Where to buy the Honor 8 in the UK
A whole lot of phone for £369.
It’s official: the Honor 8 is coming to the UK, with a £369.99 SIM-free price tag. It’s launching first, unlocked and SIM-free, on Amazon, as well as Huawei’s vMall platform, along with free bundled goodies.
As for other retailers and carriers, we’ve got the first details on UK availability down below. It’s worth noting that for now, the only model available in the UK is the 32GB Honor 8, as opposed to the more expensive 64GB variant.
Amazon UK
Amazon is offering a free Fire TV Stick with Honor 8 purchases while stocks last. All three color options — black, blue and white — are priced at £369.99.
See at Amazon UK
vMall
The Huawei-branded ecommerce store has the Honor 8 for sale at the launch price of £369.90 in black, white and blue, with a free “anniversary package” worth £69.99 while stocks last. Buyers can pick between a combination of vouchers from Gameloft, Truecaller, Elec and Deezer, up to the value of £69.99. The first 2,000 Honor 8 customers get three free months of insurance on their new device.
See at vMall
Expansys
Expansys was named as one of the partners carrying the unlocked Honor 8, however there’s no mention of it on the retailer’s site just yet.
See Android phones at Expansys
Clove
Clove has the Honor 8 available to order in all three colors, priced £369.99.
See at Clove
Three
Honor has announced that three will exclusively carry the Honor 8 “in the coming weeks,” but there are no pricing details available at present.
See Android phones at Three
Picking up an Honor 8 in the UK? Still on the fence? Shout out in the comments and share your thoughts!
Best OBD2 car readers for Android
What’s the best OBDII reader for Android? Here’s a few to get you started!
Car repair can be costly (DUH) and that Check Engine light could mean myriad issues with your car. Or, it could be a simple fix that you could do yourself – so why take it to your dealer or mechanic without knowing the problem first? Some places will charge you $100 or more just for the scan.
Don’t get swindled again. Get yourself your very own Bluetooth OBDII reader/scanner and figure out what’s wrong with your car, right on your phone or tablet!
- BAFX Products 34t5
- Panlong Car Diagnostic scanner
- ScanTool OBDLink LX
- iSaddle Super Mini
BAFX Products 34t5
The BAFX Products 34t5 claims to work on all vehicles in the U.S. from 1996 or later, so chances are that if you’re driving, this will work with your vehicle. All you need is a third-party app (which range from free to rather expensive paid apps), and you can connect the 34t5 to your Android phone or tablet to read out diagnostic information.
While reading out diagnostic codes, you can even clear them out at will, thus turning off your check engine light – even for manufacturer-specific codes!
Depending on the third-party app your choose, you can get real-time sensor information right on your phone, life speed, balance rates, RPM, O2 readings, and lots more.
If you feel the need for speed, this reader will even send you ⅛, ¼, ½, and 1 mile times.
Don’t spend $100 just for someone to scan your car; spend about $22, read it yourself, and maybe you’ll even be able to fix it on your own!
See at Amazon
Panlong Car Diagnostic scanner
Panlong’s small OBDII scanner is perfect for the do-it-yourselfer on a budget – you can find these on Amazon for around $13.
This reader will work on any car sold in the U.S. from 1996 or later – it just might not work with some hybrids. All you need is a third-party app, like Torque or DashCommand and you’ll be able to read and clear trouble codes, while receiving real-time data readings – and you’ll be able to turn off that damn Check Engine light!
If inexpensively is the way you like to maintain your vehicle (who doesn’t?), then opt for the Veepeak Mini scanner.
See at Amazon
ScanTool OBDLink LX
The ScanTool OBDLink LX is a professional-grade OBDII reader that features its own app, which allows you to scan, read, and clear trouble codes in all cars sold in the U.S. since 1996 (except hybrid or electric vehicles).
All you have to do is plug it in, pair it with your phone, open the app, and you’ll see real-time diagnostic data, as well as information about performance.
You can even use your Windows PC to access and compile your information without ever having to see a mechanic. Fix the stuff you can fix yourself and only take it in when absolutely necessary.
Being a professional tool, the OBDLink LX claims to service a wider range of vehicles, given more complex algorithms, and the Amazon reviews seem to agree.
It may be about $50, but if you love your car and worry that the cheaper readers might not actually do the trick, then check out the OBDLink LX. $50 is better than the $100 the dealers will charge you!
See at Amazon
iSaddle Super Mini
The iSaddle Super Mini supports all OBDII protocols and works on just about every car sold in the U.S. since 1996 (except hybrid and electric), allowing you to diagnose what ails your vehicle to help determine whether or not it really needs a trip to the shop.
For Android users, iSaddle works exclusively with the Torque app feeding you diagnostics and performance data via Bluetooth.
If you’re unsure about the DYI approach to car repair, the iSaddle’s only about $12, so you really have nothing to lose if you want to try it out yourself. If you can fix the problem yourself, go for it, but you still have the option of taking it to your dealer or mechanic if you’re out of your element.
See at Amazon
What do you use?
Do you read your car or truck’s trouble codes with another scanner that we didn’t mention? Do you read your own codes or just take your car to the shop whenever the Check Engine light comes on?
Let us know in the comments below!
Your phone may never get Android 7.0, but does it really matter?
Unless you bought a phone from Google, it’s going to take a while to see Nougat — if you ever see it at all. But that doesn’t matter as much as you might think.
Android and updates seem like a mystery to many of us. If you’re not familiar with the way a big open-source software distribution works, it can get a little confusing trying to sort out who gets what version and when. Reading the things you see online often make it worse, too — we’re all talking about how Android 7.0 is here, and when phones will be updated, or if they will be at all. Then the obligatory comparisons to Apple’s iOS or Microsoft Windows (which are both a thing that is built and distributed as a whole) start and more confusion just happens. It’s nobody’s fault: most of us think about Android as a thing on its own, but it’s not. Since it’s the time of year for a whole new version, we get to start the process all over again.
Free as in beer
Nobody “owns” Android, and that’s why everything is so different. Android is, for all intents and purposes, a Linux distribution like Ubuntu. Google maintains the source code but they don’t turn it into a piece of software and hand it out. They get patches and additions from a bunch of qualified folks and make sure everything works as intended, then let anyone and everyone take it to do whatever they like with it. It’s important to understand what Android is, and how it gets distributed, when we think about the software on our phones.
You have two choices when it comes to operating system version updates — buy phones direct from Google, or waiting.
Two kinds of updates
Updates are important, but so is understanding how they work for Android. The important updates aren’t the ones you hear about on a stage somewhere, no matter what someone else wants you to believe. The ones that get put out every month by the Android team at Google or the Knox team at Samsung or whoever is in control of releasing maintenance and security patches for the Android distribution they custom-built for your phone. These are the patches that make sure your phone does exactly what it was promised to do when you bought it and does it securely.
The small monthly updates are the important ones.
Google does a pretty good job and keeping Android versions up to date. They may do a lot of other things poorly, but they are still pumping out software fixes as far back as Ice Cream Sandwich. They also make it easy to see what was patched, and how, in case you want to build it yourself on your customized version. That’s where the folks who make your phone come into the picture.
Google takes these patches and puts them into the version of Android they make for their own phones. Remember, even phones like the Nexus 6P need their own version of Android built. Samsung and HTC and Huawei and everyone else is free to do the same and build a small patch for the phone in your hands. Carriers can and will try to ruin the process, but with them out of the picture it really is this simple. Once you get it, you install it and there is absolutely nothing wrong with your Lollipop phone, or even with your KitKat phone. It works as advertised, and you’re generally safe from the nasty things you hear about malware unless you do something silly like trust people you shouldn’t when installing software from outside of Google Play.
New features
The other kind of update gets all the press and all the attention. They usually bring new features or change how things work, and people like me take the time to write about them. They are great updates (once they work the way they should) and they’re worth talking about. But those low-key monthly updates are far more important. You don’t buy a refrigerator or a golf cart because of the great things that will come next year, so you shouldn’t buy a phone for the great things that come next year. The things it does this year need to still work.
Because of the way Android is distributed, Google knows that 100 different phones may be running 100 different operating systems, but they all will be fully Android compatible — running Android at the core if you want to think of it that way. That means they can all run the same apps and access the same services, and if they use Google Play they are even more compatible with Android apps and services. While Google builds a custom version for their own phones, they also focus on making apps run better and do more of the things we usually think of as system features. Android is and always has been about apps and online services. It always will be.
You have two choices when it comes to Android version updates — phones direct from Google or waiting.
Enter Google Play Services. It’s a horrible solution for keeping more versions of Android compatible with each other when it comes to running apps, but it’s also the best solution. Google can not force any company to update a phone they built — Android is free to use, and as long as the phone met the standards required to run Google Play when it was built, it can run Google Play. Thinking Google can (or even wants to) yank permission to use their apps and store away from a manufacturer is silly. Stop thinking it. Instead, Google Play Services handles much of the behind-the-scenes stuff an app needs to run. Things like location services or security. Google can do whatever it takes to make Play Services compatible with most versions and update it independently from the operating system, and that’s exactly what they do. When you see Play Services eating up your battery, that’s because so many apps are using it.
Te reiterate — if your phone runs Lollipop and has the latest version of Play Services (and you would know if it doesn’t because you changed it yourself) do you really need Nougat? Your phone still does all the things it was supposed to do and can run almost every app available. Most app-based security is handled by Play Services as well. Combined with the latest Security Patch for the core system itself, your phone is fine and you should be happy using it.
Is Android N important?
Yep. Android 7.0 Nougat is a major update, even if the user-facing features don’t reflect it. Changes to the ways apps can run in the background, changes to the way updates are handled and changes to the overall security model are a major shift from what we have with Lollipop. Eventually, these changes will be required to run apps and use Google’s services. Think of it as Android’s Windows 7 moment — things look familiar, but everything you can’t see has been improved.
I want Nougat. That’s why I have a Nexus 6P. But I also know that any other phone on my desk that is current for its version of Android is still a fine phone and does what I need it to do. I’m fine waiting on Nougat for phones like my HTC 10 or my Galaxy S7 edge, as long as the monthly patches — the important updates — keep coming.
Android 7.0 Nougat
- Android 7.0 Nougat: Everything you need to know
- Will my phone get Android Nougat?
- All Android Nougat news
- How to manually update your Nexus
- Join the Discussion
SwiftKey says sync errors fixed in latest update
The now Microsoft-owned keyboard app for Android is still going through some growing pains.
SwiftKey had an issue arise in July with some users getting the predictions of other people, including names and email addresses. Today, SwiftKey has pushed out an update claiming the “sync service is fixed.”
SwiftKey disabled a number of syncing and prediction features in late July while they worked to fix the issue. While some features appear to be working again with the most recent update, it appears the sync service is still throwing errors at the moment. SwiftKey also acknowledges in the change log that email and number predictions are still turned off, so we’re not out of the woods just yet.
But we’re another step closer. If you account was affected, are you seeing your old library yet? Are you still seeing any extra languages? Tell us in the comments below!
Homeland Security is investigating the Leslie Jones hack
The Department of Homeland Security is looking into yesterday’s hack of actress Leslie Jones’ personal information and photos. Deadline reports DHS confirmed Thursday that its New York office has an open investigation into the attack, but the on-going investigation prohibited the release of any further information. Jones’ website was hacked and nude photos from her iCloud account were posted there along with images of her passport and driver’s license. This comes just weeks after the actress was attacked online following the premiere of the Ghostbusters reboot she starts in.
“ICE Homeland Security Investigations in New York does currently have an open investigation,” a Homeland Security spokesperson explained. “As a matter of agency policy, we are unable to disclose any information related to an active investigation.”
As Deadline notes, the involvement of DHS could suggest that the hack originated from outside of the US. It’s still early in the process and the forthcoming investigation should reveal more details on the matter. Jones briefly left Twitter earlier this summer following a coordinated attack by conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos in response to the Ghostbusters film. Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter shortly after and one theory that made the rounds yesterday was that this hack was in retaliation for that ordeal. The Breitbart editor released a statement saying he was “distressed” to hear about the attack. “I know we had our differences after my review of Ghostbusters but I wish her all the best at what must be a deeply upsetting time,” he said.
This isn’t the first time celebrity iCloud accounts have been breached. Nearly two years ago, the so-called Celebgate saw personal and explicit photos of over 100 celebrities swiped and released on the internet. In that case, a Pennsylvania man used a phishing scheme to obtain usernames and passwords for both iCloud and Gmail over the course of about two years. Last month, a second man plead guilty to the same crime, which included accessing accounts of 30 celebs.
Source: Deadline
Homebrew Enthusiasts Emulate Macintosh Plus on Nintendo 3DS
While the Macintosh Plus was discontinued over 25 years ago, two developers have brought the old school machine back to life in the form of a Nintendo 2DS and 3DS.
The first developer, who uses the pseudonym TarableCode, managed to port the Mini vMac emulator to Nintendo 2DS and has since shared pictures and technical details of her homebrew accomplishment on video game community GBAtemp. The code for Mini vMac for Nintendo 2DS/3DS is available on GitHub.
The photo shows the Nintendo 2DS is running Macintosh System 7.5.3, retroactively called Mac OS 7, released in 1996. The 2DS’s directional pad functions as arrow keys, while the L and R shoulder buttons are the mouse buttons, the Y button toggles the on-screen keyboard, and both the circle pad and touchscreen move the mouse.
A fellow homebrew enthusiast who uses the pseudonym LarBob Doomer has since uploaded a YouTube video that shows the emulated Macintosh Plus experience in action on Nintendo 3DS. In the video, he scrolls through a functional version of System 6, and opens apps, inputs text from the keyboard, and eventually powers off the device.
The practical applications of 20-year-old Mac software running on Nintendo 3DS are obviously limited, but the homebrew emulator is a unique proof of concept. In the past, developer Nick Lee similarly managed to get both Macintosh System 7.5.5 and Windows 95 to run on an Apple Watch.
(Thanks, Mitch!)
Tag: Nintendo
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Sony Xperia X Compact breaks cover, and you didn’t expect that
There’s been a lot of talk about Sony Mobile recently. After the ditching of the Z series at MWC and the launch of a new X series, the question of where the next flagship will come from has been the subject of lots of speculation.
We’ve spent plenty of time pondering what the next Xperia flagship might look like, but now we have another phone in the mix and it’s an Xperia Compact model.
Presented by @evleaks, all we have is an image of the handset and the name: Sony Xperia X Compact. We’ve heard nothing about this phone so far and we have no details of that level it might be pitched at, so all we can use is logic.
Sony has released a number of Compact editions in the past, the most recent being the Xperia Z5 Compact.
Sony Xperia X Compact pic.twitter.com/q2GKddYUqh
— Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 25, 2016
Typically, the Compact will offer specs that are close to those of the flagship phone that’s its namesake. The Z5 Compact, for example, has the same Snapdragon 810, camera and features as the Z5, the difference being the display size.
For the Xperia X Compact, then, we can only surmise that it will be pinned on the Xperia X. That would suggest it’s a compact mid-ranger, with a Snapdragon 650, 23MP rear and 13MP front camera. For the display, we can only guess, but 4.6-inches was the size of the last Compact Sony released, with a 720p resolution.
From this image you can’t deduce much: it looks entirely typical for a Sony handset, with dedicated camera button, twin front speakers. Judging by the lines on the photo, it might also pick up the slight curves to the edges of the display that the Xperia X offers.
Admittedly, this is all speculation and there’s no concrete evidence that this device is even legitimate at this point in time – except for the fact that it’s being shared by a reliable source.
Amazon announces a special forum just for car enthusiasts
Amazon has launched Amazon Vehicles, a special “automotive community” meant for users to research information about their vehicles while shopping for vehicles, parts and accessories. The key word here is “shopping.” It’s essentially an online destination to chat about cars and buy new parts when you need or want them.
In addition to checking out parts and information on vehicles like videos, reviews, images and specs customers can chat with other members of the community and ask their burning vehicle questions. It’s meant as an “extension” of the pre-existing Amazon Automotive store, where you can already purchase vehicles, tires, parts and various other pieces of cars you might need. Plus, you can already add information about cars you own to the Amazon Garage.
Though Amazon Vehicles seems mainly focused on getting you to search for the components you need to build the best car possible, it could be a cool resource for anyone obsessed with cars and the culture surrounding them, as well as a jumping off point for Amazon’s Top Gear spinoff The Grand Tour. Either way, if you’re looking to spruce up your car, it looks like Amazon’s going to be a pretty decent place to start.
Source: Amazon
Uber is quietly rolling out flat rates for riders in select cities
Uber is testing out a new pricing plan that could make using the service as cheap as paying bus fare in a city like San Francisco.
Uber’s current pricing structure, like Lyft, depends on the distance you’re traveling from one point to another as well as surge pricing, which makes your ride more expensive if you hail one during a busier time than normal. This can cause prices to skyrocket when you’re only traveling a short distance.
The company is opting to shy away from surge pricing by offering a new flat fee per ride for groups of riders this September, according to Business Insider, who first caught wind of the new program via new beta invite.
Uber offered a package of 20 trips for $20 or 40 trips for $30 and a flat fare of $2 for an UberPool ride, where you share a car with others. For an UberX, or a private car, it’s $7.
The 20 rides via UberPool, when the pricing is broken down, essentially makes it about $3 apiece. Uber has yet to offer commentary on the test, but it is currently rolling out the structure to six locations: San Diego, Boston, Seattle, Miami and Washington, DC.
It will be interesting to see how these pricing alterations work out for Uber in the future and if the test is rolled out to other cities going forward.
Via: Business Insider UK
Facebook opens its advanced AI vision tech to everyone
Over the past two years, Facebook’s artificial intelligence research team (also known as FAIR) has been hard at work figuring out how to make computer vision as good as human vision. The crew has made a lot of progress so far (Facebook has already incorporated some of that tech for the benefit of its blind users), but there’s still room for improvement. In a post published today, Facebook details not only its latest computer-vision findings but also announces that it’s open-sourcing them to the public so that everyone can pitch in to develop the tech. And as FAIR tells us, improved computer vision will not only make image recognition easier but could also lead to applications in augmented reality.
There are essentially three sets of code that Facebook is putting on GitHub today. They’re called DeepMask, SharpMask and MultiPathNet: DeepMask figures out if there’s an object in the image, SharpMask delineates those objects and MultiPathNet attempts to identify what they are. Combined, they make up a visual-recognition system that Facebook says is able to understand images at the pixel level, a surprisingly complex task for machines.
“There’s a view that a lot of computer vision has progressed and a lot of things are solved,” says Piotr Dollar, a research scientist at Facebook. “The reality is we’re just starting to scratch the surface.” For example, he says, computer vision can currently tell you if an image has a dog or a person. But a photo is more than just the objects that are in it. Is the person tall or short? Is it a man or a woman? Is the person happy or sad? What is the person doing with the dog? These are questions that machines have a lot of difficulty answering.
In the blog post, he describes a photo of a man next to an old-fashioned camera. He’s standing in a grassy field with buildings in the background. But a machine sees none of this; to a machine, it’s just a bunch of pixels. It’s up to computer-vision technology like the one developed at FAIR to segment each object out. Considering that real-world objects come in so many shapes and sizes as well as the fact that photos are subject to varying backgrounds and lighting conditions, it’s easy to see why visual recognition is so complex.
The answer, Dollar writes, lies in deep convolutional neural networks that are “trained rather than designed.” The networks essentially learn from millions of annotated examples over time to identify the objects. “The first stage would be to look at different parts of the image that could be interesting,” he says. “The second step is to then say, ‘OK, that’s a sheep,’ or ‘that’s a dog.’
“Our whole goal is to get at all the pixels, to get at all the information in the image,” he says. “It’s still sort of a first step in the grand scheme of computer vision and having a visual recognition system that’s on par with the human visual system. We’re starting to move in that direction.”
By open-sourcing the project on GitHub, he hopes that the community will start working together to solve any problems with the algorithm. It’s a step that Facebook has taken before with other AI projects, like fasText (AI language processing) and Big Sur (the hardware that runs its AI programs). “As a company, we care more about using AI than owning AI,” says Larry Zitnick, a research manager at FAIR. “The faster AI moves forward, the better it is for Facebook.”
One of the reasons Facebook is so excited about computer vision is that visual content has exploded on the site in the past few years. Photos and videos practically rule News Feed. In a statement, Facebook said that computer vision could be used for anything from searching for images with just a few keywords (think Google Photos) to helping those with vision loss understand what’s in a photo.
There are also some interesting augmented reality possibilities. Computer vision could identify how many calories are in a photo of a sandwich, for example, or it could see if a runner has the proper form. Now imagine if this kind of information was accessible on Facebook. It could bring a whole new level of interaction to the photos and videos you already have. Ads could let you arrange furniture in a room or try on virtual clothes. “It’s critical to understand not just what’s in the image, but where it is,” says Zitnick about what it would take for augmented reality applications to take off.
Dollar brought up Pokémon Go as an example. Right now the cartoon monsters are mostly just floating in the middle of the capture scene. “Imagine if the creature can interact with the environment,” he says. “If it could hide behind objects, or jump on top of them.”
The next step would be to bring this computer-vision research into the realm of video, which is especially challenging because the objects are always moving. FAIR says that some progress has already been made: It’s able to figure out certain items in a video, like cats or food. If this identification could happen in real time, then it could theoretically be that much easier to surface the Live videos that are the most relevant to your interests.
Still, with so many possibilities, Zitnick says FAIR’s focus right now is on the underlying tech. “The fundamental goal here is to create the technologies that enable these different potential applications,” he says. Making the code open-source is a start.
AIVAnet 