All the new Camera Features on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3

The Galaxy Z Fold 3 is Samsung’s best foldable to date with excellent improvements like water resistance, support for the S Pen, and slightly better ergonomics than its predecessor. The Galaxy Z Fold 3 essentially replaces the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra from last year since Samsung has decided to drop the Note series from its portfolio. While this may disappoint a lot of people, it makes sense now that the Galaxy Z Fold 3 offers a larger canvas with the same usability and features as the Note. Of course, it’s considerably more expensive, but that’s mainly because of all the engineering that went into making a phone fold out as a tablet.

While the Galaxy Z Fold 3 excels in terms of performance and productivity and is a true flagship in a lot of departments, one area where it falls short of some other flagship phones is the cameras. Samsung’s own Galaxy S21 Ultra has a better camera setup with a periscope lens while the Galaxy Z Fold 3 only has a standard 2X telephoto lens flanked by 12MP primary and 12MP ultra-wide cameras. The Galaxy Z Fold 3 may not have the best camera hardware, but it’s got some unique software tricks that will help you make the best use of the cameras that are onboard.

Here are some cool camera features on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 you can take advantage of.

Flex Mode

This feature first debuted with the Galaxy Z Flip and was then introduced on the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Now it has made its way to the Galaxy Z Fold 3 as well. While Flex Mode is a feature you can use on multiple different apps, you can make good use of it on the camera app. To activate Flex Mode, all you have to do is fold the display of the Galaxy Z Fold 3. The Galaxy Z Fold 3’s hinge can stop at an angle, so you can angle the phone any way you want.

Ideally, if you have both halves perpendicular to each other, you can rest your phone on the base and use it as a tripod to take photos or pictures either through the front-facing camera or any of the rear cameras. Another advantage of Flex Mode is it moves the viewfinder to the top half of the screen with relevant controls like the shutter, preview, camera modes, etc. to the bottom portion. This ensures you have a clearer view of the image you’re going to capture. The button position is actually set through the accelerometer, so you can reset it back to the other half by simply setting the phone upright.

Further, you can also move the viewfinder to the other half of the display, just in case you wanted to open the phone at an angle less than 45°, letting you position the phone for shots that would otherwise be difficult to execute. For example, in the shot below, the toy Pikachu is placed on a low-height storage drawer. Using Flex Mode, you can take a shot from a lower perspective, giving the toy a larger-than-life persona.

This is just an example of how you can leverage the strong hinge on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 alongside Flex Mode and a decent camera setup to get some interesting shots.

Using Rear Cameras for Selfies

Samsung introduced an under-display camera for the first time on its phone with the Galaxy Z Fold 3. The inner display has a 4MP UDC which almost fades into the background when you’re not looking at it. This gives the already large display an immersive look. However, since the tech is still in its infancy, under-display cameras aren’t great when it comes to image quality. The UDC on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 produces hazy images that don’t look very appealing.

If you want better-looking selfies, you can use the rear cameras for some crisp shots! All you have to do is open up the camera app from the cover display, and hit the “Selfie” button in the top right corner. This will then let you unfold the phone and retain camera controls and the viewfinder on the cover display.

Holding the phone unfolded can get a little awkward, especially if you are using just one hand. The camera shutter button is on the lower right quadrant, so you can still manage.

Cover Screen Preview

Do you click photos of other people and want them to also see how you compose the image? Or maybe you want someone to take a photo of you with the rear cameras and you want to guide them through the image composition while they are clicking the photo? With the Cover Screen Preview feature on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, you can do just that.

With the Galaxy Z Fold 3 unfolded, open the Camera app and click on the icon on the top right corner. This will enable Cover Screen Preview. This will duplicate the viewfinder on the cover display, while the viewfinder and the camera controls will stay on the main display.

Now, you can point the rear camera of the device towards yourself and frame your shot using the preview on the cover display. You can couple this with the palm gesture or voice commands to take a hands-free selfie too.

Split Screen Preview Mode

The Galaxy Z Fold 3 almost feels like two halves of a phone fit together and this next trick makes use of those two halves perfectly. You can activate the Preview Mode by hitting the button on the top-left corner of the camera app when you open it on the main display. This will split your view into two separate halves — the right side with the camera preview and all your usual controls, and the left side with previews of all the images you’ve clicked with large thumbnails.

This is helpful when you’re clicking multiple pictures since you can get an instant preview of the images you’ve clicked and you can use that to determine whether your shots are good or if you’ll have to retake them to get a better result.

Quick Share

This is linked to the Preview Mode itself and is an extension of what you can do while using it. Once you’ve clicked a few pictures, you can preview them on the side pane and scroll through all the shots you took. When you find a picture you like, you can either send it to someone or post it on social media directly from the preview itself. You just have to tap and hold the image you want to share, and the share sheet will pop up asking you where you want to share the image.

---

These were a few camera features that can be used with the Galaxy Z Fold 3 to improve your overall experience while using the camera app. There are various use cases of each feature and whether you want to use the phone as a tripod or if you just want to place your phone on a table during a video call, these features will surely make using the camera a lot more convenient.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3

The Galaxy Z Fold 3 is Samsung's latest foldable phone which has support for the S Pen.

View at Samsung

If you’re planning to buy the Galaxy Z Fold 3, you might want to check out the best deals to save a few extra bucks and if you’ve already picked up the phone, we have a list of the best cases for the Galaxy Z Fold 3 you can buy for the device.

The post All the new Camera Features on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 appeared first on xda-developers.

from xda-developers https://ift.tt/3teZIII
via IFTTT

EcoFlow Launches the DELTA mini – Super Portable Power Station

EcoFlow makes some of the best portable power stations on the market right now, with solutions ranging from products designed for short camping trips to devices that can power any appliance in your home for days on end. People’s access to reliable power is changing, and there has recently been an increased need for these types of portable power stations. To create a more accessible portable power station that is designed for everyone, EcoFlow launches the DELTA mini.

The DELTA mini is super compact and lightweight. It can effortlessly fit in the back of any sized car, on your desk, under a table, or be transported with ease. Even with the smaller size, EcoFlow didn’t skip out on any of the features you’d expect to find in a large portable power station. You can still use things like 300w solar input charging, and 882Wh capacity, and a 1400W power output which can power 90% of household appliances.

---

The Eco Flow DELTA will launch on HSN at a discounted price of $799. This sale will begin on September 5th. The sale price is a limited-time offer that will only be available for the launch of the product. Take advantage of the sale while it’s available since the standard price will be $999 through the EcoFlow website.

---

Work Anywhere with Reliable Power

So many people across the world have suddenly found themselves able to work remotely. People are able to take advantage of this and work from camping trips, off-grid environments, road trips, the beach, or anywhere else you’d like. The DELTA mini is able to provide reliable power that can keep your computer running for days on end.

Whether you’re working from a single laptop, or you need a desktop with several monitors and mobile devices, the DELTA mini is up to the task. Power devices requiring up to 1800W of power with the X-Boost technology.

EcoFlow Delta mini Computer Backup Power

Stay Powered on your Outdoor Adventures

This simple product can open the door for tons of new outdoor opportunities for you. The ability to take this device with a huge 885Wh capacity with you is a major advantage. Stay powered for days on an extended camping trip while charging your phone, laptop, powering a minifridge, or using things like hair dryers or electric skillets.

When it comes time to recharge, you can use the 75V solar input. Combine your DELTA mini with three of EcoFlow’s 110W solar panels to get up to 300W of solar charging. This will charge your portable power station completely, in 4-8 hours.

EcoFlow DELTA mini Off-grid Power

Use for Power Outages and Emergencies at Home

Power outages are an ever-growing problem with things like floods, wildfires, snowstorms, and natural disasters knocking people’s power out. Don’t get caught off-guard. The Delta mini has the ability to power most of your home appliances, making surviving these types of situations much easier.

Many people find themselves in situations where they only have power for short periods of time, sometimes only hours a day. The DELTA mini can be charged from 0-80% in just one hour, and fully charged in 1.6 hours. This allows you to secure the backup power you need, even in a short window of time.

EcoFlow DELTA mini’s Portable and Lightweight Design

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to get the new DELTA mini for only $799. Check the HSN on September 5th to see this special sale price on this new product from EcoFlow.

We thank EcoFlow for sponsoring this post. Our sponsors help us pay for the many costs associated with running XDA, including server costs, full time developers, news writers, and much more. While you might see sponsored content (which will always be labeled as such) alongside Portal content, the Portal team is in no way responsible for these posts. Sponsored content, advertising and XDA Depot are managed by a separate team entirely. XDA will never compromise its journalistic integrity by accepting money to write favorably about a company, or alter our opinions or views in any way. Our opinion cannot be bought.

The post EcoFlow Launches the DELTA mini – Super Portable Power Station appeared first on xda-developers.

from xda-developers https://ift.tt/3n3fLbC
via IFTTT

Play the entire Mass Effect trilogy for only $40 ($20 off) on PS4/5 and Xbox

Mass Effect is one of the most influential (and fun!) sci-fi game series of all time, and most people agree the first three games are the best of the bunch. The original triology was remastered earlier this year and released as a single package, Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Now you can get Legendary Edition for $39.99 at several retail stores — a savings of $20 from the usual price.

The Mass Effect games take place in an alternate universe 22nd century, where you play as elite solider Commander Shepard as he helps fight against the ‘Reaper’ synthetic starships. It’s not just another space shooter game though, as there are RPG elements and a lot of dialogue. The new Legendary Edition version includes visual updates, combat that feels more like the later Mass Effect games, improved aim assist, more frequent auto-saving, and other quality-of-life improvements.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition (Xbox)

This Xbox One version of Legendary Edition works great on newer consoles, but doesn't have Series X/S-specific improvements.

Buy at Best Buy

Buy at Amazon

Mass Effect Legendary Edition (PS4)

This PS4 version of Legendary Edition also works well on the PS5.

Buy at Best Buy

Buy at Amazon

Mass Effect Legendary Edition for the PlayStation 4 has an 86/100 on Metacritic, while the Xbox version has a score of 90/100. The games are forwards-compatible with the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5, but for the moment, there are no plans for updates that take full advantage of newer console hardware.

The post Play the entire Mass Effect trilogy for only $40 ($20 off) on PS4/5 and Xbox appeared first on xda-developers.

from xda-developers https://ift.tt/3n3eGRh
via IFTTT

How Chrome killed Internet Explorer: Extensions, Android, and Innovation

In just over 13 years, Google’s Chrome browser has risen from a new project to the behemoth we know today. Today, Chrome is by far the most popular browser in the world on both desktop and mobile. You could even say Chrome killed Internet Explorer. So, how did Google accomplish this unbelievable feat in such a short time?

Mostly they did it starting from scratch. Microsoft, along with Mozilla and others, were continuing to build their browsers on legacy code. Google used a few existing tools to create Chrome, but for the most part, their approach to a browser was completely new.

When Google came on the scene, Microsoft hadn’t really thought much about reinventing the browser experience. In fact, Internet Explorer worked the same in 2008 as it did in 1998. Google had plans to change all of that. In the beginning, Chrome set out to be an entire platform for exploring the web in a new way, not just a browser. These aspirations pushed Google to innovate in several key ways, eventually breaking through with the largest browser market share in 2012.

In this article, we’ll take a look at how Google skyrocketed Chrome to the top from 2008 to 2012. There were three key contributing factors — the open-source nature of Chromium, revolutionizing web browsing with extensions, and the rise of Android and Chromebooks. This article kicks off our series on the history of web browsers, celebrating Google’s 23rd birthday on September 4th, 2021.

2008: Launching in beta

Google launched the Chrome browser in beta on September 2nd, 2008. This was a very interesting time in tech. Smartphones were fairly new and apps weren’t really a big deal in 2008. Already looking to the future, Google developed Chrome on top of the HTML layout engine, WebKit, which would support web apps like their popular Maps service. At the time the beta launched, Google made a comic to explain why they created a new browser in a sea of existing alternatives.

The comic itself is quite lengthy at 39 pages, but the first page gives a pretty good synopsis of Google’s philosophy. In their minds, the browser experience was completely broken. People didn’t use the internet for just accessing research articles for school anymore, the web was a big place with content to consume. Perhaps the biggest unique advantage for Chrome early on was the sandboxing of separate browser tabs. Browser crashing was a fairly common thing, especially on Internet Explorer. Sandboxing meant that if one tab crashed, the entire session didn’t go down with it.

Indeed, sandboxing separate tabs was a move that looked forward to the future of the web, where apps would replace webpages as the primary tool for users. With this in mind, Google took the next huge step in seizing the browser space — in September 2008, the open-source Chromium Project launched. Not only was open-source in vogue at the time, it also garnered developer interest in Chrome as a project. Google knew they’d need developers on board to speed up improvements to Chrome, as well as create for their upcoming extensions gallery.

2009: Chrome OS and extensions

By 2009, it was clear that Chrome was a big deal. That summer, Google announced they were building an entire operating system based on Chrome, aptly named ‘Chrome OS’. At the same time, users were converting to Chrome more and more. In July 2009, there were over 30 million people using Google’s new browser. A user base of 30 million in less than a year is pretty incredible, certainly something not seen before in the browser wars.

While Chrome OS and the growing user base were huge news, they weren’t the biggest Chrome story of 2009. In December 2009, Google launched the extensions gallery. Extensions were revolutionary at the time. This was the big turning point, where Google hoped to convince users that apps were the future of web browsing. Users and developers alike loved extensions. In just over a year’s time, the extensions gallery had over 10,000 extensions and themes. Customization is a deeply personal thing and people embraced the idea of personalizing their browser’s appearance and functionality.

At the end of 2009, Chrome already had 5% market share. While that number seems small, keep in mind this was a brand new product, fighting for competition in an established market. Themes and extensions, along with Chrome’s incredible speed thanks to sandboxing, were poised to make even bigger gains in 2010.

2010: Monetization and the Chrome Web Store

With Chrome growing at an exponential rate, it was time for Google to start cashing in on the success. In August 2010, Google began charging developers $5 to publish their Chrome apps in the extension gallery. This was both a revenue opportunity and a security measure. The $5 fee allowed Google to implement domain verification for all new apps submitted for publication.

Throughout the year, Chrome continued to see its largest user increase ever. Tripling from 40 million to 120 million over the course of 2010, Google was legitimately threatening Microsoft’s top spot for browser market share. Perhaps the most interesting thing is Microsoft didn’t do very much to stave off Chrome’s ascent to the top. Instead of adding new platform-independent features, Microsoft focused on deeper integration with Windows in Internet Explorer 9.

Unfortunately, most of those features IE9 added for Windows already existed in Chrome. There’s no doubt that if Microsoft launched a truly redesigned version of IE in 2010, they would have at least delayed Chrome’s rise to #1.

At the conclusion of 2010, Google launched the Chrome Web Store. Unlike the smaller extensions gallery, this was a more polished app store for Chrome users. New developers jumped on board and Chrome was quickly becoming not only the fastest browser, but the most versatile one as well. The extensions, plugins, and themes in the Chrome Web Store shaped how people used the web and even how web content was monetized. With ad block extensions readily available, the traditional method of monetizing web content with ads was no longer viable. This introduced all-new opportunities for Google to innovate in their other key business — advertising.

Chrome’s growth was on cruise control and doing things differently than every other browser, but Google still wasn’t satisfied. It was time for Chrome to get a few new tricks, dedicated hardware, and a new coat of paint.

2011: A new logo, Chromebooks, and the tabs page

From the very beginning, Chrome had a 3D logo. By March 2011, that design looked pretty outdated. Apple started the trend of bringing flat icons to iOS and Google didn’t want their design to seem out of place. The design change was fairly minimal, but quite impactful. Keeping the same color scheme, Google flattened out the Chrome logo to give it a more modern look.

In May 2011, Google launched Chromebooks. While netbooks were fairly popular in 2011, the idea of a laptop with no hard drive was fairly foreign. Chromebooks would handle all tasks via the Chrome browser. At first, the proliferation of Chromebooks was stagnated by the launch of Apple’s iPad. Thankfully, with some persistence from OEMs and tweaks from Google, Chromebooks became a hit, especially in the education sector.

With Chrome OS now running on dedicated hardware, Google had another outlet to increase the user base for Chrome as a browser. Over the next decade, Chromebooks would become ubiquitous throughout the budget computing segment, now running both Android and Linux apps.

To cap off 2011, Chrome debuted another feature that would soon be standard across all browsers — the New Tab Page. The idea was genius, albeit incredibly simple. Collecting all of your favorite Chrome apps or pages that you visit frequently just made sense. As people learned to customize the New Tab Page, it made browsing the web easier and accomplishing work more intuitive.

By the end of 2011, Chrome had nearly 25% market share, nearly a tie for second place with Firefox. To make the final leap, Google needed to bring Chrome to mobile devices.

2012: Chrome comes to Android and iOS

In retrospect, it’s incredibly surprising how long it took for Chrome to launch on Android. Android became official as an operating system in September 2008, the same time the Chrome beta debuted. Considering these are both Google products with similar birthdays, Chrome should have launched on Android before 2012. However, mobile was exactly the platform Google needed to take the top spot. They didn’t want to mess that up.

In February 2012, Chrome finally launched on Android. With millions of Android devices out there, this was a huge catalyst for capturing lots of market share in a single move. Just four months later, Google launched Chrome for iOS. While Safari was still more popular amongst iPhone users, the opportunity to capture part of that user base was huge. It only took a few more months from this point for Google to dethrone Microsoft for good.

Near the end of summer 2012, it was announced Google had taken the market share lead for browsers, with 31% of users on Chrome. Microsoft certainly helped speed up their demise by not truly innovating with Internet Explorer features in a time that Chrome pivoted to the future of web applications.

Google wasn’t done yet, but they accomplished what they set out to in the beginning — Chrome killed Internet Explorer and changed the way people use the web.

The post How Chrome killed Internet Explorer: Extensions, Android, and Innovation appeared first on xda-developers.

from xda-developers https://ift.tt/2Vec1bK
via IFTTT

Here’s our wish list for a Google Pixel Ultra! #DreamPixel

If you ask a smartphone enthusiast from the modding community about some fond memories they’ve had with phones in the past, there’s a good chance the list would include a Nexus device. The Nexus line-up portrayed Google’s vision for Android and offered a no-frills experience. Instead of going hard on hardware, Google focused on the aspect they’re good at — software — and outsourced the hardware to other OEMs. This allowed them to focus on developing and improving newer versions of Android which Nexus users first got a taste of before it hit other devices.

In 2016 though, Google unexpectedly killed the Nexus series in favor of the Pixel. While the Nexus was catered more towards enthusiasts, the Pixel took a different route. Apart from just running the latest version of Android, the Pixel series demonstrated Google’s software prowess in various departments. Be it the amazing portrait mode shots with just a single camera, Night Sight which literally gets light into your pictures from nowhere, a voice recorder with offline transcription, or even Google Duplex that can answer your calls for you using AI.

The Pixel has differentiated itself from the Nexus over the years with more focus on the mass market. There’s still one aspect though, that’s plagued Google’s phones to date — their reluctance to make meaningful changes YoY to hardware. While this is set to change with the Pixel 6 series going by what Google themselves have spilled, the hardware choices that Google has made have often been controversial. Be it sticking to a single camera when competitors had up to four different lenses or the decision to put a mid-range chip on the Pixel 5, the bottom line is, Google has seldom done something out of its comfort zone.

There were rumors however, of a flagship do-it-all Pixel phone that was supposed to be launched alongside the Pixel 2, and it was supposedly slated to be the “Pixel Ultra”. Unfortunately, though, the Pixel Ultra never materialized. With Google’s 23rd birthday today, the time is ripe for all of us tech nerds to dive deep into our imagination and hope for a Pixel that can truly compete against the flagships of today’s world.

So, guess what, we actually did it! On Google’s 23rd birthday, here’s what we wish the Pixel Ultra would be if it launched today, or as we call it, the #teampixel #DreamPixel!

Double up on those cameras!

You can’t talk about a Pixel without addressing the cameras up first. Right from the first-gen Pixel, Google has built a legacy in terms of the camera output thanks to one major component — its software brilliance. The original Pixel came with a single rear-facing camera which was understandable back in the day when phones were only starting to get dual cameras. However, this trend of using a single camera carried over for the next two years when both the Pixel 2 and Pixel 3 had single cameras on the back.

Even with a single lens and the exact same sensor, Google managed to produce some magic with the camera output of these phones. The Pixel 2 had the best portrait mode on any phone which only got better, and the Pixel 3 revolutionized low light photography with Night Sight. All of these breakthroughs were possible thanks to Google’s computational photography algorithms. Google was able to make up for the lack of hardware by using their software expertise which worked great. However, there’s only so far you can go with just software.

Pixel 3a with a single camera

When competing brands had ultra-wide and telephoto cameras to capture different perspectives, the Pixel could do just one. The Pixel 4 did get a telephoto lens which was then swapped out for an ultra-wide on the Pixel 5, but even then, the camera setup didn’t feel as comprehensive as that on something like the Galaxy S21 Ultra or even the Mi 11 Ultra.

Won’t we all love to see a Pixel with an additional periscope camera for 10X lossless zoom? When you club that with Google’s digital zoom algorithms and a larger sensor, you can only imagine how good moon shots from the phone would look like at 100X hybrid zoom! Periscope cameras have been around for a while and we don’t see a reason for Google to exclude one from their flagship.

Periscope zoom cameras

While a triple camera setup comprising of a primary shooter, an ultra-wide lens, and a periscope camera should satisfy most people, why not add a fourth camera in there since we are talking about an imaginary phone anyway? I would love to see a macro camera on the Pixel, and before you question my profession as a tech journalist, no, I’m not referring to those atrocious 2MP sensors.

The Oppo Find X3 Pro had a brilliant microscope camera that provided up to 60X magnification. While you may not find a lot of practical use cases for it, it’s surely a fun sensor to have and if I ever want a fourth camera on my phone, this is the one I would pick.

Microscope camera on the OPPO Find X3 Pro

So we’ve given the Pixel a much-needed bump in terms of camera hardware, but that would be incomplete without some software changes. While the Pixel has always been a champ when it comes to taking still photos, videos are still meh for the most part when you compare it to something like the iPhone. Google really needs to up its game in this department and also allow users to shoot up to 4K 60fps video from all cameras, including the front-facing one which we’ll talk about in just a bit.

A True Full-screen Display

When the trend of bezel-less displays started to pick up, Google still stuck with a thick frame on its devices. Now, some might argue it was done in order to retain the excellent front-firing stereo speakers, but there’s absolutely no defense for putting a bathtub at the top of the display.

Even with the Pixel 4, Google’s experiment with Project Soli meant the phone had to have a thick top bezel and hence look dated compared to phones from other OEMs. While they fixed that with the Pixel 5 and went with a punch hole like any sane OEM in 2020 would, it’s still not the perfect full-screen experience.

Mix 4 with UDC vs a punch-hole camera

We’ve been seeing phones with under-display cameras for a while now and I agree the tech isn’t perfect. ZTE’s implementation was quite bad and so is Samsung’s on the Galaxy Z Fold 3. The main issue with the under-display cameras on these phones is that the shots from the selfie camera look bad since there’s an additional layer of pixels that the camera needs to look through.

The only way to make the selfies look better is by having strong software algorithms in place that optimize the look of the picture once it’s been captured. The Xiaomi Mix 4, for example, actually does a pretty good job at it.

Considering Google’s software expertise and their ability to optimize pictures using the Pixel Visual Core, we would imagine that an under-display camera on the Pixel Ultra would suit well. The front would be truly full-screen without a notch or a cutout being an eye-sore, and the selfies too would look good. While we’re on the topic, a 120Hz QHD+ AMOLED display with an LTPO panel would be a treat to view content on.

Better Hardware-Software Integration

We often associate the word ecosystem with Apple. That’s mainly because all of their products talk to each other and work so well in tandem. It’s a big reason why someone buying an iPhone would consider getting an Apple Watch instead of a Fitbit, a Mac instead of a Windows machine, and so on. It’s not just about the ecosystem though. Apple makes both the hardware and the software that goes into an iPhone which is why they work so well together. Apple’s software optimization makes the best use of the hardware onboard.

On the Android side of things though, there’s one brand making the chips, and another making the software. This doesn’t allow for as seamless of a hardware-software integration as Apple has been nailing for years now. With the Pixel 6 series, Google finally announced that they’re going to be using their custom Silicon called Tensor. While we’re yet to experience the changes and improvements this custom chip will bring and how well Google’s software works with it, it’s surely a step in the right direction. The silicon will only keep getting better and Google will be able to customize their software to take advantage of the chipset in the best possible way.

Pixel 6 series with Tensor

Along with gains in raw performance, this kind of integration will also help with things like battery life. You’re probably aware at this point that the iPhone has considerably lower battery capacities compared to most Android phones. While Android devices have breached the 5,000mAh mark, an iPhone with a mere 3,500mAh battery would perform similarly thanks to the software optimization done by Apple. This sort of seamless integration is what I want the Pixel Ultra to achieve.

More Software Features and Customization

Over the years, Android has thrived in one particular aspect — customization. Launchers, widgets, mods, and what-not. However, the UI that you get on a Pixel has remained basic for the most part. Even some vital features like scrolling screenshots have only been introduced recently in Android 12. Native screen recording was made available only last year with Android 11. These features have existed for the longest time on custom UIs and skins and only improve the utility of the phone.

Features like dual apps, native app lock, custom steps for the ringer, and multiple options for system navigation are features that are must-haves on modern-day smartphones. My dream Pixel Ultra would even have a Samsung DeX-like desktop mode implementation wherein plugging the phone into an external display would turn it into a Chromebook. Speaking of computers, Google can work with Microsoft to seamlessly integrate and harmonize Android phones with Windows computers, just like how an iPhone links to a Mac.

AirDrop on iPhone and Mac

Yes, there is the Your Phone app that does something similar, but it’s nowhere close to what you get with iOS and Mac. Airdrop, for example, can transfer large video files from an iPhone to a Mac in a matter of seconds. While Google did respond with Nearby Share, it currently only works between Android devices and not between a phone and a PC. Handoff and Continuity are also great features that let you continue your work across devices. These are the kind of features I would want a Pixel Ultra to have.

Another area where Android has fallen behind compared to iOS is a seamless backup and restore function. What better way to bring it to Android than on a Pixel Ultra? When you buy a new Pixel Ultra, you should be able to transfer all your data from your existing smartphone right from the apps, app data, home screen layout, saved passwords, with all your accounts logged in. The procedure should be made as seamless as entering your PIN on your new Pixel and voila, all your data is transferred in a few minutes.

A lof these software elements can be introduced on the Pixel to make the experience more productive and to ensure the UI doesn’t feel limiting. When you have so much horsepower with modern-day SoCs, why waste it? One may argue that other UIs already offer these features so by providing all of these on the Pixel Ultra, you would make the experience more cluttered. That’s not entirely true though since the core aesthetic and experience of the Pixel UI can be maintained, and these can be added as advanced features for power users.

Bonus Additions

If Google makes both the hardware and the software, they also have the advantage of supporting the device for much longer. The iPhone 6S, launched in 2015, is still getting software updates and will support iOS 15 which is a huge deal. Five years of Android updates for the Pixel Ultra would be great and would ensure that the phone runs well for a long period of time. It would also be great if Google built an ecosystem of products that integrate well with the Pixel Ultra smartphone. Yes, the Pixel Buds already exist, but the rumored Pixel Watch is still nowhere to be seen.

A large 5000mAh battery would be great when you also factor in the optimization that you’re going to get with the custom silicon. 65W PD charging would go very well along with a large battery. Most smartphones with fast charging speeds rely on proprietary standards like VOOC, Warp, etc. which require custom charging bricks that also support the standard. Having support for fast PD charging would mean you can use any universal charger that has support for USB-PD.

The rest of it would be quite simple — 12GB of RAM and 256GB of UFS3.1 storage, at least. The colored power button from existing Pixels stays, but I would like an additional mute switch like the iPhone or a OnePlus device. The inclusion of a headphone jack with a good DAC would mean you can enjoy all the hype around lossless audio, and wireless charging along with an IP68 rating would complete the package for the Pixel Ultra.

Lastly, I would love it if all this was packed into a portable form factor like the Pixel 5. The Pixel 5 was the perfect size to handle and wasn’t too big or small. Not to forget, the availability of Google’s phones all over the world has been erratic. Most Pixel phones only launch in a handful of selected countries which I’m sure is based on market research. But if Google really wants to stamp its dominance in the smartphone industry, they have to make the Pixel Ultra available worldwide.

---

Let’s be real for a moment. There’s no such thing as a perfect phone, and the Pixel Ultra remains squarely in the realms of fantasy for now. Every device has its own set of flaws which may or may not irk different people in different ways. It doesn’t hurt to imagine what an ideal phone would look like though, especially with the Pixel 6 series slated to launch sometime soon. I’ve tried to keep my expectations as realistic as possible and haven’t gone overboard by saying I want eight cameras and a 32-core processor and a 10,000mAh battery with 200W wireless charging in the body of an iPhone 12 mini with a price tag of $200. No, that’s not the point of this wishlist.

The point is to make you wonder what a Play Edition Galaxy S21 Ultra would look like if Google/Samsung hadn’t killed off the program. It would probably satisfy most parameters I mentioned here that I would expect from my dream Pixel Ultra, at least in terms of hardware. This takes me back to the original point — Google hasn’t really done much with the hardware on their devices, which is probably why they aren’t leaders in any segment that deal with hardware. One would assume their acquisition of HTC’s smartphone division would’ve changed things, but that change hasn’t really materialized.

Fortunately for us, the Pixel 6 series looks like a step in that direction. It seems to be the first phone from Google with a bold design language and some notable improvements like more versatile cameras, and not to forget, a custom chip. Is it going to be the Pixel we’ve all been waiting for? Only time will tell. Until then, let us know what your dream Pixel Ultra would look like in the comments below.

The post Here’s our wish list for a Google Pixel Ultra! #DreamPixel appeared first on xda-developers.

from xda-developers https://ift.tt/3h1Qgnp
via IFTTT

10 decisions from Google that really make you wonder, “What were they thinking?”

Google’s 23rd birthday is today, September 4th, as the company was incorporated on this day in 1998 in Silicon Valley. Since then it has grown from just a simple webpage to a ubiquitous internet giant, though it certainly wasn’t without some mishaps along the way. The company has made some pretty weird decisions over the years, from product launches to the launch and downfall of a million different messaging services. While there are probably a lot of decisions from the web giant that makes you wonder “why?”, here are 10 of them that make us go “What were they really thinking?”.

10: Google Glass

To kick off our list is Google Glass, a pair of futuristic smart glasses that seemed to enamor the entire news cycle for a brief period of time when it was announced. A futuristic invention taken straight from science fiction, Google Glass was a pair of smart glasses launched in 2013. They came in with a hefty price tag of $1500, and never saw the commercial success that the company probably wanted. Between privacy concerns and its limited use cases, it just never really took off. The MyGlass app used for pairing and configuring Google Glass was taken off of the Google Play Store last year.

However, Google Glass wasn’t a total failure. It had its uses, particularly in medicine, and was also used as a way to try and help children with autism. While neither use case has become ubiquitous in their respective medicinal disciplines, it had theoretical developments that could set a groundwork for future technological advancement.

9: Google Stadia

Google Stadia isn’t so much a mistake as it is a giant question mark on Google’s release timeline. Getting into gaming never really seemed to be Google’s style, and while the service is good, it has a lot of inherent problems that it can’t necessarily fix by itself.

Google’s Stadia has every reason to be doing well, but its biggest problems may be out of its control

To sum up its problems, you need to meet three criteria for actually being able to play Stadia. While you may have a low-latency connection that’s consistent, maybe it’s not fast enough to use game streaming services. Maybe it is fast enough, but you live too far away from your nearest data center. What’s more, if you’re primarily using Stadia for game streaming to avoid having to download games because that takes too long, then your internet likely can’t even handle Stadia in the first place.

I enjoy using Stadia, but there are some major question marks surrounding it that draw concerns towards its viability.

8: Google Allo and the graveyard of Google messaging apps

Google and messaging services are a combination that always yields interesting results. We’ve seen the coming and going of Google Talk, Google Hangouts, Google Allo, and many other random messaging services from the company over the years. Then there’s also the tendency that the company has to bake in messaging features into apps and services that don’t necessarily need an instant messaging functionality per se. While a messaging service (obviously) makes sense, it seems that Google also eventually kills off any that it launches. There’s not a whole lot of elaboration needed here; we all know Google’s tendency to kill off services.

7: Pill navigation

Remember Google introduced pill navigation with Android Pie? It disappeared as quickly as it came, killed off with Android 10 on the Google Pixel 4 in favor of full-screen gestures. A post was then made on the Android Developers blog explaining why Google went with the gestures that we have now over pill navigation, and I personally believe that most Android fans are happier with the current implementation over the two-button pill navigation. The two-button pill wasn’t even symmetrical and centered, to begin with.

6: Goodbye Google Play Music, hello YouTube Music

The decision to kill off Google Play Music was a weird one, no less because there still isn’t a direct replacement. Set as the default music player on Android, it was the only pre-packaged “out-of-the-box” way to play local music files on your phone’s storage on a lot of smartphones. While YouTube Music is a good service, Google Play Music was too, particularly as it allowed you to upload 50,000 of your own MP3 songs free of charge for streaming to any of your devices. You could transfer everything over to YouTube Music if you wanted, but there still is no local music player alternative on Android. Not to mention, YouTube Music has a few of its own drawbacks, like not allowing screen-off playback to free users. If you want to listen to music (and not watch every second of the audio playing back on your phone along the way), you have to hope that the manufacturer of your device has designed its own music player. To be fair, most probably have at this point.

5: Google’s big rebranding

Google’s major rebranding really had a number of people wondering what was the point of the whole exercise. Services with their own unique brand identity and personality were replaced with Google-ified colors and designs, leading to everything looking more or less the same. It makes sense that the company is looking to have some kind of uniform brand identity… but it certainly makes it hard to tell the difference between them at a glance. It stripped away identity from each service and made it harder for anyone deep in the Google ecosystem to tell the difference between all of them. It’s not a “mistake” as such, but it’s certainly a head-scratcher as to why the company felt that this change was necessary.

4: Killing the Nexus line

The Nexus line was one of the most popular smartphones for enthusiasts. The Google Nexus 5 was my introduction to ROMs and modding, which I then later followed up with my purchase of the OnePlus 3. The Nexus line of smartphones was the most “Google” you could get Android, and it was primarily aimed at developers. Even still, that didn’t stop average users from purchasing one to get the most authentic Android experience. When the Nexus line was culled in favor of the Pixel line, it marked a departure towards the mainstream for Google, as Google’s smartphones were no longer aimed just at developers.

The Nexus line died with the Nexus 6P, a phone that Google made with Huawei. It suffered bootlooping problems (alongside the Nexus 5X) and ultimately ended with Google paying out cheques as a result of a class-action lawsuit. There hasn’t been a Nexus phone since, and it’s unlikely that there ever will be again.

3: Android One & Google Play Edition

Did you know that the Android One program is still alive and kicking? You’d probably be forgiven to assume that it’s dead, given that Google doesn’t even seem to update the Android One page anymore. The recently-released rugged smartphone Nokia XR20 is actually an Android One program device, though we’ve not heard much about the program in recent years. Xiaomi’s Mi A series was widely regarded as the torchbearers of the Android One experience, though HMD Global has also been an avid supporter of the program for years. The Android One program is oddly reminiscent of the Nexus line — close-to-stock Android and quick updates.

However, weirdly, the home page of the Android One site still says that Android 10 is the “latest” Android operating system. To further confuse the issue, the Nokia 5.3 only just received the Android 11 update… when Android One devices are supposed to get updates faster than the rest of the competition. Device releases have slowed down too — in the past two years, only one device on the program launched hasn’t been released by Nokia and HMD Global, and a grand total of only four devices have been released this year as part of the program. Android One isn’t necessarily dead, but there’s definitely something amiss with it.

As for Google Play Edition, it was a cool program for purchasing devices with official Google support. The HTC One M8 is the most popular example; you could buy one from HTC with the company’s SenseUI, or buy it on the Google Play store with more “stock”-like Android. They had unlocked bootloaders, and the Samsung Galaxy S4 at the time was available too under the same conditions. Press renders of a Google Play Edition Samsung Galaxy S5 even leaked at the time, though never materialized and the program was killed shortly after.

2: Future Pixels won’t have free Google Photos storage

Here’s one that I still have trouble wrapping my head around — why won’t future Google Pixel devices have, at the very least, free compressed Google Photos storage? A perk of the original Pixels was that you could store all your photos in original quality free of charge, though it was dialed back a bit after that. Google has confirmed that older Pixels can still store photos for “life” for free in a compressed format on Google Photos, but future devices won’t get it.

Given that Google loves to push the imaging capabilities of the Pixels, you think they’d throw in as much as possible to make them appealing and to give people another incentive to get a Pixel. Google Photos is a service that many rely on, and a lifetime of free compressed uploads would be a fantastic deal when paired with the purchase of a Google Pixel. But alas, it won’t be any more.

1: Google+

The story of Google+ is hilarious and is one of the few times where Google demonstrated that it was possible for the company to be truly out of its depth. It struggled for years, and following a massive data breach, the company decided it wasn’t worth running anymore.

For context: there was a bug in the Google+ People APIs, which potentially exposed the data of over 500,000 users and was promptly patched in March 2018. This, combined with the community’s extremely low user base – 90% of Google+ sessions are under 5 seconds – was enough for Google to be done with it for good. While Google initially gave a timeline of a shutdown over roughly ten months, it decided to expedite the shutdown when yet another data leak impacted 52.5 million users who could have had personal profile information exposed to developers.

To make matters worse, Google actively tried to push Google+ on users, even integrating the comment section of YouTube directly into the social network. Anyone commenting on YouTube had to have a Google+ account, even if you never actually used it. While some people did enjoy using the social network, it was more or less just another social network that didn’t really have much of a reason to exist.

---

23 years on, Google still makes weird decisions

Marking Google’s 23rd birthday, it’s a funny realization that all of the above decisions were made in the last ten years. Quite a lot of them were more recent than that, and yet the company is still as big as ever. Google doesn’t seem to lead in any hardware category, nor does it seem to care to. When it experiments with new products and services, it doesn’t seem to be a bad thing (for Google) if they fail, as it just moves onto whatever its next plans are. While it’s cool that Google loves to experiment, a lot of the decisions that it has made over the years are perplexing. Let’s hope that its most popular services stick around!

The post 10 decisions from Google that really make you wonder, “What were they thinking?” appeared first on xda-developers.

from xda-developers https://ift.tt/3DPZwEE
via IFTTT

Google went from a simple webpage to an ubiquitous internet giant in 23 years

Knowledge is power, and in this modern digital age, one company shapes the entire world’s knowledge more than any other — Google. With the exception of mainland China, where Google is banned, the NorCal tech giant’s search engine is used in over 87% of desktop computers and 94% of mobile devices worldwide, according to research firm Statista.

It can’t be overstated the degree to which Google’s utter dominance of the online search has upended entire industries and how they operate. For most websites, a big bulk of traffic comes from search results, and research has shown that the first five or six results on Google Search grab more than 60% of the clicks. In other words, Google’s search results can make or break a website’s traffic, and by extension, entire digital businesses like online media or e-commerce sites.

This is why advertising on Google has been so lucrative — the tech giant raked in $150 billion in advertising revenue in 2020, which made up 80% of the company’s overall revenue. Today, Google is worth a trillion dollars. Its utter dominance influencing which website gets shown has led to scrutiny from lawmakers in its home country and abroad.

And to think, Google started as an unassuming, somewhat generic-looking website back on September 4th, 1998. As we approach Google’s 23rd birthday, here’s a look back at some milestones and how the company became the unescapable, ubiquitous, pervasive Goliath it is today.

August 1996: Larry Page and Sergey Brin launches Goo… uh … BackRub

The internet behemoth we know as Google today began as a college dissertation by then-Stanford Ph.D. student Larry Page, who wanted to explore the mathematical properties of the internet, specifically how linking structures work. Using the idea that university research papers often had to list citations, Page conceived a system that rewarded websites that were frequently “cited” a.k.a. being linked to.

Fellow Stanford student Sergey Brin soon joined the project, and the two developed the PageRank algorithm that ranked websites by not just the number of links citing them, but also the quality of those links. The pair gave the search engine, which still only ran on Stanford’s servers at the time, the unfortunate name “BackRub”.

Here’s the thing, BackRub was not the first internet search engine. Yahoo, also founded by Stanford alums, was already active and dominant at the time. But Page and Brin’s idea to use an automated algorithm to scour the entire internet and rank pages by quality and quantity of backlinks was far more efficient than Yahoo’s method, which used physical staff to list an index of websites. Of course, nobody knew Google’s method was far superior then.

September 1998: Google goes official

How Google’s homepage looked in 1998. Source: Web Design Museum

Page and Brin changed BackRub’s name to Google (after the mathematical term “googol” meaning one, followed by 100 zeroes) sometime in 1997, and officially registered Google.com on September 17th, 1997, but it wasn’t until September 4th of the next year did Google become an official company. So, September 4 is the day most media, including XDA, use as Google’s official birthday.

June 2000: Yahoo concedes Google’s search solution is better

Although Yahoo was still highly valuable and leading ahead of Google in search engine market share in 2000, Yahoo executives realized their index-based approach could not keep up with the fast-growing vast internet. And on June 26th, 2000, Yahoo announced it would be using Google’s search engine.

But Yahoo wasn’t accepting defeat. It merely saw the partnership with Google as a temporary one while Yahoo worked to rebuild its own search engine.

Summer 2002: Google rejects Yahoo’s offer to buy the company outright for $3 billion

According to Wired, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel offered $3 billion to acquire Google entirely in the summer of 2002. Google refused the offer. At the time, Yahoo was still the “bigger” company, with annual revenues of $837 million that year, compared to Google’s $240 million.

April 1st, 2004: Google launches Gmail

Google’s Gmail homepage on March 31st, 2003 — a day before Gmail launched

When Google launched its email service to compete with Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo’s service, many thought it was a joke — it was announced on April Fool’s Day, after all. But with a then-unprecedented 1GB of free storage. At the time, free email services only offered a few megabytes of storage. In fact, Yahoo’s response to Gmail’s 1GB was an offer of 100 megabytes — a sign that Yahoo just didn’t know how to appeal to internet users the way Google did.

April 29th, 2004: Google goes public

April 2004 would prove to be a busy month for Google. The company filed an IPO (Initial Public Offering) on April 19th, and by April 29th, the company was officially public, with an evaluation of $27 billion.

February 8th, 2005: Google launches Maps

How Google Maps looked in 2005

If you’re not a loyal Apple eco-system devotee and you don’t live in mainland China, the chances are Google Maps is an indispensable tool in your everyday life. The mapping service began life in early 2005 as a desktop-only service, but it really wouldn’t be until smartphones became ubiquitous, did Google Maps become the must-use service it is today. According to The Guardian, Steve Jobs personally called Google to work together to ensure the app launched with the first iPhone.

July 2005: Google acquires Android — “Best deal ever”

By mid-2005 Google was running on all cylinders. Its search engine market share had overtaken Yahoo over the past year to become the number one search engine in the US (in June 2005, Google’s market share of US search was 36.7% to Yahoo’s 30.4%); and the company was starting to do what tech giants do — acquire promising start-ups and absorb its technology and innovations.

In July of that year Google acquired a wireless software start-up named Android, Inc. The acquisition figure was not disclosed, but the vice president of Google’s corporate development, David Lawee, would hail it as “the best deal ever” at the time. Today, Android is the largest mobile platform by some distance, and a major reason why Google’s search dominates over 90% of mobile devices. Many of us at XDA wouldn’t have much work to do if Android didn’t exist so, yeah, ‘best deal ever’ doesn’t seem like hyperbole.

October 9th, 2006: Google acquires YouTube

Yup, another acquisition, and another service that, with Google’s guidance and resources, has now become literally a ubiquitous service worldwide (outside of mainland China, where it’s banned). According to Hollywood trade paper Variety, YouTube pulled in $7 billion in ad revenue for Google in Q2 of 2021 alone.

April 14th, 2007: Google acquires DoubleClick

Google was already an advertising giant at this time, but it didn’t use cookie-based tracking until its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, an online advertising company that specialized in display ads. Google acquired the company’s software and began cookie-based tracking for advertising uses.

October 22nd, 2008: the first Android phone launches

The HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1

The HTC Dream (known as T-Mobile G1 in the US) was announced in September 2008 and hit stores in October 2008. It wasn’t as elegant as the iPhone 3G which was already out at the time, but it introduced Android to the world, an open-source mobile OS with deep integration of Google’s services.

August 10th, 2015: Google restructures, becomes Alphabet Inc.

By the mid 2010s Google had become such a vast sprawling company, co-founders Page and Brin decided to restructure the company. The duo would become in charge of a larger entity known as Alphabet Inc., with Google itself under its umbrella and headed by Sundar Pichai. This restructuring may have changed the status quo internally at Google and on the business end, but to consumers, nothing really changed. Google Search was the default search engine of choice, Google Maps, YouTube, etc were almost must-use services.

To celebrate the restructuring, Google did launch a new logo that looked very similar to the old one.

October 20th, 2016: Google ventures into hardware with the Pixel

Even though Google Pixel phones never sold enough to be considered a hit or even mainstream, its launch is still a crucial moment in Google’s history, as it marked the software juggernaut’s first real foray into hardware. Sure, Google had toyed with the idea before with the Nexus series, but the Pixel was supposedly Google’s version of the iPhone — a device with hardware and software built by Google. Of course, this wasn’t quite true with the first few Pixels, as the hardware was manufactured by Taiwan phone maker HTC.

Still, the Pixel arguably pioneered the age of computational photography in smartphones, so it deserves a spot on this list.

January 30th, 2018: Google acquires HTC

Announced in September of 2017 but not finalized until the first month of 2018, Google’s purchase of HTC meant it acquired all of HTC’s hardware engineering team, so Google could finally say they make their own smartphone hardware.

December 18th, 2020: Google’s search dominance draws ire of US government

We already alluded in the opening paragraph of this article just how big Google has become today. Many of us living outside mainland China would have our entire digital lives (and perhaps even our actual incomes) crippled if Google were to abruptly stop offering any of its major services like Search, Maps, YouTube, Gmail, etc.

Should one company have this much power? Regulators around the world are beginning to say “no.” After the European Commission and Australian government scrutinized Google for anti-trust practices in the late 2010s, Republican lawmakers in the US followed suit last December by filing a trio of antitrust lawsuits against Google. The accusations claim Google is committing anti-competitive tactics to prevent rival search engines from catching up.

The thing is, to prove Google is behaving unethically is nearly impossible, because Google’s dominance over search is thanks to the unique nature of how internet searches work. As explained in this excellent New York Times feature, search engines rely on algorithms, and algorithms require data. The more people use Google Search, the more data Google collects, the smarter its algorithms become, and the more utility it can serve to its users and gain more popularity.

In other words, Google’s dominance in web search is a snowball effect: people want to use it because it’s better than other search engines, and the more people use it, the larger the lead becomes for Google when it comes to search engine performance.

August 2, 2021: Google announces its own smartphone silicon

Google Pixel 6 leaked render. Source: OnLeaks/ 91Mobiles

Google teased/previewed its upcoming Pixel 6 smartphone last month, and while the phone is quite a looker, the big news coming from this announcement is the fact it will run on Google’s own SoC, Tensor. While it’s not known if Google manufactured all parts of the SoC, it’s confirmed Google at the very least designed it from the ground up.

This is big news, as it should in theory give the Pixel that hardware-software-SoC synergy that only Apple, and to some extent, Samsung, enjoys right now. With LG pulling out of the mobile market and Chinese brands still mostly absent, there’s room for the Pixel to grow in the US.

Google is already the most powerful software company right now. Imagine what happens if it nails hardware too.

What’s next for Google?

While it’s possible Google could eventually be forced by regulators to allow competitors to catch up, can this even happen realistically? What potential platform is going to replace YouTube in the near future? Even Apple, the rare company with the money and resources to match Google, still struggles to build a mapping system as good as Google’s despite almost a decade of trying.

It’s safe to say that Google is probably not going anywhere anytime soon. And we at XDA are particularly excited about the upcoming Pixel 6, since it could finally be a Pixel phone with mainstream appeal.

This isn’t to say everything Google touches turns to gold. Google’s had its fair share of misfires, as we covered in our other piece celebrating Google’s 23 years of existence. The rise of Google from a simple webpage to a digital giant we can’t live without in a little over two decades is nothing short of extraordinary. And if you look at www.google.com on any ordinary day, you’ll still see a seemingly simple and ordinary webpage.

The post Google went from a simple webpage to an ubiquitous internet giant in 23 years appeared first on xda-developers.

from xda-developers https://ift.tt/3yJO6i0
via IFTTT