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LG Support Page Suggests its New Flagship Will be Called the LG G7 In early January, an LG official told members of the press that  the company would ditch its G series smartphone brand for something new . LG’s said to be tossing around new names, and reportedly plans to launch the rebranding effort sometime during the first half of 2018. Some folks took the reports to mean that LG’s next flagship — the successor to the LG G6 — wouldn’t be called the LG G7, but a support page on LG’s UK website points to the contrary. The support page was quickly taken down (you can see a screenshot below), but it talked about which version of Qualcomm’s Quick Charge technology the company’s smartphones support. A chart showed the LG G5 and the LG G6 , which have Quick Charge 3.0, and the “Future LG G7”, which it listed as supporting Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4.0 technology. Source: Androidu It’s not LG’s only recent slipup....

Substratum Theme Manager Gets a UI Revamp & Performance Improvements Substratum , a mainstay in Android system theming since the Marshmallow days, received a major design revamp this week along with some security improvements and a new default theme compiler to improve performance. The new design, first teased last month , has been long-anticipated and has finally arrived. The improvements to the user interface (UI) are designed to make the app more user-friendly, and include the ability to show your installed themes in a multi-column grid to save some scrolling and the ability to return to the theme list by simply swiping down on whichever theme you currently have open. Below is a screenshot gallery of the new UI in action. Here you can find basic information about the Substratum app among other things. Tapping on the “substratum version” (currently at version 930) will send you to Github where you can see all the latest changes. You can also set the number of columns...

Qeexo and STMicroelectronics partner to bring Smarter Touch Gestures to Smartphones Since the arrival of touchscreen smartphones, smartphone vendors have been experimenting with touch gestures to replace physical buttons. webOS, Ubuntu Touch, and MeeGo have all used touch gestures in the past, and last year, Apple adopted touch gestures in iOS to replace the home button on the iPhone X. In the Android world, we are starting to see the adoption of touch gestures on a larger scale, with companies like Huawei  and  Xiaomi  all aboard the bandwagon. It’s important to know that smartphone OEMs can only integrate touch gestures if they are sourced from the right suppliers. Most people probably haven’t heard of Qeexo, but the company’s FingerSense platform powers the Knuckle Gestures which are seen on Huawei/Honor phones. Qeexo is a developer of machine learning and AI solutions for sensor data, and today, the company announced a collaboration with STMicroelectronics (a semi...

Xiaomi is Recruiting Beta Testers for the Mi Mix 2 Android Oreo Update The Xiaomi Mi A1, which is part of Google’s Android One program,  received an update to Android Oreo a few days ago . But the rest of Xiaomi’s devices run MIUI , Xiaomi’s proprietary software layer, and they haven’t gotten Oreo yet. That won’t be the case for much longer, though — in December, Xiaomi started recruiting beta testers for an Android Oreo update for the Mi 6 , and later that month, the company launched a closed beta program for the Mi Mix 2’s Oreo update. Now, Xiaomi is back with announcement: It’s recruiting beta testers for the Mi Mix 2’s Android Oreo update. Anyone can apply, but only if they’re (1) running the latest version of MIUI Global Developer ROM, (2) active on Xiaomi’s community forums, and (3) have an interest in and knowledge about testing ROMs. To sign up, you need to download the Mi Forum app. Tap on the Recruitment tab,...

Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit Roundup: Snapdragon 845, Spectra 280 ISP, Hexagon 685 DSP, and More The newest flagship in Qualcomm’s system-on-chip (SoC) lineup, the  Snapdragon 845 , was announced on Wednesday at the chipmaker’s Snapdragon Tech Summit in Hawaii. But that wasn’t the conference’s only highlight. Missed this week’s coverage? Don’t fret — we’ve summarized all of Qualcomm’s biggest announcements, including the  Hexagon 685 DSP , the  Adreno 630 , and the Spectra 280 ISP. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Specs Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Chipset 845 (10nm LPP) 835 (10nm LPE) CPU 4x 2.8GHz Kryo 385 (A75 “performance”), 4x 1.8GHz Kryo 385 (A55 “efficiency”) 4x 2.45GHz Kryo 280 (A73 big), 4x 1.9GHz Kryo 280 (A53 LITTLE) GPU Adreno 630 GPU Adreno 540 GPU Memory 4x 1866MHz 32-bit LPDDR4X 4x 1866MHz 32-bit LPDDR4X ISP/Camera Dual 14-bit Spectra 280 ISP __ 32MP Dual 14-bit Spectra ISP 14-...