pixel – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Android 8.1 Oreo goes final, rolling out now to Pixel and Nexus devices

After two developer previews, Android 8.1 Oreo is ready for the masses. Google announced that the new OS is rolling out now and is posting system images for the Pixel 2 and 2 XL , the Pixel 1 and 1 XL, the Pixel C tablet, and the Nexus 6P and 5X. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code drop should be happening now, too. Android 8.1 Oreo is a minor maintenance release after the major update of Android 8.0 . The biggest feature in 8.1 is a new ” Neural Networks API ” (NNAPI), which is designed for running machine learning operations on mobile devices. Phones with specialized machine learning hardware can hardware accelerate this API, while older devices can use a CPU fallback mode. The API provides a base layer higher-level machine-learning framework to plug into, like Google’s TensorFlow Lite. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Android 8.1 Oreo goes final, rolling out now to Pixel and Nexus devices

Android 8.0 Oreo is official, starts rollout to devices

Enlarge (credit: Google ) NEW YORK CITY—Happy Eclipse Day! As the Moon slowly crept its way across the Sun, Google took the opportunity to host an Eclipse-themed Android 8.0 launch event in New York City. Along with eclipse glasses and a simulcast of NASA’s eclipse livestream, Android “O” finally got its full name: “Android 8.0, Oreo.” Like KitKat before it, Android’s alphabetical snack-themed codenames have gone commercial and partnered with an actual snack producer, adopting Nabisco’s trademarked “Oreo” as the name for this release. The event also came with the traditional statue unveiling: a superhero Android Oreo. With today’s event, Android 8.0 Oreo is shipping out across all the usual distribution methods. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is getting the 8.0 code drop. OTAs will begin to roll out “soon” to the Pixel, Pixel XL, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, and Pixel C, and system images should be up on developers.google.com soon. Any device enrolled in the Android Beta Program will also be upgraded to these final builds. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Android 8.0 Oreo is official, starts rollout to devices

iOS 11 camera features may include scene recognition

Smartphones may have effectively killed off dedicated point-and-shoot cameras, but Apple is looking to them for inspiration with iOS 11. Developers have dug through beta firmware for the HomePod, and tucked inside the code for Apple’s smart speaker, there are hints that the next version of its mobile OS will feature something called “SmartCam.” iOS 11 (or the next iPhone) will have something called SmartCam. It will tune camera settings based on the scene it detects pic.twitter.com/7duyvh5Ecj — Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) August 2, 2017 If you’ve ever used a point-and-shoot camera, the feature should sound pretty familiar: different scene modes and photo settings depending on what you’re shooting. So, one each for fireworks, foliage, pets, skies, snow, sports and others, as SlashGear notes. There’s even one for documents. The “smart” in its name suggests that maybe machine learning will play a role here as well, potentially analyzing the scene for you and picking the best settings. This might not use machine learning to improve photography a la what Google does with the Pixel , but it could make Apple’s woefully basic camera app a little more full featured. Whether this will be exclusive to Apple’s next round of mobile hardware — whenever it’s announced — or if it’ll apply to legacy handsets too is hard to tell. Via: SlashGear Source: Guilherme Rambo (Twitter)

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iOS 11 camera features may include scene recognition

Android 7.1.2 leaves beta, arrives on Pixel and Nexus devices

After a lengthy beta period that began in January, Google released Android Nougat 7.1.2 on Monday. Images and OTAs are up on Google’s factory image page , and a rollout has started to creep across the Google device landscape. Google is releasing the update for the Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel C, Nexus 6P, 5X, and Nexus Player. As we reported during the beta release, 7.1.2 marks the end of the line for the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9, Google’s flagship devices from 2014. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Android 7.1.2 leaves beta, arrives on Pixel and Nexus devices

Android O teases big changes to save your battery

Google I/O is only a few months away — but just like last year, we won’t have to wait until then to get our first taste of what’s coming to Android. Today, Google is releasing a developer preview of Android O, just over one year after first dropping details on Android 7.0 Nougat . Just like last year, the company is highlighting a handful of major features and letting developers know how they can try it out. But as is often the case with preview releases, Android O is not ready for regular users and not for the faint of heart. Judging from the info Google has released today, Android O doesn’t have a big, attention-grabbing consumer feature like split-screen multitasking. Probably the closest is a change to how the system handles notifications. Android will allow for new “notification channels, ” which from Google’s somewhat-vague description sound like a way for developers to roll up various types of notifications into a bundle a user can browse. An example screenshot Google provided showed a news app with 10 different “categories” of notifications, so you can see all the tech news notifications in one shot. It’s the kind thing we’ll need to see in action to judge, but it could potentially help to simplify a messy notification window. Another pretty major change is called “background limits.” While it’s not something a user will interface directly with, it could crucially save battery life, something Google has focused on in Android for a while now. Background limits will do just what it says: put limits on what apps can do in the background, across three main areas. Background services, location updates and “implicit broadcasts” will all be subject to automatic limiting by Android to help developers create apps that don’t trash your battery life. Google’s initial release doesn’t give much info on how this will affect the functionality of apps, but the company admits that it’s a “significant change” to Android. Therefore, it’s providing a lot of documentation on what’s changing and how to make apps work in the new system — we haven’t had a chance to review it yet, but we’ll update this post with anything significant we learn. Other features worth mentioning include a picture-in-picture mode for phones (the feature came to tablets last year), “adaptive” app icons that should look native to multiple phone launchers, better keyboard navigation for devices like Chromebooks and support for autofill apps. Google compares these apps to password managers; it sounds like it’ll be an improved way to manage all the info you get tired of having to enter over and over again. Developers will be able to try Android O out in the official Android emulator, but if you want to try it on actual hardware you’ll have to download and flash your device. Google says that brave developers can do this with the Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel C, Nexus 5x, Nexus 6P and Nexus Player. If you’re interested in building apps to work with Android O and Android Wear 2.0, that’s available in the emulator as well. Android O isn’t being pushed out to the beta channel (where just about anyone can try it) just yet, so only try this if you’re really game for potentially wreaking havoc on your chosen device. For everyone else, Google says it’ll have a lot more details on Android at I/O in May — we’ll probably see the full beta release right around the, as well.

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Android O teases big changes to save your battery

Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has released an experimental version of its Linux-based Pixel OS for Windows and Mac PCs. The OS, originally designed to run only on the Raspberry Pi hobby board, comes with the Chromium web browser and a suite of productivity and coding tools. “We asked ourselves one simple question: If we like Pixel so much, why ask people to buy Raspberry Pi hardware in order to run it?” founder Eben Upton wrote in a blog post . Built on top of Debian, the OS is light enough to run most old machines, provided you have at least 512MB of RAM. “Because we’re using the venerable i386 architecture variant it should run even on vintage machines like my ThinkPad X40 (above), ” Upton said. It’s easy to try out, but Upton urges you back up machines that may have valuable data. After downloading the image, you burn it either to a DVD or USB stick, then enable booting of those devices. You can normally do that by tweaking your PC’s BIOS or by holding the “C” key down when you boot up a Mac. From there, it’ll run the OS with no need to install anything. If you booted on a USB stick, you’ll get the option to run “with persistence, ” meaning any changes or files will stick for the next session. If you’d rather just play around and start fresh next time, you can run without persistence or reset it. As mentioned, you get a full suite of apps and a browser, but unlike with the Pi version, there’s no Minecraft or Wolfram Mathematica because of licensing issues. There are plenty of lightweight Linux distros for older PCs (including Debian itself), or you could use Neverware , which turns your old laptop into a Chromebook. However, the Pi Foundation supplies a lot of useful Linux apps with Pixel, and aims to make it as easy to use as possible. By porting it to desktop machines, Upton also feels “we can more easily see where [the operating system’s] weak points are and work to fix them [on the Pi].” The group thinks it could be a perfect for schools (where the Raspberry Pi already has a big foothold ) to help students learn programming and various apps. The idea is that they can learn at school, then using the persistent boot option, continue working at home with exactly the same setup. As mentioned, the Pixel OS is still in the experimental stages, and doesn’t run on all machines. On his own modern Mac, Upton said, “the machine fails to identify the image as bootable.” They’ll be releasing more updates going forward, but if you’re interested in giving it a try, you can hit announce post to find it. Source: Raspberry Pi

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Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

Hands-on with the Google Pixel and Pixel XL

Google has two new smartphones, the Pixel and Pixel XL, and these are the first that Google says it has designed on its own in terms of both hardware and software: It shows. These are great looking devices that also feel excellent when held, with industrial design that clearly inherits some of its sensibilities from Google’s work with the Pixel Chromebook, and recalls last year’s… Read More

Google announces Chromebook Pixel: 1.8GHz Core i5, 2,560 x 1,700 touchscreen, with LTE option; pre-order now, ships in April

Only yesterday we were being teased with the idea of a touchscreen Chromebook . Well, good news for people who hate waiting — it’s here, it’s called the Pixel, and you can pre-order today. The all-Google laptop is aimed at those who live in the cloud, but want a little more from their machine. Built from the ground up for the web, the 12.85-inch 3:2 ratio display claims to offer 18 percent more vertical space than 16:9 does. The screen the Pixel has is — as you can imagine — one of its proudest features, sporting a 2,560 x 1,700 resolution, giving a PPI of 239, and offers a brightness of 400nit. Oh, and of course, it’s touch-enabled so whatever your input preference, you’re covered. On the inside, there’s a dual-core 1.8Ghz Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and two SSD options — 32GB or 64GB. If that’s not enough, Google’s ahead of you, and is throwing in 1TB of Drive storage with every Pixel for three years — what it expects the life of the machine to be. You won’t be basing your choice just on storage though, as the smaller capacity model is WiFi only, while the 64GB comes with Verizon LTE baked right in, and a choice of plans. As for the rest of the features, the Pixel also has a triple-microphone configuration — with one under the keyboard — which helps improve noise cancellation, including the rattle of your typing during excited hangouts. This is also where the speakers are hidden, so it will be interesting to see how those play nice together. Other features include an “HD” camera, a custom keyboard action for less finger-fatigue, and an enhanced smooth glass trackpad. As for ins and outs, there are two USB ports, a mini displayport, a mic / headphone jack and an SD card reader — notably, no Ethernet. Wirelessly, you have WiFi a thru n and Bluetooth (plus that LTE if you opt in). Wondering what effect that display might have on the (59Wh) battery? Well Google claims its open-source test (available for criticism online) has rated the Pixel at five hours. If you want to get yourself some touchscreen Pixel action, you can order starting today from the Play store, or Best Buy starting tomorrow. The WiFi-only model will cost you $1,299, rising to $1,449 if you want some LTE (currently US / Verizon only). Not enough info for you right there? Why not head over to our minty-fresh hands-on . Filed under: Laptops , Google Comments

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Google announces Chromebook Pixel: 1.8GHz Core i5, 2,560 x 1,700 touchscreen, with LTE option; pre-order now, ships in April