At a recent Samsung Members survey, more than half of the participants cherished Samsung’s 120Hz display as their favorite Galaxy show characteristic. Samsung has relay made a massive improvement in terms of its display quality and refresh rate. This has resulted in a vivid & vibrant display with a higher refresh rate on-board.
The refresh rate is the frequency at which any display updates the images in a second. A smartphone has a display with a 60Hz refresh rate which means the display updates the image 60 times a second. The refresh rate of any display is measured in hertz (Hz).
A display with a higher refresh rate (Hz) translates into smoother visuals. A 120Hz refresh rate as seen on the latest Samsung Galaxy S20 FE updates an image 120 times a second. This allows for a smoother user experience with less motion blur. The change is apparent if you are using two phones with a 60Hz and a 120Hz refresh rate each.
Via Samsung Newsroom
A higher refresh rate allows for smoother transitions no matter if you are simply scrolling or streaming a video or gaming. It has a mind-boggling impact on gaming since you can spot your enemies quicker before your opponent sees you.
Samsung started shipping its smartphones with a higher refresh rate a few years ago and recently, clocked to 120Hz. You can find a 120Hz refresh rate display with Galaxy Tab S7/S7+, Galaxy S20 series, and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. The latest Samsung Galaxy S20 FE sports a Super AMOLED Infinity-O display with a 120Hz display which is next-gen.
Here’s a GIF that represents refresh rates ranging from a choppy 12 Hz to 120Hz in a cool animation. AS you can see, the 12Hz refresh rate produces choppy visuals. But as you go forward with 24Hz, it is improved twice as much. A 120Hz refresh rate is 10 times faster than a 24Hz refresh rate. No doubt it produces less motion blur, smoother and crisp visuals, and transitions.
Samsung conducted the Samsung Members survey between July 29, 2020, and August 14, 2020, with over 10,000 participants spread across six countries.
Samsung has rolled out a new firmware update for its wearable tech, Galaxy Watch Active 2. The new update brings several bug fixes and performance enhancements followed by some other changes. However, this update is only limited to the LTE variant of Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 in the US.
Image Courtesy: Samsung
The major points of the update are improved GPS performance and voice assistance.
Moreover, Samsung has been working on improving its wearable tech’s experience a lot lately. The Korean tech giant has also released a major performance enhancement update the previous month.
But this time it is a small firmware update that comes with a package size of merely 45.42MB. This new firmware update is identified by the build number R825USQU1BTJ6.
Galaxy Watch Active 2 new firmware update changelog
In addition to that, the new firmware update brings improved GPS accuracy. Also, voice guidance during exercising and running when connected with a wireless Bluetooth headset. Moreover, the voice assistant is not just limited to exercising. The Korean tech giant has also added voice guidance for other features such as traveled distance and heart rate monitored data when the Auto Lap feature is enabled during cycling and running.
Android has gained the popularity of the most famous smartphone operating system over the past years. But lately, the delivery of the latest Android updates for bug fixes and basic security patches has become quite hectic for many smartphone manufacturers. Usually, smartphone manufacturers take months or even a year to release the new Android update. On the contrary, Google smartphones like Pixel and Nexus back in the days always received the updates first. And they were greatly appreciated for the stock and bloatware experience they provide.
Image Courtesy: GetDroidTips
Finally, to counter that Google has introduced Project Marine. Project Marine will provide easy access to the new android version to users and smartphone manufacturers. Since the last few years, Google used Android Runtime (also known as ART) but now it is being converted into a Mainline module allowing Google to deliver updates smoothly to all the users.
Project Marine gives Google more privilege over Android as an open-source operating system. This means Google will be to distribute the upcoming Android 12 and further security updates on Play Store. This will allow the users to directly update their smartphone to the latest security patch or android version when Google will release the new update on its Play Store. This, however, will drastically reduce the control over updates by private smartphone makers.
Trendy and stylish ringtones are the favorite choice of youngsters and adults alike. Out of the box, ringtones and alarm tones are bound to make several heads to turn towards you. These funky ringtones will make you the center of attraction in your circle. So, if you too are looking for giving your Android phone a new makeover by having interesting ringtones then you have arrived at the right place. In this blog, we bring to you the 10 Best Ringtone Apps for Android which you can install and have your very own customized ringtones. You can use any of these applications to download, save, and use various soundtracks as your ringtone.
Soothe those Notifications with the Best Ringtone Apps for Android
1. Ringtone Maker
This super cool and funky application is easy to use for creating soothing ringtones, alarms, and notification alert sound. You can avail these functions and get sounds for your device directly from the handset, you need not plug your phone into a computer or laptop. Just by clicking on the song from the music library section you can make custom ringtones for your smartphone. You can even get different ringtones for different callers. The application allows you to set unique ringtones for different contacts on your phone.
Additionally, the application also allows you to handle the audio files on your system with fade-in and fade-out options. The supported file format which you can use to get ringtones for your device is MP3, WAV, AAC/MP4, 3GPP/AMR, and OGG.
Loud shrill keynotes are very unwelcoming for ringtones as they cause irritation when the person is sleeping and suddenly the phone starts to ring. Contrary to this, hilarious ringtone are always a delight as they lighten the mood and bring on a whole atmosphere of positivity around. And that is exactly what this application aims for. This application has some of the funniest ringtones and sounds collection. The user can easily pick out their favorite tune and make it their ringtone. You can get these ringtones for all of our calls or a specific person, or you can have these as your alarm tone.
“Old is Gold”- all of us agree to that, don’t we? Classical hits are melodious and are always in trend for ringtones. This application provides you works of several great musical legends such as Mozart and Beethoven to be used as ringtones for mobile. There are several preinstalled hit works to choose from in the classical genre such as The Turkish March, A Little Night Music, Brandenburg concerto, etc.
The best thing about classical tunes is that they have the power to calm your mind and soul. This application on our list of the 10 Best Ringtone Apps for Android provides you many such works that will help you build a positive environment around you. With this application installed on your device, you can have the best ringtones available at your fingertips.
Apart from ringtones, you can get these tunes saved as your alarm sound or notification alert. You can customize the app settings to play the sound at your desired timing. Moreover, you can also have a widget button on the screen of your phone of your favorite soundtracks.
This application has an array of popular ringtones available for you to choose from. You can get these ringtones on your device by simply downloading it from the MyTinyPhone’s huge content catalog. The contents are those that are shared by other fellow users like yourself. The best thing about this application is that the developers regularly update the content and provide you with fresh material.
The application interface is simple and easy to operate to set standard ringtones or contact specific ringtones, and alarm and notification sounds. There are various sections provided in the application to help the users in searching for their required ringtone. You can also add tunes to the favorites section without having to download the song.
With over 1 million active users this application ranks 5th in our list of the 10 Best Ringtone Apps for Android. After proper installations, a user will be entitled to choose from 100 contemporary, businesslike, and professional soundtracks.You can even select your desired tune and make it your ringtone. The soundtracks provided are all loud, clear, and of high quality and can be selected as your favorite option to make it easier to listen to the track time and again. These professional business sounds are a rich source of self-expression, inspiration, and joy. The well-designed user interface allows you to set your favorite ringtone and alarm tone in absolutely no time.
This robust application provides several top-notch features to its users. You can, with the help of this application, listen to the music as well as share and edit the music on the go. The ringtone cutter facility allows the user to trim out their favorite part of the tune and then have it as their ringtone. The sound too is of high-quality owing to the versatile built-in equalizer that has over 25 presets, bass booster, virtualizer and provides a 3D-Reverb Effect to further enhance the sound quality. The application also serves as an opportunity for the users to share their audio files with anyone. The application’s layout is beautiful and attractive with four stunning themes, these are Gloss, Dark, Black, and Light.
Price: The basic version of the application is free of cost while the In-app purchases would cost you somewhere around $0.34 – $0.93 per item.
This application on our list of the 10 Best Ringtone Apps for Android allows you to make your very own audio ringtones. Users can cut out the best part of a particular track and save it as their ringtone, alarm tone, or notification alert. It even provides a scrollable waveform representation of the audio file with 4 levels of zoom for finer tunings. Additionally, users can record any live audio and after renaming the new clip can keep it as their ringtone using this application. It supports different file formats such as MP3, WAV, AAC, AMR, etc.
Apart from the regular feature of cutting a part of the song and setting it as the ringtone of your device, this application performs various other functions dexterously. There is a record button placed at the top left corner of the application that allows users to record any audio clip for editing. Next, there is an inverted red triangle given to select and then edit the mp3 file from the device’s storage space. You can manually, with the help of an optional touch interface, set the start and endpoint for a selected audio clip. This selected part can be extracted and set as your device’s ringtone.
Thisapplication allows its users to personalize their gadgets with fabulous alarm sounds and ringtones without any hassle. The application has several thousand ringtones, alarm sounds, and notification tunes to choose from. With an active user base of over 300 million this application was bound to make it in our list of the 10 Best Ringtone Apps for Android. This is your one stand stop for all types of ringtone. The application offers free ringtones of various genres such as sweet music, dramatic sound effects, and funny tones. There is an option available to set particular contact ringtones and alarm sounds as well.
Price: The basic version of the application is free of cost while the In-app purchases would cost you somewhere around $0.41 – $ 17.56 per item
This application single-handedly provides the hottest and most popular audio tracks to its millions of users. The application’s music library has a vast collection of millions of tracks of every genre. The music database is further updated on regular intervals to provide fresh and latest mobile tracks to their users. The user interface of the application assists in searching the audio tracks. The ringtone editor tool allows you to customize your soundtrack as per your taste. You can thus create your very own ringtone from various file formats such as MP3, MP4, WAV, etc. The application runs smoothly on all Android mobile phones, Android Tablets, and PC.
Price: The basic version of the application is free of cost while the In-app purchases would cost you somewhere around $0.47 – $9.32 per item
Regular Android devices come with monotonous soundtracks and alarm tones, but with the help of applications given in our list of 10 Best Ringtone Apps for Android; you can get yourself the top trending ringtones for your Android device.
Last year, Google unveiled a pretty efficient & powerful app called Recorder. It leverages on-device machine learning to transcribe hour-long recordings into a readable & editable format. It was efficient in recognizing suitable tags for titles, highlighting audio and music, applause, and other elements. Even with all this, it wasn’t that easy to find the specific text or sentence especially if it is a long transcript.
Turns out, Google has just introduced “Smart Scrolling” that gives Recorder the ability to mark important sentences in any transcripts. The feature can recognize the most representative keywords, and crucial sentences to attach it with. This allows users to scroll through the long transcription with chapter-like headings. Users can either tap on the words to direct to the particular section or sentence or scroll amidst the headings.
Image via Google Blog
How Does Google Recorder’s Smart Scrolling Work?
The best thing about Smart Scrolling is that it leverages on-device machine learning to get the best results. As said, it finds representative keywords and assigns them with sections that are unique textually. For this, the feature uses a distilled bidirectional transformer (BERT) and a modified extractive term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) model.
Don’t get spooked by these technical terms. For Smart Scrolling to work, it users both these models in parallel to extract keywords and sections using aggregation heuristics (average weighted). Another benefit of using this combination of models is it helps the system mitigate drawbacks to churn out the best results.
Image via Google Blog
Both these models were trained on a publicly available conversational dataset including interviews, lectures, and others. This allows the system to have the same word frequency distribution as per Zipf’s law which is crucial.
For extracting keywords, the TF-IDF model detects representative keywords and scores them based on their representativeness in a textual context. Here, TF-IDF is prone to find uncommon keywords while BERT has a high variance on the possible keywords found. When these models are used in combination, it pays off as these two models complement each other.
Next up, both of these models use a similar approach to find sections with the most importance. Several moving parts are involved in grading the sections and selecting the best results.
Smart Scrolling has to face some challenges too, one of which includes identifying whether any section or keyword is important or not. For this, the researchers trained the models to find sections with importance along with keywords with importance in these sections.
Runtime Execution
The Smart Scrolling feature embedded with the Recorder app has shown promising results. When recording something, the underlying system processes each section as soon as the microphone captures it and feeds it as an input. The system stores intermediate results in the memory and once the recording is over, the system consolidates all the results and shows them to the user.
Interestingly, the researchers have already made quite a significant importance in terms of mastering the ‘Recorder’ app. With Smart Scrolling, users have an additional navigational ability to hover on the important parts of any transcript without searching from A to Z.
Google Chrome recently got way too many updates and Google ain’t stopping here. Google is working on an improved cursor control for Google Chrome for Android. With the changes coming to the Canary version soon, it will allow users to interact with Chrome just like any other apps on the platform.
According to the post by Google, the new and improved cursor control on Google Chrome lets users utilize touch gestures. As of now, when you tap on any editable area on Chrome, you get the cursor and a teardrop handle. Hold this teardrop handle and you can move the cursor across the extremities of the editable area.
Image via Chrome Story
Google’s updated text cursor controls allow users to navigate the cursor with touch gestures on-board. Here, an intricate system comprising many events, elements, renderer, and other moving parts allows users to drag the cursor with a gesture. Google has worked on many use cases to prevent the drag to move the cursor to malfunction as well. Users can drag it horizontally by dragging the touch along the way. Getting this control on-board Chrome will unify it with other apps on Android that use the same logic.
Via Chrome Story
Google has asked its users to watch out for a new flag called ‘Swipe to move cursor’. This will indicate that the feature is alive and kicking. It allows users to utilize touch gestures to move the cursor across the editable area on the browser.
This is a great feature for those who use their smartphones to edit their docs or compose or reply to emails on Android. As of now, the feature will first arrive on Google’s Canary channel which is the first place where features are tested in the area. It will still take several weeks before the feature could roll out in public on the Google Chrome application. Watch out this space for further updates.
Google introduced attendance reports for education meetings with five and up to 250 participants on Google Meet. Cut to now, Google is enhancing the features ahead putting users in more control, access to the live streams, and meeting reports. Google has updated all the features that it will bring to more users on Google Meet.
First up, the live streaming viewership data will now include data on total viewer count. It will also carry a total number of viewers in a live stream that users will receive in a separate tab. Both hosts and meeting attendees will get to see the total number of viewers/participants via the Google Meet app. They can also see the same stats on the desktop client. It is up to admins whether or not to let organizational units to use attendance tracking features.
Google Meet is now extending the attendance reports available to Google Workspace Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Business Plan, and Enterprise Essentials customers. To put things into perspective, the education attendance reports feature was available for Enterprise customers only.
Getting Started with Google Meet & new features
Image via Google Blog
Talking about how to get started, admins will have options to make both live streams and attendance reports available by default. They can make it unavailable for a specific group or domain as a whole. Similarly, the in-call viewer count feature for live streams will be enabled by default. Admins don’t have any option to turn it off.
Talking about the end-users, they can access in-call viewer count by default. This is because admins cannot turn it off. Talking about users from other domains, the attendance reports will be disabled by default. Here, the admins or meeting organizers can turn it on and let users check out the reports at their will. They can alter the settings via the meeting settings during a call or check out calendar events before participating in a call.
Image via Google Blog
Finally, the organizers or hosts will get the attendance reports if they are a part of the Enterprise for Education domains. They will get the report automatically for participants with five or more and up to 250.
The in-call viewer count for the live streams feature will release in a full rollout over 1-3 days starting on November 24. The same goes for the live streaming data reports. The report creation control settings will be released in full in 1 to 3 days starting November 24 as well.
As aforementioned, the features will be available across all types of customers excluding Google Workspace Business Standard and Starter. The G Suite Basic Business, Nonprofits, and Education customers will not get these improvements and features as well.
The new update on Google Pay brought a plethora of changes on-board including an upgraded logo. It has introduced some new functionalities while making a few compromises here and there. Turns out, Google Pay web app accessible at pay.google.com will no longer be available from early January. On top of that, Google Pay will charge a fee on instant transfers.
The caveat behind the new update is, the old Google Pay app will go away in January 2021 as well. Apart from that, the web app of Google Pay with the ability to send & receive money will be removed as well. In fact, users have already started receiving notice when accessing the web app stating the removal in early 2021. Note that the Google Pay web app isn’t accessible for all regions such as India among others.
Image via 9to5Google
It appears other functionalities including managing payment methods will stay intact. Thus, peer-to-peet payment feature is going and so is the original Google Pay app.
Google Pay will levy fee on instant transfers
Google Pay is a lucrative and popular choice when transferring money or receiving it from a sender. Originally, it was free of charge no matter if you transfer money via your bank account or debit card.
Cut to now, Google will levy a 1.5 free (and a minimum of 31 cents) on all instant transfers. This is for payments made via a debit card that earlier didn’t had any transaction fee attached to it. Perhaps, there’s only an instant transfer option available when using a debit card. On the other hand, transfers from a linked bank account which usually takes between a day or three won’t levy any fee.
Google is working with trusted financial institutions to introduce Plex, its mobile-first bank account integrated with Google Pay.
Google Fit just received a huge revamp on its iOS, Android, and Wear OS applications. No doubt Google Fit has made our lives easier tracking our daily activities and showcasing historical data. We tried the revamped Google Fit for Wear OS and here are all the improvements that you must look out for.
The new Google Fit for Wear OS is a simple, easy to use, and intuitive interface with a complete design. The home screen allows you to track activities right away. Tap on its new “Flag” button and you can set your goals may it be Heart Points, Distance, or others. It also has Open Goal, Time, and Calories as goals that you can configure before commencing.
Once you start doing a selected activity, the interface shows a revamped stats screen. It is a three-liner interface where your set goal takes the middle section followed by supporting stats on the upper and lower part of the display. If your goal is Distance, the Google Fit for Wear OS will show the distance at the center followed by time and pace. A blue-hued notification ring gives you a quick look at the trends towards completing any set goal.
Via 9to5Google
Swipe the screen to see other stats such as calories, BPM, Heart Points & so on. The new update has made finding information on the app much easier. It follows a much fluent tile user interface that makes the app look sophisticated, intuitive & dazzling. Google introduced a weather experience on Wear OS to selected users a few months ago. Cut to now, the Weather tile has found its way onto the app available on a wider scale.
There’s a ‘Breathe’ feature where you can set up the duration you want to do the breathing exercises. The app itself dictates you to inhale and exhale to get the best of results. It’s not just the app on Wear OS, its Android client has received a massive revamp as well. You also get the Touch Lock feature that prevents unwanted and accidental taps on the screen.
All the stats including Sleep Cycle, Distance, Steps, Heart Points, Heart Rate, Blood Pressure, and goals are updated in a tile-view on the home screen itself. Google has added support to a tonne of third-party apps and has promised to add a few more in the long run. That’s pretty much all that you must know about the latest update on Google Fit for Wear OS.
Last year Google Cloud launched an open beta that enabled admins to configure a session length for Google Console and Cloud SDK. Now, the tech giant is enhancing this feature by allowing users to exempt some specific applications from the session length control feature. The company says this new update is intended to make it easier for users to roll out the feature on their domain. Here’s how this feature works and what’s changing with the new update.
Google Cloud Session Control Features
Image courtesy: Google Workspace Blog
The session length control feature in Google Cloud applies a length to the company’s own GCP admin tools, as well as the third-party applications that use the cloud-platform scope. The applications require the user to reauthenticate when the configured session expires. Though this reauthentication is required to reduce unauthorized access to sensitive user data, it makes some applications work improperly. For example, in some applications, the re-auth scenario does not work properly, which causes confusing application crashes or stack traces.
Through this update, Google wants the users to have an option that lets them exempt such apps from periodic reauthentication. So the company has brought a new update that allows Cloud Identity admins to add these apps to a trusted list, which temporarily exempts the apps from session length policy. However, this feature will be off by default, and admins can enable it manually using the “Exempt Trusted apps” setting. On the other hand, the end-users will have no setting for this feature.
Release Date and Availability
Google has already enabled this feature on both Rapid and Scheduled Release domains starting November 23, 2020. It will be available to Google Workspace Essentials and Business Starter, Business Standard, and Business Plus customers. Also, users on Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus will receive this in the admin center. Further, the new update will also be available to G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits, and Cloud Identity customers.
