developers

The day of the foldable phone is almost upon us, and with Samsung's Infinity Flex - and the mysterious smartphone that will use it sometime in 2019 - we have plenty of questions and a handful of answers. Key to the story is just what advantages a foldable phone will have over current devices, and what app-makers will need to do in order to get their software experiences ready for devices that morph between different sizes.

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Samsung's smart TVs are gaining more voice control, with new partnerships with streaming services like Netflix and Spotify that won't need you to pick up the remote. Announced at SDC 2018, Samsung's annual Developer Conference, the new Voice Media Control API will allow apps and services to enable speech controls more easily.

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Today with the Samsung Infinity Flex display, Samsung revealed their foldable smartphone. This device has two displays, one on the outside that looks a lot like a standard Galaxy S9 (or thereabouts). The device opens up like a book, if the first display was the cover. Inside is a display that's twice as large as the display up front. Today we're meant to start understanding why this concept became a reality.

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Samsung isn't done with Bixby. The virtual assistant may not have reached the usefulness of Alexa or the Google Assistant, or the consumer awareness of Siri, but Samsung is betting that embracing third-party developers and expanding Bixby's availability will make the difference in the long-term.

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Spotify Connect is a pretty nifty alternative to things like Bluetooth and AirPlay, but thus far, it's been strictly the domain of Premium users. Those who listen for free haven't had access to Spotify Connect, but that's all about to change with a new update to Spotify's Commercial Partners' SDK. Beginning today, those hardware partners can enable Spotify Connect for free users in their speakers.

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New details on the next wave in big-time updates for Android 9 Pie for Samsung phones are coming soon. This week at Samsung's developer conference, software information and connections to hardware of all sorts will be running rampant. Word is this afternoon that Samsung is right on the verge of deciding whether they'll release the Android 9 Beta to Samsung Galaxy S9 devices this week, right alongside information about what's inside.

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Since time immemorial, OK maybe just a decade or so ago, people have imagined what a Google OS would be like. At one point, it seemed that would be something based on Ubuntu Linux which turned out to simply be a version they use internally. Then came Android, which almost because but still isn’t that Google OS. These days, the running theory is Fuchsia OS but you don’t have to go that far into the future. That Google OS might already be already be here in the form of Chrome OS but it’s still missing one important thing to truly establish it as more than just a passing but expensive experiment for Google.

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Back in June, Microsoft announced its intention to purchase GitHub. The monolithic company revealed that it would pay an impressive $7.5 billion in stock to add GitHub to its portfolio, making this one expensive deal. Today, we're getting word that the acquisition is complete, having gone through all the necessary regulatory channels to gain approval from the world's various governments.

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Samsung may soon show off a folding smartphone after years of rumors about such a device. An invite recently sent out for the company's developer conference teases the unveiling of "where now meets next" and "the crossroads between the present and the future," which many believe means a folding phone. Adding fuel to the speculation is an image that some say represents a foldable device.

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There's an app called Reachability Cursor that'll change the way you use Android. Your smartphone likely has a significantly large-sized display. This is 2018, after all, and displays only seem to be getting larger, on average. What Reachability Cursor does is to make navigating these phones with one hand just a little bit easier. That's the initial goal, but the potential of this app go much further.

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The first surprise I had with the iPhone XS Max was just how much more I preferred iOS 12 on a far larger display than that of the iPhone XS. The second surprise, though, was that not all apps are created equal, particularly when it comes to making the most of a whopping 6.5-inch panel. While the iPhone XS Max may fill your hand, not all software fills its screen.

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Skip video on YouTube this week on Android and you might have an issue to deal with. Previous versions of YouTube - the Android app - allowed users to skip forward and backward with a tap on the progress bar. Now, not so much. The good news is that YouTube developers are hard at work looking for a solution to the problem, and it should be fixed soon.

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