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Razer Phone Now Supports Netflix Content in HDR and 5.1 Surround Sound Some content on Netflix take advantage of high dynamic range (HDR) and 5.1 surround sound, but not all devices support those technologies. Luckily, that began to change last year, when smartphone manufacturers like Samsung and LG put out smartphones with HDR compatibility. And today at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, Razer and Netflix jointly announced that the Razer Phone will start showing Netflix content in HDR and 5.1 surround sound later this year. “We engineered the Razer Phone to handle HDR video and sound like no other phone on the market,” said  Min-Liang Tan , Razer co-founder and CEO. “We are incredibly excited to deliver Netflix entertainment on a smartphone like never before, enabling us to take full measure of the Razer Phone’s HDR10-enabled display and dual-firing, front-facing Dolby-optimized speakers and THX-certified headphone connectivity.” When the Razer Phone w...

Razer Unveils Project Linda, a Laptop Which Uses Your Android Phone as a Touchpad and Second Screen At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday, gaming company Razer unveiled Project Linda, a tricked-out laptop dock designed for the Razer Phone . Project Linda comes in the form of a clamshell aluminum dock with a 13.3-inch Quad HD (2560×1440) 120Hz display, a 720p webcam, a dual-microphone array, 200GB of storage, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a USB-A port, and a USB-C port. The full-sized keyboard has dedicated Android navigation, search, and app selection keys, and Razer Chroma programmable RGB backlighting. There’s a dock where you’d normally find a touchpad, and when the Razer Phone is attached to it, the laptop leverages the handset’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and 8GB of RAM of RAM to PC-like applications and software. (It’s like Samsung’s Dex Dock or the Motorola Atrix laptop dock.) It also charges the phone with a built-in 53.6 Wh int...

Google Pixel Launcher Mods to Change Icon Packs, Widget Sizes, and Labels If you’ve been around the Android block lately, you probably know that Google makes a few home screen alternatives to Android’s default launcher. One’s the Google Now Launcher , which puts Google Now, a card-based scroll of useful information, in the left-most panel. Another’s the Pixel Launcher, a launcher exclusive to Google Pixel smartphones. Both are highly optimized and fast, but don’t offer much in the way of customization. Luckily, Pixel Launcher Mods, a new root application from XDA Recognized Contributor  Quinny899 , fixes that. We’ve seen modded versions of the Pixel Launcher in the past which have included some highly requested modifications , and some that don’t require root. But Pixel Launcher Mods offers more choices and options than many of them, and modifies rather than replaces the Google Now Launcher and Pixel Launcher. Here’s the list of availa...

TCL Brings BlackBerry Motion to the US, Will Launch Two New BlackBerry Phones in 2018 BlackBerry-branded smartphones from Chinese smartphone maker TCL  may not be the top choice for every Android enthusiast , but it seems the phones got enough attention to warrant follow-ups. Last year’s BlackBerry KEYone , which launched at MWC 2017 , was an attempt to merge BlackBerry’s security and enterprise strengths with the flexibility and popularity of Android. It’s the first of more to come: At its press conference during the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, the company announced that it’ll release “at least two” new smartphones later this year, each of which will have  a physical keyboard . BlackBerry also announced a new Bronze color variant for the BlackBerry KEYone at the event: The Bronze Edition KEYone. It sports a matte bronze look complemented by a textured black back panel, and drops the standard KEYone’s microSD card slot in favor of a second SIM t...

Nextbit Robin’s Cloud Storage Servers Will Shut Down on March 1, 2018 It’s not easy for new companies to enter the smartphone market — the competition’s fierce, and it takes really unique features to stand out from the crowd. When startup company Nextbit announced the Kickstarter-backed  Nextbit Robin , one of its  standout features was Smart Storage, which dynamically expanded the phone’s local storage by syncing photos, applications, and other content to the cloud. Nextbit’s servers made it all possible, but they won’t for much longer — Nextbit announced this week that they’re shutting down on March 1, 2018. In an email to Nextbit Robin owners this week, the company said that on March 1, users who are still logged into the Smart Storage service will be automatically logged out, and that all personal information and data will be purged from the servers. Images (the thumbnails in Nextbit Robin’s gallery app) and applications t...

Android Distribution Numbers for January 2018 Show Oreo at 0.7% We’re a little over a week into the new year, and like clockwork, Google published the global Android distribution numbers for the month of January 2018. As always, they’re not 100 percent accurate, but they give a pretty good idea of where Android stands right now. The search giant collected the stats during a seven-day period that ended on the second week of this month, January 8, and omitted from the results any version Android that didn’t hit 0.1 percent market share or greater. As per usual, only devices that visited the Google Play Store factored into the distribution numbers — phone and tablets that were turned off during the first week weren’t counted, for example. Android 8.0 and 8.1 Oreo reached 0.7 percent of the market, but didn’t manage to nab the lead from Marshmallow , which was well ahead with a 28.6 percent share. It was the most-used version of Android as of early Ja...

Google Assistant Reaches Android Auto and Smart Displays from Sony, LG, Lenovo At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, Google took the opportunity to announce multiple developments regarding its smart assistant platform, the  Google Assistant . The product-packed, eventful week in Vegas was the perfect venue to advertise connected devices, smart home products, and artificial intelligence, and Google revealed how its AI-powered platform is expanding beyond smart speakers through smart displays and Android Auto . Google Assistant saw a slow rollout that seemed to curtail its potential, in great part because it was initially limited to Pixel smartphones and Google’s Allo messaging service. It eventually reached non-Google smartphones and Android Wear watches, and the launch of Google Home substantially accelerated its growth. While the original Google Home  was steeply priced at $130 (a bit much for a mediocre speaker with then-limited assistant capabilities), newer Google Home ...

Qualcomm’s New Home Hub Platforms Bring Google Services to Smart Devices Smart devices (and smart home devices in particular) have grown increasingly popular in recent years. Amazon leads the pack with its Alexa virtual assistant, but faces tough competition from Google . The search giant released the newest Developer Preview of Android Things , its lightweight, Weave-enabled operating system design for home automation, in December 2017. And at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday, it teamed up with Qualcomm to announce two new Qualcomm Home Hub platforms that support Android Things. Qualcomm’s new Home Hub platforms are based on Qualcomm’s SDA624 and SDA212 system-on-chips (SoC), and they’re designed to help developers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) quickly and cost-effectively ship devices that tap Google services such as the Google Assistant . Qualcomm notes that smart home hubs, which come in a range of form factors and rely on cloud c...

AT&T Reportedly Calls Off Deal with Huawei to Sell Phones in the US Huawei, the third-largest phone manufacturer on the planet, has been trying for years to break into  the US smartphone industry, but it hasn’t been easy — Apple and Samsung dominate the market with an estimated 70% combined share . The China-based company was said to be in talks to sell  its latest flagship, the Mate 10, through AT&T, the country’s largest GSM carrier, but AT&T stepped back from the deal at the last second. Huawei and AT&T’s partnership was reportedly going to be announced Tuesday during the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, according to CNBC and The Wall Street Journal , and the carrier’s reasons for calling it off remain a mystery. Had it gone through, it would’ve marked Huawei’s first carrier partnership in the US and could’ve given the company’s smartphone lineup a major boost in visibility. The breakdown of the deal means that ...

Honor 7X to Get Face Unlock Feature in Q1 2018 Honor, Huawei’s budget-focused sub-brand, stole the spotlight this week with the launch of the affordable, mid-range Honor 7X in a limited-edition red color. In case you haven’t been following our  coverage , the phone packs a 18:9 display with a FHD+ (2160×1080) resolution, dual rear cameras, and a large battery at the competitively low price of $199.99. Alongside the new red color option for the Honor 7X, Honor announced that a face unlock feature will roll out to all variants in the coming weeks. All Honor 7X models and the forthcoming Honor 7X Red will get over-the-air firmware with a facial recognition feature similar to the OnePlus 5T’s Face Unlock . It uses the handset’s front-facing camera to identify your face, and, because the Honor 7X doesn’t have biometric sensors like the iPhone X’s TrueDepth camera, likely works the same way as OnePlus’s implementation — that is to say, t...