Material You dynamic theming Archives - Gizmochina

Galaxy S22 series, Android 13 Developer Preview, Infinix ZERO 5G, and more from Last Week

Sudarshan Ravichandran — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 17:35:14 +0000

We are back again with our new list of top stories from the previous week. Lots of things happened last week. Most importantly, Samsung announced its flagship smartphones and tablets of 2022. Then, out of the blue, Google dropped the first Developer Preview of Android 13. At the same time, the search giant ended support for one of the Pixel series. Let’s take a look at these and a lot more in our ‘latest Top Stories from Last Week’ segment.

Before we continue, we would like to inform you that the stories selected here are based on our opinion. Further, they are listed in no particular order. Since everyone’s choices differ from others, we would like to know your picks in the comment section below.

Top Stories from Last Week

Galaxy S22 series – The next big thing from Samsung

Samsung’s next big thing is finally here in the form of the Galaxy S22 series. The South Korean tech unveiled its latest flagship smartphones with a fanfare at the Galaxy Unpacked 2022 event on February 9 (Wednesday).

The company has introduced multiple changes in the new models. Firstly, all three devices arrive with a new design. The Galaxy S22 and the Galaxy S22+ are only slightly different from their predecessors, whereas the Galaxy S22 Ultra has been completely revamped with a built-in S Pen. In fact, the latter is more of a Galaxy Note than a Galaxy S.

The two cheaper models come with updated primary and telephoto cameras. The plus and ultra offer the brightest display on a smartphone. Finally, in some markets, these phones are powered by Samsung’s in-house Exynos 2200 SoC with AMD RDNA architecture-based Xclipse GPU.

Galaxy Tab S8 series – Notch and a 14.6-inch screen

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Tab S8 series alongside the Galaxy S22 series. The family consists of three models like the phones – vanilla, plus, and ultra.

Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, the first ‘Ultra’-branded tablet from Samsung, has a massive 14.6-inch AMOLED display. The screen also includes a notch housing two cameras.

The Galaxy Tab S8 and the Galaxy Tab S8+ are regularly sized tablets. But the vanilla variant has an LCD panel instead of AMOLED like the other two.

All three are powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC. They also have support for the S Pen stylus.

Android 13 Developer Preview out ahead of Android 12L Stable release

Even before Android 12L could hit the stable channel, Google has already released the Android 13 Developer Preview. Anyone with Pixel 4 or above devices can try out the upcoming version of Android.

Android 13, which is codenamed Tiramisu, is a polished version of Android 12. So don’t expect major changes like the transition from Android 11 to Android 12.

According to a timeline shared by Googe, beta builds will be out around April, followed by stable in June or July. Anyway, this schedule is only applicable for Pixels.

Dynamic theme coming to non-Pixel devices

Google has officially revealed that the Android 12’s monet dynamic theme engine will be soon available on devices from popular OEMs like Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and others. However, the search didn’t give a specific timeline.

Ahead of this announcement, a report had already disclosed that the Android 12 dynamic theming engine will be a requirement for GMS approval from March 14. This means the feature should come to non-Pixel devices in the next few weeks, at least, in the form of beta.

Google ends support for Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL

The Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3 XL received their final software update last week. The system update merely brings February 2022 security patches.

The Pixel 3 series debuted in October 2018 with Android 9.0 Pie. Throughout their lifetime, the handsets received 3 Android updates (up to Android 12).

The Pixel 3 XL has made a name for itself in history for its ‘bathtub notch’.

OnePlus plans to discuss OxygenOS 13 with users

OnePlus and OPPO are expected to introduce a unified operating system based on Android 13 later this year. Ahead of that, the former has scheduled an Open Ears Forum (OEF) to discuss the said software with its userbase.

As of now, OnePlus is still calling it OxygenOS 13 based on Android 13. Perhaps, the name change may happen once the software reaches the release phase.

That said, the event is planned for February 28 and the registrations for it are open until February 18.

Bunch of upcoming Motorola phones leak in renders

Popular leaker Evan Blass shared press renders of five forthcoming Motorola smartphones on February 9. As he does with Motorola leaks, he merely described the codenames of these phones instead of their actual marketing names.

These handsets called Hawaii+, Dubai, Rogue, Rhode, and Austin belong to multiple price segments. For instance, one of them has an under-display camera, while another features a thick chin.

We expect to learn more about these devices in the coming days.

Infinix debuts its first 5G smartphone – ZERO 5G

Infinix ZERO 5G made its global debut in Nigeria as the brand’s first 5G smartphone. It is a mid-range offering with some interesting set of features.

The 6.78-inch 120Hz display (LCD) touting handset is powered by a MediaTek Dimesnity 900 SoC coupled with 8GB LPDDR5 RAM and 128GB UFS 3.1 storage. Unlike most phones in the segment, it sports a 13MP 2x telephoto camera.

In addition to a dedicated MicroSD card slot and a 3.5mm headphone jack, the device is backed by a large 5,000mAh battery with support for 33W fast charging.

Realme grew stronger globally in Q4 2021

A Canalys report revealed that Realme entered the top 5 in 30 markets globally. For the first time, the brand made it to the list in key markets like Germany, Peru, Colombia, and Western Europe.

In India alone, the company grew 48% YoY. As a result, its market share rose to 17% in the region. In Western Europe and Europe, it registered growths of a whopping 1365% and 450% respectively.

Hope for new BlackBerry smartphones dies

In January, OnwardMobility reassured that a 5G BlackBerry smartphone with a keyboard is on its way later this year after being delayed. Within a few weeks, a report from last week revealed that this project is dead.

It is said that OnwardMobility has lost its license to use the ‘BlackBerry’ name. The once-popular smartphone maker is reportedly distancing itself from its glorious days after selling its mobile patent portfolio in early February.

The post Galaxy S22 series, Android 13 Developer Preview, Infinix ZERO 5G, and more from Last Week appeared first on Gizmochina.

Google to fix the game crashing wallpaper bug in Android 12L

Sudhanshu — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 17:52:49 +0000

Earlier, we reported Android 12‘s tendency to crash games when the wallpaper is changed in the background. The bug was first reported in September on the Google Issue Tracker. Now, according to Twitter user Mishaal Rahman, this issue will be tackled in Android 12L.

"…people with automatic wallpaper switchers have found that you can actually crash a game if it happens in the background"

A fix for this is coming in Android 12L. Background wallpaper changes won't trigger theme changes.

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) November 15, 2021

Google‘s new UI, the Material You, introduced with Android 12, is a dynamic theming engine that extracts colors from the current wallpaper and splashes it across the system UI and supported apps, giving users greater control than ever over what their phone’s software looks like. Changing the wallpaper in Android 12 results in a configuration change forcing all app activities to restart so that they use the new colors from the wallpaper for theming purposes.

The root cause of this game crashing bug was spotted to be this forced Android configuration changes. Games typically used to ignore such changes but that isn’t the case anymore with Android 12.

This bug, which has remained unsolved for more than 2 months, will now be addressed in the Android 12L. The Android 12L is primarily meant for foldable phones, tablets, and big display devices but will fix many bugs present in Android 12. The fix will ensure that background wallpaper changes will not trigger theme changes or force app activities to restart, preventing crashes. The OS, set to go live in early 2022, will enter beta testing from December to February.

OPPO, OnePlus, Xiaomi, realme, Nokia will likely get Android 12 dynamic themes support

Zohaib Ahmed — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 10:43:25 +0000

Dynamic theming introduced with Android 12 is easily one of the most significant UI upgrades Android has seen in years. The feature picks colors from the wallpaper and splashes them across the system UI and supported apps. Codenamed ‘monet’, it is currently exclusive to the Pixels and Google is yet to release the source code for it, but that’s set to change quite soon.

Mishaal Rahman on Twitter (via XDA Developers) shared a new code commit in Google’s Material Components library titled “Add supporting manufacturer list of dynamic colors.” It includes a list of OEMs that will support dynamic system themes. The list currently comprises OPPO, realme, OnePlus, vivo, Xiaomi, Motorola, itel, Tecno Mobile, Infinix, HMD Global, Sharp, Sony, TCL, Lenovo, Google, and Roboelectric.

This is interesting. The source code for Monet (Android 12's wallpaper-based theme system) will be released with Android 12L, but based on this code change for the Material Components library, it looks like a bunch of OEMs are implementing dynamic color support themselves. https://t.co/Oufh9zxDnZ pic.twitter.com/9obGYbbMDC

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) November 11, 2021

Google had earlier confirmed that the code for monet will be uploaded to AOSP sometime after the release of Android 12. And it has now been confirmed that this will be happening with the release of Android 12L in early 2022.

However, it had been unclear if any manufacturer besides Google would be interested in supporting dynamic themes, considering most have their own Android skins with various design languages. While these OEMs don’t seem to have plans of implementing monet, they do seem to be working on their own implementations entirely.

As such, the color palettes generated from your wallpaper will likely be different from Google’s monet.

A great example of this is the Android 12 beta for the OPPO Find X3 Pro which has its own implementation of dynamic theming and thus creates its own unique palettes. This could also mean that OPPO won’t be making use of the monet engine when it goes live at all, and instead stick to using its own dynamic themes engine.

Oddly, Samsung is missing from the supported manufacturers list even though One UI 4 does come with a dynamic color feature. The reason for this could be Samsung not planning to plug into the Material Components library at all. The downside to this will be that only the supported system apps will be able to benefit from Samsung’s theming solution and third-party apps will be held back.

However, it isn’t unlikely for more OEMs to get added to the list so Samsung still has time.