Just when the Samsung Galaxy S7 hype train has run its course, the Galaxy Note 6 train has begun its course. This news comes to us courtesy of Sammobile, who claim that the next version in the Galaxy Note lineup will come with a USB Type C port, along with IP68 water and dust resistance. Also, speculation ensues on if we will see USB 3.1, as well as a new model of Gear VR to support the USB Type C port.
The Android 6.0 Marshmallow update for the AT&T HTC one M8 and M9 has been delayed. The reason for the delay is not mentioned, but the update is in “lab” (testing). Approval is said to be gained “within the next couple weeks”.
Engineer Ryan Nelwan took the task into his own hands and built himself a touchscreen based smart mirror. The mirror runs on a custom OS built by Ryan himself, and supports a fair few options such as displaying widgets, playing music, controlling home temperature using Nest, launching (limited) apps and even calling an Uber when you are late for work.
Developers, Developers, Developers. We love our developers here at XDA. We’re maybe not as outwardly-loud through text as Mr. Ballmer was in the linked clip, but without developers there wouldn’t even be an XDA-Developers.
You guys provide the backbone for our forums; your work is what draws millions to our forums every year. You guys put so much hard work into the software you release to the masses for free, and we know that at times it might seem like we’re not appreciative of the work you guys do. However, we’ve been revamping our forums over the years and have introduced several developer-centric features such as the XDA DevDB to make it easier for developers to post and update their work.
Premium Service Giveaway
Today, we’re showing our appreciation to our developers (and our users) by partnering with Android File Host to offer you 2 free months of their premium service. What do you get as a premium user at Android File Host? Here’s a run-down:
How do you get in on this?
Enter promo code “XDA2MONTHSFREE” at the premium service check-out page.
This isn’t the first time we’ve partnered with Android File Host to give developers the chance to use their premium services. However, this time the code will work for both premium users and premium devs. Yes, that’s right, EVERYONE gets a chance to use Android File Host’s premium services.
But please don’t let the 2 month trial be the end of your support! If you’ve read our interview with the team behind Android File Host, then you’ll know just how difficult it is to run a file-hosting service without your help. At the very least, we would appreciate it if you could whitelist them in your favorite adblocker!
Swag Bag Giveaway
That’s not all, though! XDA-Developers and Android File Host would also like to show our appreciation to the many users who make up our great community. Without you guys actually downloading the work put forth by our developers, many developers wouldn’t even bother posting their work! That’s why the team behind Android File Host has put together a little ‘swag bag‘ (consisting of a T-shirt, 4 stickers, and 2 pins) that we’re going to be giving away to 10 lucky winners from anywhere in the world.
How do you get in on this?
Leave a comment below and show us your love for Android!
We’ll be picking 10 random users as winners and will announce these winners on the XDA Portal as well as on our social media pages.
Follow AndroidFileHost on Twitter, Google+, or their blog.
Follow XDA-Developers on Twitter, Google+, or Facebook.
In our recent review of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Snapdragon 650 variant, we noted some stellar battery performance. This was no ordinary 8hr-SOT battery life, this was legitimately 14+ hours of screen on time under working scenarios.
We asked our followers on Twitter which phone this screenshot originated from, and just one person could guess it correctly.
One of the most defining features of battery life usually starts off with the actual battery capacity itself. This is by no means the only defining factor of good battery life, but it definitely is a good starting point. The energy stored in your battery is what powers the device. So if you have a larger reserve in terms of quantity, you’ll be able to use your phone for longer and less conservatively. With all other variables being equal, a phone with 3,000 mAh of battery would outperform a phone with 2,000 mAh of battery when it comes to powering through the day.
But is battery capacity the truest mark of battery life? Will having a bigger battery give you better battery life? The answer to this question is two-folds — on a very general scale, looking at general trends, this statement is true. But battery life is not only a function of battery capacity, but also of battery usage. This is something we saw back in 2013, with the Motorola Moto G managing to impress many with its battery life despite having a small 2,070 mAh battery. This starter phone came close to matching some battery behemoths of its time, like the flagship LG G2 with its 3,000 mAh battery. So it is true that sheer capacity is not the absolute determining factor by which we can judge a phone’s battery life.
Another one of the factors defining the battery life of a device relates to the screen. There are a few variables at play here: the screen size matters, so does the resolution, and the screen type as well. Along with the screen tech and the spectrum of brightness of the device, these factors influence how quickly the battery drains. A big 6″ QHD LCD display with above average maximum brightness may look very good with good color reproduction and adequate saturation, but it will certainly not be the battery’s best friend. The longer such a display remains on, the quicker the charge in the battery will be consumed up. Because of this, a lot of users tend to take Screen On Time as a defining character when measuring battery life — how long can the phone survive with its screen on under the users normal usage? Using SOT as a measurement tool without proper context is a flawed approach to measure battery life, but this is a topic for a different day.
Low and mid end phones with their mediocre screen tech see a trade-off as they bring lower resolution, but typically also last-generation screen technology. But are these all there is to it?
A factor that is often overlooked when talking about battery life is the SoC in use in the phone. Modern day flagship SoCs are built for speed, and in despite alleged optimizations, in 2015 many disproportionately traded battery efficiency in processing for raw power. A good example of this is the Exynos 7420, which is a good flagship grade SoC employed in the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Note 5. Throughout 2015 we saw widespread adoption of the big.LITTLE setup with A57 and A53 cores. The A57 cores did the heavy lifting, yet employing A53’s tends to be a big trade-off with performance, but the battery efficiency that these cores offer remains unrivaled.
You only have to take a look at some good “real world” battery devices in the past few months to see the trend. The Huawei honor 5X is a good example, a device that stands no chance in competing against flagships but does not fail in the battery department, often delivering 6 hours of screen on time on our unit. The big.LITTLE setup on the Snapdragon 616 employs Cortex-A53 for both of the clusters, so it comes as no surprise that the phone can last as long as it can. The phone is certainly not the best at battery benchmarks either, but for a normal consumer, the phone can suffice all of his daily needs in both performance and battery life.
We can also see this in a lot of different SoCs and devices which employ the Cortex-A53’s. They tend to be poor in performance in synthetic benchmarks, but chug along fine in real world usage, often despite the burden of heavy and bloaty UIs popular amongst Chinese OEMs. Android’s idle time situation has been generally improving with every iteration as a whole, but major beneficiaries of these improvements are devices employing power-efficient cores, including those using them in dedicated clusters. Battery life in the low end continues to be one of the better selling points of these devices, being that one area where they can give flagships a run for their money.
So those of us who do seek battery life over cutting-edge performance, are we condemned to being restricted to low and mid end devices? Not necessarily. As spec wars thin out over segments such as SoCs, Screens, Memory and from factors, it is only natural for OEMs to shift their attention on towards battery capacity and efficiency. Until we get a true flagship phone with unnatural battery life, we may have to be content with sticking with low and mid end devices for the foreseeable future. But seeing how the low and mid end sections of the Android market is evolving in terms of hardware and software, and with the difference between two extreme points of the market (flagships v/s low end), this may not be a bad thing after all.
What are your thoughts on battery efficiency? Should flagships only be flagships for pure performance, or should they be flagships in areas such as battery as well? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Up until late 2011, hardware buttons were the widely-accepted norm for buttons on a handheld device, with Android’s hardware partners taking advantage of the free rein given to them, going on to flirt with a variety of functions, icons and positions in a somewhat-wayward manner. In November that year, Google took charge of the playing field with the launch of the Galaxy Nexus, the device that pioneered Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and with it, the first legitimate implementation of softkeys on Android. As has been the case with numerous such niches, Google taking a step caused most of the OEMs to fall in line over the years, and softkeys became prevalent on a wide number of device lineups.
Following the release of the Galaxy Nexus, things didn’t go exactly as planned, as most OEMs resisted the change, citing Google’s fondness for experimentation. However, year after year, Google continued down this route, and one-by-one, most device manufacturers responded in kind. Samsung for one, actively opposed the change, and for a while it seemed that the South Korean OEM was fighting an uphill battle, as HTC gave in with the One M8, Sony with the Xperia Z, LG with the G2 and Motorola with the Droid Razr Maxx, but a twist in the tale took place with the launch of fingerprint sensors.
As biometric authentication became increasingly popular, the hardware design teams at each camp were left with the mammoth question of placement. Where did fingerprint sensors belong? Samsung was quick to respond with an obvious solution, its home button, but others were left wondering, and the years 2014-15 saw various takes on the problem, but most notable was the tendency to resort to Samsung’s implementation, which saw large OEMs like HTC, OnePlus and Xiaomi go the home-button route, consequently causing each of them to give in to hardware buttons. Google and LG sport the sensor at the back, with Sony using the power button to house it, and while the world awaits Motorola’s take, two clear camps have arisen in the playing field, with powerhouses on both sides refusing to give up any ground.
With the market offering a variety of devices with both options to choose from, one might opine that it doesn’t make much of a difference, and while that might hold true for the average consumer, power users tend to carefully weigh the pros and cons of each device feature, so let’s take a look at the factors that constitute the gargantuan rift between the two manifestations.
The placement of softkeys on the lower edge of the screen causes a 48dp loss in screen real estate, blocking apps from availing the complete height of the screen. Some users think nothing of it, but hardware button enthusiasts vehemently argue that that space can be used by the system instead. Phones are getting larger, and the inability to experience the complete glory of a large, high-resolution screen is enough to send some over the edge. However, Google has been consistently working on making the best of the situation, deploying APIs that developers can use to hide the system bars and thereby provide a temporary fix.
Apps that hide softkeys, and the subsequent swipe-up gesture to show them is a notch against them given the mild inconvenience caused, but overall, hardware buttons prove to be much less friendly towards ease-of-access than softkeys. Their inability to adapt to device orientation hinders the user experience and the effort required to press them is considerably more than that required to press softkeys.
Hardware buttons are mechanical (or capacitive) in nature, with actual components making up their underlying structure. As such, their lifetime and durability are questionable, and have several variables such as intensity and frequency of usage, overall care of the device, et al, whereas softkeys are mere image renders tied to system-wide method calls, and are insusceptible to any such hindrances.
Perhaps the most significant advantage of softkeys is their ability to adapt as the situation calls for. Their virtual nature allows for the embodiment of Google’s “Design for the user and all else will follow” philosophy and there are a number of ways they carry this out:
While hardware keys remain locked to portrait orientation even when the device rotates, softkeys adapt and reflect the change in orientation, with the icons rotating to match the device on phones, and entire navigation bar changing the edge its anchored to on tablets. The result? A seamless user experience that sheds the learning curve and initial incompatibility when one attempts to use portrait-oriented keys in any way but that.
With custom ROMs allowing users to modify close to every inch of the system, the navigation bar is, without a doubt, an active and salient member of the array of customization options. From custom icon sets and manual height settings to modified order and user-defined functionality, softkeys allow for a level of personalization that remains near-impossible for hardware buttons, yet under-exploited in practice.
Mutation of softkeys is a new and unfamiliar topic, one that has been discussed from time to time on social media, and is just beginning to unfold in the Xposed community. Softkey mutation, should it come to fruition, would modify the navigation bar in a contextually-aware manner, allowing it to react and adapt to situation changes and thus providing a delightful and powerful user experience. While it might never see the light of day in the AOSP repository, community solutions such as Xtended Navbar give a glimpse of the potential held in the small black bar that so many oppose.
With all the facts laid out, it’s pretty clear that both sides have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. However, softkeys have infinitely more potential, and more importantly, the weight of Mountain View’s support. Like them or not, they’re here to stay for the foreseeable future. Which side do you root for? Does it affect your choice when buying a new phone? Let us know in the comments section below!
