Sony is not overly fast at deploying Android updates. Luckily the Japanese OEM is trying to catch up. Sony Japan has confirmed that users should see OTA notifications pretty soon. Android 5.1.1 should fix a few critical flaws so be on the look out.
LG G4 is one of the greatest devices of the year and T-Mobile US has just decided to drop the price of LG’s flagship. You can get your own G4 for $479,76, which is $120 cheaper than the previous offer. That’s definitely a nice way to care about clients. You can order the smartphone from this page.
Microsoft’s (incredibly cool) Hyperlapse is now out of Beta and available to all Android users. The app is a very cool way to condense long videos and stabilize them in to much smaller bite-sized chunks. Go get it!
If you’ve ever felt that your desktop is too big, too complicated or too ugly, and you have $30 burning a hole in your pocket, the Remix Mini might just pique your interest. Ex-Google employees Jide Tech have come up with a very small and attractive Kickstarter project for those looking to experience the of simplicity of Android on a big screen, along with full keyboard and mouse support and PC-class connectivity.
The Remix Mini takes the form of a very minimalist black pebble, that plugs into your monitor or TV and runs Remix OS 1.5, a modified version of Android. Remix OS is designed to blend traditional desktop functionality with modern mobile operating system simplicity, and remain simple and uncluttered at the same time. It looks like a cross between Windows 7 and Lollipop, with a translucent taskbar along the bottom containing your navigation buttons and icons for running apps on the left, and a cross between a system tray and status bar on the right. Remix OS is heavily skinned, but apparently optimized for smooth performance on mid-range hardware, and supports windowed multi-tasking, mouse and keyboard input, keyboard shortcuts, and other features usually reserved for desktops. It thankfully also includes access to the Play Store, meaning that any of Android’s one and a half million apps are available for download.
The Remix Mini itself walks the line between portability and practicality, featuring two full-size USB ports on its rear, along with an HDMI port, Micro SD card slot, an Ethernet port and a headphone jack. It’s definitely above the minimum required to emulate PC functionality, whilst still ensuring that your desk isn’t covered in cables and wires. There’s a capacitive power button on the top of the unit, which is a neat way of making turning it on very simple, and an unobtrusive power indication light on the front of the device. Under the hood the Mini is rocking a 64-bit 1.2GHz quad-core AllWinner CPU, which is a relatively untested chip, and so it remains to be seen how well it performs. There are two storage options available; one with a single gigabyte of RAM and 8GB of storage for $30, and one with double the RAM and double the storage for $50. Both options come with your usual Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, allowing you to connect your wireless peripherals easily.
There are a few good use-cases for this kind of hardware. Especially handy is the fact that Microsoft’s mobile Office applications are available for download, and combined with web browsing through Chrome and the built-in email client and file manager, a good 80-90% of typical PC activity is covered right off the bat. In that sense, this product is a direct competitor to Chromebooks everywhere, where given that operating systems are similar, the pricing alone gives the Remix Mini a huge advantage. Another potential use for this device is as a media server; it has more than enough power needed to host or control your music library, run Kodi, or play up to 4k videos through the HDMI port.
The Remix Mini is Jide Tech’s second stab at creating a mobile/desktop cross-over device with emphasis on productivity. Earlier this year we saw the fledgling company release the Remix Ultratablet, a 11″ tablet also running Remix OS, with a detachable keyboard, selling for $39 in its Early Bird pledges. The company had some fairly significant issues with shipping from their location in China, and you can see the resulting price rise in the same area this time around, however most users that funded the previous campaign seem pleased with their choice. Remix OS is also available as a ROM for the Nexus 10, will apparently soon be ready for the Nexus 9, and support for the software looks promising so far. The Kickstarter is currently at $370,000 pledged, obliterating its target of $50,000, with all of the cheapest $20 Early Bird packages already sold out, so clearly there is significant demand for this kind of product. At this price, the Remix Mini is very much within ‘impulse buy’ territory, something that an enthusiast could purchase to tinker with, knowing that if something went wrong they don’t have too much to lose. The other advantage is the most people have the peripherals needed to make full use of this mini-PC already lying around already, due to the many connectivity options included.
That fact that the smartphones we carry around with us everyday are powerful enough to perform so many of the tasks that used to be limited to desktop-class systems means that a product like this was inevitable. At this point however, Jibe Tech are the only company selling something this capable at this price point, and it seems to be a winning formula. Prices will almost certainly go up once the campaign has ended and the Remix Mini is in production, but it is likely to remain extremely competitive regardless, so rivals will have their work cut out trying to compete. Jibe Tech also have the bonus of having worked for Google previously, giving their efforts in software far more credibility than others on the crowdfunding arena. We’ll have to wait until October to find out exactly how useful this compact desktop is and how well it performs, but at present things seem to be going very well for the Chinese company.
What do you think of the Remix Mini?
Microsoft announced earlier this year that Cortana would be coming to Android, but it looks as if the app has leaked early. After Paul Dale tweeted a picture of the app running on his Note 4, hundreds over users have downloaded the voice assistant with varied success – follow the link to give it a try.
The folks at team I N F I N I T Y have released a sleek and well-designed app called Theme ShowCase. It provides a convenient platform on which users can browse, preview, and download the team’s own CM12 themes.
One of the most tangible benefits of the upcoming USB Type-C connection standard is the fact that it is reversible, meaning that it doesn’t matter which way up the connector is when you plug it in. iPhone users have had this functionality since Apple’s proprietary Lightning adapter was introduced back in 2012, and it’s something that many users in the Android camp envy. Unfortunately, USB Type-C won’t begin to arrive on phones until later this year, but a Kickstarter project aims to deliver a clever solution to the sometimes fiddly charging experience.
ZNAPS is a small adapter that fits on to the existing plug on your charging cable and coverts it into a reversible magnetic connection, without removing any functionality. It’s comprised of two parts; the “adapter” that fits over the plug at the end of your micro USB cable, and the small “connector” that fits into the charging port on your phone, with both of these units connected by a magnet. The connector is designed to stay permanently in your phone, and so has an understandably small footprint to ensure that it doesn’t get in the way.
Both parts are removable of course, meaning that you can swap the ZNAPS between your devices and cables, and the design also features a neat little LED, to helpfully indicate when the unit is actively charging your device. Pleasingly, Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 isn’t affected by this extra buffer between your phone and the mains, and so there’s no reason to suspect that other quick charging implementations like Oppo’s VOOC will be either. It’s an elegantly simple solution overall with a lot of promise, turning your phone charger into a mini-magsafe clone.
There are a few advantages to this design beyond its reversible nature of course. Firstly, and as demonstrated in the slightly cheesy video, you can plug your phone in way more easily, and with one hand. As soon as you get the two parts close to each other, they snap together, meaning that you don’t even necessarily need to look at what you’re doing. Secondly, it adds an element of safety, due to the magnets disconnecting in the event of a sharp tug on your charging cable, instead of ripping out your micro USB port, snapping the cable itself, or launching your phone across the room.
There’s also another dubious advertised advantage, that being ‘waterproofing’. The ZNAPS is claimed to prevent water from entering the device through the charging port by simply plugging it, and there’s even a small section of the video showing an iPhone being half dipped in to a bowl of water to prove it. The key word there is ‘half'; obviously this won’t stop entering through any of the other holes in your device, so if you do submerge your phone accidentally, you’ll find this ‘advantage’ very limited. If the rest of your phone is waterproof, either your charging port is already waterproof, or it’s covered by a rubberized flap, which when opened will expose other entry points even if the micro USB port is covered.
This adapter is designed to fit into any phone due to its minimal form factor, and the project has even considered the different kinds of cases that a user might be using, claiming that the ZNAPS is compatible with them all. The page itself is almost entirely dedicated to images of iPhones, which simplifies the look somewhat, and it will be interesting to see what in the Android world won’t work with the tiny adapter, considering the countless designs out there. Particularly concerning to me is the use-case mentioned earlier, where the waterproofing flaps on some devices mean that the charging port is not flush with the edge of the device – I’m not sure that the ZNAPS will fit into my Xperia Z1 for example. However, the adapter truly is minuscule, so in the vast majority of cases it looks as if this won’t be an issue.
The ZNAPS is also encouragingly cheap too; adapters and connectors are available separately via a “custom pledge” for $8 and $3 respectively, or in a number of pre-selected packs at different prices, starting from $9 for the pair. You can choose how many of either you’d like, meaning that you can fit them around whatever your charging setup is. There’s an optional portable container too, in the form of a clear cylindrical key chain in case you want to carry one of the adapters out and about. Physical units are shown in the video, meaning that prototypes do exist and that the product works in real life, which is especially useful given the amount of vapor-ware present on any crowdfunding site. The project has today passed its funding goal of $120,000, and still has 27 days to go, so if all goes well the product is expected to start shipping in December, just in time for Christmas.
All things told, this looks like a clever little invention that performs a useful purpose and doesn’t cost the earth. It’s clearly popular for those exact reasons, will probably continue to develop, and will hopefully support USB Type-C connections in the future. Of course, the best scenario for the consumer is for smartphone manufacturers to take note and implement this idea into their own designs, where phones could simply have a magnetic spot on their base where the charger could stick itself to. Of course, that would start to bring issues like charger compatibility back into the open, a problem that the ZNAPS doesn’t face, but in the future, you would hope that all devices could be charged this easily. What do you think? Does the ZNAPS do enough to earn your pledge?
