Google Announce NVIDIA And Marvell Processors Will Also Be Available For Project Ara

Project Ara is a wonderful proposition. The idea that you can literally build your own smartphone will bring a whole new level of customization to the table. However, the additional benefit of Google’s modular smartphone is that you do not have to stick with your original built smartphone. You don’t like something, no problem, switch it out for something else. Your processor is dated, no problem, switch it out for a new one. The concept alone is enough to make an android fan squeal.

Well, with each day that passes, the idea of the modular smartphone becomes closer to reality. In fact, we only have to wait until January before the next Google Developer Conference takes place, before we can get a look at the next working prototype of Ara in all its glory. That said, if January seems too far away, then don’t worry as Google have let slip a few more Ara details to get you through the holiday period. So whats new? Well, it’s time for some processor talk. We already know that Ara is due to come with a Rockchip processor inside. At least, that will be one of the choices. In the most recent blog from Google, they also announced that there will be two more processor options available. The first will be based on NVIDIA’s superfast Tegra K1 processor. While the second option will be based upon Marvell’s 64-bit PXA1928 chip. Google has said that they are already working with both companies to create the modular prototypes.

As a last little snippet of information to tide you over, Google also announced that the Spiral 2 prototypes look “beautiful” with their custom module shells, which they will be showing off at the developer conference in January. To add to this, the blog signed off with the ultimate teaser alluding to the Spiral 3 prototype, which will include Toshiba built “second generation of UniPro switch and bridge ASICs with a contactless M-PHY data transfer capability (using inductive AC-coupling)”. So, are you still excited about the notion of Ara? What do you think of the newly announced processors? What else would you like to see included or available for Ara? Let us know.

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Analyst: Xiaomi Mi5 To Feature OmniVision’s 13MP Camera With An Increased Pixel Size Compared To Mi4

Xiaomi has become a really respectable smartphone manufacturer real fast. The company was founded back in 2010 and in about four years they managed to become China’s number one smartphone manufacturer and become extremely popular in Asia. The company makes well-specced and yet affordable handsets, while they also pay attention to quality of their products. People have started appreciating that really fast, which is one of the reasons why Xiaomi is one of the fastest growing smartphone manufacturers in the world at the moment.

Xiaomi Mi4 is company’s latest (and current) flagship. This thing is an extremely powerful smartphone and the company sold a ton of these units over the last couple of months. The Xiaomi Mi4 was announced back in July and the company released it in August, which means this is a relatively new device, but that didn’t stop the Mi5 rumors which started a long time ago. Some rumors even stated that the company will release the Mi5 during CES in Las Vegas next month, but Xiaomi told us that won’t happen because the company won’t participate in Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015.

New reports started coming in regarding this device none the less. Industry analyst, Sun Changxu, released some rather interesting information via Weibo (Chinese social network). According to the analyst, Xiaomi might choose to implement OmniVision’s 13-megapixel camera, which sports 1.75um pixel size, in their Mi5 flagship next year. This actually seems quite probable actually, the current 13-megapixel sensor on the Mi4 has 1.12um pixel size, the OV’s 13-megapixel camera would be a significant upgrade, especially if Xiaomi manages to add some quality software on top of the sensor itself.

According to previous rumors, this handset will sports a 5.7-inch QuadHD display and will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810. I already said I’m kind of skeptical when it comes to these specs, especially if the other part of that rumors comes to fruition and the price of this handset turns out to be around 1,999 Yuan ($321). This all depends on when will the company launch this handset, if Xiaomi sticks to the July release date, Snapdragon 810 is a possibility, for sure. The company might opt to include a smaller display in their device considering the Mi4 sports a 5-inch display, so this seems like a big jump. That’s just my guess, we’ll see.

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Micromax Released The $110 Canvas Tab P470 Phablet

Micromax are one of Google’s partners for the Android One devices with the Carbon A1, which we’ve reviewed here at Android Headlines. The business has just launched a new device, which is quite different to the Canvas A1 in several respects. Firstly, let me introduce the new device, which is the Canvas Tab P470. With a name like that you might be thinking that this is a tablet and you would be right, except this particular tablet includes voice calling. So it’s more a phablet I suppose, but one based around a 7.0-inch display. The Tab P470 features a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor backed up by 1GB of RAM and 8GB of memory, but it also comes with a MicroSD card slot that can take at least a 32GB MicroSD card. It’s a dual-SIM device too and comes with a voice-capable 3G radio. Unfortunately, that large screen has a relatively low resolution of 1,024 by 600 pixels. There’s a 5 MP rear camera, which is fixed focus but does come with a LED flash, and a VGA front-facing camera for low-quality video calling. Under the skin, Micromax have given the device a 3,200mAh battery with a claimed talk time of eleven hours. Android 4.4 KitKat runs the show but as of yet we’ve no news of an upgrade to Android 5.0 Lollipop.

In terms of raw specification, then, the Tab P470 appears to sit one or two notches below the Canvas A1 in most respects. That MediaTek processor is slightly newer compared with the Canvas A1 but has a lower clock speed and is a dualcore compared with the A1’s quad core architecture; it is not a bad performer but it’s very much an entry level processor, which is almost certainly why the P470 uses the venerable Mali-400 GPU and has a sub-720p resolution. I also do not expect the rear camera to be capable of producing great quality images, but if we consider the device to be a tablet with voice, rather than phablet, this isn’t such a bitter pill to swallow. Instead, what might concern me is the relatively small capacity battery given the rest of the device: 3,200mAh is about the same size as the Motorola-built Nexus 6, which of course has a smaller screen. It’s quite a bit smaller than the original Nexus 7’s battery, too, which nudged 4,000mAh. And in our review, the Canvas A1 was quite a battery hog when idle.

The above has been written without any reference to the price, which is just 6,999 Indian Rupees, or around $110. This makes it only slightly more expensive than the Android One device but quite a different product and appeal to customers. It’s going to be available from tomorrow, the 20 December, in two colors: Classy Silver and Mystic Grey. What do you think to the Micromax phablet? Would you be interested if you were looking for a new Android device at this end of the price range? Let us know in the comments below.

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Japanese Display Manufacturers Drop Prices To Compete For Chinese Business

China has rapidly become the key industrial powerhouse for the world, building large scale manufacturing plants to take advantage of a plentiful supply of inexpensive labor to build much of what the world needs. Apple is a great example of this via their two manufacturing partners, Foxconn and Pegatron, where they have an army of tens of thousands of workers building their products. This relatively low manufacturing cost is one of the main reasons why Apple’s profit margin is nudging 30%: their manufacturing costs are low because they do not pay their workers very much! However, it’s not just foreign smartphone manufacturers that are able to take advantage of low labor costs, but domestic companies can too. These cost savings are true with component manufacturers too, such as processors (think: MediaTek as one example) and displays. Cheaper component prices ultimately leads to cheaper devices, such as the amazingly cheap $30 smartphone. The Japanese premium display manufacturers – Japan Display (known as JDI, a joint venture between Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi) and Sharp are two examples – have been squeezed by the glut of cheaper small and medium display panels. What’s been happening is that when a device manufacturer puts out a display for tender, JDI and Sharp are outbid by their competitors.

We’ve news that these two Japanese firms are not giving up; far from it! They’re aggressively seeking business from Chinese handset manufacturers (including ZTE, Huawei and TCL), have ramped up their factories for high production rates and cut prices. In short, they’re gunning for business from the Chinese smartphone manufacturers. And this is an interesting game for the Japanese to play because their labour and material costs will be higher than Chinese competitors, although their products have the perception of being better quality. However, we here at Android Headlines know that many recent Chinese smartphones are at least comparable to the establishment and in many cases, superior: and are also cheaper. Industry experts expect the smartphone market to remain buoyant, especially at the lower end where we’re expecting strong growth from the developing areas of the world. And one of the rules of economics is that over a given period of time, the quality of a given product tends to go up and the price goes down. This benefits the customer: witness a typical mid-range smartphone from 2014 compared with a high-end device from 2011.

It’s either a gutsy or desperate move by the Japanese. They are feeling the squeeze and face possible extinction if they are not able to turn around their businesses. I hope that it works; the world needs specialist manufacturers across the globe and not just concentrated in one country.

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Exclusive: Source Reveals Cyanogen And OnePlus Fall-Out Was Months Ago

If you have been following the Cyanogen/OnePlus story then you will know that things are not very good between the two camps. In the last few days, OnePlus was instructed to refrain from selling, shipping and marketing Cyanogen branded devices in India by a New Delhi court. This was due to an exclusivity deal between Cyanogen and Micromax for the rights to CyanogeOS in India. We reported this morning that the court documents highlighted a number of emails between the two companies showing that their relationship was becoming increasingly strained. If you missed this morning’s article, you can read it by clicking here. However, the important part was a string of emails sent between the two. These were dated November 17th and ran through to November 26th. Basically, a week or two before the OnePlus One was supposed to debut in India.

As a result, it was presumed that the relationship between the two started to become frayed only recently. However, we have now received information that suggests the straining of the relationship is not a new thing and actually dated back to the summer. Following on from this morning’s email revelations, an anonymous source has sent us emails between Cyanogen and OnePlus showing that both parties have struggled to find common ground for months. A lot of the media attention this morning (and the last few days) have focused on Cyanogen and their supposed treatment of OnePlus in the Indian situation. However, the emails we have seen suggest that OnePlus caused a number of the issues which led to the breakdown, such as not being hands-on, not taking part in the development process of the One and effectively leaving Cyanogen to pick up the pieces “Every time we find hardware issues, like all the XXX problems, we get blown off until we take action ourselves. We had to make all the art right down to the wallpapers and media shots. We’ve had to do damage control on multiple occasions because of pointless stunts”.

The emails strongly suggest that OnePlus were more intent on trying to get something quickly to market then something of substance. This in-turn frustrated Cyanogen as they were worried their brand would be demeaned by a product that did not provide users with the experience they expected “It costs us tens of thousands of dollars in bandwidth every time we do an OTA, but we don’t care because our name is on the thing and we want a quality product out there”.

Now, it is important to remember that the information we have received cannot be verified and unlike the emails we saw this morning are not part of a court issued or legal document. Not to mention, the emails we saw are also not time-stamped and as such we cannot verify when they were originally sent. That said, their content strongly indicates this was during the early release stages of the One due to the various software referencing and so on. Which does tie-in with the summer time we were advised of by our source. It is also worth pointing out that the quoted content included here is only a fraction of the emails we have seen which all generally make the same points. Needless to say, the emails (if true) do clearly highlight that the current issues are not all based down to the India situation, have been a long-time in the making and run far deeper than what the current reports suggest. If or when either Cyanogen or OnePlus respond to the information, we will update you.

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Android Headliner: The Lollipop Update for Android Wear is Good, but There’s Still Room for Improvement

This past week, people have been waiting patiently (and not so patiently in most cases) for the Android Wear update Google promised us was coming a while ago. The update bought Android Wear in line with the main version of Android. Now watches like the Moto 360, the original G Watch and the Gear Live are running Android 5.0 Lollipop like a handful of phones. It was a nice update, but it could have gone further, and there are features we’re still missing from Android Wear’s initial unveiling.

It’s hard to wonder if there was much to this latest update than fancy watch faces. Yes, the ability to change watch faces from our phones is nice, and the arrival of the official watch face API is a big deal as well, but some new functionality would have been nice as well. I’m enjoying the new watch faces, I’m not going to lie, the Pac-Man face is particularly fun, but I was expecting a little more.

I was expecting Android Wear to become more powerful with the update to Lollipop and I don’t feel that I’m being unreasonable in expecting more, either. From the initial reveal of Android Wear, there’s a prominent part where two women are dancing while listening to music. The watch then picks up on said motion, and listens to find out what song is playing, and by whom. I still can’t do that with the latest update. When I ask my watch to let me know what song is playing, it runs a simple Google Search. Trying the same command on my phone using the Google Search app gets me the result I want, and it works great. It’d be far more convenient on my wrist though, as I often listen to internet radio with a good friend of mine and I’d like to know what’s playing without digging my phone out. That’s the whole point of a smartwatch after all, at least in my eyes.

That’s a stand out feature for me, but it seems to me like Android Wear still doesn’t go far enough. Apps are now getting much better, like the recently updated Todoist, which is great but there’s still nothing that really screams “I have to have that”. I’m aware that the platform is still in its infancy, and I’m sure that things will get much better over the coming months, but I just expected a little more from such a big update.

I’m a big fan of Android Wear overall though, I’ve been wearing my G Watch since it launched, and without a smartwatch of any kind I’d probably be a lot more stressed. Notifications are handled brilliantly by Android Wear and while the new “dismissing” timeout is a great annoyance to me, it’s a big help to Android Wear uses like my Dad. Outside of notifications, there isn’t much that jumps out at me as a key feature of Android Wear, I don’t really have a killer app I use a lot on my watch, from Google or otherwise. This latest update was great to see, definitely, but I still think Google has a long way to go before they convince the majority of smartphone owners they need a watch to go with it. With watches like the G Watch R and ASUS ZenWatch, the hardware is here, now it feels like Google’s software needs to catch up a little.

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Hangouts Voicemail Can Now Be Played In The Background Or Even When The Screen Is Off

Hangouts is going from strength to strength. The little messenger app has, over its last few incarnations and updates grown into much more than just a messenger app. Now it has an almost all-encompassing communication feel to it. The most recent update only came about a week ago and offered users a number of additional functions and add-ons. One of those features which we recently reported on was that finally Hangouts was being identified by device systems as a dialer. Now, if you use hangouts as a phone service then you will be able to set Hangouts as your default dialer so that it always opens first instead of the system dialer.

If you are someone who uses the Hangouts phone and dialer feature quite often, then it seems there is another new feature you might want to hear about. Especially, as this one has been a bit longer coming. Back in September Hangouts was upgraded to version 2.3 and with that, came Google Voice integration. This was a big deal and a long awaited feature by those who use hangouts. That said, its voicemail feature left a lot to be desired. For instance, when you playback a voicemail via Hangouts, it had a very unfortunate tendency to stop playing when the screen turned off or the user changed to another app. Think of how YouTube used to behave when watching a video and switching apps. Well, if that all sounds familiar to you then the latest update will be very good news.

Yep, last week’s Hangouts update has rectified this unfortunate issue and now users have the ability to playback voicemails regardless of whether their screen is on or off. In a similar fashion, you can always continue listening to a voicemail message even if changing from app to app. The message will simply continue to playback in the background. Sweet huh! If you are currently not a hangout user then this is just another reason for you to give the service a proper try. If you don’t have the app already pre-installed (or the latest version) then you can download it from the Play Store.

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