Second Wave iPhone 7 and 7 Plus Launch Kicks Off in Dozens of Countries Around the World
Following their September 16 debut in more than 25 countries around the world, the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus are seeing their second wave launch today, debuting in a number of additional countries across Europe and the Middle East.
The iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus are now available for purchase in the following locations: Andorra, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Greenland, Guernsey, Hungary, Iceland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Kosovo, Kuwait, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Maldives, Malta, Monaco, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
With today’s second wave launch, Apple’s latest devices have rolled out to more than 55 countries, and will expand to India in the near future with an October 7 launch date planned.
In many countries, supplies of the iPhone 7 and especially the iPhone 7 Plus are likely to be severely constrained, as Apple has been struggling to meet demand. In the United States, Apple had no iPhone 7 Plus stock available for walk-in customers on launch day, with all supplies having gone to pre-order customers.
Wait times are up to three to five weeks for the most popular iPhone models, like the Jet Black iPhone 7 Plus, in many countries, with lower two to three week shipping estimates for other devices.
The iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus feature better water resistance, much improved cameras (with a dual-camera for the 7 Plus), faster processors, brighter, more vivid displays, a redesigned Home button powered by a new Taptic engine and no headphone jack.
The Apple Watch Series 1, Apple Watch Series 2, and Apple Watch Edition are launching in new countries today as well, including Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Cayman Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, Greece, Guam, Hungary, Jersey, Kuwait, Macau, Monaco, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia and the US Virgin Islands.
Apple Watch Hermès Series 2 models are also available as of today in Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Macau, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, UAE, the UK and the US.
Related Roundups: Apple Watch Series 2, watchOS 3, iPhone 7
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Buy Now)
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UPS Working to Expedite iPhone 7 Deliveries Following Weather and Mechanical Delays
Yesterday, we reported that some iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus shipments have experienced irregular movement or delays during delivery between China or South Korea and their final destinations in the United States.
UPS has since confirmed to MacRumors that a small number of deliveries were impacted due to a mechanical problem and weather delay, while it is still investigating the reason for erroneous tracking notices.
UPS experienced a mechanical problem on one flight and a weather delay on another flight containing iPhones. The cargo was redirected, but not in time to avoid minor delays in residential deliveries of these packages. None of the phones were returned to their origin or routed on extraneous legs of the journey to their final destination.
We are still investigating the reason for the erroneous tracking notices. When the packages receive their next physical scan at a UPS facility, the ups.com tracking information will be updated to reflect the next planned delivery date. UPS is working to expedite these deliveries as rapidly as possible. The updated delivery date may be improved and another status update posted. To be informed of latest status, consumers can request text or email notification by selecting the “Notify me with Updates” feature when tracking their shipment on ups.com.
Apple began accepting iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus pre-orders on September 9, and it took less than 20 minutes for supplies of popular models to begin selling out. iPhone 7 Plus and Jet Black models have been most constrained, but some customers originally quoted October to November delivery dates for Jet Black iPhone 7 Plus models have seen their orders ship sooner than expected.
Related Roundup: iPhone 7
Tag: UPS
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Apple Watch Series 2: A Swimmer’s Perspective
As a lifelong swimmer, I found the addition of 50-meter water resistance and swim workout tracking in the Apple Watch Series 2 to be a welcome improvement that made the new watch a must-have upgrade for me. While the original Apple Watch was not rated for swimming, many users had no issues regularly using it in the water, although its lack of built-in swim tracking features limited its usefulness.
With Apple Watch Series 2, Apple has not only upgraded the water resistance with new gaskets and seals to make it suitable for swimming, but added new Pool Swim and Open Water Swim workouts to help track your progress. As part of the Apple Watch Series 2 introduction earlier this month, Apple highlighted how it worked with swimmers in the company’s fitness labs to develop the software to accurately track swim workouts, from using the accelerometer in the watch to measure arm movements to tracking energy expenditures during workouts.
So how well does the new Apple Watch work when you take it for some swims in a pool? Let’s take a look.
Getting Started
Swim tracking is managed in the same Workout app as other types of exercise, with both pool and open water swim workout options to choose from and a variety of different goals available for each workout.
When you launch a pool swim workout from the Apple Watch, the first screen lets you input the length of the pool you’re going to be swimming in. The default value in the U.S. is 25 yards, which is the most common pool length, but you can adjust this manually down to the exact yard as needed. A force press on the screen lets you change between yards and meters.
The next screen is where you set your goal for the workout. As with other types of workouts, you can swipe left and right on the watch to choose between calories burned, time or distance, or simply set an open goal. If you’ve previously completed swim workouts, the watch displays your best performances for each of the metrics, giving you a reference for setting new goals.
In the Pool
Once you’ve selected your pool length and workout goal, you’re ready to go. Hit the Start button and the watch will give you a three-second countdown and you’re off.
During your swim workout, the Apple Watch can display up to four different metrics. By default, these include workout duration, active calories burned, laps completed, and distance. Using the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, however, you can customize the display to rearrange the order of the different metrics or replace some of them with other options including average pace, total calories burned, and heart rate. Alternatively, you can set your Apple Watch to display only a single metric at a time and use the Digital Crown to change metrics during the workout.
One unique aspect to swim workouts is that once the workout begins, the Apple Watch screen automatically locks to prevent accidental taps that can occur as water interferes with the touch sensing. If you want to pause your workout at any point, simply press the Digital Crown and the side button simultaneously. Pressing them again resumes the workout tracking.
As detailed during its introduction earlier this month, the Apple Watch Series 2 has a clever feature to help clear water from its speaker, using vibrations of the speaker itself to expel water from the speaker cavity when your workout is complete. Once your workout is paused and you’re finished, turning the Digital Crown expels the water from the speaker and unlocks the screen, which then allows you to swipe right and end the workout, resume the workout, or re-lock the display.
How Well Does It Work?
So how well does the swim workout tracking work? The answer is very well if your goal is to simply swim back and forth to rack up yardage. The watch accurately senses individual strokes and both open turns and flip turns at the ends of the pool to calculate the distance you’ve traveled, elapsed time, and calories burned, and I found the active calories burned metric calculated by the watch to be close to figures estimated by other sources for various types of swimming activity.
Apple notes that the heart rate sensor may not function properly during swimming activities as water may interfere with the measurements, but that calories burned continue to be estimated using the watch’s accelerometer. In my experience, however, the heart rate sensor continued to function very well in the water, accurately capturing my heart rate throughout my workouts.
Where the Apple Watch’s swim tracking starts to fall short is for people looking to do more varied swim workouts based around swim sets and focused exercises like stroke drills and kicking. The Apple Watch’s tracking is linked to its ability to sense arm motion, which means if you’re doing a kick set, it won’t pick it up at all. Or if you’re doing specialized drills to work on your technique, such as one-arm strokes, if may not track accurately if you don’t have a regular stroke rhythm.
The Apple Watch’s pace calculation also becomes less useful if you’re doing interval-based sets, as it’s simply going to tell you the interval you were going on instead of your actual swimming pace unless you manually pause the workout as you finish each repeat and resume before starting the next one. That quickly becomes tedious, especially as I found myself having to visually check the watch’s screen each time to make sure it was pausing and resuming correctly, as pressing the crown and side button didn’t always register properly.
It would be great if the watch could sense when I’ve stopped at the wall to rest and automatically pause my workout and then resume once I push off the wall on my next swim. It obviously starts to get tricky differentiating random arm movements while resting from the start of a new swim with only an accelerometer to go on, but I feel like there could be some improvements made here.
I’d also love a way to edit workouts after the fact to include untracked activities such as kick sets and drills, even if it’s just adding in the yardage. For now, I’m using a third-party app like MyFitnessPal to create a second workout to estimate my calories burned for the portions of my workouts the Apple Watch can’t track.
Finishing Up Your Workout
At the end of your workout, the Apple Watch app displays a summary of your session, including the time of day the activity took place, dominant stroke used, distance, workout time, pool length, laps completed, average pace, average heart rate, and both active and total calories burned, as well as the weather at your location.
All of that data gets synced over to the Activity app on your iPhone, where it’s visible in the Workouts tab. A bonus view on the iPhone lets you break down the average pace number and see your pace for each 100-yard segment of the workout. And of course the exercise and calorie data also automatically syncs over to the Health app on the iPhone, as well as third-party apps hooked into HealthKit, to help track your overall health status.
Open Water Swimming
Aside from pool swims, the Apple Watch Series 2 can also track open water swims in the Workout app. I’m not as much of a fan of open water swimming and so I haven’t had a chance to test that function out, but it operates in a similar fashion to pool workouts, allowing you to set a goal for time, distance, or calories, or leave an open goal.
As with pool swims, you can customize the metrics shown on the Apple Watch’s display during a workout using the Apple Watch app on your iPhone. The default metrics are duration, active calories, burned, average pace, and distance, but these can be rearranged or swapped out for total calories burned and heart rate metrics from your iPhone.
Once you hit “Start” it will track your swimming progress, and as long as you are using a freestyle stroke it will use GPS to plot your location and speed while the accelerometer tracks your calories burned. Once your open water swim is completed, you can view a map of your route within the Workout entry in the Activity app on your phone.
Wrap-up
Plenty of serious and not-so-serious swimmers and triathletes already wear fitness watches to track their workouts, but this is my first foray into wrist-worn swim tracking. I like the tracking the Apple Watch can provide in pool swims to help keep tabs on my yardage, heart rate, and calories burned, and it’s something I’ll likely continue playing with. It’s great for tracking long workouts with a minimum of stopping.
If you’re doing sets of short swims or varied sets involving drills or kicking, it can be frustrating to have that activity go untracked or to have to manage pausing and unpausing the tracking to separate swimming from resting intervals. Frequent focusing on the watch to ensure it’s tracking accurately and at the right times can also divert your attention from the actual swimming, although that will likely improve over time as I gain familiarity with using the watch in the pool.
For those reasons, the Apple Watch Series 2 may not yet become an everyday swim tracker for me, although I’ll keep experimenting with it to figure out the best way to incorporate it into my workouts to provide the best data with minimum disruption to my workout focus.
Where the new Apple Watch could be a major benefit, however, is for open water swimmers. The lengthy freestyle swims are ideal for tracking with the Apple Watch, and the watch’s GPS should make it a great tool for tracking those lake and ocean swims where it’s difficult to estimate how far you’ve swum. It’s certainly not the first GPS swim tracking watch, but for open water swimmers it’s a great addition to an Apple Watch they can wear throughout the day to provide a host of other functions.
Related Roundups: Apple Watch Series 2, watchOS 3
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Buy Now)
Discuss this article in our forums
Zinga Jump should jump back to the drawing board (Review)
Overview:
Zinga Jump is a simple platforming game where you collect coins while running to the end of the stage avoiding obstacles along the way.
Developer: Apps Freax
Cost: free (with ads and micro-transactions)
Impressions:
Zinga Jump is another game that hearkens back to the old days of mobile gaming, where you didn’t need as much substance or style to make a decent game. Unfortunately for Zinga Jump, it’s 2016 now and we have a lot of great mobile games available that offer a ton of content and polish, some even without ads. Zinga Jump is simple and rather innocuous, but there are some elements that make it almost impossible to recommend to anyone. at least for me.
Let’s start with the art and sound of the game. The resolution of the character sprite and backgrounds appear super low and blurry, especially on the QHD screen of my Nexus 6P. There’s also very little variety in the levels, as they all use the same scrolling backgrounds and obstacles all the way through. There’s also no real theme to the game, as you play a sort of cutesy alien character in what appears to be a generic “Mario” type landscape. I could give the simple visuals a pass if it wasn’t made in Unity, which has the potential for much better graphics and is relatively simple to use. The worst part of the style of this game however, has to be the music. A three second loop of annoyingly upbeat noise that plays from the moment you start the app onward to infinity. The music alone is enough to tell you to avoid this one, and sure you could mute it, but then what’s the point.
1 of 6
Really?
The store page
The only available content
Gameplay-wise, Zinga Jump is a bore. Timed tapping with shoddy accuracy makes it very difficult for something so simple, but just easy enough to beat if you halfway try. The placement of platforms is odd, and makes timing rapid jumps harder than it should since the game doesn’t like to always respond when I tap the screen. When you lose a level, you’re greeted with a poorly-spelled “game over” screen as well, which just further adds to the frustration. Also, you could beat the whole game in an hour since there’s only about 24 stages in total, and no good reason to replay them at all.
The biggest issue, however, has to be the micro-transactions. For some reason, the developer has seen fit to lock the last six levels behind a nonsense paywall, because of course. If that wasn’t bad enough, the whole of the six levels can only be bought individually with coins, that cost $0.99 for 250, which means in order to get all six, you’d be forced to spend another $0.99 for just one level. On top of that, there’s a 1000 coin option for $2.99, but why would anyone ever buy that? You may say “well, surely there’s more to be purchased with coins that justify the existence of such purchases.” well, you’d be wrong. There’s nothing else. Six levels, and that’s all. It would almost be okay if you could unlock the levels with the coins you collect from the actual gameplay, but guess what, those coins are meaningless and aren’t actually in-game currency at all. The game tries to force you to pay two buck minimum to unlock all it’s content and beat the full game, when it’s levels aren’t remotely worth the cost. It’s an awful scam and the developer shouldn’t feel proud of this game at all in this regard.
Oh, and on top of that it has the occasional ad as well.
Conclusion:
All in all, Zinga Jump is probably harmless, but the overall low quality and way it handles micro-transactions make it seem like a scam. I’d be hard pressed to find a less shady cash grab in the Google Play Store today. How it has a four star rating is beyond me, but either way I’d steer clear of this game for now.
Download Zinga Jump (if you must) from the Google Play Store
360fly 4K review: The future of action cams
The quick take
If you’re looking for a fun way to capture yourself doing something cool or mildly dangerous, this is absolutely the camera for you. 360fly has polished nearly every rough edge from the previous model and delivered something that deserved to be considered among action cam fans.
The Good
- Fun design
- Single button makes quick captures easy
- Relatively easy to upload and share
The Bad
- Does not capture a full sphere
- Wi-Fi Direct is still awkward
- Massive lens is delicate, prone to scratching
Everything is better in 4K
360fly 4K Review
Last year, 360fly seemed like a camera in need of a market. The original design was clearly aimed at action cam folks, but offered few of the features necessary to hook those users and an app that was downright clunky. At the end of my original review I warned users would probably want to wait for the upcoming 4K model, and that time is now. 360fly 4K is here, and with it you’ll find a camera that lives up to the promise of the original — a 360-degree action camera.
Check out 360fly 4K side by side with the original 360fly!
Same same, but different, but still same.
360fly Hardware
360fly is a weird angular sphere with a single massive fisheye lens, a single physical button, and no ports. It’s nearly identical to the original 360fly design, which is solid. The single lens doesn’t capture a complete 360-degree sphere, but there’s also no need for stitching software either. It’s a single lens you mount on a bike or in your car or even on top of your head if you really wanted. The standard camera tripod screw on the bottom means it’ll work with about every camera mounting accessory, and the included GoPro adapter in the box means it’ll adapt to everything else. The single button gives you a single option — push once to record and go do your thing.
The magnetic socket on the bottom of the orb lets the camera sit flat when it isn’t mounted somewhere, and when you set 360fly on top of its charging dock you gain the ability to transfer video over USB to a PC. Needing to carry around a separate charging plate is as tedious for this camera as it is for anything else, but through that you get a camera that can be submerged 30ft without any damage. Compared to the barely splash resistant 360-degree competition or action cams that regularly require special cases for submersion, it’s a small compromise.
Surprisingly, the most useful addition to the design has been the light ring on the base of the camera. The big button on the side of 360fly glows several colors to indicate the current state of the camera, and the ring on the bottom now glows that same color. It’s slightly more noticeable in bright sunlight with a protective helmet on, and it’s way more noticeable on the bottom of a glossy drone 10ft above your head. The change is subtle, but so important.
Making the whole top of this camera a giant lens means there’s very little protecting the glass. This isn’t a huge problem for most cameras, where care is implied, but action cameras by nature are exposed to some roughness. For example, 360fly included a suction cup mount for its camera that is rated for well over 100 mph and we decided to test that claim on the front of a 2016 BMW k1300s Motorsport Edition.
The suction cup did in fact handle 120 mph without issue, but shortly after the motorcycle came to a stop the suction cup dropped to the asphalt and the camera became irreparably damaged. This four foot fall is fairly mild compared to the more intense GoPro footage you find out in the world, which is a serious problem for those looking to do something crazy with this camera.
Oh hey, a kitchen sink!
360fly Software
While little has changed about the overall design of the 360fly app, there are way more features now. 360fly now lets you edit photos and videos through the app in several significant ways, as well as use the app as a real time viewfinder with live filters and camera modes that can be applied while you’re shooting.
Editing photos and videos directly in the app is a huge improvement.
You can capture the whole scene around you, positioned vertically or horizontally just in case you’re drone surfing with your camera, or you can narrow the field of view down and have some fun with what almost looks like panoramic video. If capturing and sharing later isn’t good enough for you, 360fly has partnered with a Livit to allow live streaming a 360-degree sphere over your phone’s cellular connection.
It’s clear from the single big friendly button on the front of 360fly — which only allows you to record video — that photos aren’t the main priority for this camera. Many competing cameras are photo first, video second, but 360fly clearly feels most of its users will want to tap that big button and go do something worth sharing on video. The photo suite in the app is enough for great single photos or time lapses, complete with manual control over ISO and other details if you’re interested in a specific kind of shot. The resulting photos are on par with what you’d get from a Ricoh Theta S, save of course for the small black space on the bottom of the sphere where there is no image.
Easily the most important feature for action cam enthusiasts is the ability to add a little control to the viewer’s focus. You can publish a video and let the viewer pan around on their own, or you can create a viewing path that follows a specific object in the video. This could be a face, a bike, or even a cloud in the sky. The target will be the focal point until the user decides to try and look elsewhere, which means you have some control over the story being told with your video. While there is a Desktop client for all of this, you can do it all through the app with no issue.
This team wanted to throw every conceivable feature into its app, and for the most part succeeded. The app feels complete, and letting a third party handle steaming means the heavy lifting can happen elsewhere. Even sharing to other networks has improved, which is so important now. Quick sharing to Facebook or YouTube is a button press away, but if you’d prefer to keep using the 360fly hosting service for the best possible quality, that option is always right next to the others.
The only thing missing from this app is more defined audio control. Currently you can either keep the audio included with your experience, cut the audio entirely, or add a song of your choosing. These options are fine as long as you aren’t doing something louder than the microphones can handle, in which case what would really be helpful would be something that simply cut the audio in half so it wasn’t deafening to the viewer.
I need a snowboard and some duct tape.
360fly Experience
If you’re capturing yourself doing something crazy, it makes all the sense in the world to capture the entire moment. Using a regular action cam means you get to share a small window of what has happened in front of you. Using a 360-degree camera means the viewer get the whole picture. The look on your face as your take the turn, the faces in the crowd as you skate by, or the stuff happening behind you that you didn’t even know about until later. Action cams should always be 360-degree, especially when the creator can control the viewer’s focus with software as easily as you can with the 360fly app.
No matter how you look at it, 360fly 4K is a more capable and higher quality camera than its predecessor.
Fragility is a concern with every 360-degree camera with exposed lenses, but using 360fly placed a real emphasis on potential damage to the lens. There’s nothing to be done about the scuffs on the review unit we have here, and you can see the damage in every photo and video captured after the accident. On the other hand, there’s very little chance many of the other competing cameras would have handled the drop quite as well.
Having a light ring on the bottom of this camera makes a huge difference in how often you need to check and make sure it’s still recording. The app does a great job keeping you informed, but if you’re recording something dynamic it helps to not have to reach into your pocket and check quite as frequently. It’s dead simple to see the glowing red and know you’re still recording.
A fully charged battery isn’t quite enough to completely fill the included 64GB of internal storage, but it’s more than enough to record for an hour or capture a timelapse over four hours. The larger file size hasn’t made any significant difference in battery drain, which is fantastic. Despite being one of the physically smaller cameras of its kind, the battery lasts more than long enough to have lots of fun.
Should you buy it? Sure!
No matter how you look at it, 360fly 4K is a more capable and higher quality camera than its predecessor. Images and video are much nicer, it’s much more user friendly now, and the original design has held up well with some minor improvements. That having been said, it’s still a 360-degree camera aimed at folks wondering what comes after a GoPro, with a price tag that competes directly with the GoPro Hero 4 line.
If you’re looking for a fun way to capture yourself doing something cool, this is absolutely the camera for you. If you just want to take 360-degree photos and maybe a video every once in while, this is probably not your camera.
See at Amazon
Frequency illusion and exploding Samsung phones
Just because you’re hearing about Samsung phones exploding, doesn’t mean it’s actually happening more often.
Did you hear?! A Samsung phone caught fire on an Indian airplane! The device in question, a Samsung Galaxy Note… 2 — from 2012 — reportedly went up in smoke in an overhead compartment, before being doused in a bucket of water by cabin crew.
It’s one of a few prominent reports lately of Samsung phones other than the genuinely explosion-prone Note 7 going up in smoke. A couple of weeks back, The New York Post carried a story on a Samsung phone catching fire in the hands of a child (the paper incorrectly reported it as a Note 7 initially). Then shouty British rag The Sun published a story on a GS7 edge catching fire in the UK. Those are just two recent examples — many more have been reported in the media since the Note 7 fiasco erupted.
It seems like Samsung phones are constantly exploding! Maybe there’s a problem with all of them!
Frequency illusion, amplified by the effect of the modern media.
Well, probably not. What we have here is a case of frequency illusion. (Sometimes called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.) This is a cognitive bias — a trick of the mind — where something which has recently come to the personal or collective attention seems to appear with much greater frequency shortly afterwards.
That’s amplified considerably by the modern media, which is quick to jump on unrelated stories like the Note 2 catching fire over India, and present them in the narrative of the Note 7 battery fiasco. Had the Note 7 not had battery issues, a story about a single smartphone malfunctioning (albeit spectacularly) on an airplane, with no harm coming to anyone, wouldn’t have been splashed around major news outlets as much as it has been.
What’s more, the idea of there being a broader problem with Samsung batteries simply doesn’t stand up to common sense. The Galaxy Note 2 has been around for four years, selling well over 5 million units in its year of release alone. If there’d been a battery problem as serious and widespread as that of the Note 7, it would’ve come to light literally years ago.
The idea of a wider problem with Samsung phones simply doesn’t stand up to common sense.
The same argument applies to the Galaxy S7, which had racked up sales of 26 million units by early July. Given that out of a million or so “bad” Note 7s in the U.S., around 100 caught fire in the first month, we’d be looking at thousands of GS7-related cases if the problem was common to both phones.
It’s also worth remembering the sheer number of phones Samsung sells. Samsung was the world’s biggest smartphone seller in 2015, shifting some 320 million phones, according to Gartner. It’s battled Apple for the number-one spot for the past several years. Many of those phones, especially cheaper models, have user-replaceable batteries.
Which brings us back to our airborne Galaxy Note 2 fire over India. The Note 2 is an old Samsung phone with a removable battery, which opens up the strong possibility that an off-brand battery may have been used.
“In India, it’s easier to get a hold of third-party batteries than those made by Samsung,” AC India editor Harish Jonnalagadda told me. “Non-certified batteries often retail for one-fourth the cost of the genuine product, making them a much more lucrative option for price-conscious buyers. Meanwhile, retailers are able to eke out better profits by selling third-party batteries, which is why they continue to push them onto customers.”
There’s a non-zero chance of any lithium-ion battery catching fire.
Lithium-ion batteries pack a lot of power into a small space. At any point in time, there’s a non-zero chance of a something or other going wrong and releasing all that energy at once. Given that Samsung sells more phones than anyone else, the prominence of that brand in reports of battery fires (outside of the Note 7) isn’t surprising. The same applies to the many reports in years past of iPhones catching fire when charging, given that Apple also sells a hell of a lot of iPhones.
MORE: What makes a phone battery explode?
Between the sheer number of Samsung phones out there, the number with replaceable batteries, the tendency for uncertified batteries to be used in some countries — and the important effect of frequency illusion and the modern media, it’s not surprising that there are more reports of exploding Samsung phones in the news. (And also that it seems like it’s happening more often.)
But that doesn’t mean that there’s any flaw with other Samsung batteries, or that exploding batteries are any more common now than before the Note 7 fiasco.
Samsung Galaxy Note 7
- Galaxy Note 7 recall: Everything you need to know
- Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review
- The latest Galaxy Note 7 news!
- Here are all four Note 7 colors
- Complete Galaxy Note 7 specs
- Join the Note 7 discussion in the forums!
Verizon
AT&T
T-Mobile
Sprint
10 Chrome extensions you didn’t know existed but should be using
What are the best Chrome extensions I should be using?
The amount of time most people spend browsing the internet continues to rise each year, and Google’s Chrome browser attempts to be the most comfortable and versatile browser out there. To aid in its quest, Google allows for developers to market small software extensions that modify and (in most cases) ameliorate your browsing experience. Here are 10 Chrome extensions you didn’t know about but should be using.
- Dark Reader
- TL;DR
- Keepa
- Web Timer
- PanicButton
- Ghostery
- Feedly Mini
- HTTPS Everywhere
- The Great Suspender
- Extensity
- Pushbullet
- LastPass
- uBlock Origin
- Honey
- Magic Actions for YouTube
Dark Reader
Chrome’s natural white background can become tiresome after a few hours of viewing — Dark Reader has the answer. It changes blinding, bright pages into high contrast, dark-themed pages that are easy on the eyes. You can adjust the filters and font settings and add certain webpages to an ignore list in the case of complete incompatibility.
See at Chrome Web Store
TL;DR
TL;DR is the answer to articles on the internet that are too long to read. Highlight article text, click the TL;DR button located next to your address bar, and read a well-constructed summary of the article. You can adjust the length of the summary depending on how much time you have or how involved you want to get. It does a good job of condensing the article without cutting out important bits of information.
See at Chrome Web Store
Keepa
Keepa gives you some pretty in-depth information about Amazon products and prices, and lets you set price-drop alerts to keep you in the know. Check price history charts for all iterations of a product (including different colors and sizes), and compare Amazon prices from all over the world. You can even import your Amazon wishlist and assign alerts for when specific items drop below a certain price. Go to Amazon and hover over any item while Keepa is running; a graph will pop up with extended information. Never get ripped off again!
See at Chrome Web Store
Web Timer
Web Timer is a double-edged sword. You’re getting data that helps you better manage your time, but said data can be depressing. You’ll find yourself asking questions, like, “Did I really spend four hours on Reddit yesterday?” You can add sites to a white-list so that time spent is not recorded, and you can change time measurement parameters from “Today”, to “Average”, to “Lifetime.” Take Web Timer for a spin — you won’t be disappointed.
See at Chrome Web Store
PanicButton
This app is ideal for the classic situation where you’re slacking off at work and your boss happens to walk by. Before you have a chance to yell “Lunch break,” he or she sees Facebook, Reddit, and whatever else you have open in Chrome. PanicButton provides you with a single button or single keyboard key (default F4) that scoops all open tabs into a hidden bookmarks folder that can be restored at a later time. You won’t always need PanicButton, but when you do need it you’ll be glad it’s installed.
See at Chrome Web Store
Ghostery
Want to block advertising companies from creating a profile around your browsing tendencies? Want to load webpages faster than ever before? Want to have more overall privacy on the internet? Ghostery lets you choose what trackers to block on a website-to-website basis. The first time you turn Ghostery on in Chrome, you’ll be amazed at how many trackers are watching your moves. Trackers stay blocked across webpages, so you’ll deal with increasingly less trackers the more you browse.
See at Chrome Web Store
Feedly Mini
This extension provides you with an easy way to see your RSS feeds now that Google got rid of Google Reader. If you have the Feedly app on your Android phone, you can add websites from your computer while you’re navigating the web. A small button sits at the bottom right side of your browser — click it and choose from several options including Facebook sharing and page tagging.
See at Chrome Web Store
HTTPS Everywhere
HTTPS essentially creates authentication between you and the web server hosting the specific webpage. This helps reduce the chance of someone hijacking the information sent between you and the web server. This extension creates HTTPS authentication wherever you go, and it is a must have if you’re worried about surveillance, censorship, or identification theft.
See at Chrome Web Store
The Great Suspender
Everyone who uses Chrome knows about the enormous footprint it leaves on your memory. If you’re an hour or two into an internet trail and have about fifty tabs open, you’ll be happy to have The Great Suspender in your corner. It will auto-suspend tabs after a set time, and you can manually suspend tabs whenever you want. You can also place certain tabs on a whitelist (say the tab playing your YouTube video), and tabs can be opened even after closing and re-opening Chrome.
See at Chrome Web Store
Extensity
You’re going to need an organizer for all the Chrome extensions you have working for you. Extensity collects all extensions and places them in one button beside your address bar; enable and disable extensions with one click and create profiles for separate preferences. Extensity keeps your browser toolbar uncluttered and gives you mastery over your browsing experience.
See at Chrome Web Store
Pushbullet
Receiving notifications from your Android phone right in Chrome is a great way to not miss an important text or call. Pushbullet also allows you to send SMS messages from your phone and send messages through apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Kik. When you receive and acknowledge a notification in Chrome, the notification will be dismissed from your phone — alerts will no longer pile up while you’re busy working away at your computer.
See at Chrome Web Store
LastPass
Having multiple, complex passwords is becoming ever more important, but keeping track of them all can be a pain. The LastPass extension brings everything you love about the password manager to Chrome — generate strong passwords, save all passwords, and even store credit card information for easy checkout. LastPass autofills password fields, so you’ll only have to remember one master password that unlocks your vault. This is a free extension, but a premium version can be unlocked that features full syncing across all devices.
See at Chrome Web Store
uBlock Origin
Choosing an extension that blocks ads doesn’t have to be a difficult decision. uBlock Origin is an open-source extension that aggressively blocks ads while using less memory than the other big ad-blocking services. If you want to go one step further, there are thousands of filters that can be applied to uBlock Origin, including tracking blockers and malware domain blockers.
See at Chrome Web Store
Honey
There are plenty of deals available when you shop online — the only problem is that they’re sometimes hard to find. Honey is a neat extension that finds coupon codes for you. When you’re at a checkout screen, just click the Honey button and the best coupon code available will be automatically applied. Honey will also show a list of coupon codes that recently worked with whatever site you’re currently on.
See at Chrome Web Store
Magic Actions for YouTube
Magic Actions is an extension designed for a better YouTube experience. Set all videos to start in HD, enable cinema mode for a darkened screen, hide those annoying video annotations, and block ads. For anyone who watches a lot of YouTube — who doesn’t? — this is an incredibly useful extension.
See at Chrome Web Store
Your favorite extension?
Hit the comments section below and let us know what Chrome extensions you use most.
Grab these unlocked phones at up to 33% off right now!
Your next phone doesn’t have to cost a ton — here are a few great deals.
Amazon is currently offering select unlocked phones at a discount of up to 33%, dropping prices on some of them to under $100. The list includes a variety of different phones, like the OnePlus 2, Nextbit Robin, Alcatel Idol 3 and many others. Unlocked phones make great backup devices or even new phones, and don’t come loaded with tons of carrier bloat. You have the freedom to move them between carriers as you need, and with these discounts they are even more affordable.
The deals here include:
- Alcatel Idol 3 – $100
- Moto G4 Plus – $249
- OnePlus 2 (64GB) – $240
- ASUS ZenFone Zoom – $300
- BLU Studio Touch – $80
There are a number of other deals available, so be sure to hit the link below to check them all out. Will any of these be your next phone? Let us know which one in the comments!
See at Amazon
Here’s what your next Roku streaming boxes will look like
After releasing a cheap, updated streaming stick to great reviews, it was only a matter of time before Roku officially revealed updates for the rest of its line-up. This is not that time. Dave Zatz (who also blew the lid off Roku’s rebranding efforts not long ago) has come through with images and details of Roku’s currently unannounced updates, and for the most part, they’re the logical next steps many expected.
First up are the Roku Express and Express Plus, two replacements for the company’s existing Roku 1 streaming box that we really don’t know much about. The design is pretty distinctive, though: while the 1 was a glossy squircle with a flattish top, the Express twins look like a traditional matte black streamer that’s been bisected with a butter knife. A shot of the Express’s rear reveals only an HDMI output, too, which frankly sucks since the Roku 1’s RCA ports came in really handy for older televisions.
The next steps up are the Roku Premiere and Premiere Plus, the latter of which pack an Ethernet port and a microSD card slot for adding local storage. Zatz suggests these two might also pack the ability to playback 4K contact, though we’ll have to wait until Roku gets chatty to know for sure. He is, however, sure that the more premium Roku Ultra will play HDR video and 4K (though the name basically implied it all anyway). That high-end Roku will look near-identical to the Premiere and Premiere Plus save for the addition of a button to find your missing remote and an optical out for improved audio.
We’re not sure that we love the rebranding, but whatever — it seems like a fait accompli at this point anyway. More importantly, these images look to be high-quality press renders, which suggests a full-blown Roku announcement is coming very soon. Do yourself a favor and don’t start your holiday shopping too early, okay?
Source: ZatzNotFunny
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