T-Mobile Giving Customers a Free Subscription to MLB.TV Premium

T-Mobile today announced that it is once again partnering with Major League Baseball, this time to give all T-Mobile customers a free one-year subscription to the MLB.TV Premium service. This is the third year in a row T-Mobile has partnered up with Major League Baseball, and this year’s giveaway is in celebration of three more years of partnership.

“For the last three years MLB has been with us every step of the way as we have re-written the rules of wireless. This year we’re doubling down – and expanding the relationship even further to include the Home Run Derbies and free MLB.TV for customers,” said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile. “This isn’t just some corporate sponsorship. It’s the combined effort of two passionate teams bringing even more amazing perks and game-changing moves to baseball fans over the next three years!”

T-Mobile Simple Choice customers on qualifying plans are able to sign up for a full MLB.TV Premium subscription valued at $109.99 starting on April 3. To get the discount, customers will need to subscribe using the T-Mobile network.

The service will allow T-Mobile subscribers to watch 2,430 out-of-market regular season games live on their T-Mobile devices. It will take advantage of T-Mobile’s BingeOn feature, so streaming MLB content on a device connected to the T-Mobile network will not count against data caps. MLB.TV Premium is available on Macs, iOS devices, the Apple TV, and a number of other consoles and set-top boxes.

Also included is a free premium subscription to MLB.com At Bat, something T-Mobile has given away in past years.

(Thanks, Asa!)

Tag: T-Mobile
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BOT Home Automation Ring Video Doorbell Pro Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Smaller than the original, with swappable faceplates.

BOT Home Automation

Up from the 720p camera in the original $200 Ring, the new Ring Video Doorbell Pro from BOT Home Automation goes on sale today and boasts a 1080p high-definition video feed, along with a sleeker look, swappable face plates, and customizable motion detection zones. It’s a compelling list of new features. The trade-off — it costs $50 more and is hard-wired only. The original Ring could be hard-wired or powered with rechargeable batteries.

The original Ring is available in 83 countries, including in Australia for AU$244 and in the UK for £127, plus additional shipping charges. I’d expect the new one will be available overseas, too. The $250 price converts to approximately £180 and AU$335.

Other smart doorbells

• August Doorbell Cam
• DoorBird
• Skybell 2.0

Hopefully, the extra specs add up to clearer video in practice. That wasn’t always the case with the 720p Ring. It should have been an obvious step up in video quality over the 640×480 picture of the competitive $200 Skybell 2.0, but over the course of testing both, we preferred Skybell’s feed as Ring’s lagged and streaked more frequently.

Still, the Ring proved a significant leap forward from its predecessor — BOT Home Automation’s disappointing Doorbot, so there’s room for optimism that the Pro will take a similar step. The Ring Pro’s other big new feature is similarly great in theory — you can actually draw your own zones for customized motion detection. With the original Ring, you picked from predefined zones, so it’ll be interesting to see if refining them beyond that makes a tangible difference.

Otherwise, both Rings share a lot of the same qualities:

• Push alerts when motion is detected and/or when the doorbell rings
• Two-way audio so you can talk to whoever is at your door
• An activity log
• Optional cloud storage of recorded clips ($3 per month or $30 per year for 6 months of storage)

The Ring Pro also works with both 5GHz and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi connections, as opposed to the 2.4GHz-only Ring.

The Ring Pro isn’t replacing the original Ring. If you don’t have a hard-wired doorbell, or don’t care to pay $50 for the new look or extra definition in terms of video and motion detection, you’ll still be able to purchase the $200 Ring. You can order the $250 Ring Pro now on the company’s site. The units are scheduled to start shipping in April. At that point, we’ll see if the new features do enough to help the Ring Pro stand out from an increasingly competitive field that includes a model from August and the Bird Home Automation Doorbird.

Nixon Mission Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Nixon

It’s not recommended that you shower with most smartwatches, let alone swim with them, but the Nixon Mission isn’t your average smartwatch.

The Mission is a rugged and durable Android Wear-powered watch with a polycarbonate and 316L stainless-steel body, and a fully round AMOLED display. It’s also one of the first smartwatches to feature Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Wear 2100 system-on-a-chip, which uses 25 percent less power than previous chips and should deliver improved battery life.

Nixon

The standout feature, though, is the watch’s water resistance. The Mission is the first smartwatch to carry a 10ATM water-resistant rating. That means it can withstand pressures equivalent to a depth of 100 meters (about 330 feet). While you still can’t go deep-sea diving with it or jump off a jet ski, the watch should be able to withstand just about everything else, including snorkeling, swimming and even surfing. In fact, Nixon encourages it.

The California-based company built an app for the watch that shows surf and ski conditions at a glance of the wrist. It also partnered with Trace, an action sports company, to help with tracking various activities.

Nixon

Other specs include 4GB of internal storage for music and apps, and 512MB of RAM, both of which are relatively standard for Android Wear watches. The Mission reminds me a lot of the Casio Smart Outdoor Watch that we saw at the CES trade show in January. The two are quite similar, although the Mission has a higher water-resistant rating and includes GPS, in addition to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

The Mission can do everything other Android Wear watches can do. You can customize the watch face, download apps and view personalized Google Now cards and notifications for emails, calls, texts and app alerts from your Android or iOS device.

The Nixon Mission will arrive later this year for $400. That price converts to about £280 in the UK and AU$530 in Australia.

Raspberry Pi 3 review

There are several key things that have helped make the Raspberry Pi such a success. They include its feature set (like the GPIO pins), its ease of access, and its price. And it seems that this last point is a core value for the Raspberry Pi foundation. Over the last few years the foundation has either made new boards which are even cheaper (like the Pi Zero) or it has increased the performance and functionality of the boards, while retaining the same price. The Raspberry Pi 3 falls into the latter category, a new board, with better performance and new features, but yet at the same familiar price.

The Raspberry Pi 3 is a natural and progressive upgrade from the Pi 2. Not only does it open the door to 64-bit computing because of its 64-bit Cortex-A53 based processor, but it also adds Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, two key features for the Internet of Things (IoT).

Buy on Amazon

I ordered a Pi 3 on the day it was announced and I have been playing with it ever since it arrived. Is it a worthwhile upgrade? Is now the best time to buy your first Raspberry Pi? Let’s find out.

Read more:

• Raspberry Pi Zero review
• Raspberry Pi 2 review

Specifications

Design

As with all Raspberry Pi boards, what you are buying is just a circuit board. A versatile and fully functional computer circuit board, but just a circuit board nonetheless. Of course there are a multitude of accessories including cases, touchscreens and cases with touchscreens, but for $35 what you get is the board. To use it you will need a microSD card, a keyboard, a mouse, and a TV or monitor with a HDMI port.

In the middle of the board is the black System-on-a-Chip (SoC) from Broadcom with the HDMI port below it and the USB ports, plus the Ethernet port, to the right. Along the top edge are the GPIO pins which are fully compatible with previous Pi boards. On the bottom of the board is the microSD slot which is used to store the OS and your data.

The board is powered via a 5V micro USB port, but unlike previous generations this one needs a bit more juice. It is now recommended that you use a 2.5A adapter if you want to connect power-hungry USB devices to the board.

Hardware

There are three big changes to this new board that mean it earns the title “Pi 3” rather than something like “Pi 2+”. The first is the upgrade to 64-bits. The new board uses a 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core Cortex-A53 ARMv8 based CPU from Broadcom. The new SoC, the BCM2837, keeps the same basic architecture as its predecessors, so any projects and tutorials which rely on the precise details of the Raspberry Pi hardware will continue to work.

The BCM2835 found in the Raspberry Pi 1 and the Raspberry Pi Zero contains a single core ARMv6 (i.e. and ARM1176) CPU and a VideoCore IV CPU. The BCM2836 keeps the same GPU core but replaces the ARMv6 CPU with a quad-core ARMv7 Cortex-A7 CPU. The new BCM2837 remains essentially the same as the BCM2836 but replaces the four 32-bit Cortex-A7 cores with four 64-bit Cortex-A53 cores.

The other two big changes are in the wireless department. For the first time the Raspberry Pi now has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Both of these were previously available via USB dongles, however by including them on the board the Raspberry Pi foundation has throw down the gauntlet to all other would-be IoT developer boards. I can only hope that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth become a standard for all future Raspberry Pi boards. Anyone want a Raspberry Pi Zero+ with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, even if it costs $15? Yes please! But I digress.

As for the rest of the hardware, it is basically unchanged from the Pi 2. You get the 40 General Purpose Input and Output (GPIO) ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, a digital camera interface and a display interface (not to be confused with the HDMI port).

Software

The operating system of choice for all Raspberry Pi boards is Linux, specifically the Debian based Raspbian. The Pi 3 will also run Linux based media center distributions like OSMC. You also get access to Windows 10 IoT Core support, if that is the kind of thing you like! Plus don’t forget RISC OS, an OS designed in Cambridge, England by Acorn. RISC OS was first released in 1987 and its origins can be traced back to the original team that developed the ARM microprocessor.

Installing Raspbian is a breeze. You need to download the New Out Of the Box Software (NOOBS) zip archive and extract it onto a blank microSD card. Boot the Pi 3 from the card and follow the on screen instructions. Once complete the board will reboot into the Raspbian desktop environment.

When the desktop appears you will probably want to configure the networking, either Ethernet or Wi-Fi. To do this left-click on the network icon (near the clock at the top-right of the screen) and you will see a list of all available wireless networks. Select the one you want and enter the password. If you right-click the network icon and choose the “Wifi Networks (dhcpcdui) Settings” option from the pop-up menu, you can manually enter a static IP address and/or configure the wired networking.

With all this talk of 64-bit processors you might think that the software running in the Pi is also fully 64-bit… unfortunately not quite. Remember how you can install a 32-bit version of Windows or a 32-bit version of Linux on a 64-bit Intel desktop? Well, it is exactly the same with 64-bit ARM based processors. At the moment Raspbian is the 32-bit version both at the kernel level and for the userland tools (that means the command line tools and installed programs like the browser). In the future the Raspberry Pi foundation will look into releasing a 64-bit distro. If and when that happens it will likely happen in two stages, first a 64-bit kernel and 32-bit userland and then fully 64-bit. My guess is that the first 64-bit Raspberry Pi distros will come from Arch and CentOS and not from Raspbian. However while we wait, the 32-bit versions run perfectly well.

OSMC

As well as Raspbian there are lots of other general Linux distributions that work with the Raspberry Pi3 including Arch Linux, CentOS and many others. One of the specialist distributions is OSMC (the Open Source Media Center). It is based on Debian and boots straight into XBMC/Kodi, turning your Raspberry Pi into a Media Center.

I installed OSMC on my Pi 3 and booted it up. I then attached an external 2TB hard disk with some Full HD videos. I was able to find the files on the hard drive without any problems and I was able to watch the videos easily. My primary test file was a high bit-rate video that come straight out of Premiere Pro. The Pi 3 was able to play it without any lag or stutters.

So if you have a hard drive full of media and you want to access it from your lounge then you could use the Raspberry Pi 3!

Performance

Before we look at the actual performance numbers, lets look at the theoreticals. The Raspberry Pi 3 is clocked at 1.2GHz compared to the 900MHz of the Pi 2, so that is a 33% increase from the start. Plus the Cortex-A53 is a faster CPU core than the Cortex-A7, so theoretically the Pi 3 should be around 50-60% faster than the Raspberry Pi 2, which is roughly a factor of ten times faster than the original Raspberry Pi.

To test the relative speed of all the different Pi boards, I ran the “speed” test of the OpenSSL suite. These tests churn out lots of numbers however the data below should give you a feel for how the different boards compare. The ‘numbers’ are in 1000s of bytes per second processed:

According to these benchmarks the Raspberry Pi 3 is around 35% to 40% faster than the Raspberry Pi 2. It also seems to be around 3 to 4 times faster than the Raspberry Pi Zero (when comparing the single-core results to the multi-core results).

As for real world desktop performance, the Raspberry Pi 3 has certainly nudged the Pi a step closer to being a desktop alternative. Loading a webpage like AndroidAuthority.com is about twice as slow on the Raspberry Pi compared to a modern desktop, while launching a program like LibreOffice Writer is around 3 times slower. However the speeds achieved aren’t painfully slow. Using the Pi 3 as a desktop wouldn’t be optimum, however it is certainly do-able.

However, at the moment the real aim of the Pi 3 isn’t too replace the desktop, it is as a tool for hobbyists and educators. And as such the performance is excellent. Raspbian comes pre-installed with tools like Python 3 IDLE and Wolfram Mathematica, there are suites like LibreOffice, and you can get access to C, C++, Golang and Java. Unlike the Pi 1 and Pi Zero, which really had to be used from the command line – if you wanted to keep your sanity, the Pi 3 is a pleasure to use from the desktop.

Gallery

Final thoughts

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has remained true to the original aims of the Raspberry Pi and it continues to deliver great boards at excellent prices. The Pi 3 is no exception. With a better CPU plus built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the Pi 3 is a worthy successor to the Pi 2. If you have a Pi 2 and use it a lot then you should upgrade to the Pi 3. If you haven’t bought a Pi until now then there really hasn’t been a better time to get one.

Buy on Amazon

Now read:

• ODROID C1 review
• Showdown: Raspberry Pi 2 vs ODROID C1 vs HummingBoard vs MIPS Creator CI20

Uber Testing ‘Family Profiles’ With Shared Payment Method in iOS App

Uber today announced the limited launch of a new “Family Profiles” feature for its iOS app, which will allow up to 10 riders to share a single payment method. With Family Profiles, Uber passengers can have their rides paid for by friends or family, allowing parents to pay for rides for children, for example.

While we’ve called this feature Family Profiles, we let you decide who is family. It’s a great way to help loved ones, friends or coworkers get where they want to go while you foot the bill. Whether you’re a parent with kids away at college or a daughter wanting to help your parents maintain their independence, it’s never been easier to share some Uber love around to the people that matter most in your life.

Family Profiles are currently available in Atlanta, Dallas, and Phoenix and can be enabled in the Settings app of the latest version of the Uber app.

A main Family Profile organizer can invite contacts to accept an invitation to join the Family Profile, which will then allow riders to request rides from their own device using the shared payment method. Family Profile organizers will be billed for the ride and will receive ride receipts.

Uber has not specified when Family Profiles might expand to additional areas, but should the feature prove successful, it will likely be available in more cities across the United States in the coming weeks.

The Uber app can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
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Individually wrap portions of meat to prevent freezer burn – CNET

Taylor Martin/CNET

If you buy in bulk and store meat in your freezer, chances are you’ve also encountered the dreaded freezer burn at some point.

Freezer burn is caused by sublimation, or when water molecules near the surface of food evaporate without ever entering the liquid phase. In other words, the water goes directly from a solid (ice) to gas (water vapor), leaving the food dehydrated, shriveled and often discolored.

Foods that have succumbed to freezer burn are safe to eat. In fact, this is the same process that is purposefully used to freeze-dry some foods. However, it can negatively affect the taste of many foods, such as meats or vegetables.

Fortunately, there’s a simple trick that can help protect your meats from freezer burn. Here’s how.

Freezing meat without the burn

First things first, you want to remove as much surrounding air from the meat as possible. Most of the time, meat packaged in markets and grocery stores aren’t meant for long-term storage. Instead, they’re packaged to be consumed shortly thereafter.

That means you’ll need to remove the meat from its original packaging. Discard the packaging and trim any unwanted parts of the meat.

Taylor Martin/CNET

The paper you should wrap your meat in is called freezer paper, and it can be found in many supermarkets and grocery stores. Freezer paper is different from wax paper in that it is a matte paper finish on one side (presumably for writing on it with a marker) and has a thin plastic coating on the other side.

If you do not have access to freezer paper, wax paper will work in a pinch. Just know that wax paper is not as resistant to to moisture or water vapor. Freezer paper is generally rated to keep food items for up to a year in the freezer. Wax paper, on the other hand, should only be used to store frozen foods for a few weeks.

Taylor Martin/CNET

Divide the meat into portions and tear off a piece of paper that’s large enough to fully wrap around a single portion of meat twice. Lay the wax paper flat and place the portion of meat in one of the corners. Fold the corner of the paper over the meat and roll the meat over onto the paper. Meanwhile, maintain pressure on the meat to ensure as little air as possible gets into the paper wrap. Next, fold in the left or right corner of the wax paper and roll the meat over. Fold in the second corner and flip once more. Roll the meat over the remaining paper.

Keeping constant pressure on the meat to ensure that no air enters the wrapper, use a piece or freezer or masking tape to hold the wax paper in place. Repeat this process for any meat you will be storing in a freezer.

After all the meat you will be freezing is completely wrapped, write the date on the paper and what’s in the wrap. Place all portions of meat inside a large zip-top bag or vacuum-sealed bag. This help prevent moisture from reaching the meat.

Next time you want to cook some meat for any occasion, remove the large bag of meat and take out the number of portions you need. The meat should be free of freezer burn and ready to be thawed, cooked and eaten.

You can now compare ride-sharing options in Google Maps – CNET

Until we all have a Google self-driving car to get us home at the end of a long night, we must rely on friends, public transportation, a taxi or a ride-sharing service like Uber. Uber and its ilk are an increasingly popular option for getting around town, and yesterday Google Maps announced it will soon add a new tab to its mobile apps for popular ride-sharing services.

Google Maps added Uber integration a couple years ago, but it only showed up at the end of public transportation, walking and driving directions when available. With this latest update, when you ask for directions in Google Maps, you’ll see a new tab for ride-sharing services alongside the driving, public transportation, walking and biking options.

In addition to Uber, Google Maps will display other ride-sharing services in five countries: 99Taxis in Brazil; Ola Cabs in India; Hailo in the UK and Spain; mytaxi in Germany and Spain; and Gett in the UK.

Enlarge Image

Google

The ride-sharing options will show a fare estimate and how long it’ll take for the nearest car to get to you. You will need to have one of the supported ride-sharing apps installed on your device in order to see it listed in Google Maps. Tap on a ride-sharing option listed and Google Maps will open the corresponding app so you can book a car.

Google states it is rolling out the new ride-services tab to Android in the next few days. As for iOS, Google states vaguely that it is coming very soon.

If you prefer to drive yourself than share a ride, Google Maps in an earlier update has made it easier to make a pit stop or take a detour.

Hands-on with Neato BotVac Connected, a robot vacuum your phone controls

Most robot vacuums kinda suck. But Neato manages to make one that’s better than most — but still has its own room for improvement.

Robot vacuums are, with few exceptions, expensive toys that occasionally clean things about as well as asking a 7-year-old to run a regular vacuum. Many of them have obstacle-avoidance issues that cause them to crash into everything, and you basically have to pre-clean your floors of most things that aren’t dust bunnies to avoid clogging or property damage. The ultimate goal of these machines is to run unsupervised, with enough intelligence built in to avoid obstacles and keep from trying to suck up a stray sock.

Unfortunately, few of these pricey little robots have reached that point.

Neato is one company that has been working on robot vacuums for a while now, and the company thinks their latest version is smart enough that you can confidently start a cleaning session from your phone even when you aren’t at home. It’s called the Neato Botvac Connected, and while it’s not without flaws this little robot is one of the better automated cleaning systems available today.

Botvac Connected is smart and connected, but it could still be smarter. And better-connected.

The cleaning bits of the Botvac are fairly simple. There’s a single rotating brush with rubber fins to throw everything to the suction tube, passing everything it sucks up into the tiny dirt trap. A small set of bristles on the right side of the robot stick out just far enough to sweep things from under places the robot head can’t reach, and that’s about it. A pair of wheels in the middle of this design raise and lower to handle moving over separators in door frames, with just enough tread to climb over things like rugs with raised corners or the occasional book on the floor. The rest of this robot is the stuff that makes it run automatically, the display and sensors on the top and a pair of charging pins on the back that line up with the charger dock you leave on the floor.

Once Botvac is set up physically, you pair it to your phone and connect it to Wifi. By making this connection, you gain the ability to initiate a clean from wherever you are, set up scheduled times for cleaning, or jump into a manual mode where you drive the robot with your phone as though you’re holding a controller. Manual mode suffers from a slight delay between tapping something on the screen and seeing the instruction happen on the robot, but if you’re unable to move and need to vacuum something in a specific area, this mode gets the job done. everything else you do with the Botvac Connected happens through the automated cleaning system, where Neato’s smarts map out the house and clean everything the robot can reach.

This new Botvac does a decent job mapping rooms and dodging obstacles to clean things. If you are standing in the room, Botvac won’t just run into you. It’ll clean around you, and if you’re not there when it makes another pass through that part of the room, it’ll clean where you were standing. This logic is great for most things, but less great for cat trees that are the same color as your carpet. On several occasions, the Botvac we tested would use its raised wheels to try to clean up and over the base of the cat tree instead of skipping it when appropriate. Still, Neato’s object detection is better than most and carries over to things like wheel tangles and sucking up more than can be handled by this little vacuum. On several occasions we tried to trip up the vacuum with power cords wrapped around the wheel, and in every case the system was smart enough to detect resistance and back up to avoid any serious issues.

A pretty smart system for avoidance, but it still tends to eat things it shouldn’t.

Where this vacuum didn’t fare so well was when it sucked up something it shouldn’t, which in this house usually meant socks. Botvac tries with limited success to regurgitate when it eats something it shouldn’t, but most of the time we’re left with a message on the display that asks to clean the brush so cleaning can continue. In fact, Botvac frequently will throw messages to your phone and on the display that try to tug at your heart a little. Things like “I’m finished cleaning” and “Please put me down” are small but personal, and quickly create a mild emotional attachment if you’ve got children around to read the messages. Even the way it wiggles itself back onto the charging dock is almost like watching a pet curl up on a blanket. It’s a nice touch, but also highlights how much supervision this vacuum needs on a fairly regular basis. Pre-cleaning is still an important part of using a robot vacuum, which is a problem when the system is designed to be started when no one is around to do so.

The biggest problem with the Botvac Connected is that it isn’t connected enough. You have an app on your phone to start cleaning, but that’s basically it. You don’t get to see the map of the house Botvac has made, you can’t schedule out specific parts of that map to be cleaned on different days, and there’s nothing in the experience that makes the phone feel like it’s adding much. Neato has the ability to empower the user with this vacuum, and instead offered up little more than an on/off switch to a robot that’s only slightly more impressive than the previous model. It’s the start of a cool idea, and hopefully it gets better over time thanks to the ability to do things through the app. In the mean time, Neato’s Botvac Connected is a strangely cute robot servant that you have to keep an eye on so it doesn’t accidentally eat something dangerous and die.

As a vacuum, $700 is far too much for what you get. As a robot that will most of the time keep your floor clean without needing a lot of maintenance, $700 is a great price if you’ve got the cash to spend.

See Botvac Connected on Amazon

Verus is offering a number of Galaxy S7 and S7 edge cases for as low as $5 at eBay

Verus is offering a selection of Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge cases for as low as $5 on eBay. All you have to do is add it to your cart, and the price will drop. There are a number of cases priced at $5, with some coming in at the $7 mark. From slim and clear to protective and colorful, there is likely a design here that will appeal to everyone.

These listings take you to a page that shows both the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge versions. Be sure to select the one that you need for your phone!

• Crystal Bumper – $4.99
• Crystal Mixx – $4.99
• Damda Clip – $4.99
• High Pro Shield – $4.99
• Shine Guard – $4.99
• Single Fit – $4.99
• Verge – $4.99
• Triple Mixx – $6.99
• Layered Dandy – $6.99

If you are interested in any of these, be sure to act quick as we have no idea how long the sale will last for. Be sure to let us know which one you grabbed in the comments!

Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge — which should you buy?

This may be the toughest question a prospective smartphone purchaser has to ask themselves. Fortunately, we have answers.

You can’t turn on a television, visit a web page or take two steps outside your home without running into the Samsung Marketing Machine. It’s in full effect now that the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge are upon us. And if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll note that Samsung is pushing one phone more than another — that’d be the Galaxy S7 edge. That’s not unexpected, and Samsung’s been pretty transparent about which phone it truly sees as the more important model.

But let us not forget about the Galaxy S7. It’s a very capable phone, and there are number of reasons why you might chose it over the edge. Let’s discuss which one is right for you.

If price is a factor: Galaxy S7

There is a price difference between the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge when you’re buying it from the U.S. carriers. On average, the Galaxy S7 edge is about $100 more. But you do get more phone for that extra money. You get a bigger screen. You get a higher-capacity battery. And you get the “edge” display. (More on all that below.)

An extra $100 isn’t a huge difference in the scheme of things, but it’s something to keep in mind. Here’s how things break down by the four U.S. carriers.

Where to buy Galaxy S7/edge in the U.S.Where to buy Galaxy S7 in CanadaWhere to buy Galaxy S7 in the UK

If you just want a phone with as few gimmicks as necessary: Galaxy S7

There’s sort of no such thing as a “basic” smartphone these days, especially when it comes to Samsung. But the Galaxy S7 edge brings a little extra to the table in its “edge” display. That curved section is a must-have feature for a lot of folks. And you don’t have to use it if you don’t want it.

But if you don’t want to deal with curved glass and one more extra software feature, then you’ll want to stick to the GS7. And there’s something to be said for simplicity, especially since smartphones (and Samsung’s in particular) come with so many features out of the box.

That’s not to say that the GS7 edge is overloaded with features any more than the GS7 proper is. It’s just that the edge model has one (OK, two) extra features beyond the other model.

If you need as much battery as possible: Galaxy S7 edge

This one comes down to some pretty basic math. The Galaxy S7 has a 3,000 mAh battery. The Galaxy S7 edge has a 3,600 mAh battery. That’s 20 percent more, which isn’t a whole lot. But it’s not nothing, either. And that’s more important since the GS7 doesn’t have a removable battery. You’re going to have to recharge at some point, the question more a matter of when.

What’s that difference mean in real-world use? Depends on how hard you’re pushing your phone. Maybe a couple more hours or so. But either way the GS7 edge should last longer.

We haven’t exactly been over the moon for the battery life on either one of these phones. “Adequate” is the word that comes to time. And while 3,600 mAh in the GS7 edge sounds like a lot of capacity (and in most cases it is), it’s not magic. Here’s how we put things in our Galaxy S7 edge review:

This larger-than-average battery capacity is definitely required to get the Galaxy S7 edge through a full day without making you worried about where a power outlet is, and it means I rarely worried about battery life on the phone. It doesn’t, however, give you the confidence of “do anything, no consequences” battery life that so few phones can offer.

It’s good. Not great.

If you need more storage: Either one

This one’s a push. Samsung is only offering the GS7 and GS7 edge with 32 gigabytes of on-board storage. You’ll actually be able to use only about 20GB of that, though, because of the way storage is measured, and because the operating system takes up a good bit of space.

To that end, Samsung has brought back the SD card. You can add up to 200 gigabytes more storage for things like pictures and movies and music and what not. You also can move apps to the SD card, if you want. Not every app will move — and Samsung isn’t using the new Adoptable Storage feature for SD cards. But it’s definitely better than nothing, and should be fine for most folks.

More: Best SD cards for the Galaxy S7

If you want a smaller phone: Galaxy S7

There’s a pretty stark difference in size between the two phones. The Galaxy S7 display comes in at 5.1 inches diagonally. The GS7 edge is 5.5 inches. The GS7 also is about three-tenths of an inch shorter.

Size is one thing, and you definitely can tell the difference between the two phones when you’re holding them. But perhaps the bigger change is due to the curved display on the GS7 edge. It’s a good bit thinner at the edges than the GS7. And for that reason we’ve found it to be a little harder to hold onto.

And for the reasons we detailed above, there’s just some more simple about the GS7 vs. the edge.

The bottom line …

Look, you can’t really go wrong with either one here. Both the Samsung Galaxy S7 and GS7 edge are really good Android smartphones in a sea of good high-end models. And in many ways, the two phones are pretty much identical. As a refresher, here’s how the Galaxy S7 edge differs:

• Larger, 5.5-inch display.
• Larger battery, at 3,600 mAh.
• The “edge” display, which adds more features along the side of the screen.
• About $100 more expensive.

It also differs in that it’s getting more attention from Samsung. And to be fair, it’s the better phone in some respects. A good bit of this is going to be subjective, though. Want a smaller phone? Get the GS7. Want to save a little money? Get the GS7.

Want a damn good phone in any event? Get either one.

Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge

• Galaxy S7 review
• Galaxy S7 edge review
• Galaxy S7 edge with Exynos: A Canadian perspective
• Here are all four Galaxy S7 colors
• Details on the Galaxy S7’s camera
• The SD card is back on the GS7
• Join our Galaxy S7 forums

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