MIUI 9 Alpha and Beta Download Links Available for the Redmi Note 4X and Mi 6

We’ve talked about MIUI 9 quite a lot lately. It was only last week when Xiaomi officially announced that MIUI 9 would be launched at the end of this month. This new software update would coincide with the launch of the Xiaomi Mi 5X, and the update would also be making its way to other Xiaomi devices. The company even confirmed that a couple of their smartphones from 2013, namey the Mi 2 and Mi 2S, were on the roadmap to receive an update to MIUI 9.

A few days later, Xiaomi previewed MIUI 9 on the upcoming Mi 5X and that gave us a look at what we should expect from the new software. We got a look at the new lockscreen shortcut changes, the split screen functionality that we’ve been hearing about for quite some time, and even learned the Mi 6 and Redmi Note 4X would be some of the first devices to receive a beta for the new update. Then right on schedule, Xiaomi officially launched the Mi 5X and MIUI 9 two days ago.

Now that MIUI 9 has been launched, the company has also kept their word and has begun with the alpha and beta testing of the software on the Mi 6 and the Redmi Note 4X. You can download a set of alpha and beta MIUI 9 builds for these devices by following the linked buttons below.

There are some caveats when it comes to these updates that XDA Member tom_riddler feels you should know about. Firstly, these are alpha/beta builds and you should expect to see plenty of bugs if you decide to flash them onto your device. Secondly, these downloadable updates are for the Chinese ROM, so there is some Chinese bloatware that’s installed and there aren’t any Google applications included, but those can be manually installed later.

Lastly, you have the choice to install either the Alpha build or the Beta build of MIUI 9 for these two devices. The alpha builds for both devices will get faster updates pushed out to you, but they could also contain more serious and frequent bugs as well. The beta builds will get slower updates than the alpha builds, but there should be less bugs as they’re trying to squash them in anticipation of the official release.

Download MIUI 9 for the Mi 6 Download MIUI 9 for the Redmi Note 4X

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NPR Survey Shows 65% of Owners Wouldn’t Go Back to Not Having a Smart Speaker

For some, the whole smart speaker market seemingly came out of no where. Amazon launched the Echo and for a while it was too expensive for your average customer to consider buying. Amazon was aware of this and then released the Echo Dot and Echo Tap to help fill in those price ranges. Now, the company has one with a touch screen on it that is now sitting at the same price point the original Echo was released at but includes a lot more features.

Google has also entered this market with Google Home and there have been reports of Samsung wanting in on it as well. The smart speaker market may be dominated by Amazon right now, but it’s still early and there is plenty of room for new competition. Not everyone has been a fan of the smart speaker though, even after they buy one many people simply stop using them. Some have wondered if they will go the way smartwatches have and see interest dying off.

A new survey from NPR indicates that smart speakers are increasingly becoming vital to everyday life. When asked, owners say that they’ll use their smart speaker for 7.5 common tasks on average each week. Of the people surveyed, 65% of smart speaker owners say they would not go back to life without their smart speaker. 70% of these owners say they’re listening to more audio (music, news, podcasts, etc.) in their home thanks to the wireless capabilities.

On top of that, 20% of them even say that streaming to their connected speaker is how they most often listen to audio these days. The survey continued and showed that 45% of owners say they’ll be purchasing a new connected speaker in the future, and 69% of them have recommended their friends to start using one in their homes. That stat makes it seem like connected speakers are going to be a popular choice as a gift for those who have yet to try one.

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Source: National Public Media

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WiFi Chipset Info Checks if Your Device is Vulnerable to BroadPwn

Android’s monthly security update for July included patches for 138 issues with 18 of them being tagged with Remote Code Execution. These are the vulnerabilities that enable an attacker to execute some code remotely and is considered quite dangerous. One of these RCE vulnerabilities is actually a flaw in Broadcom’s Wi-Fi code, which is used in a lot of Android devices. This vulnerability is come to be known as BroadPwn and a new application called WiFi Chipset Info will check to see if you’re vulnerable to the attack.

The attack is quite complex but it’s also very dangerous since it can remotely execute code on your device. For a full explanation, you can find the original article for it here. Essentially though, the vulnerability allows for an attacker to initiate malicious network packets to a device that is in WiFi range. With so many people using public hotspots at stores and restaurants, you can see why this is such a big deal. The malicious network packets target your WiFi hardware to trigger the bug without you even knowing.

Once the bug has been triggered, the attacker has the same programmatic powers as the Android operating system. Thankfully the bug is patched, but we all know how security updates are on Android devices these days. Thankfully, the exploit is so new that few people even know about it, and because it’s so complex it is unlikely to become widespread anytime soon. However, the researcher who discovered has already presented their findings at the Black Hat 2017 conference in Las Vegas.

So this exploit is only able to take advantage of certain Broadcom wireless chips and you’re likely wondering if your device is vulnerable. XDA Senior Member vndnguyen was kind enough to put together an application called WiFi Chipset Info that not only checks to see what WiFi chipset manufacturer your device uses, but also checks to see if you’re vulnerable to the BroadPwn attack.

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Check out WiFi Chipset Info in our Apps and Games forum

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Google Hires Essential’s Liron Damir as Head of UX on Google Home Products

Google has been getting more serious each passing year when it comes to its newly formed hardware division. The company has had huge success with its Chromecast device, and has since started expanding into smartphones, and most recently a couple of connected home products. Granted, they did lose the head of the Pixel division back in April, but this week it has been announced that Liron Damir has been hired to lead the user experience team of those connected home products.

Right now, this includes the Chromecast, Google Home connected speaker, and the Google WiFi mesh network devices. Chromecast and Google WiFi are both very user friendly devices but many feel Google Home could use some improvements when it comes to what the device can and cannot do (and how to get it to do certain things). Mr. Damir will be working on all of these products (and any new ones as well) though, so we should see some interesting changes in the future.

For those who aren’t aware, Liron Damir has worked at a number of high profile jobs in the past. The man was the former lead designer at HP and worked on webOS before it was acquired by LG. He then continued his work at LG for a little bit and then got hired as the lead designer at Pebble as well. He was then picked up by Andy Rubin’s own Essential and worked as the head of user experience for the entire company.

So now he has been hired at Google and will be in charge of the company’s user experience team for all of their Google home products. This will allow him to work on a wide variety of different devices and each of them have their own ways to interact with them. Google Home is controlled by voice, Chromecast devices have their controls handled via a phone and Google WiFi has a companion application but is supposed to automate everything so there’s little to no reason to even use the application.

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Source: Variety

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Answer this Survey for Honor, Win an Honor 6X

Honor is giving away an Honor 6X, and all you have to do to enter is fill out this short survey which will help Honor learn more about your phone usage and preferences. All countries can participate, and the winner will be chosen in one week, on 4 August.

Having trouble? Try this direct link to the form.

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HTC 10 and HTC One A9 Android 7.0 Nougat Kernel Source Code Released

HTC just announced that they have published the Android 7.0 kernel source code for the HTC 10 and the HTC One A9. These newly published sets of kernel source code will go a long way towards helping with the development of Android 7.0, AOSP-based custom ROMs for these devices.

Although it is always nice to see kernel source code published, it is a bit concerning that the kernel source code for the unlocked HTC One A9 is being published 6 months late. The Android 7.0 update for the HTC One A9 initially rolled out on January 17th 2017, which was also the point in time at which the matching kernel source code should have been released. This delay is relatively strange, as HTC is usually very quick to update their kernel source code, especially for their unlocked models.

It is important to keep in mind that while this isn’t the fastest case of publishing kernel sources, HTC had already published the Android 7.0 kernel source code for the unlocked model of the HTC 10 back in early December, just a couple weeks after initially launching Android 7.0 on the HTC 10. While it is not yet clear what caused the delay for the other HTC 10 and HTC One A9 models, it is still a relief to finally see their Android 7.0 kernel source code published in accordance with the GPL 2.0 license.

With this release, HTC has bumped the source code version for the unlocked HTC 10 from 2.28.617.8 to 2.50.617.2. The full list of newly published Android 7.0 Kernel Source code can be found in the following chart:

Device	Software Version
HTC 10 T-Mobile	2.41.531.44
HTC 10 Verizon	2.41.605.20
HTC 10 Telstra	2.48.841.3
HTC 10 Unlocked	2.50.617.2
HTC One A9 China CHS 2	2.17.1405.3
HTC One A9 EE	2.17.91.1
HTC One A9 EU	2.17.401.2
HTC One A9 India	2.18.707.1
HTC One A9 Unlocked	2.18.617.21
HTC One A9 Telstra	2.17.841.1
HTC One A9 Asia HK CHT	2.17.708.2
HTC One A9 Unlocked	2.18.617.30

You can find the Kernel Source code for download at the HTC Dev Center.

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Latest Windows 10 Insider Preview Build Lets you Link your Android Phone to your Windows PC

Microsoft has announced the newest iteration of Insider Previews for Windows 10. Insider Preview Build 16251 for PC is rolling out to Windows 10 Insiders in the Fast ring, and will also be available for Insiders who opted in to ‘Skip Ahead‘. The highlight of Preview Build 16251 is the ability to link your Android device to your Windows PC as Microsoft is introducing the first set of features that enable this linking functionality. The current use case in this build focuses on cross-device web-browsing, and this build invites Windows Insiders to help test the experience on Android before the functionality makes it way onto the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (Redstone 3).

To get started with linking, install the newest Preview Build on your PC and link your phone by navigating through Settings –> Phone on your PC. Microsoft will send you an SMS with a link to a test application for Android called “Microsoft Apps” that is needed to complete the link between your phone and PC. Linking the devices in this manner ensures that your sessions are continued only on PCs which you have explicitly linked to, and not across all PCs where your Microsoft Account is present.

The test application on your Android device will add a share context “Continue on PC” in the share menu. So when the linking is complete, you can start browsing the web on your phone and share websites through this option. On the first invocation, the user will be asked to sign in with their Microsoft Account, and this account should be the same account that is used on the PC. Once the website has been shared from your Android device, it will show up on your linked PC. You can also defer the opening by selecting the “Continue Later” option, which will save the notification under the Microsoft Action Center panel for accessing later on.

If you would like to try out this feature, you would need to be enrolled into the Fast ring of the Windows Insider program. Jen Gentleman from Microsoft’s Shell team wrote up a quick info tutorial on the same over at Reddit:

First you’d need to register your MSA {Microsoft Account} or AAD {Azure Active Directory} for WIP {Windows Insider Program}, and then on your PC go to Settings > Update > Windows Insider Program and select which ring you’d like to be in.

Personally I’m a big fan of Fast and have that or even faster internal-only rings on most of my devices, but I will note I have a relatively high tolerance for potential issues and am pretty savvy when it comes to workarounds. Slow is more stable, but also (by nature) gets builds less frequently (once they’ve gone through Fast and are assured to meet a certain quality bar). Those are the two ring options out of our dev branch. We also have the Release Preview ring out of our current branch (aka the one in prod), where you’ll get app updates and sometimes cumulative updates before they go to prod, which can be quite nice and way less risky.

Currently, the link functionality appears to be limited to tab pushing from your phone to your PC. This comes in handy for those of us who want to revisit articles on a bigger display and a proper setup. We wish to see PC->Phone tab pushing as well, as some URLs are better shared through our phones to other less tech-savvy users.

A popular use case for linking phone to PC is to send texts from your desktop and see your phone notifications. While this functionality is not currently included in the Insider update (nor any mention has been made of it coming in the future), Mr. Jen Gentlemen pointed out that similar functionality can be achieved using Cortana on both your PC and Android. You would need Cortana and the same Microsoft account on both phone and PC, and you will have to make sure your PC is using the Anniversary Update or a later release.

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All linking functionality that we have seen so far, through Cortana or through this update, involves the use of a Microsoft Account. The success and popularity of these functionality will be affected by the existence of a Microsoft Account in the first place. While it may be trivial to create one, many users do not intend to bind themselves up with yet another company and migrate away to a different set of apps just to achieve functionality that could have been achieved by using WiFi and Bluetooth connections. That’s something for Microsoft to consider.

What are your thoughts on the linking functionality introduced in the new Windows 10 Insider Preview Build? Have you tried it out yet? What features would you like to see possible in the future? Let us know in the comments below!

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Source: Windows Blog

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