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Android is struggling to keep its market share in the United States, as Apple continues to take over in the market. But, despite Android as a whole losing ground, Google Pixel phones are becoming a bigger slice of the US market.

Counterpoint Research reports that, in Q2 2023, US smartphone shipments dropped by 24% year-over-year. That includes both iPhones and Android phones, and virtually every brand saw a drop in shipments. Samsung saw US shipments drop by 37% while Motorola saw a 17% drop. TCL saw the biggest decline at just shy of 70% year-over-year, and even Apple saw a 6% drop.

Facebook and Instagram users see wildly different political news in their feeds depending on their political beliefs, but chronological feeds won’t fix the problem with polarization, new research published Thursday suggests.

The findings come from four papers produced through a partnership between Meta and more than a dozen outside academics to research the impact of Facebook and Instagram on user behavior during the 2020 election. The company supplied data from around 208 million US-based active users in aggregate, totaling nearly all of the 231 million Facebook and Instagram users nationwide at the time.

‘I’m highly confident we’re going to be able to pour enough gasoline on this to help it grow,’ the Meta CEO told investors on Wednesday.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has high hopes for Threads, his competitor to the company formerly known as Twitter.

During Meta’s second quarter earnings call with investors on Wednesday, Zuckerberg was asked multiple times about Threads and his expectations for its long-term success. He said it’s a “weird anomaly in the tech industry that there hasn’t been an app like this for text-based convos that has reached 1 billion people,” echoing previous comments he has made both on Threads itself and during a recent interview with the podcaster Lex Fridman.

Ten years ago today, Google released the 2nd-generation Nexus 7, just days after a surprise announcement. Back then, Android tablets still felt fresh and exciting. It seemed like anything was possible, and things could only improve from there. Well, we know what happened next. But the depressing state of the tablet market to come was in no way the fault of the Nexus 7. In fact, this is still one of the best Android tablets ever made, and it's worth looking back and showing it the honor and respect it deserves.

After months of rumors , the news is in. The exclusive distributor of Oppo in France, Yang Technology, announces that it will cease its activities in the territory. The information comes directly from the latter who contacted Frandroid to teach him.

Yang Technology is the name of the company behind Oppo France, a distinct entity from Oppo Monde, the manufacturer as such. The two companies collaborate together, but remain well separated. It is also not excluded that Oppo Monde continues to want to keep a semblance of presence in France, despite the threatened fate of Yang Technology.

Source is in French
English alternatives: 9to5Google, Android Police

Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and the mapping company TomTom have launched an initiative to take on Google Maps and Apple Maps. The four companies formed the Overture Maps Foundation last year with the goal of creating interoperable map products — and now, the group has released its first open map dataset.

With this data, third-party developers can create global mapping or navigation products of their own, allowing them to go head-to-head with Google Maps and Apple Maps. According to Overture, the release includes over 59 million places of interest, along with data on buildings, transportation networks, and administrative boundaries.

Overture says the data layers have been formatted so developers can “ingest and use map data in a standard, documented way and will be interoperable.” Developers can then use this information on which to build a mapping app or any service that relies on navigation. The dataset is available on Overture’s website.

“The Places dataset, in particular, represents a major, previously unavailable open dataset, with the potential to map everything from new businesses big and small to pop-up street markets located anywhere in the world,” Marc Prioleau, Overture’s executive director, says in a statement. “Overture plans to build a broad collaboration that can build and maintain an up-to-date, comprehensive database of POIs [places of interest].”

First formed last year, the Overture Maps Foundation could threaten Google’s and Apple’s thrones when it comes to mapping. Having the data readily available could make it easier — and far cheaper — for developers to make apps. Right now, developers must pay to access Google Maps’ API, while Apple also charges developers who are making non-native apps.

I’ve been running OpenWRT on my routers for a while now. It started off as just an experiment on my Mi Router 3c, but it now forms a very integral part of my homelab.

I’ve since helped set up OpenWRT on a lot of different routers for my friends’ home networks, giving old routers a new lease of life and making it more secure.

Of the different routers I’ve come across that support OpenWRT, Xiaomi ones tend to stand out to me:

• They’re fairly cheap
• Easily procurable in most markets
• Have very very decent specs for the price point, and,
• Aren’t hard to put OpenWRT on

I think I’ve only seen routers from TP-Link come close to this level of support for OpenWRT, but their hardware variations often throws an axe when it comes to OpenWRT support.

What are your thoughts, and what do you run OpenWRT on?