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Qualcomm Makes the Snapdragon 845 Official, Talks 5G It’s finally official: At the 2017 Snapdragon Developer Conference in Maui, Hawaii, Qualcomm took the wraps off the Snapdragon 845 , the newest flagship in its 10-year-old Snapdragon system-on-chip series. The San Jose, California-based company wasn’t willing to spill  all  of the beans just yet — it’s hosting a talk exclusively about the Snapdragon 845 on Wednesday — but it gave a tantalizing glimpse of its latest and greatest chip on Tuesday. Here’s everything you need to know. Snapdragon 845 Qualcomm’s the largest fabless semiconductor company in the world, and its chips power billions of devices. But it has its eyes on the estimated 8.6 billion smartphones that are expected to ship between 2017 and 2021. The Snapdragon 845 was three years in the making, Qualcomm said, and the development team honed in on five core features: Content creation, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, wirel...

Google Flights and Google Trips Gain Price Tracking, Deal Alerts Just ahead of the holiday season, Google’s rolling out updates to Google Flights and Google Trips that’ll make nabbing last-minute deals on airline tickets, hotel rooms, and local goings-on easier. Starting Thursday, Google Flights, Google’s Search -powered airfare search tool, will start to analyze historical pricing data in order to predict when fares might rise or fall. Using some of the same machine learning techniques employed by Kayak, Hipmunk, Hopper, and other price-predicting travel planners, Flights will notify you when airline prices reach certain predefined thresholds. You’ll see a tip at the top of your Google Flights results if prices to a destination “won’t drop further”, for example, or “are less than normal”. Source: Google The artificial intelligence-powered predictions are heading to Google’s hotel-searching tools, too. When you’re search...

Snap’s Lens Studio Lets Anyone Design Custom Snapchat Lenses Snapchat Lenses come in all shapes and sizes. Dancing hot dogs, rainbows, and rabbit ears are just a sampling of the augmented reality (AR) camera filters you’ll find in the application’s growing gallery, and starting Thursday, anyone will be able to contribute new ones. Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, took the wraps off Lens Studio, a design program for Windows and Mac that lets users fine-tune, render, and publish the Lenses of their dreams. Studio — which resembles the internal tool that Snap uses to build Snapchat Lenses, according to The Verge — is chock full of templates and guides for three-dimensional and two-dimensional lens designs, and has a application programming interface (API) that lets budding Lens designers add animations and touch interations. Right now, users are limited to creating World Lenses, or AR layered on Snapchat’s rear camera feed. But in the future, th...

T-Mobile Will Launch its Own TV Service in 2018 AT&T has DirecTV. Verizon has Go90. And starting next year, T-Mobile will begin offering an over-the-air, direct-to-consumer premium video service of its own. In an announcement published to YouTube on Monday, T-Mobile CEO John Legere said that the carrier had finalized the acquisition of TV tech company Layer3 TV, and that it’d begin to secure the necessary content deals, contracts, and services for a competitive TV service launch in 2018. It’ll be one without “long-term contracts” or “complex bundles and billing,” Legere said, and one that’s priced disruptively. “We’re going to build TV for people who love TV — TV you’ll be able to watch on every connected device you have wherever you are,” Mr. Legere said. “[We’re] about to ‘un-carrier’ your TV. [We want] to take the fight to big cable and satellite TV on behalf of consumers everywhere....

Qualcomm’s QCC5100 Bluetooth Chip Hones in On Power Efficiency If you own a pair of Bluetooth headphones, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve had to put up with subpar battery life. But you might not have to for much longer. At the Consumer Electronics Show on Monday, Qualcomm announced the QCC5100, a low-power Bluetooth system-on-chip that’s designed to deliver best-in-class features without compromising on power efficiency. The QCC5100 supports data transfers up to 2Mbps and a Bluetooth 5 dual-mode radio that lets you stream audio to multiple devices at once. There’s also proprietary technologies like Qualcomm’s TrueWireless Stereo which eliminates the need for wires between left and right earbuds, Qualcomm’s high-quality aptX HD audio codec , and enhanced Qualcomm cVc and Fluence active noise cancellation (ANC) technologies. All the more impressive is the claim that the QCC5100 is up to 65 percent more efficient at handling voice calls and...

Google Home Sales Top 6 Million, Over 400 Million Google Assistant-Enabled Devices Shipped Amazon’s Echo may be the smart speaker market’s top dog , but Google Home is nipping at its tail. Lifetime sales of Google’s AI-powered speakers — which include the Google Home , Home Mini , Home Max — topped six million this holiday, according to the search giant. “All told, Google Home usage increased 9X this holiday season over last year’s,” Google wrote in a blog post. “And in fact, we sold more than one […] device every second since Google Home Mini started shipping in October.” Google’s accomplishments don’t stop there. It also shipped tens of millions of “Google devices for the home” in 2017, a category that comprises speakers, appliances, and peripherals with the Google Assistant , Google’s voice assistant, built in. And it’s enabled the Assistant support on more than 400 million devices, including App...

Honor View 10 arriving internationally January 8th, Honor 7X Red Model coming to U.S. At a press conference during the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Honor , an offshoot of smartphone maker Huawei , announced that the Honor View 10 will head to new territories starting January 8. It’ll precede the launch of a limited-edition Honor 7X Red, which will hit U.S., U.K., and international shores in the coming weeks. Honor View 10 Source: Honor Starting January 8, the Honor View 10 will go on sale in India, U.K., France, Germany, Italy, and Spain from HiHonor . It’ll be available in Malaysia and Russia in late January, Huawei said. The View 10’s specs are nothing to scoff at. It has a metal unibody and a 5.99-inch FullView Full HD+ resolution (2160×1080) 18:9 display. Under the hood, the handset packs an octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 970 system-on-chip (four ARM Cortex-A73 cores paired with four ARM Cortex-A53 cores) with an i7 co-processor and a dedicated ...

Google AMP Will Soon Show Publisher URLs on Supported Web Browsers Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) speed up websites in part by caching contents with AMP Cache, which stores them on Google’s servers. It generally works pretty well, but there’s a pretty annoying side effect: Every page’s address is replaced with an AMP-specific URL, which makes sharing and bookmarking them a tad inconvenient (unless you use an app like DeAMPify ). Luckily, that’s finally changing. This week, Malte Ubl, Tech Lead for the AMP Project, announced that the team will introduce a new version of the AMP Cache based on the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Packaging standard. In plain English, current and future AMP URLs will look and act like normal, non-AMP addresses, but take advantage of Google’s preloading and performance technologies behind the scenes. “When we first launched AMP in Google Search we made a big trade-off: To achieve the user exper...

Samsung Teams up with TagStation to Enable FM Chips in Phones Rare’s the flagship smartphone with FM radio, but there’s a push to change that. In September 2017, Federal Communications Chairman (FCC) Aji Pai penned a letter requesting that phone manufacturers enable FM in wireless chipsets, and carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint are actively encouraging phone makers to activate them. Now, Samsung’s recommitting to supporting FM radio in its upcoming handsets. On Tuesday, TagStation, the developer of NextRadio , announced that the handset maker would unlock the necessary chips in upcoming phones bound for the US and Canada. “Samsung should be lauded for taking this important step,” said  Paul Brenner , President of NextRadio. “They are providing their customers a more engaging, immersive radio experience and, as importantly, a means to connect with life-saving information in emergencies.” So what’s that mean? Samsung smartpho...

LG Support Page Suggests its New Flagship Will be Called the LG G7 In early January, an LG official told members of the press that  the company would ditch its G series smartphone brand for something new . LG’s said to be tossing around new names, and reportedly plans to launch the rebranding effort sometime during the first half of 2018. Some folks took the reports to mean that LG’s next flagship — the successor to the LG G6 — wouldn’t be called the LG G7, but a support page on LG’s UK website points to the contrary. The support page was quickly taken down (you can see a screenshot below), but it talked about which version of Qualcomm’s Quick Charge technology the company’s smartphones support. A chart showed the LG G5 and the LG G6 , which have Quick Charge 3.0, and the “Future LG G7”, which it listed as supporting Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4.0 technology. Source: Androidu It’s not LG’s only recent slipup....

Keyboard and Biometric Moto Mods Coming in 2018 Motorola’s Moto Mods have allowed the Lenovo-owned company to expand the functionality of its Moto Z smartphone lineup without having to introduce new hardware. Peripherals like the JBL SoundBoost 2, Moto Power Pack, and Moto Insta-Share Projector snap onto the smartphones’ magnetic connectors and add functionality. And at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, Motorola took the wraps off new Moto Mods for the Moto Z series: A keyboard mod and a biometric mod. The Livermorium Slider Keyboard Moto Mod , a project from Motorola’s Accelerator Program, attaches to the back of the phone and wraps around it, angling the keyboard at a 60-degree angle (maximum) with the keyboard facing flat upwards. It’s aimed at folks who use their phone for productivity, and it’ll launch later this winter at a retail price of $99. Next is the Lenovo Vital Moto Mod , which looks like a cool piece of health-tracking technology. It can...

Report: Samsung to Start Production of a Foldable Smartphone in November Foldable smartphones are becoming a reality. In 2017, we saw the ZTE Axon M launch in the US with dual displays, and Samsung confirmed that it was working on a flexible device pegged for release in 2018 . We’ve also recently seen a patent that potentially describes Samsung’s user interface for its foldable device , as well as a patent for a fully curved device . Now, according to a report by  ET News,  Samsung is expected to start production of its first foldable smartphone in November ahead of a mass-market debut in either December or in early 2019. The report, quoting unnamed sources, states that the company has recently settled on the phone’s final specifications and production plans. The crucial part of display development is will be completed by March, so that panel production will be able to start in September. ET News  says that the phone “is likely” to have a 7.3-inch OLED di...

Facebook Set to Reveal “Portal” Device With Video Calling and Facial Recognition Facebook is set to unveil a hardware product code-named Portal that’ll compete with smart home devices such as the Amazon Echo Show , according to a report from Cheddar , Portal will make video calls and use a wide-angle lens that’ll recognize faces tied to Facebook accounts, according to the report, and it’ll accept voice commands a la the Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa assistant. The social network intends to pitch it as a way to keep in touch with friends and loved ones. Facebook’s also secured licensing deals with Sony/ATV and Universal Music Group to build out a music streaming service for Portal, and plans to support third-party services like Netflix and Spotify. Portal will retail for $499, but that pricing’s subject to change prior to launch. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s reportedly told employees that he doesn’t care if it generates a prof...

Huawei Mate 10 Pro is coming to the U.S., but not on AT&T Given the focus, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas isn’t a place where you would expect to be surprised by an announcement. However, yesterday several news outlets shared a shocking revelation: that AT&T would no longer carry the Huawei Mate 10 Pro . Leading up to CES, Huawei was expected to unveil a partnership with U.S. carrier AT&T to carry the company’s latest flagship smartphone . Now that this deal has fallen through, the Mate 10 Pro will only be available through online retailers such as Amazon and some brick and mortar stores such as Best Buy. Huawei already confirmed that they would be expanding into the U.S. Indeed, Huawei has been eagerly pushing the news that the Mate 10 Pro would be coming to the U.S., with more details to come at CES. The company has repeatedly confirmed on their U.S. social media accounts that the new Mate smartphone would be unveiled on January 9. Are you ready...

Vivo Showcases the World’s First Smartphone with an In-Display Fingerprint Sensor We’ve been hearing about in-display fingerprint sensors for quite a while. Notably, Samsung was rumored to include an in-display sensor in the Galaxy S8 , but reportedly opted not to because the tech wasn’t ready. Vivo, though, has made real progress. In July 2017, the China-based company teamed up with Qualcomm to demo an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor — one of the first commercial examples of in-display fingerprint scanning. Then, in November, Synaptics announced its Clear ID in-display fingerprint sensors , and said a “top five” smartphone OEM would use it in 2018.  Some analysts predicted that the OEM was Vivo, and the company confirmed those suspicious at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show. “Today’s showcase of a ready-to-produce in-display fingerprint scanning smartphone featuring an optical fingerprint sensor is a big leap forward in bringi...

New Website for Google Assistant Shows Off All Available Actions and Services Just what the Google Assistant can and can’t do isn’t necessarily clear to folks who haven’t used it before — and even to folks who have. It’s great for basic tasks like checking the weather and setting alarms, of course, but did you know that it had a magic 8 ball minigame, and that you can ask it what position you should play in Quidditch ? To make Google Assistant skills easier to find, the search giant on Tuesday launched a new website with every action, service, and integration available. They’re organized by categories such as “Games and fun”, “Music and audio”, and “Arts and lifestyle”, and the homepage shows a list of new and trending Assistant apps — each with users ratings, instructions on how to use it, and the list of devices that support it. There are hundreds of applications to choose from, and Google’s directo...

Systemless Xposed for Android Oreo Now Available This week started off with a bang: XDA Senior Recognized Developer  rovo89  announced and released  Xposed Framework for Android Oreo 8.0 and Android 8.1 in beta. It came as something as a surprise, considering how long it took it took Xposed to hit Android Nougat , and it’s not perfect — some Xposed Modules won’t work properly until they’re updated with support for Oreo. But thanks to the hard work of XDA Recognized Developer and Contributor  topjohnwu , Xposed Framework for Oreo is now available in a  Magisk  module that installs in a systemless manner. It’s live now guys, grab it from Magisk Manager > Downloads Enjoy 🙂 pic.twitter.com/exCr2tgOH8 — John Wu (@topjohnwu) January 9, 2018 topjohnwu has been making a systemless version of Xposed for quite a while now, and the installation process for his systemless Xposed Framework for Android 8.0 and 8.1 Oreo is pretty much unchanged from last time arou...

TCL Announces Alcatel 1 Series, Alcatel 3 Series, and Alcatel 5 Series at CES 2018 It was back in November 2017 when well-known leaker Evan Blass shared press renders of six unannounced TCL-made Alcatel smartphones , and while a few details could be inferred from their rumored names, the hardware specs and prices remained a mystery. Thankfully, TCL filled in a few gaps at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show this week with the unveiling of the Alcatel 1, Alcatel 3, and Alcatel 5 ranges. The China-based company’s differentiating between the Alcatel series with sequential numbering — the Alcatel 1 series are the cheapest phones of the bunch, and the Alcatel 5 series are the priciest. Source: TCL Alcatel 1 Alcatel 1 series phones, which will cost less than $100, will feature compact unibody designs with “premium materials” and grippy back plates. They’ll have 18:9 displays, TCL said, plus features like facial recognition. Alcatel 3 Alcatel 3 range devices, whic...

Edge Sense Plus Updated with Support for Google Pixel 2 Squeeze Customization HTC’s Edge Sense, which lets you trigger shortcuts and apps by squeezing the HTC U11 and HTC U11+’s edges, was customizable from the start, and only  got better with software updates . Google’s squeezable  Pixel 2 shortcuts, on the other hand — Active Edge — is a lot less flexible. Gripping the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL  tightly opens the Google Assistant and silences incoming calls, but that’s about it — there’s no way to remap the squeeze action. In August, we covered Edge Sense Plus, a third-party app that lets you customize HTC’s Edge Sense to an even greater degree . Now, Edge Sense Plus has been updated with support Active Edge customization on the Google Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL. To recap, we noted in October that it’d be hard to remap the Pixel phones’ Active Edge functionality because of the fact that it was hard-coded by Google to...

Razer Phone Now Supports Netflix Content in HDR and 5.1 Surround Sound Some content on Netflix take advantage of high dynamic range (HDR) and 5.1 surround sound, but not all devices support those technologies. Luckily, that began to change last year, when smartphone manufacturers like Samsung and LG put out smartphones with HDR compatibility. And today at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, Razer and Netflix jointly announced that the Razer Phone will start showing Netflix content in HDR and 5.1 surround sound later this year. “We engineered the Razer Phone to handle HDR video and sound like no other phone on the market,” said  Min-Liang Tan , Razer co-founder and CEO. “We are incredibly excited to deliver Netflix entertainment on a smartphone like never before, enabling us to take full measure of the Razer Phone’s HDR10-enabled display and dual-firing, front-facing Dolby-optimized speakers and THX-certified headphone connectivity.” When the Razer Phone w...

Razer Unveils Project Linda, a Laptop Which Uses Your Android Phone as a Touchpad and Second Screen At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday, gaming company Razer unveiled Project Linda, a tricked-out laptop dock designed for the Razer Phone . Project Linda comes in the form of a clamshell aluminum dock with a 13.3-inch Quad HD (2560×1440) 120Hz display, a 720p webcam, a dual-microphone array, 200GB of storage, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a USB-A port, and a USB-C port. The full-sized keyboard has dedicated Android navigation, search, and app selection keys, and Razer Chroma programmable RGB backlighting. There’s a dock where you’d normally find a touchpad, and when the Razer Phone is attached to it, the laptop leverages the handset’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and 8GB of RAM of RAM to PC-like applications and software. (It’s like Samsung’s Dex Dock or the Motorola Atrix laptop dock.) It also charges the phone with a built-in 53.6 Wh int...