Tag: Android

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Mobile Syrup

Google introduces the Monk Skin Tone Scale at Google I/O

Google has released a new scale that captures the wide spectrum of skin tones.

The Monk Skin Tone (MST) includes 10 shades and is developed by Dr. Ellis Monk, a sociologist and Harvard professor.

Google will incorporate the scale into its products in the coming months. Google says the scale help addresses the ongoing challenges associated with image-based technologies and representation online.

The scale is open source, and anyone can use it for research or product development.

The feature will be incorporated on ‘Search.’ For example, if looking for makeup looks on Google Images, users will have the option to refine search results by skin tone, showing people images that represent them.

Google Photos will also be using the scale through the launch of ‘Real Tone filters.’ These filters will be evaluated by the MST Scale and allow users to choose a filter that works with skin tones presented in a photo. Google will roll out Real Tone filters across Android, iOS and the Web in the next couple of weeks.

The MST Scale is Google’s most recent action when it comes to dealing with representative skin tones. The tech giant introduced ‘Real Tone’ on Pixel 6 devices last year. The feature recognizes darker skin tones and complements them when taking images. Real Tone filters seem to be an expansion of the feature that was exclusively available to Pixel.

Image credit: Google

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Mobile Syrup

Google announces several new security features at IO 2022

At I/O 2022, Google announced several new security updates such as a new Account Safety Status, Automatic 2-Step Verification, Virtual Cards and more.

Google’s Virtual Cards is a new feature on Android and Chrome. When you autofill to enter your payment details at checkout, virtual cards will add an additional layer of security by replacing your actual card number with a virtual number.

Further, it eliminates the need to enter card details like CVV at checkout, and you can manage it at pay.google.com.

Unfortunately, Virtual cards will roll out this summer only in the U.S., for Visa, American Express and all Capital One cards. Google is unable to offer a timeline regarding when Virtual cards will come to Canada.

Google is also giving users more ways to minimize their data footprint.

With a new tool, you can now remove personal information from Search. Google Search results containing contact details like phone numbers, home addresses and email addresses can now be removed. Google says this is partially done with AI, but that there will be humans checking these removal requests as well. The company says that this means it will take a couple of days before the personal information is removed.

This feature will be available in the coming months through the Google App, and you can access it by clicking three dots next to the individual Google Search results.

Lastly, you can control what ads you see a lot better. In the ads privacy settings, you can now select which brands you want to see more or less of. This feature applies to YouTube, Search and Discover feed, and you’ll still be able to block and report ads.

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Mobile Syrup

Google introduces Google Doc summarization feature

Google is making it easy for people to quickly read long documents before a deadline.

The tech giant introduced ‘Automatic Summarization’ for Google Docs at Google I/O.

The feature will summarize the main points of a document and present it to the reader to gain a quick understanding of what the text features.

More to come…

Image credit: Google

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Mobile Syrup

Samsung Galaxy Fold 4 unofficial renders showcase Fold 3 and S22 design cues

Unofficial renders of the Galaxy Z Fold 4 offer a better picture of what to expect in the coming months.

The renders were published by SmartPrix, based on information from the ever-reliable Steve Hemmerstoffer (Onleaks).

The renders show that the phone looks very similar to the Fold 3 from the front, and sports a camera array inspired by the Galaxy S22 that launched earlier this year. This camera setup will contain three lenses that protrude from the rear and an LED flash.

The handset will flaunt a 6.2-inch cover display, and a larger 7.6-inch tablet-like screen when unfolded. The leak indicates that we’ll again see a high refresh rate on the displays and an improved under-display camera.

Dimension-wise, the device measures 155 x 130 x 7.1mm compared to the Fold 3, which featured dimensions of 158.2 x 128.1 x 6.4mm. This means the phone isn’t as tall, but is slightly wider and will have a noticeable thickness to it.

Despite the increased thickness, Ice Universe says that the Fold 3 is “very light.” And now that the foldable is slightly wider, the Cover display is almost the same width as the iPhone 13 mini.

Theres still no sign of a built-in slot for the S-Pen stylus. Smartprix says there’s also a very small change to the hinge that makes it a bit better.

It’s unclear when Samsung will unveil the Fold 4, but we’re expecting to see it in August or September this year, alongside a couple of other foldable devices.

Source: SmartPrix, OnLeaks

Image Credit: SmartPrix

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Mobile Syrup

Samsung’s Galaxy S23 will reportedly feature 200-megapixel sensor

Samsung is reportedly done working on the 200-megapixel camera for 2023’s Galaxy S23.

According to ETNews, the company is in the process of selecting suppliers for its new 200-megapixel sensor. Samsung Electro-Mechanics will get 70 percent of the orders, while Samsung Electronics and other partners will recieve the remaining 30 percent of orders.

This new sensor is called the ‘ISOCELL HP3’ and is an upgraded version of the current 200-megapixel camera called the ISOCELL HP1. For whatever reason, the HP1 wasn’t included in Samsung’s devices. This sensor can record 8K and 4K videos and offers advanced HDR and Double Super Phase Detection autofocus.

We’ll liekly see the 200-megapixel ISOCELL HP3 alongside the S23 (Ultra) in early 2023.

Source: ETNews Via: SamMobile

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Mobile Syrup

Google’s Pixel 6a has reportedly started production

Google has started production on the Pixel 6a, according to the tipster Mukul Sharma. The phone is being manufactured in “several Asian countries.”

The Pixel 6a is expected to launch on Wednesday, May 11th at Google I/O 2022 at 1pm ET/10am PT.

While the Pixel 5a only launched in Japan and U.S. and was delayed due to chip shortages, we’re expecting a wider launch for the Pixel 6a, and for the phone to show here in Canada.

The device is rumoured to feature either 6GB or 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, two 12-megapixel shooters and a 5,000mAh battery.

Source: @stufflistings

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Mobile Syrup

Motorola Razr 2 successor to look more like Samsung’s Flip 3 than Razr

Motorola’s next foldable device has leaked online with the codename ‘Maven.’ This time, Motorola has reportedly developed a flagship-level handset that’s scheduled to launch in the summer, according to 91mobiles.

The phone sports more of resemblance to Samsung’s Galaxy Flip 3 than the Razr or Razr 5G. For example, the device is overall boxier and features two rear-facing cameras like Samsung’s Flip 3. According to the rumour, Maven will offer a 50-megapixel f/1.8 primary shooter and a 13-megapixel camera for macro and ultra-wide shots.

Additionally, the phone is expected to sport a 32-megapixel hole-punch selfie shooter, with an FHD+ interior folding display. The standard variant of the device is supposed to feature a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, with the “Plus variant” of the device sporting the rumoured Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+, as well as up to 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage.

The phone will also lose the bottom chin featured on previous Razr devices and offers a more modern appearance.

Alongside Maven, Felix is another device that Motorola is working on. The device features a rollable display, instead of a folding one like the Razr. It’s unclear when Felix would make an appearance as the device is in its very early stages of development, according to 91mobiles.  However, the publisher guesses that it’s at least a year away from launching.

While many other companies that are or have talked about rollable phones, like LG, TCL and Samsung, Motorola isn’t working on making a device with a bigger display, but is instead trying to make the phone more pocket friendly.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that Motorola has already started working on ‘Juno,’ the successor of Maven (the Razr 3). This device is also a year away from, however. 91mobiles says that the foldable will release in either late July or early August and come in Quartz Black and Tranquil Blue colour variants.

Image Credit: 91mobiles

Source: 91mobiles, (2), Evan Blass

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Mobile Syrup

EA returns to Lord of the Rings with a free-to-play mobile game

Electronic Arts has announced a partnership with Middle-earth Enterprises on a new free-to-play The Lord of the Rings mobile game.

No reveal trailer was actually shown for the title, titled The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth, but EA says it’s a “collectible role-playing game” featuring “high-fidelity graphics, cinematic animations, and stylized art.” EA also promises that the game will feature “storylines, locations, characters, and lore” from J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary works, rather than the Peter Jackson films, although specific details weren’t provided.

EA Capital Games, the California-based studio behind the massively popular Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes mobile game, is developing Heroes of Middle-earth. A launch date for Heroes of Middle-earth wasn’t confirmed, but EA says a limited, regional beta test will begin this summer.

Heroes of Middle-earth marks EA’s return to the world of Middle-earth after a number of years. Around the time that Jackson’s films were in theatres, EA published several related games, including 2002’s well-regarded The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers tie-in and 2009’s The Lord of the Rings: Conquest. Warner Bros., which produced the Jackson films, would later gain the license to publish Middle-earth games, which include last generation’s popular Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War.

Image credit: Warner Bros.

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Mobile Syrup

Red Magic 7 Pro is suitable only for the most serious mobile gamers

Using Nubia’s latest flagship, the Red Magic 7 Pro, feels like an upgrade and a downgrade at the same time.

The last RedMagic device that I used was the 6R which had its own cons, including a cluttered notification tab, laggy UI, and apps like Instagram crashing. While the new RedMagic 7 Pro carries a beefier Snapdragon 8-Gen-1 chipset, it still retains some of its predecessor’s weaknesses.

On the other hand, Red Magic 7 Pro improves on aspects like its camera, shoulder triggers, battery life, internal cooling system and the overall look of the gaming phone.

One of the best-looking rear end on a phone

The RedMagic 7 Pro is a chonky phone. Weighing in at 235g, the device is about 50g heavier than the 6R, noticeably thicker, yet comfortable to grip while gaming. I would say the thicker body makes it feel more like an actual controller in my hands and adds to the overall ‘gaming phone’ experience.

The smartphone features a massive 6.8-inch Full HD AMOLED display with minimal bezels, high brightness that doesn’t fail under direct glare and eye-pleasing colour reproduction for FPS games. 600Hz higher multi-finger touch sampling rate that allows for ultra-fast response in-game when you register a touch.

Where it falls short, however, is the display’s 144Hz refresh rate. For reference, the 7 Pro’s predecessor, the RedMagic 7, has a 165Hz refresh rate, whereas the last-gen RedMagic 6R has a 144Hz refresh rate.

The RedMagic 7 Pro lags behind as it has a maximum variable refresh rate of 120Hz. That doesn’t seem like a big difference when you’re using the phone for everyday activities, but it does make a difference when gaming, and using both the phones simultaneously makes the difference clear as day.

I would have imagined the ‘Pro’ device to be excessively spec’d out, but that isn’t the case with the Red Magic 7 Pro. This seems to be a conscious decision from Red Magic, considering not many mobile games support 144Hz or higher gameplay, and the lower refresh rate helps preserve battery.

The rear of the smartphone is beautiful. I would argue that the RedMagic 7 Pro has the best-looking back of any phone I’ve used. It features a design right out of Nothing’s textbook with a transparent rear that gives you a peek into the internals and prevents the phone’s aesthetic from getting boring.

You’ll also see text like “Air Inlet,” “20,000 RPM Max Fan,” “Stereo Speaker” and “Snapdragon 8-Gen-1” to indicate where those parts are positioned. Of Course, this doesn’t improve or impair the device’s performance, it’s just cool to look at.

On the top, the gaming phone features a 3.5mm headphone jack and a stereo speaker, an air outlet and two shoulder triggers on the right, along with volume and power buttons.

On the bottom sits the SIM tray along with another stereo speaker and a Type-C charging port, whereas the left side of the phone is reserved exclusively for the ‘Game Space Slider’ that allows you to start gaming instantly.

Graphic-heavy games are no challenge

The Red Magic 7 Pro runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset and features 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage.

It runs Android 12 out of the box with Red Magic’s own OS. I’m not a fan of Red Magic’s OS and UI, which I talked about in my 6R review, so this time around, I used the device with Niagra Launcher from day one.

While the launcher lets you change the way the UI looks, it doesn’t change some of the incorrect translations. Red Magic is a brand out of China, and its primary development UI is designed in Chinese. Seemingly, a bunch of typos and spelling errors are still left in, making the software side of the experience haphazard — something you’ll have to trade in exchange for a top-notch mobile gaming experience.

Toggling on the red ‘Game Space’ button from the left side of the device lets you directly access your game hub, where you can scroll through your games, check your playtime, tweak settings and control performance.

This is also where you get to customize what your shoulder triggers do, set the screen refresh rate, turn on/off the built-in cooling fan, record your gameplay, choose plugins and more.

More demanding games like Need For Speed No Limits and PUBG: Mobile work excellently on the Red Magic 7 Pro, even on the highest graphic settings, while the device feels overkill for lighter titles like Slither.io. I never had to experience choppy or laggy frames, and the responsiveness of the titles was top-notch.

The higher-touch sampling rate is also evident when playing first-person shooter games, and so is the shoulder trigger’s responsiveness.

Additionally, Game Space now has applications like Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram and Facebook directly integrated into it, which means you can have these apps open in small floating windows while you are gaming, with options to move the window around and expand it to full screen (check the screenshot above for reference).

The phone doesn’t heat up even after extended periods of gaming, and that can be credited to a built-in fan and air vent, which comes with two modes, including ‘Intelligent regulation’ and ‘Fast cooling.’ As is evident by the name, ‘Intelligent regulation,’ tweaks the fan speed depending on the device’s need, whereas ‘Fast cooling’ keeps the fan running at its full pace.

Further, according to Nubia’s press release, the Red Magic 7 Pro incorporates internal materials that offer superior heat dissipation, rapid thermal dissipation and active cooling.

The device uses ‘Vapor Chamber Liquid-cooling’ technology with a wide variety of heat transferring metals like Composite Graphene, Super Soft High Heat Rare Earth, High-Conducting Gel, Copper Coil, and a Heat Dissipation Plate, just to name a few.

Battery drains quick while gaming

The Red Magic 7 Pro boasts a 5,000mAh battery, 800mAh more than the Red Magic 6R, and supports 65W GaN fast charging with the included charging brick and cable.

While the extra boost in battery does make a slight difference in everyday use, the 7 Pro’s overall battery life still depletes rather quickly when gaming at high graphic settings, high brightness or high frame rates.

With everyday use, 100 percent battery can last you about two days, but with an hour of gaming per day, you will need to charge your phone at least once per day. The in-box 65W charger can juice up your phone to about 50 percent in 15 minutes, so it’s not all that bad.

Additionally, just like the 6R, the 7 Pro also features ‘Charge Separation’ that allows your device to operate from power right out of the wall outlet.

The camera is satisfactory

The Red Magic 7 Pro features a tri-camera set up on the back and an under-display selfie camera on the front that are all satisfactory at most.

I know, a gaming phone’s selling point is not its camera, but how well it can handle heavy titles without a drop in performance. This puts the device in a niche, and falling under a niche means slow or stagnant growth for the product.

The 7 Pro’s camera setup is almost identical to the 6R with a 64-megapixel main camera, an 8-megapixel ultrawide shooter and a 2-megapixel macro camera.

Compared to the iPhone 12 Pro, the Red Magic 7 Pro’s photos look dull and lifeless, but that could also be attributed to iPhone 12 Pro’s automatic post-processing, which is pretty evident in the images below:

The 7 Pro offers 2x and 5x digital zoom that distorts even nearby objects like no other, thanks to the absence of a telephoto lens, whereas the device’s low-light photography software does a good enough job of capturing detail and accurate colours.

To compensate for a lacklustre camera experience, Red Magic offers several ‘Camera Family’ modes, including ‘Star Trail,’ ‘Starry Sky,’ ‘Multi Exposure,’ ‘Clone’ ‘3D’ ‘Zoom Blur,’ and many more. On the video side of things, the Red Magic 7 Pro can record in HDR, with up to Ultra HD 4K at 60FPS, along with built-in anti-shake stabilization software.

With all that being said, the Red Magic 7 Pro feels like a super niche phone that won’t serve everyone well. While it’s undoubtedly one of the best gaming phones on the market with slight omissions from preceding models, the lacklustre software experience, combined with a lower refresh rate, and average quality cameras make it a no-go for the everyday user who also wants to game once in a while.

However, if you’re looking to get into mobile eSports, stream games on Twitch or YouTube, or have extra cash lying around to purchase a dedicated phone just for gaming, it’s hard to beat the Red Magic 7 Pro. It has one of the best-looking rear designs on the market, provides a top-notch gaming experience without any dips in performance, stays cool, charges rather quickly and has a big AMOLED panel that is pleasing to look at.

The Red Magic 7 Pro is available to order in 16GB+256GB and 16GB+512GB variants for $799 and $899, respectively.

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Mobile Syrup

Nothing’s Launcher is here, and it’s pretty basic

Modern Samsung and Pixel owners can now download and try out the new ‘Nothing Launcher.’

The minimal-looking Android launcher is live on the Google Play Store but be warned that it’s still a beta. That means it’s subject to change and features the odd bug.

The Play Store says that anyone with Pixel 5/Pixel 6 or Galaxy S21/S22 can download the launcher. The store listing also mentions that OnePlus support is coming soon.

After sending myself a link to the launcher, I was able to install it on my OnePlus 10 Pro relatively easily. It seems a little janky on the 10 Pro, but it also performs that way on the Pixel 6, so I think that’s just the nature of this being a beta.

It’s worth noting that I was only able to set the launcher as default through the phone’s settings. There’s no Nothing Launcher app to initiate the setup like several other launchers.

Two of the three Nothing widgets and a look at a ‘Max Folder.’

On the Play Store page, the company is hyping up its ‘Max Folder’ widget that looks like Apple Store apps in the App Library on iOS. This means that three of the apps in the folder are still tappable and you can tap on a smaller collection of more apps in the bottom corner to access the full folder. This design works fairly well in iOS, and so far, it’s pretty good in Nothing’s launcher too.

Beyond this, the launcher is simplistic and reminiscent of the Pixel Launcher, which is a good thing since I suspect Android purists will be the main users of Nothing’s products.

That said, the launcher is probably a little too simple right now, but hopefully, Nothing will roll out more features before its smartphone launches this summer. There is a side of me that likes the old-school Android simplicity the current launcher offers, but if Nothing wants to compete with devices like Google’s Pixel, Samsung’s Galaxy S smartphones and OnePlus, it has a ways to go.

The launcher also includes a custom background and you can download more from a Dropbox folder Nothing has only shared on its Discord server for some reason. There are also a few default Nothing widgets for the clock and weather. You can also make giant app icons that look similar to widgets. I like them since they look cool, but this isn’t a make-or-break feature.

The dropbox folder that the company has shared is the most interesting aspect of the launcher since it includes access to three demo sounds from the upcoming Nothing Phone. I’ll admit that I was skeptical when Nothing said that it used industrial gadgets and medical tech for its smartphone sounds inspiration, but the demos have convinced me its claims are accurate. For example, the alarm demo sounds great and is also quite unique.

If you want to report bugs or talk about the Launcher, you can join the Nothing Discord server. When I briefly checked out the server, Nothing founder Carl Pei asked what other launchers have good system search tools. The Nothing Launcher won’t replace the Niagra launcher for me any time soon, but it’s a solid base that, hopefully, Nothing can improve on substantially before release.

Source: Nothing