XDA

jeudi 3 mars 2022

GrapheneOS brings its privacy-conscious camera and PDF viewer apps to the Play Store

There is certainly no shortage of camera apps on the Google Play Store. If you’re been a part of the Android ecosystem for any length of time, you’ve probably tried out several different camera apps besides the OEM ones. While there may be many to choose from — including the community favorite Google Camera ports — the vast majority of these apps are closed source and they don’t necessarily put your privacy as a top priority. Now, the team behind the privacy-focused GrapheneOS project aims to fill the void by releasing their camera app to the Google Play Store.

Dubbed as Secure Camera, the GrapheneOS camera app takes merely 5MB space after installation. It utilizes Google’s CameraX Android library, hence the camera app can seamlessly utilize vendor extensions. For example, if Samsung ships a CameraX night mode extension in its phones, the GrapheneOS camera will be able to use it. On supported devices like the Google Pixel lineup, zooming via pinch to zoom or the zoom slider makes use of the wide-angle and telephoto sensors out of the box. The app also supports QR code and barcode scanning.

As mentioned earlier, privacy is a big focus of GrapheneOS, so let’s talk about that. Here’s a list of privacy features present in the Secure Camera app:

Camera permission is the only one that’s required.
Images and videos are stored using the MediaStore API, so media and storage permissions aren’t required.
The Microphone permission is needed for video recording, but it can be turned off when you don’t need to record audio.
Location permission is only needed if location tagging has been explicitly enabled beforehand.
EXIF metadata stripping for captured images is turned on by default.

Additionally, the developers have also uploaded the GrapheneOS PDF viewer app to the Play Store. Aptly named as Secure PDF Viewer, it takes privacy to a whole new level. The foundation of the app is based on pdf.js and content providers. In order to minimize the security woes, the PDF stream is fed into the sandboxed WebView without giving it access to content or files. As a result, the app doesn’t require any permissions to operate.

We won’t see a time in which a custom ROM distribution will push all of their first-party applications to the Play Store, but it certainly makes sense for a lot of them. Using GrapheneOS’ action as an example, there just isn’t a reason for them to limit updates for the core inbox application packages to OTA updates. This results in it taking the developers longer to get bug fixes and new features out to their users and that can be a big deal if someone has been putting up with an annoying bug or security flaw within the apps.

If you’re interested in these GrapheneOS apps, you can download them from the Google Play Store by following the links embedded below. For any app developers that read this, they are open source, so you can take a look at the codebase, submit new patches, or just compile the apps yourself.

Secure Camera (Free, Google Play) →

Secure PDF Viewer (Free, Google Play) →

Source: GrapheneOS on Twitter (1, 2)

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Samsung is reportedly throttling the performance of 10,000 popular apps

A new finding suggests Samsung is throttling the performance of thousands of Android apps on Galaxy smartphones. The issue affects many popular apps, including Google and Samsung’s first-party apps.

Samsung has an app called Game Optimization Service that comes preinstalled on many Galaxy phones. Although the name suggests the app helps improve gaming performance, it’s apparently being used to limit the performance of non-gaming apps. Users on the Korean tech forum Meeco have posted a list of affected apps that are subject to performance throttling. The list includes 10,000 popular apps, including Instagram, TikTok, Netflix, Microsoft Office, Google Keep, Spotify, Snapchat, YouTube Music, and more. Samsung’s own apps such as Samsung Pay, Secure Folder, Bixby, and others are also on the list. Notably, there are no benchmark apps on this blacklist.

Samsung created an app called GOS and used the app to limit game performance, making the gaming experience worse. However, according to what the Korean community found out today, Samsung confirmed that it has put performance limits on more than 10,000 apps… pic.twitter.com/U58AreZZoo

— 한가련 (@GaryeonHan) March 2, 2022

A video posted by Korean YouTuber shows how blacklisted apps are subject to inferior performance while benchmark apps are given a free hand. In his test, the YouTuber changed the package name of the 3DMark benchmark app to Genshin Impact, one of the apps on the blacklist. The unmodified version of 3D Mark scored 2618 points in the Wild Life Extreme test. When he ran the same test with the spoofed version, there was a significant drop in the score — 1141 points. In other words, the spoofed version performed 56% worse than the unmodified version.

It’s not immediately clear if the Game Optimization Service app is installed on every Galaxy phone. Android Authority notes that they couldn’t find the app on their Galaxy S22 series units, Galaxy S20 FE and Galaxy S10s. Meanwhile, 9to5Google mentions it’s installed on their Galaxy S22 Plus unit. It’s possible Samsung may have pushed this app via a recent software update.

According to a post on Naver, it seems Samsung is aware of the issue and is conducting an internal investigation. While Samsung hasn’t clarified why it’s throttling Android apps, it’s likely in an attempt to improve battery life. OnePlus was caught doing something similar with the OnePlus 9 Pro last year. The company used an app called OnePlus Performance Service to throttle popular Android apps. The company later confirmed it had added the performance-limiting mechanism to improve the phone’s battery life and heat management.

Source: Meeco forums (Korean), Naver
Via: Android Authority

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Samsung is reportedly throttling the performance of 10,000 popular apps

Samsung created an app called GOS and used the app to limit game performance, making the gaming experience worse. However, according to what the Korean community found out today, Samsung confirmed that it has put performance limits on more than 10,000 apps… pic.twitter.com/U58AreZZoo

— 한가련 (@GaryeonHan) March 2, 2022

Source: Meeco forums (Korean), Naver
Via: Android Authority

The post Samsung is reportedly throttling the performance of 10,000 popular apps appeared first on xda-developers.

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mercredi 2 mars 2022

Galaxy A33 and Galaxy A13 4G design and key specifications revealed in a fresh leak

After launching the Galaxy S22 series, Samsung is now gearing up to refresh the affordable Galaxy A lineup. We have already seen several leaks of the Galaxy A53, Galaxy A73, Galaxy A33, and Galaxy A23 over the past months. Now we’re getting more details about the Galaxy A33 and the first look at another affordable entry in the lineup: the Galaxy A13.

Galaxy A33

Fresh renders of the Galaxy A33 published by WinFuture provide us our clearest look at the Galaxy A53’s “little brother.” The renders are in line with what we saw in earlier leaks. The Galaxy A33 does away with the seamless camera design and opts for the rectangular camera module, similar to the Galaxy A53 and Galaxy A73.

According to WinFuture, the Galaxy A33 will feature a 6.4-inch OLED FHD+ display with a 90Hz refresh rate, Exynos 1200 chipset, 6GB RAM, and 128GB flash storage, 5,000mAh battery, and 5G connectivity.

Galaxy A13

The Galaxy A13 is said to be a 4G variant of the Galaxy A13 5G that launched in the US last year. However, it doesn’t look even remotely close to its 5G sibling in terms of the design.

The Galaxy A13 features a 6.6-inch PLS LCD panel with Full HD+ resolution, a step up from the HD+ panel of the Galaxy A13 5G. The panel supports a 90Hz refresh rate and has a waterdrop notch cutout for the selfie camera.

The phone will reportedly be powered by Samsung’s in-house Exynos 850 SoC, paired with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. The quad-camera setup will be headlined by a 48MP primary shooter, accompanied by a 5MP ultra-wide camera and two 2MP depth and macro shooters. Finally, the phone will pack a 5,000mAh battery and charge via a 15W charger.

The Galaxy A13 is expected to be priced around €200 and launch first in Europe. Samsung has yet to reveal the launch timeline for the Galaxy A33 and Galaxy A13.

Source: WinFuture

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Galaxy A33 and Galaxy A13 4G design and key specifications revealed in a fresh leak

Galaxy A33

Galaxy A13

The Galaxy A13 is said to be a 4G variant of the Galaxy A13 5G that launched in the US last year. However, it doesn’t look even remotely close to its 5G sibling in terms of the design.

The Galaxy A13 is expected to be priced around €200 and launch first in Europe. Samsung has yet to reveal the launch timeline for the Galaxy A33 and Galaxy A13.

Source: WinFuture

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Update your phone’s GPU drivers systemlessly using this tool, no root required

Smartphone-oriented websites tend to focus only on the latest devices, but a large chunk of users choose not to upgrade their phones for one reason or another. Barring hardware failure, many of these devices may still have years of use ahead of them because, to their owners, they still work just fine. While custom ROMs can keep legacy smartphones alive for ages, it can be a nightmare for the modders to keep things like the camera and graphics drivers up to date without official manufacturer support.

Updating GPU drivers on Android

Unlike the smartphone ecosystem, updating the graphics driver on your PC is something you can always think about. This is possible because of the modular architecture of PC hardware drivers, which allows power users to tinker with closed source driver packages, or even opt for open source drivers instead of OEM-provided binaries. In the case of Android, however, driver updates generally only come to your phone alongside larger OS updates.

Updatable GPU drivers can come in handy for fixing bugs, improving graphics performance, or adding new features from OpenGL or Vulkan APIs. Nowadays, smartphones are bigger and faster than ever, making them the perfect vehicle for gaming, hence porting the PC-esque driver design to them does make sense.

Matter of fact, in an effort to modularize Android via Project Treble, Google actually made it possible to wrap the graphics driver set for a particular platform as an app and update it through the Play Store. Since then, several mainstream Android OEMs collaborated with Google and major GPU vendors, including ARM and Qualcomm, to distribute updates for their phones’ GPU drivers independent of larger software releases.

Does the updatable graphics driver design reduce the fragmentation?

Yes, to some extent. Nonetheless, a few worrying questions are still left unanswered. First of all, Google’s mechanism doesn’t provide an easy way to substitute the closed-source vendor driver with a third-party open source offering. You can, of course, manually replace the driver package in the vendor partition of the target device, provided you have root access and somehow get your hands on the necessary files, but that’s not an ideal solution for many.

Next comes the stability-versus-enhancement paradox. Android maintains a hierarchical arrangement when it comes to loading the graphics driver. While one can switch between the factory-installed build and the newer updated release using Developer options => Graphics driver preferences on a per-app basis, it ultimately boils down to the OEM’s decision when to push the graphics driver update. As a result, an end user can’t utilize bleeding-edge driver builds directly from the SoC maker, as OEMs are still responsible for rolling out the updates.

Android 12 Graphics driver preferences

Enter Adreno Tools

As mentioned earlier, updating GPU drivers is possible with root access, but nothing can beat a non-root method. Thanks to XDA Senior Member bylaws, we now have a genius solution named Adreno Tools that allows on-the-fly GPU driver modifications or replacements on Android — that too without root! The developer’s background of porting Android to the Nintendo Switch certainly played a crucial role in this venture, as the whole project has its origin in Skyline, an open source, work-in-progress Nintendo Switch emulator for Android.

Fellow Skyline developer Mark “Pixelylon” pitched the idea of runtime drive replacement to bylaws, which eventually materialized into Adreno Tools. Being a rootless library, Adreno Tools can help any regular app to load custom GPU drivers, deal with BCn textures, and redirect file operations for further complex modifications. It does so by hooking into system libraries and seamlessly swapping in the new driver. Notably, there is no support for Mali GPUs yet.

Since there is no limitation on the origin of the driver, enthusiasts can also load third-party drivers through Adreno Tools. This is particularly useful for those who want to try out Turnip — an open source Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno graphics hardware that falls under the Freedreno umbrella. For example, AetherSX2, the PlayStation 2 emulator for Android already utilizes Adreno Tools to give end users the choice to opt for Turnip instead of the OEM driver for better performance.

Adreno Tools on GitHub

Given the alternatives for the Android GPU driver modding scene in the past, the Adreno Tools library is a fantastic step forward. We’re looking forward to seeing how the project grows and matures in the future. Be sure to give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments!

Source: Esper
Featured image: Red Magic 6S Pro

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