Let’s get net neutral in November mailbag | #PNWeekly 280 (LIVE at 3p ET)

Enough food for a week in the fridge, enough football for a season and enough shopping for you to drop the habit. On this show, we jam about net neutrality.

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Wileyfox after Cyanogen: Android Nougat is coming

Wileyfox is one of two prominent manufacturer partners to Android ROM vendor Cyanogen. And, at least for the next few days, it still is.

But beyond December 31, the UK startup will have to figure out how to bring fresh updates to the deprecated software on its six devices out in the market.

Luckily for its customers, the company looks committed to the challenge and is addressing the issue in a statement through its live chat support staff:

Hi, Our OS Strategy and Software plan moving forward will be complete soon.
We have agreed a smooth transition where we will continue deliver constant and consistent software and OS updates.
Our plan is to bring our entire Wileyfox portfolio onto Android N, the latest version of Google Android’s OS, in a timely manner – while still continuing to protect the range with Google software security updates.
We will share our full and final plan in due time.

The message received by Redditor /u/BurkusCat (linked in our Source spot) also added that Wileyfox does not represent Cyanogen in its comments and that it is confident that the “software will continue to evolve and stay pure to Android, enhanced to maximise our consumers’ user experience.”

While there are some stray manufacturers with the odd Cyanogen phone or two (like ZUK and bq) Micromax sub-brand Yu is the only other company with a Cyanogen-dependent product portfolio that will either need weaning off or reworking altogether. We shall see how these companies evolve.

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Wileyfox Swift 2 and 2 Plus blend respectable specs, premium design and aggressive pricing

What does the (Wiley) fox say? Nothing worth writing home about just a few months ago, when this British smartphone-manufacturing startup followed last year’s warmly received first-generation Swift and Storm with a far too humble Spark trio, but a “fresh look and impressive tech upgrade” now brings the Swift 2 in the limelight for all the right reasons.

Well, most of the right reasons anyway, as we can’t really act impressed by a 5-inch 720 display or Snapdragon 430 processor. On the decidedly bright side, both the Wileyfox Swift 2 and Swift 2 Plus “make sophisticated statements” with “delicate curves”, aviation-grade aluminum metal housing, and diamond cut “iconic” fox logos.

Priced at £189 ($230) on British shores, compared to £159 ($195) for the standard configuration, the Plus version stands out thanks primarily to an awesome-sounding 16MP rear-facing Samsung 3P3 camera sensor with ISOCELL technology and f2.0 aperture.

The higher-end model also packs 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage space, while the non-Plus second-gen Swift settles for 2 and 16 gigs respectively, as well as a 13MP main Samsung shooter. Everything else is the same, including 8MP selfie cams, fingerprint recognition, NFC support, microSD capabilities, USB Type-C connectivity, 2,700 mAh battery capacity, 8.64 mm profiles, “big box speaker set-up”, and of course, pre-loaded Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 software “powered” by Cyanogen 13.1.

For a post-Brexit upper mid-range smartphone duo, the bang for buck pound feels quite competitive, don’t you think?

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Could Google be eying Apple’s Swift as a language to help move Android away from Java?

June 2014 brought us that year’s Apple WWDC gathering, introducing the world to iOS 8. Apple’s significant update to its mobile platform might have grabbed headlines with all the new features it was delivering, but we also got news of plenty of changes behind the scenes, like the new Metal graphics system for driving next-gen games. Those included the debut of Swift, Apple’s new programming language designed to complement Objective-C while addressing some of its shortcomings. In the time since, ...

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