Last month, we learned that LG might bid farewell to the flagship LG G series and could introduce a mid-range smartphone under a new branding. LG later confirmed its plan to replace the G series with a new brand and gave us our first look at the LG Velvet, the first phone in the Velvet lineup. This was followed by a teaser video that showcased the phone in its entirety and gave us a closer look at the design language. LG isn’t stopping here as it has now gone ahead and confirmed some of the key specifications of the LG Velvet.
According to LG Korea, the LG Velvet will feature a 6.8-inch curved display with a 20.5:9 aspect ratio and centered U-shaped notch. It’s unclear whether it will be an LCD or AMOLED and we also don’t know if it will support a high refresh rate. As rumored and later confirmed by LG in the teaser, the phone will indeed be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 756 SoC.
Coming to the camera, the triple camera setup is comprised of a 48MP primary camera, 8MP ultra-wide camera, and 5MP depth sensor. The LG Velvet will also support LG Dual Screen attachment – just like the LG V60 ThinQ – as well as LG Stylus Pen – both of which will be available as optional accessories.
Much like the G series, the LG Velvet will continue to put a strong emphasis on audio, and as such, it will pack stereo speakers along with “Artificial Intelligent Sound” which automatically analyzes and tunes the audio based on the content being played. Other audio features of the LG Velvet include: “Voice Out Focus” that lets users filter out the background noises when shooting a video and ASMR recording which maximizes the sensitivity of two microphones.
Lastly, the LG Velvet will feature a 4,300 mAh battery and will support 10W wireless charging — as confirmed by a listing on the Wireless Power Consortium.
The LG Velvet is set to be unveiled on May 7th in South Korea and will go on sale starting May 15th on 3 Korean carriers. We don’t know when LG plans to bring the phone to other markets but we expect to learn more about this in the coming weeks.
Displays have always been one of Samsung’s strong suits. The company has been known to offer some of the best OLED panels on its smartphones for quite a while now, with its latest flagship Galaxy S20 Ultra taking things to a whole new level. Samsung’s displays are, in fact, so good that several other manufacturers source displays for their flagships from the company. For instance, the recently released OnePlus 8 Pro packs in a Samsung display and it has helped the device achieve DisplayMate’s highest A+ rating. However, if a recent report from the Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) is to be believed, the company might be looking to source OLED panels from BOE for the Galaxy S21+ and the Galaxy A91.
The DSCC is a consulting company that analyzes the display market and in their latest blog post, they state that Samsung Mobile may start multi-sourcing flexible OLED panels (not foldable) for some of its upcoming Galaxy smartphones. This is quite unusual as Samsung Mobile traditionally only sources its flexible OLED displays from Samsung Display. Sources familiar with the matter have revealed to the DSCC that Samsung Mobile is currently looking to reach an agreement with China-based BOE to use the company’s OLED displays for production in some Galaxy smartphones by as early as June of 2020. The smartphones that are in discussion for this multi-sourcing include the early 2021 Galaxy S20+ and the late 2020 Galaxy A91.
As of now, we don’t know for sure if the 2021 Galaxy S flagships will be called the Galaxy S21 series or if it’ll be called the Galaxy S30 series, but it’s quite plausible that it will be called the S21 to coincide with the year 2021. As for the Galaxy A91, that was the rumored name for the Galaxy S10 Lite before it launched earlier this year, but it’s possible that there will be an actual Galaxy A91 launching later this year. DSCC believes this rumor to be plausible for 5 main reasons: Multi-sourcing will lower panel prices/costs, it will mitigate potential supply disruptions, it will free up production for Samsung Display to sell panels to other companies at higher prices, BOE recently won an agreement to include Qualcomm’s ultrasonic sensors, and the fact that BOE already supplies some OLED panels to Samsung for the Galaxy Watch Active.
Interestingly, BOE may not be the only supplier in consideration. DSCC further adds that CSOT, a subsidiary of TCL, may also join the fray and supply displays to Samsung for its upcoming smartphones.
Realme entered the wearable space in India with the Realme Buds Air TWS earbuds, following it up with the Realme Band smart wristband. While the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a wrench in the launch plans of the company (and everyone else’s), Realme has continued to work on its next wearable, the Realme Watch. The existence of the Realme Watch is no secret, as it was teased by Realme India’s CEO himself in the company’s video Q&A.
The video barely offered a glimpse at the smartwatch, other than the fact that it has a square display. The company hasn’t offered any information beyond this, but the watch could be glimpsed at several certification listings across different regions. While we still don’t have any clarity on when the Realme Watch will be officially released, we now have access to a lot of information about the upcoming smartwatch, and we hope to give you more than a glimpse of the same.
XDA Recognized Developer@deletescape, known in the community for his work on the Lawnchair launcher, has shared with us some key information about the Realme Watch. This includes device renders, device functions, as well as renders/screenshots of how various functions of the Watch would look like on your wrist. While things could still change by the time the Watch is released, we have high confidence that this is how the device will more or less turn out.
This is the Realme Watch, Realme’s second fitness wearable product.
In the renders that @deletescape obtained, the Realme Watch appears as a familiar overall design but with its own distinct personality. We see a square display with rounded corners, and thick bezels all around. The “realme” branding makes an appearance on the bottom bezel of the device. The Watch has a singular push button on the right edge. The band does not appear to be changeable, at least from these renders, but we do not know this with finality. The clasp is not visible in these renders, so we do not have any information on that as well. We can, however, spot the charging pins on what appears to be hard polycarbonate back cover plate. The Watch will very likely adopt a magnetic charger.
In addition to the render, we also have a few specifications to go along. The Realme Watch will come with a 1.4″ TFT LCD touchscreen display with a 320×320 resolution. The battery inside the watch will be 160mAh in capacity, which could give you about 7 days of life with 24-hour heart rate monitoring. The watch will be IP68 certified for water and dust resistance. You will get Bluetooth 5.0 onboard for pairing your phone with the Watch, but there will be no onboard GPS on the device. Other sensors on the device include an acceleration sensor, a heart rate sensor, and a blood oxygen sensor. The Watch will not run on Android Wear OS; instead, it will run on a proprietary OS for lower cost smartwatches. The closest equivalent device to the Realme Band would be the Amazfit GTS that we reviewed, a device we can describe as a smart wristband with a bigger display, and an evolution from smart wristbands like the Realme Band and Mi Band 4.
The physical press button on the device will be used to lock and unlock the device, as well as aid in navigation with functions like returning back to the main screen. As is the case with smartwatches of this category, there will be limited storage onboard — the Watch will be able to store data for 7 days without connecting to a smartphone and companion app for syncing before it begins deleting older data on a rolling basis.
The Realme Watch will come with five preloaded watch faces within the device. However, we believe users should also be able to download more watch faces through the companion app and sync it to their Watch. We do not know if there will be any ability for third-party creators to create watch faces.
Realme Watch – Watch faces
The Realme Watch will come with the standard suite of functions that one expects out of a basic smartwatch. There will be step counting, heart rate monitoring, date and time functions, weather information, stopwatch, and alarm functions, and Find My Phone function. Most of these functions will be accessible through the Watch UI panes, where each pane will have four icons.
Realme Watch – UI Panes
The Realme Watch should also be able to track 15 different kinds of exercises: outdoor running, walking, swimming, indoor running, outdoor riding, aerobic capacity, strength training, football, basketball, badminton, table tennis, indoor riding, yoga, elliptical machine, and cricket. Curiously, we also spotted functions related to sedentary reminders, water reminders, as well as a function to help users meditate by guiding users with controlled slow breathing exercises. The Activity pane within the UI shows the Weather data, your sleep data, your heart rate data, and your data related to step counting.
Realme Watch – Activity Pane UI
Other curious features on the Realme Watch will be the ability to control music on your phone (play, pause, next, previous, and volume control), and the ability to use the Watch as a Bluetooth shutter button to control your phone’s camera.
Perhaps the greatest selling point of the Realme Watch would be its support for Hindi, in addition to English. This is a big deal for a smartwatch that is targeting the Indian market. As we note in our interview with Indus OS, companies intending to target the Indian audience need to focus on hyper-localizing their product with Indic language support. English is spoken by only 10.6% of India’s population, while Hindi is spoken by a good 57.1%. We do understand there is a difference in Hindi and English literacy as opposed to just spoken dialect, but our point still stands — adding in language support beyond English is a big advantage when targeting the Indian audience.
We do not know when the Realme Watch will be launched, in India or elsewhere. We also do not know the final branding of the product — though “Realme Watch” seems like a safe bet to us. We also do not know which price point Realme would be targeting for this product. Though, since it is in a similar product category as the Amazfit GTS, we can expect the watch to be around that price range.
What are your thoughts on the Realme Watch? Does it seem like an exciting product for you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
At Samsung Tech Day 2019 in October last year, the company announced its new flagship Exynos 990 SoC. The SoC is manufactured on the company’s new 7nm LPP EUV (extreme ultra-violet) process and it features a triple-cluster CPU core setup consisting of a combination of two custom M5 big cores, two ARM Cortex-76 middle cores, and four ARM Cortex-A55 little cores. Months after the initial announcement, Samsung’s flagship SoC finally made an appearance on the Galaxy S20 series earlier this year and we initially believed that it would also be featured in the upcoming Galaxy Note 20 series. However, a recent report from ZDNet Korea claims that that might not be the case and Samsung may include a new Exynos 992 chipset on the Galaxy Note 20 series.
As reported by Sammobile, Samsung may debut the new Exynos 992 chipset later this year with the Galaxy Note 20 series. The Exynos 992 chipset is rumored to be an improved version of the Exynos 990 that is being manufactured using Samsung’s 6nm process. The chipset is expected to offer a more power-efficient design and slight improvements in processing performance when compared to the Exynos 990. This is also expected to give the unannounced chipset a slight edge (1-3%) over its main competitor — the Snapdragon 865.
The report further reveals that the Exynos 992 may also be used in the Korean version of the Galaxy Note 20 series, making a return to flagship Exynos SoCs for Samsung after the Korean Galaxy S20 series shipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865. Samsung’s switch to the Exynos chipset can also be attributed to the delay in the launch of the upcoming Snapdragon 865+, which was initially scheduled for Q3 2020 but has been pushed back due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The delay might also prompt other manufacturers, like Vivo, to opt for the Exynos 992 instead of the Snapdragon 865+ on its upcoming flagships.
At the Mi 10 Youth Edition launch event in China yesterday, Xiaomi officially announced MIUI 12 for its Mi and Redmi devices. The latest iteration of Xiaomi’s Android skin comes with a new interface, a host of animation, privacy and health features, and much more. As with previous versions of MIUI, Xiaomi has also included a bunch of new static and live wallpapers in the MIUI 12 release. We’ve successfully managed to extract the wallpapers from the MIUI 12 firmware for the Redmi K20 Pro/Mi 9T Pro and you can now download them from the links below.
MIUI 12 Wallpapers
The latest version of MIUI comes with a total of 29 new wallpapers (2340 x 1080 in resolution each) that can be applied to any device. They are divided into 6 categories: Natural Texture, Geometry, Dynamic Nebula, Minimalist Scenery, Black & White, and Mars. Here are all the new wallpapers included in the MIUI 12 release:
If you like what you see, you can download the uncompressed, full-resolution wallpapers from the link below.
Along with the aforementioned static wallpapers, MIUI 12 also includes two new live wallpapers — Super Wallpaper Earth and Super Wallpaper Mars. We’ve extracted the live wallpaper APKs from the latest firmware release and you can download them from the links below. Do note that, unlike the static wallpapers, the live wallpapers will only work on a Xiaomi, Redmi, or POCO device running MIUI 11.
The Google Phone app recently gained the long-anticipated call recording feature, albeit the company might have made it specific to select countries and/or regions due to concerning laws. While it is possible to install the Google-made dialer app on non-Pixel (or non-Android One) phones and pray for the call recording feature to be activated, it would be much more convenient to have this option as part of the stock dialer. XDA Recognized Developer serajr would have thought the same for the Sony Xperia community, as he comes up with an Xposed module that can enable call recording on any Sony phone running Android 10.
Several older Xperia phones have received the taste of Android 10 via OTA to date, and all of them are compatible with this mod. The installation part is, however, a bit tricky as users need to flash the recent version of Magisk first, followed by the EdXposed framework. Once you have EdXposed up and running, you can download the APK of the module from the discussion thread created by serajr, install and activate it via EdXposed Manager. A reboot is necessary for the changes to take effect, and you should get a dedicated “Record call” option on the dialer UI.
The module seamlessly integrates itself with the “Settings > Calls” section of the stock dialer app. Users can choose between AMR and MP3 as the recording format, and they can even turn on auto call recording for incoming and/or outgoing calls. Lastly, there is a master switch to toggle the whole call recording facility, which can be particularly useful to diagnose unforeseen errors in the module.
The UI of the module is not multi-language aware (only English supported), which is a known limitation. At the time of writing this article, the module is available only in compiled form, but the developer has promised to share the source code ‘soon’.
Amazon Fire tablets are most popular for their dirt-cheap pricing and accessibility. The software inside them, while based on Android, is a long shot from the Android experience you’ll find on other devices. For one, Amazon doesn’t bother with Google Play certification, which means that they have greater control over open-source Android without having to follow Google’s guidelines. They can ship whatever Android version they want, and their software is heavily customized. Now, Amazon is updating its 2017 lineup of Fire tablets (7th-Gen Fire HD 10, Fire HD 8, and Fire 7) to FireOS 6, which is based on (brace yourselves) Android 7.1 Nougat. Yes, that one.
Android Nougat was released almost 4 years ago, in 2016, and brought with it several improvements for its time. Right now, though, it is a greatly outdated operating system: we’ve seen the release of Android Oreo (8.0/8.1) in 2017, Android Pie (9) in 2018, Android 10 last year, and Android 11 is already in the developer preview stage and will be rolling out to devices later this year. Amazon themselves have also used newer Android versions: the 2019 Fire HD 10 is running Android Pie.
The fact that Android 7 is rolling out to devices in 2020 might thus seem like satire at best, but in Amazon’s defense here, Fire tablets are mostly just aimed for media consumption. They sell for low prices, have really weak specifications, and they don’t even feature Google Play, so Amazon really has little need to keep these devices up to date at all besides critical security vulnerabilities. Plus, these are also older models, and it’s better to roll out an old version of Android than just leaving them on the software they were running, which was Android Lollipop–that launched in 2014, a whopping 6 years ago, and developers have started to drop support for it.
Anyway, if you want to grab this update, it is now rolling out in waves, so be on the lookout.
