LG Shuffles Mobile Execs Following $331 Million Loss

LG has had a rough go of it lately — and that's putting it mildly. Even breakout hits like the V30 couldn't keep the Seoul, South Korea-based company's mobile division from losing $331 million in the past fiscal quarter. But after successive reorganizations and a renewed focus on reducing manufacturing costs, LG's finally ready to get back in gear. The first order of business? Appointing Hwang Jeong-hwan president and CEO of the Mobile Communications arm.

The promotion comes almost a year in Jo Seong-jin's tenure as Mobile Communications president. Mr. Seong-jin, a 40-year veteran of the company who previously headed LG's home appliance division, failed to turn things around as quickly as company brass would've liked, and was replaced by Juno Cho, the current president. Mr. Cho will take on a new, unannounced role within LG's parent company when Mr. Jeong-hwan steps in.

LG's upper management has a lot of faith in Mr. Jeong-hwan, and not without good reason. He has years of experience in the company's research and development department, and was closely involved in developing one of Mobile Communications division's first smartphones in 2009.

Mr. Jeong-hwan isn't the only executive taking on a new role. Dr. Park Il-pyung, who was previously the head of LG's Software Center, will become Chief Technology Officer. The previous CEO, Dr. Skott Ahn, will move into a brand-new division at LG's headquarters in Seoul. Han Chang-hee, who was most recently vice president of the Appliance Marketing Communications division, will lead the company's Global Marketing Center. And Brian Na, who previously led LG's communications efforts, will assume the role of president of LG's Western Europe operations.

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Source: LG Newsroom

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Samsung’s W2018 Flip Phone Has Dual Displays, a Snapdragon 835 SoC, and a 12MP f/1.5 Camera

After months of leaks and rumors, Samsung on Friday took the wraps off of its latest clamshell phone: The Samsung W2018. It's the successor to the Samsung W2017, which launched around the same time last year, and it marks the 10th anniversary of Samsung's W series.

The Samsung W2018 is unlike most other smartphones on the market, featuring a unique clamshell design with a display panel on either side of its top half. The body of the handset  is made out of metal and glass and measures 132.2 x 63.2mm, with a weight of 247 grams.

As far as specifications are concerned, the Samsung W2018 doesn't skimp. It features two displays: A Full HD 4.2-inch external screen, and a Full HD internal AMOLED display, same as its predecessor. Powering the phone is Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 835 system-on-chip (SoC), which is paired with 4GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage, depending on the model. There's a microSD card slot for expansion, and in terms of optics, the W2108 makes do with a 5MP front shooter and 12MP rear shooter with the industry first f/1.5 aperture, beating even the record-setting LG V30. (Samsung says the aperture will automatically switch between f/2.4 and f/1.5 depending on the lighting condition.)

The battery is unchanged from the last year's model, so you're looking at a 2300mAh capacity battery. But the charging port's been upgraded to USB Type-C port from microUSB, and on the software side of the equation, the W2018 ships with Android 7.1.1 Nougat and Samsung's Bixby voice assistant, which can be accessed from the phone's dedicated Bixby button. There's also a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor on board, too, and support for fast wireless charging.

The W2018 is available in two colors, Elegant Gold and Platinum, and will go on sale in China through China Telecom at an unspecified date. The pricing hasn't been disclosed at this point, but if the Samsung W2017 is any indication, it won't be cheap — it's unclear at this point when, if ever, the device will make its way to markets outside of China.

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Source: Tech Sina (In Chinese) Via: Gizmochina

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Firefox for Android Beta Adds Support for Progressive Web Apps, FLAC, and More

Firefox is one of the most popular web browsers on Android, and Mozilla — the incredible nonprofit behind it — isn't slowing down. Beta 58 has been released on the Google Play Store, hot on the heels of the official and stable release of Firefox Quantum version 57. With it comes a number of key changes, including support for progressive web apps (PWA), the FLAC codec, and new locales.

We've covered PWAs before, including their impending support in Firefox a few weeks back, but here's a quick refresher: They use modern web standards to deliver an app-like experience with animations, smooth scrolling, and offline functionality. What started with Google Chrome a few months ago has begun to percolate through lots of websites — AliExpress, Flipkart, and Forbes all serve PWAs, with more joining the fray every day.

Firefox will now support these applications now, too, though not quite in the same way as Google Chrome — you can't add PWAs shortcuts to your phone's launcher like you can with Chrome, for example. Still, it's a start, and support for PWAs makes it stand out from the competition.

The update also adds support for the FLAC format, a lossless audio codec that's capable of delivering extremely high-quality sound. You won't find much web content in FLAC because the file sizes are generally too large for streaming, but the newfound support will make listening to offline files through Firefox a little easier.

The update's other changes have to do with localization and aesthetic tweaks. There's support for Bangladesh (bn-BD) and Nepali (ne-NP) locales, and the Firefox search widget has been removed.

If you're interested in checking out the latest Firefox beta for yourself, head to the Google Play Store listing. If you're wary of downloading a beta release, though, not to worry — it's likely a matter of months before the stable version hits the Play Store.

Firefox for Android Beta (Free, Google Play) →

 

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Essential Phone Camera Updated with Portrait Mode and More

Essential Products ran into a few organizational setbacks following the launch of its first product, the Essential Phone, but fared better than might have been expected. Reviews for the $700 Essential Phone praised its titanium unibody, magnetic accessory system, and nearly bone-stock, bloat-free flavor of Android. But there was consistent criticism of the camera, which many found lacking compared to comparably-priced phones like the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus and iPhone 7 Plus. The Essential team, undeterred, has been rolling out camera application updates to address those complaints, and on Friday added a portrait shooting mode, reduced compression, and more.

The improvements, which are available directly from the Play Store, follow on the heels of a larger update in October and early November. It increased the capture speed of videos and photos, enhanced low-light performance, added support for 60 frames per second (FPS) monochrome video, improved video stability, and tweaked the user interface (UI).

Early on, the Essential Phone's camera wasn't in great shape — some users went so far as to suggest using an unofficial port of the Google Camera HDR+ application from Google's Nexus and Pixel smartphones. But over the last three months, the Essential team has made substantial inroads, with each camera update making measurable progress.

It's unlikely that all of the Essential Phone camera's problems can be rectified through software, but the startup's doing its best to fix what it can, and that's great to see.

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Source: @essential

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Google Home Now Responds to Chained Commands

The Google Assistant-powered Google Home pretty much does it all. It can give you a weather report and keep you abreast of current events, of course, but it can also broadcast your voice across a room, control smart appliances, manage multiple calendars, and distinguish between different voices. And now, it can juggle more than one of those tasks at the same time.

This week, a crafty redditor discovered that Google Home now recognizes chained commands. They're not like Google Home's voice shortcuts; Instead, you can ask things like, "Show the weather forecast and make a new calendar appointment for the office at 6 p.m.", whereas before, you'd have to split commands into two or more sentences (i.e., "Show the weather forecast," "Make a new calendar appointment for the office at 6 p.m."). It's seamless, and if you use Google Home as often as we do, it's a welcome improvement.

Unfortunately, though, it's only working on the Google Home right now. In our testing, the Google Assistant on Android phones and iPhone still exhibits the old behavior: You have to ask one question and wait for the Assistant to process it before asking another. Here's hoping that chained commands come to more devices in the future.

If anything's for certain, it's that despite the competition, Google's not giving up on Google Home anytime soon. In October, Google announced the Home Mini and the high-end Home Max. The Home Mini is available for $49, and was even included for free with some Google Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL pre-orders.

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Via: /u/ProZsolt

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Google Announces Android Things Developers Preview 6

Almost like clockwork, Google's released a developer preview for Android Things, its Internet of Things (IoT) platform, every couple of months. Each new version fixes bugs, adds new features, and generally improves the performance of projects built on it. On Friday, the company announced the newest: Android Things Developer Preview 6.

For the uninitiated, Android Things (formerly Brillo) is a lightweight operating system (OS) designed for home automation. It lays the foundation for Weave, a communication layer that allows smart home devices to communicate with each other regardless of whether or not they run the same OS. Google sees it as something of a solution to the fragmented smart home industry, where incompatible standards like Z-Wave, Z-Wave, and Bluetooth compete for market dominance.

Following on the heels of improved Chromecast integration, Android Things Developer Preview 6 adds an IoT launcher, new graphics acceleration defaults, and a command-line flashing tool. It's based on the latest Android 8.1 Oreo Developer Preview, and it fully supports the newest Android API Level — Level 27 — and version 11.6 of the Google Play Services software development kit (SDK).

Android Things Developer Preview 6 also makes changes to the Android Things Console, which was released in June of this year. There's a new partition scheme, a revamped user interface, and a safeguard that prevents you from compiling applications for older builds. On the hardware side of things, the OS now includes GPIO pin naming — the IoT launcher shows an I/O pinout at boot that exposes the labels of the individual pins.

That's just scratching the surface. Google goes into more detail about Android Things Developer Preview 6 on the Android Developer Blog, so if you're interested, you'll definitely want to give it a read.

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Source: Android Developers Blog

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Google Announces Google Play’s “Best of 2017”

Tens of thousands of applications are added to the Play Store every day, which is enough to overwhelm anyone. Making matters worse, Google's laissez-faire approval process means that many of those apps aren't exactly best-in-class. That's one reason Google launched the Play Store's Editor's Choice section, which highlights outstanding applications selected by the search giant's editorial team. But for the cream of the crop, there's an even higher honor: Google Play's Best of 2017.

Google Play's Best of 2017 covers more than just applications. Google's gone through all six of the Play Store's categories and picked out the top games, apps, books, movies, TV shows, and songs. "Game of Thrones" nabbed the top TV show spot for the second year in a row, it turns out. Disney's "Moana" was the most popular movie of the year on Google Play. And "Super Mario Run" was the most downloaded game of 2017

Here's a Google-compiled list of 2017's most popular content in the U.S.:

Most popular new apps of 2017

• Photo Editor – Beauty Camera & Photo Filters

• What The Forecast?!!

• Boomerang

• TopBuzz Video: Viral Videos, Funny GIFs &TV shows

• Yarn – Chat Fiction

Most popular new games of 2017

• Super Mario Run

• Bubble Witch 3 Saga

• Magic Tiles 3

• CATS: Crash Arena Turbo Stars

• Ballz

Top five streamed songs of 2017

• HUMBLE. by Kendrick Lamar

• Shape of You by Ed Sheeran

• DNA. by Kendrick Lamar

• Mask Off by Future

• Body Like A Back Road by Sam Hunt

Top five movies of 2017

• Moana

• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

• Wonder Woman (2017)

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

• Doctor Strange

Top five TV shows of 2017

• Game of Thrones

• Rick and Morty

• The Walking Dead

• The Big Bang Theory

• Doctor Who

Top five books of 2017

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

• It by Stephen King

• The Battlemage by Taran Matharu

• Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

To complement its list of top finds, Google's launched a Best of 2017 landing page in the Play Store for its editorial team's selections. For example, you can check out the Best Games of 2017 list, which covers categories including Most Competitive, Best Indie, Most Popular, Best for Kids, and more.

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Source: The Keyword

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