android

How I disabled a lot of Android apps and packages from my tablet to make it run smoother without rooting it or flashing another ROM. Everything is reversable.

As a owner of an LG G4 (retired phone), it was disappointing to see company evolution in the recent years.

First, they didn't want to release Android 7 update for G4 and V10. That means the phones got only one year of software updates. Half of what you usually expect from every other big player. To make matters worse, they change their mind and said they will bring Android 7 (Nougat) update, but phone performance will probably degrade. It's almost a year since they promised the upgrade and they haven't release anything. So probably it's never gonna happen.

Then, they failed with the G5, which had a very bad display and a modular design that made the whole phone to look cheap. G6 was better, but still didn't manage to make a difference and now the LG V30 almost got phone of the year award, if it wasn't for the display issue which affected even Google Pixel phones.

I don't know what's happening - but they are definitely doing something wrong. Until they fix this I will not buy any phone from them, nor do I recommend them to friends.

 

My thoughts regarding the Nokia 8 phone after owning it for a few weeks now.

ArsTechnica has a in-dept article covering new version of the mobile operating system: Android 8.0 Oreo, thoroughly reviewed. My highlights from that article are:

Project Treble

Project Treble introduces a "Vendor Interface"—a standardized interface that sits between the OS and the hardware. As long as the SoC vendor plugs into the Vendor Interface and the OS plugs into the Vendor Interface, an upgrade to a new version of Android should "just work.

So you should get Android updates faster as long the vendor provided firmware is still supported. Google decides which version it will support based on data collected (how many devices are still on that version).

ROMs shouldn't need to be painstakingly hand-crafted for individual devices anymore—a single build should cover multiple Treble devices from multiple manufacturers. Imagine the next time a major new version of Android is released. On Day One of the AOSP code drop, a single build (or a small handful of builds) could cover every Treble device with an unlocked bootloader, with a "download Android 9.0 here" link on XDA or some other technical website.

Also graphics driver can now be updated through Play Store like any other app.

The Great Background Processing Lockdown

Apps can't just run in background using CPU, RAM and battery as they want. With Oreo they are required to show a notification saying that they are doing background work so you get to decide if an app is doing too much or not. Also, some events will not trigger background processing for all apps like before, making the UI more smoother. And to prevent apps for consuming the battery, all the background processing work will be done through a scheduler in batches, allowing phone to "sleep" more to preserve battery.

New Emoji

Why I don't fall for the cheap phones with top specs from less know phone manufacturers from China

This announcement made my day. I will definitely use it for long trips and even while commuting.

Few things you need to know:

• works only on smartphones (iOS and Android)
• all videos have an expiration date and they will be deleted automatically afterwards
• for ~ 1 hour of video you'll need ~280Mb for standard definition or ~ 440Mb for high definition
• you cannot access video with your file manager (similar to Spotify offline content)

Gizmodo has a full article describing how it will work in detail: Everything you need to know about Netflix downloads

Emergency Bulletin: Firefox 0 day in the wild. What to do. (first seen here)

A few hours ago a zero day vulnerability emerged in the Tor browser bundle and the Firefox web browser. Currently it exploits Windows systems with a high success rate and affects Firefox versions 41 to 50 and the current version of the Tor Browser Bundle which contains Firefox 45 ESR.

If you use Firefox, we recommend you temporarily switch browsers to Chrome, Safari or a non-firefox based browser that is secure until the Firefox dev team can release an update. The vulnerability allows an attacker to execute code on your Windows workstation. The exploit is in the wild, meaning it’s now public and every hacker on the planet has access to it. There is no fix at the time of this writing.

App-installing malware found in over 1 million Android phones

A new malware campaign has been discovered in over 1 million Android devices, according to a new report from the security firm Check Point. Dubbed “Googlian” by the firm, the campaign first emerged in August, and is currently compromising devices at a rate of roughly 13,000 per day.