Download Hangouts v2.0.012 APK – Comes with SMS integration

Google launched Nexus 5 on 31st October and with that came Android 4.4 – KitKat. Hangouts v2.0.012 comes with support of SMS, sending and receiving animated GIFs, location sharing and many other improvements. This latest version of Hangouts has been extracted from the Nexus 5 devices.

On launching Hangouts you'll be asked to enable SMS integration. You can enable/disable SMS integration whenever you wish to in the Settings section. Hangouts doesn't ask you to set that as the default SMS app. The default SMS app remains the same, old one.

You can now share your locations with your friends and send/receive animated GIFs.

Moods is another new addition. It's basically like status updates in WhatsApp and Hike.

The APK download link is mentioned at the bottom of this post.

To install this APK file, you'll have to enable installation from Unknown Sources in your Android settings section. Go to Settings > Security and enable the Unknown Sources option.

Some users have reported crash reports/bugs with some devices running this updated version. As for me, I've not experienced any crashes.

If you are enthusiastic about trying the new SMS integration, download the APK right now, or you can choose to wait till Google updates Hangouts on Google Play Store.

Link : Download Hangouts v2.0.012

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Nexus 5 priced Rs. 28,999 and availability on 14th November in India

Google released Android 4.4 KitKat and the new Nexus 5 phone a couple of days ago. The Nexus 5 is already available in the US and other markets but its availability is not officially confirmed in India.

What is officially confirmed is the the price of the Nexus 5 phone in India. Just head over to the Nexus 5 playstore listing and it shows the prices of both the 16GB and 32 GB variants.

The Nexus 5 16 GB variant is priced at Rs. 28,999 and the 32 GB variant at Rs. 32,999.

That is about Rs. 3000 more than what Nexus 4 was priced in India. According to TOI the release date for Nexus 5 in India will be the 14th November.

The Nexus 7 (2013) version is also expected in India soon and hopefully that too will be available on November 14th. Google's ambiguity over the release of Android 4.4 and Nexus 5 has been so much that it is difficult to take any rumours on a release date seriously.

About Android 4.4: I guess Google still has to learn a bit from Apple who release an update on the same day to millions of devices. My phone (Nexus 4) still does not have the Android 4.4 update available officially, which is a same as most Nexus owners buy the device to get the latest Android version. I will post a details Android 4.4 review once I get my hands on it.

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A Recommended Recipe just for you

October's Newsletter brings you refreshed Channels, Surfline, plus Halloween Recipes. Boo! These Channels have new Triggers and Actions. Click on a Channel icon for Recipe ideas! Surf's up! Keep an eye on your favorite surf spots with the new Surfline Channel. We collected a few festive Recipes just in time for Halloween… Trick-or-Treat: Recipes for the grownup Halloweenie :) —The IFTTT Team P.S. Need a last-minute costume idea? Dress as a QA Engineer and join us at IFTTT! Share on Facebook  |  Share on Twitter  |  Share on Google+ This newsletter was automatically sent to ashmikutty.friends@blogger.com because you signed up for IFTTT with that address. To disable this communication, you can manage your email settings or unsubscribe from the IFTTT Newsletter.   IFTTT · 923 Market Street #400 · San Francisco, CA 94103

Google reveals Motorola’s “Project Ara” to let users customize their phones

When Google bought Motorola most industry experts have never been truly able to explain "why" it did so. Was it for Motorola's patents which could be valuable against an Apple? Was it as leverage against Samsung who were more or less dominating the Android based phone market? Was it that Google now wanted to become like Apple and make their own phones?

Google's wisdom has been questioned for a while regarding Motorola, as over the last couple of years – Motorola has eating millions out of Google's profits. But it seems Google had a plan for Motorola all this while.

A day ago, they announced "Project Ara" for Motorola. Project Ara is basically making a phone last longer but making them modular. So basically the idea is the phone will come apart in several modules and one could just change the screen if it was smashed or opt for a bigger battery instead of a better camera.

So what is the vision of Project Ara?

The vision is to replicate Android's open source nature into hardware. As in Project Ara is supposed to become a free and open hardware platform. Here are some images of the early designs with Project Ara.

Note the Moto X lock-screen notifications icon on these devices. The phones looks like a jigsaw puzzle full of modules and that is what it is supposed to be. It will contain a endoskeleton (endo) and modules. The endo-skeleton will basically keep the modules in place as a framework.

How has Google gone about planning to make modular phones?

Some of you might be aware of a concept called Phonebloks. The concept is similar to "Project Ara" and also promises freedom of customization and choice for users. The problem with Phonebloks was that the design it was suggesting looked "scientifically dodgy" but the idea of users modular built block by block is not really news. But Google is working with Phonebloks creator Dave Hakkens to tap into its community.

Google expects to roll-out a alpha versions of Module Developers Kit (MDK) over the next 4-5 months.

In 2007, Modu an Israeli company also came out with the idea of selling modular phones. The company went bust in 2011 and surely enough in May 2011 Google stepped in and bought many of their patents on modular technology. This means Google has been thing on these lines almost since the time they acquired Motorola.

Here is a nice video from Phonebloks that explains the concept of modular phones.

Will Google succeed? That is a entirely different question but if it does, the hegemony of phone manufacturers with deep pockets will be shaken in a big way.

What are your views on modular phones? Do you think they will work? Do drop in your comments.

Link: Motorola blog

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Google Nexus 5 specs leaked in pre-registration mistake

The Canadian telecom company Wind, listed the Google Nexus 5 phone for pre-registration on its Facebook page. The post has been removed now but it was up for enough time people to take screenshots of the registration screen.

The phone is expected to be announced anytime soon. Google itself has listed it "mistakenly" on the Play Store. The mistaken listing now more or less confirms the expected specs for the Nexus 5.

Expected Nexus 5 specs

• The screen will be 4.95-inch 1080p display.
• Phone will run on 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 processor with 2GB of RAM
• The front facing camera will be 1.3 MP and the back camera 8 MP.
• Obviously the OS will be Android 4.4 KitKat.
• The phone will be available in two versions 16GB and 32 GB.

The leaks of phones is getting so ridiculous that hardly anything new is ever announced, which is a secret until the day of the launch. But the level of mistaken leaks sometimes, makes me wonder if these spec and image leaks are not just stage managed mistakes.

Whenever Nexus 5 is announced, much of what it will have will already be known. So the real surprise elements in store could be with what is new with Android 4.4 KitKat.

Source: The Verge

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LG G Flex: Curved display smartphone is official

The Korean electronics giant LG has officially announced the G Flex phone. This smartphone is "different" because the display screen is curved. The phone retains the new trend of LG's flagship phones to have the power button at the back of the phone. The phone is currently available only in S.Korea and there is not signs yet on a global release.

Basic specs of the LG G Flex

• The phone has a flexible OLED screen that allows the curved screen display. These screens usually are far more robust because of their flexibility. Also the shape of the screen with an inwards curve could mean fewer instances of the phone falling flat on the display screen to break it.
• It has a 6-inch, 720p display. The display screen will obviously show notifications based on tilting of the device.
• The device runs on 2.26GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor and packs 2GB of RAM
• The back camera is a 13-megapixel camera.
• The 3,500 mAh battery is impressive as there are major engineering difficulties with fitting a battery inside a curved device.

The engineering and design challenges of curved display phones

While curved displays are possible because of the flexible OLED screen, the innards of the phone are not really flexible. The batteries, chips, sensors are not necessarily flexible and this would probably be a major challenge in how the phone is assembled and what sort of impact it has on such a phone's performance over the long run.

LG is not the first to produce a phone with curved display. Samsung already has one but that model curves from side to side, while the curve on the LG G Flex runs from top to bottom.

Source: The Verge

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OS X Mavericks: Faster performance, Longer battery life, Better Apps

It's that time of the year when Apple releases an update to their desktop operating system and the power users try to use and experience every bit of it.

A few days back, during a special event, Apple released OS X Mavericks. I've been using it for 3-4 days and here's what I think about it.

Note: I tested Mavericks on a year old 13″ MacBook Pro – which isn't too new, nor too old.

Finder Tabs and Tags

I'm starting with Finder because it's easily one of the most used apps on my Mac. Thankfully, Apple did bring two features to this. Both of these features are practically useful too.

Finder Tabs look no different from Safari tabs. You hit CMD+T, and a new tab gets added. You can then switch between them and even transfer files by dropping over them.

Even CMD+Click-ing a folder now results in a new tab, instead of a window. If you have multiple Finder tabs, you can merge them. Click on the video below.

Next up is Finder Tags. The first thing you'll notice is that, the colourful tags looks popped out in the Finder app, where everything is monochrome. That's for bad or good, I don't know.

Tags appear in the sidebar and are assigned a colour. Tags can contain files and folders. I'm personally using it to group folders. For example, I have a 'code' tag which lists all the folders where I have code.

Tags can be added to documents right away and will be synced via iCloud.

Safari

Safari is not my default browser, not even in Mavericks, but it still impressed me with some of its new features.

To start, they tweaked the UI a bit – removing the faux 3D effect from new tab page. The feature that stands out is, the new Sidebar. It brings Bookmarks, Reading list and Shared links under single column.

Shared links is a new feature which grabs all the links from your Twitter timeline (and LinkedIn!) and lets you browse through links one after the other. It does a really good job at that.

Other neat additions include iCloud keychain which fills and remembers secure passwords for you. I use LastPass myself and many use 1Password, but nevertheless it's a fine addition.

Safari can also send you notifications from websites, even when it's not running. There are just a bunch of websites which support this now – including New York Times, NBA.com and few more. It's a really powerful addition to a browser.

The two finger swipe back gesture works better than ever, as caching is done well. On a whole, it's a tad faster.

Notification center

Debuted in Mountain Lion, Notification center is a pretty useful addition to OS X. A lot of apps support it now and Apple has made it even better in Mavericks. Taking cues from Android, Apple has made notification in OS X actionable.

Let's say you received a message, you can reply to it, without actually opening the Messages app. Received a FaceTime call? Same thing. There will be an API for third party apps to include this functionality.

Previously, you could post to Facebook and Twitter from the Notification center, now you can even send iMessages.

New toys to play with

Apple has brought in two new system apps in Mavericks – Maps and iBooks. Both of these make Mac play well with iOS devices.

Apple Maps

Everyone remembers the Apple Maps debacle, with that in mind, I didn't expect much from the Maps app – but to my surprise, it was very good. Keeping the data aside (which is what Maps lacks), the UX is really good. It's a whole lot better than using Google Maps' web app.

Pinch to zoom and panning work smoothly and everything feels faster. Some of the satellite imagery is stunning and look great in full screen. You can add bookmarks and they get synced via iCloud.

In spite of all this, Apple Maps will probably never replace Google Maps for me. Especially because, now that Google has Waze, you can expect even more accurate data in Google Maps.

iBooks

iBooks in Mavericks bring in a simple way to purchase and read books. The library is pretty vast and there are a lot of free books too.

The reading interface gets everything out of the way and you can customise the look of it (fonts and all). iBooks can be interactive too, including having embedded videos, though I didn't try any such book yet.

Performance and Battery life

By far, the biggest change in Mavericks has to be the underneath performance and battery life tweaks. This is a great news for MacBook users, as you not only get more out of your existing RAM, but also get extra battery life.

After over 3 days of usage, I observed over 6-6.5 hours of battery life on continuous usage- as supposed to 5.5 hours on Mountain Lion. The difference will be huge in the new MacBook Air with Haswell processors.

Technically speaking, Apple introduced App Nap, Timer Coalescing and Compressed Memory. You can learn more about them at Apple's site.

Better performance means, the App Store app no longer stutters, LaunchPad is smoother, Safari is snappier, etc. Ultimately, you have to use Mavericks to understand the underneath improvements.

Death of Linen

While Apple didn't slap the flat interface they have in iOS 7, on OS X – they did made a few UI tweaks. The linen background which can be seen all over the OS, is now replaced with a solid background.

Take a look at the Notification center, Mission Control and LaunchPad. Dashboard has got a new background too.

Apps like Calendar, Contacts and Notes have been redesigned. I think Calendar looks good with no faux leather. I hardly use Contacts and Notes, but they look nice too. Icons of these apps are still the same, though.

What Apple has yet to fix

So Mavericks is indeed a good update for OS X. That doesn't mean it's all gold, though. Here are few thing Apple will have to concentrate on.

Messages

Every OS X user knows that the Messages app is a mess. Mavericks doesn't change that. The icon badge count in the dock keeps going crazy. It lags like crazy and the order of messages get swapped. Sometimes the iMessage service itself is down.

Apple clearly has to do something about this.

Bugs

Are there bugs in Mavericks? Yes. Are they really intrusive and keep you from updating? No. Does Apple has to fix them? Indeed.

Best example is the bug in Finder app. Just open few Finder windows and close – to reproduce this bug. I had to do a killall Finder to get rid of this.

Conclusion

OS X Mavericks improves Apple's desktop operating system in quite a few areas. It makes your Mac faster, long last and brings useful features. It's indeed an incremental update – but that's what most OS X updates have been.

And it's free.

So why wait? Open the App Store app, update. It'll take around a hour to install Mavericks, apart from the gigantic 5.29GB download.

Did you try Mavericks? We are interested to know what you think about it!

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