Tech News - Mobile

With Google+ shutting down because of a data vulnerability, Google has been working towards providing users better security for their data. On Monday, it introduced new policies that aim to provide users a better security for their data. These new policies are focused on Gmail APIs and will go into effect on January 9, 2019. Furthermore, yesterday in its hardware event Google announced that they have integrated the Titan security chip to the newly launched Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, and Pixel Slate. What are the newly introduced security policies? The following policies will be applied to the apps accessing user data from consumer Google accounts: Application types allowed to access the covered APIs Only the following application types will be permitted to access these APIs: Source: Google Now users will get additional warnings if they are allowing applications to access their email without regular direct interaction. The applications will also need to re-consent to access user emails at regular intervals. The right use of user data According to this policy, third-party apps must access these APIs only to use the data in order to provide user-facing features. They should not transfer or sell the data for other purposes such as ads, market research, email campaign tracking, and other unrelated purposes. Applications are permitted to use data from a user’s email if they are using it for the direct benefit of a user and not for market research. Also, human review of email data must be strictly limited. Apps will have to pass assessments to ensure data security To reduce the risk of data breach, third-party apps handling Gmail data will have to meet minimum security standards. Apps will need to demonstrate secure data handling with a series of assessments. These assessments include: Application penetration testing External network penetration testing Account deletion verification Reviews of incident response plans Vulnerability disclosure programs Information security policies Accessing only the information you need Applications will be given limited API access to only the information necessary to implement the application. For instance, if an app does not need full or read access and only requires send capability, they will be allowed to only request narrower scopes so that the app only accesses data needed for its features. Applications that are accessing the covered Gmail APIs can submit an application beginning from January 9, 2019, and must submit a review by February 15, 2019. These applications will be reviewed for compliance with the policies described above. After that, developers need to complete a security assessment by a third party assessor for which they will be charged a fee ranging between $15,000 to $75,000. This fee is due whether or not the app passes the assessment. Titan Security chip comes to Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, and Pixel Slate Google announced in yesterday’s hardware event that they have integrated their in-house Titan Security chip into the newly launched Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, and Pixel Slate, making for a more secure experience for users. Google in a blog post said: “We’re committed to the security of our users. We need to offer simple, powerful ways to safeguard your devices. We’ve integrated Titan Security, the system we built for Google, into our new mobile devices. Titan Security protects your most sensitive on-device data by securing your lock screen and strengthening disk encryption.” The Titan Security system was first introduced last year for Google Cloud Platform. It is a low-power, phishing-resistant two-factor authentication (2FA) microchip. This chip is used to secure the lockscreen, strengthen disk encryption, and protect the integrity of the operating system. Rick Osterloh, senior vice president of hardware, said during the event: "By combining Titan Security both in the data center and on device, we've created a closed loop for your data across the Google ecosystem." To read the full list of policies, check out Google’s official announcement. Also read the announcement about their newly launched mobile devices: Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, and Pixel Slate. Google opts out of Pentagon’s $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract, as it doesn’t align with its ethical use of AI principles Google reveals an undisclosed bug that left 500K Google+ accounts vulnerable in early 2018; plans to sunset Google+ consumer version Ex-googler who quit Google on moral grounds writes to Senate about company’s “Unethical” China censorship plan

In the Microsoft Surface event in New York last week, they announced a new application called Your Phone. It will work with Windows 10. The Windows phone has been dead for over two years now after Microsoft trying really hard to give it momentum. They had even acquired Nokia, a once market dominant phone maker to make Windows phones. But all of that did not work since there just weren’t enough apps to make it appealing for people to buy the handsets. The Android app mirroring feature will be available as a part of the Your Phone app for Windows 10. The app will be out with the Windows 10 October 2018 Update. https://twitter.com/Windows/status/1047224970403667969 The app mirroring is easier to achieve with Android because it is more open than iOS. After acknowledging the death of Windows Phone, Microsoft took steps to accept it and push their apps to other Mobile operating systems. This includes the release of MS Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for both Android and iOS. They even launched a launcher for Android called the Microsoft Launcher which has over 10M downloads. Microsoft launcher brings Microsoft’s own services and Office apps connectivity to your Android phone’s home screen. It even supports the Windows 10 Timeline feature allowing you to resume Microsoft apps and sites across devices. Microsoft has now come to terms with the fact that people don’t need the Windows OS on a phone, there are better OSes already running on majority of the smartphones. Microsoft is trying to embrace other OSes as the ‘mobile version of Windows’. Android in particular, as it has less restrictions and allows incorporation of more features. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO303V2bQsg The demo video displays the use of the app on an Android phone, it is not clear whether it will make it to iOS in the future. If you can access Android apps on Windows PC, you are less likely to use your phone while using a PC. Microsoft announces new Surface devices to enhance user productivity, with style and elegance A decade of Android: Slayer of Blackberry, challenger of iPhone, mother of the modern mobile ecosystem .NET Core 2.0 reaches end of life, no longer supported by Microsoft

MagicLeap has announced that they are acquiring Computes Inc to bring in advancements in the field of computing. Computess Inc had already been working in the field of decentralized mesh computing. With MagicLeap, they will now be bringing their platform to the world of spatial computing. “With over 27 billion connected devices in the world today (and growing), the Computes platform provides us with the necessary building blocks to make spatial computing available to everyone,” said Gus Pinto, VP of Product and Engineering. Computes Inc’s decentralized processing unit (DPU) orchestrates sophisticated machine learning algorithms, massively parallel computations, and large datasets in a peer-to-peer (P2P) fashion. Their services are available across datacenter, cloud, edge network, operating system, mobile or IoT device, and web browsers. With this new collaboration, Computes Inc will be working on developing a new set of computing services for developers, creators, enterprises, and end-users to help them leverage the power of spatial computing on any platform. MagicLeap will be using Computes Inc’s mesh computing to power their Computes heavy Mixed Reality and Augmented Reality services by grouping systems to push resources to the devices that need it most. With Computes Inc on board, Magic Leap may also expand its augmented reality technology to other devices. Chris Matthieu, one of the founders of Computes Inc talks about this collaboration stating, “As you know, Jade and I started Computes, Inc. based on the principle of enabling the next generation of computing, and we believe Magic Leap is the perfect home for us to achieve this vision.” Read more about the announcement on Magic Leap. Magic Leap teams with Andy Serkis’ Imaginarium Studios to enhance Augmented Reality. Understanding the hype behind Magic Leap’s New Augmented Reality Headsets. Magic Leap One, the first mixed reality headsets by Magic Leap, is now available at $2295.

Apple made its personal assistant, Siri more powerful in iOS 12 by launching Siri Shortcuts and the Shortcuts app on September 17. You can now choose from existing or create custom shortcuts for your device to accomplish everyday tasks. A shortcut is nothing but a quick way to get things done with your apps, with just a tap or by asking Siri. Siri Shortcuts Siri now learns from your phone usage and based on that suggests, simple and useful shortcuts. You can then add these shortcuts to Siri, and the next time you want to do that task, just ask Siri to do it for you by saying the phrase to run the shortcut. Shortcuts app Along with shortcuts suggested by Siri, you can use the Shortcuts app to automate your daily tasks. You can choose from several ready-made shortcuts or create custom shortcuts. It enables you to create personal shortcuts with multiple steps, also called actions from your favorite apps. Shortcuts that you create or choose from the Gallery are stored in the Library section of the app. Once you have added the shortcuts from the app Gallery or created your own, you can launch them in the app, from iOS Today View, from your iOS Home screen, or by asking Siri. Some of the things you can do with Shortcuts You can make animated GIFs Create PDFs from Safari or any app with a share sheet Get directions to the nearest coffee shop in one tap Tweet the song you're listening to Get all of the images on a web page Send a message including the last screenshot you took Moving text from one app to another Generating expense reports Shortcuts are getting very popular, so much so that there is a subreddit dedicated to sharing different ideas for creating shortcuts. You can get the Shortcuts app from the App Store. Read more about Shortcuts on Apple’s official website. Apple buys Shazam, and will soon make the app ad-free iPhone XS and Apple Watch details leaked hours before product launch Apple announces a Special Event to reportedly launch new products including “iPhone XS” and OS updates

Raph Levien, an ex-software engineer at Google’s Fuchsia project, announced yesterday that Fuchsia’s Xi editor is no longer a Google-owned project. It is now being hosted in its own GitHub organization. Xi editor was a Google project to create a performant text editor. All editing operations are asynchronous, so the UI is responsive even when editing huge documents. It is used as the basis for text editing services in the Fuchsia operating system. Raph had started working on the Xi editor at his time in Google, where he had been working for 11 years. The Xi editor is thoroughly async with a loosely coupled design which promises performance and rich extensibility. It’s main aim as stated in the project’s abstract is to “push the state of computer science for text handling and build an open-source community for teaching and learning, and working together to create a joyful editing experience.” After his departure from Google in August, he gave an update yesterday on how that will affect Xi’s development going forward. Per his blog, Xi’s core and its Windows and Mac client projects are now under their own xi-editor organization. They had previously been hosted on Google’s GitHub organization where it was a part of Google’s Contributor License Agreement. As per this agreement, Google can use and distribute a developer’s code without taking away its ownership. The new Xi editor project, licensed under the Apache 2 license, also has a new set of contributor guidelines, which explains in more detail what their process will be going forward. Raph stated in his blog, that since he will be busy with creating a music synthesis game, he is inviting contributors to “help share the load, reviewing each other’s code, discussing desired features and implementation strategies for them, and then assigning issues to me when they need my review.” He further adds, “I’m hopeful this will grow a scalable and sustainable structure for the community.” Regarding the state of the Fuchsia front-end, he mentions that it’s still early days for Fuchsia and the platform is not really ready for end-user software or self-hosted development. “ I’m hopeful it will get there in time and feel that xi-editor will be a great fit for it at that time. I look forward to continuing to collaborate with the Fuchsia team and others within Google.” Read Raph’s announcement on his blog. Google Fuchsia: What’s all the fuss about? Is Google planning to replace Android with Project Fuchsia? Google’s Smart Display – A push towards the new OS, Fuchsia

Mozilla announced a major update to Firefox Focus, a free and open-source privacy-focused browser by Mozilla for Android, iOS smartphones and tablets, yesterday. Firefox Focus allows you to stay “focused” by automatically blocking ads and trackers. The new updates explore new features, revamped design, and GeckoView Technology behind Firefox Focus for Android. New Features There are three new features added in Firefox Focus, namely, home screen tips, search suggestions, and Siri shortcut for iOS users. Home Screen tips It’s good news for people who like to keep tabs on feature releases. Now, you can see the core functionalities of Firefox Focus on the start screen. This will provide an overview of the whole range of possibilities that your privacy browser needs to offer. More than that, this new addition will not interrupt the usage at all and will get automatically refreshed after every click on the Erase button. All you need to do is just open the browser and a bunch of helpful feature recommendations will be presented in your preferred language on the start screen (Android). However, for iOS users, this feature is currently available only in the English language. Search Suggestions Search suggestions make the entire searching process more convenient. You can activate the feature by opening the app and select settings > “Search” > select the checkbox “Get search suggestions”. Now, keeping in mind the privacy of the Firefox Focus users, you don’t have to share what you’re typing in the address bar with your search provider. The search suggestions feature has been turned “off” by default, so you can choose whether or not you want to turn it on. Siri shortcuts for iOS users Siri shortcuts have been added to the updated Firefox Focus. You can now set and open a favorite website, erase and open Firefox, as well as erase in the background using Siri shortcuts. Mozilla’s aim with this was to improve the Firefox Focus experience for iOS users. Revamped Design Visual design for Firefox Focus browser has been completely optimized for the recently released Android Pie. New icons, a customized URL bar, and a simplified settings menu make Firefox Focus easier to use. It also offers a consistent user experience. New engine for Firefox Android users Focus has been using Android’s built-in WebView all this time, but it has some limitations. WebView is not designed for building browsers. To add next-generation privacy features to Focus, Focus developers require deep access to the browser internals. This is why, they have opted for their own engine, Gecko. Firefox Focus is now based on GeckoView, Mozilla’s own mobile engine, making it perfect for use in Android apps. GeckoView will help them leverage all of their Firefox expertise to build more compelling, safe, and robust online experiences. GeckoView will enable Mozilla to implement unique privacy-enhancing features in the future, such as reducing the potential of a third-party collection. For more information, check out the official Mozilla website. Mozilla releases Firefox 62.0 with better scrolling on Android, a dark theme on macOS, and more Firefox Nightly browser: Debugging your app is now fun with Mozilla’s new ‘time travel’ feature Firefox Nightly’s Secure DNS Experimental Results out

Facebook Oculus' annual virtual reality developer conference, ‘The Oculus Connect 5 2018’ started yesterday on the 26th of September, in San Jose, California. It is a two-day event that ends today. This conference brings together VR developers from all around the world having an expertise in a variety of platforms and mediums. This is to push collaboration and share ideas that can bring the VR industry forward. Day 1 of Oculus Connect 5 was full of exciting news and announcements including the launch of Oculus Quest VR headset, Oculus platform updates, Oculus Go getting youtube VR, a three-part Vader Immortal Star Wars VR experience, and much more! Let’s have a look at some of these exciting announcements from Oculus Connect 5 2018. Oculus Quest VR headset revealed Oculus Quest is the first all-in-one VR gaming system by Oculus. It will be launched in Spring 2019. It comes with six degrees of freedom (6DOF), and touch controllers. The best thing is that it doesn’t come with an additional baggage of a PC, wires, and external sensors.  Oculus Quest The Oculus team also presented ‘Oculus Insight’ that uses four ultra wide-angle sensors along with computer vision algorithms. This helps track your exact position in real time without requiring any external sensors. Oculus Quest includes similar optics as Oculus Go along with a display resolution of 1600x1440 per eye. It also incorporates a lens spacing adjustment for enhanced visual comfort. The built-in audio system has been improved with bass up for higher quality sound effects. After its launch in Spring 2019, Oculus Quest will also launch a library with 50 VR apps including popular games like Robo Recall, The Climb, and Moss. Oculus Go getting YouTube VR Another exciting announcement made at the Oculus Connect 5 event was Oculus bringing YouTube VR to its Oculus Go VR headset. Oculus Go VR headset will now have access to more than 800,000 360-degree videos as a result of a partnership with Google’s YouTube service. This YouTube VR service will launch on the headset soon, as announced by Oculus Go product manager, Sean Liu at the Oculus Connect 5 conference. Oculus Venues adding NBA pro basketball games Now Oculus Venue, a concert and sports events app by Oculus has added the world’s most popular sports to the platform, NBA pro basketball games. As per the announcement at the Oculus Connect 5 conference,  NBA games will be available in Oculus Venues later this year. Also, viewers accessing NBA game in VR will be getting a custom virtual jersey of their favorite team which their avatar will be able to wear for the rest of the game season. Apart from that, Oculus Venues is planning on adding a lot more live music, movie marathons, and stand up comedy. Also, everyone who will be attending an NBA game in VR will get a special jersey for their avatar. Oculus Go cast support Another announcement made at the Oculus Connect 5 conference was cast support being added to Oculus Go. This will enable the Go users with the capability to stream their gameplay experience to other screens. As of now, the main focus is on enabling the users to cast Go screen to mobile devices. However, casting Go screen will be available for TV screens too in the near future, as mentioned by Sean Liu, Oculus Go product manager. A three-part Star Wars series - Vader Immortal Another super exciting announcement made at Oculus Connect 5 was the arrival of the first episode of a three-part VR series, called VR immortal. The series is based on Darth Vader and would be premiering with the upcoming Oculus Quest headsets. Vader Immortal  Vader Immortal is being created with David S. Goyer, who is the screenwriter behind films like The Dark Knight trilogy. Vader Immortal explores the events that take place in Secrets of the Empire and between the Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. It will also explore the Darth Vader's castle as seen in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Gaming Announcements Apart from 50 titles for the Oculus Quest at the launch, there are a bunch of other Game Announcements that were made at Oculus Connect 5 2018. Insomniac Games’ Stormland, an action-adventure game which lets you play as a robot, will be launched in 2019. First look at Ready At Dawn’s Lone Echo II, the sequel to Lone Echo I, one of the most critically acclaimed games. Vox Machinae out, the mech simulator game had a surprise launch yesterday for Oculus Rift at the Oculus Connect 5 2018 conference. Fans of giant robots and elaborate cockpits would love this game! Other Oculus platform Announcements Work in ongoing on Avatars. Expressive Avatars with better eye and mouth movements expected later this year. The Oculus mobile app has now added support for Rift. This will enable you to have access to events, friends, and the Oculus store directly from your phone. For more information on Oculus Quest, visit the official Oculus Quest website. What’s new in VR Haptics? Game developers say Virtual Reality is here to stay Why mobile VR sucks

GraphicsFuzz, the online graphics testing framework quietly went open source on Monday. There is no official announcement as of now and they are still transitioning to being open source. GraphicsFuzz was acquired by Google earlier this August. GraphicsFuzz is a testing framework that automatically finds and simplifies bugs in graphics shader compilers. The tools currently manipulate GLSL shaders but other targets like SPIR-V, HLSL and Metal can also be tested directly. Google acquired GraphicsFuzz mainly for its mobile graphics card benchmarking GraphicsFuzz finds bugs in the graphics drivers of a device by rendering families of semantically similar shaders. It looks out for discrepancies in rendering and similarities, a process known as metamorphic testing. A total of 15 tests are run and for each bug the reducer saves a lot of debugging time. It this by producing a simpler minimal-difference test case that is still able to expose the bug. The testing process on an Android phone takes a couple of minutes and for some shades it asks the user if the two rendered images are similar. The GitHub repository is under an Apache 2.0 license and there is not Commons Clause attached right now. Note that the repository is a work-in-progress and not an officially supported Google product yet. You can check out the GitHub repository. Google buys GraphicsFuzz, bringing fuzzy logic and metamorphic testing to Android graphics drivers Google’s second innings in China: Exploring cloud partnerships with Tencent and others All new Android apps on Google Play must target API Level 26 (Android Oreo) or higher, to publish

Apple announced that it has finished acquiring Shazam, a widely popular and highly rated music app, earlier this week. Shazam is a music discovery app which currently has more than 100 million monthly active users and has been downloaded over 1 billion times around the world. It allows users to discover and identify songs with just a few clicks. “Apple and Shazam have a long history together. Shazam was one of the first apps available when we launched the App Store and it has become a favorite app for music fans everywhere,” mentioned Oliver Schusser, Vice President, Apple Music, in the press release. The price of this acquisition hasn’t been specified anywhere, but as per Recode, it is estimated to be around $400 million. The news of this acquisition comes three weeks after the EU regulators gave a go-ahead signal to Apple. When Apple mentioned about its plans to buy Shazam for $400 million back in December 2017, EU regulators started an investigation into this acquisition. This was over the concern that Apple’s acquisition of Shazam would potentially give Apple an unfair advantage over its rivals such as Spotify. “At this stage, the Commission is concerned that, following the takeover of Shazam, Apple would obtain access to commercially sensitive data about customers of its competitors. Access to such data could allow Apple to directly target its competitors' customers and encourage them to switch to Apple Music. As a result, the competing music streaming services could be put at a competitive disadvantage”, reads the EU  press release. Users all around the world identify songs using the Shazam app over 20 million times every day. Additionally, it helps people share video, audio or printed content across different devices and mediums. It also helps music fans follow their favorite artists. Whether Apple has plans of integrating the Shazam app with Apple music or not requires another official announcement. For now, Apple aims to make Shazam ad-free. This will ensure that users are able to enjoy music, without any form of interruption. “With a shared love of music and innovation, we are thrilled to bring our teams together to provide users even more great ways to discover, experience and enjoy music”, mentions Schusser. For more information, check out Apple’s official announcement. Apple stocks soar just shy of $1 Trillion market cap as revenue hits $53.3 Billion in Q3 earnings 2018 Apple releases iOS 12 beta 2 with screen time and battery usage updates among others Apple announces a Special Event to reportedly launch new products including “iPhone XS” and OS updates

macOS Mojave was released yesterday with plenty of new features and a bypass flaw. The public beta was released in June at Apple’s annual developer conference, WWDC 2018. The final version has now been released with visual, utility and security improvements. The changes make macOS more clutter free. There are also certain changes made to the Mac store, iTunes, Safari and some other Apple applications. A new dark mode The new Apple macOS Mojave brings a new dark mode that is system-wide and covers all applications made by Apple. This includes the file browser, Mac App Store, and Xcode among others. The controls go into the background while focusing on what is on the screen for better focus. Third party applications using standard colors via the AppKit will also be adopting the new theme. Desktop changes in macOS Mojave The desktop picture changes throughout the day via Dynamic Desktop. It mimics sunlight and gives an effect of day or night in the desktop. For example, it is dark in the early morning, bright at noon and gets dark again at night. Similar file types can be stacked together to keep your desktop clutter-free.  For example, all PDFs in one stack, images in one, spreadsheets in one, and so on. The files can also be grouped by dates and tags. Finder and Quick Look Files can be found with ease using large previews in Gallery View. All the metadata for all file types is now displayed in the Preview pane. There are shortcuts like rotating an image, creating a PDF, and more all from the Finder using Quick Actions. You can mark up and sign PDFs, crop images, and trim audio and video files via Quick Look. macOS Mojave makes the Finder look for and do certain tasks with abilities to quickly locate a file by how it looks, instantly see metadata, and perform Quick Actions on files without even opening any application. These quick actions can be performed to multiple files at once. More screenshot options Taking screenshots is now easier and just a click away for various kinds of screenshots. Once a screenshot is captured, a small preview is shown on the corner of your screen. You can then click on it and edit the screenshot taken. There is also a new easy to use menu with options for screen recording tools and the option to choose where the screenshot is saved including saving to the clipboard. You can also drag the preview to insert the screenshot into a document. Continuity camera on iPhone macOS Mojave comes with a new feature called Continuity camera. If you click a picture of an object or scan a document with your iPhone, it will automatically appear on your Mac. This way you can quickly click a picture or scan a document and insert it into the document you’re working on. Continuity camera works with different applications like Finder, Mail, Messages, Notes, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. New apps brought to macOS The Mac App Store now has handpicked apps in the new Discover, Create, Work, and Play tabs. Apps from iOS, Apple News, Stocks, Voice Memos and Home are now available in macOS Mojave redone to fit a computer screen. On iTunes, you can search lyrics with a few words you remember and listen to what your friends are listening to. More security controls There are better controls for accessing the camera or microphone on macOS Mojave. There are options to allow or deny when an application is trying to access them. This applies to messages history and mail database. There is also improved intelligent tracking prevention to keep embedded content like social media like buttons, share buttons and comments from tracking you without your permission. Safari now automatically creates, stores and autofills strong passwords for the user. macOS also flags existing passwords that have been reused in Safari for easily updating them. A Privacy flaw allowing unauthorized access Speaking of security and privacy, there is also a flaw in the new macOS Mojave. In a video, Patrick Wardle, an experienced macOS hacker demonstrates a privacy flaw in macOS Mojave. Wardle shows that the security in macOS Mojave can be bypassed to gain access to sensitive user data, like address book information. As told to the Bleeping Computer, "I found a trivial, albeit 100% reliable flaw in their implementation," He also added that it allows a malicious or untrusted app to bypass the new security mechanism and access the sensitive details without authorization. https://vimeo.com/291491984 Wardle tweeted that the improved privacy protections in macOS are not delivered. And this is not specific to the new dark mode, any mode is vulnerable. Source: Twitter Wardle plans to share the specifics and more details about the vulnerability at Objective By the Sea, a Mac security conference to be held in November. You can upgrade to macOS Mojave from the Apple website. macOS gets RPCS3 and Dolphin using Gfx-portability, the Vulkan portability implementation for non-Rust apps Google open sources Filament – a physically based rendering engine for Android, Windows, Linux and macOS macOS Mojave: Apple updates the Mac experience for 2018

Yesterday, Google announced the stable release of Android Studio 3.2 with a variety of new features and improvements. This version comes with 20+ features including Android App Bundle, Energy Profiler, and Android Emulator Snapshots. What’s new in Android Studio 3.2 Android App Bundle With Android App Bundle, the new app publishing format, you can deliver smaller APKs to your users and reduce the download size of your app. Once Google Play has your app bundle, it uses an app serving model named Dynamic Delivery. This serving model processes your app bundle to generate and serve optimized APKs for each user's device configuration. This eliminates your efforts of building, signing, and managing multiple APKs to support different devices, and users get smaller, more optimized downloads. Android Studio 3.2 provides you a CLI, using which you can easily build your code as an app bundle. Energy Profiler Battery life is one of the key concerns of users, so it is important to check the energy consumption done by your app. Energy Profiler helps you find where your app is using more energy than necessary. With the Energy Profiler, you can visualize the estimated energy usage of system components, plus inspect background events that may lead to battery drainage. To use it, ensure you are connected to an Android device or emulator running Android 8.0 Oreo (API 26) or higher. Slices support Slices are UI templates that can be used to display rich, dynamic, and interactive content from your app in the Google Search suggestions and Google Assistant. Built-in templates are available, to help you extend your app with the new Slice Provider APIs. You can also do lint checks to ensure that you're following best practices when constructing the Slices. To start constructing your Slices, right-click on your project folder, and navigate to New | Other | Slice Provider. Sample data You can now add sample data to a TextView, an ImageView, or a RecyclerView from within the Layout Editor. This will make it easier for you to visualize the look and feel of a layout while designing your app. ‘What's New’ assistant This newly added assistant panel automatically informs developers about the latest changes in the IDE. You can also open the panel by navigating to Help | What's New in Android Studio. AndroidX Refactoring Support You can now add the Android extension (AndroidX) libraries in a new project by adding the following line in your gradle.properties file: android.useAndroidX=true To help you migrate your project to the new namespace and dependencies, Android Studio 3.2 provides you a new built-in refactoring action. Also, the Android Studio build system will automatically convert any Maven dependencies that have not migrated to the AndroidX namespace. With Android Studio 3.2 and higher, you can quickly migrate an existing project to use AndroidX by selecting Refactor > Migrate to AndroidX from the menu bar. IntelliJ Platform and Kotlin update Android Studio 3.2 comes with IntelliJ 2018.1.6 platform release and  Kotlin 1.2.61. Many improvements to dataflow analysis, debugging, new inspections, have been added to this release of IntelliJ. Kotlin 1.2.61 provides support for the Kotlin-friendly Android 9 Pie SDK. Emulator Snapshots With the latest Android Emulator, you can create a snapshot of the current state of your emulator and boot up and switch into any snapshot in under 2 seconds. In Android Studio 3.2, Android Snapshots are even faster to save and load due to underlying speed enhancements. Using Android snapshots you can pre-configure an Android Virtual Device (AVD) with the presets, apps, data, and settings that you want in-place, and repeatedly go back to the same snapshot. Microsoft Hyper-V and AMD processor support Google has finally addressed this long-standing user request from the Android developer community. Now you can run the Android Emulator on Windows 10 computers that have Hyper-V enabled while Intel HAXM remains the default hypervisor. Support for AMD processor is added to provide developers hardware-accelerated performance. Screen Record in Android Emulator With the new screen recording feature in the Android Emulator, you can now perform screen and audio recording on any Android API and save this recording to a WebM or animated GIF file. You can enable this feature via the Android Emulator Extended Controls panel, command line, or from Android Studio. These were few of the features that they have added, and there are more to explore. You can find the full list at Android Developer Blog. Entry level phones to taste the Go edition of the Android 9.0 Pie version Did you know your idle Android device sends data to Google 10 times more often than an iOS device does to Apple? 6 common challenges faced by Android App developers

Yesterday, the Torch community announced the launch of Torch AR, a 3D design platform connecting the world of web and mobile application design to spatial computing. Designing and creating in 3D is tricky at times and requires special knowledge and skills to use 3Dcomputer-aided design apps or code from scratch. With the help of Torch AR, the Torch 3D Inc attempts to offer a mobile augmented reality (AR) prototyping and design app that lets users build interactive 3D prototypes quickly and easily. With the new Torch AR app, users will be able to: build interactive prototypes collaborate on projects in real-time work with existing 3D and 2D files, tools or workflows All this, using the same mobile device where the finished apps will run on. The community has only launched the first piece of a platform and not the complete application. Torch AR will continue to evolve and improve resulting in an app that can not only prototype, but also build, distribute, and manage user’s spatial application. Features of the new Torch AR platform The power to design in 3D Users can easily design and build prototypes on their devices, in 3D, using augmented reality features. This takes away the task of constantly switching between the desktop and the device. Apart from a user’s mobile device (iOS, for now, Android soon), there’s no special hardware required. Also, users need not have game development or coding experience to build in Torch AR. Free to use with collaboration in real-time Torch AR is free of charge for all users. Even if more features and services are built, the design environment released today will remain free. Projects built, can be shared with anyone. They can also be viewed for free in Torch. Many users can simultaneously work together in real-time from anywhere and can even iterate on designs in minutes. Build interactive prototypes Torch's interactions system lets users go beyond simple AR sticker apps to build powerful multi-scene augmented reality experiences. Add Sketchfab model with a swipe Now users can add the perfect Sketchfab model to their project in a few seconds with a swipe. Sketchfab is the largest platform to publish and find 3D models online. Alban Denoyel, CEO and co-founder of Sketchfab, says, “With Torch, you can just search, then drag and drop Sketchfab models into a scene and start prototyping. Torch’s focus on making 3D prototyping easy is a perfect complement to Sketchfab’s focus on providing diverse and qualitative 3D assets.” To know more about Torch AR head over to the Torch3D blog. Deep Learning with Torch Facebook launched new multiplayer AR games in Messenger 7 AI tools mobile developers need to know

Yesterday, Google announced Flutter Release Preview 2, during the keynote of Google Developer Days in Shanghai. This is the final preview before the Google team releases Flutter 1.0. In this preview release, they have expanded support for the "Cupertino" themed controls and executing Dart code in the background and reduced the package size. Flutter is Google’s new open-source mobile app SDK using which you can quickly create high-quality native interfaces on iOS and Android. What’s new in Flutter Release Preview 2? Extended support for Cupertino themed controls After getting the feedback on Flutter Release Preview 1, this release is designed with keeping Apple interface guidelines in mind. They have expanded support for the "Cupertino" themed controls in Flutter, with an extensive library of widgets and classes. Some of the added iOS-themed widgets are: CupertinoApp, a convenience widget that wraps a number of widgets that are commonly required for an iOS-design targeting application. CupertinoTimerPicker is used to show countdown duration with hour, minute and second spinners. CupertinoSegmentedControl displays the widgets provided in the Map of children in a horizontal list. It is used to select between a number of mutually exclusive options. CupertinoActionSheet is used for a specific style of alert that presents the user with a set of two or more choices related to the current context. Support for executing Dart code in the background In this release, support has been added for executing Dart code in the background, even while the application is suspended.   Reduced package size The application package size is now reduced by up to 30% on both Android and iOS. A minimal Flutter app on Android now weighs just 4.7 MB when built in release mode, and they are continually working towards identifying further potential optimizations. How to upgrade to Flutter Release Preview 2? If you're using the beta release already, you can upgrade to Flutter Release Preview 2 just by running the following: $ flutter upgrade Follow the instructions mentioned on the Flutter blog for upgrading to Flutter Release Preview 2. To know more about Flutter Preview 2 in detail, check out the official announcement by Google. Google Flutter moves out of beta with release preview 1 Google’s Dart hits version 2.0 with major changes for developers Is Google planning to replace Android with Project Fuchsia?

Yesterday, Malte Ubl, tech leader in the AMP project at Google, announced that the AMP Project team is planning to set up an open governance model for the AMP Project. Following this, the team released a proposal for a new, open governance model. The AMP Project team along with the rest of the AMP community plan to refine the governance proposal. They also plan to carry on this process at the AMP Contributor Summit that will be held next week from September 25th to 26th at Google, Mountain View, United States. The review period for the proposal will end on October 25, 2018 with a goal of implementing the new governance model shortly thereafter. Why an open governance model for AMP? Malte Ubl, describes in his post that, “When choosing a governance model (a system that describes how decisions are made) for AMP,  we initially focused on agility. AMP has always been powered by the voices and feedback of the developers and organizations that use it; however, governance was centered around the tech lead, who ultimately decided what got executed and how. While this works great for smaller projects, we’ve found that it doesn’t scale to the size of the AMP Project today.” The AMP Project team wanted to move to a model that could explicitly give a voice to all constituents of the community, including those who cannot contribute code themselves, such as end-users. Thus, the team decided to move on to a consensus-seeking governance model following the footsteps of the Node.js project, which has a similar implementation. AMP currently has an overall 710 contributors which includes only 22% from Google employees, and 78% coming from other companies such as Twitter, Pinterest, Yahoo, and eBay. Interestingly, in the last 30 days alone over 350 contributions landed in AMP! Significant changes in the new open governance model for AMP Power to make decisions now moves to Technical Steering Committee (TSC) The power to make significant decisions in the AMP Project will move from a single Tech Lead to a Technical Steering Committee (TSC). This will include representatives from companies that have committed resources to building AMP, with the end goal of not having any company sit on more than a third of the seats. Plans to set up an Advisory Committee to advise the TSC An Advisory Committee with representation from many of AMP’s constituencies will advise the TSC. Representatives from publishers (El País, Washington Post and Terra), e-commerce sites (AliExpress and eBay) and platforms (Cloudflare and Automattic) as well as advocates for an open web (Léonie Watson of The Paciello Group, Nicole Sullivan of Google/Chrome, and Terence Eden) have agreed to join the Advisory Committee. Working groups will replace informal teams Working Groups with ownership over certain aspects of AMP (such as the UI, infrastructure and documentation) will replace the informal teams that exist today. These Working Groups will have a clear mechanism for input and a well-defined decision-making process. To know more about the goals of the open governance model in detail, head over to Malte Ubl’s post on AMP blog. Google wants web developers to embrace AMP. Great news for users, more work for developers Microsoft Azure’s new governance DApp: An enterprise blockchain without mining Progressive Web AMPs: Combining Progressive Wep Apps and AMP

After announcing their plans of introducing a web browser for virtual and augmented reality headsets earlier this year, Mozilla launched Firefox Reality 1.0 yesterday. The browser will be available in the Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream app stores. What features will you find in Firefox Reality? The browser is built from the ground up to work on mixed reality headsets with the following features: Voice search Typing a search query when you are wearing a VR headset is not a pleasant experience. Using Firefox Reality you can search the web using your voice. Smooth and fast performance Firefox Reality uses Quantum engine, which Mozilla calls "the next-generation web engine for Firefox users". With the help of this engine, it provides a smooth, fast, and secure user experience. Switch between 2D and 3D mode Firefox Reality supports both 2D and 3D mode for web search. You can seamlessly switch between these two modes according to your preference. The home screen becomes your entertainment hub You can find games, videos, stories, and other entertainment content directly on the home screen. The mixed reality team is working with more creators around the world to bring more engaging content to the browser. What’s in the future? In the announcement, they have mentioned that they will soon be launching Firefox Reality 1.1. We can expect more features in the coming release such as support for bookmarks, 360 videos, accounts, and more. Mozilla has actively been contributing in the mixed reality world by introducing WebVR, WebAR, and A-Frame. With the release of Firefox Reality they have taken the next step to make it the best browser for mixed reality: “We are in this for the long haul. This is version 1.0 of Firefox Reality and version 1.1 is right around the corner. We have an always-growing list of ideas and features that we are working to add to make this the best browser for mixed reality. We will also be listening and react quickly when we need to provide bug fixes and other minor updates.” To see read more about Firefox Reality, check out Mozilla’s official announcement. Mozilla releases Firefox 62.0 with better scrolling on Android, a dark theme on macOS, and more Firefox Nightly browser: Debugging your app is now fun with Mozilla’s new ‘time travel’ feature Mozilla is building a bridge between Rust and JavaScript