LG Announces Q4 Loss of $224 Million

LG has announced a press release detailing the company's financial performance in the fourth quarter of 2016. In spite of record revenue from Home Appliances, Air Solutions, and Home Entertainment, as well as record Q4 operating profits, underperformance in Mobile Communications and Vehicle Components resulted in a net loss of just under $224 million.

>Major losses of $400  million in the mobile division hampered what would have otherwise been a quarterly net profit of $257 million.

LG lays most of the blame for mobile losses on weak sales of the G5, while the V20 reportedly sold reasonably well and contributed to 15% QoQ revenue increase for the division. LG's strategy for mobile profitability lies mainly in releasing a successful flagship and "Mega hit" budget device, while also improving the performance, quality, and safety of the devices they develop.

With the LG G6 slated for a reveal in late February and launch soon after, the company will not have to wait much longer to see how their flagship fares. A highly competitive budget market, due largely to intense focus on quality improvement in companies like Xiaomi, will have LG also facing major competition in their pursuit of highly successful low-end device.

Heading into a new fiscal year, significant QoQ profit growth is expected in Q1 2017. Time will tell if LG can once again find financial success in the mobile realm, and 2017 will be an important year for the company to demonstrate its ability to learn from past mistakes.

Source: LG News Room

 

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XDA Labs Still Fastest Way to Browse Forums (2017 Update)

 

About a year ago we launched XDA Labs as our new Android app. After many updates and improvements, it's still the best way to browse the XDA forums. XDA Labs is built entirely in-house and is the best way to access the forums while on mobile. It's fully Material Design, ad-free, and fast. Here are some of the best features you'll find in XDA Labs.

Fastest Browsing Experience

This has been the main focus of improvement for the last year. The app loads pages from the forum at incredible speeds. Swiping through the pages of a thread is nearly instant.

 

Subscribe to Threads and Forums

Subscribe to specific threads or forums and access them all on one page. You can even create shortcuts that will appear on your homescreen that can take you to the forums you are subscribed to.

Notifications

You will receive an alert for every new private message or mention you get. For nougat devices, expand the notification from your lockscreen to see the contents of the PM.

App Store

The app store is a great place to find apks for beta apps or anything that might not be available on the Play store. It's the best way for developers to release alpha and beta version of their apps to the community.

Xposed

XDA Labs also has access to the entire library of xposed modules. For those of you with a rooted device and xposed framework installed, this is the best way to find new mods to try out.

Quick Actions

Quick action support lets to launch right into the my device or forums section.

 

Tablet Support

We also have tablet support. The XDA threads will look just as good on your big screen.

XDA Play Store App

If you're not interested in the extra features like the app store or exposed modules, you can get the stand alone forum app from the Play store.

 

Get Labs

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Latest Android Experiment Turns Your Android Device into a 3D Mouse

We've talked about a number of applications that Google has highlighted with its Android Experiment program. This gives Google a way to showcase open source Android applications to the world that are more of a proof of concept than a full-fledged application.

It has resulted in projects like the Paper Planes, Sprayscape, Eating Time, and Marclay applications being made open source to benefit the Android community.

So while these applications might not be smash hits in the Play Store, the ideas and concepts behind them are open for others to use and integrate into their own applications for the world. The latest addition to Google's Android Experiments project is an application called Android 3D Mouse and its goal is to turn your Android device into a wireless and virtual 3D mouse for your PC. The idea behind this application is to use a number of gestures to control certain programs on a PC in a 3D environment.

So for example, with this Android 3D Mouse application, you can do regular pans with a single touch swipe in the gesture area of the application. You can zoom in and out with a simple three finger gesture, and you can rotate the plane by using a two finger gesture. You can execute a roll by tapping on the gesture area with two fingers, then lifting one up and swiping that remaining finger left, right, up or down. This application will only work with Blender at the moment, but it's possible this could be used in other programs in the future.

Since it's focused on Blender right now, the application developer has setup a number of shortcut commands in the sidebar. So you can instantly create objects (like a cube) with a single tap, but this can be edited for individual use cases. If you're interested in this project, be sure to check out the code on the GitHub page right here, and the video will be embedded below for those of you who want to see it in action.

Source: Android Experiments

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Google is Optimizing Chrome OS for use on Tablets

Google announced a couple of education-focused Chromebooks this week with one being called the Acer Chromebook Spin 11 and the other being the ASUS Chromebook Flip C213. Both of these Chromebooks are 2-in-1 convertible style devices so they can both be used in notebook or tablet form.

They were actually created with modular components in mind so that they can be repaired much more easily. This was key since they'll be used in classrooms where kids can sometimes end up damaging certain pieces of it.

We've seen this trend of more Chromebooks integrating a touch screen display on their device. This is thanks to the touch UI that Google has been working on within Chrome OS and it is incredibly useful when you think that Android applications are built with a touch UI in mind. Since all Chromebooks launched this year and going forward will be able to install Android applications from the Play Store, this is just one of the many steps that Google is taking to expand the market for its customers.

Not everyone likes to use a 2-in-1 as a tablet though since it adds bulk to the device when that isn't really necessary (as we've seen in the tablet market). So again, Google has been working on the touch UI so that the experience is better with Chrome OS. We've seen this change in the new Samsung Chromebook Pro because of how much bigger the icons in the task bar are. This isn't a big deal when people interacted with Chrome OS with a mouse and keyboard.

Google's director of product for Android and Chrome for education and enterprise, Rajen Sheth, held a conference call this week for the launch of the two new education Chromebooks. During that call Mr. Sheth did talk about these two new Chromebooks, but he also spoke about the future of Chrome OS. He's proud of the work Google has put into the touch UI of Chrome OS and says it will open up the possibilities for OEMs to launch products in a wider variety of form factors. Saying we can "expect everything from detachables to tablets based on Chrome OS down the line."

Source: The Verge

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Google I/O Scheduled for May 17th – 19th at the Shoreline Amphitheater

CES is behind us and we are looking forward to MWC happening in Barcelona this year, but many have been wondering when details for Google I/O were going to be announced. That changed this week when the Android Developers Twitter account published a teaser.

In the tweet, Google asked you to save the date, but didn't display any date for an upcoming event. Instead it was presented as a game where you were tasked to solve 5 puzzles from 5 clues in relation to 5 different places.

Once you clicked Go, a new tab opened up to a GitHub page for the user Kzuse201. This GitHub page had one project tied to it and the README.md file talked about solving those 5 puzzles again. This project also has JavaScript named idareyou.js. You do have the option to go back to the original page, and on there you see a big magnifying glass with a location pin bouncing in the bottom right of the screen. Clicking on this location pin opened up the new tab for Kzuse201's GitHub page again.

This directs you to a Jungle in Brazil thanks to a set of coordinates hidden in side that JavaScript file. The second clue in the puzzle takes you to an unlisted YouTube video that was uploaded by the Google Developers account. The video has nothing but the sound of wind in it since it's being filmed at a beach, but when you enable the closed captions feature you get another set of coordinates. This leads you to the third puzzle which ends up at Warsaw, Poland.

The fourth puzzle links you to a riddle that has been uploaded to Pastebin, which eventually has you winding up in Thailand. Then some people in a Discord channel figured out that assigning the name of the countries to positions of a chess board gives you the text "L IN E THEATRE SHO RE AM P H I." So now we know that Google I/O 2017 will take place on May 17th, 18th and 19th, and they will be holding the event at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA again.

Source: Android Police

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Free Software Foundation lists a Free Phone OS as a Top Priority for 2017

At XDA-Developers, we value and encourage original development efforts of all kinds. While we won't get into the debate over the merits of open source software versus closed source, we do recognize the desire for many users to run their devices on software they know is open for public scrutiny. When we discuss open source initiatives at XDA, it is usually in the context of asking companies complying with kernel licensing agreements (for the record, OnePlus did step up and finally release kernel sources a few days ago). We also applaud Sony's commitment to supporting open source development on their devices.

However, much of the software that is crucial to the basic functionality of the device is proprietary (such as the cellular baseband), so even measures such as these won't appease those of you seeking a truly open device. Unfortunately, there really isn't a place to turn for those of you who wish to have a truly open mobile device. One derivative of Android named Replicant offers software that is entirely free and open source (FOSS), but the current lack of device support hampers any widespread usage. Although, the project is in the process of re-basing on Android Marshmallow, but it is unknown how long that would take.

Hopefully that will change with the recent announcement from the Free Software Foundation that they are putting the free phone operating system as one of their top priority for 2017. In its mission statement, the FSF mentions the crucial need for a truly free mobile phone operating system:

Smart phones are the most widely used form of personal computer today. Thus, the need for a fully free phone operating system is crucial to the proliferation of software freedom.

Specifically, the foundation mentions putting their efforts into supporting the Replicant project. Moving forward, hopefully this means we will see more contributions to the project and ultimately more modern devices supported. The biggest roadblocks will of course be somehow getting crucial, proprietary hardware components working on these devices. Software developers may find it difficult to support certain components given companies' tendencies to restrict access to their proprietary technology.

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If you would like to keep up to date or get involved with the project, you can access Replicant's forum page here, contribute to its wiki here, submit any bugs you find here, or simply donate to support the cause.

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HTC: Snapdragon 835 Not Coming with MWC Flagships, New HTC Phone Coming when Processor Arrives

HTC has been criticized for many of the decisions they made with the HTC U Ultra — from a small battery (for its size) to packing last year's Snapdragon 821 instead of the newer 835, HTC seemingly couldn't catch a break from many sectors of the media. A new interview by tbreak clears up some question we had about HTC's upcoming smartphone:

Chialin Chang, President of Smartphones and Connected Devices at HTC, told tbreak that every time a new CPU with "power that [they] can leverage" comes to the market, they are at the forefront — however, the decision to pack in a Snapdragon 821 with the HTC U Ultra was determined 9 months ago. HTC claims it is the best CPU out there, and it certainly is the best option largely available to OEMs. Mr. Chang states that "when the next CPU flagship comes, HTC will be one of the very first tier doing that."

If rumors are to be believed, this that means we can expect an HTC flagship around the same time as Samsung's Galaxy S8, which is said to be debuting with the Snapdragon 835. HTC then reinforces their decision by stating that "[they] want to have a couple of months of leadership before the next flagship CPU comes (…) but that will be in another period of time — not at MWC." He then goes on to say "not for us or any other player. I can tell you that for sure." This is consistent with reports which claim that the LG G6, expected to launch in late February or early March, will not come with a Snapdragon 835 processor.

Furthermore, the interview gives us some insight into HTC's decision for packing in a measly 3,000mAh battery on a large device with a 5.7 inch QHD display: "We could have done a bigger battery", Mr. Change told tbreak,  "but the design would have been impacted. We wanted to get a symmetric design and the trimming on the sides impacts the battery." To be frank, we don't know what we expected.

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Source: tbreak

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