[Update: before and after!] HTC pushes out a much-needed update to improve the HTC One M9’s camera

UPDATE: see before and after photos that show improvements

One of the biggest knocks on the HTC One M9 despite its stylish good looks, powerful hardware and blissful software experience was its camera — it just wasn’t up to snuff despite being a 20 megapixel shooter. You can read our concerns regarding that in our HTC One M9 review.

But guess what? HTC’s been listening, and they’re just about ready to push the first software upgrade to fix that. The company has confirmed that a forthcoming upgrade (build 1.32.531.33, about 88MB in size for our T-Mobile unit) that specifically addresses the camera is currently in testing and should be ready for folks to download and install within a matter of days:

• AT&T and T-Mobile: The update is in final testing, and is expected to roll out in a week’s time.


• Sprint: The update is ready to go and will roll out beginning tomorrow.


• Verizon: The upgrade will be pre-loaded on Verizon’s devices when they go on sale tomorrow.

We’re not yet sure how much of a difference this will make for the camera experience, but for it to get its own software upgrade we’re expecting big things. We’ve already gotten our hands on it and will look to test out the new improvements in the moments to come. Stay tuned for some before and after shots, and get ready for it to hit your phone in the days to come!

Google announces Sidewalk Labs, their latest venture to help improve life for city dwellers

When they aren’t focused on bringing internet to the farthest reaches of the globe, or building robots and self-driving cars, Google is thinking of new problems to take on. Their latest venture is a startup called Sidewalk Labs and according to Google, it looks to improve city living by introducing new technologies to improve things like affordable housing, public transportation, pollution — basically anything and everything that irks city dwellers. Here’s a short blurb about Sidewalk Labs taken from their new webpage:

“We’re on the brink of a historic period for cities around the world. By 2050, the population in cities will double, intensifying existing socioeconomic, public health and environmental problems.

At the same time, innovations in technology can be used to design communities that are more efficient, responsive and resilient. Sidewalk Labs aims to foster the development of technology products, platforms and infrastructure that help improve life in cities around the world.”

The company — which Google calls a “modest investment — will be headed by Dan Doctoroff, Deputy Mayor of Economic Development and Rebuilding for the City of New York. Oh, and he just also happens to be the former CEO of Bloomberg. Like Google X and Calico, Google says Sidewalk Labs is another one of the company’s “10X bets.” Google’s Larry Page says he believes there are endless opportunities to improve life in urban environments while using technology to make make cities more “livable, flexible and vibrant.” You can find the full press release here.

[Google+]

Improve the Samsung Galaxy S6 memory management with a simple build.prop tweak

Samsung is still searching for a solution to a memory leak issue that’s been plaguing the Samsung Galaxy S6, but some crafty XDA developers seem to have found a dirty fix in the meantime. Well, it’s less of a fix and more of an improvement, and it involves a simple edit of your device’s build.prop file.

If you’re not sure what it is, a build.prop file stores lots of information about device details and configurations. Changes in the document could do as little as modify your phone’s build name, or as much as tweaking flags for the kernel.

You do need to be rooted in order to edit your build.prop file, and we should also mention this is risky stuff and should only be done if you know what you’re doing and are willing to live with any unforeseen consequences that may surface as a result.

That said, if you’re clear of the dangers and capable of accepting responsibility for what you do on your device, you can make the following changes (use this app, or use a root file manager to edit the file yourself):

In your build.prop under #DHA Properties change these two lines:

Code:

ro.config.dha_cached_max=12
ro.config.dha_empty_max=36

Add these 4 lines:

ro.config.dha_th_rate=2.3
ro.config.dha_lmk_scale=0.545
ro.config.sdha_apps_bg_max=70
ro.config.sdha_apps_bg_min=8

Scroll down beyond the DHA properties where the other properties are stored and remove duplicate entires of

ro.config.dha_cached_max=
ro.config.dha_empty_max=
ro.config.dha_th_rate=
ro.config.dha_lmk_scale=

Finally this one will change your LMK values:

ro.config.oomminfree_high=7628,9768,11909,14515,16655,20469

When all is said and done, you should have a device that takes it easy on guzzling your RAM, though the developer notes that users might still have problems when using apps that rely on WebView. That’s a small caveat to accept, though, so we’d give it a go anyway if you’re tired of waiting on Samsung to deliver the goods.