Author: batteryforpc

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.

Apple’s freshly launched iPhone XR and iPhone XS lines have hardware support for dual SIM configurations, but the rollout of the feature has been a bit delayed (or in the case of AT&T, rolled back) due to issues with carriers that have not been totally sorted out yet. Verizon, however, is reportedly planning on supporting the feature by next month.
In an internal Verizon memo obtained by 9to5Mac, the company told employees it intends to have dual SIM activations for eSIM and physical SIMs ready to go by early December:

Currently, the iPhone does not support high-speed Verizon service when used in a Dual SIM configuration, dropping down to the 2G CDMA network rather than LTE. This was especially problematic in certain geographies where Verizon has switched to offering LTE-only coverage.
As a result of these limitations, Verizon said it would not be activating service on any eSIM nor officially support Dual SIM activations.
At the launch last month, Verizon said they believed the software limitations would be resolved quickly with Apple’s cooperation. This latest memo indicates that it will stick to its promise and deliver eSIM and Dual SIM to iPhone XS and iPhone XR customers before the end of the year.

Note that the phones only support one eSIM and one physical SIM card slot outside of China, meaning that at least one of the lines will need to run through the eSIM slot.
9to5Mac noted that the projected early December date is likely to refer to the release of iOS 12.1.1, when a software update to make the dual SIM feature play more nicely with U.S. mobile networks may be rolled out alongside other features. However, the feature could also trickle out bit by bit via carrier-specific updates; per the Verge, AT&T and T-Mobile are still sorting out bugs with an unclear timeframe for a resolution.
If you find the idea of using two SIM cards for anything but traveling to a foreign country somewhat unfamiliar, survey data shows you’re probably not alone. As VentureBeat noted, few U.S. customers use dual SIM configurations, though it is more common in Asia and Europe, where many people use two SIM cards to toggle between work and phone lines and national or international carriers. Lack of support for dual SIMs was considered a barrier to expanding market shares in some regions, and VentureBeat reported earlier this year that dual SIM support had been under consideration as a China-exclusive feature.