Yesterday, at the first day of its annual developer conference I/O, Google cited a staggering
number: There are now 2 billion active monthly Android devices, with 1 million more devices
coming online every two months.
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That’s a hell of a lot of smartphones and tablets–and with Android on TVs, cars, watches, and
laptops, it’s only going to grow. To power this growing ecosystem of devices, Google released a
beta for developers of its latest operating system, Android O. In addition to some performance
improvements, O will put some small, clever UI tweaks on billions of devices. Here are a few we
saw today at I/O.
[Image: Google]
MOBILE MULTITASKING
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Using two apps at once–say, Skyping while looking at your calendar–is usually a total pain on
mobile. But a new O feature called “Picture in Picture” shrinks the video interface so you can look
at another app simultaneously. Take watching a Youtube video. Currently, if you close Youtube to
answer a text, you can’t see the video playing anymore. Picture in Picture moves the video to the
bottom righthand corner where it continues to play, letting you multitask much more efficiently.
You can watch Netflix while Googling a character, or maintain your video call with a friend as you
schedule an event.
[Image: Google]
BETTER NOTIFICATIONS
The new operating system also shifts how notifications happen within Android. O’s new design
takes some cues from Apple, adding a small dot to app icons to indicate a new notification. Also
somewhat similarly to iOS, a long-press on the icon will pull up a small window showing the
notification without launching the app. The change doesn’t make new work for developers–the
system pulls the color of the notification dot from the app icon automatically.
[Image: Google]
SMART COPY AND PASTE
Another pain point in Android today? Highlighting text to copy and paste. While previously you
had to long-press or double tap to begin a selection, and then drag the UI handles on either end of
the word to increase or decrease the selection, Google has put its machine learning to the work
improving that process in O.
Google’s user testing revealed that the most highlighted text on mobile phones is phone numbers,
followed by people’s names, businesses, and addresses. The new smart text selection feature in
Android O uses AI to recognize which of these you’re trying to select. One tap will select the entire
phone number, name, or address, and the UI then presents context-specific options: the phone
app for a number, Gmail for an email, or Google Maps for an address. All this happens on the
device in real time.
AUTOFILL FOR APPS
One of Google Chrome’s handier features on desktop is its autofill system, which will
automatically input information like addresses, passwords, or credit cards. Now, autofill will be
available across all apps on Android O, making logging into apps on a new phone easier than ever.
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And it syncs as well–if you logged into Twitter on Chrome via autofill, logging into Twitter on
Android will be autofilled as well.
[Image: Google]
SMART REPLY IN GMAIL
Gmail’s Inbox app and the messaging app Allo already have a handy feature called Smart Reply,
where Google’s machine learning provides three context-dependent replies to each email you
receive. Now, it’s coming to Gmail proper for iOS and Android. While this UI change isn’t Android
specific, it will definitely make any Gmail user’s life easier–regardless of what phone or operating
system you use.
With Google Lens, your smartphone camera won’t just see what you see, but will also
understand what you see to help you take action. #io17 pic.twitter.com/viOmWFjqk1
— Google (@Google) May 17, 2017
AR FOR EVERYDAY DECISIONS
One of the most exciting announcements on the first day of Google I/O was Google Lens, which
uses machine learning to recognize images in the real world, on the go–making it almost like a
visual search.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai demonstrated one particularly compelling application of the tool,
which will live inside Google’s AI Assistant: Hold your phone up, scan the street in front of you,
and Google Lens will recognize restaurants, popping up a menu in real time over the image that
shows the restaurant’s phone number, menu, and reviews, just like what you’d get on Google
Maps. It’s a hugely practical application of AR for everyday life.
HOW IS ALL OF THIS POSSIBLE, ANYWAY?
Many of these UI tweaks are powered by machine learning–which takes a huge amount of data to
process. In order to make it all feasible on mobile and open up these types of capabilities to
developers, Google announced a new version of its open-source machine learning library,
TensorFlow. Called TensorFlow Lite, it’s a library designed specifically to be fast and small for
mobile devices, enabling developers to use machine learning techniques in their apps. And coming
later this year? A neural net API.
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We’re seeing a new level of integration across all of Google’s services and products–from Android
O and the Pixel phone to Google Home and Google Lens–and, more and more, machine learning
is weaving them all together.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katharine Schwab is a contributing writer at Co.Design based in New York who covers technology, design, and culture.
Follow her on Twitter @kschwabable. More
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07.07.17
NestFounder:
“IWake UpIn Cold SweatsThinking,What DidWe BringTo
TheWorld?”
Tony Fadell, one of the minds behind the iPod and the iPhone, mulls design’s unintended
consequences.
[Photos: Constantin Renner/EyeEm/Getty Images, davide ragusa/Unsplash]
BY KATHARINE SCHWAB
4 MINUTE READ
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Brooklyn Design Lab
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Introduction To Beginner Coding
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Right This Time)
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Tony Fadell’s wife likes to remind him when their three children’s eyes are glued to their screens
that it’s at least partly his fault.
Hard to argue. Fadell, who founded the smart thermostat company Nest in 2010 and who was
instrumental in the creation of both the iPod and later the iPhone as a senior vice president at
Apple, has done more to shape digital technology than many of his peers. But in a recent
conversation at the Design Museum in London, Fadell spoke with a mix of pride and regret about
his role in mobile technology’s rise to omnipresence.
[Photo: Celine Grouard for Fast Company]
“I wake up in cold sweats every so often thinking, what did we bring to the world?” he says. “Did
we really bring a nuclear bomb with information that can–like we see with fake news–blow up
people’s brains and reprogram them? Or did we bring light to people who never had information,
who can now be empowered?”
Fadell was speaking as part of the Design Museum’s program around its current blockbuster
exhibition, California, which examines the history and culture of digital technology in the Golden
State, from early iPhone prototypes to the utopian festival and tech industry networking staple
Burning Man to drawings of Apple Park. The conversation, called “Selling Freedom,” brought
together Fadell; Bethany Koby, the cofounder and CEO of toy company Technology Will Save Us;
David Edgerton, a historian of science and technology at King’s College London; and Judy
Wajcman, a sociologist at the London School of Economics who studies the social impact of
technology. They were charged with examining the consequences of having so much revolutionary
technology coming from a single place.
[Photo: Tim Gouw/Unsplash]
The world Fadell describes is one in which screens are everywhere, distracting us and
interrupting what’s important, while promoting a culture of self-aggrandizement. The problem?
He says that addiction has been designed into our devices–and it’s harming the newest generation.
“And I know when I take [technology] away from my kids what happens,” Fadell says. “They
literally feel like you’re tearing a piece of their person away from them—they get emotional about
it, very emotional. They go through withdrawal for two to three days.”
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At its root, this is a design problem. Fadell believes that products like the iPhone, as much as they
are communication devices, are more attuned to the needs of the individual rather than what’s
best for the family and the larger community.
Some of Silicon Valley’s history is rooted in the communal idealism of 1960s California, where
technologists believed that a democratizing force called the internet was going to empower
everyone through shared information. But Fadell says this philosophy has been perverted. The
emphasis on community has been lost; instead, companies like Apple market their products by
selling the notion of freedom, that technology is a liberating force for the individual. Fadell
believes that’s partly because of who designed the seminal products and services of the digital age.
[Photo: rawpixel.com/Unsplash]
“A lot of the designers and coders who were in their 20s when we were creating these things didn’t
have kids. Now they have kids,” he says. “And they see what’s going on, and they say, ‘Wait a
second.’ And they start to rethink their design decisions.”
And it’s not just that these early Silicon Valley wunderkinds didn’t have children themselves–there
were no women or minorities or older people around either, as sociologist Judy Wacjman points
out. “Silicon Valley is notorious in particular for not being family-friendly,” she says. “It’s
notorious for being full of young male designers. It’s great that they’re thinking about this now
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that they’re having kids, but I wonder if one could envision a different design community full of
people of different sexes, full of people of different ages. Some of the design that you get is the
reflection of the limited cultural understanding of the young guys who are doing the designing.”
How are these designers rethinking their choices now that they do have families? One example is
many tech companies’ stalwart position that they act as platforms and are not responsible for the
content that users post–a stance that has recently come under fire as Facebook’s algorithms
enabled fake news about the election to spread faster than real news. Fadell points to Google,
which owns YouTube, in particular: “It was like, [let] any kind of content happen on YouTube.
Then a lot of the executives started having kids, [and saying], maybe this isn’t such a good
idea. They have YouTube Kids now.” (Google bought Nest, the company Fadell started after
leaving Apple, in 2014 for $3.2 billion, and Fadell left the company under less than favorable
circumstances last year.)
“This self-absorbing culture is starting to blow,” he says. “Parents didn’t know what to do. They
didn’t know this was a thing they needed to teach because we didn’t know for ourselves. We all
kind of got absorbed in it.”
According to Fadell, this is largely a matter of unintended consequences–but that doesn’t free
designers and developers from responsibility. Fadell wants there to be a Hippocratic oath for
designers, where they pledge to work ethically and “do no harm.” “I think we have to be very
cognizant of the unintended consequences, but also acknowledge them and then design them out–
make sure that we are ethically designing,” he says. “This is the slowest technology will ever
progress ever again in your life. It’s only speeding up. So what are we going to do as designers to
bring that element in all the time?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katharine Schwab is a contributing writer at Co.Design based in New York who covers technology, design, and culture.
Follow her on Twitter @kschwabable. More
Co.Design Daily Newsletter
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06.21.17
Design Didn’t Make Uber Good, But It Made Uber Great
The company, whose CEO Travis Kalanick has resigned, masterminded the dark arts of
manipulative UX.
[Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images]
BY MARK WILSON
4 MINUTE READ
I’ll never forget my first Uber. As cheesy as that sounds, I’m sure the feeling is shared by many of
us of a certain age. Finding myself stuck on the sleepy streets of San Francisco’s Nob Hill after
midnight, not a cab in sight, I hit a button on my phone, a car drove up a few minutes later, and I
realized city life as I knew it would never be the same.
This is the power of design. Uber hid the complicated logistics of connecting cars on the move with
customers who might appear anywhere on the map with the simplest of apps. I saw my car. And
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my car saw me. The mind-numbing calculations behind the scenes were invisible. It all felt, to
borrow a word that’s been horribly over-used in the smartphone age, like magic.
Yet it’s quickly become clear that Uber’s design legacy is more of a mastery of the dark arts. The
departure of CEO Travis Kalanick this week caps a year during which countless insider reports
revealed that the company is, in a way, more incredible than any of us imagined. However, it’s
incredible specifically for its unprecedented customer and driver manipulation, along with
its leveraging of data to sidestep authorities and whistleblowers.
Perhaps none of this will actually change with Kalanick’s departure, but 20 years from now, we
will look back at Uber with the same unsettling reverence that we do an intricate machine of war.
More than any other company before, Uber weaponized UX to conquer the digital and physical
worlds.
Travis Kalanick [Photo: Wang K’aichicn/VCG/VCG/Getty Images]
Uber started as a black car service for the Valley elite. The approach was standard from any
branding playbook: Launch a company marketed to VIPs, then reveal to the middle class that they
can have a piece of the high life, too. And who didn’t want a personal car service arriving at their
door for less than the price of a smelly taxi?
But behind the scenes, Uber leveraged the data of its riders and drivers to control both groups of
users. Reports of a “God View” revealed that Uber execs could see the position and identity of any
rider at any time. And it wasn’t just a means for execs to stalk Beyoncé, either. Uber’s rider data
gave it extremely personal information on journalists. One executive floated the idea of spending
$1 million to hire a team to look into just this information, including the “personal lives” and
“families” of journalists, to arm the company with blackmail fodder against its critics. The
company also deployed a project dubbed Greyball, which identified certain city officials and
authorities, flagging their accounts–sometimes by looking at a customer’s credit card to see if it
was linked to an organization like a police credit union–specifically to stop sting operations
targeting Uber’s often less-than-legal operations.
[Photo: Flickr user Carl]
Greyball was used for more than tracking individuals. Uber realized that it could actually be
deployed to geographic regions, changing the very functionality of Uber for specific segments of
the population. For instance, using geofencing–which draws invisible boundaries on an app’s
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map–Greyball could spot groups frequenting courthouses or police stations. The feature created
fake “ghost cars” to confuse regulators who might be operating stings.
Geofencing also helped Uber deceive Apple itself. Uber had been “fingerprinting” iPhones, leaving
tracking files behind even after the Uber app had been deleted, despite Apple forbidding the
practice. So it geofenced Apple’s campus–on the orders of Kalanick himself–to hide these
practices from Apple engineers, presumably just deleting those hidden files on any supposed
Apple employee’s iPhone. (For the invasive violation, The New York Times reports that Kalanick
got a slap on the wrist from Tim Cook.)
But Uber’s dark manipulation engine was especially inescapable for drivers.
Above all else, Uber wants to keep cars on the road, and it developed a remarkable cadre of datapowered
UX tools to do so. Just like Netflix loads that next episode of House of Cards, Uber
automatically queues up a driver’s next trip before their last one is done, urging them to binge on
work. Those who try to close the app are often pinged with a notification that they’re approaching
an earning milestone–and drivers will be pinged in the morning with all sorts of enticing alerts to
get them driving again. Perhaps the most unsettling twist is the gamification of rider goodwill–
which may serve as a substitute for better driver compensation. When you compliment an Uber
driver in the app, they will often receive badges like Above and Beyond. These happy pixels
motivate people to work for something that literally disappears once they close the app.
Uber was not the first company to use gamification or psychological manipulation to get a user to
do things they wouldn’t normally want to do. And certainly, it was not the first company to mine
user locations or leverage that data for more profit. But Uber was the first to layer all of these
practices together in a strange new interactive symphony, which hit us deep in the stomach so that
we’d sway to the beat.
What happens now? Kalanick may be out as CEO, but Uber’s code and interface are still humming
along. Many of the aforementioned policies are still intact.
Indeed, reports of Uber’s dark patterns have been growing for years now, and while data is scarce,
none of these practices seem to have brought the company to a halt like the events of the past few
weeks. Instead, Uber’s board eventually turned on Kalanick after months of simmering
#DeleteUber outrage that began Uber attempted to profit from the travel ban protests in
January and reached its crescendo after damning reports of gender discrimination, harassment,
and toxic bro culture.
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So we shouldn’t assume that Uber’s dark patterns will suddenly change under new management.
After all, they’re precisely what built the $50 billion company that Uber is today–with or without
its CEO.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Wilson is a senior writer at Fast Company. He started Philanthroper.com, a simple way to give back every day.
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06.19.17
MeetThe Guy Behind Design’s Most Cultishly Popular Newsletter
Say hello to Sacha Greif, the humble designer-coder behind the design industry’s daily fix,
Sidebar.
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BY MARK WILSON
5 MINUTE READ
With 35,000 subscribers and counting, Sidebar is one of the most important design publications
on the planet. It’s just a daily email, linking five stories for you to read each day, but those stories
are influential, and to many, serve as a barometer of where design stands today.
Now Sidebar founder Sacha Greif is launching a redesigned site. Its updates are Spartan, but
Sidebar has always been Spartan. Aside from the layout makeover, Greif added deks–publisher
speak for summaries–below the headlines of each story. And the design will accommodate up to
one job listing a day. It’s Sidebar’s sole revenue driver, aside from occasional sponsored links.
Greif’s monetization efforts are fittingly casual, despite that newsletters have become the dark
horse big business for publishers these days. The email newsletter began as a side project. Greif, a
Frenchman who lives in Japan, prefers to follow his own passions rather than some prescribed
career trajectory and would rather spend his day coding than maximizing his Influencer status in
meetups and on social media. (And for the most part, those passions involve the programming
framework Meteor, and one he’s in the process of launching now via the new Sidebar, Vulcan.)
With Sidebar’s relaunch, we chatted with Greif about his thoughts on everything from the way we
consume media, to how the major players of the Valley have finally reached a reckoning with their
own audience.
Co.Design: In 2012, nobody would have thought newsletters would be the force they are today.
Why’d you start Sidebar?
Sacha Greif: At the time, I had another project called Folio, which was a marketplace to put
designers and clients in touch. I had a really hard time driving traffic to it. Whenever I wrote about
code, I could post to Hacker News. But there wasn’t an equivalent for design.
I thought I’d launch Hacker News for design. As for the original project Folio, I gave it away to
someone else. So the side project ended up being more.
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Co.Design: Why do you think newsletters have found such a foothold in the age of social media,
when things should be easier to find? Co.Design‘s newsletter, for instance, is vital to our daily
traffic.
SG: I think it’s the only truly reliable media that exists. With Twitter, you tweet something out,
you might miss it. Facebook might change their algorithm. You never know who will see what.
Instagram was fairly linear, now they’re using algorithms. As a consumer, if you want to be sure to
know about something, email is pretty much the only way.
People are siloed on Facebook, Twitter. They don’t venture out to home pages as much as they
used to. I remember, I used to have my daily bookmarks. Every day, I would check out 10 to 15
sites as part of my daily routine. I don’t do that anymore.
Co.Design: What was initial growth like?
SG: It actually took off pretty fast in the beginning. Definitely, getting to 30,000 subscribers was a
lot faster than going from 30,000 to 40,000, or however large it is now. In the beginning, it was a
new concept, so I saturated my sphere of influence [laughs]. Also maybe I haven’t been as active as
I should have been to promote the site. From working on Sidebar, I ended up working on a lot of
other side projects. That’s how I operate.
Co.Design: You don’t seem like a big self-promoter! And you obviously monetize Sidebar, but not
nearly as aggressively as I’d think a lot of people would.
SG: I think part of it is due to me being easily distracted. I really enjoy building things, but when it
comes to marketing them, and doing all that more pushy advertising and monetization, I get bored
pretty fast. I don’t really track analytics. I don’t do A/B testing. There’s a lot of things I know I
should be doing but . . .
I find the only way I can motivate myself to improve a project, or Sidebar, is to redesign it. I have a
low motivation to go back to work on old code that by now seems all wrong. That’s why I’m
launching a new version. I get a chance to give it a new coat of paint.
Co.Design: 2012, the year you launched Sidebar, is coincidentally the same year I started at
Co.Design. And I don’t know about you, but for me, the way I evaluate a design has changed
entirely over those five years. It’s not just about, “Is this a convenient or beautiful product that
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solves a real problem?” but about social consequences, dark patterns, the implications to our
privacy–things like that.
SG: I think there’s a lot more awareness of these issues now. Especially with the political climate.
A simple example: It’s very popular to set up an email sequence when people sign up for your
service, and pretend like you’re a real human. But it’s just an automated sequence. I think this sort
of thing is going to go away as more and more people are uncomfortable with that ambiguity. It’s
kind of like the fake news thing. The first wave, people got duped by it. But there’s a reaction
where the people are going to question the validity of sources more, I hope. And the same thing
will happen with dark patterns, or even just deceptive practices. A lot of focus will go to questions
like, “Is your data really secure?” “Is the company you’re dealing with being truthful?” “Can you
explore your data?”
Co.Design: So the consumer is going to push back. They’re going to care more, not just get numb
and care less?
SG: Another example is YouTube. There’s so much controversy with ads on violent videos, or Pew
Die Pie, and I think it just shows that YouTube and Google weren’t ready to deal with any of that.
Same with Facebook. And they don’t have any policies that make sense in place. They’ll do nothing
and then they’ll overreact. I think that’s exactly the kind of thing people are, up to now, only a tiny
minority of people cared about these issues. Now YouTubers have huge audiences. I don’t think
you can treat them the same way. I think it will be the same thing for every big service like this.
Co.Design: What else is exciting you in design right now? What’s rocking your world?
SG: I’m really excited about all the new design tools like Adobe XD, Figma. Sketch is doing pretty
well, Framer. I grew up with Photoshop, and for 10 to 15 years, that was the only thing you had,
and nobody ever questioned if you could do something better, and nobody ever wondered why
were we using something called ‘Photoshop’ to design websites. Now, I’m glad we’re moving away
from that and using tools tailored for web, designing UX, and so on.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Wilson is a senior writer at Fast Company. He started Philanthroper.com, a simple way to give back every day.
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06.07.17 WANTED
Bet You NeverThought You’dTear UpWatching AnIkea Ad About A Bag
The Frakta bag is all of us.
[Still: Ikea]
BY DIANA BUDDS
1 MINUTE READ
Ikea’s bright-blue Frakta bag has become something of a dark-horse design icon. Who would’ve
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
9 smartphones with 6GB RAM for 2016
Earlier on, we have introduced about an on-progress project, in which Samsung will be mass producing a new chip that support up to 6GB RAM for smartphones. This new chip will bring certain advantages for future smartphones launched in 2016. (For detailed information about the 6GB RAM chip developed by Samsung, please refer to our previous article here)
With this process, it means that the smartphone industry will skip updating to 5GB RAM. Instead, they will go directly from the current popular 4GB RAM to upcoming premium 6GB RAM.
With this update, I guess you are curious to know which will be the first smartphones to feature a whooping 6GB RAM (which is bigger than many current laptops and PCs), because I am very curious too. Here are the alleged 9 first smartphones to come with 6GB RAM and launched in 2016 (rumored)
Top 9 smartphones with 6GB RAM for 2016
A. Top smartphones to skip 5GB RAM and go straight to 6GB RAM
1. Asus Zenfone 3
Asus has always been the first producer to update their smartphones with most powerful RAM. This time, it will not be a surprise to see them in the list. Also, we have heard that, Asus is launching the Zenfone 3 in March 2016. Awesome
- Display : 5.5-inch IPS screen (1920 x 1080 resolution)
- Corning Gorilla Glass 4
- Processor : Intel Atom Z3590 quad-core with 2.5GHz
- 6GB RAM
- 128GB ROM, expandable up to another 128GB via microSD
- 16-megapixel rear camera with dual-LED flash
- 8-megapixel front-facing camera
- Battery : 3500 mAh (non-removable)
2. LG G5
LG, to be very fair, is not that popular among our users. However, the company is appreciated for high-quality products. Following the success of high-end LG G4, it seems like LG is launching the next generation, LG G5, in 2016, with 6GB RAM
- Display : 5.6 inch quad HD 4K screen with 545 ppi
- Processor : Current 2016 Android OS
- 6GB RAM
- 16/ 32/ 64 GB internal storage
- Storage expansion up to 128 GB via micro SD card
- 20-megapixel main camera
- 5.1-megapiel front camera
- 3D Camera, Auto Focus, Digital image stabilization, Dual LED
- Battery : 4100 mAh
3. Xiaomi Mi6
Another rumored designed, from our favorite Chinese OEM Xiaomi. Although Xiaomi Mi5 is not yet launched, the Mi6 is said to be on the way to mark 2016. And of course, with 6GB RAM
- Design : Composite metal uni-body & rear glass
- Display : 5.2 inch Ultra HD 4K screen ( 4096 x 2160 resolution)
- Processor : Qualcomm Snapdragon octa-core with 2.5 GHz
- 4/ 5GB RAM
- 23 MP rear-facing camera
- 7 MP front-facing camera
- Battery : 2450 mAh
4. Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
Samsung Galaxy S7 has been featured lately, and may be launched in January 2016. Therefore, Samsung may follow up with this curved display Galaxy S7 Edge. After all, Samsung is the company who will bring 6GB RAM to smartphones, there is no reason why they won’t have one in this list.
Some alleged Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge could include: 6GB RAM (obviously), a Force Touch-like display, a USB Type-C port, fast charging and data transferring tech.
5. OnePlus 3
Many of us hate OnePlus, while many love it a lot. But there is one thing we could not deny: OnePlus is among the most well known OEMs on our nowadays market. The company makes sure to have a place in this 6GB RAM smartphone list, with, maybe, OnePlus 3 to follow up
- Display : 5.6-inch screen or larger
- Current 2016 Android OS
- 6GB RAM
- 16, 32, 64 GB of internal storage
- Storage expansion up to 128GB via microSD card
- 20-megapixel main camera
- 5.1-megapixel front camera
- Stabilization, Dual LED
- Faster fingerprint scanner
- Battery : 4,100 mAh
- Wireless charging
6. HTC One M10
HTC is not doing so well lately. But they also plan to work with one of the first 6GB RAM smartphone
- Display : 5.5-inch QHD screen(2,560 x 1,400 resolution)
- 4th generation Corning’s Gorilla Glass
- Processor : Qualcomm Snapdragon 820/ Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810
- 6GB RAM
- 64GB and 128GB Internal memory
- 27-megapixel rear camera
- 5-megapixel front camera
B. Top smartphones rumored to be the first with 6GB RAM
7. Sony Xperia QT
Sony Xperia Q line is a concept which quite surprises us. They mention that there will be two versions named Sony Xperia QA and Sony Xperia QT. While the Xperia QA only sports 3GB RAM, making it a lower end variant, the Sony Xperia QT specs will be the higher end one and totally fit our category in this post when boasting 6GB of RAM.
- Dimensions: 150 x 80 x 7mm
- Weight: 200g
- Display: 5.5″ Full-HD
- Rear Camera: 30.2MP
- Front Camera: 12MP
- Processor: 64-bit Nvidia X1 Chip 2.3 octa-core
- RAM: 6GB
- Connectivity: 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/ g/ n, GPS, NFC, Bluetooth, Micro-USB, HDMI UHD
- Battery: 5000mAh
8. Symetium
Symetium is a company located in Sweden and they are starting a very ambitious smartphone project. It is reported that the company is raising a $1,250,000 fund in order to produce a product called “the no-compromise smartphone PC”.
Symetium smartphone specs:
- Display: 5.0″ Full-HD OLED
- Rear Camera: 24MP
- Front Camera: 5MP
- Processor: Snapdragon 829
- RAM: 6GB
- ROM: 64/128/256GB
- Connectivity: 4GB LTE
- Battery: 4000mAh
- OS: SymetiumOS based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow
- Other features: USB Type-C, water proof and dust resistant, turned into a PC
9. LeTV Max 2
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| by super tricks and tips |
The last name in our list is LeTV Max 2 made by a Chinese producer. It will own 6GB RAM and a Snapdragon 820 chipset. Besides, it will feature a big screen of 5.7 inches with 2K resolution, similar to LeTV Max
Closing note:
Above are pretty awesome top 9 smartphones to come with 6GB RAM. Appealing as they seem, please keep in mind that, all of them are still rumors for now. Keep in touch, we will update as soon as we here any track from any of them that could come true.
Monday, June 6, 2016
smartphone as a Microscope
Do You Know, You Can Use Your Smartphone As A Microscope Using this Simple Setup
Smartphones are always fascinating the users with their unexpected applications. Initially, mobiles used to serve only the purpose of communication with people. Later, due to the advancement of technology, they were used as cameras, music players, e-books reading etc.
You may be aware of all these things. But you may wonder by listening that a smartphone can also be used as a microscope ( an optical instrument used to view very small objects) that to be at low cost and less material requirement.
All you need is the shortest focal length lens and its adapter. Let us see how this setup can be made in the following steps:
Obtain shortest focal length lens and then glue it to theadapter (or lens holder) using any adhesive (nail polish is the most preferable)
Orient this lens above the camera lens of your smartphone. After ensuring the proper alignment, fix the lens to the camera using the Scotch_Tape around the edge of the lens holder.
This setup will work better when the image stabilization is turned on ( because your hands may shake) and settings should be such that entire field of view is not under the focus.
You may be amazed by viewing the objects through this. Magnification depends on the optics inside your smartphone. Here are some snapshots of the microscopic structure of few things viewed from this setup.
Saturday, June 4, 2016
Secret WhatsApp Tips and Tricks You Probably Don’t Know
WhatsApp is definitely the best mobile messaging app ever made for Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia & Java Mobiles. If you have active Internet connection on your mobile phone, then with the help of this app you can send unlimited messages, videos, audios, images to anyone. As we all know that the WhatsApp’s popularity has grown so popular that many WhatsApp tips and tricks coming in the internet. It is estimated that WhatsApp has more than 400 million active users around the world. Due to it’s fast message delivery service and some other cool features many people were attracted towards it. Here in this tutorial we are sharing some of the best Whatsapp Tips and Tricks Collection for every user who are using Whatsapp app on their mobile phones or PC.
1. Use WhatsApp without your Mobile Number
You can use WhatsApp without number that means not with your own number. So this trick may help you to do that easily and you can activate WhatsApp with a number which is not your own i.e fake. Just follow the below steps and enjoy.
- If you are already using WhatsApp, uninstall it from your device completely. Download and install it again.
- Lock your messaging service simply by changing the flight mode.
- Now open WhatsApp and add your number to it. So it will not be able to send the message to the server it will ask you to choose an alternative method to verify.
- Choose the verify through message option and fill up your email address and then Click on ‘Send’ option and without waiting click on ‘Cancel’. This terminates the authorization process.
- Now, you are required to forge messages. Install the message Spoof text message for Andriod and Fake- a- Message for iPhone.
- Spoofing method: Go to your Outbox -> Copy the message details to spoofer app -> Send it to spoofed verification.
- Use the following details.
To: +447900347295
From: +[Country code][mobile number]
Message: Your email address - A message will be sent through that spoofed number. You can use this number to connect with your friends
2. Hide “Last Seen” Timestamp
By default, WhatsApp shows a “last seen” timestamp, telling other users the last time you were on WhatsApp. It’s a great feature, but the function becomes really annoying because it reveals whether you are online or not. You can not hide from your friends and they’ll keep talking to you. So if you want to hide this ” last seen in the” time stamp follow the below mentioned steps.
Earlier there are many third party Applications available in Google Playstore to hide ‘last seen’ feature. By the recent update, you can use this feature without installing any other apps.
- Download the latest version of WhatsApp from the official website to enjoy this feature.
- To hide last seen feature, Open WhatsApp, Go to Settings > Account > Privacy > Last Seen.
- There you can select three options, Everyone, My contacts, Nobody. Select any one of them.
3. Spy and Read the Conversation of Your Friend
Is it possible to Spy into Whatsapp conversation of the your close friends and read their conversation? Yes, it is possible and i’ll explain you about this awesome trick through which you can spy your friend conversation. Just follow the below mentioned steps
- Firstly, you need to do is, go to the MicroSD card and then click on the Whatsapp and later on on the Database option.
- Immediately after you are done with the first step you’ll get two files such as,msgstore-yyyy..dd..db.crypt
msgstore.db.crypt - After finding these two files, you just need to do is take these files from your friends mobile and then you will be easily able to read their conversations that they have done with their friends. You can open them using a simple text editor.
4. Backup And Restore WhatsApp Chats
WhatsApp makes automatic backups of your chats, but you can also make a manual backup. Follow these simple steps to restore your whatsapp chats.
- On iOS, Go to Settings > Chat Settings > Chat Backup, then click Backup Now.
- On Android, just go into Settings > Chat settings and tap Backup conversations to create a backup.
- It will not backup your media, so you will need to use a file manager to backup the media files in /sdcard/WhatsApp/Media on your mobile.
- There’s no way to restore chats directly from WhatsApp, so if you want to restore a backup just uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp.
- While you begin WhatsApp just after the reinstalling your app, you should be prompted to restore your most recent backup.
- We all know that WhatsApp doesn’t support to send other files than audio and video formats. There is not any option to share documents, compressed files, and other files using WhatsApp. But with an additional app like Cloud Send you can send PDFs, APKs, Word documents and more using WhatsApp.
- You can also use third party app like Whats Packed 2 ads to send any files of any size via WhatsApp. But make sure that both the sender and receiver must have Whats Packed 2 ads application installed on their smartphone.
6. Disable WhatsApp Auto Image Download
By default WhatsApp download all images, videos and voice notes to your memory which will create lot of mess in your gallery. Sometimes this may kill your mobile data and battery life when you have a very low data balance on your mobile. So this trick will be helpful to stop auto download of images or video.
Settings > Chat Settings > Media Auto Download. Select an option from all three which suits you. If you want to completely disable auto download, make all options to No Media
7. Hide your WhatsApp Profile Picture(DP)
Due to privacy concerns , or anything else , if you want to hide your profile picture this trick will definitely help you. Hiding Profile Picture option is only available for the latest version of WhatsApp. If you are not using latest version then download it and after installing go to Settings > Account privacy. Then click on Profile Photo, select any of the three options according to your needs – Everyone, My contacts, Nobody.
8. Change Your Friend’s Profile Picture
You can change your friend’s profile pic into your WhatsApp by using this new and an awesome trick to prank your friends. Follow the below mentioned easy steps to do it.
- Choose a profile picture for your friend. Use Google Image search for cute looking monkeys and donkeys or weird looking people.
- Resize the image to 561×561 pixels using Paint or Photoshop and name it with your friend’s mobile phone number.
- Disable WiFi and data network. If you don’t WhatsApp will automatically update the picture.
Save the image to the SD >> card WhatsApp >> Profile Pictures. Overwrite the existing file (if necessary).
Now, you show your friend the pic your profile WhatsApp instant panic invite her face.
Note: This is not a hack, but simply a trick to change your friend’s profile picture only on your device. This is meant for fun purpose only.
9. Create A Fake / Chat Conversation
This trick is going viral these days and many people are creating funny fake conversations and posting the screenshots over social media like Facebook and Google Plus. By using an app like WhatSaid-Whatsapp Prank you can easily create fake conversations and play pranks on your friends.
Download WhatSaid App Here
You will be able to create fake conversations with anyone by adding your photos, name it and create your own posts ( on both sides). Don’t use it to spoil someone’s life please.
10. Hide Two Images In One
Do you want to send an image to your WhatsApp frie
- Download & Install Magiapp for android and and FhumbApp on iPhone.
- Now after installing this wonderful app just fire it up and then you will see interface something lie in the image on the right.
- Now just click on the True Image option and choose your original image and then click on the Fake Image option and choose your pranky image.
- Now after selecting your images just press Do Magic ! option and voila! its done now just share your image with everyone.
