It’s now free for any business to list products on Google Shopping

While many people have probably used Google Shopping, it’s one of Google’s lesser-known services. On the surface, it seems like a simple aggregator for online shopping, but there’s actually more going on. Previously, businesses had to pay to appear in Google Shopping. Now, the company is letting any business owner list products for free.

It’s critical for businesses to get their products to appear in Google search results. Appearing in the more specialized Google Shopping results, where people are actively looking to spend money, is even more important. Google says they know “many retailers have the items people need in stock and ready to ship, but are less discoverable online.” This change means more exposure for those businesses and more options for shoppers.

The new free option will begin rolling out on April 27th in the US and worldwide over the next few months. Businesses can still pay for higher placement, but Google says the results will consist primarily of free product listings. Those businesses that were already paying to list products will immediately be able to list their full inventories. New users can apply for free listings through the Merchant Center.

As part of this news, Google is announcing a new partnership with PayPal to allow merchants to link their accounts and accept online payments. Google says this will speed up the onboarding process and “ensure we’re surfacing the highest quality results for our users.” The company is also working with Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce to make sure they can shift easily to Google Shopping.

Google says they have been working toward this change for a while. The COVID-19 pandemic and a huge shift toward online shopping accelerated those plans. This change puts Google Shopping more in line with Amazon, who similarly only charges merchants to promote products for higher placement. Obviously, Google isn’t doing any shipping, but it could mean more people starting to go to Google instead of Amazon to find products.

Google Shopping: Discover, compare prices & buy (Free, Google Play) →

---

Source: Google

The post It’s now free for any business to list products on Google Shopping appeared first on xda-developers.

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

YouTube Premium subscribers in some countries are getting free monthly channel memberships

YouTube Premium was launched back in May 2018 as a way to allow users to enjoy content on YouTube without any ads, much like YouTube Red. Over time, the service was expanded to more regions, and more features like 1080p offline downloads, were also rolled out. Google is now expanding the benefits that YouTube Premium subscribers get in some regions, by offering them free monthly channel memberships.

Channel membership was introduced in 2018 itself as an additional medium of monetization for YouTube Creators. Viewers can pay a monthly recurring fee to get access to unique badges, new emojis, Members-only posts in the Community tab, and access to unique custom perks such as exclusive live streams, extra videos, and shout-outs. It essentially is a new business model by itself, as the Creator gets a 70% cut of the membership fee (after local taxes), and thus, can pivot to the revenue model that suits them, their content, and their audience the best.

Existing YouTube Premium subscribers in Brazil, UK, Ireland, Japan, and South Korea will now get one free channel membership every month, for a limited time. The exact value of the freebie will vary across the regions, but it will be equivalent to the starting price level membership.

The offer is classified as a “limited time offer”, as YouTube Premium subscribers will get a free monthly channel membership until May 31. The membership is also classified as “non-recurring”, as the viewer has to decide which Creator to support every month. The Creator will earn the same amount of money out of this free membership as they would have out of a paid membership, so nothing changes on their end.

You can redeem your free channel membership on any channel that has turned on channel memberships for any eligible level. These free channel memberships don’t add up and will expire if they aren’t redeemed. Eligible YouTube Premium users will be prompted on YouTube.com or the mobile apps by this offer, and can directly claim by visiting a Creator with available channel memberships. When you tap “Join”, there will be an option to “Join for free”.

---

Source: Google Support
Via: 9to5Google

The post YouTube Premium subscribers in some countries are getting free monthly channel memberships appeared first on xda-developers.

from xda-developers https://ift.tt/34QMgyI
via IFTTT

Samsung may bring its free TV Plus streaming service to mobile

A lot of the content that we consume has made the shift from traditional cable TV to mobile, to the point that there are several popular services that do not have a TV alternative, and instead, solely focus on mobile. Cable TV still contains segments that appeal to a certain demographic, and this often remains a reason enough for them to continue availing the service separately. Samsung looked at this problem and came up with a solution for its smart TVs in the form of Samsung TV Plus, a free TV service for users in Canada and USA, offering over 100 TV channels for free over the internet. Now, a new report claims that Samsung is looking to bring this service over to mobile, likely as a Galaxy-exclusive.

According to a report by Sammobile, Samsung is planning to bring over Samsung TV Plus to mobile devices through a mobile app. The mobile app for the service is under development, and it will aim to deliver the same functionality as the service offers on Samsung’s Smart TVs. Sammobile speculates that the TV Plus mobile app may remain an exclusive for Samsung Galaxy smartphones, as the service is a Samsung-exclusive and works only on the company’s TVs.

If the mobile app does go on to mirror the functionality of the TV app, then users will be able to watch TV channels as well as access Video-On-Demand content. Content channels include beIN SPORTS EXTRA, Bon Appétit, CBS News, Crime 360, fubo Sports Network, Fuse, Kitchen Nightmares, Lively Place, Outside TV+, Reelz, Tastemade, The Design Network, VEVO, Yahoo Finance, and many more. Movies are made available through Samsung’s The Movie Hub channel. Users may also be able to pick up content where they last left off. Currently, it is unknown how Samsung will be monetizing the service for mobile if at all they choose to in the first place. At least on Samsung Smart TVs, the service is ad-supported but otherwise free — so users do not have to pay any subscription fees, or even bother logging in.

---

Source: Sammobile

The post Samsung may bring its free TV Plus streaming service to mobile appeared first on xda-developers.

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

OnePlus 8 unbrick tool is now available

OnePlus phones are often considered as the spiritual successors to the Google Nexus lineup, mainly because of their developer-friendly design. The company even offers a hassle-free unbricking method via their customer support channel. The device-specific unbrick package, internally known as ‘MsmDownloadTool’, utilizes Qualcomm’s Emergency Download Mode (EDL). We recently talked about the availability of the unbrick tool for the global and Indian variants of the OnePlus 8 Pro, and now we have our hands on the equivalent package for the regular OnePlus 8 as well.

OnePlus 8 XDA Forums || OnePlus 8 XDA Review

Tinkering with your device is not without its risks, and a misstep can lead you to temporarily brick your phone. But, now that the EDL flashing packages for the regional variants of the OnePlus 8 are easily accessible to the community, power users can rescue their phones themselves. It is also possible to switch between the international (IN21AA), European (IN21BA), and the Indian (IN21DA) OxygenOS firmware to unlock region-exclusive features, albeit end users are suggested to take a backup of the ‘persist’ partition before attempting such cross-flashing.

MsmDownloadTool for the OnePlus 8 — XDA Thread

The current set of MsmDownloadTool for the OnePlus 8 is based on the day 1 update. The OEM is using VMProtect as an obfuscation/anti-debugging measure while building the flasher, thus your antivirus might flag it as a potentially rogue candidate which is a typical case of false-positive detection. OnePlus has also introduced a mandatory login requirement in the recent revisions of the MsmDownloadTool, but you can easily go around that prompt by selecting ‘User type’ as ‘Other’.

One can force their OnePlus 8 unit to boot to EDL mode by shutting down the device and holding down both volume up and volume down buttons while connecting it with their PC. The flasher, which can only be executed under Windows, should automatically detect the phone if proper drivers are installed. The flashing process re-locks the bootloader while wiping the phone, and may take around 5 minutes to complete.

The post OnePlus 8 unbrick tool is now available appeared first on xda-developers.

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

Samsung announces a blood pressure monitoring app for the Galaxy Watch Active 2

Samsung on Tuesday announced that the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 smartwatch will soon be able to monitor the blood pressure of its users in South Korea. The company said in a press release that its Samsung Health Monitor application has been cleared by South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety as a Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) and will enable cuff-less blood pressure monitoring and tracking when paired with the Galaxy Watch Active 2.

This is not to be confused with ECG support that Samsung is currently working on to add to the Galaxy Watch Active 2. For uninitiated, ECG measures the rate and rhythm of the heart’s electrical activity, while blood pressure measures the pressure your heart exerts against the arterial walls when the heart is beating (systolic pressure) and when the heart is resting between beats (diastolic pressure). High and low blood pressure, if untreated, can lead to an increased risk of strokes and other cardiac diseases.

To start using the blood monitor functionality, users will have to calibrate their Galaxy Watch Active 2 using a traditional cuff. Samsung advises this calibration to be performed every 4 weeks to ensure accuracy. Once the watch has been calibrated, users can use the cuff-less blood pressure monitoring anytime anywhere using the Samsung Health Monitor application.

The blood pressure measurement is done through pulse wave analysis which is obtained by Heart Rate Monitoring sensors on the watch. The application then analyses the relationship between the calibration value and heart rate monitoring data to determine the actual blood pressure. Samsung also mentions that you need a Galaxy smartphone for this, and the phone should be running Android Nougat and above.

Samsung says its plans to roll out the application to the Galaxy Watch Active 2 within the third quarter, with a promise to progressively expand the functionality to upcoming Galaxy watches. This last bit is interesting as it confirms that Samsung is working on a new Galaxy smartwatch. According to our own Max Weinbach, this upcoming watch that Samsung is referring to is actually the Galaxy Watch 2 that could launch alongside the Galaxy Note 20.

Samsung Galaxy Watch XDA Forums

So far, the Samsung Health Monitor application has only been approved in South Korea. Since Samsung most likely will need a similar clearance by health organizations in other countries like the U.S. through the FDA, it will likely take some time for the app to make its way in other countries.

---

Source: Samsung Mobile Press

The post Samsung announces a blood pressure monitoring app for the Galaxy Watch Active 2 appeared first on xda-developers.

from xda-developers https://ift.tt/2Y4DEDp
via IFTTT

OPPO A52 and A72 are two mid-range smartphones coming to Europe

Earlier this month we confirmed the existence of two OPPO phones that the Chinese company was planning to launch globally. The first was the OPPO Find X2 Neo which was a rebranded version of the Chinese Reno 3 Pro that was launched around the end of 2019. We also learned about the existence of the OPPO A72. However, at the time the only bits of information we had about this phone was its model number — CPH2067 — and that it would come running Android 10.

Now a new leak from German tech blog Winfuture has shed more light on the OPPO A72 including its possible specifications and has also confirmed a new mid-range phone called OPPO A52 that could launch alongside it. WinFuture claims that both phones are likely to be mid-rangers and they could soon launch in European markets. 

The OPPO A72 and OPPO A52 are nearly identical in terms of the underlying hardware and basic design language with the only differentiating factors being camera and memory configuration. On the front, both utilize a 6.5-inch hole-punch display with a 2400 x 1080 resolution. Powering these devices is the mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 octa-core SoC, featuring eight cores running at 2GHz frequency. 

Coming to the camera, both phones feature a quad-camera setup on the back. The OPPO A72 features 48MP primary and 16MP front cameras whereas the OPPO A52 uses a 12MP primary and 8MP front shooters. The rest of the camera assembly is identical among two, with both having an 8MP ultra-wide, 2MP depth and 2MP macro shooters at their disposal.

Other probable specifications of the OPPO A72 and OPPO A52 include 4GB of RAM, Bluetooth 5.0, microSD expansion support, USB Type-C connector, side-mounted fingerprint scanner, and a 3.5mm audio jack. As mentioned earlier, the OPPO A72 and OPPO A52 also differ in terms of internal memory. As such the OPPO A72 is said to be packing 128GB of internal storage while the OPPO A52 may offer 64GB storage on the base variant. 

Details regarding the pricing and exact launch date aren’t yet known but the leak states that we could expect both phones to hit the European markets soon.

---

Source: WinFuture

The post OPPO A52 and A72 are two mid-range smartphones coming to Europe appeared first on xda-developers.

from xda-developers https://ift.tt/34RGMni
via IFTTT

MIUI 12’s Dark Mode 2.0 brings along wallpaper dimming, automatic font weight and contrast adjustment

Xiaomi uses its own custom UX on top of Android, known as MIUI. While Android version upgrades are notable updates for most of the OEMs in the Android industry, users with Xiaomi devices look forward to MIUI version upgrades, as these are the ones that bring along plenty of noticeable changes to their phones. Xiaomi has been working on the next version of MIUI, MIUI 12, which is scheduled to be released next week. The company has begun with official feature reveals on Weibo, detailing the various changes that the new version bump will bring along.

MIUI 12 builds upon the work done within MIUI 11 in the context of the MiLan Pro font and the comfort it lends to the overall UX. This comes to us in the form of Dark Mode 2.0, which improves upon the previous dark mode implementation by bringing along features such as wallpaper dimming, automatic font-weight adjustments, and font contrast adjustments.

MIUI 12: Wallpaper Dimming

MIUI 12’s Dark Mode 2.0 comes with a smart wallpaper dimming feature. Instead of just darkening the whole wallpaper in a blanket manner, this new update will attempt to simulate how light transitions during the day cycle.

It is unclear right now if this feature will be limited to the included system wallpapers, or if it would be much more widely available across all user-applied wallpapers.

MIUI 12: Font-weight adjustments

Dark Mode 2.0 will also be able to automatically adjust the weight of the text. This is based on MIUI 11’s dynamic font system, and it automatically reduces the weight to reduce glare and text blur.

 

The changes are reverted back in light mode, which will theoretically make reading on both the modes more comfortable.

Font Contrast Adjustment

In addition to changing the font-weight, the font and background contrast will also be changed according to the screen brightness.

This way, you can also use Dark Mode during the day while retaining text legibility, and use it normally at night without dazzling your vision.

---

We expect to see more MIUI 12 features unveiled as we come closer to launch. Stay tuned!

The post MIUI 12’s Dark Mode 2.0 brings along wallpaper dimming, automatic font weight and contrast adjustment appeared first on xda-developers.

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