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Earlier this week, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau finally announced an integration with Oppo, a move that had been rumored since he took over product responsibilities for both companies. Although his initial forum post confirmed the two companies would remain separate entities, a few questions went unanswered. Luckily, we have a confirmation on one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the move.Although Lau has mostly been silent in the follow-up thread to his original post, he did respond to one question wondering whether either company would move to a new operating system (via 9to5Google). Outside of China, OnePlus devices will continue to use OxygenOS in the future. That's great news for pre-existing owners and anyone interested in picking up a OnePlus 9 or — eventually — a OnePlus 9T if and when that launches this fall.
Microsoft is bringing Android OS development for the Surface Duo in-house
The second model is also in early development
The dual-screen Surface Duo is slated to be Microsoft's first Android device, but most of the work involved in porting Android was done by a contracted team of developers. Microsoft seems sure of the Duo's success (whenever it is released), as the company has now acquired the external development team, and development on a Surface Duo 2 has begun.
Spotify started supporting podcasts three years ago, and now the service is one of the most popular ways to catch up on audio shows. Rumors began to circulate last week that Spotify might buy podcast production company Gimlet Media, and now that has been confirmed — along with the purchase of Anchor.
Pixowl is an independent mobile developer with 10's of millions of downloads under its belt, all thanks to its highly popular The Sandbox series of games. The studio was just purchased by the publisher Animoca Brands for an upfront consideration of $4.875 million in cash and shares. The thing to understand is that The Sandbox is among the world’s largest independent user-generated content platforms and gaming ecosystems, and while it is no Minecraft or Roblox, it surely has a lot of potential to find just as much success.
CD PROJEKT RED is expanding. The studio best known for The Witcher series of RPGs now owns the majority stake in Spokko, a new Polish gaming studio brand co-created by Maciej Weiss and Rafał Staszewski. Spokko will remain largely independent of CD PROJEKT by retaining its creative autonomy thanks to sharing a similar philosophy of operation with CD PROJEKT, though it does seem clear both studios are teaming up on a new idea based on one of CD PROJEKT's brands.
QuickPic is a nice little Android photo gallery-slash-viewer. Over several years it has gained a comfortable userbase thanks to steady updates, excellent communication with users, plenty of extra features, and an impressive adherence to Android design standards. So when QuickPic fans discovered that the app had been sold and re-published by Cheetah Mobile, they were, to put it mildly, pissed. They began flooding the app's Play Store page under the new developer "Cheetah Mobile Cloud (NYSE:CMCM)" with disparaging reviews almost immediately.