Monthly Archives: January 2016

Google adds support for spatial audio to the Cardboard SDK

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Google’s Cardboard design is pretty much the cheapest way for anyone to get into the whole VR thing. You just buy one of the very cheap Cardboard options (or create your own, or get one for free), you add a phone, and that’s it – you’re now ready to experience VR.

To make things even better, the search giant is now adding support for spatial audio to the Cardboard SDK. This means developers can now create immersive audio experiences in their VR apps. What’s more, for end-users this will work with any pair of headphones, no special gear needed.

According to Google, “the SDK combines the physiology of a listener’s head with the positions of virtual sound sources to determine what users hear. For example: sounds that come from the right will reach a user’s left ear with a slight delay, and with fewer high frequency elements (which are normally dampened by the skull).” Furthermore, the developers can specify the size and material of any virtual environment, which contribute to the quality of a sound. Depending on where you as an end-user seem to be in VR, things will sound different.

The good news is that spatial audio shouldn’t tax your phone’s CPU too much, and the SDK allows developers to control the fidelity of each sound – allocating more resources to critical things, and de-emphasizing others. Hopefully this feature will make it to apps very…

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Microsoft Lumia 850 or 750 gets certified in China

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To complement the high-end Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL in its portfolio, Microsoft has been rumored to be working on a bunch of midrange and upper-midrange smartphones, including a Lumia 850 and a Lumia 750.

Well, one of those has recently been certified by 3C in China. Its model number is RM-1182, though that obviously doesn’t tell us if it will be sold as the Lumia 750 or the Lumia 850.

Whatever the case, the handset is said to sport Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 617 SoC, which features a 1.5 GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU and the Adreno 405 GPU, as well as support for Cat.7 LTE. It’s the same chip as in the HTC One A9.

The newly certified Lumia handset is headed to China Unicom (at least this particular version of it is), and will not have fast charging as per the data released by 3C. It’s manufactured by BYD.

Past rumors had the Lumia 750 coming with 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, a 5.4-inch 1080p touchscreen, and a 10 MP main camera. It may become official at MWC next month.

Source (in Chinese) |…

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Google Now Launcher adds auto-rotate and consistent icon sizes

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Do you use the Google Now Launcher? If so, there are a couple of new features that may be of interest to you. Google is now pushing out an update to its home screen launcher that includes bug fixes as well as new capabilities. First off, the update for the Google Now Launcher adds support for auto-rotation, meaning that your homescreen will now rotate horizontally and vertically, as nearly everything else within Android is able to do. This has been requested for a good long while, particularly as most third-party launchers allow for auto-rotation on the home screen.

The second new feature deals with icons. Google has had issues in the past with developers not following its icon sizing guidelines, so it’s taking a new step to keep them in check for users utilizing the Google Now Launcher. With this latest update, the Google Now Launcher will use software to automatically shrink overly large icons and expand overly small icons, giving a consistent icon size. This has been available in third-party launchers, too, but it’s good to see Google integrating it right into the Google Now Launcher.

The update is now rolling out, though it may take a bit of time to hit your device. Be patient and drop a comment down below when you get the update!

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