| Samsung SCH-W2014 flip phone headed for China, touts Snapdragon 800 Nov 4th 2013, 02:56, by Juan Carlos Torres Samsung and China’s love affair with flip phones seems to know no bounds. The manufacturer is once again releasing to the Chinese market a new smartphone that not only holds the distinction of being the first flip phone to be powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon, but is probably also the most expensive non-luxury flip phone in the world to date. 
The Korean device manufacturer has been keeping this old style form factor alive through the years with various flip phone models launched in China and even in its hometown of Korea, who saw Samsung unveil the SHV-E400 Galaxy Golden last August. Although Samsung just announced the SCH-W789 Hennessy in China on the same month, that smartphone, which ran on a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor and had a measly 320×480 resolution, has nothing on this upcoming model. Continuing its annual tradition of launching a somewhat high-end and expensive flip phone such as the SCH-W2013 last year and the SCH-W999 before it, Samsung is once again putting out a new model, unsurprisingly named SCH-W2014. As previously tipped, this flip phone does run on a 2.3 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 and is equipped with 2 GB of RAM, 32 GB of internal storage, a 13 megapixel main camera, and a 2 megapixel front-facing camera. Unfortunately, despite the high-end innards, the phone only has two 3.7-inch Super AMOLED displays, both with 800×480 pixel resolutions. The Samsung SCH-W2014 is headed for carrier China Telecom and, since it’s targeted at the Chinese market, has dual SIM support. Fans of the flip phone form factor, however, might flip at the price, which is expected to be around $1,640. That is actually a considerably lower price from the SCH-W2013, which supposedly launched with a $2,900 to $3,200 price tag. VIA: Engadget |  | Android 4.4 gets new non-destructive Photo Editor, coming to AOSP as well Nov 4th 2013, 02:21, by Juan Carlos Torres Image editors and enhancers are a dime a plenty on the Android platform, yet there is still something to be said about tools that come already preinstalled on any system. Even more can be said when such tools acquire new features that puts it closer with more advanced third-party versions, as is the case with the built-in Photo Editor in Android 4.4. 
With the prevalence of popular tools such as Snapseed, PicsArt, Paper Artist, or Adobe Photoshop Touch, it is quite easy to forget that the default Gallery app also has a photo editor that might very well cover the basic use cases of touching up a photo that was just grabbed via the camera before uploading it to a social networking site or sending it through e-mail. While this photo editor doesn’t offer all the bells and whistles of those bigger apps, it does have a kind of simplicity and quick access going for it. That photo editor has now been considerably enhanced for Android 4.4 and might soon have you reaching less and less for those other apps. The editor now includes a non-destructive editing feature that will help users make changes on the photo without worrying about permanently losing the original version. The user interface has also been improved to support both smartphone and tablet screen sizes. It also gains a variety of new advanced tools such as graduated filters, per-channel saturation controls, local adjustments, and more. Developer Nicolas Roard has released a video showcasing the new photo editor which you can watch below. The other great news about this built-in photo editor is that now only will it be included in Android 4.4 KitKat but will also be included in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). This means that this new editor will eventually be making its way to AOSP-based custom ROMs for everyone to use. SOURCE: Nicolas Roard | | Android 4.4.1 update to disable translucent bars on Nexus 10 Nov 4th 2013, 01:48, by Juan Carlos Torres It seems that Google has hit quite a snag with its latest Android 4.4 version and its Nexus 10 tablet. The tech giant has reportedly introduced a line of code in its upcoming Android 4.4.1 minor update that will disable translucent bars on its year-old large tablet due to performance reasons. 
One of the more subtle changes introduced into the latest iteration of the Android platform was the use of translucency, particularly in the navigation and notification bars. This feature allows wallpapers to take advantage of all the available pixels on a device’s screen. Translucency always involves a certain addition of complication and workload on a device’s hardware, and it seems that the Nexus 10 is unable to handle it gracefully for one reason or another. XDA member JosephRaphael dived into the Android 4.4.1 update code and discovered a line that disable translucent decorations on the Nexus 10, codenamed Manta. A comment on the code simply indicates that the effects perform poorly on the device. He thinks that it could be a problem with the GPU or that the new system has trouble handling the full 2560×1600 resolution of the device. Another user by the online handle of Matthileo theorizes that this is due to the tablet not being able to handle overlaying one object on top of another, which produces visible graphical glitches. 
Whatever the technical cause might be, it seems that the Nexus 10, which was released a year ago and runs on a 1.7 GHz quad-core Exynos processor, is not up to the task that the new Nexus 5 or probably even the 2013 Nexus 7 can flawlessly handle. That said, as Matthileo points out, Google should strike the problem at its root and not simply disable the feature. Perhaps this is only a stopgap measure while Google attempts to properly resolve the issue. Or perhaps Google will just be focusing on a new Nexus 10 tablet, or maybe even a Nexus 8. SOURCE: XDA
VIA: SlashGear | |
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