The Open Kirin Team has released an unofficial build of TWRP for stock EMUI 5.x with decryption support. This TWRP is intended for usage on stock ROMs with unlocked bootloader and with dm-verity disabled.
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Along with Google being present at MWC this year, the company also sent representatives to the annual Game Developers Conference. A lot of the revenue Google rakes in from the Play Store is from mobile games, so it makes sense to see them focusing on improving the experience. Earlier this week the company announced some extra tools they were giving to Android developers. These tools will help developers display price discounts that are currently happening with their game.
Along with that, we learned that Google is also putting more of an emphasis on engagement of games in the Play Store rather than simply looking at install numbers. At GDC this year, Google's AdMob division was there to talk about some new tools they're making available to developers as well. The company says they are there to talk about new playable and video ad formats to create ways to better monetize experiences. They've also developed tools to show how people are interacting with your game.
The first of these three announcements is a new playable ad format. Before, developers could show off a game in images, or even with a video, but those are different experiences than actually getting to play the game itself. This new playable ad format will let the person play a lightweight version of the game a developer is advertising. This also results in a more qualified install of the game since the person actually will have some experience with it and will install the game because they wanted to play more of it.
Next up is a way to improve video ads on mobile devices. Right now, if an ad is set to play in landscape mode, it will force that aspect once it begins playing. Google has been working on some algorithms that will focus on the important parts of the video for those times when a device is kept in portrait mode. You can find an example of this in action in the video above.
Lastly AdMob is announcing they're bringing Google's video app install advertising demand from AdWords to AdMob. This, and the rest of the changes mentioned previously, should significantly increase rewarded demand available to developers. Game development is a challenging, competitive process, but the hardest part is often what comes after. These new changes may make it easier for game development companies to acquire new customers through more engaging advertisements.
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Google Assistant was one of the main selling points of the Google Pixel and Pixel XL. This software addition from Google formed a key part of the Pixel experience, and the company intended to keep the experience exclusive for a while. You could still find ways to make use of Google Assistant on unsupported phones, but for the most part, average users would have limited choices if they wished to experience Google Assistant.
That changes soon, as Google has lifted the exclusivity of Google Assistant from the few select means to now include a wide range of devices. All devices running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow and above with Google Play Services installed will soon be able to access and enjoy Google Assistant just like they could on the Pixel.
Allowing all Android 6.0+ devices access to Assistant expands the apps support to more than 30% of Android users. This is a significant jump when one considers that Android 7.0 and 7.1 together constitute only 1.2% of Android devices as per the Android distribution numbers from February.
Google is also opening up Google Assistant to OEMs to include in their devices. The newly announced LG G6, as a result, will also be shipping with Google Assistant.
Assistant will begin rolling out this week to English users in the U.S., followed by English in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, as well as German speakers in Germany. We'll continue to add more languages over the coming year.
Google says its goal is to eventually "make the Assistant available anywhere you need it." Opening up to previous Android versions is one step in that direction.
Now rolling out to more @Android phones, it's time to meet your #GoogleAssistant → https://t.co/tu9bGCgo7F http://pic.twitter.com/aeWdgBTJH1
— Google (@Google) March 2, 2017
What are your thoughts on Google rolling out Assistant to all devices on Android 6.0 and above? Do you look forward to trying it out on your phone? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: The Keyword Blog
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Samsung Pay has been rumored to come to India "soon", but these rumors originated from independent reports with no official confirmation from Samsung to back them up – until now, that is.
Samsung India has confirmed that India is in line to get Samsung Pay in the near future. Samsung is allowing users to sign up for early access to Samsung Pay in the country, despite there being no specific launch date for the service as of yet.
Supported devices for Samsung Pay include the Galaxy Note 5, S7, S7 Edge, S6 Edge+, A5 2016 and A7 2016. The sign up page indicates that Samsung is offering support for MasterCard and Visa debit and credit cards from Axis, HDFC, ICICI and Standard Chartered Bank, while only credit cards are supported from SBI Bank. Support for American Express and Citibank credit cards will be also be added later on, and Samsung is also working with other banking partners to expand their support.
Interested readers can visit the Samsung Pay India website to sign up for early access. As mentioned before, there is no launch date specified, so there is no indication when the program goes live. Users who successfully register themselves will likely receive an email when the early access period begins.
The monetary and liquidity situation in India in the first quarter of 2017 is much better than what it was in the days immediately following demonetization. We do feel Samsung and others missed the prime period where services like these would have taken off without much effort. Right now, Samsung is in a better position with the upcoming launch of Samsung Pay to take advantage of an untapped market as other competitors have yet to launch their services in the country. With widespread availability of MST terminals in urban areas, Samsung does have the technological upper hand too.
What are your thoughts on Samsung Pay coming to India? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Samsung Pay India Via: Sammobile
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Last year, it was announced that BMW would give their customers the option to pay $300 for an upgrade to Apple CarPlay in their automobiles. This upgrade path was said to be available for most models and would be available later in the year. This is nice for those customers tied to the Apple ecosystem, but many were hoping that BMW would eventually offer the same for Android users. Such a move seems like the obvious customer-friendly route since they would be offering it as an upgrade and not forcing it onto everyone.
That doesn't seem to be the case anymore though. TechCrunch's Frederic Lardinois sat down with BMW's senior vice president of Digital Services and Business Models, Dieter May, for an interview at Mobile World Congress this week. This conversation covered a lot of topics ranging from self-driving cars to the future of car ownership, but then they started discussing different in-car technologies. Since BMW hadn't said anything official about Android Auto yet, this was important to take note of.
Mr. May said that BMW will continue offering Apple's CarPlay, but will not be doing the same for Android Auto. As he continued with his explanation, he mentions that for BMW, "control [of] the customer interface" is very important for the company. He believes this is "part of the brand experience and for that, I don't want to have an Android screen." Mr May feels BMW "especially want[s] to be able to deeply integrate these systems."
Their vision of cars in the future has as many as 6 different screens inside it. Because of that, BMW wants to be able to control the user experience and do not feel that Google's Android Auto offers them that level of control. Instead of BMW focusing on Android Auto, or even CarPlay for that matter, the company feels that the future of in-car technologies is their own ConnectedDrive platform, A2A (Apps for Auto). The company feels this in-house alternative provides a more stable developer interface and claim it will enable them to innovate more quickly.
Source: TechCrunch
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With so many people's educational, financial, and social lives tied to the online world, passwords have become as important as the keys to your personal safe, car, house etc. As we integrate more of our daily lives into the online space, it becomes harder for people to not only keep their passwords complex and secure, but to simply remember them. This has resulted in many using the same password across multiple websites and services, which can have some very devastating results as we've learned with the many online breaches these past few months.
Services called password managers started to become popular as it took a lot of the responsibility of remembering passwords off of our shoulders. Not only did they allow us to create unique, complex passwords for each individual service, but it also makes it easier to access those passwords across different platforms. Security for anything, though, is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. If you use Android applications to manage your passwords, then you would expect that the only real danger to getting hacked is how strong you've made your passwords. Few people expect that their password manager itself would be vulnerable to hacking.
However, that's exactly what researchers at TeamSIK found out. The team recently published a report that gives us a look at how insecure some password manager applications are. A list of the top 9 password manager applications that can be downloaded from the Play Store was gathered, and a security audit on all of these applications was performed which found at least one security issue with each of them. The list of applications tested include:
Some of these apps, like Informaticore Password Manager, only had one security issue that was discovered in this audit. While others, such as Avast Passwords and 1Password – Password Manager, had as many as 5 or 6. While many of these services claim to be "bank-level" or "military-grade" secure, some aren't as secure as one would hope. Thankfully, as of March 1st 2017, all of these disclosed vulnerabilities have been patched by the vendors.
But it's still on you to be aware that while password managers are generally better at safeguarding your passwords than your memory, some might not be as secure as they claim to be. As our own Daniel Marchena recommends, you may want to look into KeePass as it is an open source solution that keeps your passwords stored locally instead of on a company's severs.
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If you have a Chinese version of the Huawei Mate 9 or Mate 9 Pro, then a new OTA update (build B173) is coming soon and XDA Senior Member duraaraa has just informed us of its change-log. It includes general performance improvements, optimizations for power usage, enhanced response speed, and more.
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