Posts by Arol Wright- XDA Developers

Facebook begins testing ads on Instagram Reels in India

Arol Wright April 23, 2021

TikTok popularized the concept of short videos, and while Instagram Reels, the Facebook-flavored clone, remains a close second, it actually enjoys overwhelming success in countries like India, where TikTok has actually been banned by the government. Instagram has over 120 million monthly active users in India, and a big chunk of them are Reels users....

Realme is reportedly launching a new flagship phone in India soon

Arol Wright April 23, 2021

While we've seen a couple of Realme flagship phones before, the brand's strength is in mid-range phones, as those are the ones that usually sell the best and are overall more popular. The recently launched Realme 8 series is a good example of this. But that doesn't mean Realme doesn't like releasing a phone with...

The Galaxy A22 could be Samsung’s most affordable 5G phone

Arol Wright April 22, 2021

The rollout of 5G technology is heavily dependent not just on rolling out the technology and infrastructure for it, but also on getting 5G smartphones on people's hands. And while pretty much all 2021 flagships and even some mid-range phones are launching with 5G compatibility, there's also a lot of phones on the budget side...

OnePlus Store app launches in North America and is coming soon to Europe

Arol Wright April 22, 2021

While OnePlus phones can be found in the major U.S. carriers, if you want to buy an unlocked smartphone, the official OnePlus Store is probably the best way to do so. In fact, before carriers started selling OnePlus smartphones, the only way you could get an OnePlus phone in the U.S. was through the OnePlus...

OnePlus has launched gaming triggers for enhancing your smartphone’s gaming experience

Arol Wright April 22, 2021

While it's possible to play first-person shooters like Call of Duty: Mobile and battle royale games like Free Fire and PUBG using your phone's display, there's a lot of benefits to actually using physical buttons instead of virtual ones on your touch screen. They can allow you to react faster, move more easily, and overall...

Stolen Apple schematics confirm key details of next-gen MacBook Pro

Arol Wright April 22, 2021

So Apple recently got caught up in an interesting situation. Just as their latest event, where we saw a renewed iMac, a new M1-powered iPad Pro, and more, was unfolding, the developers of the REvil ransomware got hold of confidential information from Apple and were trying to blackmail them for a ransom. The hackers had...

The Pixel 5a 5G may have the same chip as last year’s Pixel 4a 5G

Arol Wright April 22, 2021

We're heading into the half of the year, which means that it shouldn't be much longer before we see new Pixel smartphones. But things seem a tad bit muddier this year, not just because of the COVID-19 pandemic still going strong, but also because of a new problem that's affecting all kinds of electronics appliances:...

Google Meet gets a more spacious design and video backgrounds

Arol Wright April 21, 2021

Previously a business-only service, Google Meet opened up for everyone last year as a very contagious virus started making the rounds, and people needed a tool to replace face-to-face meetings in an efficient way. While Zoom remains arguably the most popular option, Google Meet quickly became a very solid alternative with an enormous feature set...

You can now add content to albums in Google Photos when you’re offline

Arol Wright April 20, 2021

Despite Google Photos pretty much replacing the offline gallery app in a lot of smartphones, it is still pretty much an online-first app. Your photos are backed up to the cloud and you can access them anytime from any device (although unlimited storage for this service is going away, so you'll have to pay if...

Microsoft will soon enable audio passthrough on the new Xbox

Arol Wright April 20, 2021

If you're an audiophile and you want to squeeze the best possible sound out of your movies and series, you probably feed your devices through an external device such as a soundbar. In the case of the Xbox Series X, however, you don't get much advantage out of doing this, since audio is still processed...

Facebook is bringing audio chat rooms, podcasts, and “sound bites” to the mobile app

Arol Wright April 19, 2021

Audio-based social media is all the rage these days—just ask Clubhouse and the countless clones that have sprung up in the past few days as companies race to get a piece of this audio cake. And I say "clones" because the core functionality doesn't really differ much, if at all, between all the different takes...

Microsoft Edge’s Performance Mode rolls out in Canary channel, optimizes CPU, RAM, and battery usage

Arol Wright April 19, 2021

Microsoft Edge was a big step forward for Microsoft compared to where they were with Internet Explorer. While Internet Explorer was considered slow and unpractical, Microsoft Edge was in a similar place to where browsers like Google Chrome were in terms of functionality back then. More recently, Edge switched over from their proprietary engine to...