Database Users

new Features - Google IO

Just got through watching day 2 of the Google IO event. Android will soon get features like Apps2SD, remote wipe, OTA application downloads when purchasing from the web android market on your computer to one or all android devices you own, MS Exchange support, Browser access to hardware including camera, accelerometer, using your android phone as a Remote controller for Google TV-coming this fall and even leverage keyboard and speech to txt for keyboard functions for typing on GTV.
I just cant wait to see what for these to be released. What do you think ?

There's already 5 of these threads.

Seriously?! There are not 3, not 8, but 12 Froyo threads on the first page alone. Not only can you not search, but you must be blind.
Think before you post...

As there appear to be a significant number of threads on this topic as it is, I am going to close this one.
Regards,

[Latest Android infos] Android 4.2 Key Lime Pie Specifications and News

Jelly Bean Android version 4.1 and announced a few months ago by Google, has already his successor. It would be called, according to the latest rumors, Key Lime Pie or tart limes in French and is labeled with the number 4.2.
It is the site Android and Me brings us the latest news, with an internal source who has provided accurate information in the past.
According to them, this new version bring a personalization center, Project Roadrunner, or updating applications Google Play Now Google and video player.
The personalization center:
According to the source, a personalization center will be available to change ringtones, language packs, wallpapers, launcher, and a few other customizable filters. Certain assumptions are talking about custom themes introduced by the manufacturers, but that would be only a supplement and not pre-installed interface directly fused to the system time. This center is primarily a convenient way to allow the average consumer to make some basic customizations. The range of options can obviously be extended via Google Play.
This new system will allow manufacturers to provide their own interfaces manufacturers through this new center. When updates to Android if the manufacturer fails to provide a version compatible with the theme, simply return the terminal to the classic user interface.
So it sounds like a dream come true. Google may have finally found a solution that will allow consumers to update the Android operating system base, without having to wait for the new version of the interface builder.
The Roadrunner Project:
Somewhat in the same spirit as the Butter Project on Android 4.1, which allows an increase in the number of FPS (note: the number of frames per second), the Roadrunner Project will improve battery life by optimizing and reduced power consumption, allowing improved overall autonomy.
Update Google Play Now Google and video player:
Play Google: it is enhanced with new features such as personalized search - Optional integration with promotions - Improved notifications and improved in-app purchase;
Now Google: Google voice assistant now offer a user guide that will, for example, ask such questions as: "How do I enable Bluetooth? "Or" How can I reduce the brightness? "Facilitating these operations for novice users;
The native video player: it would benefit from an update regarding APIs and codecs will probably accounting expanded video formats, allowing the development of a new application dedicated to this medium.
It should be borne in mind that all this must be considered as a rumor, even if that source is reliable. Ilandroid-4-2-visits seems that Google has also begun to distribute devices to its employees since some sites are beginning to see the emergence of Android 4.2 in their statistics.
The concept of a certification program for Google Nexus is not excluded given the number of phones provided by Google this year. This will allow the web giant to take a little more control over certain issues and improve the Android experience.
What do you think of these potential new? Are you impatient? As often, Wait & See.

You could have just contributed to this very similar and active thread instead of creating a whole new thread.

Duplicate thread.
Please search before starting a new thread.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium

Please search before posting.. Is it that difficult?
Thread closed

[WIP] Android Library for Sony LifeLog API

Hi folks,
I am a huge LifeLog fan, and I like all the more details this platform has over Google Fit. Last year, Sony had made the web API open. (REST + Oauth based).
https://developer.sony.com/develop/services/lifelog-api/
I had just started working on an app for the LifeLog platform and realised there is certain need for a android java library (as a wrapper over the REST API) for LifeLog. As an app developer wanting to quickly take advantage of LifeLog, it is too much to ask for to implement oauth and rest client side functionality.
So here goes a Work-in-progress repository
https://github.com/championswimmer/Lifelog-Android-Library
As of Apr 22, 2015, Login, auth_token generation is working. Also fetching location history data is also working. The activities data implementation is yet to be done. I intend to finish that in a couple of days maybe.
Code can be shoddy. If you can help me improve, I'd definitely love that.
Feel free to open up issues on the github repo to report any bugs or problems you have with it.

SM-G975F on Canadian Networks and Best ROM

Hi everyone. I am getting an SM-G975F with the Exynos chipset. I was planning on flashing LineageOS on it but now I have stumbled upon MicroG for LineageOS and been doing a little reading up on it. Now I am not clear what the best choice would be from a privacy perspective.
My intention with LineageOS was to *not* install GApps and see how much I can make do with the default apps (i.e. the stock mail app, etc.). If that is my intention, then am I better off with LineageOS? or MicroG?
I don't really care about Google Apps. The only thing I can see myself struggling without is without some kind of semi-decent mapping application like Google Maps. Is there a decent alternative? Do I need MicroG for that? If I do cave and find I need Google Maps, then would I be better off with MicroG or LineageOS?
Also, is there a way to get Office apps (Word, Excel, etc.) on LineageOS? Or is that undesirable from a privacy perspective?
Lastly, is there a way to enable LTE bands 29, 30, and 46 on the SM-G975F model? These are enabled on the SM-G975W (Canadian) model, and I will be using the phone in Canada on Bell Mobility.
If these questions have been asked/answered elsewhere, can you please just drop a link?
Thanks,
The Fish

Your post does not qualify for Development. Please read the stickies before posting!
Moved to Questions and Answers.

Hi XDA’ers
I thought I would provide an update on my experience thus far with LineageOS 19.1 on my Exynos SM-G975F and answer some of my own questions which I asked above. Maybe some of this is obvious stuff or maybe not. Maybe it will be helpful for others in the future.
The operating system​I installed LineageOS from the official lineageos.org website. I did not install GApps so I am operating without the Google Play Services.
While Android itself is open source, the “Google Play Services” are not. They are a proprietary library from Google that are included with most (all?) Android devices and provide a number of services, APIs, etc. to apps running on Android. It's not part of the operating system per se, but lots of apps require it. So, I am operating with LineageOS only without the Google Play Services.
As a side note, there is an open-source re-implementation of Google Play Services called microG. MicroG cannot be installed as an app but needs to be installed as part of the OS. There are basically two flavors of LineageOS that include microG. They are “LineageOS for microG” and /e/OS. Both of these include microG. Pure LineageOS on its own however includes neither Google Play Services (unless you install GApps bundle) nor microG.
I was surprised how small the download file was for LineageOS. It weighs in at just 777 MB. I am used to Samsung firmware that weighs in at about 6 GB. So, this seemed really small to me.
Upon first boot up I was impressed with how clean the operating system was. Not only is there no bloatware but there is basically almost nothing at all. There is a dialer app, an SMS app, a camera app, a calculator, and a mini browser. There is also a local-only address book (no link to cloud services) and a local calendar app. The browser is fairly limited but gets the job done. Notably there isn’t a mail app (although I understand that there used to be one on previous versions of LineageOS). So, I set about seeing what I could do.
Apps​I installed the F-Droid app store but there are not any mainstream apps in there. Some of the apps in there might be good (I still need to explore it more) but I needed a solid email app. My company is on Office 365 so Outlook would be my first choice.
I stumbled upon APKPure and APKMirror. Both are very ad-filled spammy looking website that seems to be a web-based front end to the Google Play Store. Using these sites website, you can download official APKs for mainstream apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, etc. Be very careful where you click. Lots of the ads on the site include "Download Now" type buttons that you can click on thinking you are downloading an APK but instead are clicking on a spammy ad. So, navigate carefully on these sites.
I was able to install Word, Excel, OneDrive and Outlook. This was huge because I needed a decent mail app. Being able to install OneDrive meant I could now sync my camera with OneDrive. All the Microsoft apps worked flawlessly on LineageOS even without Google Play Services. The one thing I noticed however is that Outlook does not give me notifications when I get a new email. I have to go into Outlook and swipe down to refresh. I believe this is due to the lack of Google Play Services. Maybe using microG would eliminate this problem (not sure). I can live with this for now but would obviously like a way to resolve it.
Installing Outlook synced the local Calendar and Contacts apps with my Outlook contacts and calendar so that worked great.
Bible Apps​Both the Olive Tree Bible Reader app and the ESV Bible app installed no problem from APKPure. Both of these are offline Bible apps (they download the whole Bible and can be used offline). I like Olive Tree because I have several translations (including the SBLGNT) and Olive Tree lets me switch between them. The ESV app is great because they have recordings and so you can hear Kristyn Getty or David Cochran Heath read the Bible to you in natural non-synthetic voices.
Signal​I installed Signal directly from their website (they offer the APK directly on their website). Signal detects that it is being installed on a device without Google Play Services and so registers itself as a service and consequently I do get notifications for new Signal messages (unlike Outlook). I wonder if there is some way to make Outlook run the same way. I tried installing Microsoft Teams which we use at work but don't get any notifications when people send me messages. So that makes Teams pretty useless.
Browser​The build-in default browser renders HTML/CSS just fine but is very limited in terms of features. When you install a progressive web app as an app on the home screen it works but launches in the full browser with the address bar visible which breaks the app-like experiance which is really the whole point of a PWA. So I set about trying to fix this. To my surprise I was able to install Microsoft Edge without ANY issues whatsoever. It works great and web apps pin to the home screen the way they should (and open as apps). So I made Edge my default browser.
Keyboards​The default keyboard in LineageOS does not have stickers or GIFs. That is as it should be I think for a default built-in keyboard. But it does not support swipe typing either. This surprised me. It seemed like a huge step backwards to have to tap out every letter with my thumbs. Do people still type like that on their phones?!?! Oh, the humanity!
There is a microphone icon at the top of the keyboard for speech-to-text transcription. I used this all the time before on my Samsung S8+. But tapping it did nothing. Apparently I am missing a speech-to-text engine. This surprised be because Outlook has dictation built-in using Microsoft's engines and works well. But it only works in Outlook and not universally throughout the phone as it would if it was built-in on the keyboard.
I installed the Microsoft SwiftKey keyboard and that gave me stickers, GIFs and... swipe typing! Woo Hoo! But I was really hoping it would give me speech-to-text since I dictate almost all of my text messages. I figured it would use Microsoft's engine like Outlook does since it was a Microsoft app. But tapping the microphone on the SwiftKey keyboard promptly tells me that I need to download "Google Voice Search".
Microsoft Authenticator​I installed the Microsoft Authenticator app for 2FA and it installed just fine. But it was impossible to add any accounts by scanning the QR codes. I think this is due to notifications not working properly, probably also due to the lack of Google Play Services or microG.
Outstanding Issues​So, the outstanding issues I have right now are:
Microsoft Authenticator is non-usable. This is a huge issue for me
No speech-to-text transcription from keyboard
No notifications in Microsoft Teams
No notifications in Microsoft Outlook (this I can live with).
What I Like​What I like about LineageOS is the clean, minimalistic design of the operating system. I am not pushed into any particular "ecosystem" be it Google, Samsung, Microsoft or Apple. I can decide which ecosystem I want to participate in and to which extent. For example, I could download Outlook without downloading Edge and I don't need to backup my photos to OneDrive unless I want to. You can do this, to some extent, with OEM versions of Android, but it requires ignoring and disabling things. Come to think of it, that is really what an operating system should be - a platform for running apps, not an on-ramp into an ecosystem.
What irritates me is that not all apps work as they should. It seems like Google Play Services is an important part of the mix and many apps fail to function properly without it. Signal seems like one exception. It detects that you are not using Google Play Services and adapts the functioning the app accordingly.

Just a minor update. I tried several diffrent TTS engines (Pico TTS, Flite TTS, RHVoice) and none of these gave me text typing.
I ended up installing Speech Services by Google and it worked. I was surprised that it worked considering I do not have GApps (and thus no Google Play Services) and no microG on my phone.
So, I guess I can live with a little Google on my phone, but I would have preferred to find an open-source alternative or, barring that, a Microsoft alternative.

General Bing chat gets smarter with tones, turn counters, and more engaging responses

Microsoft's AI-powered Bing chat is getting even smarter. The company just outlined four changes to the experience themed towards chat tones, turn counters, page content, and chat behaviors that should improve your day-to-day use of the preview.....
Bing chat gets smarter with tones, turn counters, and more engaging responses
Microsoft has made three key changes to Bing chat that makes it even more accurate
www.xda-developers.com

Some Bing AI widget info today:
Microsoft brings Bing AI widget to your phone's home screen
Today, Microsoft announced on its blog that it will be releasing a collection of new features to the Bing AI experience.
www.androidauthority.com