Grab Samsung’s 128GB microSD card for just $33 right now!

Right now you can pick up a Samsung 128GB microSD card for just $33 at Amazon, a savings of $7 from its regular price. Whether you need extra space in your phone, tablet, camera or other devices, this is a great card to have in your collection. It is a Class 10 card with transfer speeds up to 48MB/s, so you’ll be able to quickly move pictures, video and more to and from the card. If 128GB is more than you need, you can grab a 64GB card for $20 right now as well.

We don’t know how long this deal will last, so if you need a new card be sure to act quickly. You don’t need any coupon codes to take advantage of the discount here, just simply add it to your cart and check out at the lower price.

See at Amazon

How to use the YouTube app for Android

How do I use YouTube on Android?

Keyboard Cat. Muffins. Charlie Bit Me. Grape Lady Falls. Chocolate Rain. The list goes on and on and aren’t we lucky that the YouTube app comes standard with just about every Android phone on the market (thanks, Google). So, how do you get to all these classic gems? How do you play them and subscribe to the channels you love?

Here’s how!

• How to search for videos
• How to control video playback
• How to change video quality
• How to enable/disable captions
• How to create a YouTube account
• How to subscribe to a YouTube channel
• How to share a YouTube video
• How to create playlists
• How to cast YouTube to your TV with Chromecast

How to search for videos

You can search for videos by keyword, topic, title, channel, whatever. Just type in what you want to find and away you go!

You can also find videos under the home (the little house button), trending (the fire button), and subscriptions (the play button with tabs behind it) tabs.

Launch YouTube from your home screen or the app drawer.
Tap the search button in the upper right corner of your screen. It looks like magnifying glass.
Type in your search.
Tap the search button on the bottom right of your keyboard. It’s the magnifying glass.

Tap on a video to view it.

How to control video playback

Once you search for a video and tap on it, it’ll play automatically. You can easily control playback using the play bar. Here’s how:

Launch YouTube from your home screen or from the app drawer.
Search for the video you want to watch.

Tap the video to play it. Turn your phone or tablet on its side to view the video in fullscreen. You can also tap the fullscreen button on the bottom right corner of the video. It looks like a broken square.

Playback controls

• Tap the video area to bring up the play controls. Don’t tap the center if you don’t want to pause.
• Tap the center of the video to play or pause.
• Tap and drag along the play bar to scrub through the video.

• Tap the next button or previous button to skip to the next video in the list or to go back to the video you were watching before.

  

How to change video quality

If you’re trying to save on data or you prefer all of your video in as high definition as possible, you can raise or lower the video quality at will.

Launch YouTube from your home screen or the app drawer.
Find the video you want to watch.
Tap the more button on the top right of the video pane. It looks like three vertical dots. You may have to tap the video to bring up the playback controls.
Tap Quality.

Tap a resolution in the list.

Setting a lower resolution can help reduce the amount of data you use while streaming on a cellular signal. Some videos may not have certain resolutions available.

How to enable/disable captions

Launch YouTube from your home screen or the app drawer.
Find the video you want to watch.
Tap the more button on the top right of the video pane. It looks like three vertical dots. You may have to tap the video to bring up the playback controls.
Tap Captions.

Tap a language if there are more than one available or tap Turn off if you don’t want them on.

How to create a YouTube account

If you want to like, comment, or subscribe on YouTube, you’ll need to sign up for a YouTube account if you haven’t already. Good news: If you have a Google account, you already have a YouTube account and need only sign in!

Launch YouTube from your home screen or the app drawer.
Tap the more button on the top right of your screen. It’s the three vertical dots.
Tap Sign In.

Tap the add button (plus sign) next to Accounts. Alternatively, tap the account you want to sign in with and you’ll be signed in with your password.

Enter your email address and tap Next.
Enter a password and tap Next.

Tap Accept.

You’ll be automatically signed in to YouTube with your new account.

How to subscribe to a YouTube channel

If you find a video you really like and want more from that YouTuber, you can subscribe to their channel. You’ll need an account and then you’ll receive a notification every time that channel uploads a new video.

Launch YouTube from your home screen or the app drawer.
Find the video or channel from the YouTuber to whom you’d like to subscribe.

Tap the red subscribe button. It’ll be the word “Subscribe” with a red play button next to it.

How to share a YouTube video

Launch YouTube from your home screen or the app drawer.
Find the video or channel you’d like to share.
Tap the share button on the upper right of your screen. It’s the curved arrow.
Tap a sharing method. You can share via message, email, Facebook, and just about anything else you can share with.

Share as you would normally in whatever method you choose.

How to create playlists

You can add videos to a playlist while watching a video or you can add them from their thumbnails.

How to add videos to a playlist from the thumbnail

Launch YouTube from your home screen or the app drawer.
Search for videos you’d like to add to your playlist.
Tap the more button on the side of a video thumbnail. It’s the three vertical dots.
Tap Add to playlist.

Tap Create new playlist.

Type a title for your playlist.

Tap OK.

The next time you add a video to that playlist, the name of the playlist will appear under **Add to watch later.

How to add the video you’re watching to a playlist

Launch YouTube from your home screen or the app drawer.
Search for videos you’d like to add to your playlist.
Tap the video pane while watching the video.
Tap the add to play list button. It looks like a list with a + on it.
Tap Create new playlist.
Type a name for your new playlist.

Tap OK.

When you add a new video to a playlist, the name of the playlist you’ve created will appear in the choices.

How to cast YouTube to your TV with Chromecast

Launch YouTube from your home screen or the app drawer.
Tap the cast button. It looks like a box with the Wi-Fi symbol in the bottom left corner.
Tap a device. It could be your television, and Android TV box, or some other media streaming device.

Tap a video to play it or add it to the queue.

You’ll know your phone or tablet is ready to cast when the case button turns white in the middle.

iPhone 7 Plus: The Android Central review

What happens when an Android Central editor switches to an iPhone after six years on Android?

The quick take

It’s not a hugely interesting year for the iPhone — as evidenced by the fact that much of the chatter around Apple’s latest has to do with minor color differences, or with what the 7 series doesn’t have. Even so, the iPhone 7 Plus packs enough technical innovation to rival — and in some cases beat — top-tier Android phones. The 7 Plus looks good, is approachable and easy to use, and does pretty much everything you’d want from a modern smartphone. But despite genuinely innovative technical feats like the telephoto camera and Taptic Engine, it’s clear a more substantial upgrade awaits in 2017.

The Good

• Solid, sturdy build quality
• Lightning-fast performance
• Excellent camera, neat zoom features
• Reliable all-day (often multi-day) battery
• Water resistance

The Bad

• No headphone jack
• Design iconic, but equally dated
• Bulky size compared to 5.5-inch Androids
• Slow charging
• Expensive SIM-free price

Wait, what?

iPhone 7 Plus Full Review

OK, so first things first — why are we reviewing the iPhone 7 Plus on Android Central? Simple: The iPhone is a big deal. It’s the biggest single competitor to the Android space as a whole, and that alone makes it worth our time. The 7 Plus in particular, with its 5.5-inch screen, lands around the middle of the Android field. And as the appetite for larger phones grows, the 7 Plus is the model that’s seen greater demand.

There’s one pretty big difference between the iPhone and most of the phones we review here at AC — obviously it’s not an Android device. Nevertheless, we’re still going to give it a fair shake, and treat it as we would any other flagship phone. Aside from the fact that I’ve mainly used Android phones for the past six years, I’m mostly going into this review with an open mind.

About this review

We’re publishing this review after just over a week with an unlocked European-spec iPhone 7 Plus (model A1784) in silver with 32GB of storage. We’ve been using the phone on Vodafone UK in areas with mixed 3G and 4G coverage, mainly in Manchester and London. We began running iOS 10.0.1, before receiving an update to 10.0.2 about halfway through the review process.

Because we like to live dangerously, we didn’t use a case throughout our time with the phone.

The same, but different

iPhone 7 Plus Hardware

When a friend first handed me an iPhone 6 Plus more than two years ago, the first thing I did was almost drop it directly onto a glass table. By the standards of the time, the 6 Plus seemed big, slippery and more than a little unwieldy — not the sort of phone you’d want to use without a case. Two generations on, although a lot has changed on the inside — and to a certain extent, around the back — the experience of wrangling this 5.5-inch slab of metal and glass remains largely identical. Fortunately, in the intervening period I’ve also gotten a bit better at handling oversized phones. It’s a little slippery, but not horribly so, and I haven’t felt in any huge danger of spiking it onto a table or sidewalk like I almost did to my friend’s 6 Plus.

You already know how the new iPhone looks and feels.

Chances are you too already know what the iPhone looks and feels like. In a break with its usual cadence, Apple has kept its iPhone designs largely unchanged for a third generation running. As such, from the front, the iPhone 7 Plus is basically identical to a 6 or 6s Plus. Around the back, the differences become more pronounced, with less offensive plastic antenna bands that now run along the top and bottom edge, and the 7 Plus’s standout hardware upgrade, that dual rear camera module. Yet again there’s a camera bump, which I’m fine with, given that it usually means better image quality. The change in antenna lines, combined with the new mold of the camera bump — a part of the chassis, not a separate bit of metal — makes the 7 look a little more organic and cohesive than before.

Nevertheless, it’s a riff on a two-year-old design. Iconic, to be sure, but also beginning to look a bit dated. Next to many 5.5-inch (and even 5.7-inch) Android phones, the 7 Plus is positively bulbous — there’s a lot of space on either side of what’s already a reasonably big screen.

Of course, the execution is still top-notch. Manufacturing tolerances are tight, the subtle chamfers around the power and volume keys add subtle flair, and the silver model I’m using has a pleasant shimmer as it turns through light. (And yes, the ports line up.) Despite the overarching slipperiness — which I’m told doesn’t affect the hard-to-find glossy “jet black” variant — it’s a comfortable fit in the hand. It size, curves and finish make it harder to one-hand than competitors like the glass-backed Galaxy S7 edge and Note 7, though.

So visually, we’re looking at a handful of welcome tweaks to a design that’s basically a known quantity.

A handful of welcome tweaks to a design that’s basically a known quantity.

This generation’s iPhone is more about the changes that don’t immediately jump out and grab you. Like the much improved 1080p display — now with a wider color gamut, a higher brightnesssi ceiling and excellent daylight visibility, even with that highly reflective white border. It’s not as saturated as Samsung’s SuperAMOLEDs, but that’s by choice, with apple choosing color accuracy over colors that pop. The iPhone doesn’t lead in pixel density, and in fact it hasn’t for a few years. (And with bigger upgrades surely coming next year it’s easy to see why Apple would stick at 1080p for the moment, given the hassle that new screen resolutions impose on iOS developers.)

The iPhone’s audio capabilities get a quiet improvement too, with the speaker behind the earpiece teaming up with the bottom-firing speaker for better playback without a headset. (We’ve seen this from both HTC and Huawei on the Android side.) I no longer have the HTC 10 around for comparisons, but the 7 Plus’s playback closely matched that of the Huawei P9 Plus — decent-sounding, but tinny at higher volume levels. Fine for showing friends a YouTube video, not so much for extended listening in your own home.

Another stealth upgrade sits behind the new home button, which actually isn’t a button at all. Like the display, it’s pressure-sensitive, and the “click” you feel on pressing it is generated by Apple’s Taptic Engine, like the trackpad of the newest MacBooks. The tiny haptic feedback motor produces a firm “click” when enough pressure is used, and the sensation is almost like that of a real button. I’ve heard more than a few people describe it as feeling “like the phone is broken” when pressing it for the first time — effectively, the entire lower portion of the body seems to click. But you soon get used to it, and there are three levels of click to choose from during setup.

The Taptic Engine is used throughout iOS 10 to deliver neat haptic flourishes in certain areas, like a gentle “thud” when the notification pane drops down, or a subtle bump when you’re zoomed all the way in on a photo, or a quick triple-knock when you switch to silent mode. All this extra feedback contributes to the polish of experience.

Touch ID returns for fingerprint security, and Apple’s sensor is still among the best — tied with Huawei and HTC’s offerings in my completely unscientific testing, and comfortably more reliable than anything on a Samsung phone. (Once you’re down to authenticating in a few milliseconds either way, you start dealing with diminishing returns.)

Audio, display and haptic changes stand out as some of the 7 series’ major ‘stealth upgrades.’

OK, fine. Let’s talk about headphone jacks and #donglelife. Yes, the iPhone 7 series gets rid of the standard 3.5mm socket and replaces it with a speaker facade, behind which sits a barometric vent, which definitely isn’t just a fancy term for a hole to let air in. Yes, it’s moderately annoying. The dongle provided in the box is tiny, and works OK with smaller headphones (at least when compatibility issues don’t strike), and looks ridiculous hanging off a pair of big studio headphones. If you’re using this thing over two years, you’re probably going to either lose it, or fray up the cable from the twisting motion that results from it being plugged into regular earphones.

Using the dongle is basically bad from a user experience perspective. Which is why Apple would rather you use wireless earphones or something that plugs in over Lightning. (Both of which it sells!) In the short term that’s inconvenient, but — and I’ll surprise even myself in saying this — it shouldn’t be a deal-breaker. Switching to the iPhone is about an ecosystem change as much as anything. If that’s the jump you’re making, then you should probably just suck it up and buy some new headphones.

One area where having fewer ports helps is water resistance. Both 7-series iPhones carry IP67 certification against water and dust. (More on what that actually means here). Sure enough, the phone survives being dunked in the sink and run under a tap. But as with Samsung’s high-end Galaxy line, where IP68 certification is increasingly standard, it’s the added peace of mind when using the phone out in the rain, or around a pool, that makes water resistance really valuable.

Benchmarks don’t always line up with real-world performance, but Apple’s A10 excels at both.

Internal hardware specs are often the least publicized thing about an iOS device. Nevertheless, Apple’s talking up its A10 Fusion chip, a quad-core processor which for the first time adopts a big.LITTLE configuration — two high-power cores for demanding tasks, two lower-power cores for background tasks. We’ve seen this approach in the Android space going back years and years, and it works pretty well.

Benchmarks don’t tell you much about real-world performance, but as a measure of potential they can be interesting, and the A10 Fusion has been benchmarked at a higher level than some MacBooks in single-threaded performance. So it’s no surprise that in the real world, the iPhone 7 Plus feels as absurdly fast — as quick as any Android phone out there. At the same time, standby battery life has been superb — more on that later. And an ample 3GB of RAM ensured I never experienced any obnoxious app reloads or slowdown.

Mercifully, the days of new 16GB iPhones are over, and so I opted for a 32GB 7 Plus, as it’s not going to be my main device going forward. If it were, I’d almost certainly go for 128GB — after less than two weeks of loading up a handful of apps, and taking a few photos each day, I’m already past the halfway mark. Again, another example of where just sucking it up and spending more money will leave you better off in the long run.

So overall, the picture is of a known quantity in design terms, with a few quiet upgrades the impact of which might surprise you. At the same time, Apple’s new chip extends its lead in single-core performance — a plus for gaming — and the new telephoto camera gives photographers a reason to look past the competition.

iOS 10

iPhone 7 Plus Software

I’ve used iPhones and iPads on and off over the years, usually as a side effect of working for Mobile Nations. The last time I used an iPhone full-time was back in 2010. That was an iPhone 3GS on iOS 4 — so obviously a whole lot has changed since then, both in iOS itself and how I use a phone.

I’ll say it: The out-of-box experience of using an iPhone is just better than that of most Android phones.

Making the switch was as painless as you’d expect from an Apple device. I chose to set up my 7 Plus fresh “as a new iPhone,” as opposed to using Apple’s ‘Move to iOS’ tool. This lands you at an expectedly clean home screen after the initial cellular, Wi-Fi, Touch ID and Apple account setup, but the really striking thing about setting up a new iPhone was how much more smoothly the first hour or so after setup is compared to Android. No bloatware. No dumpster fire of built-in app updates waiting. No “optimizing apps” after a day-one OTA. It’s an experience most Android phone makers could learn from.

iOS just isn’t that good at handling a bunch of notifications at once.

iOS is about simplicity and approachability, sometimes to a fault. The OS’s attractive, colorful and very much flattened design language hasn’t changed appreciably since iOS 7 — though plenty of new features have been introduced, and some things now live in different places, or work slightly differently. There’s also been ample cross-pollination between iOS and Android over the years, so as of iOS 10 it doesn’t take much effort to learn one after having used another. Control center (quick settings) lives behind a swipe up, not swipe down. Notifications look a bit different and often aren’t as easy to see in groups.

I’m not heavily into widgets or massive amounts of launcher customization on Android, nevertheless I fully expected to hate iOS’s simplified home screen setup. Despite this, I adjusted to Apple’s home screen setup relatively painlessly, and faster than I expected. You’re still limited to a six-by-four grid of icons or folders for the most part, but the new widget space over on the right makes things a bit more functional, with a customizable feed of gadgets from apps, both built-in and third-party. It’s not as smart as Google Now, but it is predictable and useful.

My colleague Andrew Martonik has joked about how notifications are still a mess in iOS 10, and I’m largely in agreement with him. I don’t deny that part of that is just what I’m accustomed to. But compared to the ease with which Android Nougat — and, to a large extent, earlier versions — handle multiple alerts from the same app, iOS’s notifications seem clunky and needlessly large, with poor information density. To put it simply, it’s just way too easy to go away for a couple of hours, come back and be swamped with an unmanageable stack alerts. As a result, it’s also way too tempting to hit “clear all,” as opposed to actually reading through all that stuff. (You can “force press” to view notifications in more detail and act on notifications, but that’s not as easy a gesture to perform as a simple swipe down.)

3D Touch is magical, but discoverability issues from the last generation remain.

3D Touch as a whole is a bit of a mixed bag. Apple, like iOS developers, is still figuring out how best to use a pressure-sensitive screen, and although the visual effects that accompany a “hard press” are delightful, there’s still a real discoverability problem. There’s no easy way for an iOS newbie to figure out what lives behind a long press, and what requires a hard press. The one place where it is clear — and genuinely useful — is on the home screen, where force-pressing icons pops up a shortcut menu to different areas of the app, and in some cases a handy widget too.

I may have hated on iOS’s notifications as a whole, but the one feature I love is something first pioneered by Motorola — the way notifications pulse on screen when they first arrive, allowing me to easily see if they’re worth acting upon. Similarly, the iPhone’s lock screen lights up when you lift the phone or remove it from your pocket, giving you an easy way to see alerts without pressing any buttons. It also lets you quickly get to the camera app with a swipe — though Samsung’s double-tap shortcut is faster by far.

While many iOS apps are now well optimized for the larger screen of the 7 Plus, there remain a few peculiar instances where things just don’t seem to make sense on a 5.5-inch display. Case in point: A back button in the top-left corner, where it’s hardest to reach. And while the vast majority of apps now reformat properly in landscape mode, there are outliers like Apple Music. With many iPhone owners sticking to smaller models — and, let’s face it, many Android phones now being enormous — maybe that’s not surprising.

Siri is smarter, but you might still feel a bit dumb talking to your phone.

Apple’s Siri assistant has gotten a lot smarter in iOS 10, with the ability to book rides, send messages and interact with payment apps. Some of that functionality is built into the Google app and Google Assistant, others we’re still waiting on. But the basic truth of Siri interaction remains: When it works, you feel like a wizard, when it fails you feel like an idiot. And I always feel like a bit of an idiot just for talking to my phone. Nevertheless, if that’s your thing, Siri is now smarter and better-supported than ever before in iOS 10. Your mileage may vary though, and I’ll admit that I’m not a massive user of voice feature on either platform.

Siri, like many other parts of iOS, hopes to keep you within the Apple ecosystem. I use a Mac, but I’ve never bought into Apple’s services in a big way, besides finding the occasional obscure movie or TV show on iTunes. The good news is that the Apple services I didn’t want to use were largely easy to ignore. Am I missing out in doing that? Probably. A big area I didn’t explore was iMessage, where the phone number tie-in — and my overreliance on Android elsewhere — makes it unworkable. I’m missing out on stickers, custom backgrounds, app plug-ins, GIANT TEXT and other stuff, but many of those are also available in WhatsApp and iMessage. Needless to say, if you’re fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, you’ll benefit from seamless messaging, calls, document transfer, photo sync and a bunch of other stuff between devices.

Fortunately for me, it’s easy to live in the Google ecosystem on an iPhone, which is exactly what I did. Gmail, the Chrome browser, Google Photos, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Keep and others work great on iOS, though some have to exist as second-class citizens behind the built-in options.

On the whole, iOS is pretty, polished, extremely fast and easy to use. The major points of frustration I ran into come from being used to many of Android’s power user-centric capabilities, like apps having free reign in the background. It’s a different set of compromises, the set that fits you best will depend on which ecosystem you’re more attached to, and how much you like to monkey with your phone.

Other iOS observations:

• Sharing between apps on iOS has gotten a lot easier over the past year, but the experience is still a little unpredictable. Sharing a photo to Instagram, for instance, shares it directly to your feed without editing or filtering.
• Apple Pay is as simple to set up and use as you’d expect, and the 7 Plus’s NFC antenna placement — right on the very top edge — makes reaching payment terminals easier than some Android phones.
• Thankfully, modern iPhones and iPads are now largely independent of the iTunes desktop app which, though improved of late, is still a usability trainwreck.
• Automatic photo backup (whether through Dropbox or Google Photos) wasn’t as seamless on the iPhone, because of the limits Apple puts on apps running in the background. That’s good for battery life, bad if you forget to open the app every few days.
• Night shift — the feature that lets you cut blue light levels at set times in the evening — should just be on every phone.

iMore on iOS 10

Want the full lowdown on everything that’s new in iOS 10 on iPhone and iPad? Rene Ritchie breaks down everything that’s new in Apple’s latest OS, in iMore’s extensive iOS 10 review.

iOS 10 review on iMore

Telephotography

iPhone 7 Plus Cameras

For a long time, the iPhone was a clear leader in mobile photography. Then the likes of Samsung and LG started to take cameras seriously, and now there’s some serious competition afoot. In the iPhone 7 Plus, Apple’s differentiating itself in a couple of days: Firstly, a solid, reliable main camera that takes photos as good as current Android flagships. Secondly, a neat new 56mm telephoto camera that lets you capture zoomed in shots without resorting to digital zoom.

The iPhone’s main camera about matches up to its major Android competitors, but there’s no clear overall winner.

By the numbers, we’re looking at an optically-stabilized 12-megapixel sensor behind an f/1.8 lens — within striking distance of both the Galaxy S7 and HTC 10. Captures, as always, are lightning-fast, and photos produced look about as good as Samsung and HTC’s latest in both daylight and low light. While Samsung uses a brighter lens, Apple’s post-processing often produces better indoor low-light snaps, simply because it does a better job of gauging white balance. (Samsung phones, historically, tend towards yellowish low-light pics.) At the same time, I found the iPhone sometimes struggled to focus in a handful of outdoor low-light settings where the GS7 had no such issues.

It seems anticlimactic to say so, but for the most part it’s a wash. The most noticeable difference between iPhone 7 Plus shots and GS7 shots has to do with the way the colors are processed, more than speed or low-light performance. Samsung (and to an extent HTC) favors more saturated output, whereas Apple’s colors are less vibrant but more natural-looking. At the same time, Apple’s Auto HDR algorithm is a bit less aggressive than Samsung’s, for better or worse.

It should be no surprise that the iPhone is an excellent video camera, too. (Our friends at iMore actually shot their video review on it.) Although there’s some predictable graininess in lower-light conditions, colors remain accurate, dynamic range is great for a smartphone camera, and the handy zoom UI helps you smoothly crop in while filming. What’s more, if you want to go completely nuts, 4K recording is supported. (Hope you picked 128 or 256GB.)

For many people, the telephoto camera will be their go-to shooter.

Speaking of zoom, that second telephoto camera. It’s actually a smaller sensor than the main camera, and behind a slower f/2.8 lens without OIS. For that reason, the phone actually uses a digitally zoomed image for “2X” shots in low light. But with decent lighting, your zoomed-in shots will benefit from a higher overall resolution, as opposed to being blown-up from a smaller crop.

The telephoto camera’s limitations are pretty clear if you know what to look for. Darker areas are a bit grainier, and more fine detail is lost through noise reduction. But despite this, the second camera has been a joy to use, allowing me to capture scenes that any other smartphone wouldn’t allow. It’s probably only a matter of time before the optics on the telephoto camera are upgraded — for a lot of people telephoto will be the go-to shooting mode, especially when iOS 10.1’s portrait mode update arrives. These are features I fully expect (and hope) Android manufacturers will borrow next year.

Other photographic notables:

• A f/2.2, 7-megapixel Facetime camera ups the game for selfies, with shots largely matching output from the GS7’s overall. Again, selfies from the iPhone seemed to benefit from more accurate white balance.
• Apple’s camera app remains simple as ever. No settings, plenty of quick toggles and you’ll need to download a third-party app for manual controls and RAW shooting capabilities.
• Apple’s animated Live Photos (introduced a year ago) are neat, but will make short work of a 32GB iPhone before long.

Enviable longevity

iPhone 7 Plus Battery Life

A 2,900mAh fixed battery isn’t much in the Android world. But on the iPhone, that’s what it takes to reliably see you through all day, every day, and often well into a second. (Because Apple controls the silicon and the OS, and is much more restrictive on how apps work in the background, its power budget goes further.) Even when traveling in areas with spotty LTE coverage, the iPhone 7 Plus got me through a full day of use and into the evening. On normal days, when I’m jumping between Wi-Fi and LTE, I never finished with less than 50 percent in the tank.

The 7 Plus is a comfortable ‘two-day’ phone.

iOS’s power stats aren’t directly comparable to Android’s, but I was getting between 10 and 12 hours of “use” per charge. Use doesn’t always mean the screen is on — and even when it is, brightness levels will mean the power drain will vary over time. What’s more important is that those hours of use tended to be over two days, not one. That’s better than the vast majority of Android phones, with the exception of newer Snapdragon 625-based mid-rangers like the Moto Z Play and Huawei Nova Plus.

Unfortunately though, the iPhone remains a relatively slow charger next to QuickCharge-enabled rivals. The standard bundled charger is a paltry 5V/1A brick, and charging from a 2A plug does little to boost charge speeds. Slower charges are better for the lifespan of the battery; they’re also pretty frustrating when you’re used to plugging in a dead phone for 30 minutes and being well past 50 percent.

Make the switch?

iPhone 7 Plus: The Bottom Line

Turns out the iPhone 7 Plus is a pretty good smartphone. Who knew!

It takes a decent (though aging) overall design, adds important under-the-hood changes, removes a port that probably didn’t need to be removed, adds an awesome new telephoto camera, becomes water-resistant and calls it a day.

And all those small things — the Taptic Engine, IP68 certification, a ridiculously fast CPU, an optically-zoomed camera — actually add up to a pretty substantial update overall. It’s a classic case of the sum being greater than the parts. In particular, the telephoto camera is a huge upgrade for mobile photographers.

The telephoto camera might be the greatest weapon in Apple’s arsenal.

The removal of the headphone jack is a mild annoyance, but Apple’s made it pretty clear that’s just how things are now. Customers will need to live with it or look elsewhere, and for the most part they’ll probably do the former.

Yet for all its improvements, this still feels like another “S” year. All the technology is there under the hood, but the overall vision — of the internals and external parts — won’t be with us for another year. That’s another year for rivals in the Android world to look at what works and what doesn’t, and react to their biggest competitor.

The iPhone isn’t automatically the best smartphone, though. It hasn’t been for a long time. Samsung, Google and others are playing at the same level, and another great (but not mind-blowing) iPhone means the status quo will continue.

Should you switch to one or the other? Only you can decide. But we’ll be here to help sort through the best the Android space has to offer in the year ahead.

iMore’s iPhone 7 and 7 Plus review

Want to know even more about the iPhone 7 Plus, and it’s smaller sibling the iPhone 7? You’ll find way more detailed take over on iMore, where Rene Ritchie goes in-depth on both phones’ feature sets.

(Then come back here and read all about the Android phones you could be buying.)

Read iMore’s iPhone 7 review

Toyota’s companion robot goes on sale at the end of the year

Toyota has announced that it’ll sell people its adorable Kirobo Mini “communication partner robot” from the end of this year. Would-be owners can snag one from a series of low-volume pre-sales at Toyota dealerships in Tokyo as well as Aichi Prefecture. Otherwise, they’ll have to wait until 2017 for the weeny ‘bots, which are designed to sit in your car’s cup holders, to reach store shelves across the country. If you’re wondering where you’ve seen this tech before, don’t worry, Toyota sent one into space to hang around the ISS a while ago.

Kirobo Mini is intended to offer “companionship” to lonely drivers on long journeys, offering “casual conversation” in standard Japanese. The unit will turn its head to whoever is speaking, nod in agreement and even attempt to analyze your emotions with a built-in camera. That way, when you gripe about your terrible new boss at work, Kirobo will adjust its manner of speaking to be more sympathetic.

When the robot was initially announced, Toyota implied that Kirobo would harvest data on your driving to send back to HQ. The information, the firm said, would be used to “inform future innovations and develop transport thats in tune with the driver’s mood.” References to such collection have been excised from the most recent release, but it’s worth bearing in mind should you want to spend 39,800 Yen ($392) before tax on one.

Source: Toyota

The best blood pressure monitors for home use

By Stacey Higginbotham

This post was done in partnership with The Sweethome, a buyer’s guide to the best things for your home. Read the full article here.

After spending 20 hours researching more than 50 blood pressure monitors, interviewing medical professionals, and testing 10 finalists with a group of nursing professors and students at the University of Texas Nursing School, we can say the best blood pressure monitor for most people to use at home is the Omron Series 10 with Bluetooth. Not everyone needs a blood pressure monitor, but those with high blood pressure (a third of Americans) or concerns about it will find a blood pressure monitor is a relatively inexpensive investment in their health.

How we picked and tested

We took 10 blood pressure monitors to the University of Texas Nursing School to test and find the most accurate, comfortable, and easy-to-use model. Photo: Stacey Higginbotham

For this guide, we decided not to review wrist or fingertip monitors because they are not recommended by the American Heart Association, and major insurers such as Aetna don’t reimburse patients for them because they question the accuracy. According to Dr. Bruce Alpert, former co-chair of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation Sphygmomanometer Committee, accuracy in wrist and fingertip monitors can be compromised by the type of algorithm the manufacturer uses to compensate for reading farther away from your heart. We also did not test smartphone apps that purport to take blood pressure readings directly from your phone, because they are not accurate.

The most important element of a blood pressure monitor is its accuracy. This is determined by the blood pressure machine itself (technically, it’s called a sphygmomanometer), and by the size of the cuff. The conditions under which you measure your blood pressure—from time of day to body position—matter as well, no matter the machine, according to both Dr. Alpert and to Dr. Leigh Goldstein at the University of Texas School of Nursing.

We brought 10 of the most promising blood pressure monitors that satisfied our basic criteria to the University of Texas School of Nursing, where nine volunteers tried on all of the cuffs after getting a baseline reading on the UT equipment. The goal was to get a variety of user impressions and to test the accuracy of the monitors against a professionally taken blood pressure on equipment you might find in a doctor’s office or hospital setting.

Each participant started with a blood pressure reading from the lab’s equipment, taken by two professors, each registered nurses. Each person then tested all nine monitors, comparing their baseline blood pressure against the test unit’s reading. Because the repeated constriction of the blood vessels in the arm during multiple tests will affect the accuracy of later readings, we took only the first two readings on each cuff into consideration when determining accuracy, looking overall for cuffs that read within the 10 mmHg of pressure suggested by doctors.

All participants took their tests sitting down with their back supported (though in the interest of time, we did not adhere throughout testing to the recommended five minutes of rest between tests). Each participant also had the option of writing their impressions of each monitor and cuff after the reading. They considered the comfort of the cuff, ease of putting it on and reading the display, and any other factors they thought were important. Some made comments about how long the monitor took to read their blood pressure and the volume of the monitor as it worked. Many of these areas are subjective, and some, like the speed of the reading, will vary from person to person, but we looked for commonalities in their input. At the end of the group testing, we continued with further tests for the five models that tested most accurately with the student nurses.

Our pick

The Omron 10 Series with Bluetooth had the most comfortable cuff of all the monitors we tried, and because of its stiffer construction, it’s also the easiest to put on one-handed. Photo: Stacey Higginbotham

Of all the models we tested, the Omron Series 10 was the most accurate, had the most comfortable cuff, and possessed the best combination of useful features—a Bluetooth connection to transmit data to your smartphone for easier health-trend tracking, the ability to average three tests taken within a 10-minute window for improved accuracy, and irregular heartbeat detection. It features an easy-to-use interface and was also the only monitor we tested with a backlit display.

Budget pick

Walmart’s ReliOn-branded monitor has a more basic set of features and is simple to use. Our testers found the cuff isn’t as comfortable or easy to put on as the Omron 10’s. Photo: Stacey Higginbotham

Those who want to spend less than $50 on a blood pressure monitor should turn to Walmart. Its ReliOn BP200 blood pressure monitor (made by Omron) is usually $25 to $30 cheaper than our main pick. The ReliOn BP200 is accurate, tracks heart rate, and stores a month’s worth of daily readings for two people. It does have a slightly trickier cuff than the Omron 10, however, and it can’t use Bluetooth to connect to your phone.

If you need to track blood pressure for more than two people

The only model we found that will track up to four users, the A&D 767F monitor is inexpensive and provided us accurate readings in our testing. Photo: Stacey Higginbotham

Those who need to check blood pressures for more than two people regularly should look at the A&D 767F. It fared well in our accuracy tests, comes with a nice case and easy-to-read display, and is priced similarly to our budget pick. It is the only option we tested with the ability to track four users, so if you have more than two people in your home—perhaps aging parents—who need to monitor their blood pressure, this could be the best choice. The cuff is tighter on the arm than our top pick’s and the machine is louder, but not terribly so.

This guide may have been updated by The Sweethome. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Quadriplegic driver gets first autonomous car license

Sam Schmidt is no ordinary race car driver after suffering a devastating accident in training that rendered him a quadriplegic back in 2000. Now he’s also the first American to have been handed a driving license that permits him to use an autonomous vehicle on public highways. The state of Nevada has announced that Schmidt is able to drive a modified Corvette Stingray Z06 that is controlled just with the motion of his head, breath and voice commands.

There’s a little stretching of the definition of autonomous, here, since Schmidt is directly in control of the car himself. The vehicle, however, does much of the heavy lifting for him, and so qualifies under Nevada state law as self-driving. For instance, Schmidt controls the gear shift through voice commands, that the car then handles automatically, while a sip-and-puff device enables him to control acceleration and braking. The vehicle’s customization was handled by Arrow Electronics as part of its semi-autonomous motorcar project.

The granting of the license is a huge step forward in enabling disabled people to regain their independence, since Schmidt can now travel ostensibly where he wants. Nevada will also use it to burnish its credentials as a tech-friendly city, since it now houses plenty of bleeding-edge tech startups including Hyperloop One and Faraday Future — not to mention that it’s also the home of Tesla’s Gigafactory. It’s also a big deal for the world of semi-autonomous vehicles, since legislators may look more favorably upon cars with humans behind the wheel. After all, most of the alarmism that currently surrounds autopilot systems is that a computer can’t make the sort of snap judgments a person can.

Via: Popular Science

Source: Nevada DMV

MIT’s shock-absorbing robots are safer and more precise

Soft robots aren’t just about speed and grace… they should be safer, too. To prove that point, MIT’s CSAIL has developed bouncing robots whose 3D-printed soft skins act as shock absorbers. The technique revolves around printing a “programmable viscoelastic material” where every aspect of the skin (which includes solids, liquids and a rubber-like substance called TangoBlack+) is tuned to the right level of elasticity. The robot can give way where it needs to, but remain solid otherwise. As a result, it can bounce around without taking damage, and land four times more precisely than it would with an inflexible surface.

Moreover, the material is very practical. It’s cheap and easy to find, and the 3D printing eliminates problems with customization. You only need a single print job to create the skin instead of a complicated, time-consuming engineering process.

The invention should primarily help with the durability and safety of robots, of course. You could see robot helpers that work alongside humans without fear of injury, and rescue robots that won’t easily break if they fall. They would be more precise, as well, as an unexpected collision wouldn’t throw them off. However, the material could be useful for all kinds of products. CSAIL envisions phones, helmets, and other impact-prone devices that would be that much better at surviving horrible blows.

Source: MIT News

New Jersey town’s parking solution is free Uber rides

The city of Summit, New Jersey has a bit of an infrastructure issue. The NJ Transit Summit Station doesn’t have enough parking for all the people who commute through it. But fear not, the city has a solution: Uber! The city announced on Monday that it is launching a pilot partnership with the ride-hailing company to provide residents with free rides to the station.

Residents will need to have a prepaid parking permit to be eligible for the free ride. Those without permits will still get a hefty discount with $2 flat-rate rides — that’s equivalent to the station parking lot’s $4/day rate. City officials figure that this scheme will free up about 100 parking spaces, eliminate the need to expand the parking lot and save taxpayers around $5 million over the next two decades. The pilot program will start with 100 commuters and run Monday to Friday between 5am and 9pm. Should it prove effective, city officials will look to expand the program to more residents.

Source: NJ.com