: Find X2 (we had no luck with the Pro version), Reno 3
The app is available until the end of October 2021, with five planned updates offering new content, dropping weekly between now and Christmas 2020. You’ll need to have Google AR Core installed and updated on your device. More details are available at the Google support page.
At its HDC 2020 event in September this year, Huawei unveiledEMUI 11, the company’s latest Android-based software release for smartphones and tablets. Soon after the announcement, the company rolled out an EMUI 11 beta release for a couple of devices and we got our first look at the software on our Huawei P40 Pro. This month, the company finally started rolling out a stable EMUI 11 release for the Mate 30 Pro, and now it has officially unveiled its update plan for other devices in its lineup.
In case you own a Huawei smartphone or tablet, you can check the table below for the EMUI 11 update timeline for your device:
Do note that the aforementioned update schedule only applies to unlocked devices. In case you have a carrier-locked device, you’ll have to refer to your carrier’s website for the EMUI 11 update schedule. For an in-depth look at everything new in EMUI 11, check out our hands-on review of Huawei’s latest software release.
Much like the previous orders, these 43 apps in this round have been found to be “prejudicial to [the] sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order.” Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 is once again being used as the provision of law under which the ban order is being passed.
List of apps banned in Wave 4
The list of 43 apps banned in this round are:
AliSuppliers Mobile App
Alibaba Workbench
AliExpress – Smarter Shopping, Better Living
Alipay Cashier
Lalamove India – Delivery App
Drive with Lalamove India
Snack Video
CamCard – Business Card Reader
CamCard – BCR (Western)
Soul- Follow the soul to find you
Chinese Social – Free Online Dating Video App & Chat
Date in Asia – Dating & Chat For Asian Singles
WeDate-Dating App
Free dating app-Singol, start your date!
Adore App
TrulyChinese – Chinese Dating App
TrulyAsian – Asian Dating App
ChinaLove: dating app for Chinese singles
DateMyAge: Chat, Meet, Date Mature Singles Online
AsianDate: find Asian singles
FlirtWish: chat with singles
Guys Only Dating: Gay Chat
Tubit: Live Streams
WeWorkChina
First Love Live- super hot live beauties live online
Rela – Lesbian Social Network
Cashier Wallet
MangoTV
MGTV-HunanTV official TV APP
WeTV – TV version
WeTV – Cdrama, Kdrama&More
WeTV Lite
Lucky Live-Live Video Streaming App
Taobao Live
DingTalk
Identity V
Isoland 2: Ashes of Time
BoxStar (Early Access)
Heroes Evolved
Happy Fish
Jellipop Match-Decorate your dream island!
Munchkin Match: magic home building
Conquista Online II
The biggest app in this list is AliExpress, without a doubt. While the e-commerce platform isn’t as popular as Amazon and Flipkart in India, it is still a popular choice for scouting deals on less-popular and niche products. Further, this list also includes a few dating apps, but none of them are too popular in the country. Lalamove was an upcoming delivery app connecting businesses with commercial truck drivers, but even that seems to have been caught in the crosshair.
After establishing itself as an independent brand, POCO has rapidly expanded its presence by launching several new smartphones covering different price segments. Continuing its steady march ahead, the company has now launched a new budget smartphone: POCO M3. The POCO M3 succeeds the POCO M2, which was launched just over two months ago. Unlike its predecessor, the POCO M3 is hitting the European markets first, offering several notable upgrades, ranging from a switch over to the Snapdragon 662 chipset, a more capable primary camera, and a bigger battery.
The most striking visual change on the POCO M3 is a giant rear camera module on the back — which takes up one-fourth of the back — with a triple camera assembly arranged vertically on the left corner and the attention-grabbing POCO branding printed on the right corner of the module. What remains unchanged is the front, as you still get a 6.53-inch IPS Full HD+ display with a waterdrop notch cutout for the front camera.
The processor has been swapped from MediaTek Helio G80 to Snapdragon 662, paired with Adreno 610 GPU, 4GB of RAM, and up to 128GB of UFS 2.1/2.2 storage. The number of cameras has dropped from four to three, but on the flip side, there’s a new 48MP primary sensor compared to the previous 16MP shooter, accompanied by 2MP depth and macro sensors. The 8MP selfie camera is unchanged from the previous model.
Another upgrade comes in the form of a bigger 6,000 mAh battery that charges via a 22.5W fast charger and supports reverse wired charging. The phone runs MIUI 12 for POCO based on Android 10 out-of-the-box. Other specifications of the POCO M3 include a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, Bluetooth 5.0, dual speakers, microSD card expansion, a 3.5mm audio jack, and an IR blaster.
Price & Availability
The POCO M3 goes on sale starting this Friday November 27th (Black Friday) on various online platforms including Amazon, Aliexpress, and more with a special early bird price of $129 for the base 4GB RAM, 64GB storage model, and $149 for the 128GB model. After that, beginning November 28th, the official retail price climbs to $149 for the base model and $169 for the 128GB storage variant. The phone comes in three colors: Cool Blue, POCO Yellow, Power Black. POCO hasn’t confirmed the device’s availability for other markets, including India, but we expect to hear more on that in the coming days. Meanwhile, you can read our hands-on of the POCO M3.
The POCO brand entered the scene two years ago with the POCOPHONE F1, offering flagship-level specs at a lower mid-range price tag in Europe and India. While many were hoping the brand to replicate this “flagship-killer” formula, POCO pivoted to offering mid-range and budget smartphones to better compete in price-conscious markets in Asia. The brand’s last release, the POCO X3 NFC, for example, was an extremely well-equipped mid-range device considering its €229 price tag. But with its latest European release, the POCO M3, POCO is aiming to appeal to those on an even tighter budget. I’ve been testing the handset for a few days and here are some early thoughts.
The POCO M3’s front features a very typical budget phone look, with a teardrop notch and a relatively large (for 2020) chin bezel measuring about a quarter of an inch that wraps around the 6.53-inch FHD+ LCD display.
But flip the phone around and it looks quite unique and striking, with a giant camera module that takes up one-third of the phone’s back, a design similar to the beautiful OnePlus 8T Cyberpunk 2077 Edition. The rest of the backside features this plastic back with a faux leather finish that looks and feels great (relative to other plastic backs).
Powering the device is a Snapdragon 662, which, for the POCO M3’s price tag, is a capable chipset with an Adreno 610 GPU that’s optimized for gaming on a budget. There’s also a 6,000 mAh battery which is impressive for a device that weighs only 198g and measures 9.6mm thick. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack and dual speakers that get quite loud.
The faux leather finish looks and feels great for the price
The rest of the components are entry-level parts — the LCD panel refreshes at 60Hz, and while it looks sharp, it doesn’t get too bright (maxes out at 400 nits); the main camera system is a “triple” lens setup in marketing only, as the 48MP main sensor is flanked by two mostly meaningless 2MP sensors. The lack of an ultra-wide camera is really jarring in late 2020. The selfie 8MP selfie camera is serviceable during the day and nothing more.
Software: The typical MIUI fare
The POCO M3 runs MIUI 12 over Android 10, and the overall experience is very similar to previous Xiaomi or POCO devices released in 2020. However, since many other POCO releases this year featured a high refresh rate, the UI here feels a tad slow to my eyes — but then again, I’m spoiled. For this budget price range, the phone’s speed and fluidity are fine.
I’m testing the European variant, and there are a couple of bloatware apps pre-installed (Amazon and Agoda), however.
Performance: System and Camera
The Snapdragon 662 is a solid octa-core 11nm chip that handles almost all daily tasks fine. I was able to play the game Hero Hunter with graphics settings on high without seeing stutter or framerate drops on the POCO M3.
As for the camera performance — I think it’s important to evaluate within the context of its price tag, because for someone like me who tests a lot of flagship phones, obviously, the photos produced by the POCO M3 are going to leave me wanting. But if we compare the POCO M3 against other devices in this price range, it can be considered capable. The main 48MP, f/1.79 sensor is decent during the day, producing sharp photos — but the dynamic range is limited.
In less than optimal lighting situations, both the 48MP camera and 8MP selfie camera struggle, producing very noisy shots. However, the main camera’s photos can be saved by turning on night mode, but the selfie sensor cannot really be salvaged at night.
The 2MP macro and depth sensors are mostly there for decoration, as the POCO M3’s macro shots are low on detail and portrait shots are just average.
Video recording maxes out at 1080p/30fps, and the footage is, again, acceptable at a budget phone price range, but for someone like me who’s used to testing more expensive phones, the footage appears grainy with no stabilization.
Battery life is, as expected, very good.
Battery life is, as expected, very good. Over the weekend, I unplugged on Saturday morning at 100%, went out for a full day, and returned home after 15 hours out with 45% battery. I was using the phone relatively heavily with lots of web surfing and photo taking. I didn’t charge it that night on purpose, and I woke up Sunday morning with 39%, which then lasted me through Sunday around 7 pm. That is solid performance in my eyes, and possibly the highlight of the POCO M3.
POCO M3: Price is the key
The POCO M3 goes on sale starting this Friday, November 27 — which is Black Friday. POCO is offering an early bird discount price of $129 for the base 64GB storage variant and $149 for the 128GB model. After the early bird sales period, the price increases to an official $149 for the base model and $169 for the 128GB model.
Personally, I think the $129 price is reasonable for the M3, but at $169, it is relatively expensive compared to the far more capable X3 NFC, which only costs another $70 or so.
One of the best things about Android is that it offers plenty of freedom when it comes to emulating retro games and titles designed for consoles. The story is a bit different on actual consoles, as very few vendors officially permit sideloading homebrew apps such as emulators on their platforms. As it turns out, you can easily transform your Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X into a retro gaming station by installing RetroArch via Developer Mode.
Microsoft doesn’t allow game emulators in its Store, but they do offer an official method to turn on “Developer Mode” on current-gen Xbox consoles, including the Xbox Series S and Series X. And for those not familiar with RetroArch, it itself is a frontend using the libretro platform that can use different “cores” to emulate a number of legacy consoles, such as the Nintendo Wii, GameCube, Dreamcast, PlayStation Portable, and many more. The developers of RetroArch, Libretro, officially support the original Xbox One, which makes it almost too easy to run the emulator(s) on it — no jailbreaking required. And now, a recent video shared by Modern Vintage Gamer on YouTube (via MSPowerUser) confirms that RetroArch can be sideloaded on the Xbox Series S as well!
As you can see, the budget Xbox One S offers fantastic emulation performance on classic titles like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GameCube), the original God of War (PlayStation 1), Super Mario Galaxy (Wii), and many others. This is no doubt the best way to relive your childhood gaming moments on the big screen.
The usual caveats with using emulators still apply, though. You do have to pay at least $19 for a Microsoft Developer account. In Developer Mode, you can develop software for the console and sideload them, but you cannot play retail games or run retail apps. You will also have to factory reset your console if you ever want to completely get out of Developer Mode. Nevertheless, none of the major mainstream consoles have something similar, making the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X a one-stop emulation machine.
Emojis have become an integral part of our informal expression. These tiny graphical assets add emotions, intention, and character to mere words. The frequent addition of new emojis to the Unicode standard is testimony to their popularity. Whenever Unicode gets new emojis, we need to wait for an OS upgrade to reach our phones to bring support for the emoji, before we can actually make them a part of our internet lingo. Google seems to prepare to make this easier, as a few commits indicate that it is working on decoupling new emojis from Android system updates.
As it currently stands, all fonts on Android are currently stored in the system partition, and more specifically, under the /system/fonts directory. Emojis, in particular, are present within the file called NotoColorEmoji.ttf. The system partition is read-only, and updating any file within the partition requires a system update while the partition isn’t mounted. So the only way to get new fonts and new emojis is to wait for an official OTA update or install it yourself unofficially through root.
New commits have been spotted at the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) Gerrit that look to decouple font files away from needing an OS upgrade. Keep in mind that these commits have not been merged yet. We can glean their purpose from the commit descriptions:
The updated font files will be stored to /data/fonts/files and all application will read it for drawing text. Thus, /data/fonts/files needs to be readable by apps and only writable by system_server (and init).
– /data/fonts/files The updated font files are placed in this directory. The files under this directory are readable by any apps. Only system_server can write font files to this directory.
– /data/fonts/config The font configuration used by system_server is stored in this directory. Only system_server can read/write this directory.
These commits essentially make it possible for the system_server process to write updated font files to the /data/fonts directory. The data partition is mounted as read-write, so with this change, Google is allowing only the system_server process the permission to write to this directory. All apps will then read the font and emoji files from this directory for drawing text. Thus, updated font files, and by extension new emojis, can be pushed to the phone without needing an entire OTA update for this purpose.
We reiterate that these commits have not been merged yet. Consequently, we aren’t sure when this change will happen. If these commits are merged within the next few months, we can see this change happen in Android 12.
Thanks to XDA Recognized Developer luca020400 for the tip!
