Grab the Samsung Gear VR from eBay for just $48
Get the Gear VR for just $48.
If you’re interested in picking up a Samsung Gear VR, you’ll want to head to eBay. The retailer is selling the VR headset for $48, a $51 discount from its usual retail price of $99. The eBay deal is better than Samsung’s own Black Friday offering, which saw the VR headset on sale for $59.
The headset connects via micro-USB to the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Note 5, S6 edge+, Galaxy S6, and the S6 edge. If you’ve got an eligible device and are yet to make the jump, now’s as good a time as any to get your hands on the Gear VR.
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Samsung Gear VR
- Gear VR review
- The Best games for Samsung Gear VR
- Inside Samsung’s Gear VR web browser
- Gear VR vs. Google Cardboard
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Manually flashing the Nougat beta for Galaxy S7? Here’s what you need to know
Right now you can only download an old beta version of Nougat for the GS7 — and unless you’re in the beta program, you won’t be able to get OTAs.
With the arrival of Android 7.0 Nougat in beta form for the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, many GS7 owners are eager to try out the new software, and with it the updated Samsung Experience 8. After all, there’s a lot of great new stuff to see. But there’s one big limitation right now that may give you pause if you’re thinking about manually flashing one of the leaked ROMs.
If you want over-the-air updates for your Nougat beta, you’ll need to play by Samsung’s rules.
Right now, because Samsung likes to keep its cards close to its chest, only the first beta build — build ZPK1 — has made its way out into the wild. That’s the build with the light-blue (as opposed to white) quick settings, and a crashy Facebook app. None of the subsequent three builds — including the most recent ZPL3 — have leaked. So if you’re flashing any of the leaked GS7 or GS7 edge builds via the ODIN utility, you’re getting an older version.
And that’s kind of a problem, because in order to receive over-the-air beta updates, you need to be a member of Samsung’s Galaxy Beta program. No beta program membership? You’ll be stuck on the first beta, and you’ll need to manually update to the final Nougat build once it’s available, or flash the latest Marshmallow firmware for your phone to downgrade.
The first beta still works relatively well — Facebook crashes notwithstanding — and gives you a decent preview of many of the features we’re expecting to see in the final GS7 Nougat update.
But if you’re looking for a steady path through the GS7 beta program, you’ll need to play by Samsung’s rules.
Android Nougat
- Android 7.0 Nougat: Everything you need to know
- Will my phone get Android Nougat?
- Google Pixel + Pixel XL review
- All Android Nougat news
- How to manually update your Nexus or Pixel
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- Galaxy S7 review
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- Should you upgrade to the Galaxy S7?
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Jerry’s Favorite Tech of 2016
2016 Jerry’s Favorite Tech
Everything we do at Android Central revolves around technology. The phones, the accessories, computers and all the cool gear and toys that work with them are our passions. Besides seeing what makes them tick and helping everyone understand so we all can get the most from them, letting you know what we think is the best is an important goal we all share.
If you need an idea or recommendation of what to buy for that tech lover in your life, here are the things I’ve used throughout 2016 that I think belong on any best-of list!
Google Pixel
The best of Google, from Google. The Pixel and Pixel XL. The Pixel is the perfect way to keep what’s on the screen as the focus instead of buttons and settings and extras that so many companies add to the experience. Google’s Pixel has the best camera of any phone you can buy, an amazing screen and is in a class by itself when it comes to being responsive. To top it all off, it’s the only phone you can buy that’s up to date with all the features and security Android has to offer.
From $649 Buy Now
BlackBerry DTEK60
BlackBerry still sells phones, and their latest is one of the best they have ever offered. The DTEK60 might have an odd name, but the powerful processor and attention to detail in the software make it the perfect phone for anyone who is all-in with BlackBerry’s HUB and the way your messages seamlessly integrate along with the people who send them. BlackBerry’s legacy of security makes it a great option for anyone who needs a phone designed for communication.
$499 Buy Now
ASUS Chromebook Flip
The ASUS Chromebook Flip is not only a great small Chromebook, it is the best Android tablet you can buy today. Everything Chrome has to offer while you’re working or playing online or offline is there, along with the ability to run Android apps. The 10-inch size makes it perfect for anyone who is on-the-go often, and the price makes it perfect for anyone’s first Chromebook.
$259 Buy Now
Chromecast Audio
Plug it into any pair of speakers on an audio receiver and you can cast your music from most any source using your phone, Chromebook or any computer using the Chrome browser. The Chromecast Audio is easy to use and sounds great.
$35 Buy Now
Google Wifi
Google Wifi is a great wireless router that will meet the needs of most any household, but its real strength is how easy everything is to set up and use. The Google Wifi app walks you though anything you want to do and the process is seamless and painless. Anyone who wants Wi-Fi that just works in their house will love it.
From $129 Buy Now
Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi continues to be the go-to product for any budding maker, and the latest version of the kit board is no exception. More powerful than ever, the Raspberry Pi is the perfect introduction to complex ideas like circuit design and programming, and the practical uses make learning both fun and productive.
$39 Buy Now
Storz & Bickel Crafty
The Crafty is the best portable vaporizer for any herbs or concentrates that you can buy. It’s easy to fill, has a long-lasting battery and provides excellent integration with any Android or iPhone to adjust your settings through it’s own native app.The Crafty is the perfect size, and it’s from the folks who introduced us to the Volcano years ago, so you know the Crafty will last a lifetime.
$339 Buy Now
Acer Chromebook R13
The Acer R13 is a great Chromebook all around. The 13 inch size is the sweet spot for many users, it’s well-built and looks great and has the power inside to run everything well. Android apps extend the Chrome software and you’ll find your favorite apps and games from Google Play. The moderate price makes the R13 a great way to experience everything a Chromebook has to offer.
$399 Buy Now
Escort Passport 8500X50
Anyone who spends a lot of time on the road can benefit from a radar detector, and the X band, K band and Ka band Escort X50 Black is one of the best available at any price. The features you need like laser detection and auto sensitivity are there, and the X 50 is easy to program and set up. And at $150, it costs less than the ticket you might get without it.
$150 Buy Now
BeyerDynamic and FiiO portable audio bundle
A set of 250 OHM BeyerDynamic DT880 headphones and a FiiO Mont Blanc DAC make for a great way to listen to high-res audio from any source. This combo is great for folks looking for premium sound from the phone they like to use, as well as the next phone they buy. It’s also great for listening to music from your computer or any portable media player. Matching the right components is key if you want superior audio, and this bundle takes the guesswork out of the picture.
$279 Buy Now
Aukey Mechanical Keyboard
As someone who types for a living, a good keyboard is important to me. I was surprised at how much I liked the Aukey Mechanical Keyboard when I first started using it, but I’m not surprised that I’m still using it every day. It’s the best value of any mechanical keyboard I’ve used, and delivers exactly the click and feedback you expect from “stiff” switches. RGB color changing is pretty cool, too.
$60 Buy Now
Win some amazing tech prizes in time for Christmas!
‘Tis the season to be jolly, and at Pocket-lint we’re feeling very jovial indeed. We’ve asked around some of our industry friends to round up some seriously prizes for you to win in the run up to Christmas. They’re not just any prizes either, as only the finest kit will do. We’ve got smartphones, soundbars, headphones and even a whole year of Sky Q for free!
Up for grabs is a Huawei Mate 9 smartphone, one of our favourites of 2016. It has a gorgeous full HD display and a terrific dual camera lens setup. It can yours by answering a very simple question.
If that’s not enough to tempt you, we’ve also managed to secure 30 AliveLabs discovAR 4D colouring books for your child and their whole class! Kids can draw pictures in the books then use an app to watch them transform into 3D and 4D animated objects. They’re very, very cool.
Like the idea of listening to your music without any distraction from outside noise? You’ll want to win a pair of Bose QuietComfort 35s then. Just one simple question separates you from noise isolated bliss.
Do you sometimes struggle with directions when in the car? A sat nav is a must-have in-car gadget. We’ve got one of the finest up for grabs, a TomTom Go 620. It has live traffic information, built-in Wi-Fi for easy updates and quarterly map updates for free.
If a new TV is on your Christmas list this year, we hate to tell you that the sound probably won’t cut the mustard when you settle down to watch a film. Don’t worry though, because the Cambridge TVB2 soundbar can step in to add some extra oomph to your shows and movies.
Sky Q has recently arrived to take the crown for the best TV service in the UK. We’ve teamed up with Sky to offer you the chance to win Sky Q with Ultra HD programmes, Sky Sports and Sky Cinema free for a whole year! You’ll be the envy of all your friends, although you will need to supply your own 4K TV.
Head to our dedicated competitions page now to enter any or all of the competitions to be in with a chance of winning these fantastic prizes.
ICYMI: Hairy robots are better than smooth
Today on In Case You Missed It: Roboticists from China created an artificial skin for robots that simulate hair with glass-shrouded microwires. A gripper hand with the ‘hair’ on it’s skin was able to feel when an object was slipping because of the hair, then adjust its grip. Lets just hope they keep the full Teenwolf under control. The helium-filled balloon bot designed for search and inspection jobs is here.
Meanwhile NASA is spending its final days of 2016 by releasing data visualizations of carbon dioxide pollution around the globe, and how extra heat is stored in the world’s oceans. The Chuck E. Cheese challenge video is here and that awkward handshake, here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
US Navy’s drone ‘swarmboats’ show off pack tactics
While the US Navy’s new state-of-the-art USS Zumwalt destroyer struggles to remain functional, the service branch’s R&D department has been busy investigating cutting-edge tech at a much smaller scale. Back in October, the Office of Naval Research (OCR) demonstrated the harbor defense capabilities of a group of prototype small autonomous boats, aka “swarmbots,” in Chesapeake Bay.
The ONR used four rigid hull inflatable boats (RHIB) — think of the larger soldier-ferrying Zodiacs — to show off the drone squad’s ability to patrol, investigate approaching unknown crafts and relay that information back to a human supervisor. Using autonomous vehicles for dull yet important tasks such as harbor defense is cheaper than using human crews, especially since some of the drone tech used in the demo is off-the-shelf.
The ONR’s autonomous system, Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS), was first demonstrated in RHIBs back in 2014, according to the department’s press release. That exercise showed how the drone boats worked together to escort larger ships and swarm around threats. Since then, the Navy’s boosted CARACaS’ ability to have multiple crafts collaborate on task sorting, expand behaviors and tactics and improve automated vessel recognition.
Using swarms of these refitted unmanned crafts monitored by a few officers is more economical than needing as many boats loaded with 3-4 persons each. But just like expendable aerial attack drones, autonomous units can also be sent on more dangerous missions than those with human crews, like mine clearance. The configuration used in these tests is also beneficial: The Navy already has plenty of RHIBs in their inventory, and refitting it with a CARACaS kit is quick and inexpensive, according to the ONR’s press release.
Source: Office of Naval Research
Facebook Messenger test hints at a bigger role for AI
Facebook wants its M chat assistant to be useful for much more than shopping and travel recommendations. It’s testing an M suggestions feature that has the artificial intelligence offer actions depending on the circumstances in your chat. Some will be familiar: if a friend asks where you are, it’ll give you a Google Hangouts-style opportunity to share your location. Others are more creative, such as suggesting stickers in response to common phrases like “thanks.”
Only a handful of people in the US will see the suggestions right now, and it’s not certain how quickly it will expand. Messenger team lead David Marcus is optimistic, however. He tells BuzzFeed News that M suggestions may well accelerate the deployment of Facebook’s AI by making it available to a much wider audience than the M assistant you see in testing right now. It won’t be as deep as a direct interaction with M, but it would certainly be more accessible — important when Google is ramping up its own AI chat helpers.
Source: BuzzFeed News
Sony’s new high-end wireless PS4 headset coming on January 17
Sony has unveiled the Platinum Wireless Headset aimed at PS4, Playstation VR, and mobile users. The model has hidden noise cancelling microphones and, like the Gold model, supports 7.1 virtual surround sound. However, it’s also equipped with the 3D audio tech used on the PlayStation VR, meaning you’ll be able to get the same surround-sound effects from a regular PlayStation 4 console. Though no PS4 games currently support 3D audio, Naughty Dog will release a patch that brings it to Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.
A couple of other games will also support the 3D audio tech later on: MLB The Show 17, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and Days Gone, with more to be announced later. In a similar way to systems from Dolby and others, it “simulates the effect of audio arriving at your ears from different directions and distances to mimic the behavior of sound in real life,” according to the PlayStation Blog.
The wireless part only works on the PS4 (via a wireless adapter) — for the PlayStation VR and mobile, you’ll need to use the included 3.5mm audio cable. However, Sony has noted before that 3D audio only works on wired headphones for VR, and confirmed that it won’t work in wireless mode on the PS4 either. So for regular PS4 games you can go wireless, but to get 3D audio, you’ll have to plug in which, frankly, is kind of stupid.
For titles that don’t support 3D audio, Sony said in the comments section of the post that the headset “has an enhanced version of 7.1 virtual surround sound. So even in games without 3D audio, the Platinum Wireless Headset will have better virtual surround sound.”
However, the fact that Sony uses its own proprietary 3D audio makes choosing a sound system a bit awkward. The Xbox One, for example, will soon support Dolby Atmos surround sound, and while that’ll only work for Blu-ray playback, at least you can run the audio through a Dolby Atmos receiver to get the full effect. So if you’d rather blast games through your home theater system rather than a headset, it doesn’t appear that you’ll get the full 3D audio effect.
Source: Sony
Instagram Has Gained 100 Million Users After Copying Snapchat
Instagram announced today that it now has more than 600 million users, with the last 100 million of those users joining the photo and video sharing service in the past six months, a period in which it has added several new Snapchat-like features. Instagram has doubled the 300 million users it had in December 2014.
A lot has changed this year, but the Instagram community and the diversity of expression it provides has remained consistent. And you now have more ways to share than ever before with Instagram Stories, live video and disappearing photos and videos in Direct. Additionally, with updated safety tools that give you more control over comments and other parts of your experience, we’re working to make Instagram safer than ever for connection and self-expression.
Instagram, owned by Facebook, has morphed into a Snapchat competitor this year with the addition of “Stories” that disappear after 24 hours, a new “Events” channel, and photos and videos that disappear in direct messages. Facebook has also wittingly added Snapchat-like features to Messenger.
Tag: Instagram
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Song Learning App Capo 3 for Mac Updated With Touch Bar Support
Popular music app Capo 3 received a major update today, adding Touch Bar support for the 2016 MacBook Pro and other new features that are designed to improve the overall user experience.
For those unfamiliar with Capo 3, it is a music app that can detect the chords in any song, allowing users to isolate specific sounds and vocals to play along with.
On 2016 MacBook Pro models, the Touch Bar can be used to scrub through songs and quickly access playback controls like volume, pause, and more. A waveform scrubber displays the waveform of the song and the locations of regions that have been added by the user.
“The Touch Bar support in Capo 3.5 was fun to build, but it’s even more fun to use,” says Chris Liscio, SuperMegaUltraGroovy founder and chief developer. “It’s great to jump instantly to a point in the song, and if you have regions placed then you can identify them in the waveform overview by color. It’s also helpful to have the audible feedback while scrubbing, so you can hear whether you’re in the right spot.”
Along with Touch Bar support, there’s a new Song Views option, which allows users to choose between a new Practice view and a Tabbing view with the Spectrogram display. New view customization options are available, allowing the tablature display and automatically detected chords to be disabled.
Transcription Playhead, a new playback mode that makes it easier to listen to individual notes has been added, and there’s an improved scrubbing feature, also for better identifying individual notes.
“I spent a week in the summer prototyping a new effect that would allow users to ‘freeze time’ so that they could hold a note still to help identify it by ear. I attached it to Capo’s scrubbing feature–just to see whether it worked–and I couldn’t stop playing with it. Since then, I’ve used it to pick apart some truly difficult solos in the Tabbing view faster than ever before.”
Capo can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for $29.99 through the holidays. A free trial is also available from the Capo website. [Direct Link]
Tag: Capo
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