The Nokia Blog

All the latest goodies from the shop to add to your collection!

The Fortnite Item Shop has updated once again, and players can now hop in and pick up some new gear, including brand new cosmetics, gliders, and other items.

Today’s update brings with it the return of some older outfits in the form of the Rebel and Revolt outfits, as well as the ability to pick up the newly introduced Cryptic outfit and Enigma item spray that debuted with Season 9 yesterday. Alongside the newer skins, players can pick up the Power Chord outfit and the Anarchu Axe harvesting tool, as well as the Crossroads harvesting tool.

Alongside the bevy of skins and pickaxes, players can also pick up some cheaper items to add to their arsenal. Today, the Insight and Tactics Officer outfits are available in the game, along with the Airlift glider and Studded Axe harvesting tool. For those looking to add to their emote collection, the Intensity and Switchstep moves are available.

As is the case with every day, the Fortnite item shop updates every day at 8 pm EST, which means the clock is ticking on your ability to pick up any of these items.

Updated May 10, 2019: The store updated with all the latest goodies for you to enjoy!

Google sees custom OEM gestures as a ‘power user option,’ and will not force brands to use Android Q’s navigation gestures.

Google introduced new navigation gestures in Android Q, and the key point is that the back button is going away, with a side-swipe gesture taking its place. The move obviously led to a lot of confusion, with users left to ponder whether custom gestures from the likes of Samsung, Huawei, and others will be waylaid in favor of Google’s new prescribed system.

We now have more clarity on the matter. Allen Huang, Project Manager for Android System UI at Google, spoke to our friends at Android Authority, stated that while Google is “strongly encouraging” OEMs to adopt the new navigation gestures, it will not force them to do so.

To simplify, custom navigation gestures are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. From Huang:

We see custom OEM gestures as a power user option. Gesture navigation is a challenge for developers. They need to decide ‘Which of my gestures is going to be back?’

People navigate back over 150 times per day. We want to make this simple to learn and understand.

That’s a welcome move from Google, because I prefer Samsung’s gesture navigation to Google’s implementation. Android has been — and will always be — about choice, so it’s good to see that Google isn’t enforcing OEMs to stick to one particular navigation system. And if you’re not sold on the idea of gesture navigation at all, Android Q will still let you select the legacy three-button navigation bar.

Android Q beta 3 review: Dark theme, gesture navigation and more notification changes

Google is leaning in to places where it can deliver the best experiences.

For the last several years, Google has saved a special part of its starting keynote at I/O for VR and AR. It started with Google casually handing out Cardboard to developers as the result of a 20% project, and grew tremendously from there. Now, Google is a full VR and AR powerhouse, complete with Marvel heroes posing with you right inside the Pixel camera app and several of the most popular VR apps on the planet being developed in house.

This year, however, AR and VR didn’t really get a specific section of the keynote. Clay Bavor did not take the stage to unveil some brilliant new thing. And while some of the headlines you may read try to create a narrative of doubt inside Google regarding the future of VR and AR, the truth is we’re seeing integration on a scale that matches the early days of Assistant.

Augment everything, everywhere

Walking up to Google I/O this year, there was never not a line in front of the big sign just outside the gate. Everyone wants to take their picture with the big I/O sign, but this year was different. This year, Google staff were waiting to help you take special AR photos with the sign, encouraging you to jump into the air as the photo was taken so you could see a spectacular version of the sign come to life with you inside it.

AR was everywhere at I/O this year. It was part of multiple sections of the keynote, including bringing AR to Google Search and Maps for navigation. The demo area for AR was never not busy, as people wandered around from station to station to explore new experiences.

Most of these demos are things we’ve seen before, just more polished. You can see the advances in facial tracking as you shoot lasers from your eyes and blast squares from your mouth as you open it. Tapping on a photo on a screen brings a massive version of that thing to life on the pedestal in front of you. Tapping on the colorful garden through your phone makes new flowers appear, and everyone who looks through their phones can see what you see. These are all announcements we’ve seen in the past brought to life, like cloud anchors and facial mapping and AR view in Chrome.

The lack of a shiny new announcement here was, in my view, way less important that the massive integration. You can smile in your Pixel Camera and the app knows to start a countdown to take a photo. Google Maps is going to place huge visible markers in front of you when walking so you know where you’re headed with greater ease. Even the I/O maps scattered throughout the festival allowed you to point your phone at them and see anchored pins everywhere to make navigation easier.

The bottom line here could be more clear, Google is investing heavily in making AR amazing, and enabling developers to do the same. You can expect much deeper integration with many Google products over the next year, and many more apps in the Play Store with these same features.

Virtually no mention of VR

Cardboard has come and gone (unless you’re Nintendo, apparently) and Daydream Standalone hasn’t really caught on the same way Oculus has with Go and Quest. Google’s own Pixel 3a won’t be supporting Daydream out of the box, due to performance concerns. So, VR at Google is dead, right?

LOL, nah.

Google has never been more deeply integrated in the VR ecosystem as it is right now, it just doesn’t have a solid footing in the hardware aspect of VR right now. Tilt Brush, which is without a doubt one of the most entertaining painting apps in any medium, is coming to Oculus Quest this month after seeing tremendous success on the Desktop VR stores. Owlchemy Labs, which is owned by Google, just published a spectacular sequel to its tremendously popular Job Simulator and it’s already doing quite well in stores. And then there’s Google Earth VR and YouTube VR, which are highly coveted VR experiences on the platforms with access.

It’s clear the Google VR team still has quite a bit of life left in them.

Daydream may not be in the foreground of Google’s VR plans right now, but Google itself is on every VR platform currently available in major ways. And many of the things these teams do push VR forward every day, in face the Owlchemy Labs people are largely responsible for many of the tools used to stream from within a VR game due to how explosively popular its first two titles continue to be.

Does this mean Google will give up on hardware and focus just in experiences? I wouldn’t count on that either. In a recent chat with Cnet’s Scott Stein, Clay Bavor made it clear everything is alive and well in VR land.

On the hardware devices side, we’re much more in a mode of R&D and thoughtfully building the Lego bricks that we’re going to need in order to snap together and make some really compelling experiences

So while some things may be publicly on pause, it’s clear the Google VR team still has quite a bit of life left in them.

Get ready for a fun year

The clock has already started counting down to the next Google I/O, and while we’re likely to see a lot more in AR on phones this year compared to VR on dedicated headsets, there’s plenty to be excited about right now for this whole category. Like Microsoft, Google has a long term vision where VR and AR intersect somewhere in the middle. And with a healthy collection of quality VR and AR experiences all polished up and ready for everyone to love, Google’s hand will continue to reach into this growing industry.

Digital Wellbeing cuts down on your phone addiction, but it could be causing performance problems on the Pixel 3/3 XL.

Digital Wellbeing is designed to curb phone addiction, with the feature offering tools to measure and limit the amount of time you spend in an app. It gives you detailed insights into how much time you’ve spent in each app, number of times you unlocked your phone over the course of a day, and notifications received. It’s a great new addition to Android, and one that has the potential to affect real change.

That said, it looks like Digital Wellbeing could be causing performance issues on the Pixel 3 and 3 XL. For several months after their debut, Pixel 3 owners have complained about the interface being laggy and the performance in general not being on par with other flagships. If a thread on the Google Pixel sub-reddit is to be believed, the issue is down to Digital Wellbeing.

As noted by user Trueray17, disabling Digital Wellbeing dramatically improves performance on the Pixel 3 and 3 XL:

So, I have literally spent months trying different methods in attempts of fixing the Pixel 3 sluggishness and stuttering issues. I tried reboots, uninstalling unwanted apps, clearing the cache, full system wipes, etc but no matter what the performance issues would return. A few days ago I stared at my pixel 3 just confused why is performance so terrible, I personally don’t believe it’s the lack of ram but software related. I asked myself what is the last big feature that Google added to Android Pie?! Just maybe that is the culprit.

Then, Digital Wellbeing came in to mind. So I went in to my settings clicked on Digital Wellbeing, clicked the 3 dots on the top right and turned off usage access. Disabling digital Wellbeing from tracking apps and data. After that, my phone has been butter smooth not one stutter or lag. Switching between apps is a breeze now, no more text input lag just speedy performance throughout the whole UI.

Also, if you reduce animations in developer options it’s a whole new experience (blazing fast). I highly recommend everyone who is experiencing performance issues (sluggishness, lag, stutters) throughout the UI to disable digital Wellbeing. Let us know if it fixed the performance issues and spread the word.

Judging by the dozens of replies to the thread, it looks like switching off Digital Wellbeing actually made a difference to several users. I disabled the feature on my primary Pixel 3 XL several months ago, but I also have a Pixel 3 unit running Pie that has Digital Wellbeing turned on from day one and it doesn’t have any performance issues.

If your Pixel 3 or 3 XL is laggy and you’re looking for a fix, it doesn’t hurt to disable Digital Wellbeing to see if that makes a difference. Here’s how you can disable the feature on your Pixel 3/3 XL: head to Settings, navigate to Digital Wellbeing, select the action menu (three vertical dots on the top right corner), and hit Turn off usage access. In the Usage access window, go to Digital Wellbeing and toggle the permit usage access to off.

Are you seeing performance issues on your Pixel 3 or 3 XL? Did turning off Digital Wellbeing solve the problem? Let us know in the comments.