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lundi 7 novembre 2016

iFixit Tears Down Google Home, Gives it an 8 Out of 10

Those who pre-ordered Google Home from the Play Store finally started to receive their unit this week. The product has even made its way onto store shelves at Best Buy, Target and Walmart as well, although some stores were having trouble keeping the device in stock this weekend. This morning, we are seeing a complete teardown of Google Home from iFixit, and we are very happy to see it get a repairability score of 8 out of 10.

Google didn't choose to make the product as compact as smartphones are, so we weren't really surprised to see it get a score like this. It's just good to see that Google didn't go out of their way to make it harder to repair than it should be. To start the teardown, you simply need to remove the magnetic speaker grill attachment from the bottom. From here, you will find 4 torx screws that attach the bottom speaker base to the top lid of the device.

Be careful when removing this top lid though, as the motherboard is connected to another board that sits at the very top of the lid. This board is attached to the top of the lid with some very strong adhesive, so be sure you are prepared to unstick that glue if you need access to it. This adhesive is required so the capacitive board will always touch the top of the lid (which is needed so you can control it with touch gestures).

This capacitive board also holds an Atmel ATSAMD21 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller, 2 NXP PCA9956BTW LED drivers, and 2 621 PS006L microphones. On the motherboard itself we see a Marvell 88DE3006 Armada 1500 Mini Plus dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 media processor, Toshiba TC58NVG1S3HBA16 256 MB NAND flash, Marvell Avastar 88W8897 WLAN/BT/NFC SoC, Texas Instruments TAS5720 audio amplifier, and a Samsung K4B4G16 512 MB B-Die DDR3 SDRAM chip.

Source: iFixit



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Samsung’s Galaxy S8 to Reportedly Feature an AI Assistant

Similar to how Google Assistant is a selling point for the Pixel and Pixel XL right now, a new report suggests that Samsung will do the same with the Galaxy S8 and its own personal assistant technology. This report comes a month after it was revealed that Samsung would be acquiring Viv Labs, the same company that helped build Apple's personal assistant feature, Siri. Now, The Wall Street Journal cites "people familiar with the matter" who tell them that Samsung wants in on the personal assistant market too.

Because of the Galaxy Note 7 debacle, Samsung will allocated more time and more resources to the development of the Galaxy S8 than normal. The company will need the Galaxy S8 to impress smartphone consumers as well since they need to win back some of the the trust they lost from the Galaxy Note 7 fires. Samsung says that the "majority" of those who returned the Galaxy Note 7 have chosen to stick with a Samsung device anyway, but some will be cautious until that trust is gained back.

Sources close to The Wall Street Journal are telling them that the company has created prototypes that have a dedicated AI assistant button. The button is said to be on the side of the phone, and it will launch the personal AI assistant when pressed. It's unclear if this dedicated button will make it into the final product, though. These types of experimental designs happen all the time before the release of a product. So we'll have to wait and see if the button makes it in the finished product or not.

The report also says Samsung could delay the announcement of the Galaxy S8 as late as April. The company has a history of announcing their new Galaxy S smartphone at Mobile World Congress, but they also need to make sure the product is safe and is impressive enough to grab people's attention.

Source: The Wall Street Journal



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Want to Beta Test EMUI 5.0 (Nougat) on the Honor 8?

You might have already seen the next version of EMUI, version 5.0, on the Mate 9 announced by Huawei recently. That same software is coming soon to Honor's flagship, the Honor 8. We have 55 slots open to anyone with an FRD-L04 version of the Honor 8, and another slots for those with the FRD-L02 model. You can tell which model you have by looking on the back of your Honor 8 under the Honor logo. Here's an overview of what's new:

Key features:

  • Simpler user interface: a brand new user interface design, comprising blue and white inspired by the color of Aegean Sea; a simplified interface system with an easy three-step-operation for over 90% of the time.
  • Stronger functionality: smoother system run enables quicker browsing from massive pictures to web pages and search queries.
  • A more secure system: strengthened security over user privacy, mobile payment and communication, and APP usage.

If you're interested in joining the beta, fill out the form linked below, and be sure to check out the Honor 8 forums on XDA!

  Apply to Beta Test!



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dimanche 6 novembre 2016

Huawei Mate 9/Kirin 960 Early Testing & Comparison with Pixel XL/Snapdragon 821

Huawei has ambitious plans for itself, as the Chinese giant that aims to eventually beat Apple also wants to be the second largest smartphone maker within the next two years. At the heart of this mammoth effort is Huawei's flagship lineup, which now includes the Huawei Mate 9.

The following article covers the theoretical maximum performance of the Kirin 960 compared to the Snapdragon 821 by looking at various benchmark results; none of these findings should be confused with indicators of actual real-world performance, which we will cover in future articles.

Despite all of the technology that the Mate 9 packs inside, the SoC is one of the most alluring aspects for performance junkies, and the Kirin 960 has a lot to live up to in the world of ever-increasing competition. So, the question is: how does the Kirin 960 compare to the Snapdragon 821? We took the Huawei Mate 9 through an early set of benchmarks to get a feel for the SoC's CPU and GPU performance, although we still have a lot of testing to do regarding real-world UI performance, thermal throttling, thermals, and real-world gaming performance. But those are topics for another day, so let's look at what we've found so far.


Huawei's HiSilicon Kirin 960

The Kirin 960 inside the Huawei Mate 9 is the latest flagship-grade SoC to debut in a device in 2016. Manufactured by Huawei's semiconductor subsidiary, HiSilicon, the Kirin 960 employs a big.LITTLE octa-core configuration: four Cortex-A73 cores operating at a peak frequency of 2.36GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores operating at a peak frequency of 1.84GHz. The GPU on the Kirin 960 is handled by the newest ARM Mali-G71MP8 GPU clocked at 900MHz and based on the 'Bifrost' architecture.

When compared to the Kirin 950, the Kirin 960 offers a few notable improvements. While the Kirin 950 employed four Cortex-A72 cores for its performance cluster, the Kirin 960 bumps this cluster to four Cortex-A73 cores. Despite the similarity in their nomenclature, the design used in the A73 is more similar to the Cortex-A17 Sophia µarch family while the A72 is closer in design to the A57 and A15 Austin µarch family. ARM claims that the new architecture is faster (by up to 30%), smaller, and more efficient (by up to 30%) than the A72, making the A73 a definite improvement in the performance department.

The GPU, though, is a different ball game altogether. The Mali-G71 is the first GPU from ARM built on the newest 'Bifrost' architecture. When compared to the Mali T880, the Mali-G71MP8 doubles the number of shader cores (from a maximum of 16 to 32). Couple this with the move to the new architecture, and you get a GPU that is more powerful and more efficient than the GPU in the predecessor, while still remaining scalable. Over the T880, ARM claims that the G71 offers 20% better energy efficiency, 40% better performance density, and 20% external memory bandwidth savings.

To put all of this in context, let us remember how the 2015 HiSilicon Kirin 950 performed. In our review of the Honor 8, we found that the Kirin 950 had great performance while demonstrating decent thermal efficiency, especially during sustained performance. However, the GPU was the weakest link in the Kirin 950, so Huawei had to step up their efforts this year. The Kirin 950 was the first flagship SoC to employ CPU cores based on the Cortex-A72 architecture when it was deployed in the Huawei Mate 8 in late 2015, but while other SoCs began utilizing Cortex-A72 cores this year, Huawei had to introduce something better to remain ahead of the curve. And they did just that with the Kirin 960 which improves the peak and sustained CPU and GPU performance.


Hands On

While the HiSilicon Kirin 960 is expected to be better than the Kirin 950, how does it fare against the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821, the SoC used in some recently released flagships? To compare, we put the Kirin 960 in the new Huawei Mate 9 to the test against the Snapdragon 821 Pro-AB found in the Google Pixel XL and ran both devices through a few benchmarks. Keep in mind that the Pixel Xl's Snapdragon 821 runs at the same clock speeds as the regular Snapdragon 820, but we'll update our findings as soon as we get our hands on a device running on a different variant of the Snapdragon 821 within the next few weeks. Each benchmark below was performed three times to weed out outlier results, and the three results for each benchmark were averaged to provide a more accurate score for each device. In addition, to reduce the effects of thermal throttling on our peak performance testing, we allowed each device to cool down between each testing iteration before proceeding with the next benchmark. With that being said, keep in mind that again these results are only representative of theoretical peak performance and not sustained performance, which we will be testing in the future.

Starting off with GeekBench 4, a benchmark that mainly tests the CPU's prowess (single and multi core) we find the following results:

geekbench-4-scores

 

In single core performance, the Kirin 960 on the Mate 9 performs better than the Snapdragon 821 on the Google Pixel XL. The multi core performance is where the dual-cluster octa-core setup and the A73's on the Kirin 960 shine against the dual-cluster quad-core Kyro setup on the Snapdragon 821, offering around 30% better results. The margin of theoretical difference is significant, albeit applications would need to properly utilize multi-threading to make the best use of the CPU superiority, and the scheduling solution that Huawei implements will greatly affect real-world results as well.

Even the Kirin 950 on the Honor 8 with the CPU profile set to "performance" outperforms the Snapdragon 821, despite the significant generational gap between the two. The Mate 9 widens the gap further by healthily building upon the Kirin 950's lead, but arguably not as much as could be expected out of a full-year improvement.

Moving on to AnTuTu, a benchmark that holistically tests all major SoC keypoints (as well as other components), we find:

antutu-score

 

The Huawei Mate 9 loses out to the Google Pixel XL in 3D performance, but remains marginally ahead across UX and CPU performance. RAM is where the score of the Mate 9 is about double that of the Pixel XL. Due to the deficit in 3D performance, the Pixel XL just about comes out on top of the Mate 9. Keep in mind we aren't fond of AnTuTu and we usually abstain from showcasing its results in our in-depth performance analysis, but we also recognize it's one of the most popular benchmarks out there for quick and easy testing, so we thought these numbers would be relevant to some readers.

BaseMark OS II, another holistic benchmark that tests overall performance in key areas paints a similar picture:

basemark-os-ii-graph

 

In this benchmark, the Mate 9 and the Pixel XL run neck-to-neck in system performance, while we see the same deficit where memory is concerned, with the Mate 9 outputting a score more than double that of the Pixel XL. However, the Pixel XL is superior in graphical performance. Since Basemark OS II weighs each score differently than AnTuTu's simple sum of scores, the Mate 9 comes ahead of the Pixel XL in this benchmark by a healthy margin.

The Adreno 530 in the Pixel XL is still notably faster than the Mali-G71 BiFrost GPU on the Kirin 960, and GFXBench confirms the same story. GFXBench 4.0 focuses mainly on 3D Graphics performance across various tests, so the results from this benchmark help shed some light on the differences in GPU prowess of the devices.

gfxbench-data

 

Next up is PCMark, another holistic benchmark that tests system performance by putting it through simulations of common tasks such as web-browsing and video editing:

pcmark-data

 

Finally, we'll move on to 3DMark, which we feel gives a better perspective of a device's gaming performance by testing the SoC with both high-level graphics and physics tests:

3d-mark-data

Here, too, we see that the Adreno 530 offers superior graphical performance compared to the Mali-G71.

 


Conclusion

While we should keep in mind that these are just a few benchmarks and we haven't put the Kirin 960 through more rigorous tests, we can already begin seeing trends and inferring some results. First, we see that there is indeed a noticeable CPU performance bump: Geekbench 4 scores have gone up by a healthy amount over what we measured with the Kirin 950 on the Honor 8, which itself was already outperforming the Snapdragon 820 (and the Pixel XL's 821) with its Cortex-A72 core setup. The biggest leap forward is in the GPU department, however: while the late-2015 Kirin 950 and its Mali-T880 MP4 offered graphical performance similar to that of the Snapdragon 805's Adreno 420 (a late 2014 GPU), the results from the Mali-G71 are notably closer to what we see in the Mali-T880 MP12 of the Exynos Galaxy Note 7 and the Adreno 530 in the Snapdragon 820 and 821.

Overall, our first run through the standard benchmarks gives us an early but promising look at the Huawei Mate 9's peak performance and what the Kirin 960 is capable of. We'll be testing the chipset and the real-world performance in the coming days to offer better insight into aspects such as performance over time (which is reportedly one of the A73 cores' key improvements) as well as gaming performance (which is an aspect Huawei has allegedly prioritized with the Kirin 960). While the improvements to the Kirin 960 does put it ahead of other 2016 chipsets in many aspects, its lead is not substantial enough for the SoC to hold its ground once the next generation of flagship SoCs arrive. The next wave of processors from Qualcomm and Samsung will most certainly up the ante, but for now and in its own regard, the HiSilicon Kirin 960 found in the Huawei Mate 9 is a more than capable chipset.



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Hidden “Partial Screenshots” Demoed on Android 7.1 Nougat

Screenshots have been around in Android ever since 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (and even back to 2.3 Gingerbread if you were on Touchwiz). However, the functionality that was added back in the day has remained stationary despite the evolved needs in the past 5+ years. Stock Android started off with simple screenshots, and stock Android has remained with simple screenshots.

While other OEM skins add in features like scrolling screenshots and more, there is hidden screenshot functionality that can be found on stock Android now: partial screenshots. This is "hidden" in the sense that this functionality was added in the latest Android version, but it still needs a small edit to activate it.

XDA Senior Member MrWasdennoch, known in the forums for his Android N-ify Xposed Module, found out that Android 7.1 Nougat on the AOSP master branch contains a commit named "Partial Screenshot", which seemingly allows users to select a size and grid position on the screen to take a screenshot. This results in a screenshot of that particular selection, rather than the full screen, which will help constricting the information displayed to narrower focus points.

XDA Recognized Developer Maxr1998 managed to enable the functionality by modifying line 53 of TakeScreenshotService to takeScreenshotPartial(). The feature would be available in his upcoming ROM build for the Nexus 4, but he was kind enough to demo the functionality for all of us to see without needing to flash a whole ROM:

As demoed, the screenshot functionality allows you to quickly select a focus area, without needing a gallery app to crop the image for you. While a very small addition by itself, this does show that functionality as basic as a screenshot is still open to evolution.

We hope more such smaller additions, like perhaps scrolling screenshots, are made part of stock Android in the future.



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Rovo89 Gives Update on Current Status of Xposed for Android Nougat

It's been a few months since Android 7.0 Nougat, and subsequently Android 7.1 Nougat, were released. While we do love the new feature additions that an Android version brings to our beloved devices, it does bring a lot of changes under the hood that changes things up for developers.

Every new Android version usually means that a lot of community based efforts and modifications end up needing an update, and a lot of times, a full overhaul and thorough rethinking.

Xposed is one such modification framework that requires a lot of maintenance to and effort to get it running running on new Android versions. XDA Senior Recognized Developer rovo89 is hard at work bringing the Xposed framework up and running on the newest version(s) of Android. Here is a quick update from him on the current status of the framework on Nougat:

Current status for Nougat: Hooks are generally working now. However, they're still unreliable for inlined methods and when JIT is used (which is often the case). I had given a few technical insights here. I'm currently thinking about the different situations that need to be handled and I create unit tests for them. Then I need to fix those which are failing or even crashing the device – ideally without recompiling the whole ROM like in previous versions. Not sure if the latter is possible though.

The good news starts off on the first sentence, although the "but"s follow it soon after. It is reassuring to know that Xposed still remains a possibility on Android 7.x Nougat and is not ruled out on account of any drastically insurmountable change.

We will still have to wait on the developer to find workarounds to issue, test, retest, polish and package all of it before average forum dwellers can install it on their devices. Let's hope for the best!



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samedi 5 novembre 2016

Plasma Mobile is a Fully Open-Source Smartphone OS from KDE e.V.

If you've dabbled with Linux distros in the past, then you've likely heard of KDE before. KDE stands for K Desktop Environment and it's one of the main desktop environment options (next to GNOME) that can be used on Linux distros. KDE e.V. is a registered non-profit organization that represents the KDE community when in legal and financial matters. The team behind this organization has just announced a new, open source smartphone OS called Plasma Mobile.

The team describes Plasma Mobile as a way to turn your smartphone into a "fully open hacking device, just like a PC." Those of you who have used KDE in the past might be familiar with the Plasma workspace by the name "KDE Plasma". KDE Plasma is available for desktops, netbooks, media centers for TVs, tablets and now mobile devices. If offers an adaptable user interface and in the future it will also offer a rapidly-maturing software system that is developed with an open life cycle.

The software has built the Plasma workspace into it, and offers KWIN/Wayland and Voicecall/Ofono while also integrating Plasma Apps, Plasma Widgets, Ubuntu Touch Apps and the possibility of installing Sailfish and Nemo Apps. Plasma Mobile's development team will be aiming to run many Qt/GTK/X11-based applications on the OS, and hope to implement package installation via the "apt-get install packagename" command. The platform will utilize libhybris on ARM devices while opting for DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) on Intel devices.

As of right now, Plasma Mobile only supports the Nexus 5 and the OnePlus One, along with some Intel-based devices. If you want to try this out on the Nexus 5, Plasma Mobile can be installed as a secondary ROM on your device thanks to MultiROM support. The team describes the state of MultiROM support for the Nexus 5 as "Solid" (so while it isn't perfect, it's past the 'Experimental' state).

Be sure to check out their forums if you are interested in trying out the software.

Source: Plasma Mobile



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