Android 5.1.1 Lollipop is rolling out to Galaxy S5 Mini in the US
If you’ve been wondering when Samsung is going to update your Galaxy S5 Mini to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, it seems that today is your lucky day, in the United States at least, anyway. Owners of the Galaxy S5 Mini in the U.S. should see the firmware update hitting their handsets from today onwards.
The Android 5.1.1 update is busy rolling out for model SM-G800R4, bringing the build number to G800R4VXU1BOI1. This update has a build date of September 1st and change list number 5720691, although that doesn’t really tell you much.
Besides the welcome Android 5.1.1 goodies, the firmware update brings the usual selection of stability improvements, performance enhancements, security updates and bugfixes. If you haven’t received the update just yet, you can manually check to see if its available by going to settings/About Device and tapping on Software Update. If you’re really impatient, you can always download the firmware (1.3GB file) directly from SamMobile to install manually, just remember to follow the instructions step-by-step.
While the update is confined to the U.S. for the moment, other regions should see it roll out in the coming weeks, hopefully. This being Samsung, it could well be a month or two before it hits your device. I guess solace could be taken from knowing that at least the Galaxy S5 Mini is actually getting updated to Android 5.1.1 because it’s anyone’s guess whether it will be updated to Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
Source: SamMobile
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First LG G5 rumours suggests phone will have Snapdragon 820, custom camera sensor
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The LG G4 is one of the standout devices of 2015, so it’s natural that we look forward to its eventual successor with high expectations. A new rumour has surfaced today which suggests that LG‘s next flagship, we’re assuming is called the LG G5, will have the latest and greatest processor from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 820, as well as a custom Sony camera sensor. The news of the processor isn’t particularly surprising seeing as how good the Snapdragon 820 is expected to be, but recall that LG shunned the more powerful Snapdragon 810 this year over rumours of overheating in favour of the more stable Snapdragon 808 – we wouldn’t expect this to be the case again next year, but there’s always a chance.
The camera sensor mentioned is also quite interesting – the rumour says that the sensor will be a 20MP camera, up from the 16MP sensor in the LG G4, and it will measure just 0.5-inch wide and built by Sony. Given how impressive LG’s cameras have been over the last few years, we’re properly excited to see how this turns out if this rumour turns out to be true. Naturally, we still have the better part of half a year before LG will be releasing the LG G5, so we’ll keep our minds open for now.
What do you think about the LG G5 having a Snapdragon 820 and custom camera sensor?
Source: G for Games via Phones Arena
The post First LG G5 rumours suggests phone will have Snapdragon 820, custom camera sensor appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
Deal: 2-year subscription for Private Internet Access VPN only $59.95!
Have you heard all the horror stories? The internet can be a dangerous place, but it’s also very fun! This is why you want to be able to take advantage of all it has to offer while staying safe from government spies, hackers, eavesdroppers and more. You can effectively protect your browsing by using a VPN (virtual private network), which routes your data through remote servers and cloaks your IP so that no one can track your surfing.
The best part is a VPN can also help you bypass geographic limitations. This means you can use it to access Netflix, Hulu and other services from anywhere! Pretty awesome, right? The sad part is VPN services can get quite pricey. At one point I was paying about $20 a month! Lucky for you, the AA Deals Store has a great deal for you today, and you don’t have to follow that treacherous path.
A 2-year subscription to Private Internet Access VPN can now be acquired for only $59.95. That would be a 24% discount over the original price, so you don’t want to miss out. The best part is that it won’t only protect one device at a time. You can use this VPN with 5 devices, simultaneously. It supports Android, iOS, Mac and PC, so most of your devices will be covered.
In addition, they have over 2906 servers in 20 countries, including Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, the USA, the UK and others. Not a bad deal, right? Go sign up at the AA Deals Store!
‘No Man’s Sky’ will get a Stephen Colbert ‘Late Show’ demo
With Apple CEO Tim Cook and other guests, Stephen Colbert has shown that tech will be a big part of his Late Show appeal. That includes gaming, judging by two segments scheduled for next week. On Friday, Colbert will welcome Hello Games founder Sean Murray, who will do an interview and demonstration of No Man’s Sky. The title has made numerous appearances of late, including in our own Twitch interview (below). Sony is no doubt building hype for a release of the presumed blockbuster, which will debut on the PS4. The question on everyone’s mind, of course, is “when is it coming?” We doubt that’ll be answered on Late Show, but you never know.
Colbert’s other gaming guest is PewDiePie, who’s making an appearance on the same show as Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel, as it happens. The YouTube celeb has 40 million followers and over 10 billion page views — and is rumored to be getting his own TV show. He’ll also give a “demonstration,” according to the CBS Late Show run-down, though there’s no mention of which game he’ll play (and how he’ll avoid cursing). The two appearances mark the first gaming appearances on Late Show, though Colbert’s rivals all do segments around it, including Conan O’Brien’s “Clueless Gamer,” and Jimmy Fallon’s “Xbox with My Mom.” Colbert has also done a “Gamergate” segment on Colbert Report, but it’ll be interesting to see how he handles it outside his former conservative buffoon persona.
Ultimate VR simulator throws you around in mid-air
Virtual reality headsets can trick our eyes and ears into believing we’re someplace else. Fooling the rest of the body is a little trickier though. Companies have tried spinning chairs and omnidirectional treadmills, but nothing comes close to the “Cable Robot Simulator” developed at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. The player wears a wireless VR headset inside a carbon fibre cage, which is then suspended in mid-air and thrown around the room using eight steel cables. The exposed pod is able to tilt, bank and move with an acceleration of up to 1.5g in response to the VR experience. Researchers have shown off some basic flight and racing simulations, but we’re already imagining how it could be used in our favorite video games. A dogfight in Star Wars: Battlefront? Tearing around corners in F-Zero GX? The possibilities are endless. It’s still very much a prototype, and hardly suitable for home use, but we’re desperate to have a go ourselves.
[Image Credit: Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen]
Via: Eurogamer
Mitsubishi will repair your broken LaserVue for free
You might not remember Mitsubishi’s rear-projection LaserVue TVs, unless you purchased one and got stuck with a huge repair bill. If so, we hope you kept those receipts, because you may be entitled to a refund for any work done. Mitsubishi has settled a class-action lawsuit brought by consumers over picture problems, like darkened screen sections that appear after 8,000 to 10,000 hours of use. The legal firm handling the suit said that “if you spent your own money to repair certain problems with your LaserVue TV, you may be entitled to a repair, payment or reimbursement” of at least $500.
There was a time when Mitsubishi’s DLP-powered models were much sought after, thanks to appreciably better black levels, contrast and color saturation than other TVs of the era. However, it had to cut prices of the rear-projection TVs — which could easily run $6,000 — to compete with new LCD and laser flat panels, and elected to leave the US market back in 2012. It likely hopes that the settlement will finally be the end of its US TV adventures.
Via: HD Guru
Source: Gilardi & Co LLC
‘Batman: Arkham Knight’ never feels too big to play
This article contains spoilers for Batman: Arkham Knight; you’ve been warned.
I didn’t want to like Batman: Arkham Knight. In the long run-up to its release, I’d become increasingly disinterested every time developer Rocksteady Studios mentioned how the game had grown compared to its prequels. Twenty times bigger than Arkham Asylum! My eyes glazed over. Drive the Batmobile around Gotham! Yawn. My worry was that Arkham Knight would be a product of the Warner Bros. Interactive marketing department, riddling the series I love with bloat and unnecessary features solely because the PlayStation 4‘s and Xbox One‘s more powerful hardware allowed for bigger experiences. It’s been a while since I was this happy to be wrong: Arkham Knight‘s genius is that despite its physical size, the game never feels larger than whatever carefully constructed moment you’re in.
None of the myriad open-world games I’ve played in the past almost 14 years have come close to doing this. Grand Theft Auto V‘s faux Los Angeles, for example, is rife with open-world options. Whenever I’m playing Rockstar’s crime simulator, I can’t shake the feeling that whatever story mission I’m doing is a distraction keeping me from taking peyote and flying around as an eagle or holding up a liquor store. There are simply too many things I can do at any given moment and it’s easy enough to abandon one activity and move onto the next.
Arkham Knight surprisingly doesn’t suffer from this open-world ADD despite the amount of missions available — be they subterranean races in the Batmobile, searching for the hidden-in-plain-sight Riddler statues or discovering the mystery behind crucified out-of-towners. The play space is exponentially larger than 2009’s first entry Asylum, but Rocksteady’s been incredibly careful to not overwhelm the player. In large part, the studio achieves this by gating progression off in a way that isn’t obvious.
The game’s Gotham City is separated into smaller islands and each is closed off from the next in a way that makes sense within the game’s fiction: Scarecrow and the titular Arkham Knight are on the loose; raising the bridges between burgs keeps their ground forces from spreading. Rather than something like Fallout 3 plopping you in the middle of a vast, post-apocalyptic Washington, DC, and leaving you feeling utterly overwhelmed by possibility, Arkham Knight takes a heavy, but transparent, hand in controlling where you’re headed.
A few missions here and a few there within a cordoned-off area and I was on to the next, just as I started feeling comfortable with the place I was in. And more often than not, those missions didn’t leave the confines of their origin “island.” Furthermore, rather than presenting mission-origin points as places you have to travel to, selecting your next task comes from a menu.
Arkham Knight takes a heavy, but transparent, hand in controlling where you’re headed.
In that sense, Arkham Knight feels an awful lot like a linear game. I think that’s why it’s sucked me into its world in a way that The Witcher 3 didn’t, or a Grand Theft Auto hasn’t in a while: Everything feels manageable and deeply personal. Instead of 20 different missions available for me to do at any given moment, I have several and they’re all only a minute or so away from wherever I am. I don’t feel lost while I’m grappling around the Gotham skyline, either. There’s always a voice in my ear acting as a signpost for what I need to do next, whether that’s Barbara “Oracle” Gordon giving tactical advice, the ever-present threat of Scarecrow or the hallucinated Joker that pops up where I least expect him.
But there’s a dark side to Arkham Knight’s linearity: At a certain point, you can’t just abort a mission and joyride in the Batmobile. If you’re stuck in that 10-on-1 brawl, you’re stuck until you have the patience again to give it another go or figure out what gadget is needed to progress (hint: It’s usually the line gun). A lot of that continued motivation is driven by the narrative — it constantly has me guessing how much more the Caped Crusader can be broken. Is Batman really Gotham’s savior? That’s something I’m sadly unsure of, but unlike most other recent open-world games, I’ll actually finish Arkham Knight and find out.
T-Mobile Shares Full Details on $5/Month iPhone 6s Offer
T-Mobile has shared the full details of its new JUMP! On Demand promotion that offers the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus for as low as $5 and $9 per month respectively with a qualifying smartphone trade in. The exact monthly payment is calculated based on both the iPhone model purchased and smartphone model traded in.
A base 16GB iPhone 6s starts at $5 per month with zero due upfront when trading in an iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 or Galaxy Note 5. The price rises to $10 per month with an iPhone 5s, Galaxy S5 or Galaxy Note 4 trade in, or to $15 per month with the trade in of most other smartphones.
A 16GB iPhone 6s Plus starts at $9 per month with zero due upfront with an iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 or Galaxy Note 5 trade in. The price rises to $14 per month with an iPhone 5s, Galaxy S5 or Galaxy Note 4 trade in, or to $19 per month with the trade in of most other smartphones.
The promotion also offers the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus in larger storage capacities, but upfront payments of $99.99 or $199.99 are required for 64GB or 128GB models respectively. The monthly payments for the new iPhones are $1 cheaper for 64GB models and $2 cheaper for 128GB models compared to 16GB pricing.
Each payment must be made for 18 months, at which point the iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus must be returned in good condition. T-Mobile offers the option to pay an additional $164 to keep the iPhone, bringing the total cost to $524 for a 16GB iPhone 6s — a savings of $125 over the device’s full retail price through Apple.
T-Mobile also has a non-trade-in JUMP! On Demand promotion that offers the 16GB iPhone 6s for $20 per month, or 16GB iPhone 6s Plus for $24 per month, for 18 months with zero dollars paid upfront. As with the new trade-in promotion, 64GB and 128GB models are available with upfront payments of $99.99 or $199.99 respectively.
T-Mobile will honor these deals for customers who already pre-ordered an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus with a trade in by issuing an upfront bill credit.
T-Mobile will begin selling the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus on September 25.
Fantastical 2 for Mac Updated With New Features, Support for OS X El Capitan
Fantastical 2 for Mac received a significant update today, adding support for OS X El Capitan and several interface tweaks to improve the Fantastical for Mac experience. Today’s 2.1 update adds a huge list of new features that were requested by Fantastical 2 users since the app first launched in March.
For users running OS X El Capitan, it’s now possible to swipe an event in a list to delete it. All users will be able to scroll to a specific day or week in the Week and Month views with a trackpad, and arrow keys now navigate in Day, Week, and Month views.
When working with Reminders, it’s now possible to organize them by list. They’ll also show up in Day, Week, and Month views, and there are shortcuts for cutting, copying, and pasting events and Reminders.
There are several new preferences options for the Menu bar icon and there are new font options. Flexibits has also fixed several bugs and improved overall performance when loading events with a lot of invitees. A full list of changes added in today’s update can be seen below:
– Full support for OS X El Capitan
– Ability to scroll to a specific day or week in the Week and Month views when using a trackpad
– Reminders now appear in the Day, Week, and Month views
– Reminders can now be organized by list
– Cut, copy, and paste events and reminders
– Added Dock app icon badge preference
– Additional options for Menu bar icon preference
– Text size setting now adjusts the text size in the Day, Week, and Month views
– Added Extra Small and Huge text size options
– Arrow keys can now navigate in the Day, Week, and Month views
– Invitee autocomplete now includes other users on CalDAV servers that support user lookup
– Improved drag-and-drop when dragging events or reminders to the Finder
– Use a pinch-and-zoom gesture to change the number of hours in the Day and Week views
– All-day section in Day and Week views now shows more events
– Added Message with Sound alerts for birthdays
– Swipe an event in the list to delete (OS X El Capitan only)
– Drag-and-drop URLs or text on event or reminder details to change the URL or note
– Added preference to disable going to today after adding new items
– Performance improvements when loading events with huge numbers of invitees
– Fixed an issue where the incorrect date would sometimes be shown when opening Fantastical
– Fixed an issue where times could appear shifted in the Day and Week views
– Fixed an issue where alerts couldn’t be removed on Google Calendar
– Fixed an issue where a single instance of a recurring invitation wouldn’t appear in the pending invitations section
– Fixed an issue where some invitations imported from .ics files didn’t allow responding to them
– Various fixes and improvements
Fantastical 2 can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for $39.99. [Direct Link]
iPad Pro Case Announcements Rolling Out Ahead of November Launch
Announced alongside the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus at Apple’s “Hey Siri” event earlier in September, the iPad Pro has seen a little less coverage than the company’s new smartphone line thanks to its less immediate launch date of November. All the same, a few companies have confirmed accessory support for the 12.9-inch tablet, with detailed information and pre-orders already up for some of the third-party cases.
First is Waterfield’s zippered iPad Travel Express case, which the company has offered for the iPad Air 2 in the past, and will now provide versions for the iPad Mini 4 ($64) and all-new iPad Pro ($89). Waterfield promises that the durable case will store charging cables, power bricks, the new Apple Pencil, and can even fit the full iPad Pro alongside the Smart Keyboard accessory Apple also introduced on September 9.
The Travel Express case comes with an optional shoulder strap accessory, sold separately, that customers can purchase to carry their iPad Pro hands-free. Waterfield’s iPad Pro case is up for pre-order now, but the company notes that those who order now can expect a shipping date of about a week-and-a-half after Apple begins shipping the iPad Pro units to customers.
Brenthaven’s BX² Sleeve Plus acts as sort of an active-lifestyle counterpart to Waterfield’s more classically designed case, with a “patent-pending Secure Grip handle” to provide users with a strengthened hold on the case alongside the company’s “Xtreme Foam” outer layer providing drop protection from all sides. The $49.95 case — available for purchase today — also has a smaller outer pocket to fit a smartphone or charging cable, and comes in both blue/black and red/black color options.
Catalyst touts its upcoming case for the iPad Pro as “the world’s first fully-waterproof case” for the new Apple tablet, with a waterproof rating of IP68 that can submerge up to 2m. The company says that full functionality of the iPad Pro is kept in check thanks to an “integrated touchscreen film,” allowing users access to Touch ID and all the promised nuances of the Apple Pencil.
The case will also provide unobstructed acoustic emissions from the iPad Pro’s four speakers, thanks to the location of a handful of “acoustic membranes” on the case. The Catalyst Case for iPad Pro is the only option not up for immediate purchase or pre-order today, with the company encouraging users to follow them on various social media platforms and sign up for their mailing list to be updated on its availability.
As with any major product launch, there are also a handful of cheaper knock-off options for customers to consider. On Amazon alone the cheapest alternative for an iPad Pro case is $6.99, with a few other, more intricate cases going up to around $29.99. With a launch in November, customers who plan to purchase Apple’s new big-screen tablet have plenty of time to shop around for a suitable case option, and should probably keep in mind that Apple will introduce its own first-party options into the mix as we get closer to the device’s launch.
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