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This Week in Apps: Facebook takes on Houseparty, Fortnite comes to Google Play, contact tracing API - TechCrunch

Posted: 25 Apr 2020 08:17 AM PDT

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.

The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie's "State of Mobile" annual report. People are now spending 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren't just a way to pass idle hours — they're a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.

In this Extra Crunch series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.

This week we're continuing to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of mobile applications, including new details about Apple and Google's contact tracing API to be released to developers, how app makers are angling for a piece of video calling marketing and record revenue from gaming, among other things.

Headlines

Apple and Google's contact tracing API to be released to developers next week

The first version of Apple and Google's jointly developed, cross-platform contact tracing API will be available to developers as of next week, according to a conversation between Apple CEO Tim Cook and European Commissioner for internal market Thierry Breton. Specifically, by April 28, reports said.

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Samsung’s first smartphone with pop-up front camera shown off in leaked renders - XDA Developers

Posted: 26 Apr 2020 05:16 AM PDT

Notchless displays were the predominant theme of 2019, giving us our most immersive smartphone experience yet. Thanks to pop-up cameras, notchless phones got rid of ugly punch holes as well as top bezels, and companies did hype these pieces of innovation up for a while. In 2020, we seem to have moved past popup cameras in favor of punch holes, but Samsung is apparently planning a return to this hardware design as we now have leaked renders that show off an upcoming Samsung Galaxy smartphone with a pop-up selfie camera.

Notable leaker @OnLeaks has shared renders of this Samsung device with Pigtou. In the renders, we see a design approach that Samsung had only adopted on the Samsung Galaxy A80, but executed differently. The front of the device is clean, without any notches or punch holes to look at. The bezels on the device are also mostly thin, as only the bottom bezel has some length to it.

The highlight of the device is the pop-up camera. The Samsung Galaxy A80 also had a pop-up camera, but it used a wildly different rotating pop-up camera mechanism to use the same camera setup for both, the front and back. Au contraire, this unnamed Galaxy device takes a more conventional approach to the pop-up camera, giving it a look that is shared across devices such as the OnePlus 7 Pro, Redmi K20 Pro, Realme X, Honor 9X, OPPO Reno 2Z, and many more.

What also sets this device apart in 2020 is that it will reportedly come with a rear fingerprint scanner. In 2020, we have become accustomed to seeing an in-display fingerprint scanner on AMOLED devices and a side-fingerprint scanner on LCD devices. We do not know what display technology is used on this phone, but there is nothing inherently flawed with a conventional rear fingerprint scanner either.

Apart from the fingerprint scanner, we also see a triple rear camera setup. The phone also has curved side edges on the back. @OnLeaks mentions that the phone has a USB Type-C port and an IR Blaster, but it apparently misses out on the 3.5mm headphone jack. The display diagonal is said to 6.5″, while the rest of the device dimensions are said to be 183.5 x 77 x 9.2 mm. Everything else about the phone is unknown, including its name.

We'll hopefully learn more about this device as it comes closer to launch.

Source: Pigtou

XDA » News Brief » Samsung's first smartphone with pop-up front camera shown off in leaked renders

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