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Android users may soon have an easier, faster way to magnify on-screen elements

May 10, 2024
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As we inch closer to the launch of Android 15, more of its potential features keep getting unearthed. Industry insider Mishaal Rahman found evidence of a new camera extension called Eyes Free to help stabilize videos shot by third-party apps.

Before that, Rahman discovered another feature within the Android 15 Beta 1.2 update relating to a fourth screen magnification shortcut referred to as the “Two-finger double-tap screen” within the menu.

What it does is perfectly summed up by its name: quickly double-tapping the screen with two fingers lets you zoom in on a specific part of the display. That’s it. This may not seem like a big deal initially, but it is.

As Rahman explains, the current three magnification shortcuts are pretty wonky. The first method requires you to hold down on an on-screen button, which is convenient but causes your finger to obscure the view and only zoom into the center. The second method has you hold on both the volume buttons, which frees up the screen but takes a while to activate.

The third method is arguably the best one—tapping the phone display three times lets you zoom into a specific area. However, doing so causes the Android device to slow down, so it's not instantaneous. Interestingly enough, the triple-tap method warns people of the performance drop.

This warning is missing on the double-tap option, indicating the zoom is near instantaneous. Putting everything together, you can think of double-tap as the Goldilocks option. Users can control where they want the software to focus on without experiencing any slowdown.

Improved accessibility

At least, it should be that fast and a marked improvement over the triple tap. Rahman states in his group’s time testing the feature, they noticed a delay when zooming in. He chalks this up to the unfinished state of the update, although soon after admits that the slowdown could simply be a part of the tool and may be an unavoidable aspect of the software.

It’ll probably be a while until a more stable version of the double-tap method becomes widely available. If you recall, Rahman and his team could only view the update by manually toggling the option themselves. As far as we know, it doesn’t even work at the moment.

Double-tap seems to be one of the new accessibility features coming to Android 15. There are several in the works, such as the ability to hide “unused notification channels” to help people manage alerts and forcing dark mode on apps that normally don’t support it.

While we have you, be sure to check out TechRadar's round up of the best Android phones for 2024.

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May 7, 2024
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Setting up your Android phone might become much faster in the near future. Industry insider Assemble Debug recently dove into the code of Google’s Data Restore Tool and shared his findings with Android Authority. He found evidence within the files of a potential tool referred to as “MultiTransportD2dTransport” as well as a line of text that reads “Copying using cable and Wi-Fi for fastest speed”.

Putting two and two together, it appears Google could one day allow users to move data from an old phone to a new one using a Wi-Fi and cable connection simultaneously. Doing so would make the transfer process much faster – at least in theory. We don’t know exactly how much faster data transfers will become when using a wired and wireless connection simultaneously. Assemble Debug couldn’t find a whole lot of information in the files.

He did, however, discover another line of text stating: “Want to speed things up?” This seems to hint that the faster speeds will be optional. If someone prefers to use the slower method of just connecting a cable between the devices, they will still have the choice.

New restoration tool

Another feature called Restore Anytime was also unearthed from the Data Restore Tool files, but the information surrounding it is rather confusing.

Looking at the screenshot in the article, users can easily send over photos, contacts, text messages, and more from an old Android smartphone to a newer device. You don’t have to worry about losing any data or perform a factory reset on the older hardware. Nothing will be overwritten. And it even works when transferring from iPhone to Android, so long as the former still has its charging cable.

Here is where the confusion lies. Android Authority claims the donor phone can only send data without incident if it’s already been used to transfer files to your current device. If you try to send files to brand new hardware, you will have to first erase all the data on the recipient phone before moving forward. However, the article contradicts this by stating you can transfer data to new devices “at any point.”

It’s a strange feature. Perhaps Google has yet to create a clear set of parameters for Restore Anytime. That would explain why the restrictions are so confusing. Or maybe the tech giant is simply experimenting with tech it has no intention of releasing. It’s hard to say for sure, but hopefully, Restore Anytime will launch in some form. Being able to move swaths of data to recently purchased smartphones without hindrances or resetting sounds very helpful.

While we have you, check out TechRadar's list of the best Android phones for 2024.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

April 29, 2024
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Amazon Prime continues to be a service juggernaut in the tech industry as the company has broken a new record. According to a recent announcement, Amazon revealed it managed to deliver over two billion items in the first three months of 2024 through Prime. That’s more than the total amount of packages they sent out in Europe to members last year.

Worldwide Amazon Stores CEO Doug Herrington stated in March that almost 60 percent of Prime orders “arrived the same or next day across” 60 of the largest urban areas in the United States. In London, Tokyo, and Toronto, “three out of four items” arrived at their destination in the same time frame.

This success in the US seems to be the result of the logistical changes Amazon made in 2023. They essentially divided up the country into “eight interconnected regions” to serve specific geographic areas. These regions have a “fulfillment center” housing a wide array of items, allowing the company to quickly deliver their stock right to your door. Amazon even claims that thanks to AI, it can predict “which items [people] in various parts of the country” want and when they want them. The tech giant also works with multiple sellers, both big and small, to get those brand-name products out fast.

It’s possible Amazon will demolish its 2023 Prime delivery record. The company is certainly on the way and Herrington says they’re “just getting started.” But will they meet this goal? Most likely. Recent moves hint that they’ll do it, but there’s a chance they'll fall short.

New services

Not too long ago, Amazon made some important business updates.

They launched a new grocery delivery service for Prime members on April 23. For $ 10, subscribers can get unlimited delivery on orders over $ 35 from local and specialty supermarkets – so long as the final bill is over $ 35. That’s the only requirement. People without a Prime membership can join the program as well at $ 5 a month. However, they must own a registered EBT (also known as food stamps) card.

Before that, the company said it was expanding its Prime Air drone delivery service to the Phoenix Metro Area in Arizona. It’s not running yet. Amazon still has to get all the “necessary permissions” from the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) before it can take to the skies.

So with the grocery delivery program and a little help from a fleet of drones, the 2023 Prime delivery record could be smashed. However, we hesitate to be confident in Amazon's corner because of the layoffs we’ve seen in the past few years. The platform has taken a hatchet to its business. From 2022 through 2023, Amazon cut over “27,000 jobs across almost every area” of the business.

Granted, things have slowed down, but Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said they’re not done cutting costs. Layoffs could ramp up in the near future.

Memorial Day is coming up in the US and that means discounts. If you want to stay up to date on whatever Amazon is planning, be sure to follow TechRadar's Amazon Memorial Day sales roundup for 2024.

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March 20, 2024
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Microsoft has announced a next-gen open-source cache-store system, Garnet, which it claims will bring major advances in making apps and services run faster. A cache store is a type of memory that is important for the quick storage and processing of data, and optimizing a system’s performance.

According to Microsoft, it’s already deploying Garnet across a range of its products and services, such as Windows & Web Experiences Platform, Azure Resource Manager, and Azure Resource Graph, and that can lead to apps and services being able to run faster.

In a surprising turn, it’s also made Garnet open-source and available for download at GitHub for free, going against Microsoft’s previous ambivalent (and somewhat downright hostile) approach to open-source.

Microsoft's motivations for developing Garnet

Microsoft goes into detail about Garnet and what it’s been able to achieve on the Microsoft Research Blog, explaining that it takes a pretty big toll on most existing devices, due to it needing particularly powerful hardware to be able to achieve its full potential.

The good news is that most modern PCs and laptops should come with hardware that's capable of taking advantage of Garnet, so hopefully soon most people using Windows 10 or Windows 11 will be able to make use of this innovative new tech.

In its blog post, Microsoft explains that it’s been working on a remote cache store since 2021, which would replace existing cache stores – and this work has resulted in Garnet. In a very welcome move, Microsoft has also opened up Garnet to anyone interested in learning about, implementing, and contributing to the tech on GitHub, stating that it hopes others can build on its work and expand what Garnet can do, as well as encouraging further academic research and collaboration.

Problems of legacy (read: older) cache store systems for app and software developers include that they might not be easily upgraded to add new features, or they might not work well across a variety of platforms and operating systems. Microsoft suggests that Garnet doesn’t have problems like these because it is open source and that it can lead to better-performing and faster apps.

It’s to Microsoft’s credit that it’s opened Garnet up to the public in this way, and shows both a willingness to learn from others through direct collaboration and a great degree of confidence that it’s willing to offer up its innovations for analysis. It's certainly a nice change from the anti-open source Microsoft of old. Hopefully, users can start to see real-world benefits from Garnet in the near future.

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September 15, 2023
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It looks like Windows 11 could finally get a fix to improve the performance of its File Explorer app, but at the moment this is only available to people who have signed up for the Windows Insider Program, Microsoft’s official community for trying out new Windows features currently being considered for future updates.

The preview (named Windows 11 build 23545) is available in the Insider Program’s Dev Channel, one of the program’s four preview channels. Microsoft has described the update as including fixes for performance issues, addressing crashes, a new dark theme, and more. Taskbar search is also changing.

Microsoft provides a full rundown of the updates coming to Windows 11 in a changelog in this blog post.

File Explorer is the feature seeing the most changes. Many of them are addressing issues that would cause File Explorer to get stuck or crash. There are also a number of other fixes like those to File Explorer’s launch performance, including a leak that could worsen performance as time went on.

This update to File Explorer comes not long after Neowin and MSPoweruser reported on tricks that you can do in Windows 11 to make it run better and faster, including File Explorer by exploiting certain bugs. It seems like Microsoft is aware that users are willing to try homebrewed fixes (within reason, of course) to speed up Windows 11’s performance, and wants to offer an official fix.

Loading and processing speeds in Windows 11 have been a topic of discussion ever since its release, often being compared to its predecessors like Windows 10 and Windows 7, and a significant chunk of this new build looks like it’s specifically aimed at reducing crashes and loading times. It will be interesting to see if this build passes testing and if any of it ends up in a future Windows 11 update.

A Microsoft Copilot page on a blue background — (Image credit: Microsoft)

Testing out Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft is also pushing forward with the development and testing of its new AI voice assistant, Windows Copilot. It was released earlier this year and is currently only available for business Microsoft 365 subscribers and Windows Insider Program members as a preview feature.

In the blog post about Windows 11 Build 23545, Microsoft states that it’s actively listening to feedback about Copilot, and making changes based on that feedback. For example, Microsoft will restore availability of Copilot in certain regions where it was temporarily unavailable.

Other improvements in the works include Microsoft experimenting with different Taskbar experiences, added utilities to Windows Share (Microsoft’s new feature to share material to and from your device), and fixes for input issues.

Hopefully, this is evidence that Microsoft is still committed to improving Windows 11’s usability – which in my opinion is a good move, as Windows 11 is supposed to be Microsoft’s flagship product, but it’s far from perfect. If you’d like to get involved in trying out and giving your own feedback on any of these future Windows 11 features, you can sign up for the Windows Insider Program and upgrade your Windows 11 to Build 23545.

The death knell of Windows 10

Let’s face it: we’re going to have to let go of Windows 10 eventually. With Windows 12 just peeking over the horizon, it was inevitable that some new features wouldn’t make the cut for our beloved 10.

Still, it’s a shame to see Microsoft so aggressively pushing forward – especially when it’s arguably ahead of the curve when it comes to its operating system. Windows Copilot and the general slew of AI-powered updates for the OS show that Microsoft doesn’t even need version 12 to innovate in Windows, so why keep pushing ahead with major version releases like this?

Frustrations have been fairly widespread with regard to Windows 11, hampering adoption in a big way despite Microsoft offering free upgrades for existing Windows users. Part of the problem is the strict hardware requirements for Win11, which entirely prevent some users from upgrading past Windows 10 (the TPM 2.0 requirement is a particular sticking point here). Early leaks have suggested that Windows 12 will also come with new minimum system requirements, locking out even more people on outdated builds.

Still, if you can upgrade to Windows 11 and have simply been putting it off out of laziness or distrust of the new OS, now might be the time to start considering it. Wi-Fi 7 devices and routers aren’t available yet, but when they do arrive, you won’t want to find yourself stuck with slower wireless internet speeds just because you didn’t upgrade!

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August 14, 2023
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Have you ever been shopping on Amazon, but found yourself too lazy to read the user reviews at the bottom of a product listing? Well, you’re in luck because Amazon has recently implemented a generative AI to its platform that will summarize reviews.

The company states the AI tool will offer short paragraphs “on the product detail page” highlighting key features as well as overall “customer sentiment”. Customers can quickly scan the short block of text to get an idea of whether a product is good or not instead of having to read dozens of reviews. Amazon states in its announcement you can direct the AI a bit by having it focus on specific “attributes.” Say you want a smart TV that’s easy to use. Users can select the “Ease of use” tab to have the summarizer specifically talk about that attribute or something else like its performance is while streaming content.

Work in progress

Unfortunately, the AI feature was unavailable to us as we were excluded from the rollout, but The Verge had access. In their report, The Verge claims it saw the tool show up on listings for “TVs, headphones, tablets, [plus] fitness trackers.” It isn’t very consistent either. They state the summarizer is available on the Galaxy Tab A7, but not the Galaxy Tab A8. Also, it appears Amazon’s AI heavily favors writing positive content, as it spends “less time on the negatives.”

We reached out to Amazon with several questions about the new tool, including if there will there be a desktop version and if the company plans on providing links directing users to the AI's source reviews. Google’s SGE tool does this for the generated content it produces. It’d be nice to see sources in the paragraph. However, Amazon has nothing more to share at the moment.

Analysis: Remaining skeptical

Amazon has been dabbling in AI for a while now. Back in May, Amazon listed a job listing for a “machine learning focus engineer,” revealing the company is looking for someone to help develop an “interactive conversational experience” for its search engine. We could see the Amazon search bar one day offer a ChatGPT-like experience where you talk with the AI when looking for a product.

It would be wrong of us not to add a little asterisk to all this AI talk. As you may know, generative AIs are known to “hallucinate”, which is to say, they sometimes provide inaccurate information. It’s gotten to the point some experts believe this problem will never be fixed. So read the summarizer’s text with several grains of salt. As it turns out, you just can’t beat good old-fashioned human opinion – like the kind TechRadar provides every single day.

Labor Day is coming up and that means savings. Be sure to check out TechRadar’s guide for Amazon’s Labor Sale for 2023. Price cuts for certain electronics are already live.

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July 1, 2023
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Microsoft has provided its regular weekly update on improvements for Bing AI, and there are some impressive strides forward this week.

Neowin spotted that the chatbot now has reduced latency spikes when it comes to certain answers, meaning you won’t be hanging around as long for a reply in these cases.

Fun fact: internally, we are most excited about something majority of people find boring. Yesterday we released a completely reworked backend for inner monologue, reducing time to first token by ~25%, and, far more importantly, making latency more stable, reducing spikes: pic.twitter.com/E0zBZ3lHyYJune 29, 2023

As Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft’s head of Advertising and Web Services, explained on Twitter, this is a result of Bing AI getting a “completely reworked backend for inner monologue”, meaning streamlining the chatbot’s ‘thinking’ process.

A second benefit this week is better handling of sports-related queries, so the range of topics covered in this field is now considerably broader, from the NHL to the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Finally, there’s a boon for those using Bing AI in Skype, with the ability to generate images (Bing Image Creator) now present within Skype conversations.

Analysis: The importance of being snappy

A snappier Bing AI is vital. Whatever query you throw at the chatbot, you want the response to come with a minimum of hanging around. If you find yourself tapping your foot (or perhaps your finger on the keyboard) while waiting for Bing to get back to you, that’ll be off-putting (and might remind you of live chats, where waits can be frustrating if a help agent is dealing with multiple simultaneous queries).

That responsiveness is a key area for Bing to do well in (that and, of course, the accuracy and usefulness of the response delivered, which is always paramount). So Microsoft is quite right to be honing away on this front.

That said, you can still be subject to waiting times that aren’t the fault of the backend (inner workings of Bing as it processes queries), but are purely due to traffic spikes. When lots of people are using the chatbot, things get more sluggish purely in terms of coping with that volume.

Incidentally, Parakhin elaborated on this in the above Twitter thread, noting that the major peaks of usage occur when folks arrive in work (at three main times – when the US East coast arrives, then when Europe comes to work, then the Far East). That corresponds to 7am, 5pm and 1am PDT, if you’re curious.

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June 12, 2023
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Top AI photo editng app PhotoRoom has formed a new partnership with Google Cloud that it says could seriously speed up image generation while keeping costs down.

The software, dubbed “the fastest generative AI provider in the commerce space” by the company, is designed to let businesses create and edit product images for ecommerce platforms.

Announcing its intention to power-up AI performance with Google’s A3 ‘supercomputers’, the company said the pairing will cut product photography production times for small businesses and entrepreneurs “from days to less than an hour – without compromising accuracy or quality.”

Product, production & photo editing

Like most commercial content creation, product photography demands high-quality visuals produced at high velocity. Not only do items need to look their best, websites need to cover variations from color to size if it’s to be added to a shopper’s basket.

> Google Cloud is building its most powerful supercomputer to date

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It’s a process that takes time – and the space that PhotoRoom, founded in 2019, occupies. The photo editor streamlines image manipulation, letting firms enhance product shots and add unique, AI-generated backgrounds, while free photo editor tools include a background remover and object remover.

Highlighting the major growth in genAI usage, Matthieu Rouif, PhotoRoom CEO,.said “We're already processing 2 billion images per year, and we expect that to double in 2024, as more businesses adopt PhotoRoom's generative AI technology. Google Cloud provides the ideal foundation for our continued success with its capacity to scale, its flexibility, and its sustainable infrastructure.”

The use of Google Cloud A3 instances is a compelling choice. Unveiled in May 2023, the next-generation GPU supercomputers are designed to train and deliver what Google called “the most demanding AI models” for generative AI and LLMs. However, the partnership benefits Google as much as PhotoRoom, strengthening the search giant’s clear B2B focus when it comes to rolling artificial intelligence to the masses.

“We're thrilled to offer Google Cloud's industry leading infrastructure, foundation models and AI tooling to PhotoRoom so the company can build, train, and deploy AI creatively, reliably and at scale,” said Mark Lohmeyer, vice president and general manager of Google Cloud.

Best photo editing PC: Top tech to breathe new life into your photography

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June 3, 2023
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AI seems to be everywhere at the moment, and Google is building the tech into its products faster than most. Gmail is the latest Google app to get an injection of artificial intelligence, to improve search results on mobile.

“When searching in Gmail, machine learning models will use the search term, most recent emails and other relevant factors to show you the results that best match your search query,” Google explains in a blog post (via Android Central).

“These results will now appear at the top of the list in a dedicated section, followed by all results sorted by recency,” the post continues. In other words, AI will (in theory) pick out the best matches for your search, and put them at the top of the list.

Years of AI

This is coming to the Gmail apps for Android and iOS, and should be rolling out for everyone now. As yet, there's no word on whether or not the same feature will be making an appearance in the desktop web interface for Gmail.

AI has been built into Gmail for years of course, with features like Smart Reply composing short automated replies for you. In recent months, Google has been pushing more advanced, generative AI as a way of composing your emails.

More AI features are heading to search on the web too, while development on the ChatGPT rival Google Bard continues at a steady pace. We can expect plenty more announcements like this one in the months and years ahead.

Analysis: AI needs to be useful

Google and other tech companies seem to have no qualms about pushing out AI features as quickly as they possibly can at the moment, which is what tends to happen in a competitive, emerging field when several players are trying to get out in front.

However, we'd query just how useful all of this AI is going to end up being. Sure, having the option to generate text messages in the style of Shakespeare is quite fun – but wouldn't most people prefer to use their own words from their own heads when keeping up conversations with friends and family?

Even something like Gmail search isn't a complete win for AI. What are the “relevant factors” that the app is using to pick the top results? Are they reliable? Sometimes it feels like the old manual methods of labels and stars are the best ways to keep on top of thousands of emails taking up room in Gmail.

In an age where we're relying on algorithms for everything from choosing our movie recommendations to writing our books, there's still a lot to be said for human creativity and curation, which might be slower but can be a whole lot more useful and engaging.

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Posts tagged "faster"

Android users may soon have an easier, faster way to magnify on-screen elements

Improved accessibility

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Google is working on a faster Android setup process that uses Wi-Fi and a cable

New restoration tool

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You’re not imagining it, Amazon Prime deliveries got even faster in 2024

New services

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Microsoft announces Garnet – a new open source tool that could make apps run faster

Microsoft's motivations for developing Garnet

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A faster, more productive Windows 11 is coming and Microsoft has given Insider members a preview

Testing out Microsoft Copilot

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS

Not upgraded to Windows 11 yet? You could miss out on faster Wi-Fi as a result

The death knell of Windows 10

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Amazon’s new AI review summarizer could help you empty your pockets even faster

Work in progress

Analysis: Remaining skeptical

Bing AI chatbot gets faster at responding – and better sports knowledge, too

Analysis: The importance of being snappy

Google wants to help provide faster AI photo editing for all

Product, production & photo editing

Gmail is adding more AI to help you find important emails faster

Years of AI

Analysis: AI needs to be useful