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Deepfakes – algorithmically synthesized face-swapping or mimicking videos – are frequently discussed as a dystopian tool that allows almost anyone on the internet to lay words into someone's mouth or put anyone's face into rather objectionable circumstances. Fortunately, deepfakes are rather easily detected at the moment, and thus not too dangerous in the grand scheme of things. Instead, if used correctly, deepfakes can apparently be rather fun. The recently released Chinese Android and iOS app ZAO allows almost anyone to insert themselves into famous movie scenes, requiring nothing more than at least one picture. As with FaceApp before it, privacy concerns quickly arose.
Google services are blocked in mainland China, but there are still millions of Chinese speakers across the world with access to Google Assistant. Support for Traditional Chinese was added to Assistant last year, and now it works with Simplified Chinese too.
Google Assistant can do a lot of awesome things, but that list would be much shorter without developer support. That's what Actions on Google is all about—it helps developers integrate apps and services with Assistant. Thus, you can shout at your phone and smart speakers more often. Now, developers can start supporting the Chinese (traditional) language in their Actions.
New languages are coming soon to Gboard. Google announced today that support for more than 20 new languages—including Korean and both traditional and simplified Chinese—will be coming in the next few days.
Gboard almost never fails to add an assortment of new, and sometimes unusual features with each update. The latest version bump doesn't disappoint. In this release, Gboard can now auto-complete email addresses from your contact list, adds support for Chinese and Korean keyboards, and launches a new universal media search feature that brings together emoji, stickers, and GIFs. There are also some other smaller improvements that will make it easier to set up multiple keyboards within a language and perhaps get suggestions and autocorrections for languages you've never even set up.
Waze is a pretty popular navigation app, even among Google diehards. In fact, Google actually bought Waze way back in 2013 for a little over one billion dollars and uses some of the data sourced by Waze in Google Maps. For many people who drive for a living or just happen to be on the road a lot, Waze's extra features when compared to Google Maps are something they just can't live without.
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- LG has reportedly created a 'Chinese Smartphone Market Task Force' under its Korea Business Headquarters. It was formed under department head Choi Sang-kyu, and aims to examine why LG Mobile has been struggling in the Chinese market. So while the company may be pulling out of the country for now, it will likely return in the future with some new tactics.
The last LG phone that was offered to the Chinese market was 2016's G5 SE, a downmarket version of the not very well-liked G5, meaning that the Korean company had all but left the country. However, we now have confirmation from an LG official that LG's mobile phone business is pulling out of China.
You don't have to be a genius to work out that China is going to be an increasingly significant nation in the coming years, culturally and economically. More than one billion people already speak Chinese, and that's sure to continue rising. It's been one of the most requested languages over at Duolingo, which is ready to launch Mandarin Chinese in its mobile apps and on the web.
The New York Times website exists in 3 language flavors: English, Spanish, and Chinese, and now the latter is graduating to also become a standalone Android app. You may be wondering why a website that's blocked in China would release an app on an app store that's also not legally available in China, but you'd be forgetting that Chinese is the most spoken language in the world, with native speakers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and plenty of Southeast Asian countries, not to count all the Chinese immigrants around the world. Plus those inside Mainland China who use proxies to access restricted content.
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Removable batteries? Bah. External USB batteries? Child's play. Real power users use multiple batteries to make sure that their phones never turn off within a hundred miles of electricity. Or at least that seems to be the idea behind the M5, an upcoming smartphone from Chinese manufacturer Gionee. According to Weibo, the as-yet-unseen phone will sport two batteries inside its bay, both of which are removable in a hot-swap configuration.
The newest version of SwiftKey opens the third-party keyboard up to millions upon millions of people. How? By officially bringing Chinese language support out of beta. There are seven new input methods total, with ways to type in Simplified, Taiwan Traditional, and Hong Kong Traditional Chinese.
We've been waiting a long time to see smartphones with screens made from synthetic sapphire, an expensive material that justifies its cost by being nearly impervious to scratches from all but the hardest materials. So far we've seen it on a single Kyocera "tough" phone and not much else, but Chinese manufacturer OPPO is hoping to bring it to a more mainstream device. Say hello to the R1C, a phone that hangs out on the higher portion of the midrange, and is scheduled to hit China later this month.
OnePlus has been amazingly and infuriatingly evasive when it comes to their much-hyped One phone, bordering on "bloody cheeky" with their series of faux-viral specification and schedule reveals. Perhaps one of their hardware or marketing partners got as fed up with waiting as we are, because a full set of convincing photos and renders has been leaked via a Chinese forum.
It's not all that uncommon for software companies to roll out updates on a monthly, even weekly basis, but manufacturers are typically content to improve their products much more slowly. This isn't the case with Xiaomi, the successful Chinese smartphone maker Hugo Barra, former Vice President of Product Management for Android, left Google to join a few months ago. The company ships a new batch of phones every week, partially relying on user feedback to determine what changes they should make for each group - new shipments come out every Tuesday at noon Beijing time, containing new software builds and possible minor hardware tweaks.
A couple of days ago, we ran a story about a circulating rumor that Google had expressed strong concerns with the launch of an Acer phone powered by Chinese Internet firm Alibaba's Aliyun OS. As the post explained, Alibaba claimed that Google had warned Acer that releasing the CloudMobile A800 could result in the search giant "terminating its Android-related cooperation and other technology licensing with [Acer]." These rather strong words led to speculation over just what the issue could be with Aliyun, and whether Google had issued the warning at all. Google quickly confirmed its stance, indicating that Aliyun was an incompatible version of Android, and one that could "weaken the ecosystem."
Cheaper Android Devices Could Increase Repair Costs Of Global Telecoms Operators By Up To $2 Billion
It's not much of a secret that Android's success is in no small part due to the broad range of devices which are currently available on the market. There is a phone for everyone available if you look hard enough, from top-of-the-range choices such as the Samsung Galaxy S II all the way down to cheap, unbranded phones from China.
Second only to Google Voice Search in terms of popularity on Android, Vlingo received a major update today. What's new? The entire UI has been streamlined into a much more intuitive list format that makes learning Vlingo's various voice command capabilities, or quickly accessing them, a breeze.
Wow, this went unnoticed for a while, didn't it? On November 23rd, Google's own GoogleinHK YouTube account posted a video walkthrough of the new Google Voice Search in Cantonese. With only 2100 views, this official Google-authored video did not grab anyone's attention, until someone noticed that it featured over a minute of the clearest Gingerbread user interface video we've seen to date. The greens, the blacks - it's all there. Have a look: