LeEco Chairman: Cash Crunch “Far Worse Than Expected”

Chinese OEM LeEco is facing a serious financial crisis. Its chairman, Jia Yueting, said on Wednesday that the company's cash crunch is "far worse than expected." LeEco is struggling to be fully operational despite financial aid from other companies as the company is still trying to recover after allegedly "expanding at an unprecedented rate". It appears that LeEco wanted too much too fast, and now has to face the consequences.

Jia Yueting, LeEco's CEO

LeEco might have not showed us its quite financially smart, though it certainly looked quite ambitious a few months back. After taking the Chinese market by storm, LeEco tried to tackle the American and Indian markets unsuccessfully. Earlier this year, the Chinese property developer Sunac agreed to invest 15 billion yuan ($2.21 billion) including 9 billion yuan into LeEco's non-listed entities. Unfortunately for the company, that didn't help much.

"We had thought some 9 billion yuan for the non-listed units would have been able to solve all the problems, the result obviously did not meet our expectations, (…) Since October, we took some measures and made some mistakes, but LeEco's non-listed units' finances got tighter. This is what we discovered over two-to-three months."

Jia Yueting, at the meeting with shareholders

Mr. Jia highlighted some moves that the company is planning to take to ease the crunch. LeEco is going to consolidate its non-listed units in the next two-three months. Additionally, the company will include additional funding for its troubled car unit, which has been a major source of its money problems. Mr. Jua also said that hosting to repay its debts instead of refinancing operations had hurt the company's ability to get on track.

Last year, the company raised $1.08 billion to build an electric car, which was announced in April. The Chinese company plans to double down on its TV/online video offerings, which are certainly where its strengths reside — the firm was once known as LeTV, and it hosts a large and successful online video service that they attempted to leverage in their smartphone ambitions.

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Source: Reuters

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Enable the OnePlus 5’s DCI-P3 Wide Color Gamut Mode on the OnePlus 3T

It's been a little over a week since OnePlus officially launched its latest flagship smartphone – the OnePlus 5. The device is currently the most powerful Android smartphone on the market with an upgraded Snapdragon 835 SoC, 8GBs of RAM, and UFS 2.1 with two-lane ROM. But compared to its predecessor, the OnePlus 3T, the OnePlus 5's display does not seem to be a marked improvement on the surface. Both devices feature a 5.5″ 1080p AMOLED display at ~401ppi, but by default the OnePlus 5 features the DCI-P3 wide color gamut which is the same color gamut found in 4K Ultra High-Definition televisions and Digital Cinema.

Other than the OnePlus 5, there are other smartphones that support DCI-P3 like LG flagship devices (though apparently, not very accurately), the now-defunct Samsung Galaxy Note 7, the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+, and the iPhone 7. However, there appears to be another smartphone that may support the DCI-P3 wide color gamut – the OnePlus 3T. Soon after the OnePlus 5 was officially announced, it was discovered that the display model found in the OnePlus 5 is actually the same display found in the OnePlus 3T. In particular, Roland Quandt (@rquandt) used AIDA64 to discover that the OnePlus 5 uses the Samsung S6E3FA5 display (for reference, OnePlus 3T devices feature either the aforementioned Samsung S6E3FA5 or S6E3FA3 displays).

That discovery got the ball rolling, and several Chinese OnePlus users began digging into kernel related files located in the /sys directory to see if they could find a way to enable DCI-P3 on the OnePlus 3T. Sure enough, located within the /sys/devices/virtual/graphics/fb0 directory are 3 files that can be modified to change the screen mode. These files are the following:

• /sys/devices/virtual/graphics/fb0/SRGB
• /sys/devices/virtual/graphics/fb0/Adobe_RBG
• /sys/devices/virtual/graphics/fb0/DCI_P3

By writing a value of '1' to the DCI_P3 file (which requires root access), the color mode can be enabled on the OnePlus 3T. After much discussion on the OnePlus BBS forums, it was discovered that this trick only works on OnePlus 3T devices with the Samsung S6E3FA5 display. If your OnePlus 3T is rooted and has the right display model, then you can enable the OnePlus 5's awesome display mode right now.

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Enable DCI-P3 for the OnePlus 3T

Thanks to XDA Member soccerwuedo5 for documenting the discoveries made on the Chinese OnePlus forums and writing a tutorial on our forums!

Here is a step-by-step set of instructions to enable this color gamut mode. Note that this only works on rooted phones:

1. Verify that your display panel is compatible. Install AIDA64 and check Display –> Panel ID. If it reads "samsung s6e3fa5 1080p cmd mode dsi panel", then your device's display is compatible with this mode.
   

   AIDA64 Panel ID Value for the OnePlus 3T. Note: this is the incorrect model. (Credits: soccerwuedo5).

   • Alternatively, you can download a file browser such as MiXplorer and browse to the /sys/devices/virtual/graphics/fb0 directory. If you see a "DCI-P3" file, then your model is compatible.
2. Install Terminal Emulator on your phone and enter the following two commands:

  su  echo 1 > /sys/devices/virtual/graphics/fb0/DCI_P3  

The change will take affect immediately, but the screen mode in settings will not be updated to reflect this change. Furthermore, if you reboot the device, the calibration will revert back to the "default" state. If you would like to revert these changes immediately, you can enter the following commands:

  su  echo 0 > /sys/devices/virtual/graphics/fb0/DCI_P3  

If you are looking for a way to have this change persist through reboots, you can use automation software such as Tasker, create an init.d script, or use this Magisk module created by XDA Senior Member doubleaykay.

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How well does it work?

Once enabled, there is an immediate, noticeable difference in the screen quality. There's a clear saturation loss when changing the calibration mode to DCI-P3, and the change is noticeable no matter what screen mode you have enabled, which indicates the profile is different than the default or sRGB modes. Although in our own subjective comparison, Mario Serrafero notes that enabling DCI-P3 on the OnePlus 3T does not result in an identical display compared to the OnePlus 5's DCI-P3. Notably, yellows and blues appear to be a tad more saturated on the OnePlus 3T, and they slightly differ in temperature throughout as well. While the unofficial display calibration mode change does not perfectly match any of the available modes on the OnePlus 5, it appears to be closest to DCI-P3. A deeper display analysis could determine exactly what the difference is and how accurate this new color profile is.

Overall, we definitely feel the modification is definitely worth doing, if only to try it out and check whether you like the different display profile.

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Was DCI-P3 Intentionally Disabled?

According to users on the OnePlusBBS forums, the preference to enable DCI-P3 on the OnePlus 3T is hidden from the settings application. Apparently, there is a "OPScreenColorMode.java" file that contains a line removing the preference from settings.

By editing this line, recompiling the APK, and pushing the updated system file to the device, the preference is indeed made available in the settings app.

Interestingly enough, XDA Member soccerwuedo5 did some digging of his own and found references to a disabled settings fragment called "OPReadingMode" within display_settings.xml that likely controls the new Reading Mode feature found on the OnePlus 5.

  <PreferenceScreen android:title="@string/oneplus_night_mode_enabled_op" android:key="oneplus_night_mode" android:fragment="com.oneplus.settings.better.OPNightMode" />  <PreferenceScreen android:title="@string/oneplus_reading_mode" android:key="oneplus_reading_mode" android:fragment="com.oneplus.settings.better.OPReadingMode" />  <PreferenceScreen android:title="@string/oneplus_screen_color_mode_title" android:key="screen_color_mode" android:fragment="com.oneplus.settings.better.OPScreenColorMode" />  

This isn't really unexpected, though OnePlus repeatedly claimed that Reading Mode makes use of a different ambient sensor to read not just ambient light intensity, but also tone, and thus it would make sense for the feature to be offered exclusively on the OnePlus 5. The existence of this string does indicate that it may be possible for the feature to be added to the OnePlus 3T in a future OxygenOS release, if not sooner thanks to modders on our forums, but if there is hardware at play it might perform differently than the OnePlus 5.

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Conclusion

We can't speak for OnePlus as to why this display calibration modification is possible on the OnePlus 3T, but we have reached out to the company and will update our readers when we hear back. In the meantime, for any rooted OnePlus 3T owners – definitely give this modification a shot if your display is compatible.

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Twitch App Update Brings Dark Mode, Mobile Streaming, Swipe Surfing, and More

Twitch is the go-to platform for hosting and viewing video game streams of all kinds (though lately the IRL/Creative categories have also exploded in popularity), and the official Android app for the service is now getting one of the biggest updates its ever seen.

There are a host of new features coming to the app including both aesthetic and functional changes. One new addition that users have been requesting for a while now is a dark mode that will make the app easier on the eyes at night and look absolutely killer on any device with an AMOLED panel. There's also a new navigation bar at the bottom of the app offering easy access for finding current live streams, accessing the Pulse section of the service, and browsing all of the content that Twitch has to offer. Add this together with new swipe gestures for better navigating the UI and streamlined notifications between the mobile and desktop apps, and there's already a lot to love here.

However, as great as all of this is, perhaps the biggest change is that you can now start a live stream directly from your Android phone or tablet. The new feature is aptly named, "Mobile Streaming", and it will likely be a great way to let Twitch streamers stay in touch with their fans when they're away from the keyboard throughout the day.

In addition to all of this, some other new features coming with this update include the ability to organize streams based on what region they're coming from or what language the streamer speaks and Instant Playlists that offer "a collection of content accessible by swiping down on the screen."

The update for the Twitch mobile app is starting to make its way to users on both Android and iOS now, and Twitch says that everyone should have access to it in early July.

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Via: The Verge

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Latest Google Photos Update Brings Machine Learning Sharing Features

Google announced a lot of stuff at this year's I/O, and among all of the buzz surrounding Android O, Google Lens, and Daydream, the company also introduced some new sharing features in Google Photos that takes advantage of the company's machine learning technology.

Today, Google is finally releasing some of those new features to the public. Version 3.0 of the Google Photos app is rolling out on the Play Store starting today.

There are two new sharing options being added to Google Photos – the first is Suggested Sharing. Suggested Sharing uses Google's machine learning to recommend photos that it thinks you should share with certain people based on who is in the photos, where certain pictures or videos were captured, and who was with you at that time.

All of these suggestions can be found in the Sharing tab at the bottom right of the app, and this is where you'll see not only suggested photos that Google thinks you should send to other people, but also any albums or other photos/videos that you've shared or others have shared with you.

Along with Suggested Sharing, the other big feature in this update are Shared Libraries. With Shared Libraries, you can choose someone to share either your entire Google Photos collection with or just a specific album. One potential use case here is for a husband and wife to share an album with one another that contains photos of their kid.

While you could just choose to manually share new photos with people as you take them, the cool part about Shared Albums is that they're updated for both parties whenever you take a new photo that belongs in that album. The husband could take a few photos of his child, Google will know that those are pictures of his kid, and then automatically add those photos to the Shared Album that the wife also has access to.

Both Suggested Sharing and Shared Albums should be available either now or within the next couple of days for Google Photos users on Android, web, and iOS.

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Source: Google

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Google Prepares Default Chrome Search Engine “Choice Window” to Comply with Russian Lawsuit

In the past few months, Google has suffered a series of setbacks due to litigation. Most recently, the company was hit with a whopping €2.42 billion fine after the European Commission ruled that Google was violating EU anti-trust regulations by inflating their own shopping service results in Google search pages. Back in mid-April, Google suffered another blow when the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) ruled that the company was violating its market dominance by essentially forcing OEMs to pre-install Google services on their devices. Part of the company's settlement with the FAS involved creating a new Google Chrome search widget that can replace the default Google search widget.

In doing so, users can then change their default search provider in Chrome's settings so that this new widget can quickly access any third-party search engine provider. Users first started to notice this new search widget in early May as it rolled out to the Chrome Dev and Canary channels, but per the settlement with FAS this widget only fulfills part of the agreement with the Russian government.

According to the FAS:

For the devices that are currently circulating on the Russian market, Google will develop an active "choice window" for the Chrome browser which at the time of the next update will provide the user with the opportunity to choose their default search engine.

Within a few months, Google will develop for new devices a new Chrome widget that will replace the standard Google search widget on the home screen. This will allow end users of the devices based on the Android OS with the GMS package to see the new "choice screen" at the first launch of the new Chrome widget. This choice screen enables users to choose Yandex search or Google search or any other search engine of those developers who will sign a commercial agreement on their inclusion to the choice screen.

Changing the device's locale to Russian, wiping Chrome Canary's data, and adding the search widget has not yet yielded the promised search engine "choice screen" that Russia requires from Google. But according to a recent commit to the Chromium open source project, that may soon change.

The commit enables the "search engine promo" by default – a flag which will show a promotion dialog about enabling other search engines depending on your locale. Chrome's LocaleManager details what Chrome will do when the device is determined to be in a "special locale" (though interestingly enough, I haven't been able to find exactly which locales are deemed to be "special").

There are 4 different states that Chrome determines the user to be in – "don't show", "new", "existing", and "sogou." "Don't show" clearly means that the user should not be shown a search engine promotion dialog as they are not located within a special locale. The "new" state means that user is setting up Chrome for the first time, so the browser will show the DefaultSearchEngineFirstRunFragment that provides a layout of available search engines to choose from on first launch. "Existing" refers to users already using Chrome, which will call the DefaultSearchEnginePromoDialog method to force users to choose a default search engine from a provided list. The dialog is not cancellable and cannot be bypassed. Finally, and what I believe to be the most interesting, is the "sogou" state. Presumably if installed in China, Google Chrome will set the default search engine provider to be Sogou – China's second largest search provider.

The SpecialLocaleHandler determines whether or not to set Google search as the default search provider based on Locale. The DefaultSearchEngineDialogHelper method handles listing which search providers will be listed once called. Interestingly, there's a routine within this method that quite literally shuffles the search engine list in random order, presumably so that which provider is listed at the top of the list is totally random.

Although this search engine promotion dialog will currently only be shown in China and Russia, we wouldn't be surprised if users in the European Union will start to see this in the future. Especially since the EU and Google are embroiled in ongoing litigation about Google applications being pre-installed on Android devices – a practice which the Russian FAS already ruled to be anti-competitive. If Google were to lose the Android case in the EU, then this search engine promotion dialog may become the rule rather than the exception.

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Sony’s Xperia Z3+, Z4 Tablet, and Z5 Series Get Updated to Android 7.1.1

Despite the fact that we're expecting Android O to be officially released within the next three months, there are still plenty of Android devices out there that are not running the latest version of the OS (Android 7.1).

Google and other OEMs have gotten better and better over the years at making sure all current flagship models stay as up-to-date as quickly as possible, and the latest batch of Android devices to get updated to Android Nougat comes from Sony.

In this latest wave of updates, Sony bumped up the Xperia Z3+, Z4 Tablet, Z5 Compact, and Z5 Premium to Android 7.1.1. The build number for these devices are all changing from 32.3.A.2.33 up to 32.4.A.0.160, and along with the new Android version, all four of these gadgets are also receiving the latest June 1, 2017 Android security patch.

Prior to this latest wave of updates, the last Sony handset to get the Android Nougat update was the Xperia XA Ultra. Although that phone was only updated to Nougat 7.0, the new software brought a serious performance boost and made using the handset considerably more enjoyable.

Assuming these other Sony devices see a similar boost in speed along with the regular host of Nougat features, Xperia users could be in for a real treat with this latest software release.

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Via: Xperia Blog

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OnLeaks Reveals Device Renders of the Dual-Camera Samsung Galaxy Note 8

The next big release in the Android world is likely to be the next iteration of one of Samsung's most prolific (and lately controversial) lineup: the Note series. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 has to shoulder the responsibility of repairing the "Note" brand and Samsung plans to do just that by giving us a phone to truly watch out for.

Notable leaker @OnLeaks, in collaboration with 91mobiles, has released 360° video renders of the Note 8, giving us a very good look at what to expect from the next Note.

 

The main talking point of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will be its dual rear camera setup. This will allegedly be the second device from Samsung to come with two cameras on the back, with the first device being the rumored and upcoming Galaxy C10. The dual cameras will be placed horizontally and are said to sport independent optical image stabilization. The device will reportedly measure 162.4 x 74.5 x 8.4mm while the thickness will ramp up to 9.5mm at the camera bump. Aside from the dual rear cameras, the camera bump will also house the fingerprint scanner.

The renders also show that the Note 8 will continue with Samsung's dual curved edge Infinity Display design as seen on the Galaxy S8 and S8+. Other elements of the device like the SPen, the USB Type-C port, and even the 3.5mm headphone jack are visible in the renders.

From the renders so far, the Note 8 appears more box-like with its more pronounced edges, as opposed to the S8 and S8+ which had a more curved design all around. The display on the Note 8 will be sized at 6.3″, which is just a tad bit larger than the 6.2″ on the S8+, so the devices will make for an interesting comparison.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will likely be Samsung's most expensive mass consumer device, with a rumored price of €999 so far. Other specifications of the device include a top-of-the-line SoC like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835/Exynos 8895 and a healthy 6GBs of RAM.

What are your thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and its dual rear camera setup? Will this setup be an outstanding feature, or yet another gimmick? Let us know in the comments below!

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Source: 91Mobiles

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