This week, on our weekly firmware roundup: the Samsung Galaxy S9+ was spotted on a benchmark with Android Pie, a big update is coming to the Wear OS, and more.Google
Google
Google announced that on this month, we can expect to receive a huge update for the Wear OS. Those include a new notification stream, a new design, improvements on Google Assistant, and Google Fit improvements.The new notification system is all about gestures. By swiping up, you can instantly get access to all of your notifications and in certain cases, you can also perform quick actions.For an example, as you can see in the image above, you can choose to reply positively or negatively to a message with a couple of taps. That can be pretty useful in certain situations.Google Assistant has improvements as well. Now it's a bit more personalized and can help you find shops, reserve a hotel, or pretty much anything depending on your needs. It basically seems to analyze your everyday schedule so that it'll be able to make the appropriate recommendations.You can see an example of how that works in the GIF above. What happens is that Google Assistant knows that the owner must go to work in 50 minutes and that's why it recommends a nearby coffee shop.Google Fit had two new activity goals: Heart Points and Move Minutes. Other than that, you can now bring up Google Fit by simply swiping left. For now, that's all. We'll keep you updated once we find out anything new.
What's new this week?
OnePlus
- Latest OxygenOS Open Beta for the OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T brings portrait mode and the August security patch
Xiaomi
- MIUI 10 is now available for the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE and Mi Mix 2
- The POCO launcher is available on Play Store for all Android devices
- A big update is coming for the Wear OS
Samsung
- Galaxy C7 is getting updated to Android Oreo
- Galaxy S9+ was spotted running Android Pie
Huawei
- Android Pie Beta is now available for 5 more Huawei devices
OnePlus
The latest Open Beta update for the OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T brings portrait mode for the front camera along with the Android security patch of August. Other than that, there are a lot of small fixes and improvements. Here's the official changelog:ChangeLog- System
- Added Toast message source for Toast messages sent by background apps
- Added description about sleep standby optimization when the function is turned on for the first time
- Optimized background power consumption control
- Fixed call recording issue in India
- Updated Android security patch to 2018.8
- Camera
- Added portrait mode for the front camera
- Gaming mode 3.0
- Added call suspension notification
- Added text notification mode
- UI and interaction optimization
- Weather
- Hourly weather forecast
- 8 units of meteorological data including precipitation probability and Perceived temperature
- Improved weather data accuracy
- Note
- New OxygenOS UI
- Optimized process for sharing notes as an image
- Oneplus Switch
- UI optimization
Xiaomi
Xiaomi Mi 8 SE and Mi Mix 2 users in China have reported that they have started receiving MIUI 10 on their devices. The update weights 930MB for the Mi 8 SE - 620MB for the Mi Mix 2, and it's rolling out randomly.For now, only China users will get it. We'll let you know if we find out any information on when other countries will get to see it officially.Changing the subject now. Remember the Xiaomi Pocophone F1? It has its own unique launcher and it turns out that Xiaomi decided to release that launcher in the Google Play Store for everyone to use.The launcher is still supposed to be in Beta stages but it already counts more than 10.000 downloads. It's available for all Android devices. If you wish to try it, then feel free to do so.Get the POCO launcher from the Google Play Store