HoFo Blog

From The Web:

The OnePlus 5 will be unveiled on June 20th

Exclusive: This is the OnePlus 5

As Google Neglects Tablets, Apple and Microsoft Advance the Convergence of Mobile and Desktop Computers

Checking out the new iPad Pros and their fancy 120Hz screens

Trudeau Minister Says Canada's Cellular Plans Are Too Expensive

From The Forums:

How's overall reliability?

Total Wireless - How do I turn off voicemail?

Apps Report: Verizon Might Buy a Stake in Pandora if SiriusXM Deal Falls Through

Which phones for Sprint MVNOs?

Looking for Verizon MVNO's Pay-As-You-Go plan (voice and text only)

---------

Congratulations, Apple fans! Your iOS 11-powered device looks to be less like an electronic appliance and more like a proper pocket computer. According to The Next Web one of the many features coming to the new version of Apple's smartphone OS is a native file manager; The Verge's reporting on the same story points to a placeholder listing for an app called "Files" on the App Store.

You might think that such a basic utility would be a prerequisite for any modern smartphone, but in my experience that hasn't been the case. Android only recently added file managing functionality, buried in your device settings—you can access it by navigating to Settings > Storage > Explore. Some OEM Android ROMs, like Oxygen OS on my OnePlus 3, do have their own native file managers, as do the majority of custom ROMs (at least the ones I've tried). And there are, of course, a variety of third-party file managers available on both Google Play and the App Store.

It must also be remembered that with the iPhone Apple brought smartphones to the masses, and along with it the danger of overwhelming new users with features that they may not need, at least not right away. Conversely, anyone who has ever used a desktop computer should be able to grasp the relatively easy concept of browsing files on a device.

Here's a question for iPhone users reading this: what have you been using for file management up to now?

Sources: The Next Web, The Verge

---------

From The Web:

Apple unveils iOS 11 for iPhone and iPad

Apple announces completely redesigned App Store

Apple announces new 10.5-inch iPad Pro with narrower side bezels, 120hz refresh rate display

Apple announces watchOS 4 Apple Watch update

June Nexus/Pixel factory images and OTA files are now available for download, includes fix for Pixel freezing

From The Forums:

WWDC 2017: Everything important Apple announced at its big event

What don't I understand about Iphone locking?

iPhone SE Unlocking Questions

7+ versus 6s+ on VZW

Lte installed with 4g extender

---------

So the Computex trade show just wrapped up in Taipei, Taiwan, and if you believe Engadget the age of the embedded SIM is upon us. The world's four biggest PC vendors—Lenovo, HP, Dell and ASUS—have all pledged to build Windows machines (presumably laptops) with eSIM support. It's a bit odd if you think about it; while an embedded SIM makes sense in a tight space like a smartwatch a laptop would has plenty of room for a traditional SIM card. But apparently Intel is developing an eSIM that provides a persistent gigabit data connection over LTE.

So are eSIMs inevitable for smartphones as well? I sure hope not. My problem with embedded SIMs is that they force the user to cede control of their data connection to someone else.

For the last decade or so every mobile phone I've owned has been free of carrier locks—meaning that right out of the box I could insert my SIM card of choice, and as long as my carrier's bands were supported I'd be good to go. As an added bonus I've also been able to remove said SIM card and gift or sell my hardware to someone else when I'm done with it, so that they can do the same.

With an eSIM the user has to select and/or change their carrier through software, which doesn't sound like a big deal but is nonetheless an additional barrier between you and your connection. A software interface gives a third party the power to block a carrier or even a specific plan from your electronic property. At best an eSIM provides multiple, competing interests a means to make your device worse. Don't believe me? Look no further than the Apple SIM; when it launched in 2014 AT&T used it to lock users to that network, while Verizon banned it altogether. That dream of having carriers competing to give you a data connection didn't exactly pan out.

It might be a minor inconvenience having to deal with APNs, SIM card trays and ejector tools, but I'm still a big fan of physical SIMs. In fact, I'd take dual-SIM support over an eSIM any day of the week.

Links: Engadget

From The Web:

Chrome Will Start Blocking Ads in 2018 on Sites Not Compliant with the Better Ads Standards

Qualcomm introduces QuickCharge 4+ for even faster charging

Nokia 9 rocks AnTuTu: Snapdragon 835 and 4GB RAM detected

First WWDC 2017 Decorations Start Going Up at McEnery Convention Center

Why you should support net neutrality

From The Forums:

Best way to transfer from BYOP LG G4 to Tracfone Ultimate 2

Data roll over on FreedomPop at&t Sim?

Best Buy Prepaid iPhones

Hotspot on Galaxy Luna (Tracfone)?

New Prepaid Plans starting June 6 $40/3GB, $50/7GB, $60/10GB

---------

Everything you need to know is in this image, really, but I'll walk you through it just so you're clear.

This past Wednesday Mobile Syrup reported that Android Pay was officially available in Canada, and then quickly added an addendum that it was actually only partially available—RBC and TD joined AMEX in not being a launch partner. Here's what RBC had to say on the matter:

Except that it doesn't.

Launch the RBC Wallet and you must choose your RBC card as the default for NFC payments. Launch the AMEX Android app and you must likewise choose your AMEX card as the default for NFC payments. I haven't tried the TD app but I imagine it's the same story. Want the option of using your AMEX, RBC and TD cards for NFC payments? You'll have to wait until those banks quit their bulls**t and start supporting Android Pay.

Until then make no mistake: mobile payments are still broken in this country, just not quite so much as they were before.

Links: Mobile Syrup (1) (2)

---------

From The Web:

Motorola Moto Z2 Play review: thinner, lighter, better

Motorola announces Moto Z2 Play and reveals it’s coming to Canada this summer

Moto Z phones get 4 new Moto Mods, including a Moto GamePad

Developer Earnings from the App Store Top $70 Billion

Dear Google, it's time Android let me choose my own darn emoji

From The Forums:

Unlimited throttled data on Freedompop/Sprint basic plan?

Tired of monthly sim swap out for Freedompop

Unlocking question

International roaming- DR ??

Verizon smartphone 5 gigabyte unlimited talk and text for $55 ?

---------

While I was away The Verge ran a nice little feature on Anker, an accessory company that deserves a lot more attention than it gets. The company is probably best-known for their portable phone and tablet chargers. I still have fond memories of their Astro 3E; it was perfectly-sized for my Nexus 5 and easily gave that phone three times the battery capacity. I've no doubt that they made a killing in sales last summer when Pokémon GO was all the rage.

What I didn't know about Anker was that it was founded by an ex-Google software engineer—Steven Yang—in only 2011. He started the company to sell replacement laptop batteries but quickly (and wisely) switched to mobile power banks. A key component of Anker's success has been using Amazon for fulfillment—customers can easily return any item they're not happy with. Honestly, though, of all the Anker products I've purchased I've not returned a single one.

And my Anker gear isn't limited to mobile chargers; I've bought two audio products, both of which are surprisingly good. The Soundcore Sport outdoor speaker is perfect for catching up on podcasts in the bath (don't judge!), and I've just started using the Soundbuds Sport on my morning walks—these Bluetooth earbuds are maybe a bit light in the bass department, but they're super-comfortable, cheap and again, perfect for podcasts.

For those not comfortable buying accessories online, sight unseen, Anker is working on bringing their brand to brick and mortar stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. No complaints here; the more people that know about this excellent accessories company, the better!

Links: Anker, The Verge

---------

From The Web:

Essential will (Essentially) Support all 4 Major U.S. Carriers, will ship with New Virtual Assistant in June

Essential Home is Andy Rubin’s Answer to the Google Home and Amazon Echo

Android Pay is now officially available in Canada

TD and RBC may come to Android Pay in ‘the next several quarters’

Latest iPhone 8 leak offers detailed dimension information & renders

From The Forums:

Android Users - Is Hangouts Call Quality Still a Crapshoot?

AT&T unlimited iPad plan

600 MHz license schedule?

So when will VZW no longer make VoLTE optional?

With bringing in customers

---------

Andy Rubin finally unveiled his Essential Phone yesterday, with The Verge getting the scoop a little early. You're looking at what I think is the phone's standout feature, a screen that seems to wrap around the front camera and sensor assembly. It's visually striking and also smart—with notifications on the left and indicators on the right the centre of your typical Android status bar is usually empty anyway, so why not put the selfie cam there?

The phone also features a titanium and ceramic housing, and proprietary connectors for first-party accessories that at present include a 360-degree camera and a docking station. Specs are as follows:

Display
5.71 inch Quad-HD
2560 x 1312 pixels @ 504 ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 5

Processor
Qualcomm Snapdragon 835

RAM / Storage
4 GB / 128 GB

Rear-Facing Camera
13-megapixel, f/1.85
Dual RBG + Mono

Front-Facing Camera
8-megapixel, f/2.2
16:9 aspect ratio

Battery
3,040 mAh
Fast charging via USB

Colours
Black Moon
Ocean Depths
Pure White
Stellar Grey

Now the bad news: There's no headphone jack and no mention of dust or water resistance. The phone will only ship within the U.S. and is priced at $699 USD. Also, for a phone from the father of Android there's been surprisingly few details about the software running it, only a promise from Rubin that there will be nothing on this device that the user doesn't want.

Do you think this premium smartphone has a chance in an already-saturated Android market, or is it essentially a cash grab?

Sources: Essential, The Verge

---------

The front page will be dark tomorrow as I've a funeral to attend, but I should be back on full duty Wednesday...

From The Web:

Hello Motorola: The oldest phone maker plots its grand comeback

Lenovo's struggling mobile business sets sight on high-end market

OnePlus Teases the OnePlus 5 with a Camera Sample

The Rise & Fall of CyanogenMod; The Bullet which Misfired

Tag Heuer Connected Modular 45 review: It seems like $1,500 should get you more

From The Forums:

Updating old Galaxy Note?

What kind of tower is this?

Problem with Port

AT&T WCDMA Bands???

Question about 50 switcher credit

---------

Here's my story. I'm hoping you'll share yours as well...

On the morning that my mom died I was waiting for a text from my older brother, the main point of contact for the hospital where we had brought her the day before. I did get a phone call shortly before 7am but again, the text never came—and I had been awake and waiting for it since about 4.

As an Android user my first instinct was to blame iMessage, but the more I think about it the more I believe it was some combination of iMessage and MMS. I actually have two older brothers and both of them use iPhones, much to my dismay (not really). What happened was that the brother who was contacted by the hospital sent a group text to my other brother and I. The oldest brother received the message on his iPhone without issue; the youngest brother on his Android phone (me) did not.

SMS has been a fairly critical means of communication for me over the past two years; I've relied on it to organize my mom's around-the-clock care. In my experience the only way that bulk texting works reliably is if I set my app to send group texts as individual messages. This isn't ideal because it makes it harder to read through replies, but at least it works. My current Android SMS app does this by default; surely there's a similar option for iMessage...?

Again, in my case it wasn't the absolute end of the world. But if you have to call someone and ask them if they got your text then messaging has failed for both of you. I personally have been using SMS for at least 17 years, and the technology has been around longer than that. This stuff should have been figured out by now, but clearly hasn't.

Please feel free to name and shame your carrier, app and/or mobile messaging technology below.

---------

Why? Because...



From The Web:

Andy Rubin's Android startup 'Essential' has a Twitter account, will announce new phone on May 30th

Report: iPhone 8 to feature Touch ID directly on the OLED screen with optical fingerprint sensor

Apple and Nokia see deeper partnership after ending patent dispute

One number for all your phones: T-Mobile is now offering call forwarding on steroids

Woman survived Manchester bomb thanks to her phone, husband says

From The Forums:

Calling Plus (AKA VoLTE) trails begin soon

Android 7.0 Nougat Update for Phoenix 2

Dual SIM Android phone with both Sims slots LTE capable.

T-Mobile Uncarrier Announcement: Ditch Verizon and keep your phone, or 2 lines for 1

Does anyone connecting to band12 actually get any use from it?

---------

You may have noticed that there was no news round-up yesterday; my apologies for that. I was with my mom, who passed away in hospital this morning, three days shy of her 92nd birthday. Unfortunately it looks like I'm going to have to take the rest of this week off. While I would actually welcome the distraction of my daily duties here there are a bunch of things that need taking care of—contacting a funeral home, arranging for a funeral, that kind of thing.

I'm hoping to be back here next Monday, Tuesday at the latest. Thanks for your understanding...

---------

This summer could prove to be a bit more exciting than usual for Android fans; the hype machine for the OnePlus 5 has already begun spooling up, and there's also this: a leak from a French Android blog showing off what appears to be a prototype Nokia 9.

There's good reason to mention Nokia and OnePlus in the same breath; based on what we know so far, the two potential flagships are more evenly matched than you might initially think. Here's a rundown of reported specs from GSM Arena:

Nokia 9
Snapdragon 835 CPU, Adreno 540 GPU
5.3 inch QHD IPS display @554 ppi
64/128 GB of storage, 4/6 GB RAM
Dual SIM + microSD support
Android 7.1.1

OnePlus 5
Snapdragon 835 CPU, Adreno 540 GPU
5.5 inch QHD AMOLED display @534 ppi
64/128/256(?) GB of storage, 6/8 GB RAM
Dual SIM support
Android 7.1.1

There are some things about both devices that we don't yet know. For starters, its unclear if the Nokia 9 will even be available in North America, and what bands it would support here if it eventually is. A release date for the Nokia is another unknown, whereas the OnePlus 5 is expected before the end of June.

The biggest and perhaps most important unknown is price. The OnePlus 5 could retail for as low as $450 and as high as $650 USD, or about $600 to $900 CAD. GSM Arena speculates that the Nokia 9 could sell for as high as €700 EUR—that's almost $800 USD!

I guess my dream of a Nokia/OnePlus price war isn't going to happen...

Sources: FrAndroid via Android Central, GSM Arena

---------

From The Web:

Galaxy S8 vs $2000 camera and DSRL: camera comparison

Brazil, Canada, Russia, Spain, and Taiwan will be getting Android Pay soon

As tech giants step back from smartwatches, the fashion world steps up

Report: Tim Cook testing wearable blood sugar tracker on Apple’s campus, connected to Apple Watch

Net Neutrality's Not Dead Yet: What's Next, and How You Can Help

From The Forums:

Verizon 3G Shutdown?

AT&T Outage?

TF works in Canada?

Using GoPhone iPhone on postpaid line

Weird voicemail forwarding?

---------

I spend a lot of time here making the case for smartphones as true pocket computers, not just Internet and app-enabled appliances. I try to demonstrate how you can fully exploit the potential of an Android-powered device with an unlocked bootloader and root, and how you can use these tools to blocks ads, backup, restore or freeze apps, change your theme or even your file system.

But I'll let you in on a little secret: a couple of weeks ago I bought a Kindle.

I know, right? Hypocritical much? This single purpose device riddled with DRM is pretty much the polar opposite of a generative computing device. But the Kindle is technically a tablet and tablets are technically mobile, and that's the justification I'm using for what I actually want to talk about, the Kindle DRM—which can be easily, almost trivially, stripped out of your Amazon purchases using a desktop computer.

To be clear, I did buy a Kindle and I think it's a fine ebook-reading device, but I would never had bought the thing without the means to liberate my legal Amazon ebook purchases from it.

You'll need two bits of software to do the same, both of which are 100% free. The first is the Calibre ebook management app, which you can install on Linux, Mac and Windows systems. You'll also need a plugin called DeDRM, which you can read about on the author's blog and download from GitHub. Both the app and the plug are open source—that is, free as in freedom as well as free as in beer.

Get your plugin installed by following the instructions on the author's site and you're nearly done. If you're on a PC or Mac you'll also need the desktop Kindle app (free as in beer only) as this will include Amazon's encryption key. On my Linux box I had the extra step of entering my Kindle's serial number.

At this point you can open your legal Amazon purchases in Calibre, and export them to any file format of your choosing. Stripping DRM may technically be illegal depending on where you live, but it's certainly better than pirating books—this way Amazon, the publishers and authors all get their money, and you get full property rights to the ebooks that you've paid for. Of course I would prefer if Amazon sold DRM-free books in the first place, but as workarounds go this one's pretty easy.

So that's why I bought a Kindle... and if none of this is mobile enough for you, what about my first purchase for it?

Links: Calibre, DeDRM

---------

From The Web:

FCC Ignores The Will Of The Public, Votes To Begin Dismantling Net Neutrality

Apple Is Lobbying Against Your Right to Repair iPhones, New York State Records Confirm

Google Play Protect, A New Solution To Keep your Android Device Secure

Android Pay confirmed to launch in Canada ‘in the coming months’

Google’s 18-Month Quest To Redesign Its Terrible Emoji

From The Forums:

Best option for lowest cost per minute on Tracfone

Amazon and dish to merge

"Verizon: 'Just over 50%' of our spectrum is being used for LTE"

Verizon Unlocked vs Sim Free Unlocked

Scenario for transferring gUDP features - will this work?

---------

It seems that Netflix has joined the wrong side in the war on general purpose computing, denying access to their service on rooted Android devices. How and why would root be a threat to Netflix? Honestly, I've no idea; the only means I could find for capturing and saving Netflix streams are desktop PC apps.

Android Police reports that the technology that enables this B.S. is a new function of the Google Play Console—specifically a check box which can disallow devices that fail Google's SafetyNet. So what's a rooted Android user to do? Use Magisk, that's what!

Magisk is short for "Magic Mask", and is described as a universal systemless interface by XDA recognized developer topjohnwu. It's installed in the same way as Chainfire's SuperSU—a zip file flashed via a custom recovery—but offers a lot more functionality via installable modules. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the old Xposed Installer that for Android modders was all the rage back in 2014. Magisk includes a root module (obviously) but can also hide root on a per-app basis, meaning that you can now enjoy Netflix on your rooted phone or tablet, along with Super Mario Run and Pokémon GO.

And if that's not enough, you can extend Magisk even further with a module that blocks ads system-wide.

From the official XDA thread, here are the steps to get it up and running:

Restore your boot image back to stock;
download the latest Magisk zip file;
reboot to a custom recovery;
flash Magisk zip;
reboot;
update Magisk Manager to the latest version on the Play Store.

Requirements are an unlocked bootloader and custom recovery.

Full disclosure: I've not yet installed Magisk on any of my devices; I'm prepping my OnePlus 3 for it right now, will report back if anything goes horribly wrong...

Links: Android Police, Play Store, XDA

---------