BLU Vivo 6 UK promo price extended for Cyber Monday

£55 off new mid-ranger from BLU.

Florida-based brand BLU has extended its £55 off deal for the new Vivo 6, a metal-clad mid-ranger that launched on Black Friday at a special price. As part of a Cyber Monday deal, you’ll be able to pick up the Vivo 6 for its discounted price of £184.99, down from the standard £239.99. The “rose gold” model is back ordered to December 2, while the regular “gold” is showing as available for delivery on November 30.

As we’ve seen from our brief time with the phone so far, it’s a decent-looking handset, but one with a few software quirks.

On the outside, the Vivo 6 sports a curved aluminum unibody with a brushed finish, and a subtle curve that fits comfortably in the hand. Chamfers around the front and back give it a premium look and feel, similar to an old favorite of ours, the HTC One M7. It’s a trued and true design that many have emulated over the years, but nevertheless it looks good at any price point.

the phone is incredibly quick in day-to-day use — there’s not a hint of lag or stuttering to be seen when jumping between apps — and thanks to the ample 4GB of RAM, we didn’t notice any multitasking issues either. But there are also changes that may rub Android purists the wrong way, like the aforementioned iOS-style quick settings, and the springboard-style home screen with no app drawer.

See at Amazon

Save big on Cyber Monday with Android Central Digital Offers!

Shopping on Cyber Monday can be chaotic — there are tons of sales around the web and it can be hard to pick which ones you’ll actually benefit from.

Something that many seem to overlook when shopping deals on Cyber Monday is software. From online courses to more information about career-specific topics than you can handle, you won’t want to miss out on these awesome savings.

Luckily Android Central Digital Offers is here to help make sure you don’t miss out! Here are some amazing deals and huge savings that you’ll want to check out.

VPNSecure: Lifetime Subscription

• Retail price: $450
• Our regular price: $39
• Cyber Monday price: $29.25

Using a VPN is the best way to remain secure while surfing the web and streaming, and it’s also an easier way to keep your online activity private. VPNSecure is an awesome cross-platform service that lets you keep your data safe and also gets around geographic restrictions, so you can watch Hulu in Canada or see what’s on Albanian Netflix (if such a thing exists).

See at Android Central Digital Offers

• Check out all of our Cyber Monday VPN deals and be sure to use promo code CYBER25 to get an additional 25% off!

Python Programming Bootcamp

• Retail price: $1,094
• Our regular price: $39
• Cyber Monday price: $29.25

Python is the programming language used to build powerful apps, and if you’re looking to get into the app development game, then the Python Bootcamp is the way you can start from scratch and move your way up to advanced app development and security.

See at Android Central Digital Offers

• Check out all of our Cyber Monday professional development course deals and be sure to use promo code CYBER25 to receive an additional 25% off!

IT Security & White Hat Hacking: CompTIA & Cisco Certifications

• Retail price: $1,395
• Our regular price: $29
• Cyber Monday price: $21.75

Get a jumpstart on your IT career by becoming CompTIA- and Cisco-certified. You’ll get all the prep you need to pass your exams with flying colors and to find a career in IT security, while learning IT fundamentals that aren’t just for the exams, but for the workplace as well.

See at Android Central Digital Offers

• Check out all of our Cyber Monday security deals and be sure to use promo code CYBER25 to get an extra 25% off!

Zoolz Complete Cloud Storage: Lifetime Solution

• Retail price: $3,600
• Our regular price: $39
• Cyber Monday price: $33.15

Cloud storage is perfect if you’re not into physical hard drives and if you want a backup service to make sure all of your data is safe and secure. Zoolz Complete Cloud Storage is perfect because you get 500GB of cold storage and 500GB of instant storage for life! Your data is encrypted; you can schedule backups; and you can store your data in multiple facilities and devices.

See at Android Central Digital Offers

Check out all of our Cyber Monday software deals and be sure to enter promo code CYBER15 to receive an additional 15% off!

Did you pick up a new Android phone on Black Friday?

What did you get?

There were a bunch of amazing deals available to U.S. and international consumers this Black Friday (and some fantastic Cyber Monday deals today, too). For many, it was the perfect time to pick up a new phone.

Some of the most popular phones during Black Friday.

From deeply-discounted Google Pixels at Verizon to unlocked devices like the ZTE Axon 7 and Honor 8, there were some great deals to be had on Android phones this past week. So tell us: Did you pick up a new device, for you or a loved one? And why did you choose that one in particular? Let us know in the comments below!

Today might be the best day to strap a Fitbit to your wrist

Spend today shopping for a fitness future!

Fitbit is a well-known and trusted brand when it comes to fitness accessories. The company’s line-up of tracking wearables are currently discounted by up to a massive 41% so if you’re thinking about getting into a fitness routine, this may well be the best time to pick up a Fitbit.

The best part about Fitbit trackers is the connectivity with supported smartphone platforms. With the wearable strapped to your wrist you’ll be able to monitor various vitals and data throughout the day, such as how many steps you’ve walked, how much you exercised, and more.

The range starts from just $59.46, which bags you a new Fitbit Flex 2. Do act quickly as we’re unsure when this promotion ends.

See at Amazon

Best TVs 2016: The best televisions available to buy today

Looking for a new TV but don’t know what to buy? Then you’ve come to the right place. 2016 saw the rise of 4K Ultra HD TVs and even introduced a new TV technology, HDR, or High Dynamic Range. Big screen events such as the 2016 Rio Olympics may have been and gone, but there’s always a good time to upgrade your TV.

4K TVs may have taken centre stage this year, but there’s still plenty of full HD screens being released if you’re not ready to take the jump in resolution. If you’re baffled when it comes to LCD vs OLED or Full HD vs 4K then, fear not, despite there being enough acronyms to melt minds we condense the basics to make that buying decision even easier.

Here’s a range of TVs to consider, either with Freeview Play built-in or ones that are ideal to hook up to a set-top box, to enhance your living room experience.

Jargon buster

LCD or liquid crystal display is the most common panel these days and is a great solution.

LED is something of a misnomer, as these TVs are still an LCD panel but with LED (light emitting diode) lights to dynamically illuminate the picture. That means more pronounced dynamic range; less illuminated blacks will look deeper, while highlights will be more pronounced. LED-backlit TVs are either lit from the edges or, in fewer (and more expensive) cases, by an entire rear panel array.

OLED, which stands for organic light emitting diode, is a format that’s been doing the rounds for a number of years. It’s popularity is beginning to increase now that prices are coming down, because they produce some of the best pictures available. OLED uses less power and is considerably thinner than other panel technologies, and it also doesn’t have to be produced as a flat panel. A lot of OLED TVs are curved, which claims to offer a more immersive experience, but it’s all down to personal preference.

4K, often termed UHD or Ultra HD, refers to resolution rather than panel type. The “Full HD” standard delivers 1920 x 1080 pixels, whereas 4K delivers 3840 x 2160 pixels. Four times the resolution means a sharper picture potential and now there’s more content available to watch, it’s never been a better time to invest.

HDR or High Dynamic Range is a TV technology that aims to make the picture on screen more realistic to what we see in reality. It works by making the whites whiter and darks darker, and making all the colours in between more accurate. If you can get a 4K TV with HDR and some content to watch on it, you’ll be getting the best possible TV experience currently available.

Freeview Play is Freeview’s catch-up TV service and appears on a rapidly increasing number of televisions. The most recent TVs from Panasonic, LG, Finlux and JVC sport Freeview Play and it gives users the ability to catch-up with their favourite shows by scrolling backwards through the electronic programme guide.

By clicking on shows on BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and UKTV channels (which include Dave, Yesterday, Really and Drama), they open in each broadcaster’s respective app automatically, then play for you to enjoy. It makes catching up more simple.

Click here to find out more about Freeview Play.

Best 4K TV

Sony ZD9 4K TV

Sony

Sony’s ZD9 TV arrived in the second half of 2016 with a seriously impressive spec and feature list. It’s designed with HDR in mind and can go even brighter than the Samsung KS9500. Sony has crammed in a whole host of proprietary screen technologies to boost the overall performance, and they really do work.

We were blown away when we first switched it on and continued to be thoroughly impressed with its 4K HDR performance from Ultra HD Blu-rays. The True Cinema processing mode is particularly effective with sports and movies by reducing motion judder to an impressive degree. 

SD and HD pictures are handled well too, making the ZD9 an incredibly good all-rounder. In fact, we loved the Sony ZD9 so much, it won the Pocket-lint Award for Best TV 2016.

Price: £3,999

Full review: Sony ZD9 4K TV

Samsung KS9500

Pocket-lint

Samsung is more than happy to take the fight to Sony though, and the KS9500 represents one of the best 4K HDR TVs available today. It’s a curved screen too, but if you’d rather have a flat screen and not sacrifice performance, you can take a look at the KS9000 series instead.

It has a generous selection of connections and runs on Samsung’s Tizen-based platform, which means there’s no backwards browsing that you’ll get from Freeview Play. The Samsung’s built-in EPG is one of the few areas it falls foul, so we’d recommend connecting a box such as the Humax FVP-4000T to get a seamless TV and catch-up experience.

The KS9500 is capable of producing one of the best pictures we’ve seen all year. If you can connect a 4K Blu-ray player or have Netflix or Amazon Video streaming, the 4K HDR picture is incredibly rewarding.

Price: £3,299

Full review: Samsung KS9500 review

Hisense 75M7900 4K TV

Hisense

You may think a 65-inch is plenty big enough, but take one look at a 75-incher and you’ll be making space in your front room in an instant. What makes this Hisense set even more appealing is its low price, considering what you get in return. You get 4K HDR, although it’s fair to say the performance isn’t quite on par with the likes of Samsung and LG because it can’t go as bright, but then this is an incredibly cheap TV for the size.

It’s a dab hand with full HD and SD content though, so you won’t feel short changed when you stick on BBC One HD to watch Planet Earth II. The Hisense TV is also rather accomplished in the sound arena too, so you won’t feel like you immediately need to go out and buy a soundbar or some speakers to connect.

It’s good that Hisense has included HDR for such a low price, but if you haven’t got any HDR content to view on it, instead having to rely on standard 4K, you’ll be pleasantly rewarded.

Price: £2,500

Full review: Hisense 75M7900 4K TV

Panasonic TX-58DX802

Pocket-lint

Panasonic’s DX802 series represents great value for money. You get a few less features than the flagship DX900 set, but what you sacrifice in features you make up for in savings, and a unique design. It runs on Firefox OS, which is one of the more quirky systems we’ve come across and generally it functions well.

There’s Freeview Play built-in too for easy access to catch-up TV and for most people should cover all their TV needs, Sky and Virgin are the only additions you may want to consider, but we don’t feel they’re necessary. 

But what good is a TV if the picture isn’t that good? Fortunately, the DX802 is an excellent performer. You’re unlikely to notice the differences between this and its flagship sibling, as you’re still presented with a stunning 4K picture. HDR performance is rather good too, delivering all the extra colour accuracy you’d want from the TV tech.

As an overall package the Panasonic TX-58DX802 is up there with the very best. Great design, stunning performance, a great TV service built-in and a soundbar included too. It’s well worth considering.

Price: £1,049

Full review: Panasonic Viera TX-50DX802

Best OLED TV

LG OLED E6

Pocket-lint

We just mentioned that the Samsung KS9500 has one major rival in 2016 and it’s this TV from LG. We think it represents the best pound-for-pound performance from a screen in 2016. Sure, it’s not cheap, but you can get one for around the same price as the Samsung, making it the ideal competitor.

It’s a 4K OLED HDR screen, so it packs in what many could consider holy trinity of TV technologies. It’s all fitted inside an utterly gorgeous package that’s as much a work of art as it is a TV. 

It runs on LG’s webOS interface, which is one of the best around, and includes built-in Freeview Play as well as access to the majority of catch-up and on-demand apps. Turn it on and start playing some 4K HDR content and we guarantee your jaw will hit the floor. The marriage of 4K HDR and OLED is one made in heaven and makes a seriously compelling case for choosing OLED over conventional LCD LED.

LG does have a more expensive OLED G6 model available, but the only real difference between the two is the G6 has a built-in soundbar for better audio. Otherwise the picture is by and large the same, and you’ll probably get a better sound experience by connecting a soundbar or surround sound package.

The best TV available in 2016? The OLED E6 might just be that.

Price: from £2,999

Full review: LG OLED E6

LG OLED C6

Pocket-lint

Curved TVs were everywhere at one point, but manufacturers seemed to catch on that consumers wanted regular flat screens too. LG listened and made three ranges of flat-screen OLED screens, but there are still those that want the curved option. In steps the LG OLED C6. 

It’s a lot cheaper than the E6 and G6 series screens, but you still get 4K HDR, and a performance that’s almost on par with its more expensive siblings. It supports Dolby Vision too for use with compatible sources – Netflix’s Marco Polo for example – and in our experience, it performs much better than regular HDR10 that’s found on most other HDR TVs.

Freeview Play is built-in, so you have access to an intuitive EPG with seven-day backwards and forwards scrolling to make it easy to catch-up on anything you’ve missed or schedule future recordings. Our only real quibble with the OLED C6 is the sound performance, which can easily be rectified by adding a soundbar, something we’d recommend anyway. 

Price: £1,999

Full article: LG OLED C6 4K TV

Best full HD TV

Samsung UE48J6300

Samsung

There’s still plenty of room in the market for full HD screens. You may not have any 4K content or be too interested in upgrading, or you may simply want a decent second set for the bedroom. Whatever the case may be, Samsung has you covered with this 48-inch beauty.

It will take full HD content from any source, be it Freeview HD, games console, Blu-ray player and deliver a bright, punchy picture that makes a solid case for remaining with ‘regular’ high definition. 

To make things even better, it’s been around for a while so it’s become even more affordable.

Price: £519 

For more information visit: http://www.freeview.co.uk, on Twitter @FreeviewTV and Facebook at facebook.com/freeview.

7 great reasons to get a Freeview Play box

Freeview Play launched in November 2015 as the company’s new connected TV service. With it you’re able to scroll backwards and forward by seven days to either set recordings for future shows, or catch-up on the ones you’ve missed. Catch-up apps are baked into Freeview Play so there’s no need to go through separate menus, making the whole process much simpler.

Freeview Play is available on a whole host of TVs and set-top boxes, and while the TVs may be great in their own right, a set-top box is undoubtedly a more affordable but just as effective upgrade for your current screen. Here’s seven reasons why you should buy a Freeview Play set-top box. 

1. It’s free!

Okay, well, the box isn’t of course, but they’re not that expensive. The cheapest route into Freeview Play is with a 500GB Humax FVP-4000T set-top box at £139. Once you’ve got that, the Freeview Play service itself is entirely free to use, no subscription required.

• Humax FVP-4000T review: Freeview Play’s first set-top box

2. You can record your favourite shows

All Freeview Play boxes available have built-in hard drives so you can record your favourite shows. They come in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB sizes which should be plenty of space for the average telly watcher. A 500GB hard drive will let you store up to 300 hours of standard definition TV, or up to 125 hours of HD content.

3. You can use your phone or tablet as a second screen

Both the Humax FVP-4000T and Panasonic’s range of Freeview Play boxes have the ability to let you use your phone or tablet as a second screen, either to watch live programmes at home or on the go, or to watch recorded content stored on your box.

4. Catch up apps are pre-installed

One of the big draws of Freeview Play is it has integrated access to the major catch-up services: BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, Demand 5 and UKTV Play. But your Freeview Play box also has access to other apps such as BBC News, BBC Sport, YouTube. 

5. You can stream files around your home

Freeview Play boxes have built-on Wi-Fi and DLNA compatibility. This means it can access any files you have stored on a Networked Attached Storage (NAS) drive, or any device that also supports DLNA.

6. They support Netflix and Amazon Instant Video

A Freeview Play box could be the only device you need underneath your TV. Not only does it have the major catch-up apps installed, but all Panasonic Freeview Play boxes have Netflix and Amazon Instant Video, while the Humax FVP-4000T has Netflix.

7. You can play Blu-ray discs on them too

Panasonic has three boxes that support Freeview Play and have a built-in Blu-ray drive, which can upscale full HD Blu-ray discs to near 4K quality. It makes them the ideal one-box home entertainment solution to nestle under your screen.

Get catch-up and on demand TV for £0 per month with Freeview Play. Click here to find out more.

AI can create videos of the future

Loads of devices can preserve moments on camera, but what if you could capture situations that were about to happen? It’s not as far-fetched as you might think. MIT CSAIL researchers have crafted a deep learning algorithm that can create videos showing what it expects to happen in the future. After extensive training (2 million videos), the AI system generates footage by pitting two neural networks against each other. One creates the scene by determining which objects are moving in still frames. The other, meanwhile, serves as a quality check — it determines whether videos are real or simulated, and the artificial video is a success when the checker AI is fooled into thinking the footage is genuine.

The technology definitely has its limits. It can’t produce videos that go further than 1.5 seconds into the future, and the results aren’t mind-blowingly realistic: it isn’t aware that objects are still there when they move, and tends to exaggerate their sizes. However, it’s good enough to predict relatively complicated scenes like waves on the beach, or people walking on grass.

If CSAIL can extend predictions and make them more realistic, though, it could have a far-reaching impact. Self-driving cars could predict where vehicles and pedestrians are going, while security cameras could spot mismatches in footage based on what they expect to see. It could also be used for relatively everyday tasks like adding animation to still images or compressing videos (since you wouldn’t need every frame). And regardless of circumstances, predicting the future can help AI understand what’s going on right now — this could help with just about any instance where computer vision is important.

Source: MIT News, MIT CSAIL (YouTube), (PDF)

Apple’s Next R&D Center Said to Be Opening in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2017

Apple will continue to expand the reach of its research and development centers around the world with a new location in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, sometime in 2017. The news comes from Indonesian Communication and Information Minister Rudiantara, who mentioned that the project’s preparation has now progressed to “the final stage” (via Tempo).

Additionally, the Minister added that Apple plans to find the location for the R&D center by the end of 2016, putting the company on the path of completing construction and hiring employees by the end of 2017. “Several options” for the focus of the Jakarta-based R&D center have been proposed, but none are yet finalized.

Image via Indonesia.travel

“Just wait. [The preparation of the project development] is in the final stage. The Industry Ministry and the Communication and Informatics Ministry are finalizing the plan,” [Rudiantara] said. “It’s more important. By late December, they will commence the execution for the location. So, in 2017, they will start building structures and recruiting employees,” he added.

Rudiantara said that he knows the monetary value of Apple’s investment in the Jakarta R&D center, but did not divulge the number to the press. In addition to the proposed site in Jakarta, Apple has set up similar R&D centers in China, Japan, Israel, and the UK, and is said to be planning similar facilities in Canada, India, and Vietnam to take advantage of local resources.

Tag: Indonesia
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