Tech News - Mobile

Fuse has announced two major new products in the app development space - Fuse Open, and Fuse App Engine, followed by a brand new business model, called as Apps-as-a-Service. First, they have open sourced their Fuse app development platform, called Fuse Open. Thus making the entire Fuse Platform, tooling and premium libraries available for free. Second, they have introduced the Fuse App Engine, combined with a new business model the Apps-as-a-service to provide existing SaaS and digital services with state-of-the-art native apps tailored to their specific needs. Fuse Open Fuse open makes it easy for students and beginner developers to create new mobile app prototypes. They can now build native mobile user interfaces using the UX Markup language, and JavaScript for adding the business logic. Among the tools and platforms that have been open sourced, include Fuse platform, Uno (the foundation of Fuse), Fuse Studio (the desktop design tool), premium code libraries, the documentation and the iOS and Android preview apps. The source code is hosted on GitHub under the MIT license. The company will continue to host the Fuse forums, documentation and Slack community. However, the forums and Slack community will transition to being managed by the community directly. Fuse App Engine + Apps-as-a-service With their new business model, Fuse aims to address one of the crucial limitations that exists in the app development space - misalignment between the people who need apps and the people who make them. With Apps as a Service, businesses and enterprises can have an app based on existing product or service, without having to develop them from scratch. This business model is fueled by the Fuse App Engine which connects with the backend, and hosts the data and logic for your mobile app. The mobile app consists of an App Model and an App. App Models are defined by adding a thin layer of semantic information to existing REST APIs. They can be configured into Apps with ease, giving each customer or use case the right amount of customization options. Visit the Fuse Blog for a comprehensive list of announcements. Android P new features: artificial intelligence, digital wellbeing, and simplicity Xamarin Forms 3, the popular cross-platform UI Toolkit, is here! Google’s Android Things, developer preview 8: First look

Yesterday, Progress, announced the release of NativeScript 5.0. With this release, NativeScript framework hits a major milestone of 3.5 million downloads in under three years, since its original launch in 2015. NativeScript 5.0 has capabilities including code sharing, hot module replacement, preview enhancements and more. Brad Green, Engineering Director, Angular Framework, Google Inc, said “In 2016, NativeScript 2.0 gave developers the ability to use Angular and NativeScript to create native mobile apps, but we wanted to take it a step further by enabling them to keep their code in one place and share business logic between web, iOS, and Android. We've worked closely with the NativeScript team resulting in the NativeScript-Schematics that integrates with the Angular CLI, making the user experience for developing both web and mobile within a single project completely seamless.” What’s New in NativeScript 5.0 NativeScript-Schematics This is a joint initiative with Angular to create a schematic that enables the building of both web and mobile apps from a single project. New ‘Instant Start’ CLI workflow Using this new CLI workflow users can start working on native apps within minutes, with no up-front requirements to install iOS and Android SDKs. Hot Module Replacement This includes instantaneous, stateful application updates, avoiding full page reload, significantly accelerating the app development and debugging experience. Vue.js support This includes a core Vue.js developer experience through a single file component in the NativeScript Playground. Streamlined “Getting Started” experience This enables an easier development with Playground-compatible code samples available in the NativeScript Marketplace. Android enhancements Some Android enhancements in this version include increased animation scenarios and more material design capabilities. Vector type support for iOS The Vector type support enables a broader set of augmented reality scenarios for iOS. Todd Anglin, Vice President, Product and Developer Relations, Progress, said, “Today’s release of NativeScript 5.0 brings an unprecedented level of ease, flexibility and productivity to the mobile app dev experience. Not only have we improved the ability to kickstart a project for new NativeScript users, but we’ve also expanded key attributes important to developers more versed in our offerings.” To know more about NativeScript 5.0 in detail, visit NativeScript’s official website. How to integrate Firebase with NativeScript for cross-platform app development NativeScript: What is it, and how to set it up Nativescript 4.1 has been released

Who doesn’t love to watch 3D movies in the theatre? The concept of 3D television is also a novel one. Irrespective of the 3D technology having a lot of takers, the one universally accepted fact is, that 3D glasses suck big time. The same issue of cumbersome headgear has plagued Virtual Reality development too. The broad consensus has been that there can be better ways of visualizing 3D and VR content. Although the 3D and VR development methodologies have improved quite a lot in recent times, the display systems have not. A latest innovation project by Kickstarter is trying to tackle this issue head-on, by introducing LookingGlass, a holographic display for 3D creators. Source: LookingGlass Project How does LookingGlass work? The traditional 3D systems create two stereoscopic images of the primary video which can be viewed by one person only - with the use of a glass. The LookingGlass comes with a different underlying tech. It generates 45 distinct views of a three-dimensional scene so that multiple people standing around a LookingGlass can see different parts of the scene in the real world. The feature of 45 distinct 3D space representations enable multiple people to view the 3D image simultaneously without the need to use glasses. LookingGlass functionality: Source - Kickstarter How to use it? The LookingGlass team has already released a free HoloPlay SDK that runs on Unity and helps developers to import their 3D designs and models into the LookingGlass easily. There’s also the option of using the Model Importer for 2D and 3D models. In the early beta release of the application, only gLTF, OBJ and glb file formats are accepted but more are to come soon. The Model Importer uses a special type of control to allow you to view your model from different perspectives in 3D. You can rotate around your model by left clicking and dragging. You can pan around the scene by right clicking and dragging, and you can zoom in by scrolling. Supported devices on LookingGlass All major 3D devices which need a headgear, can be displayed on the LookingGlass. It can be used as a Leap Motion Controller, Nintendo Joy Con controller and as an Ultrahaptic development kit. You can also seamlessly connect two Looking Glasses together for a bigger display size. Challenges An honest review by the VR industry reveals that LookingGlass has not lived upto the initial hype and faces disillusionment. The major reason seems to be the cumbersome headgears and the impracticality. The UX design is also not adaptive for the immersive nature of VR content. The animations turned out to be bloated and non-impressive. The reason being the absence of a display system that is truly immersive and 3D. The LookingGlass might prove to be the perfect launch pad for futuristic 3D apps, games and immersive mixed reality content. We are certainly looking forward to that. Top 7 modern Virtual Reality hardware systems Game developers say Virtual Reality is here to stay Why mobile VR sucks  

FeelReal launched their Feelreal Sensory Mask, earlier this week, that not only allows you to see things in virtual reality (VR) but also gives you a sense of smell among other senses. VR headsets have seen major progress in recent years from a higher resolution to a wider field of view. To be able to smell different odors, and other sensory inputs in a VR headset is something entirely new. Feelreal Inc brings a sensory mask that adds a sense of smell when you are viewing VR content. Feelreal puts it as: “Imagine the depth of interaction when users can truly feel themselves on a racing track and actually smell burned rubber. Or being able to grasp the feeling of being on a battlefield complete with the intense gunpowder odor. This is what the multi-sensory virtual reality experience is all about.” The company tweeted on Wednesday announcing the new VR mask: https://twitter.com/feelreal_com/status/1077963480324587521 The smells are developed using a scent generator that holds a replaceable cartridge which contains nine aroma capsules. There are 255 scents to choose from in their store. Along with providing various odors, the VR mask delivers other inputs to the user: Water Mist: The ultrasonic ionizing system will make you feel the rain on your cheeks. Heat: Safe micro-heaters will allow you to sense the warmth of the desert. Wind: Two micro-coolers will let you experience the cool mountain breeze. Vibration: Force-feedback haptic motors to induce impactful vibrations. There are many applications of the Feelreal multi-sensory mask. They can be used for movies at 360°, Feelreal dreams, VR games, immersive meditation, and aromatherapy controlled by their mobile app. You can connect the mask to Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, HTC Vive, or PlayStation VR via Bluetooth or WiFi. Feelreal is planning to bring this mask to Kickstarter and get funding. In 2015, they attempted crowdfunding for the mask with seven cartridges but could not get the necessary funding. The Feelreal mask comes in three colors, white, gray, and black. The Feelreal Sensory Mask is currently in the crowdfunding stage. For more details, visit the Feelreal website. Why mobile VR sucks Building custom views in vRealize operation manager [Tutorial] Google’s Daydream VR SDK finally adds support for two controllers

Chances are that you have already noticed the changes in your everyday Google apps like Gmail, Google News, Google Chrome. This change is a part of the bigger overhaul in Google’s design strategy. They are calling it the material redesign. This video shows in great detail the fluidic design implemented by Google in its latest update. The real question is where is it leading us? Is it just a superficial update or is there a larger motive behind it? Material design was first launched by Google back in 2014. The basic principle was based on two factors: Unification: A Visual language which works across the platform. Intuition: Core principle of Material Design is how “Material / Surface” behaves. This makes it almost obvious to the user what will happen on the interaction. Although Google aimed at removing design inconsistencies across different devices and manufacturers, the material design became more of a constraint rather than a guiding light. The apps which failed to imbibe the material design principles in them, seemed messy. There was a lot of flack aimed at Google for this high handed behavior. The main complaint was that the apps looked bland, and that they all looked similar with similar buttons and themes. Google have been since then trying to create a better version of its flagship project. The motivation for this is however something bigger. It’s almost impossible to bring Android under one common umbrella because there has been so many other instances of it running on different devices. This experiment on material design is their way of trying out the new display and UI system before they launch their new project Fuchsia which has been under development for some time. The reason why Google has given a new look to all its current apps is to change the way GUIs (Graphical User Interface) work and function. We are somewhat still using the same GUI based systems developed almost a decade ago. Google is trying to bring a change in that aspect. With the new material design update, Google has given the developers the freedom to choose from designs and themes without messing up their app. So you can now customize your app and the way it looks, have a brighter color palette and yet have it follow the Material Design paradigm. This also tries is to make interacting with apps much easier, without having a full app launch. That’s how, you can use the new Gmail from the notification window and even add pictures in it from there. All of these changes, point towards a movement away from the traditional GUI based system. At the heart of it is the Google Assistant and the Google AI. The vision is really interesting. You won’t have to look at your phone and manually navigate between apps. Your voice command will do it for you, smart assistant will find out the answers of your queries from the web. The Google AI system will filter the best results curated for you and won’t just aggregate them and dump it at your screen. All of this will be done from a UI that will be something similar to the present day material design UI. Google’s Smart Display – A push towards the new OS, Fuchsia Google Fuchsia: What’s all the fuss about? Introducing Android 9 Pie, filled with machine learning and baked-in UI features Android P new features: artificial intelligence, digital wellbeing, and simplicity

On Tuesday, iFixit announced its partnership with Motorola to supply customers with repair kits for Motorola’s smartphones. Users can either send their device to Motorola for repairs or they can buy an iFixit battery or screen replacement kit (Motorola OEM Fix Kits) that includes the tools required to undertake the task themselves. iFixit is a private company that sells repair parts and publishes free online repair guides for consumer electronics and gadgets on its website. According to iFixit, this partnership is geared towards supporting the right to repair movement. Motorola is the first major smartphone manufacturer to supply repair kits to users. With this partnership, Motorola is adopting an open attitude towards repair. In the official announcement, iFixit said: “For fixers like us, this partnership is representative of a broader movement in support of our Right to Repair. It’s proof that OEM manufacturers and independent repair can co-exist. Big business and social responsibility, and innovation and sustainability don’t need to be mutually exclusive. Motorola is setting an industry-leading example of a company that’s looking forward—not just six months ahead to next quarter’s margins, but decades ahead when devices are damned for the landfill.” iFixit’s site lists 16 Motorola repair kits for devices including the Moto Z Force, Z Play, Droid Turbo 2, G5, and G4. Along with these repairing kits called Motorola OEM Fix Kits, you will also get a free step-by-step guide. These kits range from $40 to $ 200 and include key replacement parts along with many of the specialty tools you’ll need to complete the repair. What is Right to Repair? Recently, CBC reported that Apple has been overpricing the repair costs and they threaten third-party shops who fix Apple products at less price. Apple only allows authorized Apple Store technicians to repair its devices. In order to confirm this malpractice by Apple, CBC News visited one of these authorized repairing centers and recorded the entire conversation with the technician using a hidden camera. The video shows that Apple customers are often told malfunctioning computers are not worth fixing, even when minor repairs could solve the problem. The news of Apple’s malpractice has fueled the Right to Repair movement. This movement advocates that a manufacturer should practice fair repair by providing repair documentation and supply parts to consumers and independent repair shops. iFixit is one of the supporters of this movement. Earlier this month, they published an article on why support the Right to Repair. They have also teamed up with the Repair Association, an advocate for consumer’s right to repair and modify products from automobiles to IT equipment. Read the official announcement on iFixit’s website. A decade of Android: Slayer of Blackberry, challenger of iPhone, mother of the modern mobile ecosystem Is Facebook planning to spy on you through your mobile’s microphones? iPhone XS and Apple Watch details leaked hours before product launch

In compliance with the EU regulations set up when Google was fined $5 Million in July, for breaching EU antitrust laws, Google has made major changes to its licensing policy. Last week, Google filed its appeal against the Commission’s decision at the General Court of the European Union. While the appeal is pending, they have now informed the European Commission of the changes made in their policy. Read More: A quick look at E.U.’s antitrust case against Google’s Android Google is splitting the license for its standard apps from Chrome and the official search app. This means that if a company wants to use some of Google apps (Gmail and YouTube for instance) but also use other competing apps (Bing for search and Firefox for browsing), they can do so in the European Economic Area (EEA), albeit with an associated cost. Hiroshi Lockheimer, Senior Vice President, Platforms & Ecosystems, mentioned in the Google blog, “Since the pre-installation of Google Search and Chrome together with our other apps helped us fund the development and free distribution of Android, we will introduce a new paid licensing agreement for smartphones and tablets shipped into the EEA. He also points out that, “Android will remain free and open source.” Google will also offer separate licenses to the Google Search app and to Chrome. They will also provide commercial agreements to partners for the non-exclusive pre-installation and placement of Google Search and Chrome, although Google noted that pre-installed competition was already possible. Android vendors in the EEA are also allowed to make forked versions of Android while still distributing Google apps. All the licensing changes will be effective for devices launched after October 29th. It is also likely that companies in Europe that would have to pay for Google apps, may pass the licensing fee to consumers in the form of higher device prices. Lockheimer added that they will continue with their commitment to the Android ecosystem saying, “We’ll be working closely with our Android partners in the coming weeks and months to transition to the new agreements. And of course, we remain deeply committed to continued innovation for the Android ecosystem.” Read the official announcement on the Google blog. OK Google, why are you ok with mut(at)ing your ethos for Project DragonFly? Google takes steps towards better security, introduces new API policies for 3rd parties and a Titan Security system for mobile devices. Google reveals an undisclosed bug that left 500K Google+ accounts vulnerable in early 2018; plans to sunset Google+ consumer version

GraphicsFuzz, the online graphics testing framework quietly went open source on Monday. There is no official announcement as of now and they are still transitioning to being open source. GraphicsFuzz was acquired by Google earlier this August. GraphicsFuzz is a testing framework that automatically finds and simplifies bugs in graphics shader compilers. The tools currently manipulate GLSL shaders but other targets like SPIR-V, HLSL and Metal can also be tested directly. Google acquired GraphicsFuzz mainly for its mobile graphics card benchmarking GraphicsFuzz finds bugs in the graphics drivers of a device by rendering families of semantically similar shaders. It looks out for discrepancies in rendering and similarities, a process known as metamorphic testing. A total of 15 tests are run and for each bug the reducer saves a lot of debugging time. It this by producing a simpler minimal-difference test case that is still able to expose the bug. The testing process on an Android phone takes a couple of minutes and for some shades it asks the user if the two rendered images are similar. The GitHub repository is under an Apache 2.0 license and there is not Commons Clause attached right now. Note that the repository is a work-in-progress and not an officially supported Google product yet. You can check out the GitHub repository. Google buys GraphicsFuzz, bringing fuzzy logic and metamorphic testing to Android graphics drivers Google’s second innings in China: Exploring cloud partnerships with Tencent and others All new Android apps on Google Play must target API Level 26 (Android Oreo) or higher, to publish

Facebook has announced the open-source release of Sonar, their cross-platform debugging tool. Sonar is designed to aid developers, framework experts and engineers collaborate on the app development process. Sonar is built on Facebook’s Stetho, an Android debugging bridge built on Chrome's developer tools. Sonar further adds more extensible features to Stetho such as plugins to help engineers develop new features, investigate bugs and optimize apps. Sonar is a cross-platform debugging tool. Hence developers can connect their mobile devices (Android and iOS or an emulator) to a desktop client for inspection. Sonar works as a guide and interpreter to a running app providing developers with stats on what an app is doing to better understand bugs and system capabilities. Sonar is now available for the developer community at large, not just Facebook engineers, as an open-source software project via GitHub. As Sonar was designed with extensibility in focus, it made use of a lot of external plugins. With the open sourcing of Sonar, these plugins are also being open-sourced. Some of these include: Logs, a plugin that shows device logs without the need for additional setup. Layout Inspector, a debugging platform that provides deep dives into user interface hierarchies and supports Litho and ComponentKit components. Network, a plugin that enables the inspection of network packets as they pass into and out of the app in question. Sonar architecture Sonar’s architecture has two parts, a desktop client, and a mobile SDK. The desktop client is built on top of Electron, and Facebook's projects such as React.js, Flow, Metro, RSocket, and Yarn. The mobile SDK is installed within the Android or iOS application and interacts with the desktop client. The mobile SDK makes use of Facebook open source projects such as Folly and RSocket. Plugins are available for both Desktop client and Mobile SDK. Desktop client plugins render the UI and a mobile SDK plugin exposes the data. A React component extends the desktop plugin class. This React component is in charge of communicating with the mobile SDK plugin and rendering any data it delivers. The mobile SDK plugin is developed in the language native to the platform on which it will run (Swift/Objective-C on iOS or Java/Kotlin on Android). It registers a set of handlers and defines responses for them. Source: Facebook Blog Emil Sjölander, Facebook software engineer hopes that “open-sourcing Sonar and the accompanying plugins will provide a useful tool for other engineers working on mobile applications.” He says that “As we've already seen Sonar prove useful internally at Facebook, we think Sonar's APIs will help other engineers build great new experiences to improve their workflows.” You can read about the full release coverage on Facebook code blog. Jest 23, Facebook’s popular framework for testing React applications is now released Facebook’s F8 Conference – 5 key announcements Testing Single Page Applications (SPAs) using Vue.js developer tools