The Note Line has Changed, and That’s Fine: Powerful Alternatives Abound in Today’s Market

Tutorial: Clear Drawer For Nova Launcher

Today we are going to be looking at how to setup the clear drawer look on your app drawer. We will be using Nova launcher, a few custom icon packs and a custom clock widget. Marcos has made this video for XDA TV that will take you step by step to achieve this awesome look.

This is the look we will be showing you how to achieve in this tutorial.

What you’ll need

Download Nova Launcher Download KWGT Kustom Widget Maker Download Invisible Icon Pack Download Min Icons

The Dock

Long press on your home screen and select settings. This will bring you to the Nova launcher settings. Select dock and make sure that it’s toggled on. Change your dock to the rectangle shape and select a dark solid color as the dock background.

Desktop

In your Nova Launcher settings, go to Desktop, Page Indicator, and select none.

Min Icons

Now we will set the icons on the dock to use the Min icon pack. Long press on an icon and select edit, select the icon, choose the Min option and pick out the best icon from the selection. Do this for each icon on the dock.

App Drawer

Now it’s time to change the look of your app drawer. Long press on the home screen and head back into the settings menu. Go to the app and widget section and change the style from vertical to  list. Turn the card background option off and change the background color to something dark. Set the transparency to about five or ten percent.

Now go to the icon layout section and set the text size to max.

Next, go to the look and feel section and change the icon theme to the invisible icons pack.

Your app drawer should now look like this.

Clock Widget

Here you’ll have a little bit of freedom to tweak the clock widget until you have it looking the way  that you want it to.

And that’s about it!

from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2amj7iS
via IFTTT

Soft Gold OnePlus 3 Hands-On & Photo Gallery: Same Great Value with a Premium Touch

When OnePlus first unveiled the OnePlus 3, we caught glimpses of a white and gold variant that was sadly absent from the OnePlus store. It took a month for the company to allow consumers to buy the shinier variant of their latest flagship, but now it’s available for everyone to buy.

We rushed to put one in our cart and after some headaches with DHL shipping, it finally arrived to the XDA HQ. How does this cosmetic revision live up to the original block of graphite metal and black glass? We took it out of the box and put it in front of our camera lenses to find out.

As you’d expect, the color change of the back is the real eye candy here, with the soft gold variant bringing the light champagne look that other OEMs have been offering on their flagships. It’s also worth pointing out that the texture feels different, with slightly better grip due to a different finishing which OnePlus should feel like a “fine, silky-soft sand”. At the back you also get a color change in the antennae bands (now white) and the logo shines differently virtue of the new palette surround it. The rest is standard affair until you reach the front, which abandons the black slab look for a pure white face that only has a few accents in the form of the fingerprint scanner, earpiece, front camera and sensor. The bezels look quite minimal once more, although there’s more than meets the eye.

Turning on the display reveals a somewhat thick black border around the display, the kind we complained about in editorials before. This isn’t to say that the regular OnePlus 3 didn’t have these, of course it did; but the black slab front plus the 2.5D glass at least gave a better illusion of thinner bezels. This isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, though, as the phone is still very easy to handle and has an above-average screen-to-body ratio. It’s also worth noting that the rubber border serving as an interface between the edge of the phone and the display is notably absent here, a plus given some users reported early and easy scuffing on that area.

The device weighed 2 grams heavier than our standard graphite unit, but other than that there don’t seem to be differences in thickness. From the side, the soft gold OnePlus 3 looks quite attractive and nicely reflects the light around its edge. It ultimately looks very appealing in our opinion, but we did wish that the black border around the display was thinner.

So there you have it, that’s the soft gold OnePlus 3 in all its glory and compared to the regular variant. Considering there is no super-high premium cost to the gold paint, it’s definitely an attractive option for those wanting a flashier OnePlus 3. Let’s hope supplies aren’t so limited, so that anyone on the fence can get theirs in time should they choose this alternative.

What do you think of gold variants for phones? Let us know below and join the chat!

 

from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2acnccn
via IFTTT

AndromiumOS Review

Today Miles is going to review the AndromiumOS in a new XDA TV video. Over the years smartphones have become powerful enough that many modders are developing ROMs that can replace your desktop OS. RemixOS is the most popular option which turns your tablet into a desktop-like environment. AndromiumOS is a simple app that can be downloaded at no cost. Lets take a closer look.

The Superbook

The Superbook started a kickstarter campaign to develop an external screen and keyboard that would be powered by your phone. The campaign looks promising and while the product hasn’t been released yet, we can use Andromium to get a very similar result.

Andromium App

The AndromiumOS comes in the form of a free app that you can grab from the Play store. To push the UI to an external display, you’ll have the option of HDMI or Cast.

Download

There isn’t much built into the OS as it’s still a fairly new app. There are about 6 apps ready to go, the first one being the browser. It’s nothing too exciting but it does what it’s supposed to. You can run multiple tabs, save bookmarks, and video playback is surprisingly smooth.

The file explorer is clean and simple. It will give you access to all of the files on your android device.

The video and audio media player is still going through some beta pains. You’ll only get a few seconds of playback before it starts to skip and freak out.

You’ll also find some basic apps like a calculator and minesweeper.

As of right now it’s far from a desktop replacement. We will see where projects like this go in the future and keep a close eye on them.

from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2aHbzJY
via IFTTT

Xiaomi Mi 5 Battery Catches on Fire

While it’s still rare for smartphone batteries to catch on fire, this marks the second incident from an Xiaomi device in a short time. This time it was from the company’s Mi 5 smartphone, a device that went on sale in China on March 1st. It’s unclear if this person was using Xiaomi’s official charger and cable at this time.

from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2ac9eHx
via IFTTT

Sony Shifts its Business Strategy in India

After losing millions in its mobile business, Sony has recently started to only focus on selling premium smartphones and it’s worked out rather well for them. The company says they will continue with this shift in the price-sensitive country of India. This could actually be the result of Sony spending less time and effort in markets like India, China, USA and Brazil.

from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2aWKK2a
via IFTTT

Microsoft Launches Flow App in the Play Store

Microsoft Flow is the company’s attempt at competing with the growing popularity of IFTTT. In June, they released an iOS application for the service and now there’s a version for Android in the Play Store. It’s not 100% stable yet though, as you will need to opt-in to become a tester before you can try out the application for yourself.

from xda-developers http://ift.tt/2ac96HU
via IFTTT