Substratum Release v930 Brings New User Interface, Improved Support For Samsung Users & More

All of us are just getting out of the mood of the festivities and returning to our normal lives, but the hard working developers of Substratum have been working tirelessly to give us an update as a New Year's present. And the new update is here. Substratum's Public Release has been updated to v930 and brings along with it a new user interface, template reinforcement and much more.

Substratum has now gotten rid of the side menu and the options from the side menu are now available in the form of a bar at the bottom. If you have got small hands, the bottom bar will ensure easy one handed use. The options which aren't available in the bottom bar can now be found under the Settings menu. The new user interface utilizes Google's new downloadable fonts API. There is also a new way using which you can close themes. Apart from using the back key, you can now also drag the theme down from the top edge of the screen to close it. Consider this similar to the way videos in YouTube's application can be dragged down as a small window to the bottom right corner. The new UI also features several new animations inspired by animation hero characters. The pull down to close themes feature may affect transparent themes. The Substratum team have said that the background for transparent themes in the Substratum application will remain dark until a solution is figured out.

Substratum v930 includes several improvements for Samsung users. According to Nicholas Chum, Samsung users should "now have a much speedier experience" while applying themes. Several crashes, hangs and bugs have also been fixed. Additionally, several security enhancements have also been made.

Keeping in mind the privacy concerns, the Substratum team have deprecated the use of push notifications. The Substratum application will still collect the data of crashes and analytics associated with it. You need not worry though because no personal data is ever collected.

Samsung will soon be releasing Oreo for its devices. Nicholas Chum has said that the Sungstratum (Substratum add-on for Samsung users) users will have to move over to Andromeda (Substratum's add-on for computers) to theme their devices on Oreo. Sungstratum was specifically designed to enable certain features for Samsung's Nougat based user interface of GraceUX. Android Oreo supports native theming, and for Oreo based GraceUX, Samsung will be employing Android's native theming to use. With the Oreo update, Sungstratum will become defunct. Samsung devices which would remain stuck on Nougat can continue to use Sungstratum but those on Oreo will have to make use of Andromeda. To help the current Sungstratum users to start using Andromeda, the Substratum team will be conducting a sale (or probably sales or giveaway).

According to comments of several users on Google+, this update breaks on Android Wear. Several users also expressed complaints regarding the new font being used by Substratum. If you have issues with the font or you don't like the new user interface, then you can shift over to the old UI from Settings > Advanced.

Substratum v930 is rolling out via the Play Store right now. If you haven't come across the update on Play Store yet, you can update Substratum by installing its APK from here. For a detailed changelog, refer to the link in the source.

Source: Nicholas Chum

Krittin Kalra

Krittin Kalra is a 20 year old Android freak. Striving for passions, chasing down his dreams and living a life without regrets is his sole mantra. A bit moody, he also does custom ROM reviews for AndroGuider. Currently pursuing his B.Tech, he aspires to follow his heart.