Google Hires New Talent to Run its New Pixel Phone Division

David Foster has worked at a number of big companies over the last few decades. The man was a staff manager at IBM Research back in the late 80s and early 90s, he was a senior director at Apple in the late 90s and early 2000s, and also worked as a general manager at Microsoft from 2005 to 2011. The last big projects Foster worked on were the Kindle and Kindle Fire tablet line when he was employed by Amazon from 2011 to 2014.

The Information is now reporting that Google has hired David Foster to lead the company’s new Pixel brand of smartphones. Google has been known as a software company for years, but it’s clear that they are finally starting to take hardware seriously. Rick Osterloh left Motorola back in March of this year, and it wasn’t more than 2 months later that Google scooped him up to oversee their newly-formed hardware division.

This hardware division includes all of the products that Google is currently working on. This includes the Chromecast line, the Pixel line, the Nexus line, the new Daydream VR headset, Google Home, Google WiFi, OnHub, ATAP, Glass and the products that have yet to be announced. Osterloh isn’t alone here, as he’s reportedly been working closely with the Senior Vice President of Android Hiroshi Lockheimer.

With David Foster taking over the reigns of the new Pixel smartphones, and The Information is reporting that Foster will be reporting directly to Rick Osterloh at this time. It’s nice to see Google taking hardware so seriously now and we’re very curious to see how it all pans out in a year or two. Google is known for starting up projects and abandoning them very quickly before they can mature. If they end up dating this seriously though, which it seems like they are, then it will be exciting to watch Google evolve over the next few years.

Source: The Information

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Magisk Updated to v7, Now Completely Open Source

We’ve talked about Magisk in the past, and how it promises a world of modifications to be done in a systemless manner. The Magisk Universal Systemless Interface has ballooned in popularity recently much like Xposed has, and not without good reason too. In addition to all the benefits that going systemless brings to the table, Magisk also provided a way to run Android Pay, and even Pokémon GO, whilst maintaining root capabilities on your device. For many, those were reasons enough to dabble with all things systemless.

The Magisk Universal Systemless Interface by XDA Recognized Developer topjohnwu has received an update that bumps it up to version 7. There are a bunch of notable changes that follow in the changelog:

• Fully open source
• Remove supolicy dependency, use my own sepolicy-injection
• Run everything in its own selinux domain, should fix all selinux issues
• Add Note 7 stock kernel hex patches
• Add support to install Magisk in Manager
• Add support for image merging for module flashing in Manager
• Add root helpers for SuperSU auto module-ize and auto upgrading legacy phh superuser
• New paths to toggle busybox, and support all root solutions
• Remove root management API; both SuperSU and phh has their own superior solutions

Amongst the most notable changes, Magisk is now fully open source from v7 onwards, including the binaries that it makes use of. In addition to this, the Magisk Manager is now a completely different app altogether, becoming a part of the core experience. New features and improvements are planned, so we can be sure that things will continue to improve in the future.

Magisk is also moving towards a repo system for better module management. The aim is to bring Magisk and its modules at the same ease of management that Xposed currently is at — providing developers a platform to reach out to users, and for users to easily install and keep track of modules.

There’s another change that v7 brings, and this is something that should be understood as part of a bigger plan. The v7 update removes root management and SafetyNet bypassing capabilities from Magisk itself. The developer mentions of two reasons for the aforementioned change: One, Xposed does not work with SafetyNet and suhide came from the efforts of XDA Senior Recognized Developer Chainfire, which rendered this as an incomplete solution. Second, XDA Senior Member phhusson is also in the process of creating his own solution in the form of hidesu, which topjohnwu plans to incorporate into Magisk’s version of phh root. The methods mentioned are superior to the one that was in place, and hence it makes sense to let them shoulder the responsibility of hiding root.

If you would like to know more, head on over to the XDA Community Apps section. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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Xiaomi Launches the Mi Box in USA for $69

There’s no denying that Xiaomi has become a strong player in the smartphone market in Asia, thanks to its affordable lineup, its spec-heavy mid-ends and great-value flagships. Markets outside of Asia, though, have not yet tasted the offerings from Xiaomi. That changes today, in some part at least, as Xiaomi is launching the Mi Box in the United States for a price of $69.

Although not a smartphone, the Mi Box is the first device from Xiaomi that is launching in the USA. The device was unveiled back at Google I/O 2016, and was supposed to land in early Q4 2016. In simple terms, the Mi Box is a Set Top Box that runs Android TV, but when you keep in mind the current scenario of Android TV STB products, the Mi Box is perhaps the cheapest you could buy, while still getting some great value for money.

The Mi Box supports 4K video at 60fps, made possible by quad-core Cortex-A53 with the Mali 450 GPU and 2GB of RAM inside the device. There’s also support for Dolby Digital Plus audio playback. You also get 8GB of storage, HDMI 2.0a compatibility, a voice-activated Bluetooth remote, and optionally, a game controller (sold separately).

Of course, there is Android TV on the device, so you get all the apps and advantages of that ecosystem. Xiaomi is also bundling a few software service freebies to entice more users to purchase the Mi Box.

For $69, the Mi Box certainly offers a pretty good deal, especially for first time adopters who do not want to invest too much into Android TV. The device is available in the US from today (change the region to US to get the option to purchase), though orders will be shipped out on October 6th. You can also find the device in Walmart soon, though exact dates for availability in retail outlets is not known yet.

What are your thoughts on the Mi Box? Let us know in the comments below!

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Opinion: The LG V20 Offers One of the Best Year-on-Year Improvements of 2016

Win an Honor 8: 4GB RAM, Dual-Camera, Premium Design

We’re back with another Honor 8 contest, and like before, it’s open to all countries! You can enter the contest in numerous ways. Each point you earn is considered an entry, so the more points you earn, the higher your chances are of winning. As a reminder, the Honor 8 is the current flagship from Honor and sports dual-cameras, USB Type-C with fast-charging, a Kirin 950 CPU with 4GB RAM, and a 5.2″ 1080p display. We will pick the winner around during the week of October 17. Good luck!

Win a New Honor 8!

  Honor 8 XDA Review   Honor 8 Forums

  Win Stuff from Honor

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Facebook Announces Messenger Lite For Older Devices and Emerging Markets

Facebook just announced Facebook Messenger Lite, a new low-resource version of Facebook Messenger (much to the disdain of the developers of Lite Messenger for Facebook), joining Facebook Lite in their portfolio.

Facebook Messenger Lite is a cut down version of Facebook Messenger, weighing in at under 10 MB. It is designed to be fast to download (even on slower data connections) and fast to open, and includes many of the basic Facebook Messenger features like “messaging, sending and receiving photos and links, and receiving stickers.” However no mention was made in the announcement of calling, location sharing, read receipts, or various other features, some of which have likely been cut in order to get down to the smaller APK size that they are targeting. Facebook also made extensive mention of how Facebook Messenger Lite was designed with a focus on slow and unreliable network connections, and how it will help expand Facebook Messenger into markets that it previously couldn’t reach.

David Marcus, Facebook’s VP of Messaging Products, stated that Messenger Lite was created “for people, who still own older Android devices (think 2009-2011) that have less available ‘disk’ space, memory, and lower performing CPUs, and that often run on lower bandwidth connections”, rather than for people buying current entry-level phones. Back when dual core processors were just starting to hit the market, batteries were commonly around 1400 mAh, Samsung hitting the 1 GHz mark was considered impressive, and many phones were shipping with storage amounts measured in Megabytes. Phones like the Motorola Droid, the HTC Desire, and the Samsung Galaxy S II. Technology has changed substantially since then, and it can be easy to forget how different those devices were from current flagship phones like the Moto Z Force, the HTC 10, or the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 if you haven’t seen them in a while, but there are still people out there that use older devices, and Facebook wants to see those people using their communication platform.

Facebook is aware of the reputation that Facebook Messenger has as being a bit of a resource hog, and were very careful in their launch announcement to avoid undercutting their full Facebook Messenger offering. While having people on Messenger Lite is nice for Facebook, they would prefer that people use the full Messenger offering to avoid splintering which parts of the userbase can use which features with each other. They know that there is a risk of people switching from Facebook Messenger to Facebook Messenger Lite, especially as many people have been asking for improvements in Facebook Messenger’s resource usage for quite a while now (which was redoubled by Facebook’s removal of messaging functionality from the mobile website earlier this year), and are stressing that Facebook Messenger Lite is targeted for early smartphones, the likes of which are becoming increasingly rare in the Western world. As a result, Facebook may decide to permanently keep country restrictions on Messenger Lite similarly to what they are currently doing with Facebook Lite.

Facebook Messenger Lite will be initially launching in Kenya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela, with promises of more countries being added shortly. It will be interesting to see what countries Facebook Messenger Lite comes to, and what steps Facebook takes to promote it there. Messenger Lite looks like it could be a solid product, but Facebook will need to take some steps to advertise it if they want people to actually use it (although their methods with Facebook Lite seem to have been fairly successful, with it reaching a couple hundred million installs already).

It also will likely only launch on Android, as there are limited numbers of smartphones on other OSes in developing markets (although many companies like Samsung, Microsoft, Apple, and Mozilla have been attempting to make inroads into the market), and Facebook extensively mentioned Android in their announcement.

What are your thoughts on Facebook’s strategy of Lite apps? Do you think it is a wasted effort with early smartphones being on their way out? Or is it a smart strategy to target markets that Facebook Messenger cannot reach, especially for something social where every user matters? Let us know in the comments below!

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Samsung Sells 30,000 New Galaxy Note 7 Units in South Korea in 2 Days

Samsung has been working hard to get back on their feet after the whole defective battery issues with the Galaxy Note 7. The last couple of months have not been good to the South Korean tech giant, but things are finally starting to level out for them. It did seem like business was going to get rocky for Samsung again when a replaced Galaxy Note 7 caught fire, but that looks to be an isolated incident and not another batch of defective batteries.

Two weeks ago we started seeing safe Galaxy Note 7 units appear in major US wireless carrier stores. This first started with AT&T, but then branched out to the other major US carriers as well. Just like in the United States, Samsung had also suspended sales in other countries as well. The company just resumed sales of the Galaxy Note 7 in their home country of South Korea on October 1st as they had previously announced.

Along with resumed sales, Samsung is also offering South Korean customers a 50% discount on screen repairs for those who buy the device in October. One would suspect that customers would be worried about buying the Galaxy Note 7 right now, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. In South Korea, a smartphone is said to be a “hit” if they are able to sell 10,000 units per day and the Note 7 has surpassed this benchmark.

The Korea Herald is reporting that since sales of the Galaxy Note 7 have resumed, Samsung has been able to sell 30,000 units on Saturday and Sunday. This has to be a relief for Samsung, but the real test is if they will be able to keep up with these sales numbers, especially outside of their own turf in South Korea. Dedicated Samsung fans would have likely bought the Note 7 anyway, but it’ll be interesting to see if the smartphone has staying power after the reputation that has been building around it.

Source: The Korea Herald

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