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Ever wish you could snap a photo on your Android phone without having to wait for the camera app to load? Soon you’ll be able to do that on devices running CyanogenMod.

The new feature lets you pull down the quick settings panel from the top of the screen and tap a camera tile. That turns the tile into a viewfinder, and tapping the tile will snap a photo. When you’re done, just swipe up again to close the menu.

Sure, you’ll probably get better shots if you open a camera app, tweak some settings, adjust your focus, and so on. But the mini camera utility will attempt to auto-focus on whatever you’re pointing at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bumyRLKVcKY

Here’s a roundup of tech news from around the web.

  • CyanogenMod to let you snap photos from the Quick Settings Panel
    There was a time when the best reason to install CyanogenMod was basically to get a stock version of Android on a phone that might not otherwise offer it. But the team keeps adding cool new features that even Google didn’t think of. [Android Police]
  • CyanogenMod for Sony Xperia devices to get better camera support
    Coming soon to CyanogenMod for 2012 and later Sony Xperia Tablet and smartphone devices: HDR photos, ISO modes, scene modes, and Sony image and video stabilization. [Giulio Cervera]
  • Performance test of Kingnovel K-R42 Android TV box shows strong performance, WiFi
    The Kingnovel KR-42 is an Android TV box with an RK3188 quad-core processor, an Ethernet jack, an external antenna, and a wireless remote. I wrote about it a few weeks ago, but hadn’t had a chance to test it. Now some folks who have say it offers pretty strong performance — but then, they’re also some of the folks selling it. So take that for what it’s worth. [Geekbuying]
  • TWRP Manager app for Android lets you interact with custom recovery without first rebooting
    TWRP custom recover lets you backup or restore your Android device, flash firmware updates, or make other changes. But you usually need to reboot into recovery before you can do any of those things. This app lets you select what you want to do from within Android (although it’ll still have to reboot into recovery to perform any actions and the boot back to Android when done). [xda-developers]
  • Samsung Ativ Q with Intel Core i5 demolishes competition in Antutu benchmark (Close to 55,000)
    The Samsung Ativ Q is a convertible notebook/tablet which runs Windows and Android and which has an Intel Core i5 Haswell processor. So it’s not surprising that it can run circles around even the fastest ARM-based Android devices. What’s a little surprising is that it doesn’t score even higher. That probably has more to do with the test than the CPU. [TechHive]
  • Good news: Aol Reader beta is now live. Bad news: It seems kind of buggy at the moment
    With Google Reader scheduled to shut down next week, a number of companies are launching new (or updated) RSS reader apps. Aol’s actually looks pretty nice, but it’s missing some features such as built-in search at the moment. It launched as a public beta today. Unfortunately while I was able to import my list of feeds, I’ve been completely unable to actually view any new items. It keeps telling me that all my items are marked as read… and periodically instead of showing me today’s new feed items, it surfaces articles from a few years ago. Hopefully Aol Reader’s just going through some growing pains, but so far I’m sticking with Feedly. [Aol]

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One reply on “Lilbits (6-24-2013): Mini camera coming to CyanogenMod”

  1. /* “Good news: Aol Reader beta is now live. Bad news: It seems kind of buggy at the moment” */

    Mmmhh, how does one get to see anything at all at https://reader.aol.com/ ?

    I am running FF ESR 17.0.6 on Linux Mint and all I got to see yesterday and today is a blank, white page :-

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