New Site

Ive moved my blog to my new site https://kashifkhan.org

Nvidia Shield Video Loss Issue

I recently got the excellent NVIDIA Shield and quickly hooked it up in to my existing Home Theater Set up (Shield -> 4k Receiver -> 4K TV) . I noticed that whenever I increased/decreased the volume on the receiver, the Shield would lose the video signal for a good 2 seconds or so and this would happen whether there was a video playing or not. After a lot of searching on Reddit and the shield forums I learnt that there is a HDMI handshake issue with Sony receivers  and that nothing could be done about it other than replacing the receiver or just setting the volume before playing any video.

After some days I plugged my HTPC back in and noticed it was doing the same thing !!! So I turned off the last thing that I turned on the Samsung TV which was UHD Mode. That did the trick, no more loss of video when I changed the volume. Switch over to the shield, the issue was still happening so I went in to the display settings. This is where I remembered another thing : I hate the soap opera feel on movies so I had set the refresh rate of TV at 4k @ 24fps . The shield was set was 4k @ 60 hz, so i lowered it down to 23.976 hz and no more flickering, everything was working fine !!

So if you have the NVIDIA Shield with a Sony Receiver make sure they are set to the proper settings for the display.

Google Building An Echo Competitor

I wonder what took them so long. This was such an obvious thing for them to do esp with the always listening feature on Nexus and Moto devices. They really missed a huge opportunity with the onHub routers but im hoping this is a surprise release during IO

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11298426/google-building-amazon-echo-rival

Android Mid Month Security Patch

Its stories like these that make the case for Nexus phones even stronger. It does seem like Android N is trying to get a grip on the "fragmentation" issue but till that is truly fixed my recommendation to family and friends is the Nexus line of devices

http://source.android.com/security/advisory/2016-03-18.html

Telegram

Ive been using Hangouts for years but have felt that over that same time it hasnt gone anywhere. In terms of features it seems years behind the current crop. For the past week or so I have been using telegram and absolutely enjoy using it. Something as simple as link previews just makes the sharing experience between friends that much better......Google better whip up something fast for messaging else they wont have a race in this horse at all

LG G5 - Modular Phone

Going by the video from Android Central LG has the winner here. The phone looks different and in a good way. If this phone is a preview of things to come from Project Ara then Google has a real winner with the modular phone concept. 

It should be interesting to see what Samsung reveals in a few hours with the S7 series but LG has done something innovative here

Samsung Galaxy S7

Again thanks to evleaks, look like Samsung will have the best looking phone this year again 

HTC M10

Courtesy Evan blass we get a sneak peak at the HTC iPhone M10...

It looks hideous, an odd mix of the Galaxy phones and iPhone.