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The Asus ROG Phone 3 gets its long-overdue Android 11 update
you'll have to download and flash it manually, but I doubt that'll bother owners too much
Owners of the Asus ROG Phone 3 have been waiting for an Android 11 upgrade almost since the phone was released late last year. The update dropped yesterday, without a formal announcement from Asus, but it was spotted by a few users and confirmed to be working with a download. You can grab it now and flash it manually, if you're not patient enough to wait for an over-the-air update.
Chrome 88 brings better password protection and Incognito screenshots while sunsetting Flash (APK Download)
The long-dreaded Manifest V3 is also on board
Another month, another Chrome release: Following the usual beta testing period, Google has just started rolling out version 88 of its browser, and there are quite a few improvements and significant changes on board. The release enhances some password protection features and paves the way for more web apps in the Play Store, but it also says goodbye to FTP connections and puts the final nail in the Flash Player's coffin.
There was a time when Flash made the web a more vibrant and fun place by providing easy access to games and video content. There was even a brief time when everyone wanted Flash support on Android. However, Flash was always a security nightmare and a drain on system resources, and newer web technologies have surpassed the capabilities of Flash. Adobe decided to wind down Flash support in 2017, and now we know when this once-storied web plugin will die for good: December 31, 2020.
There are a lot of general questions we have when it comes to how people use their phones here at Android Police, but sometimes they can be hard to articulate or bring to mind. This weekend's question comes courtesy of one of our readers, who wonders: How many of you turn off or disable the flash for your smartphone cameras?
Remember when being able to run Adobe Flash was a selling point for Android devices? The plugin was never officially supported past Android 4.1, but various hacks kept it alive for a while longer. Some browsers continued to support the plugin for devices that could run it, including Firefox. But the next major Firefox update, v56, will finally drop the plugin on Android.
The web has changed quite a bit over the past few years. All major browsers now release updates on a strict schedule, HTTPS is becoming the norm rather than the exception (before you ask, we're working on it!), and web plugins like Adobe Flash and Java are on their way out. Browser vendors and Adobe itself have been working to transition Flash-based content to HTML5, and Chrome even started displaying HTML5 content by default last year.
Google Assistant was introduced at Google I/O last year, as a more personal voice assistant than Google Now. Since then, it has been made available on several platforms - Pixel phones, the Google Home, Android TV, and Allo. But Assistant is still unavailable on non-Pixel phones without a special build.prop tweak. Now the Open GApps team has made enabling Assistant a little easier.
The best way to show you're worried about a competitor is to copy their product and attempt to do it better than the original. Facebook is obviously worried about Snapchat, because it's created not one, not two, but three Snapchat clones over the past few years. Now it's got another one, Flash, aimed at emerging markets.
Another day, another deal and today's comes from Amazon's Gold Box sale. Certain PNY flash storage items are on sale for up to 50% off. These include flash drives, SD cards, microSD cards, and OTG accessories. Most of the storage media are pretty high capacity, too.The highlight of this sale is a 128GB microSD card with a USB/micro-USB reader for $34. The latter, of course, is for USB-OTG on compatible Android devices. The only bummer here is that it isn't Type-C. Among the other treasures in this Gold Box deal are a 64GB flash drive with a Lightning connector and a 480GB portable SSD.If you've been itching for some more glorious space to store all of the (digital) things, then this is definitely worth checking out. It's also great if you're like me and hoard flash drives and SD cards.Source: Amazon
The Google Pixel phones' development has had a big week; just a few days ago, the Verizon and EE variants had their bootloaders unlocked. Now, Chainfire, the famed developer of SuperSU and FlashFire, has debuted a systemless root method for the Pixels.
I never thought I needed more LED flashes in my life. My phone, whichever model it happened to be, came with at least one and that was supposed to be enough for those instances when I was in dark surroundings. But then I spotted the original iBlazr on Kickstarter and immediately fell in love with the idea. An LED light that you could attach to your phone, use on demand, and even with front-facing cameras? Sign me up!But upon delivery, I discovered a few flaws with the concept. You could only insert it into the 3.5mm plug on your phone, which made no sense for devices with the plug on the bottom since it put the flash far away from the camera. The iblazr Android app was next to useless. And it was nearly impossible to get the app and phone to work together to take a single shot.Like most crowdfunded projects, the Concepter team learned from its mistakes and launched a second generation product to address these issues. The iBlazr 2 is wireless, has better lights, more solid build quality, and worked from the first try within my regular camera app.
Got an LG G4? You lucky dog, you. The impressive technical specs and highly adjustable camera, plus features like a removable battery and a MicroSD card slot, have made it a popular flagship choice for power users. Some of those power users will naturally want to tinker with their phones... and now they can. Over on XDA-Developers, forum poster "thecubed" (who's well-known for previous LG exploits) and his team are showing off a solution that they claim can gain root permissions on all versions of the LG G4, regardless of carrier or international status.
Almost two years ago, I backed the iblazr project on Kickstarter. It promised an external flash for my phone that connected via the 3.5mm plug and brightened photos more than the built-in LED ever could. The project was successful, the company delivered quite on time, and the final product was good. However, as with any first-gen item, there were flaws and issues with the iblazr. Most importantly, the Android app was never up to par and the 3.5mm connection meant that on phones where the plug was on the bottom, you had your light angled wrong compared to your camera (which is usually on the top).
One of the tools any good flashaholic should be familiar with is fastboot. Like ADB, the help screen for fastboot received some changes with the preview release of Android M. The reboot command now offers a friendlier syntax to reach the bootloader, and there is a new set of "flashing" commands designed to prevent write operations from occurring when they aren't desired. There's also a fix for the "missing system.img" error that some people experienced after trying to use the flash-all script to install factory images.
Veteran Android users, particularly those who stick to Nexus devices, are well aware of the fact that you can usually flash OTA updates manually once someone pulls a link to the actual update file. This normally provides a much better option than waiting for your device to get the update sent to it, which could take weeks. Android Wear has this functionality as well, but each watch is a little different in terms of proper procedures for doing so. We're going to run a series of posts on how to manually flash updates to each Android Wear device that supports it (sorry, Moto 360 users) in the hopes of providing some clarity on the issue.
The preview release of Android M has shown magnificent growth in the platform. There are new things for everybody to enjoy. While we're always excited to see new APIs and cool features – not to mention some pretty important bug fixes – we shouldn't overlook the interesting changes that have also come to the tools we use to work with Android and our devices on a different level. The preview SDK brings an updated version of ADB with a few new commands, including a handy new shortcut to reboot directly into Sideload Mode.
While Android Lollipop added a flashlight toggle into Quick Settings, circumventing most third-party torch apps, the function was only accessible in the notification drop-down and as an on/off switch. If you wanted to use the flashlight with morse code, for signaling, or other patterns, you still had to use a separate application and developers of said apps didn't have any clear API to build their software on. They had to hack together solutions for various phones, relying on whatever way the different OEMs had created to access the camera's flash.
Flash continues to exist largely because it's so entrenched. Even as mobile devices without Flash become increasingly common, you might notice ads are often still created in Flash. Google is looking to change that on its ad network by automatically converting Flash to HTML5. That should take some strain off your system.
Dolphin, one of Android’s most popular third-party browsers, continues refining its Lollipop experience after initially rolling out a compatible release a month ago. Now, with Flash support, Android 5.0 devices should have feature parity with KitKat and earlier systems. In addition to the Flash upgrade, Dolphin has a grab-bag of enhancements that apply to all 4.x users.