Moto Z2 Play Specifications Leaked, Slimmer Body and Reduced Battery Capacity

The Moto Z line was a big success to Motorola, who is poised to maintain the line with upcoming Moto Z2 Play. The first generation Moto Z was well known for its slim profile and exceptionally good battery life. However, according to a leak by Evan Blass over at VentureBeat, the second generation model will be slimmer than its predecessor, but as a result will face a reduction in battery capacity.

According to marketing material reviewed by VentureBeat, the Moto Z2 Play will be 6 mm thick and weigh 145 grams, but will come with a less capacious battery. From what they’ve learned, the new phone will have a 3,000 mAh battery. That’s 510 mAh less than the battery found in the Moto Z Play. Theoretically, this will affect the battery life, and according to the marketing material the Moto Z2 Play will feature 30 hours of active usage, down from 50 hours on the Moto Z Play.

Otherwise, the Moto Z2 Play will sport similar specifications to the original Moto Z Play. Lenovo will use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 as the SoC. The smartphone will have eight ARM Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.2 GHz as well as an Adreno 506 GPU. If we compare it to the first generation Z Play, we will get pretty much the same smartphone but with a slightly faster CPU. On the software side, the Moto Z2 Play will seemingly ship with Android 7.1.1 out of the box.

Furthermore, the phone will have 4 GBs of RAM (compare to the Z Play which had 3 GBs). The internal storage is doubled and set to a satisfying 64 GBs. We can expect the Moto Z2 Play to ship with a 5.5″ Full HD Super AMOLED screen.

Finally, Lenovo decided to replace the 16-megapixel rear-facing camera with a 12-megapixel one, but image quality should not be worse thanks to the camera having  f/1.7 component featuring dual auto-focus. The front camera remains unchanged.

Moto Z2 Play will be available in two colors: Lunar Gray and Fine Gold. The device is one of three handsets in the refreshed Moto Z2 lineup. Those include the new entry-level Moto C and C Plus, the Moto E4 and E4 Plus, and the Moto Z2 and Moto Z2 Force. These devices should be released throughout the rest of the year.

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Source: VentureBeat

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The Hardware Lottery Continues: Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+ Varies Between UFS 2.0 and UFS 2.1

A few weeks ago, it was reported that Huawei undertook some controversial decisions with the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus. In a nutshell, the Huawei P10 and the P10 Plus could feature any combination of LPDDR3 or LPDDR4 for the RAM and eMMC 5.1, UFS 2.0, or UFS 2.1 for the storage. This essentially made purchasing the device a hardware lottery as you’re paying the same price for the device as anyone else, but the device you bought could be objectively worse than someone else’s P10/P10+.

The hardware lottery phenomenon has now apparently popped up in the most talked about flagship of this year so far – the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+.

Apparently, the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+ could feature either UFS 2.0 or UFS 2.1 for the storage. Promotional material from Samsung early on boasted of UFS 2.1 for its storage, but eagle-eyed XDA Senior Member lch920619x spotted the silent removal of mentions of UFS 2.1 for storage on Samsung’s official webpage for the devices.

Users are reporting significant variance in sequential read speeds on their devices. The UFS 2.1 devices get sequential read speeds hovering between 700-800 MBps, while those with UFS 2.0 for storage would get sequential read speeds in the range of 500-600 MBps.

There is no clear and fool-proof way as of yet to identify which of the two you would be getting before purchasing the device.

However, XDA Senior Member lch920619x does mention of ways to conclusively ascertain the same once you have the device in your hand. Using a Terminal Emulator app, users can enter the following command:

cat /proc/scsi/scsi

This would return the exact Model Number of your flash memory chip. You can google the model number to get more information on the storage. lch920619x got the model number ‘KLUCG4J1ED – B0C1’ on his SM-G950FD [Exynos-based Samsung Galaxy S8 Duos] which turns out to be a Samsung-made UFS 2.1 memory chip.

The lottery situation arises with Toshiba-made memory chips. If the model number returned is along the lines of ‘THGAF4G9N4LBAIRB’, then you are lucky enough to get a device with UFS 2.1. If however, the model number returned is ‘THGBF7G9L4LBATRC’, then your device comes with UFS 2.0 storage specification.

You can also check the Sequential Reads on your device using AndroBench, but checking the Model Number is the most accurate method of finding out exactly what you have inside your device.

Interestingly, the same situation exists for the Huawei Mate 9 too, as far as UFS specifications go. Twitter user @yao_yunfan shared a handy reference table listing and differentiating the model numbers as found on the Mate 9 which was also advertised as a UFS 2.1 device. The model numbers listed on the table match the ones reported by Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ users, indicating that the UFS 2.1 crunch that forced Huawei’s hand on the P10, P10 Plus, and the Mate 9 also affects Samsung on the newest Galaxy flagship.

Speculation and anecdotal evidence suggests that the hardware lottery on the Samsung flagships relates only to some Snapdragon Galaxy S8 devices, but this could be incorrect. Both the processor variants of the Galaxy S8+, the bigger and more expensive of the flagships, utilize UFS 2.1. Exynos variants of the Galaxy S8 also seem to be using UFS 2.1. Since Samsung has not responded with an official statement on the issue, it appears prima facie that Snapdragon S8 users may be the ones with the objectively inferior device.

How bad is having UFS 2.0 instead of UFS 2.1 for your device?

Theoretically speaking, the difference between UFS 2.0 and UFS 2.1 objectively exists and is large enough for phone OEMs to tout the superiority of one over the other.

Practically speaking, most average users and even smartphone enthusiasts will not be able to distinguish between the performance of UFS 2.0 versus UFS 2.1, unless they compare both side-by-side. In real life and daily usage, UFS 2.0 will unlikely be the bottleneck in your flagship experience. Had Samsung gone for eMMC 5.1, the memory specification would have had a much more profound and noticeable impact on your experience. Thus as a silver lining, Samsung is only juggling between UFS 2.0 and UFS 2.1 for now.

At the end of the day though, if you paid flagship prices for the subjectively “best smartphone” of the year, then you deserve to get nothing but the best. Especially when UFS 2.1 was touted as a feature and mentions of it subsequently removed silently, it shows an OEM’s opacity in dealing with their customers. That’s just our opinion.

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What are your thoughts on the hardware lottery trend that we now also see on the Samsung Galaxy S8 flagships? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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Redmi Note 3 (Kenzo) Receives Support for Quick Charge 2.0 with Latest Franco Kernel Update

Francisco Franco has just released r5 of his custom kernel for the Kenzo variant of the Redmi Note 3. This update adds support for Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 technology, fixed a bug regarding the hardware interrupt handler, added a little headroom for the little cluster CPUs, and made some sepolicy changes so it will work with Magisk root users.

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Refurbished Galaxy Note 7R Passes FCC Certification, Expected to Hit Market Next Month

Samsung has been planning to release a refurbished version of the last year’s ill-fated Galaxy Note 7 in order to recoup some of the costs that they incurred with manufacturing so many devices. Following the two unprecedented recalls of the Galaxy Note 7 last year due to some dangerous battery issues, Samsung was forced to cease the sale of the device worldwide.

The possibility of bringing the refurbished Galaxy Note 7 units to the worldwide market was always in the cards; Samsung first revealed its plan to release the refurbished Note 7 at MWC 2017, where the company also detailed the cause behind the battery issue of the Note 7. At the time, the company said it would first consider selling the Galaxy Note 7 as refurbished phones after due consultation with South Korean regulatory authorities and carriers.

Then again last month, we learned that the device will likely be named the Galaxy Note 7R and that it will be available through all major carriers in South Korea by the end of June. Now it appears we certainly don’t have to wait long to learn more about the Galaxy Note 7R as the device has just cleared FCC certification. Receiving FCC certification is a strong indication that Samsung is serious about selling the device.

According to the FCC listing, three variants have cleared the certification – SM-N935S, SM-N935K, and SM-N935L. It appears the SM-N935S model is for the South Korean carrier SK Telecom while the SM-N935K and SM-N935L are believed to be for the KT Freetel and LG Uplus’s variants, respectively.

Releasing the Note 7R will probably help Samsung minimize its losses as well as avoid environmental penalties it would have to pay to South Korean authorities for disposing of the Note 7 units.

The Galaxy Note 7R is expected to carry a price tag of 700,000 KRW ($620). In case you’re wondering, that is $250 less compared to the original price of the Note 7 ($875). The Note 7R will reportedly have a smaller 3,200mAh capacity battery compared to the original 3500mAh battery in the Galaxy Note 7 in order to avoid any potential battery heating issues. The Note 7R is also rumored to come running with Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box this time around.

Source: FCC Via: Android Authority

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OTGSubs Lets You Create and Package Substratum Themes Directly on a Phone or Tablet

Substratum is an incredibly popular theming system for smartphones and tablets running compatible firmware. It has evolved from Sony’s RRO framework and used to be called Layers until it evolved into the Substratum project that we know of today. We’ve talked about Substratum on multiple occasions here on XDA and have even produced a few tutorial videos so you can theme elements yourself. The process can seem tedious and there is some setup involved before you can get things to look the way you want.

However, there’s a new open source application from XDA Member Android-xp that promises to let you make your own Substratum themes all from your own smartphone or tablet. The application is called OTGSubs and you can find the open source project on GitHub or download the official application from the Play Store. Creating and packaging a Substratum theme directly from your device isn’t all that OTGSubs allows you to do, though. Themers, if they choose to, can make their existing themes compatible with OTGSubs if they want.

Thus if your favorite Substratum theme also supports OTGSubs, you can then load up that theme into the application and customize certain elements such as background and accent colors. The developer says the application is still in an alpha stage and there could be some rough edges that need to be fixed. Still, creating a basic theme is very straight forward and you can see how the process works by watching the embedded video down below.

OTGSubs (which stands for On-The-Go Substratum) currently contains three modules: app, substratum-packager, and substratum-template-patcher. The developer has even been in touch with the Substratum team and they’re working to see if this functionality can be directly implemented into the core Substratum application. Be sure to check out the application if you’re interested and tell us what you think down in the comments section below.

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Report: Researchers Find an Average of ~8,400 Pieces of Android Malware Every Day

Being the most dominant platform in any market means there are going to be a lot of malicious actors targeting Android with malware. We’ve seen this happen with Windows over the years, and now more people are targeting Android than ever before due to how many people are using it. Some reports peg Android’s global market share at 72%, while others go even higher. Google has gotten very serious about keeping Android secure over the years and their monthly security updates are going a long way to help this.

Still, not every smartphone and tablet receives these monthly security updates. Some devices go months without receiving patches for the latest exploits and others aren’t even supported anymore. Thus many consumers are forced to either buy a new phone in order to keep it secure, or hope that community developers will maintain and support the device with custom ROMs. A new report from G DATA shows exactly how important these security updates are, and how more pieces of malware are found every single day.

The research company released a report at the end of last month that detailed their findings for the first quarter of 2017. Their security researchers say they discovered over 750,000 new Android malware applications during the first quarter of the year. When averaging this out, that equates to just under 8,400 instances of new Android malware every single day. This is a growing trend and it’s something that G DATA feels will continue to grow this year as well.

According to their data, 2013 saw almost 1.2 million pieces of Android malware being discovered by the company. This increased to close to 1.55 million in 2014 before it rose to 2.33 million in 2015, and finally last year they found just under 3.25 million instances of malware for Android. The company says they are forecasting this year to end with around 3.5 million instance of malware, but it could go even higher. So it just goes to show you how important it is for an OEM to push out monthly security updates to their customers.

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Source: G DATA

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Android Pay To Be Launched In Taiwan In June

Android Pay is scheduled to enter the Taiwanese market on June 1, according a Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) report. Initially, Google’s mobile payment service will be supported by three local banks. Nevertheless, support for additional banks should expand in time according to the report.

Currently, customers in Taiwan can use Apple Pay for mobile wireless payments. The service has been available for seven local banks since late March, but Android Pay is poised to join the race two months later.

Android Pay was announced at Google I/O in 2015. The service uses NFC communication to transmit card information facilitating funds transfer to the retailer. Since its premiere, Google has successfully launched Android Pay in many countries, and if the report by EDN is true, then Taiwan will be the thirteenth country with support for Android Pay.

The most noteworthy part of this news is that Android devices are incredibly popular in Taiwan. According to the paper, 80 percent of smartphones in the region run this system. This is mostly thanks to the fact that Taiwan is the home market to the likes of smartphone giants HTC and ASUS.

Android Pay will be available for clients of CTBC Bank, First Bank, and Bank SinoPac, per the report. CTBC Bank alone issued six million credit cards, so there is a lot of market potential to be captured by Google. Clients of these banks will soon have an option to utilize the NFC in their devices for mobile payments.

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Source: Digitimes

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