Edward Snowden: "Google's decision to disable end-to-end encryption by default in its new #Allo chat app is dangerous, and makes it unsafe. Avoid it for now."

Edward Snowden: "Google's decision to disable end-to-end encryption by default in its new #Allo chat app is dangerous, and makes it unsafe. Avoid it for now."


Edward Snowden: "Google's decision to disable end-to-end encryption by default in its new #Allo chat app is dangerous, and makes it unsafe. Avoid it for now."

Posted: 20 May 2016 07:12 AM PDT

Project Ara Developer Edition coming Fall 2016

Posted: 20 May 2016 10:25 AM PDT

In my opinion one of the best things out of Google I/O - Project Soli working on an actual smartwatch

Posted: 20 May 2016 10:26 AM PDT

90% of Nexus phone users now have a secure lock screen, thanks to fingerprint sensors

Posted: 20 May 2016 11:27 AM PDT

MKBHD in 2013 discussing the unifying of Google's messaging services. 3 years later, we still have all of the broken up messaging apps mentioned + YouTube messaging + Spaces + 2 more just announced (Allo and Duo)

Posted: 20 May 2016 12:04 AM PDT

[CONCEPT] Redesign of Google Play

Posted: 20 May 2016 02:05 PM PDT

Project Ara Lives: Google's Modular Phone Is Ready for You Now

Posted: 20 May 2016 10:54 AM PDT

A closer look at Google’s modular phone prototype

Posted: 20 May 2016 02:10 PM PDT

Thanks Be To Wugfresh

Posted: 20 May 2016 07:42 AM PDT

I'm not sure if this is appropriate, but I really wanted to mention that wugfresh's NRT has saved my bacon more times than I care to admit. This morning it rescued my Nexus 9 from a softbrick resulting from the Preview 3 OTA. Bootloader was locked but that presents no issue for wug's toolkit. Got the Preview 3 image flashed without problems.

submitted by /u/gtrays
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Tearing Down Google Apps Updates: What's (Possibly) Coming!

Posted: 20 May 2016 11:02 AM PDT

"Quicker than I expected: It has just taken 5h 15min to charge the 3000mAh battery in the #MotoG4 with the in-box charger from 3 to 100%. "

Posted: 20 May 2016 03:34 PM PDT

Making a custom Gold and White Nexus 6P (xpost r/Nexus6P)

Posted: 20 May 2016 06:47 AM PDT

Want pictures only? Click here


Intro

So when shopping for a new phone this month I fell in love with the HTC 10 Gold variant. However, the price point and lack of availability of the Gold model on Verizon made this a deal breaker for me. The Nexus 6P was also a strong contender, but Google only made it in a 64GB variant. Also, the Gold rear seemed too plain without the aesthetic white trim typical of iPhones and the HTC 10.

So I figured, why not buy a white 128 GB Nexus 6P and swap out superficial parts? Should be no big deal, right? After all, I've done this beforeRIP_moto.


Making a White and Gold Nexus 6P

1) The setup - I bought a replacement package on ebay for $30, which came with a gold housing case and spare glass visor. They also sent two plastic picks, four screw drivers, 2 plastic wedge tools and a suction cup. In the top right corner is my google case and magnetic car dock. My original plan was to install a metal magnetic piece inside the housing case after the swap. But for reasons I'll explain later, I forgot this step. Finally the weird cloth bag is a sock stuffed with uncooked rice, a makeshift heating pouch once microwaved.

2) Warming the glass visor - Tossing the sock in the microwave for 2-3 minutes gets it plenty warm.

3) Prying the glass visor off - So none of the tools supplied were thin enough to get between the glass and metal housing. After getting pretty frustrated, I decided to use a safety pin to wedge the visor off. As you will see in later pictures, this roughshod method left a dent in the case. I would not recommend you do it this way unless you have no intention of reusing the old case.

3) Removing the bottom plastic piece - Another minute in the microwave and the sock is good to go

4) Warming the plastic off - Once again, I had to resort to using the safety pin to create a gap in the plastic. You can see another dent in the metal case as well as a small mark in the plastic piece itself. Once I had enough room I snuck a plastic pick in there and wiggled it from one end to the other until I could pry the plastic off. A few tear down videos used a hairdryer, which discolored the plastic during this process. I would definitely recommend the rick sock over direct heat regardless of your phone.

5) Screws exposed - Hard part should be over according to ifixit and a few other repair sites. Don't listen to the lies, the hardest part just started.

6) Removing the screws - Not pictured, removing the sim card as well. This is easy, although my device actually had two screws hidden by tiny white stickers.

7) Don't lose those screws! - Self-explanatory.

8) Even more heating - Tear down instructions I read advised heating the entire body for this part. I assumed it was for more glue, but the device is just snuggly held in the tight casing. In retrospect this step is largely unnecessary.

9) Finally getting a pick in - LOTS of undocumented trial and error between these two shots. Every video made this process seem like the body just pops off. But this thing is on there pretty fucking tight. Trying to pry the glass side off WILL bend the soft plastic edging. So I had to keep heating/prying with the shitty plastic tools until I was able to get a pick between the actual phone unit and the case.

10) Collateral damage - Unfortunately, my patience was wearing thin at this point and in my haste to pry the damn case off, I ended up tearing the metal case due to the torque from fitting multiple picks between the phone unit and the case.

11) Fucking finally - 2 hour mark at this point

12) Thinnest phone ever? - Seeing this phone without its case makes you really appreciate the feat of engineering in putting a beauty like this together with a 3450 mAh battery.

13) Dropping the Gold case on - At this point I was so tired I totally spaced putting the magnetic piece from my Koomus dock inside here. Oops.

14) Replacing the glass visor - Getting it off in one piece was tricky, but replacing it was easy. No visible marks or damage and the original glue was strong enough to hold it together.

15) Still works! - In trying to pry this phone apart I turned this phone on and off more than a few times, even getting a few worrying errors along the way. Fortunately it booted just fine in the end.

16) Gold and White - Putting the phone together was one thing. But I wanted to really make this makeover pop. Some small dbrand pieces in Matte White in strategically applied places should make this functional and eye-catching.

17) White accents from the rear - Turned out as nice as I expected. The reason I sprung for the white 128GB version was because the fingerprint sensor is not replaceable. Hence, keeping it white would fit in with the new theme.

18) Alternate rear view - This was my first time buying a dbrand skin, and while I am pleased I was not particularly blown away. The camera piece was a little oddly shaped and did not fit the visor completely as I had hoped. The black visor still visible on the sides detracted from the white/gold I was going for.

19) Not too shabby - For someone with little patience and a bravery, this is an easy project to totally reinvent your phone. This reviews slamming this phone's repairability are well-deserved as I will probably never take this piece of shit apart again. Would I have done it again if I could choose? Absolutely.

Thanks for reading!

Resources:

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Here's a theory - Google aren't thinking about just the USA with Allo & Duo

Posted: 20 May 2016 07:31 AM PDT

I've seen a lot of the Americans in this subreddit losing it about how Allo & Duo won't have SMS support and won't bake into Google Voice so there's no way they'll take off.

Google Voice is only available in the USA and that won't change tomorrow. Hangouts everywhere else in the world is a failure. A brand refresh is going to be the only way to get people to download.

iMessage isn't a massively popular thing here in the UK. If you're sending an SMS and the person you're messaging happens to have an iPhone, they'll get an iMessage. Simple as that. Carriers here giv e you unlimited texts and a lot of data as standard these days, so neither option matters.

Everyone is using feature rich options like FB Messenger etc. that allow for many more options: GIF search, location and more. This is why Allo is launching - it's a feature rich, messaging only platform level with FB and Whatsapp. If it has SMS support, that's a good thing but not the end of the world.

Duo is solely there to take on FaceTime. Nothing more, nothing less.

Hangouts isn't going anywhere because the majority of it's usership probably comes from people using Google Voice and as such, it'll stay for those purposes. Outside the US, that's not an issue and Hangouts will disappear into the void.

submitted by /u/josdaw
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Project Soli: Alpha Developers Showcase

Posted: 20 May 2016 11:03 AM PDT

A study on scale: WhatsApp & Google Drive… the story of our integration

Posted: 20 May 2016 11:26 AM PDT

Robinhood wins the 2016 Google Material Design Award

Posted: 19 May 2016 07:49 PM PDT

LG G5 supports USB power delivery in addition to Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 over USB Type-C

Posted: 20 May 2016 06:33 AM PDT

MIUI 8 with Promising and Improved features - An Overview

Posted: 20 May 2016 07:16 AM PDT

Fusion 2.0 Concept Overview (x-post /r/fusionIM)

Posted: 20 May 2016 08:00 AM PDT

Samsung's Trademarks Point to Galaxy Note 6 with Iris Scanner

Posted: 20 May 2016 07:23 AM PDT

HTC 10 Sense UI Feature Focus

Posted: 20 May 2016 08:35 AM PDT

I don't think a lot of people understand what Allo/Duo is really trying to accomplish.

Posted: 19 May 2016 08:49 PM PDT

I think Google releasing Allo and Duo was a good starting point to where we as a community would like messaging to go on Android. All I hear is people talking about "But Google already has Hangouts, which has both video and messaging built in, Spaces (how do you even compare this to messaging), Youtube Messaging (Okay...), and Messenger."

Yeah we get it, they have all those but 2 on the list don't even count as conventional messengers. Spaces is like Slack and Youtube Messaging is just an attempt to watch videos together and what not, so it was never meant to be a full fledged messaging app. Now we are left with two messengers, Hangouts and messenger that are out as of right now.

Hangouts has been a problem since they launchd it. It got a ton of heat and year after year, it could not get it right. As of right now, Hangouts is in a "decent" place. As the years went by, the same common issues were seen across the board. The UI and messenger just felt way too heavy, you had no idea if the other person had it or not but if they even used it once, the messages would go through but they would never get it, the proper sms/messaging hand off, and not being able to send videos/gifs. (Until recently, you couldn't even send more than 1 picture at a time)

So to mitigate these problems people were having with the SMS integration of hangouts, Google released Messenger. It is a light weight SMS/MMS app which got the job done very well. I use it all the time and absolutely no complains from it. But that's all it is, a light weight SMS app.

Fast forward to yesterday and Google releases Allo/Duo and people are up in arms about how we are adding 2 more messaging apps to the list that Google already has.

So this is why I think Google is headed in the right direction:

  • Allo comes in with the most important feature that was needed: Phone Number Registering. With this, EVERYONE will be able to log in without having to remember anything other than having their device and being able to receive a one time SMS. This model has worked fantastically for Whatsapp, Telegram, and many other services. This DOES NOT exclude Google from making a desktop app because you can very well log into any other client on a computer for Telegram or Whatsapp with just a one time log in code.
  • When the leaked APKs for both Duo and Allo were installed on devices, they had the app name of Messaging and Video Call. This is a BIG hint that Google is not just planning on releasing this as a stand alone instant messaging app and is part of a bigger ecosystem they are trying to set up.
  • Hangouts will not be going anywhere but it also won't be on the phone as a pre installed GAPP suite. This makes total sense. People are really up in arms if how Google is going to get rid of Hangouts and I can't see that. Hangouts is a part of Google Work (Business?) They have moved that into the corporate space. Once you're in that space, you don't have much room to change standards/apps/protocols often. It would slow down work flow. You keep things as constant as possible for people to be able to make their day to day tasks as easy as possible. You need to remember, the vast majority of the people are not tech savvy and if you change something as big as a conference app, they won't know whats going on most of the time. *Allo is not perfect and does not have a desktop app, BUT I will be VERY surprised if I don't see one by the end of the year or early next year. I understand, it should have been there at launch but maybe they could not make it on time? But who knows, we still have 6 months till N comes out and they might release it with that.

NOW TO ADDRESS THE BIG QUESTIONS:

Why didn't they just fix up hangouts? Why didn't they strip hangouts and keep the name?

*Well, it's pretty simple. The Hangouts branding has a REALLY bad reputation. Reputation is VERY hard to fix after an initial impression. I know at least 50 people who have tried Hangouts and if I told them to try it again, they simply would not because they had a bad experience with the app when it first came out. *Second, it's just MUCH easier to start from scratch then trying to fix what is broken. The amount of work needed to fix Hangouts without bugs was just way too much and they could put out a new product with a new branding.

Why is Duo/Allo not one app?

*From what I understand, this is for ease of maintaining. One does not need to rely on the other but would still work fairly well together. This is the case with iMessage and Facetime as well. A good example of this would be Hangouts with the Hangouts Dialer. When you install it, it adds a new tab in the app. With Allo/Duo, as long as you have both installed, I can't see why they won't do the same thing where they will put a video call and call icon on the messaging app using Duo.

Where is RCS?!?!

*RCS is probably going to be incorporated into Allo. RCS is already Built into Android N but there is a bigger problem with the carriers. I'm sure once they settle on a deal with the carriers, RCS will be built into Allo and Google Messenger.

What About Hangouts? * Hangouts would stay in the play store for whoever wants to use it. It would be something like Facebook messenger or any of the other million instant messengers on the market. Once they take it out of the phone as a packaged app, Allo/Duo will gain traction fast because when someone buys the phone, they just look for the messaging app and use that. Allo will most likely be that. Hangouts will stay for anyone who still wants to use it and business for conference calls.

TLDR:

Google is at a place where they are in the early stages of releasing an iMessage/Face Time competitor. People were complaining so they had to show what they were working on. I would be surprised if they didn't remove hangouts in the N release and Allo Duo as the main messaging app with SMS built in. Once people start using it, and growing the user base, it will likely gain traction fairly quick since no one needs to really go out of there way to download it on a phone with N or higher. I'm also hopeful that Google will release a desktop client to message with on desktop with the N release, or soon after. Finally, they will probably integrate RCS into Allo at a later time when carriers are ready to make the switch to the protocol.

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