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New Website for Google Assistant Shows Off All Available Actions and Services Just what the Google Assistant can and can’t do isn’t necessarily clear to folks who haven’t used it before — and even to folks who have. It’s great for basic tasks like checking the weather and setting alarms, of course, but did you know that it had a magic 8 ball minigame, and that you can ask it what position you should play in Quidditch ? To make Google Assistant skills easier to find, the search giant on Tuesday launched a new website with every action, service, and integration available. They’re organized by categories such as “Games and fun”, “Music and audio”, and “Arts and lifestyle”, and the homepage shows a list of new and trending Assistant apps — each with users ratings, instructions on how to use it, and the list of devices that support it. There are hundreds of applications to choose from, and Google’s directo...

Systemless Xposed for Android Oreo Now Available This week started off with a bang: XDA Senior Recognized Developer  rovo89  announced and released  Xposed Framework for Android Oreo 8.0 and Android 8.1 in beta. It came as something as a surprise, considering how long it took it took Xposed to hit Android Nougat , and it’s not perfect — some Xposed Modules won’t work properly until they’re updated with support for Oreo. But thanks to the hard work of XDA Recognized Developer and Contributor  topjohnwu , Xposed Framework for Oreo is now available in a  Magisk  module that installs in a systemless manner. It’s live now guys, grab it from Magisk Manager > Downloads Enjoy 🙂 pic.twitter.com/exCr2tgOH8 — John Wu (@topjohnwu) January 9, 2018 topjohnwu has been making a systemless version of Xposed for quite a while now, and the installation process for his systemless Xposed Framework for Android 8.0 and 8.1 Oreo is pretty much unchanged from last time arou...

TCL Announces Alcatel 1 Series, Alcatel 3 Series, and Alcatel 5 Series at CES 2018 It was back in November 2017 when well-known leaker Evan Blass shared press renders of six unannounced TCL-made Alcatel smartphones , and while a few details could be inferred from their rumored names, the hardware specs and prices remained a mystery. Thankfully, TCL filled in a few gaps at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show this week with the unveiling of the Alcatel 1, Alcatel 3, and Alcatel 5 ranges. The China-based company’s differentiating between the Alcatel series with sequential numbering — the Alcatel 1 series are the cheapest phones of the bunch, and the Alcatel 5 series are the priciest. Source: TCL Alcatel 1 Alcatel 1 series phones, which will cost less than $100, will feature compact unibody designs with “premium materials” and grippy back plates. They’ll have 18:9 displays, TCL said, plus features like facial recognition. Alcatel 3 Alcatel 3 range devices, whic...

Edge Sense Plus Updated with Support for Google Pixel 2 Squeeze Customization HTC’s Edge Sense, which lets you trigger shortcuts and apps by squeezing the HTC U11 and HTC U11+’s edges, was customizable from the start, and only  got better with software updates . Google’s squeezable  Pixel 2 shortcuts, on the other hand — Active Edge — is a lot less flexible. Gripping the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL  tightly opens the Google Assistant and silences incoming calls, but that’s about it — there’s no way to remap the squeeze action. In August, we covered Edge Sense Plus, a third-party app that lets you customize HTC’s Edge Sense to an even greater degree . Now, Edge Sense Plus has been updated with support Active Edge customization on the Google Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL. To recap, we noted in October that it’d be hard to remap the Pixel phones’ Active Edge functionality because of the fact that it was hard-coded by Google to...

Razer Phone Now Supports Netflix Content in HDR and 5.1 Surround Sound Some content on Netflix take advantage of high dynamic range (HDR) and 5.1 surround sound, but not all devices support those technologies. Luckily, that began to change last year, when smartphone manufacturers like Samsung and LG put out smartphones with HDR compatibility. And today at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, Razer and Netflix jointly announced that the Razer Phone will start showing Netflix content in HDR and 5.1 surround sound later this year. “We engineered the Razer Phone to handle HDR video and sound like no other phone on the market,” said  Min-Liang Tan , Razer co-founder and CEO. “We are incredibly excited to deliver Netflix entertainment on a smartphone like never before, enabling us to take full measure of the Razer Phone’s HDR10-enabled display and dual-firing, front-facing Dolby-optimized speakers and THX-certified headphone connectivity.” When the Razer Phone w...

Razer Unveils Project Linda, a Laptop Which Uses Your Android Phone as a Touchpad and Second Screen At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday, gaming company Razer unveiled Project Linda, a tricked-out laptop dock designed for the Razer Phone . Project Linda comes in the form of a clamshell aluminum dock with a 13.3-inch Quad HD (2560×1440) 120Hz display, a 720p webcam, a dual-microphone array, 200GB of storage, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a USB-A port, and a USB-C port. The full-sized keyboard has dedicated Android navigation, search, and app selection keys, and Razer Chroma programmable RGB backlighting. There’s a dock where you’d normally find a touchpad, and when the Razer Phone is attached to it, the laptop leverages the handset’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and 8GB of RAM of RAM to PC-like applications and software. (It’s like Samsung’s Dex Dock or the Motorola Atrix laptop dock.) It also charges the phone with a built-in 53.6 Wh int...

Google Pixel Launcher Mods to Change Icon Packs, Widget Sizes, and Labels If you’ve been around the Android block lately, you probably know that Google makes a few home screen alternatives to Android’s default launcher. One’s the Google Now Launcher , which puts Google Now, a card-based scroll of useful information, in the left-most panel. Another’s the Pixel Launcher, a launcher exclusive to Google Pixel smartphones. Both are highly optimized and fast, but don’t offer much in the way of customization. Luckily, Pixel Launcher Mods, a new root application from XDA Recognized Contributor  Quinny899 , fixes that. We’ve seen modded versions of the Pixel Launcher in the past which have included some highly requested modifications , and some that don’t require root. But Pixel Launcher Mods offers more choices and options than many of them, and modifies rather than replaces the Google Now Launcher and Pixel Launcher. Here’s the list of availa...