Update 1 (05/04/2020 @ 03:04 AM EST): Hands-on images of the LG Velvet have surfaced, showing off its design. Scroll to the bottom for more information. The article as published on April 28, 2020, is preserved below.
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.
Update: LG Velvet makes an appearance in hands-on images
LG themselves went ahead to make the LG Velvet and its design official, so there isn’t much left to see. But still, the newly emerged hands-on images align with the renders, showing off the now-familiar face of LG’s upcoming smartphone.
Early this year in March, Chinese OEM Nubia announced the Red Magic 5G — a flagship gaming phone powered by the Snapdragon 865 SoC, up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and up to 256GB of UFS 3.0 storage. The device also features a few other notable components like a 144Hz high refresh rate AMOLED display, a 4500mAh battery with support for 55W fast charging, a 64MP Sony IMX 686 primary camera, and an in-display fingerprint scanner. Much like other gaming phones from Chinese OEMs, the Red Magic 5G runs a customized version of Android 10, called Red Magic OS, which offers a ton of additional features. But the device still lacks a couple of useful settings like a 120Hz refresh rate mode, advanced screen color options, an HD screen recorder, etc.
Now, as per a recent post on our Red Magic 5G forums, it turns out that the device, in fact, does include these additional settings and they can easily be enabled using an app like Activity Launcher. To do so, just install the app on your device and search for the following activities:
cn.nubia.theme.local.ThemeActivity
This activity brings up all the preinstalled themes on the device and you can choose the “colorfull international” theme to get round icons on your device.
You can use this activity to change the default quality of the screen recorder from SD to HD.
com.qualcomm.qti.qcolo.QColorActivity
This activity lets you choose between 8 available color modes for the screen.
cn.nubia.factory.ChooseFpsActivity
You can use this to enable the hidden 120Hz refresh rate mode on the device. The mode will be enabled as soon as you leave the menu, however, standard settings and the refresh rate notification won’t show the new value.
To go back to the standard refresh rate settings you’ll have to enable “default auto FPS” in the hidden menu.
You can also create home screen shortcuts for these activities by long pressing on the Activity within the app and selecting the shortcut option from the contextual menu. It’s also worth noting that these aren’t the only hidden features on the Red Magic 5G. The device has many more hidden features like battery percentage in the status bar, fingerprint calibration settings and battery stats that can be enabled from within the Activity Launcher app.
When Google first launched its Stadia cloud gaming service, they made it available for a handful of Android devices, the Google Chrome browser, and the Chromecast Ultra. While Google has yet to expand support to Android TV devices, they have enabled gameplay on dozens of additional Android smartphones and have greatly expanded the service’s functionality and game catalog. In a minor update to Google Assistant rolling out to some users, it’s now possible to directly launch games that you have purchased.
Over on Reddit, user /u/dericiouswon noticed that they were able to launch the game The Turing Test by searching for “the turing test game” in the Chrome OS search box. The Redditor noticed that this search query opened Google Chrome and directed them to a URL under the “ggp.sandbox.google.com” domain, which appears to be where Google’s internal test server is hosted. Other users noticed that you can type the name of a game followed by “game” to launch a title—for example, entering “The Division 2 game” into Assistant will launch the game on Stadia in a new Chrome tab.
According to 9to5Google, you can also launch Stadia games directly on Android phones with the app installed. The publication notes that on both Android and Chrome OS, you can launch a game that you own by saying “play [insert game]” in Google Assistant.
Top row: launching Destiny 2 on Chrome OS by entering a search query in the launcher
Bottom row: launching Destiny 2 on Android by sending a Google Assistant voice query. Image credits: 9to5Google.
Launching Stadia games through Google Assistant previously worked with the Chromecast Ultra, but now you can launch titles on all platforms where both Stadia and Google Assistant are supported. These smaller integrations demonstrate one area where Google Stadia is superior to Microsoft xCloud or NVIDIA GeForce NOW, provided you own an Android device or Chromebook. In the future, Google promises that Stadia will get deeper integrations with Assistant, but for now, all you can do with Assistant is launch games.
Later this month, Google is expected to launch the follow-up to the 2019 mid-range Pixel 3a: the Google Pixel 4a. The smartphone, which is expected to come in only one size, is expected to cost $400 at launch, pitting Google’s 2020 mid-range Pixel against the likes of the Apple iPhone SE and Samsung Galaxy A51. While Pixel smartphones aren’t known for their best-in-class hardware, they are known to excel in their picture-taking capabilities. The Pixel 4a will feature a single camera on the front and rear, much like the iPhone SE but unlike the Galaxy A51, but where the phone is expected to really shine is its use of the Google Camera app. Thanks to an early Pixel 4a camera review, we have a pretty good idea of its camera performance.
Cuban YouTube channel TecnoLike Plus, which is run by Julio Lusson, shared early camera samples from the Google Pixel 4a exclusively with XDA-Developers. Julio Lusson is the YouTuber who gave us our first detailed real-world look at the Pixel 4a back in March. Over the last few days, he has been taking pictures from his pre-release device. Thanks to these photos, we can share our general thoughts on the Pixel 4a’s camera performance ahead of this month’s launch. However, we should note that Julio’s device is running a pre-release firmware build and hence we expect Google to have tuned the camera processing for the upcoming retail software release. Julio did download the latest version of the Google Camera app, version 7.3.021.300172532, onto his device, but we don’t know what version of the app will be preloaded on retail units.
TecnoLike Plus published the below video on his YouTube channel and the following blog post showcasing camera samples that he took, but the video and article are in Spanish, so keep reading below if you’re interested in the full details on the Pixel 4a’s camera specifications and picture samples!
Leaked Camera Specifications
Earlier leaks confirmed the basic hardware specifications of the Google Pixel 4a, but Julio sent us some screenshots of the “camera” tabs in two different hardware information apps so we can share more details on the camera specifications. According to the “Device Info HW” and “DevCheck” apps, the Pixel 4a has a single rear camera consisting of a 12.2MP Sony IMX363 sensor with an f/1.73 aperture lens and 1.4µm pixel size and a single front-facing camera consisting of an 8MP Sony IMX355 sensor with an f/2.0 aperture lens and 1.14µm pixel size. Notably, the Sony IMX363 is the same primary rear camera sensor found on the Pixel 3, Pixel 3a, and Pixel 4, while the Sony IMX355 is the same primary front-facing camera sensor found on the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a.
The two hardware info apps report that the rear camera lens has a horizontal viewing angle of 65.6° while the front camera lens has a horizontal viewing angle of 72.4°. Next, the apps report that the Pixel 4a’s front camera is fixed-focus and supports EIS but not OIS, while the rear camera supports both OIS and EIS with auto-focus.
Google Pixel 4a Camera Samples
The following images are camera samples from the Google Pixel 4a. The photos were captured by Julio Lusson and published here with his permission. Due to our WordPress configuration, the below images have been resized and compressed to improve page load speed. However, at the bottom of this article, we have a link to a Google Photos album where the images have been uploaded in their original quality.
Portrait Mode Samples
Portrait Mode is one of the major features of the Google Camera app on Pixel smartphones. It enables “professional-looking shallow depth-of-field images”, according to Google. When Portrait Mode is enabled, the camera zooms in a bit (1.5x for the rear camera and 1.2x for the front camera) because the narrower field of view encourages users to stand further back, which reduces perspective distortion and leads to better portrait photos. Like most Pixel smartphones, the Pixel 4a can use portrait mode with a single camera.
Outdoor Samples
HDR+ is another major feature in the Google Camera app. The feature takes continuous burst shots with short exposures, and the sharpest images are aligned and combined to produce a single image with higher dynamic range. HDR+ is one of the first major features of the Google Camera app which dates all the way back to the Google Nexus 5 and 6, so it’s no surprise to see that it’s supported on the Google Pixel 4a.
Astrophotography Samples
Astrophotography is a new Google Camera feature introduced with the Pixel 4. The feature allows users to take photos of the starry sky. It expands upon the existing “Night Sight” camera mode which enables handheld long exposure shots. Astrophotography requires the user to enable Night Sight and then leave the phone completely still for several minutes while the phone captures multiple exposures—you’ll almost always need to place the phone on a tripod to use Astrophotography. Google brought Astrophotography to the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a after its debut on the Pixel 4, so its presence on the Pixel 4a should come as no surprise. Of course, Google Camera modders ported the feature to older Pixel smartphones.
Low-Light Samples
Night Sight is one of the best Google Camera features to come from the Pixel 3 launch. Google’s Night Sight mode has kept Pixel phones in the conversation as the best camera phones for low-light shots, right under Huawei’s Mate and P series flagships.
Zoom Samples
The Pixel 4 was Google’s first Pixel device with dual rear cameras. Google chose a telephoto camera for the Pixel 4’s secondary rear camera, allowing the phone to boast improved Portrait Mode shots and crisp ~2X optical zoom and up to 8X digital zoom. Part of what makes zoom shots on the Pixel 4 so great is Google’s new Super Res Zoom algorithm. While the Google Pixel 4a only has a single primary camera, Super Res Zoom helps it take passable zoomed-in shots at up to 8X magnification.
Indoor Samples
Lastly, here are some indoor camera samples from the Google Pixel 4a, two of which are in arguably difficult lighting.
If you want to view these (and more) photos in their original, uncompressed form, then check out the following Google Photos album:
XDA Senior Contributor Idrees Patel also offered the following comments on the above photos:
“I viewed all the photos in full resolution, and they seem better than the Google Pixel 3 in terms of dynamic range and shadow detail capture. I haven’t used a Pixel 4 or Pixel 3a, so I can’t compare with them.
The photos are characteristically Pixel-like in look. This means they have excellent detail, balanced noise reduction with visible luminance noise, adequate (but not best in class) dynamic range, and great color accuracy. Night Sight is just as good as ever—I feel these photos are better than the Galaxy S20+’s night mode photos in a few respects.
The Pixel 4a’s camera will continue to excel when it comes to having a balanced noise reduction system, which will resolve more detail compared to competitors.
The one weakness is exposure. Compared to phones like the S20 or the OnePlus 7 Pro, these photos aren’t as bright, resolving less shadow detail. On the other hand, facial detail continues to remain a particular strength for all Pixels.
And finally, the Pixel’s portrait mode is better than most implementations. After viewing these photos I miss Google Camera on the OnePlus 7 Pro.”
Here are the full (rumored) specifications of the Google Pixel 4a. The phone will launch later this month at an expected retail price of $400. While the Pixel 4a likely won’t have the best hardware at this price point, it will still most likely be a worthy contender for the best mid-range smartphone in the U.S. thanks to Google’s stellar software and support.
Rumored Google Pixel 4a Specifications
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 730
GPU: Adreno 618
RAM: 6GB
Internal storage: 64GB UFS 2.1
Display: Single hole-punch 5.81-inch display, 2,340 x 1,080 resolution, 443 dpi, 60Hz refresh rate
Rear camera: 12.2 MP Sony IMX363, f/1.73 aperture, 1.4µm pixels, OIS, EIS, LED flash, 4K video recording, Autofocus
Front camera: 8.0 MP Sony IMX355, f/2.0 aperture, 1.14µm pixels, EIS, Fixed focus
The Google Cast protocol is one of Google’s most useful services as it enables you to quickly play music, videos, podcasts, and more on your compatible smart speaker, smart display, TV, and more devices after finding the content you want to play on your Android device. Android TV devices are compatible with Google Cast, and now you can add them to speaker groups in the Google Home app.
Last night, Twitter user @androidtv_rumor noticed (via 9to5Google) that he was able to add his NVIDIA SHIELD TV to a speaker group that includes a Google Nest Hub smart display and Google Home Mini smart speaker. He says that this feature was enabled via an update to version 1.47.207274 for the pre-installed “Chromecast built-in” app. Another Twitter user confirmed that they were able to add their SHIELD TV to a speaker group after receiving this update.
Got an update for the Chromecast Built-in app on my Shield TV yesterday and I can now add my #AndroidTV in a speaker group ! Finally pic.twitter.com/gEEYUb9kMG
Creating a speaker group is a handy feature in the Google Home app as it allows you to cast media to multiple Google Cast devices simultaneously. The ability to add Google Cast devices to speaker groups was initially only available for Google Home smart speakers, Chromecast Audio devices, and other Google Cast-enabled speakers. In November of 2018, Google rolled out the ability to add Chromecasts to speaker groups in the Google Home app. Android TV devices have built-in Google Cast functionality but only now are they getting the ability to be added to speaker groups.
In case you haven’t received this update to the “Chromecast built-in” app yet, you can sign up for the beta program on the Google Play Store. Then, open up the Google Home app to see if you can add your Android TV device to a speaker group.
VLC Media Player is a free and open source media player from VideoLAN. The popular media player is available on numerous platforms, including for Android, Android TV, and Chrome OS. Version 3.3.0 beta has now been released for Android devices, and it brings a redesigned UI with bottom navigation.
Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president of VideoLAN and one of VLC’s lead developers, took to Reddit to announce the release and to seek feedback on the new UI. He explained that the new update brings VLC’s UI closer to Google’s Material Theme guidelines, makes the media player more compatible with gesture navigation in Android, and introduces a lot of UI tricks and animations to make the app feel more native.
He also shared the following screenshots that show off the new UI in VLC for Android:
Screenshots of VLC 3.3.0 beta for Android. Source: VideoLAN
VLC 3.3.0 beta media player UI on Android. Source: VideoLAN
On Twitter, VideoLAN engineer Nicolas Pomepuy shared additional details about the changes introduced in VLC version 3.3.0 beta. First, he says the transition to the bottom navigation bar was done to reduce the number of taps needed to go from one screen to another. Next, the removal of the fully colored toolbar was done to obtain a more modern design, but VideoLAN is keeping VLC’s iconic orange color throughout the UI to retain the brand’s identity. While the team prefers displaying content in cards, they leave it up to users to decide if they want to switch to a standard list view. In addition, users can now create custom groups in case the automatically sorted video collections aren’t enough. The browsing screen has been reworked to place the local and network browsing in the same place, the dark theme has been reworked to be darker than before, and finally, more corners in the UI have been rounded.
You can sign up for the VLC beta program on Google Play here and then download the latest beta release from the Play Store. If you don’t see the update yet, you can skip the wait by sideloading version 3.3.0 beta 1 from APKMirror. The source code for VLC for Android, Android TV, and Chrome OS is available here.
As noted previously, VideoLAN is actively seeking feedback on this latest VLC release. You can file a bug report here or leave a comment on the team’s Reddit post here.
Last week, Xiaomi announced the latest version of its Android-based software for its Mi and Redmi smartphones—MIUI 12. The update adds a plethora of useful features as we noted in our hands-on. Xiaomi has started rolling out MIUI 12 closed beta builds for a handful of devices in China, but now there’s a better way to try the latest software features thanks to the Xiaomi.EU team.
Xiaomi’s MIUI China software releases aren’t intended to be used by global users. MIUI China only has Mandarin and English as languages, lacks Google apps, and comes with a bunch of Chinese services that aren’t of any use outside of the country. The team at Xiaomi.EU takes MIUI China and translates the strings to more languages, adds Google apps, and removes various Chinese services so global users can enjoy bleeding edge MIUI features. In addition, Xiaomi.EU also unlocks a bunch of features that Xiaomi restricts to certain device models or are otherwise hidden in MIUI. Their latest release is based on the Chinese MIUI 12 beta builds and is available on over 2 dozen Mi and Redmi smartphones.
Xiaomi.EU MIUI 12 Changelog
Update to MIUI 12. You have to install this update MANUALLY – updater wouldn’t work.
System
Dark mode 2.0 (automatically adjust font weight and contrast depending on conditions)
New layout of most views
New animations
Floating windows
More focus on privacy (virtual ID, permissions control, notifications about using permissions)
Notification bar
Now you can choose between 2 views (swipe from upper left to open notification bar, from upper right to open Control center – toggles view) or old style (“Use Control center” option disabled)
Control center with new toggles view
Screen time
Visual changes, new layout
Camera
New app version – only on selected devices (on all devices until end of May)
Scanner
You can generate QR code on the settings
You can turn on Scanner history
Home screen
Floating windows
Messaging
Promotional messages are grouped according to their content now
New layout of “new message”
Weather
New layout
Gallery
More sky filters
Transitions on video editor
Calendar
You can search events now
UI designed for vertical and horizontal views
Health
New design
Dark mode support
Support for Xiaomi Watch as data source
App vault
You can see percentage of connected Bluetooth devices
The initial list of 28 Xiaomi Mi and Redmi devices that Xiaomi.EU based on MIUI 12 supports includes the following:
The team dropped support for the Redmi Note 8 Pro due to issues with bricking that can’t be easily recovered from.
Here’s a chart that Xiaomi.EU published showing all the devices that are supported in this release, their Android OS versions, and whether rollback protection is enabled in this release.
You can download Xiaomi.EU’s MIUI 12 release on the team’s SourceForge or AndroidFileHost pages and read the release notes on the team’s official website.
