It’s not a placebo effect: this is why your Nexus 6 feels so fast after the Android 5.1 update

Android 5.0 Lollipop is great, but for those on the Nexus 6 there’s no secret there were some troubling performance issues that a phone of its stature shouldn’t experience. We thought much of the issues were due to the infancy of the ART runtime and possibly due to problematic device encryption. We expected much of that to be cleared up with Android 5.1’s arrival.

It was, at least according to some early impressions around the Phandroid office. But what changed to bring about that performance boost, exactly? Google wasn’t keen to go into detail, but renowned kernel developer Francisco Franco gave us a good bit of insight.

Alongside general improvements to the ART runtime as a whole, Google apparently unlocked the device’s CPU to run at full quad-core mode at all times in order to handle task scheduling more efficiently. What this means is that “Job B” no longer has to wait on “Job A” to finish on a certain core before carrying out its task. It can simply jump onto another of three other cores to allow everything else ample time and room to work. Think of it as a one-lane street merging into a multi-lane highway.

Taking things a step further, Google was able to reduce the lag and improve battery life at the same time thanks to disabling a Qualcomm driver that would needlessly boost individual CPU cores whenever tasks migrate from one core to another. Franco says he’d already made these tweaks in his version of the kernel, so kudos to Google for seeing things similarly and following suit.

So if you notice increased performance and improved battery life after upgrading to Android 5.1, it’s not a placebo effect — Google made some significant changes, and the great thing is we haven’t even scratched the surface of what we know to be different in this latest version. Be sure to try Android 5.1 on for size on your Nexus device of choice using one of the available OTA links.

LG shows off another piece of the LG G4, this time it’s the camera

At the end of this month LG is set to announce the LG G4, but until then they can’t help themselves from announcing parts of the device. So far we’ve seen the display, new UX, and a close-up of the sensor. Today LG is sharing even more information about the new camera.

The new camera module for the G4 is 16MP with a f/1.8 aperture. The wider aperture will allow the G4 to take in 80% more light than the camera on the LG G3. Inc case your forgot, the G3 had a really nice camera (which was also used on the LG G Flex 2). LG also announced that the front-facing camera will be 8MP. We should be looking at a phone with a really nice set of cameras. Hopefully the real-world results live up to the specs.

We’ll know more about the G4 after LG’s event on April 28th. Are you excited about the LG G4?

Press Release

Big Android BBQ 2015 is happening October 23rd, and it’s sponsored by Google Developers

It’s back, folks. Ideaa — the same folks who brought you the awesome Big Android Meat and Greet in Washington DC earlier this year — today announced that the Big Android BBQ’s dates are set. It’s all going down in Hurst, TX and will take place October 22nd through October 23rd.

The BBQ has grown to be a rich platform for developers and enthusiasts to come together for a good time, learn about Android development, and — well — eat. It’ll feature panels hosted by developers from all over the place, including Google’s very own crop of engineers in Mountain View (in fact, this year’s BBQ is “delivered” by them). You’ll also have workshops, parties, and the grandaddy banner event: some delicious Texas-style barbecue.

Early bird tickets are currently going for , and this will come with a nice “gift” that’s yet to be detailed. Early bird pricing ends May 22nd so you’ll want to get your order in as soon as you can.

You should also note that the early bird ticket will only entitle you to all the standard ticket features (which typically includes access to all panels, Code Kitchens and the BBQ itself). Upgraded tickets — which have yet to be detailed, but typically include perks such as private dinners and cool transportation — will be available at some point soon, and you will be able to upgrade your ticket if you so desire when that time comes.

Other details — such as travel discount packages — have yet to be revealed, though we’re sure Ideaa will be releasing that information in due time. If you’re absolutely sure you can make it to Texas for the shindig later this year you can head to the BBQ’s EventBrite page right here to place your order.

iFixIt’s Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge teardown shows it’s nearly impossible to repair

We’ve already seen how hard it is to take apart a Samsung Galaxy S6 thanks to its dual-sided glass design, so surely the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge is in the same ballpark, no? iFixIt confirms that much in their latest teardown.

In fact, it’s predictably even more difficult to disassemble and repair than the Samsung Galaxy S6 thanks to the unique construction and engineering that had to happen for the device’s Edge display. The device’s battery is actually glued to the flexible display, and iFixIt says that it’s incredibly difficult to remove the front pane of glass without shattering both the glass slab and the display unit itself.

This forced them to give the Galaxy S6 Edge a 3/10 on the repairability scale, with 10 being the easiest. This tells us it likely isn’t going to be the best idea to try your hand at a home repair should you ever need it, so be sure to keep Samsung’s customer service number handy. Be sure to check out the full teardown at the jump!

[via iFixIt]

It’s true: you can remove a crap ton of bloatware from the Samsung Galaxy S6

Ahead of its launch, some Samsung Galaxy S6 rumors claimed that Samsung was going with a more “Nexus-like” user experience as opposed to the bloated TouchWiz mess of the past. That wasn’t totally true — it’s still TouchWiz with all of Samsung’s typical goodies sprinkled throughout.

But perhaps the rumors were speaking more about pre-installed apps and giving users more control over how much is loaded onto their device. XDA user Jeshter2000 was lucky enough to grab hold of a Samsung Galaxy S6 before its official launch and held an AMA session. One of the biggest requests was information about pre-installed apps.

The verdict? They can be removed, or at the very least disabled and never to be heard from again. Holding down on the icon of a number of apps will bring up a minus symbol that, when pressed, will either uninstall or disable the app.

If you’re not aware of what it means to disable an app, it simply removes the app from your app drawer and makes it so that the system can’t launch the app. The app still takes up space, though it’s usually a negligible amount.

Many of the apps that you can uninstall can be redownloaded from Samsung’s app store or Google Play, so if you find yourself wanting to bring some of it back then it shouldn’t be a pain to make that happen.

And yes, this goes for the huge folder of Google’s apps you’ll find pre-installed on the device as well. It’s not perfect, but least we know we won’t have to root from day one to remove most of the gunk from the Samsung Galaxy S6 once we power it up for the first time on April 10th.

OnePlus’s “game-changing” announcement isn’t a games console — it’s a drone, apparently

OnePlus really threw us for a loop. They’ve been teasing a “game-changing” announcement for a couple of weeks now. “Start a new game.” “For the fun of it.” “You’re in control.” They even used a photo of a pair of hands seemingly holding an invisible gaming controller for that last one.

Surely this can be nothing other than a gaming console, right? Wrong — well, wrong according to OnePlus’s Carl Pei, anyway. The company nonchalantly confirmed in an Ask Me Anything session on reddit that they’d be revealing a gaming drone dubbed the DR-1. Carl Pei even posted a convincing branding image for the thing:

But even though this information is coming from the horse’s mouth, we’re going to take this one with a grain of salt for a few different reasons.

1. We’re dangerously close to April Fools day.


2. We’ve never seen a company tease an announcement and then “leak” their own information.


3. It’s OnePlus.


4. It’s OnePlus.

Those last couple of points weren’t duplicated in err — this company’s marketing tactics have been questionable since their conception, and we wouldn’t put anything past them. We’re electing to wait until that April-scheduled announcement before we put all our eggs into the “drone” basket, but this is the story they’re dishing out in the interim. You guys believe them?

This is what it’s like to unbox the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge [VIDEO]

If you don’t want your Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge unboxing experienced ruined once it arrives on your doorstep this Spring, do not watch this video. But who are we kidding — you probably can’t help yourself! Neither could Samsung:

We’ve seen the device at every angle, explored every nook and cranny, and gotten to check out its most cool features, but one thing we can’t partake in right now that Samsung was able to is a good, old-fashioned unboxing. Be sure to indulge by hitting the play button above.

OnePlus DR-1 drone is actually real, but it’s little more than a toy [VIDEO]

Looks like our cause for caution regarding OnePlus One’s latest announcement was a bit justified. Just as they confirmed on Reddit, OnePlus has revealed the DR-1, and it definitely is a drone. Only, it’s not the serious spy-right gadgetry you were probably dreaming of when they first mentioned it.

It’s a toy. This thing costs .99, and although it will actually fly for a good few minutes it’s not to be regarded in the same light as something like the IRIS+ Super Drone.

OnePlus is touting this as the world’s smallest remote-controlled drone, though, and they’ll only be available as a limited one time run. Unfortunately the product is already being listed as sold out on their website, and if what they say there is true then there won’t be any other opportunities to snag one in the future outside of something like eBay.

So for all you folks mad that OnePlus was making a new product before shoring up the OnePlus One? Chill out, it’s just a quick little toy that likely took them no time at all to produce and did nothing to take away from the work that still needs to be done on their first ever smartphone.

It’s no Galaxy S6 Active, but Samsung’s latest phone can take quite a beating

Unlike the Samsung Galaxy S5, the Samsung Galaxy S6 is not waterproof. While we wait for the Galaxy S6 Active to (hopefully) arrive Samsung has a rugged phone to tide us over. Today Samsung announced the Galaxy Xcover 3, a phone that can take a beating and keep on kicking.

The Xcover 3 adheres to the MIL-STD 810G specification that allows the phone to withstand falls up to 4 feet. It’s also rated IP67 dustproof and waterproof for up to 30 minutes under 3 feet of water. The Xcover 3 also has dedicated key to turn on the flashlight or double-tap to quickly launch the camera.

In terms of specs we’re looking at a mid-range device. It has a 4.5-inch WVGA display, 1.2GHz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, microSD card slot, 5MP camera, and a 2200mAh battery. The Xcover 3 will be released in April for 275 Euros. Here in the U.S. we’ll have to keep waiting for the Galaxy S6 Active.

[via SammyHub]

Test drive the HTC One M9 at select Best Buy locations, see for yourself if it’s worth the hype

Sometimes seeing is believing. When it comes to the HTC One M9, it’s definitely one of the most beautiful Android devices to date (it has been since the One M8). The premium aluminum materials, 2-tone finish, and polished edges, pick one up and you’ll feel the difference right away. HTC knows this and it’s why you’ll soon be able to give the One M9 a whirl at your local Best Buy.

We know, everyone has been coming down kind of hard on HTC for nearly recycling last year’s design. But it’s not entirely unheard of in mobile. Take a look at the last few Sony Xperia flagships, LG’s devices, or even Samsung’s, and you’ll have a hard time telling them apart from their latest. We loved the way the HTC One M9 felt in the hand when we played around with it at Mobile World Congress and quite honestly, we think you will too.

If you’re on the fence about which new Android to buy this year — the HTC One M9 or the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge — it seems Best Buy has you covered. For store availability (you’ll want to call ahead of time to make sure they have a display set up), you can check out Best Buy’s HTC One M9 landing page here.

It’s official: Google+ photos have merged into Google Drive

Ladies and gentleman, it’s official: starting today, all the photos you store in Google+ can now finally be accessed in Google Drive. And why shouldn’t they? They’ve been using the same cloud storage this whole time. This really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. We’ve seen Google toy around with this idea a few weeks back, even mention the move more recently. But only today has it become officially available.

Google says you’ll see the new Google Photos option in Drive’s slide-out menu for everything you upload from here on out. For your older albums, well, those will take a few more weeks before they’ll be available in Drive. No word on when/if we’ll see a separate Google Photos app arrive in the Play Store in the near future, but we’ll keep an eye out.

[Google Drive Blog]

You can now upgrade your device with Verizon Edge as soon as it’s paid in full

Verizon has announced a small, yet key change to their EDGE upgrade program. The company now allows you to upgrade through EDGE as soon as your device is paid in full as opposed to having to wait a certain amount of time.

This is great for folks who want a new phone with little upfront costs, but don’t mind paying their current device off early for the privilege of doing so at their own pace. The change goes into effect May 31st, which is only a few days’ wait if you’re planning to take advantage.

[via Verizon]

It’s official: Windows 10 can run Android apps… sort of

Yesterday, we heard about Microsoft’s plans to get Android apps to run on Windows 10. We likened the idea to Blackberry’s Android runtime used on their latest devices that allows Android developers to easily port their apps over.

Well, the news was true, but only to a degree. Microsoft has equipped developers with tools to easily port their Android and iOS apps to Windows 10, only this is no mere emulation or runtime. Instead, it’s a custom platform called Astoria that opens up Windows 10 development to a number of new languages.

For Android, developers can now code directly in C++ and Java to make sure they don’t have to write entirely new code bases from scratch. iOS developers will also be treated to support for Objective-C. Microsoft will make it extremely easy for developers to get comfortable developing for Windows using this SDK.

There are a couple of hurdles to consider, though you can be sure Microsoft was mindful about them. Namely, they recognize that not all developers can fully port their code base to Windows 10 without the help of some of Google’s proprietary services and APIs.

Microsoft says it’s their goal to build many of these types of services and tools themselves to fill in some of those gaps. It’s not all that dissimilar to Amazon and their Kindle Fire devices. While apps can be ported over to those devices in native fashion, Amazon still had to create their own APIs and platforms to fill in for the missing Google bits.

Whether this is going to be enough to fix Microsoft’s apps problem is still up in the air, but at least they’ve gone about trying to fix it it in a very creative, sensible and — honestly — exciting way. We hope to learn more soon.

[via The Verge]

Yu’s next phone is called Yuphoria, and it’s coming May 12th with Cyanogen OS

Yu’s first smartphone — the Yureka — wasn’t all that special aside from the fact that it ran Cyanogen OS. It was still a decent option for budget-minded folks, though, and now the company is set to follow-up with a sequel.

They have announced a May 12th date for the revelation of their next smartphone, which the promo image suggests will be called “Yuphoria”. The company is sure to use Cyanogen OS for software, though that’s as much as we know about it at this time.

Even if we don’t know what to expect we can always talk about what we want. What we don’t want? A copy/paste job based on a smartphone that already exists. We’re hoping for something unique that’ll turn heads even if its specs are unlikely to top any charts. We’ll be digging for more details, but May 12th isn’t even a fortnight away so we’ll know more soon enough.

Apple made another Android app and it’s to help people ‘Move to iOS’

They didn’t talk about during their keynote this morning, but apparently Apple’s got another Android app in the works and it’s called Move to iOS. Like the name suggests, Apple wants to make it easier to make the switch to iOS, and it’s doing that by creating an app that moves most of the stuff from your Android device on over to an iPhone or iPad.

Move to iOS will import all of your contacts, message history, photos/videos, bookmarks, mail accounts, calendars, wallpaper, songs and books (DRM free ones) wirelessly. The app will also suggest previously installed apps to download from their own App Store, as well as add any paid apps to a Wish List so you can easily find them again.

While we, personally, wouldn’t make a permanent switch to iOS, we won’t knock anyone else for wanting to try new things. Android isn’t for everyone (and neither is iOS) so I can see something like this coming in handy.

The app isn’t available yet, but it looks to be one of the new apps Apple has planned for iOS 9 which launches later this year.

[Apple]

YouTube app for Android finally adds 60fps option for everyone and it’s wonderful [VIDEO]

It’s finally here. After launching 60fps 4K videos back in March for Chrome on the desktop, we had a feeling it was just a matter of time before the higher frame rate eventually made its way to mobile apps. That time is now, with the folks at YouTube officially announcing that 60fps video playback is now finally possible in their Android and iOS apps.

Also known as HFR (high frame rate), the resulting video is something that almost looks surreal, especially on our mobile devices. While the verdict is still out on whether or not this improves the cinema experience, it’s flipping awesome for watching anything that has to do with video games. Providing they’ve been uploaded in 60fps, of course. To be clear, this update doesn’t enable 60fps 4K videos, that’s something we probably wont see for a long while and besides, most desktops can barely handle it without melting.

Watch this video in the YouTube app on your Android device

Users will find that when watching a video in the YouTube app where 60fps is available (the above video for example), it should default to the higher frame rate on HD, providing you have a fast connection. In other words, don’t worry about having to change any settings to enable it. If you can stream HD, you’ll be streaming the higher frame rate. If for whatever reason it doesn’t, you can always press the 3-dot menu button followed by the little gear icon to change the quality.

We’re not sure what the impact on battery life will be, but we watched a few trailers on our Nexus 6 and it seemed to work without a hitch. No slow downs, judder, or any overheating. Just silky, smooth video. Check it out for yourself.

[Twitter]

 

Our free Adult Swim VR headset finally arrived and it’s pretty great

It was at the beginning of this month that we told you about a special promotion Adult Swim put together to show off their new VR experience on Google Play. All you had to was fax in — yes, fax — a quick order form and they’d mail you their own VR Cardboard Viewer free of charge. Of course, this was a “while supplies last” kinda thing and it didn’t take long before supply was exhausted and the phone number was out of order. A few of our readers had their doubts that this was ever a real thing, pointing to a tweet Adult Swim made about “trolling” this or that.

In any case, our VR headset arrived and after quickly putting it together, found that it was actually quite nice. Velcro actually lines the top to keep the top flap in place and there’s a nifty magnetic sliding “button” (metal washer) that you can use to select items in Adult Swim’s Virtual Brainlord. This wasn’t our first VR rodeo, but to call Virtual Brainlord a trip would be an understatement. You’ll have to give it spin for yourself to see what we mean and if you haven’t yet, take a moment to sign up for Conan O’Brien’s free cardboard viewer (they’re giving one away too).

Anyone else manage to grab an Adult Swim viewer before they ran out?

Adult Swim Virtual Brainload (Playboard) | Adult Swim Virtual Brainload (Play Store)

T-Mobile’s 10th Un-Carrier announcement is called AMPED, and it’s coming June 25th [VIDEO]

T-Mobile is just about ready to unveil their 10th Un-Carrier move. Such a neat number and milestone deserves a slobberknocker of an announcement, and we have feeling they aren’t looking to disappoint. They’ve gone as far as creating a trailer not unlike the one you’ll see for a blockbuster summer film, and the name they’ve coined for it — AMPED — certainly gets our blood pumping.

It’s become increasingly difficult to guess what direction T-Mobile would go next with Un-Carrier as they have seemingly eliminated most consumers’ pain points in previous moves. Even the businesses got some love the last time around.

It all goes down in a mere 2 days — June 25th — so circle back to see what Magenta has in store. In the meantime, let us know if there’s anything cool you’d love to see the carrier do with a comment below.