Tag Archives: Android

X Is Rolling Out Audio And Video Calls To Android

X,

Elon Musk’s own social network X is rolling out the ability to make audio and video calls from the app to its Android client, TechCrunch reported.

One of the engineers working on the project posted about the feature release and said it would be available to Android users after an app update.

According to TechCrunch, in August 2023, CEO Linda Yaccarino first talked about introducing video calls to the platform and eventually rolled it out to iOS users in October.

Notably, any user can receive a call but only paid users can place a call. It’s one of the long list of things only paid users can do on X. However, X removed the ability for premium users to set an NFT as a profile picture earlier in the month.

X, formerly known as Twitter, provided information about Audio and Video calls:

We’re releasing a new way of communicating on X, Audio and Video calling. Audio and Video calling is now available on iOS and Android.

The basics

* Premium subscribers have the ability to make audio and video calls.
* All accounts are able to receive calls.
* You’re able to control who can call you from the Direct Messages Settings.
* By default you’re able to receive calls from accounts you follow or have in your address book (if you’ve previously given us access to your address book).
* To be able to call another user, they must have sent you a direct message at least once before.
On Android, you need to have push notifications enabled to get notified when you get a call.

To make an audio or video call

* Tap the envelope icon. You’ll be directed to your messages.
* Tap an existing DM conversation or start a new conversation.
* Tap on the phone icon, from there you can;
* Tap Audio call to start an audio call
* Tap Video to start a video call
* The account that you call will receive a notification that you’re calling them and if they don’t pick up they’ll get a notification that they missed a call.

After that, there are descriptions of how to manage an audio call or a video call. X users are able to control who can call them. There is the option of being able to choose who is able to call you. You can receive calls from: people in your address book, people you know, or verified users.

Mashable reported that in order to call someone on X/Twitter, you must be a Premium users (paying $8 per month) – or Premium+, which will set users back $16 per month – if they’d like to make a call. However, any user can receive audio and video calls on X. Only the user placing the call has to pay.

Personally, I’m not a fan of this at all. There is ample room for Premium or Premium+ users to use their call to harass people or to send threatening audio or video messages. I also don’t like the idea of giving X/Twitter my voice.

OnePlus Pad Pricing Announced

Android, tablet, ,

OnePlus LogoAfter several months of waiting, the price point for the OnePlus Pad has been announced at UK£449 (499 € / US$479) for 8GB RAM and 128GB storage with pre-orders in Europe from 10:00 BST on Friday 28th April. Pre-orders will come with the choice of the OnePlus Folio Case or the SuperVOOC 80W adapter. Shipping is from 18th May so it’s a few weeks until the courier drops it off, as it were.

The full price list for the Pad and accessories is:

  • OnePlus Pad £449
  • Stylo (Pencil) £99
  • Magnetic Keyboard £149
  • Folio Case £59
  • 80W SUPERVOOC Adapter £39.

The original Early Bird offer when the pricing was unknown sold out in five days so it looks it’s going to be popular.

Toumas Lampen, European Head of Strategy, commented ’Earlier this year, we announced our ambition to build a Superior Digital Life for consumers. Today we take our next big step in that journey by announcing the price and pre-order dates of our first ever tablet, OnePlus Pad. Following a complete sell out of our Early Bird Offer earlier in April, we’re thrilled that people are as excited about OnePlus Pad as we are.’

A quick reminder of the specs….it’s a MediaTek Dimensity 9000 CPU driving an 11.6″ 2800×2000 pixel screen with a 144 Hz refresh rate and powered by a 9510 mAh battery. Four speakers support Dolby Atmos audio for great sound. The colour way is Halo Green and it has this lovely circular pattern on the rear, spreading out from the large camera array.

I think this is a good price point as it fills space that’s missing in the Samsung range. The Galaxy Tab A8 is in the £200+ range but the Tab S8 is £700+, so there’s a convenient slot there for OnePlus to position itself as a “not-quite-a-flagship-killer-but-only-about-half-the-price-of-one”.

I’m looking forward to getting my hands on one (fingers crossed!)

Reduce Uninstalls For Your App With Auto-Archive

Android

Android Developers Blog posted information titled “Reduce uninstalls for your app with auto-archive”. It was posted by Chang Liu and Lidia Gaymond, Product Managers, Google Play. From the information:

Did you know that one of the main reasons users uninstall apps is to free up space? Today, whenever users try to install a new app on a nearly-full device, they see a dialog that allows them to manually uninstall the app to make room. However, sometimes uninstalling a whole app, including all of the user’s app data just isn’t necessary.

To reduce unnecessary uninstalls and help users successfully install new apps, we are introducing a new feature: auto archive. Once a user opts in, auto-archive can help them automatically free up to nearly 60% of an app’s storage space, without removing the app presence or users’ data from the device.

What is auto-archive?

Auto-archive is a new feature that allows users to free up space on their device without the need to complete uninstall an app. Once the user opts in, infrequently used apps will be partly removed from the device to save space, whilst the app icon and the user’s personal app data will be preserved. When the user wants to start using the app again, they can simply tap to re-download it and pick up where they left off (as long as the app is still available on Google Play).

Eligibility of auto-archive

Auto-archive is only available for developers using the App Bundle to publish their apps. If your app supports archiving, users will be less likely to see it surfaced amongst uninstall suggestions.

TechCrunch reported that Android users will see a prompt to use the auto-archiving feature when their device is running out to storage while trying to install a new app. They can then choose to activate the feature, which automatically archives their unused apps while also removing things like permissions and temporary files and disabling notifications.

“Your device is out of storage, and you won’t be able to install this app. With app archiving turned on, your device will detect when you don’t have enough storage and automatically archive apps that you don’t use often. Your personal data will be saved in case you download the app again,” the prompt reads.

The feature will make Android devices more competitive with iOS, which for years had made suggestions about apps to unload. In 2017, Apple introduced personalized recommendations to remove unused apps in iOS 11. To enable the automatic removal of these apps, iPhone users can head to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and tap Enable on the Offload Unused apps toggle.

To me, it sounds as though both Google and Apple want to give their users a way to offload unused apps by allowing them to archive the apps they do not regularly use. I like that there is an option, for both Android and iOS users, to save space on their devices without entirely losing an app.

Android Released The Third Beta of Android 13

Android

Google’s Android Developers Blog posted “Android 13 Beta 3 and Platform Stability” on June 8, 2022. It was written by VP of Engineering, Dave Burke. The blog post talks about the release of the third beta and platform stability.

Today, we’re releasing the third Beta of Android 13, taking us into the final phase of our cycle where we’re focusing on polish and performance. With Android 13, we’ve built on our core themes of privacy and security, developer productivity, and tablet and large screen support.

In the blog post, he mentions features in Android 13. This includes privacy features like the new notification permission and photo picker, to productivity features like themed app icons and per-app language support, as well as modern standards like HDR video, Bluetooth LE Audio, and MIDI 2.0 over USB.

They also extended the newer updates they made in 12L, giving you better tools to take advantage of the 270+ million tablet and large screen devices in active use.

Those who want to participate in Beta 3 on their Pixel device can enroll for over-the-air updates. Anyone who has previously enrolled will automatically get the June 8 update.

Regarding platform stability, they are asking all app and game developers to start their final compatibility testing now, and to prepare to publish their compatibility updates as soon as possible ahead of the final release. It is important for app and game developers to move quickly, because those who don’t may find their apps blocked until Android receives their updates. There are more details in the blog post for developers to consider.

Gizmodo explained that Android’s Beta 3 is now available as an over-the-air update to anyone already using Android 13 as their daily driver on a respective Pixel device.

Gizmodo also pointed out that this version of the Android beta has also reached Platform Stability, which means that the developer APIs and how apps perform on this next version of the operating system are final. According to Gizmodo, from here, until the software’s public release sometime in a few months, developer are to focus on app compatibility and overall quality.

The Android Developers Blog says that the Android Beta 3 can also be tested on tablets. According to the blog, Android 13 builds on the tablet optimizations introduced in 12L. As part of your testing, make sure your apps look their best on tablets and large-screen devices. You can test with the large screen features by setting up an Android emulator in Android Studio, or you can use a large screen device from their Android 13 Beta partners.

Nothing Announces a Smartphone at the Heart of an Ecosystem

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Nothing is Carl Pei’s latest venture after leaving the OnePlus smartphone company in 2020. Now employing 300 people in six countries, the first product, wireless earphones called ear(1), were very well received for their design, audio quality and price. The ear(1) are transparent and have sold over 400,000 units at a reasonable GB£100.

The ear(1) was always intended to the be the first in a range products and in today’s Nothing presentation, Carl promised a revolutionary new smartphone, the phone(1) at the heart of an open ecosystem. The vision is interoperability in the style of Apple without the walled garden, attitude and price.

The new phone will be powered by a Qualcomm processor running Nothing OS. This Android-based OS will be fast and smooth, and stripped of bloatware. Hardware and software would be brought together as one, and design elements would be consistent across the phone. If it all sounds a bit familiar, it’s not terribly different from the vision for OnePlus before it snuggled up to Oppo.

That’s pretty much it. There was no unveiling of the device itself – all that was revealed is the pictogram on the right. The phone(1) is expected to go on sale in the summer.

And if you are thinking that this is all pie in the sky, it’s not. They’ve the financial backing to go with it to the tune of US$140 million and backing from the likes of Google, Samsung, Qualcomm, Sony, BYD and Visionox.

To get a taste of what’s on offer Nothing will be offering, the Nothing OS launcher will be available from April for installation on select existing devices.

I’m looking forward to it.

Google Introduces the Privacy Sandbox

google,

Google has introduced the Privacy Sandbox. This news was announced on Google’s The Keyword blog. The purpose of this new feature appears to be to “evolve how digital advertising works to improve user privacy.”

Today, we’re announcing a multi-year initiative to build the Privacy Sandbox on Android with the goal of introducing new, more private advertising solutions. Specifically, these solutions will limit sharing of user data with third parties and operate without cross-app identifiers, including advertising ID. We’re also exploring technologies that reduce the potential for covert data collection, including safer ways to integrate with advertising SDK’s.

Google claims that the goal with the Privacy Sandbox on Android is to develop effective privacy enhancing advertising solutions, where users know their information is protected, and developers and businesses have the tools to succeed on mobile.

Google acknowledges that “other platforms have taken a different approach to ads privacy, bluntly restricting existing technologies used by developers and advertisers” Google believes that those approaches are ineffective.

It is possible that Google is referring to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature, which allows Apple users to diminish the amount of data apps can collect, lets them know what is shared and how it is used, and gives users the ability to turn all of that off.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple’s changes “have already upended the digital-ad industry and contributed to a wipeout of more than $300 billion from Meta’s market value.”

The Wall Street Journal also reported that Google’s new restrictions to curtail tracking across apps on Android smartphones is “putting restraints on an advertising industry that has covertly collected data across billions of mobile devices.” Google plans to keep supporting current smartphone identifiers for at least the next two years to give the ad industry notice before any changes.

According to The Wall Street Journal, one proposal would have users’ Android devices track their app usage and analyze it on their devices, rather than sending raw usage information to outside companies. The phones will then tell third parties the user’s interests so they can be targeted with relevant ads without the advertisers knowing that user’s smartphone identifier.

Personally, I think that Google should do better. Allowing third-parties to send Android users targeted ads based on the user’s interests certainly doesn’t sound like something a Privacy Sandbox should be doing.

Apple Launches AirTags and Find My Trackers for Android

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Those who choose to travel during this holiday season should make an effort to keep a close watch on their baggage or carry-on items. Previously, Apple gave iOS users the ability to use AirTags to keep track of their stuff, and to identify when an AirTag has been placed on their stuff by a stranger. Now, Android users will have the same ability to protect themselves.

CNET reported: The new app, which Apple released on the Google Play store Monday, is intended to help people look for item trackers compatible with Apple’s Find My network. “If you think someone is using an AirTag or another device to track your location,” the app says, “you can scan to try to find it.”

The Verge posted a screenshot of what Apple’s Tracker Detect does. The screenshot shows a blue circle, with a smaller blue dot in the center. Three smaller circles show a key, a backpack, and an AirTag.

The screenshot includes the following text: “Tracker Detect looks for item trackers that are separated from their owner and that are compatible with Apple’s Find My network. These item trackers include AirTag and compatible devices from the companies. If you think someone is using AirTag or another device to track your location, you can scan to try to find it.”

As The Verge pointed out, the Tracker Detect will alert Android users if it finds a tracker that shouldn’t be there. However, it is “purely a manual search.” The Verge makes it clear: “Tracker Detect doesn’t help you keep track of the AirTags attached to an Apple account, so it’s not helping Android users actually use AirTags.”

In my opinion, it appears that Apple’s Tracker Detect could provide Apple users who have added AirTags to their belongings to quickly learn that a tracker that they did not put there has been detected. Tracker Detecter can provide Android users with the same information, but the user will have to do a manual search for the unknown tracker while scanning for it. That said, everyone traveling should always keep a close eye on their luggage and carry-on items.