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“The New Moto X” leak: Moto Maker on Verizon, Bamboo option

Just three days or so before Motorola makes its big announcement and we're still getting last minute leaks about the Moto X+1. Here labeled as the "new Moto X", which sounds like a page out of someone else's marketing book, Motorola's next flagship is shown to be available from Verizon from the get go, including a few configuration options as well as Moto Maker customizations.



The Moto X and, for an even longer time, the Moto Maker service was initially available to only one carrier. Whether Motorola has seen the light or is just doing it differently this time, it seems that its next premiere smartphone will be available from Verizon right at launch. But more than that, Verizon's subscribers will also be able to buy and customize the Moto X+1, or the New Moto X if you prefer, to their taste from Moto Maker, without having to wait for a few months to get their hands on the service.


But what exactly will those options and customizations be? The screenshot of Verizon's system confirms previous rumors and leaks about some of the choices that will be made available to users. Of course there's the typical black, but the white version won't just be plain white. This white device will come with a bamboo back cover, one of the more anticipated options back in the Moto X's days. For devices designed with Moto Maker, there will be two configuration options of 16 and 32 GB. We will presume that the same two colors mentioned previously will be available from Moto Maker as well.


It isn't known though, if these offers are exclusive only to Verizon or if Motorola, and Lenovo, will be playing fair this time around. Whichever path it will take, we will most likely hear about it on Thursday, September 4, when Motorola unveils not only the Moto X+1/The New Moto X, the Moto G2 ("The New Moto G?"), the Moto 360 (finally!), and probably a Bluetooth earpiece as well. Join us as we trek the treacherous jungles of IFA 2014 for the next few days to bring you Motorola's latest gadgets as well as those form other manufacturers.


VIA: Phandroid





Is sapphire glass all it’s cracked up to be?

With IFA 2014 set to start in a few days in Berlin, one of the buzzwords being bandied about is sapphire glass, particularly because it is rumored to be one of the features of the anticipated iPhone 6. Another OEM has beaten Apple to the punch as Kyocera recently announced the availability of its Brigadier with Sapphire Display through carrier Verizon. But as a supposedly scratch and drop resistant material, is sapphire glass all it’s, well, cracked up to be?



uBreakiFix, a tech repair company, released a video showing the results on tests that they conducted on sapphire glass, as compared to the Gorilla Glass, which is used by several devices from Motorola, ASUS, Samsung and Amazon. They did three “torture” tests to compare the two: a scratch resistance test using a tungsten drill bit, an impact test, and a four-point bend stress test. When it comes to being scratch resistant, sapphire glass more than impresses as it is indeed a good material to keep your device scratch free, since after all, it is ranked in the mohs hardness spectrum.




But while it is indeed harder than most of the smartphone glass materials used by OEMs, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will result in an unbreakable device. As the result of the other two tests showed, sapphire glass is brittle and so it is unable to bend and absorb the impact when dropped or stressed. Its failure strength is 25% higher than gorilla glass, but that’s not what will make it effective and may present a problem for engineers. How sapphire can make a gadget better is “clever engineering and protective features”, which may be something Apple has managed to overcome.




Kyocera, which has made a name for itself for smartphones that can survive rough terrain, released two videos showing off how the sapphire glass has made the Brigadier tougher than any of their previous products. Discovery Channel superstar Bear Grylls starred in one of the videos, putting the phone through various real-life tests while the other video put the phone through the ringer and it emerged virtually unscathed.





Galaxy Note 4 resolution confirmed by Samsung site, poster

Those looking forward to the next generation of Samsung's S-Pen powered phablet are mostly likely just counting down hours instead of days. And while we too are very curious to see what tricks the device has left up its sleeves, one part is almost all but confirmed thanks to Samsung itself. The Galaxy Note 4 will indeed bear a QHD screen, according to Samsung's own website UAProf as well as its IFA poster.



The UAProf, or user agent profile, is used by websites to attempt to deliver content optimized to each device's screen. As such, it would, at the very least, include information such as screen resolution. The UAProf for the SM-N910T, which is noted to be the model number for one Galaxy Note 4 variant, lists a resolution of 2560x1440. As websites don't usually optimize for screen size and only for resolutions, it doesn't exactly list that information though word on the street is that it will be the same 5.7 inches as on the Galaxy Note 3, giving the latest incarnation a higher DPI count.


galaxy-note-4-uaprof


That resolution, the QHD part and not the exact pixel count, is also confirmed by a leaked photo of Samsung's IFA poster, which does explicitly mention "QHD". Other than that, as well as a render of what the Galaxy Note 4 might look like, it doesn't give much information.


Thanks to innumerable leaks and rumors, though, we have been able to assemble an almost complete picture of the device. That includes a processor that's either a Samsung Exynos 5433 or Qualcomm Snapdragon 805, depending on the market, the highest 4 GB RAM you'll find in any commercial smartphone, a 16 megapixel rear shooter, and most likely the same host of sensors found on the Galaxy S5. Whatever other surprises Samsung might hold, especially when it comes to the S Pen and related features, we will know for sure when the company makes its big announcement on September 3, 3 p.m. CEST. Keep tabs on our IFA 2014 tag portal for that highly anticipated event.


VIA: GSMArena





First ROMs for the NVIDIA Shield Tablet surface

We’re all big fans of the NVIDIA Shield Tablet – that gaming-centered Android tablet which at one point we were unsure if it would fulfill its potential or even wow its potential market. We were blown away on both counts. We love the quality and gamers and techno-geeks alike have been impressed with it – so much that in a little over a month, it’s been rooted, received a major OTA update, and now custom ROMs have come out for the device.



Of course, it all starts with root access, and that is given to you via the Towel Root app – pretty straight forward. Then we need a custom recovery – this one is given to us via an unofficial ClockWorkMod recovery port done by XDA Recognized Developer “Unjustified Dev”. You can check out the official recovery thread at XDA.


Once we’re done with the recovery, most of you mod lovers out there would know that we’re pretty much on our way to custom ROM goodness. We have two source-built ROMs available for the NVIDIA Shield Tablet at the moment – the VanirAOSP ROM and the AICP ROM, both official threads linked. Check out the forum threads for instructions.


SHIELD_tablet_Exploded_View_black_bckgr


We will always give you the disclaimer that rooting and installing custom ROMs have the added risk of doing something crazy to your device – maybe to the point of bricking it. There is also the risk of NVIDIA not honoring your warranty if you do this. But if done correctly, you might just have that added bit of enjoyment on your device running a custom ROM. Tell us about your NVIDIA Shield device if you’ve actually gone through the process of rooting and modding it.


SOURCE: XDA





Futuremark kicks out the Huawei Ascend P7 for ‘cheating’

This is not the first time this has happened – all the more sad for the smartphone industry – but as of the moment, benchmarking outfit Futuremark is booting the relatively new Huawei Ascend P7 from its databases. You will remember that Samsung was the first big name caught for trying to “game” benchmarking results, and Huawei is the latest culprit.



3DMark – Futuremark’s benchmarking software – was quickly wise to the alleged cheating. The Ascend P7 doesn’t have a beast of an SoC like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 series processors or an NVIDIA Tegra. Instead it has a Kirin quad-core processor that turns at 1.8Ghz per core with a Mali-450 GPU – not bad, but really not top of the line since the technology is around 2 to 3 years old.


The problem was that the Ascend P7 was getting very decent scores with the Futuremark software, where it should be lagging behind the leaders. As exposed by Anandtech, there is probably embedded code in the device that detects when a known benchmarking app is running. The code then manually cranks up all CPU cores until the test has completed, making for decent scores, but really not representative of ordinary workload performance.


The “cheat” was discovered when the device was tested with a version of Futuremark that was “renamed” to show something else other than the Play Store version naming code. The result was almost 2000 points lower than that of the official downloadable version. At the moment, the Huawei Ascend P7 sits beside the HTC One M8 and the Galaxy Note 10.1 as devices banned from Futuremark for gaming their results.


VIA: Android Police





New Nvidia SHIELD Tablet OTA! Moto G 4G Gets Official CyangenMod 11 Nightlies – XDA Developer TV

Jordan0901

The Nvidia SHIELD Tablet gets its first update! That and much more news is covered by Jordan when he reviews all the important stories from this weekend. Included in this weekend’s news is the announcement of the Nvidia SHIELD getting it’s first custom ROMs and be sure the check out the article talking about the Moto G 4G getting Official CyanogenMod! That’s not all that’s covered in today’s video!


Jordan talks about the other videos released this weekend on XDA Developer TV. XDA Developer TV Newcomer Jared released a video showing you his Top 5 MODs for the LG G3. Then Newcomer RootJunky showed off how to root the LG G Watch. And if you missed it be sure to check out Jordan’s Review of the Nvidia SHIELD Tablet. Pull up a chair and check out this video.



Links to stories mentioned:



Check out Jordan’s YouTube Channel and Jordan’s Gaming YouTube Channel


The post New Nvidia SHIELD Tablet OTA! Moto G 4G Gets Official CyangenMod 11 Nightlies – XDA Developer TV appeared first on xda-developers.


Samsung releases “trailers” for its Unpacked event at IFA 2014

Teasers are defined as small, cryptic details that are revealed to makes us anticipate or get excited about an upcoming event or bigger reveal. Well in the days leading up to its press event pre-IFA 2014 in Berlin, Samsung has really been mercilessly teasing us with short videos about its upcoming Galaxy Note 4. The latest (maybe last?) Ready to Note? videos are now focusing on the Unpacked event itself, ratcheting up the excitement until the main event on September 3.



The video released over the weekend doesn’t really tell us anything new about the Galaxy Note 4. They actually don’t even show us the device of course since it is after all, a teaser. But it does have some clues about what to expect due to some key words shown. Using the concept of “Ready…set…go”, it shows various people doing all sorts of activities that we assume will be fulfilled by the new smartphone. Words like share (social networking), win (gaming), write (S-Pen), go big (video), create (maybe S-Pen too), smile (photos) are just basic ideas but we have to wait and see if there’s anything new to them in the Galaxy Note 4.




The other video is a one-minute teaser which highlight how the idea of the pen has changed our lives by creating art, touching our soul and enhancing our lives. It then says that “it gets even better” with an image of the S-Pen for the Galaxy Note 4. Now we still have no idea what that S-Pen for Samsung's newest smartphone can do, but it better be shooting lasers out of it or something really special, given how much Samsung has been hyping this particular feature in their previous teaser videos.




The Unpacked event is set for September 3, a day before the IFA 2014 officially begins, as has been the tradition of Samsung the past few years. If you’re not actually in Berlin, you can still see the big reveal as they will be streaming the event live through its YouTube channel. Let’s see what the S-Pen hype is all about.





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