New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

We have become accustomed to the fact that Google and other companies periodically release updates to their devices and services. Huawei used to do this, but dark times came and there were fewer updates. Many took this as a symbol that the company stopped fighting and decided to go with the flow, but from time to time it lets you know otherwise. So it happened this time. The new firmware and the ability to run applications without installation have become more confirmation of this. But this week was not only remembered for this. There was important news from Samsung and Google. Let's discuss them in our traditional weekly newsletter.

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

Google often comes up with something new for its services. For this we love them.

Galaxy Fold 2 will be much cheaper than you thought

Samsung Galaxy Fold was talked about a lot before its release. Everyone waited, discussed, pointed a finger at the fold on the screen. Then he finally came out and after that there was even more talk. Broken screen, peeling cover and other jambs. The bloodthirsty audience, as usual, did not miss anything. At the same time, all the time of its existence, including in the project, everyone expected the price to be lower, but somehow it did not work out. It is difficult to disagree with the fact that there are objective reasons for this. Now is the time for a significant price cut.

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

We don't know exactly what the Galaxy Fold 2 will be like yet.

Let me remind you that the original Samsung Galaxy Fold costs $ 1,980. Of course, you can find more expensive devices, but for sure there will be few of them and they can hardly be called serial. Against this backdrop, even the ceramic Galaxy S and iPhone 11 Pro Max prices don't seem that high. Of course, he has one distinctive feature that others do not have, and it really arouses interest, but how often they write in our comments: “I don’t want to be a tester for my own money.” However, if you really need a phone like this, now it's only a matter of money. Previously, it was impossible to buy it for a lot of money.

It is possible that in the near future it will become even easier to buy a foldable smartphone. At least, according to the South Korean news portal iNews24, the price of the Galaxy Fold 2 could be as little as 1 million … South Korean won. It's only $ 860 at the current exchange rate, or £ 660. The second listed price is slightly higher at $ 1290, which is still significantly cheaper than the first generation of the smartphone.

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

It looks interesting. Would you buy it for about $ 1000?

You can argue with the data of the publication, since they are obtained from a source from the environment of mobile operators. Naturally, the names are not named, so there is no specifics.

If what is said in the article is true and the new smartphone really costs about half the price, this will be great news for those who are interested in it, but could not or did not want to pay $ 2,000 for a smartphone. Even if the cost reduction is due to weaker characteristics, it will still be pleasant, since everyone does not care about six cameras and many other tinsel, which is not at all the main thing in this smartphone. People just want to touch the future. That future is the display of the whole revolutionary Galaxy Fold.

According to the publication, there is a high probability that the new Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 will be shown at the Samsung Unpacked event alongside the Galaxy S20 smartphones. I do not think that this will surprise anyone, since we expected this development of events. But now there is a little more confidence in this.

There are a large number of rumors, some of which contradict themselves. One by one – the smartphone will be made in the form factor of the first Galaxy Fold, and by the second – it will be similar to the shown Motorola Razr and will open like an old “clamshell”. Such a solution looks more promising, since, perhaps, it is this solution that will reduce costs and make the smartphone cheaper. Besides, it doesn't make much sense to produce the same smartphones every year. Changing the clamshell format will attract a new audience. Especially considering that the news about Motorola Razr was received very positively by the public.

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

Galaxy Fold 2 variants.

There are even rumors that the new smartphone will be called differently, namely, Galaxy Bloom or Galaxy Z Flip. There is a drop of common sense in this, because the name will make it easier to separate the models if the novelty really opens differently from last year's device.

In any case, the release of a new unusual smartphone will be pleasant to everyone. Technology fans will have food for thought and discussion, and the company will have a trump card that it can use in the competition. If the price is really reduced, it will be possible to say that the technology reduction is going faster than we thought. One can even assume that sales of the first generation Galaxy Fold were really good and the company was able to recoup some of its development costs. As a result, it can now reduce the price of subsequent flexible display devices. If so, one can only rejoice for the company and for us. Give more smartphones! Finally, there is an opportunity to make them really different.

Huawei started updating smartphones to EMUI 10 in Russia

Manufacturers are still hesitant to ditch their shells in favor of a clean one Android, while some still manage to offer good quality and a good alternative to Google's interfaces. Will Huawei be able to surprise with its update this time? The company began the process of updating smartphones to the new version of the EMUI 10 shell. It received a refined design, new animation effects, improved functions and performance. One of the main features is the Deterministic Latency Engine. In total, 35 models will receive the update, which are used by 150 million people around the world.

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

Huawei started sending out EMUI 10 update

In EMUI 10, the company has implemented a deterministic latency mechanism, thanks to this function, the operating system will intelligently schedule tasks and allocate processor time, graphics power, memory, bandwidth, Wi-FI depending on the priority and timing of the task. It will make the interface and applications work more smoothly.

In addition, EMUI has an updated design. The interface now has animated elements, a dark theme, and gesture control, which formed the basis Android 10.

So far, only ten devices are known. The official list with the approximate release date of the update in Russia is as follows:

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

EMUI 10 release date for various devices

No. All devices will receive an update with Google services. Only new devices Huawei will not work without the services of the American giant. All current devices with installed services will not lose them.

Below is a list of devices that will not be updated to EMUI 10:

  • Honor Play
  • Honor 9
  • Honor 9 Lite
  • Honor 8X Max
  • Huawei Y9 2019
  • Huawei Nova 3
  • Huawei Nova 3i
  • Huawei P20 Lite

The only question is Honor Play, which was introduced just 1.5 years ago and runs on the flagship Kirin 970 processor. The same is installed in Mate 10 and Huawei P20, so the situation with Play is still remains unclear. What is the reason for the refusal to update this unit?

Are there any readers who have already started receiving the update? How much worse or better is your smartphone performing? Share your opinion in the comments or in our Telegram chat.

Galaxy S20 won't have the camera expected of it

Last year, smartphones with a periscope-type camera began to appear. First, OPPO showed a mysterious smartphone at the presentation during the MWC 2019, which was supposed to take pictures with a tenfold optical zoom. A little later, he was born under the name OPPO Reno. Huawei also offered his solution in the P30 Pro model. Those cameras did very well at great distances. Even from a distance of several hundred meters, the subject could be seen as a whole. It would seem that everyone should come out with such smartphones, but something went wrong. So Samsung jumped off. What does it mean?

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

Are you waiting for this smartphone?

Why is there an assumption that Samsung should go this way at all and offer cameras with a periscope design in its smartphones? All due to the fact that they are, if not a leader, then definitely one of them in their field. The cameras of the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note are very good, and the increase in resolution can of course be considered as a further improvement, but it is already sufficient. It is better to master really new directions. Moreover, the camera with a prism was received by the market as a whole positively.

This is what makes the speculation about 10x optical and 100x digital zoom in the Samsung Galaxy S20 very logical. Moreover, the advertisement “Space Zoom” and the code name of the camera of the upcoming flagship spoke in addition in favor of this. Someone decided that it should be called “Hubble” – like a telescope.

It turns out that there will be no tenfold zoom? This week, a Korean source from The Elec reported that local companies Optrontec and Actro, which appear to be supplying camera modules for the new flagship, will not produce 10x but 5x modules.

Remember how much talk there was about Huawei releasing a 5x optical 50x hybrid camera? This was talked about, probably even more than about the shooting speed of over 7000 frames per second in the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, although it is also very interesting. It turns out that a year later Samsung was not supposed to repeat the achievement of the Chinese, but to surpass it, because it is still unknown how the company from the Middle Kingdom would respond.

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

Apparently, this is the camera module.

Such a response would undoubtedly be something more weighty in the fight against a competitor than US sanctions, which it is not yet known how long will last and how they will affect Huawei. It turns out that Samsung once again missed an excellent chance to realize its advantage? Maybe.

By the way, according to rumors, the company could implement such a module already in the Samsung Galaxy Note 10, but did not do it and saved it as a killer feature of the spring flagship. If such a module had been applied at the end of last summer, this decision would have been much more timely.

On the other hand, up the sleeve of the new Samsung Galaxy S20 will be a 108MP module that will allow you to compose cool 12MP shots and allow you to play around with changing the actual magnification. It may not be optical, but it will be without loss of quality at the same resolution. They may even be able to surpass the current record 60MP hybrid zoom in the OPPO Reno 10x ZOOM.

I don’t think it’s worth explaining that optical zoom is much better than digital, when pixels are simply stretched, gradually turning the image into a bright mash of broken lines and colors. But why does a smartphone need it?

It's simple. The smartphone has long replaced the camera for many people. How long have you seen a man with a “soap box”? DSLRs and system cameras do not count, as they provide a completely different image quality and are used by many as a hobby.

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

Magnification without loss of quality is almost the only thing that the smartphone lacks.

Against this background, it is the possibility of increasing without loss of quality that looks like a very logical vector for the development of mobile photography. Surely, every person has more than once found himself in a situation where a two-fold increase in the second module was not enough to shoot the desired scene.

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

An example of a photo taken on the Huawei P30 Pro from the stands during a football match between Levante and Atlético last May.

We fully support the decision of companies to develop in this direction, but we have already seen enough of a 5-fold increase. If the young brand repeated this achievement of the Chinese, it would be very cool, but we are talking about such a monster as Samsung, which shows that it can only repeat, but not surpass. It's a shame …

On the other hand, if the industry and technology are not really ready for high-quality images with 10x optical zoom yet, you should not rush. It will just be very unpleasant if Huawei, despite its difficulties, does it in the P40 Pro, but Samsung does not.

Google Assistant support will appear in Chrome for Android

Google's apps and services, which are part of a single ecosystem, are virtually unrelated to each other. However, the search giant has been doing a long-standing job of correcting this flaw, trying to combine different software products to increase their productivity. As a result of this initiative, Google Maps introduces a Google Play Music playback control widget and Gmail support for 'Google Calendar'. But most of all, of course, Google Chrome was lucky, which received a built-in 'Google Translate', Google Lens, and very soon will receive Google Assistant.

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

Google Assistant coming soon to Chrome

Google is testing an updated version of Google Chrome for Android with Google Assistant built in. He has to replace the voice search function, which has been in the browser for a long time and allows you to form search queries without typing them on the keyboard, but dictating with your voice. This feature is already available in a test build of Chrome, which means, most likely, its release will take place with the next update, scheduled for February. At the same time, it is possible that the assistant will appear not only in the mobile version of the browser, but also in the desktop one.

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

Google Assistant will make it easier to interact with Chrome

Despite the fact that Google is going to implement Google Assistant in Google Chrome, there is no confirmation that users will be able to control the browser by giving it voice commands. However, given that owners of Google Pixel smartphones already have such an opportunity, it cannot be ruled out that everyone else will soon have it. Another thing is that there is no need to combine a browser with an assistant for this, because on the Pixel 4 both Google services work like that.

Why, then, did Google decide to integrate Google Assistant and Google Chrome? According to one of the versions, this is how the company wants to compensate for the refusal of cookies, since in this case it will be able to collect more data about users, because the assistant saves all records on Google servers. But this is obviously not the case, because Google can record not only calls to Google Assistant, but in general all cases of using dictation in any of its applications.

It seems that the primary goal pursued by the search giant is, of course, to expand the capabilities of the browser, and only then in the formation of an interconnected ecosystem. Indeed, in this case, the user will be able to ask the voice assistant to translate the request into a foreign language, whereas under normal conditions it is required to perform the translation independently. It's actually not difficult, but it takes time, and with Google Assistant, which not only translates, but also fixes errors, you can get the desired result faster.

But Google is not alone in training its browser to handle voice commands. Recently it became known that a similar experiment was launched by Mozilla. The Firefox developer doesn't just want users to be able to give the browser commands like 'forward' or 'back', but literally interact with site elements. For this, the Speech API was released, which administrators will have to adapt for their web resources, making life easier for users who are not able to manage the site with their hands.

New service Huawei allows you to run Android – applications without installation

Since the Huawei banned the use of Google services, the Chinese are trying in every possible way to minimize the losses incurred because of this. First Huawei undertook to re-release existing smartphones under new names and with more advanced hardware. This allowed her to continue installing Google Play Services on them, because according to the documents, these were not new devices, but old ones, which are not subject to US sanctions. Nevertheless, very quickly it became clear that it would not be possible to travel for an infinitely long time and that something had to be done for the future.

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

Huawei is developing its app store, making it look like Google Play

The primary goal Huawei was to create a competitive app store. Despite the fact that she already had an AppGallery catalog, it had to be filled with software so that it would become interesting not only for the Chinese audience, for which it was originally created, but also for everyone else. It was a difficult task, but Huawei, I must give it its due, coped with it pretty well and expanded the AppGallery assortment so much that it could even be used in Russia. And to make it really cool, the Chinese decided to allow owners of branded smartphones to run applications for Android without installing.

New feature in Google Chrome at Android and interesting updates from Huawei: weekly summary

Quick Apps is only available in AppGallery

The mechanism that allows applications to be launched without pre-installation is called Quick Apps and, in fact, is analogous to Instant Apps from Google. Therefore, the restrictions by which they are connected are approximately the same. Due to the fact that the software cannot save all its files in the device's memory, its functionality will be incomplete. As a result, if you try to start the game without installing, most likely, you will only have access to the first couple of levels, and to continue you will have to perform a full installation.

However, Huawei assures that with Quick Apps users will be able to save space when using heavy, resource-intensive applications. It turns out that most of the functions of the software installed in this way will still be preserved, although this has yet to be verified. But if the Chinese really allow most of the features of the AppGallery apps without installing them, it will be a breakthrough.

While it is argued that the Quick App does not require an app to be installed in principle, this is actually not the case. In order for a game or program to start, it is necessary that a small data packet is still downloaded to the device. However, its volume most often does not exceed 3% of the total weight of the application that the user wants to try out. This is, firstly, a great way to save available space if there is not much of it, and, secondly, it is very convenient as an advanced demo mode. Quick Apps are activated by clicking on a separate button located in the interface next to the download button.

Right now, the Quick Apps engine is only available on the Huawei Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro because they really need it. The fact is that these are the only smartphones of the company that are initially incompatible with Google services, and therefore their owners have to make do with their own services Huawei, which in many ways do not reach the solution of the search giant. However, there is a hope that very soon the Chinese will deploy Huawei Mobile Services among all users and then we will all be able to experience Quick Apps in real conditions without any problems.

Rate article
Everything for Android and not only | Tips, instructions, root, news and app reviews.
Add a comment