Telegram tests floating chat head bubbles for messages

Telegram for Android appears to be testing chat head bubbles for messages. The feature, which is buried in beta version 6.3.0 of the app, allows users to keep conversations at the forefront of their device in the form of a bubble. This adds convenience if you frequently talk to a certain friend or family member.

The feature was first brought to our attention by Twitter user Nadan Parinda, who uncovered the option in a hidden debug menu found in Telegram’s settings. However, this feature appears to have been spotted even earlier by the folks at TestingCatalog.

If you’re using Telegram version 6.3.0 beta, enabling chat head bubbles is easy. Simply open Telegram’s Settings, scroll down, long-press on the app version until you see the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ emoji, then long-press on the app version again to show the debug menu. In the debug menu, tap “enable chat bubbles” to show bubbles for incoming messages.

Screenshots courtesy of Nadan Parinda

If you’re running Android 10, you also have to enable “Bubbles” in the Developer Options for it to work. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear Telegram’s bubbles work on every device running Android 10. We tested the feature on an ASUS ROG Phone 3 and the bubble UI was broken. On the Pixel 4, the bubble crashed when we tried to interact with it. We did get it to mostly work on an OPPO Find X2 Pro (as shown earlier), while our tipster claimed it ran without issue on a Redmi Note 5 Pro running the Pixel Experience custom ROM.

Meanwhile, on Android 11, Telegram’s chat head bubbles don’t work at all, because the notifications aren’t recognized as a “conversation” notification. This could change, however, in future app updates. After all, chat head bubbles are a main feature of Android 11.

Telegram appears to be working out the kinks right now, hence why it’s a beta feature. But as Android 11 is released, chat bubbles will likely become a standard Telegram feature for quicker, more convenient communication.

Telegram (Free, Google Play) →

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Google Assistant-enabled Smart Displays can now play some games

Google Assistant-enabled Smart Displays are great for watching YouTube videos, checking the weather, viewing photos of family and friends, and most recently, watching Netflix. Starting today, these devices also make for a great party distraction thanks to the addition of games.

Google announced today on its official blog that devices like the Nest Hub and Nest Max can now access games “that take full advantage of the screen, and combine with voice and touch controls for instant, easy fun.” Simply say, “Hey Google, Let’s Play a Game,” and you can browse what’s available.

There are a variety of games to choose from, according to Google, including “Jeopardy!”, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, “Trivia Crack”, and something called “Guess the Drawing”, which challenges players to guess drawings as quickly as possible.

With families and friends quarantined together, these games are meant to provide a light-hearted distraction from the madness. It’s also just a nice way to add more value to Google Assistant-enabled Smart Displays, which are already great home companions.

Google said a handful of games are available beginning today, with more titles from “top game developers” coming later this year. It’s unclear what other titles are planned, but they’ll likely be party-focused.

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Source: Google

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Google Chrome for Android is adding biometric authentication for payments and touch-to-fill for passwords

Google Chrome rolled out support for Windows Hello biometric authentication for payments earlier this year, allowing users with Windows Hello capable devices to authenticate payments on the browser with their face or fingerprint. Earlier this month, we learned that Google was working to bring a similar feature to Chrome for Android which would allow users to select “Screen lock” as an additional payment confirmation method on their smartphones. Now, Google has officially announced that biometric authentication support is making its way to Chrome for Android, along with a few improvements to the Autofill experience.

Once the feature rolls out to Google Chrome for Android, users will be able to enroll their device and retrieve card details via biometric authentication. While the feature will require users to enter their CVC manually the first time they use their credit card, all subsequent transactions will just require biometric authentication to confirm the credit card details. The biometric authentication feature will be optional and users will be able to enable or disable it from within Chrome settings.

Google further reveals that the browser will make use of the W3C standard WebAuthn to securely enroll you for biometric authentication and ensures that none of your biometric information will ever leave your device. It’s worth noting that the feature isn’t available in the current build of Google Chrome for Android and it should roll out to users in the coming weeks.

Along with biometric authentication support, Google Chrome for Android is also getting a touch-to-fill feature that will present your saved accounts for the current website in a new dialog. The dialog will let you quickly fill in your information without requiring you to scroll to the respective form fields to choose an account. As with the biometric authentication support, the new touch-to-fill feature isn’t available in the current build of Chrome for Android and should roll out in the coming weeks.

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Report: Huawei overtook Samsung in Q2 2020 to become the #1 smartphone vendor

The Huawei Consumer Business Group (CBG), which both the Huawei and Honor smartphone brands are part of, has achieved incredible growth in the last few years. The Chinese technology giant is a major player in not only its home market of China but also in certain markets in Europe and other parts of Asia. The company’s growth has led them to become the #1 smartphone vendor in the second quarter of this year, finally overtaking Samsung. That’s according to a new report by technology analyst firm Canalys.

Canalys‘ data shows that Huawei shipped 55.8 million devices in Q2 2020, while Samsung shipped 53.7 million phones in the same period. As a result of the smartphone market contraction brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic, Huawei’s smartphone shipments actually dropped 5% year-on-year. However, Samsung’s smartphone shipments dropped a whopping 30% in the same period, which is what has allowed Huawei to overtake Samsung as the global smartphone vendor. In response to this news, Huawei issued a statement saying that their business has “demonstrated exceptional resilience in these difficult times. Amidst a period of unprecedented global economic slowdown and challenges, we’ve continued to grow and further our leadership position by providing innovative products and experience to consumers.”

There’s a big caveat with these smartphone shipment numbers, though. Much of Huawei’s success in Q2 2020 came from increased smartphone shipments in its home market of China where they increased shipments by 8%. In contrast, Samsung has a minuscule presence in China, with only less than 1% of the total market share. Samsung’s core markets including Brazil, India, the U.S., and Europe have been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, and their economic activity contracting as a consequence. In these overseas markets, Huawei’s smartphone shipments actually dropped 27%, a decrease similar to the one Samsung suffered.

Samsung and Huawei’s worldwide smartphone shipments in millions of units tracked from Q1 2015 to Q2 2020. Source: Canalys.

This data is surprising for a big reason. First, U.S. trade sanctions have threatened Huawei’s ability to make new Android smartphones since 2019. With the sanctions in place, Huawei cannot license Google Mobile Services (GMS) for new smartphone models, which means that the company’s latest smartphone models do not ship with the Google Play Store or Google Play Services. Users in Western markets rely on many apps that are either downloaded from the Google Play Store or depend on APIs within Google Play Services. While Huawei offers its own alternatives to the Google Play Store and Google Play Services in the form of the Huawei AppGallery and Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) respectively, many developers have not yet adapted their apps for deployment on HMS-only devices. Huawei has continued to sell smartphones with GMS on board thanks to a clever trick: Rebadging older, already-Google-certified models as new releases with slight design changes. However, this tactic of rebadging older models, as well as the company’s ability to create truly new smartphone models, is in jeopardy with the recent news that contract chip-makers have been barred from using U.S.-developed technology to fabricate chips for Huawei’s HiSilicon. The former measure affects the Chinese market very little, though, as the Chinese app ecosystem is wholly decoupled from Google already, while the latter measure is too recent for us to see the effects of in Q2 2020 smartphone shipments.

Then there’s the fact that we’re still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic effects of which have grown substantially during Q2. With the pandemic came a global recession as stay-at-home orders have affected both supply and demand for new smartphones. It’s thus no surprise to learn that the smartphone market contracted significantly this quarter. Huawei’s lead this quarter can be partly attributed to the effects on the market from the pandemic. Although the outbreak started in China, the country has managed to bounce back to relative normality as factories have reopened and new outbreaks are tightly controlled. Smartphone sales in the country are, thus, returning to normal, and since 70% of Huawei’s shipments are in China, they have weathered the storm better than Samsung.

It may be difficult for Huawei to maintain this lead going forward, though. As President Trump’s administration keeps imposing harsher trade sanctions on Huawei, it will become increasingly difficult for the company to compete in the global smartphone market. When the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy, and thus, smartphone shipments, will bounce back. China may be Huawei’s most important market, but it won’t be enough to keep Huawei at the #1 spot for much longer.

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HMD Global’s first 5G smartphone, the Nokia 8.3 5G, is coming to the US this fall

The Nokia 8.3 5G was announced a few months back as HMD Global’s highest-end smartphone in 2020 so far (although there are rumors floating around of a Nokia 9.3 PureView in the works, so this could very well change soon). The Nokia 8.3 5G is also the company’s first, and so far only, 5G-enabled smartphone. While it’s not powered by the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, it does have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G, which has been the common choice for mid-range smartphones with 5G support throughout the year. Not only this, but HMD Global also claimed that theirs was the first 5G device in the market to be compatible with all 5G bands globally. This device was previously planned for a global release following an announcement at MWC 2020 but plans obviously changed because of COVID-19 (MWC was canceled, the phone’s announcement was delayed, etc.) Now, HMD Global has announced that the Nokia 8.3 5G is coming to the United States very soon.

The Nokia 8.3 5G. Source: HMD Global

How soon, you might ask? The phone is launching sometime in the fall as per the company’s official announcement. For now, though, HMD Global has not given an exact release date and there is also a lot of information essential to the U.S. market that has not been disclosed right now, such as which carriers will have the phone, which retailers will sell it, what RAM/storage configurations will be available, and more. All of this information will probably be disclosed as we get closer to the phone’s release.

HMD Global is also increasing its focus on the American market; they have already had a presence in the U.S. for years, but the company plans to increase its presence as they’ve done in other parts of the world. The release of the Nokia 8.3 5G in the U.S. is only a part of this renewed push; Juho Sarvikas, the current Chief Product Officer of HMD Global, has been appointed Vice President of North America in order to work more closely with carriers and bring even more Nokia-branded smartphones to Americans.

This is all amazing news for Nokia fans in the United States. Are you excited about the Nokia 8.3 5G?

Nokia 8.3 5G Specifications

• 6.81-inch (1080 × 2400 pixels) Full HD+ 20:9 LCD screen with 120Hz refresh rate
• Octa Core (1 x 2.4GHz + 1 x 2.2GHz + 6 x 1.8GHz Kryo 475 CPUs) Snapdragon 765G 7nm EUV Mobile Platform with Adreno 620 GPU
• 6GB LPDDR4X RAM with 64GB storage, 8GB LPDDR4X RAM with 128GB storage, expandable memory with miroSD
• Android 10
• Single / Dual SIM
• 64MP rear camera with Dual LED flash, ZEISS Optics, 12MP ultra-wide angle lens, 2MP macro and 2MP depth sensor
• 24MP front-facing camera
• Side-mounted fingerprint sensor
• 3.5 mm headphone jack, FM radio receiver, OZO audio
• Dimensions: 171.90 x 78.56 x 8.99mm; Weight: 220g
• 5G SA/ NSA / Dual 4G VoLTE, WiFi 802.11 ac (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5, GPS/GLONASS/Beidou, USB Type-C
• 4500mAh battery with 18W fast charging

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HMS Core 5.0 introduces an AR Engine, Computer Graphics Kit, Accelerate Kit and more improvements

Huawei Mobile Services, or HMS, is Huawei’s alternative to GMS, and it similarly consists of user-facing applications as well as core background services. HMS provides an experience that is consistent across devices and independent of the platform version. The HMS ecosystem is comprised of HMS Apps, the HMS Core, and the HMS Capabilities that the Core enables through its available APIs. The latest milestone update to HMS Core 5.0 introduces several APIs and improvements to existing APIs.

Huawei has doubled down on improving HMS Core and its allied services. After all, these services and service frameworks form the backbone of Huawei and Honor’s current experience. As of March 2020, Huawei’s global monthly active users has reached 650 million, representing an increase of 25% YoY. The number of registered developers on Huawei’s platform has also reached 1.4 million, a 115% YoY increase. And the total number of HMS Core apps has also exceeded 60,000 globally, which is a 67% YoY growth. Huawei is placing all of its bets on its own ecosystem, and the constant improvements in HMS Core are testimony to its long-term commitment towards the HMS vision.

HMS Core 4.0 was launched back in January 15, 2020, introducing new APIs in the form of the Map Kit, Machine Learning Kit, Scan Kit, WisePlay DRM, and more. Now, with HMS Core 5.0, Huawei is introducing some more new APIs: AR Engine, Computer Graphics Kit, Accelerate Kit.

AR Engine

Huawei AR Engine is equivalent to Google Play’s ARCore service. Thie AR Engine in HMS Core serves as a platform for building augmented reality (AR) apps on Android smartphones with HiSilicon Kirin chips. It integrates core algorithms for AR to provide basic AR capabilities such as motion tracking, environment tracking, and body and face tracking. With the AR Engine, you can build apps that bridge the virtual world with the real world.

In a nutshell, the Huawei AR Engine continuously tracks the device location and poses in order to provide motion tracking and environment tracking abilities. It makes use of the device camera to identify feature points in a given space, and then tracks the movement relative to these points, and subsequently integrates these changes with the data reported by the inertial sensor on the device. It can also recognize flat planes such as floors and walls, and it can also make an estimation of the lighting intensity around them when identifying feature points.

What makes Huawei’s AR Engine special is its ability to also enable movement tracking for humans. It can allow locating hand locations and recognize specific gestures. There is also a depth component within the API, which then comes together to let the API track as many as 21 hand skeleton points to implement precise interactive controls and special effect overlays. It can also track 23 body skeleton points to detect human posture in real-time, and Huawei envisages that you can use this data to build innovative apps around fitness and health too.

Computer Graphics Kit

The Huawei Computer Graphics Kit is a Vulkan-based high-performance computer graphics rendering framework. This framework consists of the PBR (physically based rendering) material, models, textures, light, component systems, and more. The idea behind the rending framework is to provide the best 3D rendering capabilities on Huawei devices that make use of HiSilicon Kirin chips. The framework also supports secondary development with reduced difficulty and complexity, which Huawei claims helps significantly increase development efficiency.

The Huawei Computer Graphics Kit can be used for 3D applications use cases as it encapsulates the necessary Vulkan API call methods, and also implements dedicated optimization on the Huawei GPU. This greatly reduces the workload in developing high-quality 3D static models. The Kit also provides for a high-performance multi-thread rending module that integrates the best practices in usage of Huawei-dedicated Vulkan enhancements and extensions. In essence, the Computer Graphics Kit helps accelerate the adoption of computer graphics in apps by offering developers the cutting edge tools they need to integrate the same into their software.

Accelerate Kit

The Huawei Accelerate Kit provides for multi-threaded acceleration capability that claims to efficiently improve the concurrent execution of multiple threads, thereby optimizing apps. This Kit opens this capability to developers as a set of C-language APIs. This will allow developers much more flexibility on current-generation Android devices that run on a multi-core setup. Multi-thread programming is generally achieved by controlling task execution by managing threads. With the Accelerate Kit, developers are freed from thread management details, so they can focus more on their own app while still gaining efficiency.

Audio Kit, Image Kit, Video Kit within HMS Core

HMS Core 5.0 also adds three new kits relating to the phone’s audio, video, and image capabilities. The Audio Kit enables audio playback capabilities based on the HMS Core ecosystem, including audio encoding, decoding capabilities at the hardware level and system bottom layer. The Image Kit allows you to incorporate scene-specific design and animation production functions into your app. The Video Kit currently provides for video playback capabilities, and work is on to incorporate video editing and even video hosting APIs in later releases. This will let you easily build apps that can play streaming media from an address provided by a third party.

Other upgrades to HMS Core

While the major focus of the version release is the new APIs, several new APIs are also getting new features. For instance, the Scan Kit now features deep learning-based scanning codes to improve scanning accuracy in more challenging situations with higher response speeds. The Map Kit has gained bus and subway route planning information, so developers can now use these to improve the functions within their apps. The Location Kit now supports fence management capabilities.

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HMS presents itself as a window of opportunity for reducing your app’s reliance on Google services as well as an opening into Huawei and Honor’s device ecosystem, which still forms a substantial and unignorable part of the market. Huawei is in one of the rare positions of being able to offer a robust set of alternative APIs that provide a similar set of expected functionalities to both developers and users. Huawei intends to move ahead with HMS Core integration within its devices, so as a developer, can you really afford to ignore this important part of the market?

Check out all API Kits present in Huawei Mobile Services

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Selpic P1 – A portable handheld printer with limited uses

Have you ever wanted a portable printer? I’ll be honest, I don’t think the thought ever really crossed my mind before. What would I use a portable printer for? Turns out there’s actually quite a lot of uses for a portable handheld printer, which I realized after I received the Selpic P1 for review earlier this month. It’s a portable printer that you can control with your smartphone, letting you print phrases and images with just your smartphone and the printer pen. Is it as useful as it sounds? Well, that’s complicated. The Selpic P1 is currently running an Indiegogo campaign, where you can pick up the pen for $99 and a separate ink cartridge for $39. Once it properly launches, the pen will cost $199 and the ink cartridge will cost $59. The pen also comes with a black ink cartridge.

About this review: I received the Selpic P1 for review from Selpic in early July. The company had no input in this review.

A portable printer is significantly more useful with visible ink

First, there’s just one caveat to this review. The biggest issue that I had with the Selpic P1 wasn’t technical but the fact that the ink cartridge I received wasn’t black—it was yellow. As you can imagine, a yellow ink cartridge is rather useless for use on white sheets of paper, and in fact, has very few uses in general. The ink cartridges aren’t multi-coloured—they’re all one colour each. I asked for a black ink cartridge, but the company was unable to send one to me. As a result, some of the photos here are of poor quality as it can be hard to get yellow to show up on a page in any kind of appealing way. It’s also hard to brainstorm ways that this could be used as in its current state, it’s not very useful due to the colour of the ink.

Having said that, at the very least the Selpic P1 does work as intended. Yellow ink is just hard to see, and as such, it decreases the usefulness of the device by a lot. I would have loved to have had practically any other colour of ink just so that I could play with it more and maybe discover more use cases. I’m also skeptical about the white lines that seem to be printed as part of the image. Will this not cause issues for a barcode scanner? Seeing as one of the advertised use cases (and one I can see genuinely being useful) is that the Selpic P1 can print barcodes.

The Selpic P1 is mostly controlled through an (abysmal) app

Now that that is all out of the way, let’s move on to how the Selpic P1 is controlled. Everything happens pretty much entirely through an app on your smartphone. You connect your phone to it and all content to be printed is sent from your smartphone to the device via Bluetooth. The app is on the Google Play Store, though it can be a bit difficult to work out how exactly to connect it to the Selpic P1. I’ll be honest, the app isn’t well-designed and the process of even connecting the P1 to your smartphone is somewhat unintuitive.

There are three buttons on the Selpic P1, one of which is fairly pointless. Holding down the circular colored button on the back (above the USB-C port) puts the P1 in pairing mode. The long silver button is used to print whatever is stored in the Selpic P1’s memory. Finally, the gray circular button below that ejects the ink cartridge, which you can just pull out anyway as I’ve been doing.

There’s a “login” when first starting the app wherein you submit your email address. Am I actually logging into anything? Is there data associated with my “account” that anyone can access without a password? Not that I’m aware of, which is a little concerning to me. I didn’t notice anything obvious that the app may have pulled across to any devices that I tested on, so I’m confused by why it needed to collect my email.

When I asked my contact about this, I was told that the team “cancel[ed] the step of entering [the] password” that was originally required, since “people can’t get [the] verification code” yet. I assume what they meant by this is that they intended to have a login system with a password and verification code sent via text message, but they were unable to set this up. Instead, they’re simply logging you in by email address…without verification? In any case, I was assured that “this app doesn’t retain user information” in any way.

The app itself is used for updating the firmware of the Selpic P1 and also providing information about the device, along with the ink that’s loaded. Also, yes, it only works in landscape mode.

It also requires you to log into the same WiFi network that you are connected to by inputting your WiFi password when you first connect it to your smartphone. I don’t know why this is required as I was under the impression that the printer would work directly over Bluetooth. While I generally wouldn’t mind this too much, I’m already wary of the security of this application.

This app seems poorly designed and the UI is unintuitive. It doesn’t follow any of Android’s design language and the icons aren’t all self-explanatory. On the editing page, there’s a trash can icon next to the barcode symbol. You would think that button might clear what’s on the printer sheet, but no, it deletes the selected element. The paintbrush to its right is what clears the printer sheet, which I thought was a brush to allow you to draw on the printer sheet yourself. You can import an image as well for printing, but it’s… not great. I cleared the data of the app to get that screenshot showing the login page, and reconnecting the app to the Selpic P1 feels like a chore.

There are included images as well that you can add to the printer sheet, and they turn out okay on paper. Just like everything else from this device though, they’re small and hard to make out what they are. The ink colour doesn’t help either, as they appear even smaller due to their lack of distinction.

Selpic handy printer (Free, Google Play) →

The Selpic P1 has its uses, but they’re limited

I may have come across as harsh towards the Selpic P1, but that’s because it’s a product that asks for a lot of money when for most users, I don’t believe it’s useful. Those purchasing the product through Indiegogo will get a standard black ink cartridge, which makes more sense than the yellow cartridge I was sent. Non-black ink cartridges ought to be purchased separately. On top of that, the app itself needs major reworking. Besides the seeming lack of justification for asking for my email address, the UI isn’t well thought out. The Selpic P1 begins shipping worldwide in September, and if you really want one, you can check out the Indiegogo link below.

Selpic P1 on Indiegogo

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