Month: November 2018

Samsung’s customer support staff may be wrong and clueless too many times to count, but they might have been right about the Galaxy Note 9 joining the One UI (Android Pie) beta. Well, Samsung might have, at the very least, pondered starting a Galaxy Note 9 Android Pie beta program even if it won’t actually do it. This is supported by test Pie firmware discovered by GalaxyClub for the Note 9 in Europe and South Korea.

Galaxy Note 9 Android Pie beta still possible?

Samsung is currently testing firmware versions N960FXXU2ZRKE and N960NKSU2ZRKF for the Galaxy Note 9. The interesting part here is the letter ‘Z’ in the build number. It has been used by Samsung for beta firmware since it began having public beta programs with the Galaxy S6. The Galaxy S9’s One UI beta, for example, comes with build number G960FXXU2ZRKA in Germany. And, before Android Pie, no such test firmware were ever spotted for a Galaxy Note flagship while a beta program was going on for that year’s Galaxy S smartphone.
It makes the presence of such firmware for the Galaxy Note 9 quite interesting. And with the Galaxy S9 beta program having started less than a week ago, Samsung does have time to include the Galaxy Note 9 in the program. But, as we said at the beginning, it’s also possible the company has backed out of doing that despite having planned it at some point. We hope that’s not the case, of course, and we will now be spending all our waking hours looking at the Samsung Members app on the Galaxy Note 9 for any sign of the Android Pie/One UI beta.

Say goodbye to the grid. Eventually, a programming-first design similar to the Roku Channel will take over.
The future look of Roku’s home screen is being built before your eyes.
Roku, the most popular streaming-TV player in the US, has stuck with its distinctive grid of channel tiles since 2013, back when Roku had sold about 5 million of its players. But streaming video has exploded in the last five years. The number of households with a streaming player has quadrupled, and Roku now has nearly 24 million active accounts streaming video to TVs with its devices.
That means the tile-grid layout is the only design that most Roku users have ever known. But Roku is planning to replace its home screen with a different interface, one you can already find if you know where to look.
“It’s the Roku Channel,” CEO Anthony Wood said in an interview last week.
The Roku Channel is the company’s sandbox for building the programming-first user experience it will eventually move over to its home screen, Wood said.
Like competitors, Roku will need to evolve its design to something that puts shows and movies — rather than apps or channels — at center stage. Rather than having you open individual apps or channels to get to the show or movie you want, Roku’s future home screen will aggregate and recommend specific titles that are available across the apps on its platform.
“There’s 5,000 apps on Roku. Most people don’t install 5,000 apps,” Wood said. He didn’t specify when Roku will change the home screen design. The company is just about to start tests to compare performance between different designs, he said.
The Roku Channel, which launched a year ago, has grown to be one of the top five apps by reach on the platform. It started with selections of movies and TV shows you could watch free with advertising, and it’s widened to include other free programming like news and sports. Though the Roku Channel may seem secondary to the company, most of Roku’s profit comes from the Roku Channel and the advertising it inserts there.
“It might not always be called the Roku Channel,” Wood said. “It might be called the home screen.”

Microsoft puts another block on the Windows 10 1809 rollout and says it’s all part of its “controlled approach”.
The latest group that Microsoft has blocked from receiving the Windows 10 October 2018 Update are users with a set of incompatible Intel display drivers.
Some users who update to Windows 10 version 1089 may find that external displays lose sound. Whether users are impacted depends on whether their PC OEM activated unsupported features in two versions of an Intel Audio Display Driver.
According to Microsoft, Intel “inadvertently” released two versions of a display driver to OEMs, which in turn “accidentally turned on unsupported features in Windows”.
Affected users will notice that they’re not getting any sound from a monitor or television connected to the Windows 10 PC via HDMI, USB-C, or DisplayPort.
The update is blocked for users with Intel display drivers versions 24.20.100.6344 and 24.20.100.6345. Microsoft has provided instructions on its answers forum to check if your PC is affected.
“Microsoft is working with Intel to expire these display drivers, including coordinating with OEMs, and will provide an update on the resolution in an upcoming release,” the company said.
Microsoft emphasizes this issue is different from the one affecting the Intel Smart Sound Technology (ISST) Driver, which again was inadvertently released by Intel and caused problems with audio on Windows 10 1809 and 1803 PCs.
Before halting the Windows 10 1809 update due to the data-deletion bug, Microsoft was blocking the update for devices with certain versions of an Intel Audio Display device driver. That issue was over-utilizing the processor and draining the battery.
Last week Microsoft blocked the Windows 10 1809 update for PCs with iCloud for Windows due to an incompatibility issue. The company is also working on a fix for a known issue affecting mapped drives, which it expects to deliver by the end of November.
The growing list of blocks on the 1809 update may seem like Microsoft hasn’t got a grip of the testing and quality problems that led to it pulling the release for over a month.
But according to Microsoft, the blocks are all part of its “controlled rollout approach” to Window 10 1809.
“Blocking the availability of a Windows 10 feature update to devices we know will experience issues is a key aspect of our controlled rollout approach to provide users with a great update experience,” Microsoft says on its support page.
On resuming the Windows 1809 rollout on November 13, Microsoft promised it was taking a more measured and controlled approach to the rollout compared with the April Update, version 1803, which is its fastest Windows 10 rollout on record.
It also drew attention to the complexity of the Windows driver ecosystem, which consists of”16 million unique hardware/driver combinations”.

Why it matters: A lot of focus is on Samsung’s recently unveiled folding phone tech right now, but we’ve known for a while that other companies, including Huawei, are working on similar devices. Now, the Chinese giant has reportedly presented its finished version to Korean carriers at a private event.
According to Korean publication ET News, Huawei’s device will arrive next year. The exact date isn’t certain, but it will reportedly be unveiled at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress in February/March before launching sometime in June.
Samsung’s foldable device, which is expected to be called the Galaxy F or Galaxy X, measures 7.3 inches when opened up, but Huawei’s flexible phone has it beat with an 8-inch screen manufactured by BOE. It also appears to be almost completely free of bezels. When folded up, the screen measures 5 inches, again beating the Galaxy F/X’s 4.6-inch display, though unlike Samsung, Huawei has decided to include a notch.
An official said the phone would come with 5G support, which means it could be released in South Korea first, where many carriers already support the technology. It’s been reported that the Galaxy F/X won’t have 5G, which would be disappointing for a phone with a rumored $1800 price tag.
Back in October, Chinese firm Royole became the first company to unveil a foldable phone—the FlexPai—though it doesn’t look particularly spectacular in Ice Universe’s tweet.