In an interview with PTI, Motorola India GM Amit Boni commented that Motorola sold 2.6M smartohones in India since Feb 2015. The company has also released the Moto X Play in the country, available for purchase starting from midnight for Rs. 18,499 ($280, 16GB) & Rs. 19,999 ($300, 32GB).
Want to get into XDA shenanigans with your new Moto X Pure? Now you can, thanks to XDA Recognized Contributor Hashbang173 and his unofficialTeam Win Recovery Project!
The Blackberry Venice, Blackberry’s full foray into Android OS with a slider phone, has been spotted at the Toronto Film Festival. This image offers a better look at the dimensions of the device as well as its one handed usability.
XDA Senior Member Misterjunky has posted his custom rom for the T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+. The rom is based on the latest BOH6 firmware for T-Mobile users and contains a long list of feature and mod additions, minus the carrier bloat.
Join us in a fun Sunday Debate on Force Touch. Come with your opinions and feel free to read some of our thoughts, then pick your side or play devil’s advocate to get your voice heard and engage in friendly discussion. You can read our food-for-thought or jump straight into the fray below!
Force Touch is a relatively simple technology from the end user’s point of view, but the actual process going on behind the screen is much more interesting than people give it credit for. We detailed some of the mechanisms and its benefits, as well as possible applications, on an analytical feature, and now that the Huawei Mate S (which we tried out!) is officially bringing the technology to Android in all its glory, we think it’s time to have a debate on how it can be beneficial to Android, and if it’s worth the trouble.
Force Touch on phones basically allows your screen to directly measure the force applied upon the glass, and the standard can also be used for different kinds of feedback. The two well-known players bringing it to mobile, Apple and Huawei, have mostly relegated the functionality as an extra layer of gimmicky input, but there are other ways in which it can provide a better user experience. One of them is through enhancing the UI, particularly Material Design and its many layers of depth. We will explore some of those thoughts below, but if you want to simply jump to the comments and discuss, we ask you:
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Moreover, force-feedback in some Force Touch implementations can trick you into thinking you’ve clicked a button, and this could give physical feedback to plain glass, solving an age-old problem of touchscreens. Lateral-force haptic feedback can even trick your brain into interpreting vertical movements and texture, which would play amazingly well with the actual material part of this UI standard where cards move up and down.
The additional cost to develop and manufacture this technology means that phones that bring it may be priced at higher prices than the affordable flagships trending today, putting the innovators at a price disadvantage (especially since it’s not a pragmatic feature). Some OEMs like Motorola already have patents for the technology and others can make use of it in future phones, but those that don’t have experience with the development or production of Force Touch might find themselves simply avoiding it due to the cost, which limits its adoption. All of this for something that doesn’t add much practical value and is mostly another way to embellish our interfaces and access menus… for now, at least.
On one hand, Force Touch could bring an extra layer of interaction, beauty, and feedback to the Android user experience. So far, none of its implementations have proved to be revolutionary, and the Huawei Mate S isn’t making enough noise to be noticed. On the other hand, the Android flagship market is in dire need of innovation and OEMs have to find new ways to justify flagship pricetags. They can bow down to the affordable flagship or try to push their phones’ user experience forward to lure consumers in a market full of alternatives. It’s a nice thing to have, but certainly not necessary. That being said, do you think it has the potential to grow?
XDA Senior Member lemon07r has brought f2fs support to the popular Sultanxda ROM for the OnePlus One. This derivative rom is separate from sultanxda’s work as it builds upon his base work. The rom also includes a CAF kernel, specifically the Tyr-CAF kernel.
If you would like to have an iOS style touch assistant on your LG G3, XDA Senior Member no14me has pulled the apk from a custom rom. The app should work on all LG G3 Stock roms, and also has a version emulating the iOS styling.
