The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) recently released version 2.0 of the DisplayPort Alternate Mode (Alt Mode) standard which enables up to 16K video output over USB 4 Type-C ports. As a report from AnandTech explains, the new standard remaps USB Type-C‘s high-speed data pins to unlock more bandwidth for videos, resulting in a maximum raw bandwidth of up to 80Gbps. This is accomplished by reconfiguring a 4 lane USB 4 connection into a 2 or 4 lane DisplayPort connection and driving DisplayPort signals over high-speed lanes which would otherwise be carrying USB 4 signals.
In a statement regarding the new standard, Craig Wiley, senior director of marketing at Parade Technologies, VESA board member, and DisplayPort Alt Mode sub-group leader, was quoted saying, “VESA’s updated DisplayPort Alt Mode spec includes a number of under-the-hood developments — including updates to interface discovery and configuration as well as power management — to ensure seamless integration with the USB 4 specification…This major undertaking, which was several years in the making, could only be made possible through the combined efforts of VESA and the USB-IF. Through our latest collaboration with the USB-IF, VESA is now taking care of everything related to high-performance displays over USB-C, whether through a native DisplayPort or USB-C connector, or through tunneling of DisplayPort over the native USB 4 interface.”
For the unaware, USB 4 relies on a 2-up/2-down configuration to form a bidirectional connection. Since video signals don’t need to go both ways, DisplayPort Alt Mode 2.0 can take over all four lanes. In essence, this means that a DisplayPort Alt Mode 2.0 connection will be as capable as a regular DisplayPort 2.0 connection as far as connectivity and bandwidth are concerned.
Additionally, the new standard doesn’t require users to have a USB 4 controller on either end of the cable, which means that you’ll be able to use your existing monitors with DisplayPort hardware without upgrading to a USB 4 supported monitor. For a more detailed explanation of all that the new standard entails, you can check out AnandTech’s coverage from the link below.
If you’re someone who regularly transfers images between multiple devices, you probably would have ended up with a disordered gallery at some point or another due to incorrect timestamps. We all have been there and we know how frustrating it is. One of the reasons why this happens is because the file modification dates of images may have been overwritten by the date when the images were copied to your phone. If you are looking for a quick and easy fix to correctly timestamp your media, we have a solution for you.
XDA Recognized Developer j to the 4n has made an app that lets you restore the correct timestamp to your images and video files in just a few clicks. Aptly named Image and Video Date Fixer, the app reads the EXIF metadata entries of images and videos to identify the original timestamp and sets it as the modification date.
In case the image is stripped off of EXIF metadata — which is usually the case with images shared on instant messaging apps like WhatsApp — the app can still fix the wrong timestamp by parsing the filename. Most phones and cameras save the date and time info within the filenames of images and videos — this is usually in the format of yyyy-MM-dd_HH:mm:ss. The app can extract this info from filenames to create an EXIF attribute with the correct date.
The Image and Video Date Fixer is available on Google Play Store for free. In the free version, you can process up to 20 files in a single batch. You can pay a small fee, however, to remove this restriction via an in-app purchase. The developer is also giving away 50 premium keys at the XDA Thread, so check that out.
A couple of months after Google rolled out the first stable build of Android 10, OPPO announced ColorOS 7 — its newest software release based on the latest iteration of Android. In our review of ColorOS 7, we found OPPO’s latest software release to be a major improvement over ColorOS 6, with a new minimalist UI, full support for Android’s notification features, better dark mode implementation, and more. Shortly after the announcement, we reported that OPPO had started recruiting ColorOS 7 beta testers for a couple of its devices, including the OPPO F11 and the OPPO F11 Pro. The recruitment carried on until earlier this year, with more devices like the OPPO Find X, R17, and R17 Pro being added to the list. Since then, OPPO has rolled out a stable version of the software to a handful of devices, including the OPPO Reno2/z, F11/F11 Pro, A9, and R17. The company has even rolled out ColorOS 7.1 on its Find X2 series with a few additional improvements. However, a number of OPPO devices are yet to receive the stable ColorOS 7 update.
Good news for our users in Europe: #ColorOS7 + #Android10 Official Version Plan is here. Find the system update information below!
A brand new experience awaits. Thank you for your patience and support!
How to apply Setting>Software Update
For details: https://t.co/Vs3Rl9zWEKpic.twitter.com/3OZGVZiKHQ
In a bid to give users an idea about when their devices should receive the ColorOS 7 update, OPPO has now announced a rollout schedule for Europe and other regions. The schedule was recently shared via the ColorOS 7 official Twitter handle and it reveals that the company will soon be rolling out the update in several regions over the coming months. Here’s a rundown of all the devices that are set to receive the update, along with the release timeline for each device:
OPPO Reno 10x Zoom
Ongoing: Russia, Kazakhstan
June: Italy, Spain, Turkey, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Poland, Australia
OPPO Reno
Ongoing: Kazakhstan
May: Russia
June: Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Poland
OPPO Reno 5G
June: Australia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom
OPPO R17
Ongoing: Australia
OPPO RX17 Pro/R17 Pro
Ongoing: Kazakhstan
May: Itlay, Russia
June: France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Poland, Turkey
OPPO Find X Series
Ongoing: Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Australia, France, Russia, Kazakhstan, Poland
June: the United Kingdom, New Zealand
OPPO A5 2020, A9 2020
July: New Zealand, Australia, Russia, Kazakhstan, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, Turkey, Ukraine, Romania, Italy, Belgium (A5 2020), Portugal (A9 2020)
OPPO Reno2
Ongoing: Switzerland, Spain, Ukraine
May: Kazakhstan, Russia
June: the Netherlands, New Zealand, Germany, Poland, Turkey
July: Italy, France, the United Kingdom
OPPO Reno Z
Ongoing: Russia, Kazakhstan
June: Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Poland, the Netherlands, Turkey
OPPO Reno2 Z
Ongoing: Russia
June: Germany, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Turkey, Ukraine, Poland
July: Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Switzerland
OPPO F9, F9 Pro
May: Russia, Kazakhstan
OPPO F7, F7 128G
June: Russia, Kazakhstan
OPPO R15
July: Australia, New Zealand
OPPO R15 Pro
July: Australia, New Zealand, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland
OPPO A91
August: Italy, Spain, the Netherland, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Poland, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Turkey
A post regarding the matter on OPPO’s ColorOS community forums adds that the ColorOS 7 update will be released in batches and users will have to check the Software Update setting on their device in the given time period to receive the update.
Early this year in March, Chinese OEM Nubia announced the Red Magic 5G — a flagship gaming phone powered by the Snapdragon 865 SoC, up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and up to 256GB of UFS 3.0 storage. The device also features a few other notable components like a 144Hz high refresh rate AMOLED display, a 4500mAh battery with support for 55W fast charging, a 64MP Sony IMX 686 primary camera, and an in-display fingerprint scanner. Much like other gaming phones from Chinese OEMs, the Red Magic 5G runs a customized version of Android 10, called Red Magic OS, which offers a ton of additional features. But the device still lacks a couple of useful settings like a 120Hz refresh rate mode, advanced screen color options, an HD screen recorder, etc.
Now, as per a recent post on our Red Magic 5G forums, it turns out that the device, in fact, does include these additional settings and they can easily be enabled using an app like Activity Launcher. To do so, just install the app on your device and search for the following activities:
cn.nubia.theme.local.ThemeActivity
This activity brings up all the preinstalled themes on the device and you can choose the “colorfull international” theme to get round icons on your device.
You can use this activity to change the default quality of the screen recorder from SD to HD.
com.qualcomm.qti.qcolo.QColorActivity
This activity lets you choose between 8 available color modes for the screen.
cn.nubia.factory.ChooseFpsActivity
You can use this to enable the hidden 120Hz refresh rate mode on the device. The mode will be enabled as soon as you leave the menu, however, standard settings and the refresh rate notification won’t show the new value.
To go back to the standard refresh rate settings you’ll have to enable “default auto FPS” in the hidden menu.
You can also create home screen shortcuts for these activities by long pressing on the Activity within the app and selecting the shortcut option from the contextual menu. It’s also worth noting that these aren’t the only hidden features on the Red Magic 5G. The device has many more hidden features like battery percentage in the status bar, fingerprint calibration settings and battery stats that can be enabled from within the Activity Launcher app.
When Google first launched its Stadia cloud gaming service, they made it available for a handful of Android devices, the Google Chrome browser, and the Chromecast Ultra. While Google has yet to expand support to Android TV devices, they have enabled gameplay on dozens of additional Android smartphones and have greatly expanded the service’s functionality and game catalog. In a minor update to Google Assistant rolling out to some users, it’s now possible to directly launch games that you have purchased.
Over on Reddit, user /u/dericiouswon noticed that they were able to launch the game The Turing Test by searching for “the turing test game” in the Chrome OS search box. The Redditor noticed that this search query opened Google Chrome and directed them to a URL under the “ggp.sandbox.google.com” domain, which appears to be where Google’s internal test server is hosted. Other users noticed that you can type the name of a game followed by “game” to launch a title—for example, entering “The Division 2 game” into Assistant will launch the game on Stadia in a new Chrome tab.
According to 9to5Google, you can also launch Stadia games directly on Android phones with the app installed. The publication notes that on both Android and Chrome OS, you can launch a game that you own by saying “play [insert game]” in Google Assistant.
Top row: launching Destiny 2 on Chrome OS by entering a search query in the launcher
Bottom row: launching Destiny 2 on Android by sending a Google Assistant voice query. Image credits: 9to5Google.
Launching Stadia games through Google Assistant previously worked with the Chromecast Ultra, but now you can launch titles on all platforms where both Stadia and Google Assistant are supported. These smaller integrations demonstrate one area where Google Stadia is superior to Microsoft xCloud or NVIDIA GeForce NOW, provided you own an Android device or Chromebook. In the future, Google promises that Stadia will get deeper integrations with Assistant, but for now, all you can do with Assistant is launch games.
Later this month, Google is expected to launch the follow-up to the 2019 mid-range Pixel 3a: the Google Pixel 4a. The smartphone, which is expected to come in only one size, is expected to cost $400 at launch, pitting Google’s 2020 mid-range Pixel against the likes of the Apple iPhone SE and Samsung Galaxy A51. While Pixel smartphones aren’t known for their best-in-class hardware, they are known to excel in their picture-taking capabilities. The Pixel 4a will feature a single camera on the front and rear, much like the iPhone SE but unlike the Galaxy A51, but where the phone is expected to really shine is its use of the Google Camera app. Thanks to an early Pixel 4a camera review, we have a pretty good idea of its camera performance.
Cuban YouTube channel TecnoLike Plus, which is run by Julio Lusson, shared early camera samples from the Google Pixel 4a exclusively with XDA-Developers. Julio Lusson is the YouTuber who gave us our first detailed real-world look at the Pixel 4a back in March. Over the last few days, he has been taking pictures from his pre-release device. Thanks to these photos, we can share our general thoughts on the Pixel 4a’s camera performance ahead of this month’s launch. However, we should note that Julio’s device is running a pre-release firmware build and hence we expect Google to have tuned the camera processing for the upcoming retail software release. Julio did download the latest version of the Google Camera app, version 7.3.021.300172532, onto his device, but we don’t know what version of the app will be preloaded on retail units.
TecnoLike Plus published the below video on his YouTube channel and the following blog post showcasing camera samples that he took, but the video and article are in Spanish, so keep reading below if you’re interested in the full details on the Pixel 4a’s camera specifications and picture samples!
Leaked Camera Specifications
Earlier leaks confirmed the basic hardware specifications of the Google Pixel 4a, but Julio sent us some screenshots of the “camera” tabs in two different hardware information apps so we can share more details on the camera specifications. According to the “Device Info HW” and “DevCheck” apps, the Pixel 4a has a single rear camera consisting of a 12.2MP Sony IMX363 sensor with an f/1.73 aperture lens and 1.4µm pixel size and a single front-facing camera consisting of an 8MP Sony IMX355 sensor with an f/2.0 aperture lens and 1.14µm pixel size. Notably, the Sony IMX363 is the same primary rear camera sensor found on the Pixel 3, Pixel 3a, and Pixel 4, while the Sony IMX355 is the same primary front-facing camera sensor found on the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a.
The two hardware info apps report that the rear camera lens has a horizontal viewing angle of 65.6° while the front camera lens has a horizontal viewing angle of 72.4°. Next, the apps report that the Pixel 4a’s front camera is fixed-focus and supports EIS but not OIS, while the rear camera supports both OIS and EIS with auto-focus.
Google Pixel 4a Camera Samples
The following images are camera samples from the Google Pixel 4a. The photos were captured by Julio Lusson and published here with his permission. Due to our WordPress configuration, the below images have been resized and compressed to improve page load speed. However, at the bottom of this article, we have a link to a Google Photos album where the images have been uploaded in their original quality.
Portrait Mode Samples
Portrait Mode is one of the major features of the Google Camera app on Pixel smartphones. It enables “professional-looking shallow depth-of-field images”, according to Google. When Portrait Mode is enabled, the camera zooms in a bit (1.5x for the rear camera and 1.2x for the front camera) because the narrower field of view encourages users to stand further back, which reduces perspective distortion and leads to better portrait photos. Like most Pixel smartphones, the Pixel 4a can use portrait mode with a single camera.
Outdoor Samples
HDR+ is another major feature in the Google Camera app. The feature takes continuous burst shots with short exposures, and the sharpest images are aligned and combined to produce a single image with higher dynamic range. HDR+ is one of the first major features of the Google Camera app which dates all the way back to the Google Nexus 5 and 6, so it’s no surprise to see that it’s supported on the Google Pixel 4a.
Astrophotography Samples
Astrophotography is a new Google Camera feature introduced with the Pixel 4. The feature allows users to take photos of the starry sky. It expands upon the existing “Night Sight” camera mode which enables handheld long exposure shots. Astrophotography requires the user to enable Night Sight and then leave the phone completely still for several minutes while the phone captures multiple exposures—you’ll almost always need to place the phone on a tripod to use Astrophotography. Google brought Astrophotography to the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a after its debut on the Pixel 4, so its presence on the Pixel 4a should come as no surprise. Of course, Google Camera modders ported the feature to older Pixel smartphones.
Low-Light Samples
Night Sight is one of the best Google Camera features to come from the Pixel 3 launch. Google’s Night Sight mode has kept Pixel phones in the conversation as the best camera phones for low-light shots, right under Huawei’s Mate and P series flagships.
Zoom Samples
The Pixel 4 was Google’s first Pixel device with dual rear cameras. Google chose a telephoto camera for the Pixel 4’s secondary rear camera, allowing the phone to boast improved Portrait Mode shots and crisp ~2X optical zoom and up to 8X digital zoom. Part of what makes zoom shots on the Pixel 4 so great is Google’s new Super Res Zoom algorithm. While the Google Pixel 4a only has a single primary camera, Super Res Zoom helps it take passable zoomed-in shots at up to 8X magnification.
Indoor Samples
Lastly, here are some indoor camera samples from the Google Pixel 4a, two of which are in arguably difficult lighting.
If you want to view these (and more) photos in their original, uncompressed form, then check out the following Google Photos album:
XDA Senior Contributor Idrees Patel also offered the following comments on the above photos:
“I viewed all the photos in full resolution, and they seem better than the Google Pixel 3 in terms of dynamic range and shadow detail capture. I haven’t used a Pixel 4 or Pixel 3a, so I can’t compare with them.
The photos are characteristically Pixel-like in look. This means they have excellent detail, balanced noise reduction with visible luminance noise, adequate (but not best in class) dynamic range, and great color accuracy. Night Sight is just as good as ever—I feel these photos are better than the Galaxy S20+’s night mode photos in a few respects.
The Pixel 4a’s camera will continue to excel when it comes to having a balanced noise reduction system, which will resolve more detail compared to competitors.
The one weakness is exposure. Compared to phones like the S20 or the OnePlus 7 Pro, these photos aren’t as bright, resolving less shadow detail. On the other hand, facial detail continues to remain a particular strength for all Pixels.
And finally, the Pixel’s portrait mode is better than most implementations. After viewing these photos I miss Google Camera on the OnePlus 7 Pro.”
Here are the full (rumored) specifications of the Google Pixel 4a. The phone will launch later this month at an expected retail price of $400. While the Pixel 4a likely won’t have the best hardware at this price point, it will still most likely be a worthy contender for the best mid-range smartphone in the U.S. thanks to Google’s stellar software and support.
Rumored Google Pixel 4a Specifications
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 730
GPU: Adreno 618
RAM: 6GB
Internal storage: 64GB UFS 2.1
Display: Single hole-punch 5.81-inch display, 2,340 x 1,080 resolution, 443 dpi, 60Hz refresh rate
Rear camera: 12.2 MP Sony IMX363, f/1.73 aperture, 1.4µm pixels, OIS, EIS, LED flash, 4K video recording, Autofocus
Front camera: 8.0 MP Sony IMX355, f/2.0 aperture, 1.14µm pixels, EIS, Fixed focus
The Google Cast protocol is one of Google’s most useful services as it enables you to quickly play music, videos, podcasts, and more on your compatible smart speaker, smart display, TV, and more devices after finding the content you want to play on your Android device. Android TV devices are compatible with Google Cast, and now you can add them to speaker groups in the Google Home app.
Last night, Twitter user @androidtv_rumor noticed (via 9to5Google) that he was able to add his NVIDIA SHIELD TV to a speaker group that includes a Google Nest Hub smart display and Google Home Mini smart speaker. He says that this feature was enabled via an update to version 1.47.207274 for the pre-installed “Chromecast built-in” app. Another Twitter user confirmed that they were able to add their SHIELD TV to a speaker group after receiving this update.
Got an update for the Chromecast Built-in app on my Shield TV yesterday and I can now add my #AndroidTV in a speaker group ! Finally pic.twitter.com/gEEYUb9kMG
Creating a speaker group is a handy feature in the Google Home app as it allows you to cast media to multiple Google Cast devices simultaneously. The ability to add Google Cast devices to speaker groups was initially only available for Google Home smart speakers, Chromecast Audio devices, and other Google Cast-enabled speakers. In November of 2018, Google rolled out the ability to add Chromecasts to speaker groups in the Google Home app. Android TV devices have built-in Google Cast functionality but only now are they getting the ability to be added to speaker groups.
In case you haven’t received this update to the “Chromecast built-in” app yet, you can sign up for the beta program on the Google Play Store. Then, open up the Google Home app to see if you can add your Android TV device to a speaker group.
Setting>Software Update
