The gorgeous Samsung 5200mAh external battery pack can charge your Galaxy S7 from 0-50% in 30min (review)

Were you one of the millions who picked up the gorgeous Samsung Galaxy S7 or S7 edge? If you did, it means you chose the best looking phone on the planet right now. There are many other great alternatives to the S7 edge like the Nexus 6P and LG G5, but arguably no Android phone competes in the design category.

Samsung makes great accessories that third party manufacturers can’t match. I recently reviewed two official Samsung cases, the S-View Clear Protective Flip cover, and the LED View Flip cover. Both cases are incredibly well designed and manufactured, and are also unmatched in quality. Like the cases, Samsung’s 5200mAh portable battery is also an accessory that lives up to the curves and high-fashion of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge.

Samsung Fast Charge Battery Pack Specs

• 5200mAh LiIon
• Universal for all USB powered devices
• Fast charging – can charge your Galaxy devices from 0-50% in 30 minutes
• LED indicator light
• Pass through charging. When a device is attached to the battery pack and the battery pack is being charged from a power outlet, the device will be charged to 100% first and then the battery pack will begin to charge.
• Available in Gold and Silver
• Comes with a USB to microUSB charging cable

Usage and Design

Samsung’s official portable battery pack has the design to match up to the edgy phones it manufactures. Samsung paid attention to design with its battery pack as it knows its customers want the best of the best. There are many alternative battery packs that serve the same purpose, but I have yet to come across one that looks as good as Samsung’s own.

At 5200mAh, the battery is about the same physical size as the Galaxy S7 edge. It does pack enough power to give the Galaxy S7 edge (3600mAh) about one and a half charges. That is enough to get a typical user over two full days of usage away from a wall socket. The battery pack features one full size USB port which offers Fast Charging and gets my S7 edge from 0-50% in about 30 minutes. In my testing, I actually saw it go from 0-50% in 27 minutes and 32 minutes on consecutive attempts. It charged my S7 edge to full power in just over an hour of being connected.

What is extremely nice about this Samsung portable battery is its size. At just 68 grams in weight, it is significantly lighter than the S7 edge which weighs in at 157g. It is almost identical in dimensions to the S7 edge, and can easily fit in my front pocket with my smartphone. Although I prefer to keep it in my back pocket to prevent scratching my battery pack and phone. There are other batteries I have tested that offer four to five times the capacity, but they’re overkill for day to day usage. The weight of those batteries is simply too much to carry with me on a daily basis.

Summary

The Samsung portable battery offers enough juice to get me through a night or two, and doesn’t need to be carried in a backpack to be useful. The MSRP is pricey at $69.99, but is now on sale at sites like Amazon for less than $30. For the incredible design, light-weight, fast charge capability, and perfect size, it is a bargain at this price.

If you’re at all conscious of how your phone looks and want accessories to match, I suggest you pick up the Samsung 5200mAh battery and look no further. At $30 it is reasonably priced and is an accessory you should keep around for all of your USB powered devices.

Get the Samsung 5200mAh battery on sale now at Amazon.com.

Impossible Project debuts its take on the Polaroid camera

The Impossible Project is releasing a new, old-timey instant camera on May 10th for people who want to be able to print their photos on the spot. It’s called the I-1, and it works like Polaroid cameras of old, but with a modern twist. The I-1 connects to an iOS app via Bluetooth, giving you the power to trigger it remotely, as well as to adjust its shutter speed, aperture and flash. Plus, you can charge its battery via USB instead of replacing it when it runs out.

Once you’ve tweaked its settings to your heart’s content, you can then capture photos and print them on type 600 films that the company recreated through a feat of reverse engineering. The original and discontinued Polaroid film, if you still have any, works with the camera, too. Impossible Project will sell the I-1 for $300 when it arrives in May, making it a more expensive option than the Fujifilm Instax. Besides the type 600 film and this device, the company also created and crowdfunded the Instant Lab, a device that can print out images captured using mobile devices, in 2013.

Via: The Verge, PetaPixel

Source: Impossible Project, Bloomberg

Porn site bans all North Carolina users over anti-LGBT law

Since Monday, porn site XHamster.com has refused access to any user with a North Carolina IP address. The site says the block will stay in place until the state repeals House Bill 2, which prevents cities and counties passing rules that protect LGBT rights. “We have spent the last 50 years fighting for equality for everyone and these laws are discriminatory which XHamster.com does not tolerate,” said the company’s spokesman in official statement sent to The Huffington Post.

“Judging by the stats of what you North Carolinians watch, we feel this punishment is a severe one. We will not standby and pump revenue into a system that promotes this type of garbage. We respect all sexualities and embrace them.” According to the streaming site, NC residents searched for the term “transsexual” around 400,000 times, while “gay” was typed in around 320,000 times. (Let’s not mention all the other kinds of keywords they could be searching for.) Users from the state will see a black screen when they load the site, although the owners plan to replace it with a petition demanding a repeal of the law.

Via: Huffington Post

Drake’s New Album to be Exclusive to Apple Music for One Week

Drake’s new album, Views From The 6, will be exclusive to Apple Music for one week starting on April 29, Apple confirmed to BuzzFeed News. After that week, the album will be available on other music streaming services like Spotify.

Apple and Drake have had a friendly relationship since the announcement of Apple Music, with the artist appearing at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference to help introduce the service. Apple also produced the music video for the rapper’s song “Energy” with its in-house production team. More recently, Drake’s collaboration with Future, “Jumpman,” was used for Taylor Swift’s Apple Music ad.

In August, Quartz found that Drake was the second most played artist on Apple Music. Apple Music has increasingly turned to popular music artists in an effort to differentiate it from competitors. Artists like DJ Khaled have been given radio shows on Beats 1 while others, like Taylor Swift, have given the service exclusives, like Swift’s music documentary on her 1989 world tour.

Tags: Apple Music, Drake
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Third-Party Reddit Apps Pulled From App Store for NSFW Content

Popular third-party Reddit apps like Narwhal, iAlien, Baconreader, Eggplant and Antenna have been pulled from the App Store for breaching clause 18.2 of the App Review Guidelines, Narwhal developer Rick Harrison told Gizmodo. The takedowns were first spotted on a Reddit thread.

Today, we received notice that our new update with a lot of great new features was rejected under the App Store rule 18.2: “Your app contains a mechanism to enable or disable Not Safe For Work (NSFW) content, including pornographic content. Apps with sexually explicit content are not appropriate for the App Store.” About 15 minutes afterwards, we received notice that the current version of our app has been removed from the app store.

While the third-party apps were pulled from the App Store, Reddit’s new official app has remained. When Reddit launched its new app, it said users were “free to continue enjoying” the third-party app of their choice and pledged to continue support for its public API.

Harrison told MacStories that he reached out to Reddit about the takedowns and was told that the company did not request that third-party apps be pulled. In fact, Reddit told Harrison that the company was also having issues with Apple over clause 18.2.

Specifically, clause 18.2 states that apps containing user-generated content that is “frequently pornographic” would be rejected. Many of the pulled third-party apps have been in the App Store for about a year, and some of them include NSFW filters that allow users to disable potentially pornographic content.

In the past, Apple has also pulled apps for featuring user-generated content that could be viewed as pornographic. In 2013, Apple pulled 500px’s photo sharing app due to concerns that users could search for nude photographs. The app was eventually returned to the App Store once it added an age-gate.

Tag: Reddit
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Send money through Facebook – CNET

Remember when Facebook Messenger broke out of Facebook proper? A lot of users, including yours truly, were seriously irked. Why did we have to switch to entire different app just to chat with a Facebook friend?

Turns out Facebook had bigger plans for Messenger, including voice calls, chat bots, chess games and — who knew? — mobile payments.

It’s true: You can use the Facebook Messenger app to send and receive money, PayPal-style.

Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

Well, not quite — Messenger payments require a debit card on both ends of the transaction. But there’s no cost to use the service, which offers PIN-based protection and “industry-leading security,” according to Facebook. Here’s how to get started:

Add a debit card to Facebook Messenger so you can send and receive money.

Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

Step one: Add your debit card. In the Messenger app for Android, tap the Profile icon, then scroll down and tap Payments. In the iOS app, tap Settings, then Payments. Tap Add New Debit Card and complete that process.

Tap here to access the Payments option in Facebook Messenger.

Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

Step two: Open a chat with the person you want to send money to or from whom you want to request money. Tap the little “more” icon in the toolbar; it’s the one with three dots in a rectangular box.

Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

Step three: Tap Payments, then Next to bypass the info screen. By default, you’ll be in the Pay screen; enter an amount you want to pay that person and a note indicating what the payment is for. Then tap Pay and you’re done!

I need a lot of money for donuts.

Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

Step four: If you want to request money instead, tap Request at the top of the screen, enter the amount and reason, then tap the Request button to complete the process.

With either action, the transaction will appear as embedded item right inline with your existing chat. From there the recipient can either accept or deny just by tapping.

And that’s it! Assuming you and the people you know use debit cards, this is an awfully easy way to perform electronic transactions on the go. Awfully free, too.

Grab a factory refurbished high-end Acer Chromebook 15 for just $260 (Update: And they’re gone)

Score a premium Chromebook for half price with this eBay deal.

We really liked the Acer Chromebook 15 when we had a go with it at CES 2015. It’s a nice 15-inch screen with plenty of power to do just about anything you would want a Chromebook to do, and we would recommend it for folks who want more than just the basics and are looking for something with a larger screen.

If you were as interested as we were, you can buy a factory refurbished model for $259.99 (as opposed to the $499.99 retail) from eBay. We’re talking about the Intel Core i5 model, with 32GB of storage and 4GB of RAM. It pairs up nicely with the full HD 15.6-inch display and should be a great Chromebook for just about anyone. It isn’t the newest model out at this point, but with those specs and a big screen, it’s hard to beat.

See at eBay

Lyft and partners make it easy to get a ride in Asia

If you’re taking a trip to China or Southeast Asia, Lyft could be a valuable addition to your arsenal of travel apps. Starting this week, it will be able to access rides you can hail through its partners Didi if you’re in China and Grab if you’re in SE Asia. You won’t have to download a separate app or set up a new account, and you can even pay in dollars with the credit card you already have on file. It also works the other way around: folks from those regions can simply fire up Lyft whenever they visit the US and pay in their own currency.

Both of Lyft’s partners are big ridesharing companies in the continent. In fact, Didi has a larger share of the market than Uber in China, while Grab has been around longer in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Lyft says it’s linking its app with additional partners’ applications in more countries later this year — the WSJ once said it’s hashing out a deal in India — so expect its global ridesharing network to continue growing.

Source: Lyft

Drake’s new album only an Apple Music exclusive for a week

We had an inkling that Drake’s next album, Views From the 6, would hit streaming services other than Apple Music but didn’t exactly know when. The truth is you’ll only have to wait a week after its initial release before you can hear it on other platforms, according to Buzzfeed News. That exclusivity window is pretty brief, and compared to how Kanye West and streaming service Tidal handled The Life of Pablo, refreshingly straightforward. Pretty sure I’m not the only one who’s disappointed that the news didn’t come via an ill-advised tweetstorm though.

Source: Buzzfeed News

City Documents Reveal Code Names of Secret Buildings Likely for Apple Car

Apple secretly purchased and leased several buildings in the Silicon Valley area and naming them after Greek mythological figures and other interesting inspirations in 2014 and 2015, according to city documents obtained by the Silicon Valley Business Journal (via Business Insider).

Photo of “Rhea” building via Silicon Valley Business Journal

Apple and its contractors have been building out a network of industrial projects throughout the South Bay, giving them intriguing monikers largely drawn from Greek mythology and filling them with heavy-duty equipment, including gear with potential automotive applications.

In February, loud “motor noises” were heard emanating from an Apple-leased Sunnyvale campus, sparking speculation that the building was a secret car testing facility for Apple’s automotive project, dubbed Project Titan. In classical Greek mythology, Titans are divine beings who preceded the more well-known Greek gods like Zeus and Athena. Several of Apple’s newly-leased buildings are named after Greek mythological figures who have direct connection to Titans.

The Sunnyvale facility that emanated the reported “motor noises” is called Rhea, and city documents show that the building plans make references to automotive terms like “lube bay,” “wheel balancer,” “tire changer” and “wheel sensor.” Rhea, in Greek mythology, was a Titan who was also the mother of Zeus.

Zeus is also the name of a 290,000 square foot San Jose complex Apple bought in 2015. The location will house an “interim lab” that employs 15 people and an exterior service yard blocked out by a 12-foot fence with a black plastic material on the inside and a black mesh on the outside. The fence will “prevent any visual connection to the service yard from the parking lot,” according to the city documents.

Another building is named after Athena, daughter of Zeus. It’s unknown what the building will be used for, but the Silicon Valley Business Journal says it will undergo a “lengthy facilities closure process” as it was originally used by semiconductor manufacturers. Another building is named after the Pegasus, a Greek mythological creature that’s best described as a horse with wings. Apple demolished the interior of that building and plans to create new testing and mechanical rooms within.

The final building named after a Greek mythological figure is a 105,000 square foot facility. This location, named after Medusa, will have rooms marked for “participant testing,” “eye tracking,” “vision lab,” “spray room,” and “metal / machine room.” A list of chemicals for the facility lists car products like Turtle Wax Bug and Tar Remover and Bondo Body Filler. A contractor’s filing found by the Silicon Valley Business Journal says the building will be used for research and design. In Greek mythology, Medusa’s head is eventually placed on Athena’s shield.

The other buildings aren’t inspired by Greek mythology. One building, which will be used to support a “regenerative thermal oxidizer,” is named Magnolia. The machine is used to treat exhaust air, and is utilized by many manufacturing companies, including those in the car industry. Another building is named Corvinus and is planned for industrial use. The final building is named Aria and will have “stepper” tools installed inside.

In January, it was reported that Apple Car lead Steve Zadesky had left Apple, with the company issuing a temporary hiring freeze as Apple executives were not happy with the progress of the project. While these recent developments put the future of the project in question, Tim Cook teased the Apple Car in February by saying “it’s going to be Christmas Eve for a while,” suggesting the much-rumored project will not be publicly revealed for sometime.

Related Roundup: Apple Car
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