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Oppo had the overseas unveiling of ColorOS 7 in India today, where all the new features, design and rollout schedule details were shared for upcoming smartphones.

The software skin on Oppos smartphones was often considered to be a little out of place in otherwise good offerings. With ColorOS 7, it aims to improve that while bringing loads of optimizations and new features that should make it to most upcoming and existing smartphones from the Chinese manufacturer.

There are over 300 million active ColorOS users across the world, spread over 140 countries, and using it in 80+ languages. For its latest iteration, the focus was on providing a Smooth and Delightful experience that delivers consistent performance, is stable across the board, and doesnt chug on the battery. This included significant facelifts to the design, security, and customizability aspects with ColorOS 7.

Oppo mentioned that the most significant update to ColorOS would also be its biggest software rollout, covering almost its entire current portfolio. ColorOS 7 based on Android 10 limited trial will start in November itself, and will eventually be available for more phones. We also expect upcoming high-end Oppo phones to run on the latest software skin.

The first wave of phones includes the Reno and the Reno 10x Zoom Edition, which will be eligible for the update starting November 26.

That will be followed by the Reno2 and the F11 series, in December of this year.

The first quarter of 2020 will see phones such as the Find X, Reno Z, Reno 2Z, R17 series, RX17 Pro, and the A9 be included.

The next quarter will involve the F7 series, the F9 series, the R15 series, the A5 2020, the A9 2020, and the K3.

Realme is working on its software skin called Realme UI, which will be based on ColorOS 7 built atop Android 10. The beta program for the X2 Pro users commences on November 27.

The public rollout will start early next year, starting with the Realme XT and 3 Pro in January, the X and 5 Pro in February, the flagship X2 Pro in March, the 3 and 3i in April, the 5 and 5s in May, the 2 Pro in June, and the C2 some time in the third quarter of 2020.

Lets start with what has been redesigned for a better visual experience. The quick settings in the notification pull-down will now be borderless and have a more straightforward design. Even the rest of the icons have been made simpler and follow dual-tone Material design guidelines. The shapes and sizes of these icons can also be customized. The volume control pop-up is now vertical and will appear closer to where the volume rocker is located.

To reduce eye fatigue, all system colors have been made slightly less saturated and with higher contrast. A new batch of dynamic wallpapers has been added which respond to your touch or the time of the day or your surroundings.

On the audio front, Oppo has partnered with Epic Sound to reimagine all interactions. Backed with improved haptics, all touches, slides, and toggles will respond with new sounds that make more sense and are pleasing to the ear. Alarm tones can be adapted to the weather, too, where the regular music will have a layer of the rain or wind sounds with it.

The interface has also been simplified and made more consistent across various pages and system apps. They mentioned how specific tasks that would take 4-5 steps to reach will now be in the form of a Modal page, which appears as a floating interface from the bottom and can be dismissed with a swipe down or elaborated with a swipe up.

Oppo introduced 3-finger swipes for screenshots back in 2014. Now, it is being taken to the next level where the screenshot can be directly shared by a swipe down on the preview, and extended by a swipe up. For taking screenshots of specific regions, a 3-finger swipe follows by a long press will select only the part that is swiped.

Catching on to the current year's trends, a system-wide dark mode is also available now whose contrast changes with the time of the day. Oppo calls it All-day-comfort dark mode. This dark mode can also be used in tandem with eye protection mode. According to them, most users spend only about 10% of the time on the home screen and system apps. So they optimized multiple third-party apps to display in dark mode, such as Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube. It is supposed to save battery consumption by 38%.

Animations also get a facelift with the new Quantum high frame rate animation package, which is supposed to make animations and transitions more fluid. We expect this to be a crucial part of Oppos upcoming phones with high refresh rate displays. These transitions can also be canceled halfway through.

The VOOC charging animation will also be updated to make it more exciting and visual.

Universal themes will be made available in the coming months, along with a theme editor for creators to upload their designs easily. There will reportedly be a relatively large collection of free themes.

In terms of performance, users are likely to judge the responsiveness of a skin based on app launch times, switching between apps and gaming. ColorOS 7 has been optimized to improve performance across all of these fronts.

Opening apps again has been made 25% faster thanks to Cache preload, bringing it up to the same level as bringing an app up from memory. Once open, apps will sustain peak performance via oMem Priority Management, which increases RAM utilization by up to 40%. This effect will carry on to gaming, where oSense CPU Scheduling will bring the average framerate up by 19% and improve touch responsiveness by 15%. Lastly, UFS+ Anti-aging solutions will use hardware and software optimizations to reduce app fragmentation over time.

ColorOS 7 also brings updates to privacy and data security. For apps that require individual specific permissions, it will workaround that by sending dummy or empty information. For example, if a third-party requests access to your contacts, you can use Personal Information Protection to send made-up empty contacts instead of your actual contacts.

App lock and Private space are still around and can be locked with a password, PIN, fingerprint, or even your face.

New features have also been brought to the photography experience, with AI Beautification 2.0 for better matching the filters to the environment and the subjects skin tone, Ultra Dark mode for better photography in dark scenarios while reducing noise and improving the brightness for an overall sharper image. An Ultra Steady will also be added for action videography.

To cater to the rising trend of short-form videos, vlogging, and social media, ColorOS 7 will come bundled with a video editor called Soloop, which offers templates, music, filters, editing and subtitling capabilities.

Oppo is also working in collaboration with Googles CameraX project, which lets third-party app makers better optimize their in-app cameras to make better use of the phones camera capabilities in aspects such as HDR, shutter speed and AI Beautification.

ColorOS 7 also brings some features specifically for the Indian market. DigiLocker, which was a part of the Governments Digital India scheme, will also be natively present, making Oppo the first smartphone manufacturer partner for this initiative. This DocVault is private, secure, encrypted, and can hold soft copies of your relevant documents.

Other India specific additions include a Riding mode, which puts your phone on DND mode and blocks all notifications except those apps which are whitelisted.

Music Party will let multiple users play the same songs together in a synchronized fashion. To use it, select the option which will show a QR code, which other ColorOS 7 users can scan and join.

Lastly, we also get some digital wellbeing features such as a Focus mode, and Oppo Relax, which will come next year.

See the article here:
ColorOS 7: New features, rollout timeline and which devices will receive it - Techradar

Leeds-based digital marketing agency Search Laboratory is continuing to pave the way for businesses across the city, with the launch of its latest mental health initiative. The company, already recognised as one of the UKs top employers, has launched an enhanced flexible working policy to mark Stress Awareness Day and improve well-being in the workplace.

The business is leading the way by introducing benefits designed to help people cope with stress and stay healthy, including mental health first aid training, mindfulness sessions, free gym membership and how-to health seminars, as well as offering free face-to-face private counselling through an employee assistance programme.

Renae Shaw, Head of HR at Search Laboratory, said: Our approach to workplace well-being is to do everything we can to help employees stay feeling well, happy and motivated at work. We all know how difficult it can be trying to juggle home with work, but we hope by having greater flexibility staff will have a better commute, better balance in their lives, and work when it suits them best and when energy levels are at their highest.

It was also really important to us that we can still get what we need from each other internally, and in particular that our team in New York can still work well with the UK. We wanted the rules to be simple and flexible, whilst still ensuring we have enough time in the office to collaborate together and deliver great work for our clients.

This latest step towards greater support for employee well-being has been announced as part of the companys Well-being Week which ran from 4th November 8th November 2019, in line with Stress Awareness Day. During the week staff could attend dedicated workshops on well-being and nutrition.

Search Laboratory offers holistic digital marketing solutions for household names such as Ann Summers, Moonpig and Nokia. As one of only a handful of Google Marketing Platform Sales Partners in the UK, their expertise spans analytics and data science, SEO, PPC, social media and programmatic display. The agency is widely recognised as the digital leader in the North, in part due to the major brand names across the UK and internationally the agency works with from its Leeds headquarters, in addition to being awarded impressive accolades such as being listed in The Sunday Times Best Small Companies to Work For list seven times.

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Leeds based tech company puts employee well-being first - Business Up North

Apparently, disgruntled Rutgers football fans have gone scorched earth on Athletic Director Patrick Hobbs in the 24 hours since negotiations to bring Greg Schiano on board as the programs next head coach fell through. With the mob lighting up the message boards and social media and calling for Hobbs job, one fan took to Wikipedia to make his point.

On Monday morning -- less than 24 hours after Schiano-Rutgers negotiations were officially declared dead -- Hobbs Wikipedia page listed his full name as Patrick Weasel Hobbs. The entry ends by saying In 2019, his ego killed Rutgers football.

An edited Wikipedia entry for Rutgers Athletics Director Patrick Hobbs.

It is a unique display of a common feeling among the Rutgers fanbase.

In the hours after the breakdown was reported Sunday, a steady stream of fans expressed their frustration with a #FireHobbs hashtag on Twitter. One fan created a Change.org petition that called for leadership change atop the Rutgers athletics department. It has 930 signatures as of 11 a.m. Monday.

"Rutgers nation,'' the posting read, "has lost confidence and trust in him.''

High-level donors publicly expressed their frustrations with Hobbs.

Im terribly disappointed in Pat Hobbs, Doug Dolan, a longtime Rutgers booster and the Universitys former athletics director of fundraising, told NJ Advance Medias Keith Sargeant. This has been a train wreck hurtling towards a cliff for a while now. I dont know everything thats gone on behind the scenes. But my opinion is, the way things have fallen apart, Hobbs needs to pay for this with his job. I dont believe he knows whats necessary to run a major college football program.

(NJ Advance Medias Keith Sargeant contributed to this report.)

Get Rutgers Sports Insider text messages from reporters: Cut through the clutter of social media and communicate directly with the Rutgers beat writers. Plus, exclusive news and analysis every day. Sign up now.

Brian Fonseca may be reached at bfonseca@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @briannnnf. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Somebody messed with Pat Hobbs Wikipedia page: Hes a weasel with an ego that killed Rutgers football' - NJ.com

We explore some of Wikipedias oddities in our 5,973,574-week series, Wiki Wormhole.

This weeks entry: 2010s in music

What its about: Baby Shark, and all of the other, lesser songs that also came out in the past ten years. This decade appeared to be when people stopped paying for music, all FM radio stations seemed to be owned by one company and programmed by the same computer, and most of us discovered new artists by letting YouTube autoplay to the next video rather than exerting ourselves enough to click a button. Yet, some people still managed to write some terrific songs. Lets take a listen.

Biggest controversy: This column is more than 300 entries into our 5,973,574-week series, and this might be the worst-written Wikipedia article weve yet come across. Granted, much of the text is merely lists of artists, broken up by the occasional list of songs. But attempts at prose include such gems as, Traditional instruments have been used more often, especially in indie rock musicians, In recent years, the music industry has progress in Ghana, and one run-on sentence after another. The moral of the story: For readable, informative music writing, stick to your local pop culture website!

Strangest fact: Japanese girl group AKB48 set a record for being the largest pop group in history. The J-pop band at one point had 134 members. The sprawling group opened its own theater so that it could play in one location every day instead of touring, and will rotate members in and out so different factions of the group can play multiple gigs or fan events simultaneously. (Part of the groups concept is that the members are idols you can meetwith so many, its much easier for fans to have face-to-face contact with one.) The group is the highest selling musical act in Japan in terms of singles sold. The concept proved sturdy enough that AKB48 now has spinoff groups in China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, with an Indian AKB48 in the works.

Thing we were happiest to learn: Hip-hop has gotten its due. Lil Nas X became a star this year by combining hip-hop and country, spurring the latest chapter in the neverending debate over what constitutes real country music. The genre also increased its influence around the world, with rappers like Shigga Shay in Singapore, AKA and Emtee in South Africa becoming big stars, and Korean K-Pop spawning a K-hip-hop subgenre.

Thing we were unhappiest to learn: The meaningless label alternative rock has only become more meaningless with time. Originally coined to separate the post-punk underground acts that broke through to the mainstream in the 1990s with the hard rock and pop acts who dominated the mainstream in the 80s, the term now appears to encompass mainstream acts like Imagine Dragons, Linkin Park, and Coldplay, somnambulant singer-songwriter Jack Johnson, and funk party band-turned-yacht rockers the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Alternative used to mean something, maaaaan! Okay, it never meant anything, but it meant slightly more than this, maaaaan!

Also noteworthy: Punks decline ended up being a good thing for punk. After a surge in popularity in the 2000s by punk-esque bands like Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance, and Sum 41, the genre has been largely absent from the pop charts. But thats led to a resurgence of scrappy garage-influenced punk bands (and one of the bands on the list is called Joanna Gruesome, a definite contender for Year In Band Names.)

Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: If you want to read about music in the 2010s without any of the actual music, check out 2010s In the Music Industry. That page covers music business trends, nearly all of which involve how digital media has upended the industry. One of the page headings, Exclusive Releases As Promotion, hilariously has two subheadings: The Beginning Of Exclusive Releases and The End Of Exclusive Releases. The trend was apparently short-lived.

Further down the Wormhole: Included in a very long list of rappers is Chief Keef, a Chicago-born MC who broke out in the 2010s and had an unlikely champion in Lou Reed. Shortly before Reeds death in 2013, he commented to The Talkhouse about Keefs featured track on Kanye Wests album Yeezus: Hold My Liquor is just heartbreaking listen to that incredibly poignant hook from a tough guy like Chief Keef, wow. Reed, the sardonic songwriter who fronted the influential Velvet Underground before releasing 22 solo studio albums, also made an odd contribution to the video game world. The singer had a cameo in Penn & Tellers Smoke And Mirrors, a 1995 Sega CD game that was never released, but found a cult following in recent years after the game was posted online. Were taking a week off to enjoy Thanksgiving, but well be back in two weeks to examine one of the most intentionally maddening video games ever created.

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Wikipedia tries to cover the last 10 years of music in one overstuffed page - The A.V. Club

Weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that his country develop an alternative to the massively popular Wikipedia free online encyclopedia one prominent editor has revealed he was working to do just that.

Speaking Thursday to the state-run Tass Russian News Agency, Great Russian Encyclopedia executive editor Sergei Kravets said that he was developing a digital version of the famed 21st-century Great Soviet Encyclopedia commissioned by Putin. "The project, which began in July, is anticipated to take 33 months," he said. "It will be completed by the spring or summer of 2022."

The name has not been selected, but Kravets said he sought a title that both evoked the prestige of the Great Russian Encyclopedia and could bring such a work to a contemporary, young audience.

"As many as 35 percent of students are aware of its existence, they consider it to be reliable but a bit outdated. As for professors, nearly 100 percent are acquainted with the encyclopedia and believe it to be fundamental and reliable," he said. "If we create something new, we need to maintain continuity, credibility, depth and reliability, but at the same time, we should eliminate its antiquatedness and reach out to new areas."

Establishing a Russian Wikipedia-style database has been a source of debate in Russia for years. The idea was brought up by lawmaker Yelena Yampolskaya, a member of Putin's ruling United Russia Party and an outspoken supporter of the Soviet Union, at a December 2016 a joint meeting of the Council for Culture and Art and the Council on the Russian Language during which she appealed to Putin for more indigenous forms of sports, culture and entertainment.

"We need a national reference system so that people have resources other than Wikipedia at their disposal," Yampolskaya, who last year went on to become head of the Russian lower house of parliament's culture committee, said, berating mobile game Pokmon GO as "the devil's work and the product of a global conspiracy."

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A year later, in 2017, Kravets met with Putin alongside Russian Academy of Sciences member Yury Osipov to present the Russian leader the final, 35th volume of the Great Russian Encylopedia. The two men thanked Putin for his guidance but called for more support in bringing the vast work online, an endeavor he immediately praised.

"You are right, when they read Wikipedia online, people get a lot of varied and important information. However, when it is not entirely accurate, it does more harm than good," Putin said at the time. "This is why this information touchstone is so valuable."

Two years later, the Kremlin announced in a draft law that it would spend up to $27 million in establishing a Russian-language Wikipedia alternative during 2020-2022, but at a meeting earlier this month Putin elicited some controversy at home and abroad with comments that some took to mean he may move to block access to the original site, which has more than one and half a million articles in Russian.

Putin held a meeting of the Presidential Council on the Russian Language on November 2. During the session, before the president weighed in, two other participants brought up the subject of Wikipedia, both questioning its accuracy and warning of its effect on society and the proliferation of Russian-language knowledge.

"Regarding Wikipedia, this has already been mentioned here: It is better to replace it with the new Great Russian Encyclopedia in electronic form, we are now talking about this with our colleagues," Putin said. "This will be, in any case, reliable information in a good, modern, by the way, form."

Days later, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov issued a clarification on the Russian leader's comments, saying "Wikipedia is a popular and respected self-updated resource," according to Tass.

"What the president and some of the speakers [at the Council's meeting] meant was that with all due respect, no one guarantees the credibility of information available on Wikipedia," Peskov said. "The president highlighted the need to create an encyclopedia-style source of knowledge and make it accessible."

"That's what the Great Soviet Encyclopedia is," he added, emphasizing that "there cannot be, nor have there been any bans or restrictions on access to Wikipedia."

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Russia Is Building Its Own Wikipedia After Putin Says The Country Needs One - Newsweek