XDA

jeudi 26 décembre 2019

Samsung and OPPO’s A-series smartphones were the respective brands’ best selling smartphones in Q3 2019

Even though Samsung saw a significant decline in sales in Q1 2019, the company seems to have picked up the pace with its Galaxy A series in Q3 2019. According to the latest report from Counterpoint Research, three smartphones from the company’s Galaxy A series have made it to the top-selling list in the third quarter of this year.

The Market Pulse report reveals that the Samsung Galaxy A10 captured a total sales market share of 2.6%, taking the second spot right behind the Apple iPhone XR at 3%. The Samsung Galaxy A50 took the third spot at a sales market share of 1.9%, while the Galaxy A20 took the seventh position with a total sales market share of 1.4%. The increase in sales could be attributed to the company’s move to discontinue the Galaxy J series and bring the A series to lower price tiers. Since the Galaxy A series has had a more premium perception than the J series, it seems to have boosted sales for the company.

But it wasn’t just the public perception of the devices that boosted sales. Unlike older devices, Samsung offered great specifications and design features in the Galaxy A series at an affordable price point, which also played a major role in the boost in sales. However, Samsung failed to gain similar sales figures for its flagships and none of them feature in the top 10 list released by Counterpoint Research.

Along with Samsung, Chinese smartphone OEM OPPO managed to secure three spots in the top 10 list with its A series. The OPPO A9, A5s and A5 took the fourth, sixth, and eighth spot, achieving sales market shares of 1.6%, 1.5%, and 1.3%, respectively. Despite recent setbacks, Huawei also managed to secure a spot in the top 10 with the Huawei P30. The device took the tenth spot with a total sales market share of 1.1%. Xiaomi also featured in the list at the ninth spot with the Xiaomi Redmi 7A with a market share of 1.2%, while the fifth spot was taken by the recently launched Apple iPhone 11 (1.6%).

The report further reveals that the volume contribution in total sell-through for the top 10 devices increased by 9% YoY to capture a total of 17% of sales compared to 15% in Q3 2018. However, the combined wholesale revenue of the top 10 models declined by 30% YoY as more mid-range and budget devices made an appearance on the list. This increased adoption of budget and mid-tier products has led to setbacks in revenue for key smartphone manufacturers during the quarter with the overall global handset profits declining 11% YoY in the quarter. For more details from the report, you can follow the source link below.

Source: Counterpoint Research

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Flow Desktop is the first launcher built for Android 10’s hidden Desktop Mode

Android Q betas gave us our first look at an experimental Desktop Mode on Android smartphones. Enabled through a setting in Developer Options, this Desktop Mode brought up a new Android interface that resembled a more conventional desktop launcher, with the ability to launch apps in freeform multi-windows. Google has even provided more information for app developers to adapt their applications to work harmoniously with a secondary display. Curiously, Google has not really introduced Desktop Mode with much fanfare just yet, as the experimental setting is quite barebones in its approach, needing a lot of fixes and playing around to make it more useful. However, Flow Desktop goes a step ahead in this direction as a launcher, adding more utility to the hidden Desktop Mode.

Flow Desktop builds on Android 10’s Desktop Mode to give you a better experience on a secondary display with a connected keyboard and mouse. At the outset, it is worth mentioning that Android’s Desktop Mode is still considered experimental, and Flow Desktop is also in a preview state with bugs expected throughout the experience. The app provides a very short trial period for you to check out what it is about and then requires purchasing premium in order to support further development. You already need to have enabled Developer Options on your device and enabled the Freeform Windows and Experimental Desktop Mode toggles as well for the launcher to work.

There is a brief device setup to undertake for the first time, so you will need a computer too. The developer has shown off the experience in the video below:

Flow Desktop comes along with several options, including support to change the resolution on the secondary display, as well as the density on it. The launcher enables a more traditional desktop and Windows-like experience on the secondary display, complete with a Start Menu for displaying all apps, the ability to add apps to the bottom Taskbar, and more. Due to inherent limitations with Desktop Mode, right clicks on the mouse are treated as touch long presses, so the context menu is displayed accordingly.

Again, there are bugs to be found in the entire experience, even on officially supported devices. Flow Desktop officially supports the OnePlus 7T Pro, and officially considers the Essential Phone PH1 (no support for display settings adjustments) and Samsung phones (with DeX pre-installed, as they need further tweaking) as unsupported for now.

You can check out Flow Desktop on the Google Play Store. For discussion, you can check out the developer’s thread on Reddit.

Flow Desktop launcher (Preview test release) (Free⁺, Google Play) →

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Flow Desktop is the first launcher built for Android 10’s hidden Desktop Mode

There is a brief device setup to undertake for the first time, so you will need a computer too. The developer has shown off the experience in the video below:

You can check out Flow Desktop on the Google Play Store. For discussion, you can check out the developer’s thread on Reddit.

Flow Desktop launcher (Preview test release) (Free⁺, Google Play) →

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You can no longer use a phone number to sign up for Facebook Messenger

In a bid to bring more users to the platform, Facebook has now removed support for phone number logins on Facebook Messenger. According to a recent report from VentureBeat, the company now requires users to create a Facebook account in order to use Messenger. In an email to the publication, a Facebook spokesperson wrote, “If you’re new to Messenger, you’ll notice that you need a Facebook account to chat with friends and close connections. We found that the vast majority of people who use Messenger already log in through Facebook and we wanted to simplify the process. If you already use Messenger without a Facebook account, no need to do anything.”

As is evident from the statement above, the recent change won’t affect users who have already signed up for Messenger using their phone number. The change only applies to new users who haven’t signed up for Messenger before. However, a few Messenger users who don’t have a Facebook account have reported that the transition hasn’t gone smoothly. This could be due to a bug that brings up an error message indicating that their account has been restricted.

Facebook’s move to remove phone number sign-ups on Messenger foreshadow’s the company’s plan to unify all its messaging platforms. Earlier this year in January we learned that Mark Zuckerberg planned on unifying the infrastructure of all three of the company’s messaging services — WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.

The idea behind that was to operate all three services as standalone apps but on the same underlying messaging infrastructure. The raised privacy concerns among many of its users, following which Facebook outlined a new “Privacy-Focused Vision”. But the company’s plans may not pan out smoothly as U.S. Federal officials are currently considering seeking preliminary action against the company over antitrust concerns regarding how its products interact.

Source: VentureBeat

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You can no longer use a phone number to sign up for Facebook Messenger

Source: VentureBeat

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Android 11 may finally remove Android’s 4GB file size limit for video recordings

In 2019, smartphone brands have made huge jumps in camera quality, especially when it comes to zoom and low-light. On the other hand, video quality hasn’t been given the same amount of attention. That could change in 2020 with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865’s improved ISP. Yet, even as Android smartphones are shipping with larger internal storage capacities, have faster modems, and are now supporting 5G networks, an old limitation prevents most of these phones from saving video files that are larger than 4GB in size. However, that could change in Android 11, the next major version of Android that’s set to release in 2020.

I’ll try to summarize the reasoning behind this limitation without going too deep into the technical aspects. Basically, Google decided that Android’s MediaMuxer and MPEG4Writer classes, which are respectively responsible for muxing (combining) video files and saving them as MP4 files, should support outputting an MP4 file with a maximum size of 2^32 – 1 bytes, which is approximately 4GB. This decision was made in early 2014, back when the Google Nexus 5 with its maximum 32GB of internal storage was still on the market, SD cards were still widely in use, and the first phones with 4K video recording had just come to market (Galaxy Note 3). Thus, there wasn’t much demand to save video files over 4GB in size: most phones didn’t have enough storage, SD cards formatted in FAT32 wouldn’t support it anyway, and few phones recorded in high enough quality to even meet that limitation. Fast forward 5 years and much has changed: there are now phones with 1TB of storage, SD cards are now the exception rather than the norm, and 4K video recording is ubiquitous, with 8K video recording soon to reach devices.

Today, if you record a 4K video on the Pixel 4, your video will reach 4GB in size in about 12 minutes; that’s at the default quality settings of 30fps for the frame rate and 48Mbps for the bitrate. After about 12 minutes of recording, the camera app will save the video and immediately begin recording another video – without the user noticing. When you check your phone’s DCIM folder, you’ll notice that what was supposed to be one continuous video recording has instead been split into multiple video files. For example, a 73 minute video recording on my Pixel 4 was split into 7 different files – all of which were seen by Google Photos as separate recordings. It’s not difficult to mux these MP4 files before uploading to Google Photos, but you’ll have to use a third-party app if you want to do so. Most people wouldn’t bother or know how to do so, I would imagine.

A 73 minute 4K30 video recording from my Pixel 4 split up into 7 different files.

Developers have asked for a way to record video files larger than 4GB in size for years now, and it seems that change could finally be coming in Android 11. According to the description of a new commit in the AOSP gerrit, Google is updating Android’s media classes to remove the 32-bit file size limitation. Specifically, Android will now “use [a] 64bit offset in mpeg4writer,” which allows Android “to compose/mux files more than 4GB in size.” During testing, Google successfully composed a file of around 32GB in size, and in a separate test, even managed to fill up the entire storage capacity of the phone with a single recording. A maximum file size of 2^64 -1 bytes is comically large and would never really ever be met, so we expect Google to limit the MediaRecorder API or OEMs to limit their stock camera apps to support a more reasonable maximum file size. However, apps like OpenCamera that use the Camera2API should still be able to arbitrarily set whatever maximum file size they want without having to worry about the 32-bit file size limitation.

OpenCamera’s Video Recording Settings

The commit has not been merged yet, but when it does, we expect the change to be reflected in Android 11 since that’s the next major Android release. The first Android 10 beta went live in March of this year, so expect to see an Android 11 beta in March of 2020 followed by a stable release sometime in August of 2020. With phones from Xiaomi and Samsung expected to support 8K video recording, this change is welcome – albeit way overdue.

Thanks to XDA Recognized Developer luca020400 for the tip!

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Chrome OS 80 lets you sideload Android apps without Developer Mode

It’s probably no secret to anyone that Chrome OS now supports Android apps. It has for a while, in fact. Before bringing Android app support to Chrome OS, it was actually very much limited to web apps, but Android app support has unlocked a lot of possibilities for Chromebook users, including better, native experiences for social media, productivity apps, and even some gaming as well. The experience was, at first, pretty limited, but further updates have made it so Android apps feel more native and seamless every time. One notable omission, though, was that you couldn’t sideload Android apps on a Chromebook unless you enabled Developer Mode. Starting with Chrome OS 80, as previously announced, this will be changing.

Now, please note that the process is still not at all as straightforward as it is on an Android phone or tablet. This is because Google intends users to install Android apps to their Chromebooks exclusively through the Google Play Store: the process for sideloading APKs is meant for developers testing out their apps, according to Google. This is probably to ensure compatibility with their Chrome OS system, but it’s still a hurdle for power users wanting to sideload APKs. Once you have Chrome OS 80 running on your Chromebook, though, the process goes as follows:

Download Google’s Android SDK Platform Tools for Linux on your Chromebook and extract the contents to an easily accessible location. This will essentially allow you to use adb and fastboot commands within your Chromebook through the Linux console. For more info on how to get adb and fastboot running, please refer to the Linux section of this tutorial.
Enable ADB debugging in the Develop Android apps section under Chrome OS’s Linux settings. The device will restart when you’ve confirmed the dialog.
Open up a Linux console and set up an ADB-over-WiFi server within your device by running the adb connect 100.115.92.2:5555 command.
Drag the apps you want to install to the platform-tools folder you are using.
From here, you can sideload Android apps by using the adb install command within that same Linux console. For example, if I want to install fortnite.apk, then you should run adb install fortnite.apk.
The app should have been installed correctly at this point.

It is far from a streamlined process, but it doesn’t require you to enable Developer Mode on your Chromebook and compromise its security. You will, however, have a warning on your lock screen saying that non-Google Play apps may be running on your device.

Chrome OS 80 is currently available in the Dev branch, so that’s also something you should keep in mind if you want to sideload apps to your Chromebook. We hope Google ends up relaxing their policies a bit so that we can sideload apps like you can on Android phones, as several popular apps, including Fortnite, are not available on the Play Store.

Via: AboutChromebooks

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