Google has sent out press invites for an October 13th event in New Delhi, where they will be announcing the new Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P for the Indian market. The Nexus 5X is expected to cost Rs 31,900 ($490) & Rs 35,900 ($555) for 16 GB & 32 GB variants, while the Nexus 6P may cost Rs 39,999 ($615) & Rs 42,999 ($660) for 32GB & 64 GB variants.
Cyanogen published a blog post today with some details about October’s security patches and plans for the next CM12.1 snapshot. Google’s October security patches are now included in CM12.1’s nightly builds for all supported devices. Also, a new stable snapshot of CM12.1 will arrive “this week”, which will include these security patches as well.
Motorola has released the source code of the 2013 Moto X’s kernel for Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. The code is available for all to view on GitHub right now so developers and enthusiasts can grab the code and start tinkering with custom kernels.
Droidcon, the global developer conference series and network focusing on the best of Android, heads to London on the 29th and 30th of this month and XDA will be there sponsoring the event. 52 experts will be speaking including our very own Community Relations Admin, jerdog. Tickets currently cost £450 and can be purchased from their website here. With 5 rooms each with talks occurring throughout the event there is always going to be something to capture your interest. Just a few of the talks that should be popular this year are:
Community“Android has come a long ways since its humble beginnings in 2003. What began as a desire to develop, in Andy Rubin’s words, “smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner’s location and preferences” has grown into a behemoth which can now be found running on cars and washing machines. Due to its open source nature, it was only a matter of time before the independent developer community would rise up, and extend, Android. XDA Developer was founded with the sole desire of creating an environment where developers could share, collaborate, and create. It was here where famous projects like AOKP, CyanogenMod, OmniROM, and Paranoid Android began. XDA has now grown to over 6 million members around the world. You will explore how the developer community has evolved, and even struggled, since Android began.”
“Marcos Paulo Damasceno will talk on how to scale your Material Design app in many different screen sizes. You will learn a very good technique to decide when to use certain patterns from Material Design and how to use animations and colours to express your branding. When it’s ok to create your own pattern and how to not become a guidelines developer.”
“Maria Neumayer discusses how Android Wear received a big upgrade this year with always on support and maps. These new features make it more compelling for you to create apps for wearables. Through this session you will learn what it takes to make your app available on Android Wear and understand its limits and quirks.”
“Filipe Abrantes and Will Bailey will demonstrate how physics allows you to create fully interactive, coherent UIs that are a joy to use and easy to maintain. Filipe and Will will start by explaining the underlying physics (aka Springs) that power modern animation libraries, how to tweak its (typical) parameters and examine alternatives. You will then discover different ways of implementing such libraries on Android, making the case for how decoupling animation state from Views can make your life easier. Along the way you will explore related topics such as prototyping tools, filling the developer-designer gap and how this all fits into material design.”
“Jon Reeve – We spend a lot of time putting apps together, but when was the last time you pulled one apart? How wonderful is it that Android is open-source, so we can simply look at the code when we need to? What if it were just as easy to look at the source code and behaviour of any other app? If we can streamline the process of looking inside a compiled application then we’re more likely to employ it to answer questions and teach us valuable lessons we can apply to our work. We may learn from others and also make our own apps more secure. We can pinpoint bugs that come from closed-source libraries such as those for ad and tracking networks, and work around those bugs, get them fixed faster, or even patch them if need be. This talk will explore simple real-world examples for the greatest practical benefit, using some of the ever improving set of reverse engineering tools for Android. You don’t need to have any experience reverse engineering anything before, but hopefully even if you do you’ll learn a few useful tips. With this talk Jon aims to make every developer more familiar with the reverse engineering tools available for Android, and how and why they should apply them. There’s an incredible amount that can be learned from taking things apart!”
Immediately after Droidcon, the DroidconHack 2015 begins at CodeNode and will continue right through Sunday. If you are planning on attending either event this year be sure to drop by and say hello to us!
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Starting off with the phones, Microsoft announced two phones during its NYC event: the Microsoft Lumia 950 and the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL.
The Lumia 950 sports a 5.2″ QHD (1440 x 2560) AMOLED display, giving it a pixel density of ~565 ppi. Under the hood, you will find a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 SoC with Adreno 418 for its GPU. Powering all of this is a 3,000 mAh battery, which is removable.
The Lumia 950 XL, as the name implies, is the bigger sized brother of the Lumia 950. The 950 XL sports a 5.7″ QHD AMOLED display, giving it a pixel density of ~515 ppi. For the SoC, the Lumia 950 XL trades in the SD-808 for its bigger and hotter sibling, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, along with the Adreno 430. Powering the setup is a larger 3,340 mAh battery, which again, is removable.
The differences between the phones, except their pricing, ends here. A lot of the other traits are shared amongst the two, and in this case, it makes both of them very good offerings for their respective feature sets.
Both the phones come equipped with a 20 MP rear camera with a f/1.9 aperture along with OIS and the ability to record video in 4k. The rear module also features a triple-LED RGB flash. For the front, the phones sport a 5 MP sensor with an aperture of f/2.4 and capable of full-HD video recording. The phones also come with a dedicated camera shutter buttons.
Both the handsets come with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal memory, which can be further expanded up to 200GB thanks to the presence of a micro-sd card slot. The handsets are also liquid cooled, which should help with heat dissipation. Both also come with a USB Type-C port of USB 3.1 standard, which Microsoft claims can 50 percent battery in 30 minutes. Not only that, the phones also come equipped with Qi wireless charging.
The Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL are the first smartphones to run on Windows 10 Mobile. Paired with the new Continuum feature and a Microsoft Display Dock, you can essentially use the devices as the CPU for a seamless desktop experience. The exact scope of this implementation is unclear as of yet, but we can expect to run Windows 10 universal apps in a desktop environment when using Continuum.
The Microsoft Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL are scheduled to hit the shelves in November 2015, for price of $549 for the 950 and $649 for the 950 XL. In the USA, availability seems to be restricted to AT&T for the 950, although both the phones are expected to be available from Microsoft directly too.
There were more products launched in the same event, and another notable one amongst the others is the new Surface Pro 4.
The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 follows along in its predecessors size footprint while still bumping up the screen size to 12.3″ PixelSense display with a resolution of 2763 x 1824, which is optimized for touch as well as pen input. The device is powered by 6th Gen Intel Core processors, offering a choice of either m3, i5 or i7 Skylake. For the storage, the base m3 variant starts with 128GB of SSD storage along with 4GB of RAM, while opting and configuring your own variant can let you pack an i7 with 1TB SSD and 16GB of RAM.
The Surface Pro 4 sports a 8 MP rear camera along with a 5 MP front camera. There’s also a USB 3.0 port and a micro-sd card reader along with other ports. There’s an included Surface Pen in the package too, which claims to have a year’s worth of battery life, and attaches to the side of the Surface Pro 4 magnetically. It also includes a tail eraser, and also supports interchangeable pen tips to emulate pencil, ballpoint or felt tip pens. Users can also opt for the new Type Cover, which now sports a 5-point multi-touch glass trackpad along with a fingerprint sensor.
The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 is available for pre-order from today for a price of $899 for the base (m3 | 128 GB | 4 GB) variant, while going upwards in specs can set you back for as much as $2,699 for the top variant (i7 | 1 TB | 16 GB). Retail availability for the device is scheduled for October 26th 2015.
Credits: Windows Central
And that wasn’t all though. Microsoft also took the wraps off the Surface Book which is marketed as the ultimate laptop and truly attempts to reach this target. There is also the Microsoft Band wearable which serves as a fitness and health tracker and a notification center. And if you haven’t been wowed yet with the plethora of releases, there is also the Microsoft HoloLens, which is a stepping stone into the world of holograms. You can read more about all of these devices from their product pages.
The Microsoft event was truly one that could be enjoyed, both in terms of presentation as well as actual products. Personally speaking, the products launched by Microsoft are very tempting, for they offer a very decent hardware package for prices that aren’t really obscene and far fetched. The Windows 10 environment is what separates the Microsoft experience from Android, and we hope that it continues to flourish under the new integrated ideology. Afterall, some more competition in the duopoly of Android and iOS will only help the consumer get more value for their money and the choice of varied experiences.
What do you think about the Microsoft Lumia 950, 950 XL and the Surface Pro 4? Do they products excite you for the future of Windows 10? Will you consider purchasing any of these devices? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
This week, Google will be rolling out some interesting integration of the Google Translate into Android 6.0 Marshmallow. No matter which application you are in, when you highlight some next, tapping the 3-dot menu will offer a new option (assuming you have the Google Translate application installed). This will open up a new dialog box that lets you translate it into any language that is currently supported.
