Huawei P8 Lite 2017 unveiled with Nougat, hitting Europe this month

P8 Lite gets a 2017 refresh with EMUI 5.0 and Kirin 655.

Huawei has refreshed the P8 Lite with a 2017 model that features upgraded hardware in the form of a 5.2-inch Full HD display and a Kirin 655 SoC. The phone also comes with 3GB of RAM and a rather disappointing 16GB internal memory, but there is a microSD card slot.

Unlike the Honor 6X — which has a dual camera setup at the back — P8 Lite offers a 12MP camera at the back and an 8MP shooter up front. There’s also a 3000mAh battery, and the phone features the Nougat-based EMUI 5.0 out of the box.

The P8 Lite 2017 is slated to go up for sale in European markets by the end of January, where it will cost €239.

Make hitting your fitness goals in 2017 easier with this $29 fitness tracker!

2017 is finally here and this year you have promised to follow through on your resolutions. Increasing your fitness level, losing weight, and being more active is always a popular decision when it comes to making resolutions, but so many people fail because they don’t set achievable goals. What if I told you technology can help you with that?

There are plenty of wearables, both smartwatches and activity trackers, that can help you achieve your fitness goals. Unfortunately, they can be pricey and you may not have the money to splurge on the latest and greatest, but you could spend a little cash on something reasonable. If this sounds familiar, Android Central Offers has the perfect fitness tracker for you!

The Striiv Touch Activity Tracking & Notification-Enabled Smartwatch gives you the ability to track your activity without the expensive price tag of high-end fitness trackers or smartwatches.

Wearing the Striiv Touch will allow you to keep track of how many calories you have burned, steps you have taken, and how far you traveled all from your wrist. Plus, the Striiv is sleek and fashionable so you never have to take it off; it’s always in style.

Meet your fitness goals today! Learn more

Here are some other great features of the Striiv Touch:

• Track steps taken, calories burned, distance traveled, and activity minutes all from your wrist.
• Monitor the duration and quality of your sleep.
• Set silent, vibrating alarms.
• Receive alerts for texts, emails, incoming calls, Twitter, Facebook, and more!

Through Android Central Offers the Striiv Touch can be your for only $29.99! That’s just a small fraction of what you would pay normally, with Android Central Offers you get a savings of 70%.

Huawei Mate 9 now available on Three UK

Prices for the 5.9-incher start at £31 per month.

Huawei’s biggest and best phone yet, the Mate 9, arrives on store shelves in the UK today through Three. The carrier has Huawei’s 5.9-inch flagship in space gray with 64GB of storage, with on-contract prices starting at £31 per month with a £99 upfront payment. (That’ll get you the phone with a 1GB data allowance.)

At the other end of the spectrum, the Mate 9 is available on Three’s All You Can Eat data plan for £56 per month with £29 upfront fee, which includes a 30GB tethering allowance. As usual, the carrier has a range of plans at the 1, 2, 4, 8, 12 and 30GB marks.

If you’re after a Mate 9 without a contract, Three’s also selling it on PAYG for £549.99 when you buy £10 of prepaid credit. That’s not a bad option, since the Mate 9 on Three, like all the network’s phones, is sold SIM-unlocked.

Why consider the Mate 9? Here’s the verdict from our review:

The Huawei Mate 9 is great big phone in every sense of that term. It delivers the strong performance and epic battery life we’ve come to expect from the Mate series, in a slightly more compact form factor, with trailblazing internals. EMUI 5 is a big, meaningful upgrade, doing away with many of our pet hates from previous versions of Huawei’s software layer.

See at Three UK

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Keep one of these three USB-C converters in your pocket at all times for just $6 right now

Right now you can pick up Aukey’s 3 pack of USB-C converters for just $6 at Amazon with coupon code AUK3USBC. The package comes with two converters to turn Micro-USB cables into USB-C and one to turn a regular USB-A cable into USB-C. Odds are you’ll have a much easier time finding one of those two cables when you need some extra charge than you are to find a USB-C cable laying around, so this makes those cables useful to you. When you break it down to just $2 per adapter, you really can’t go wrong with this deal.

Even if you’ve already invested in a few USB-C cables, these are still great to keep around. Keep one in your pocket at all times, just in case your friends don’t have the right cable for you and you need some extra battery life. Don’t forget to use coupon code AUK3USBC for the full savings!

See at Amazon

Best new games for Android

What’s the latest games worth checking out in the Google Play Store?

There are thousands and thousands of games available in the Google Play Store, with more being added every month. With so much content hitting the app store, it can be damn near impossible to keep up on the latest releases and determine which games are worth your time.

Here at Android Central, we want to help. We’ll be using this space to let you know about the latest gaming releases for Android that we think deserve your attention. We’ll be checking in and updating this page weekly as new games are released, so refresh often!

hocus

This indie game is the definition of chill and answers the question “What if M.C. Escher designed a game for Android?” In this minimalist puzzle game, you must use your spacial reasoning skills to work a red cube through illusion-based mazes built from impossible structures.

It’s a brilliant idea for a puzzle game, offering a casual challenge while calming music plays in the background. You’ll reach zen-like states as you learn to move the cube across the different dimensions of the maze. There are 100 levels included in the main part of the game but — and this is where the real fun begins — you also have the option to build your own levels, as well as play levels designed by people around the world. Best of all, the game is free with no ads to break your flow.

Download: Hocus (Free)

Arrow.io

Frantic gameplay is at the heart of Arrow.io, a minimalist action game that puts you in control of a ninja archer as you do battle in arenas against online opponents. The game uses on-screen joystick to control your ninja — which will be a point of frustration for some — and swipes to fire your arrows as you hunt down your opponents collecting experience points and health along the way. Once you level up, you’re able to select a new power up to help you in your quest to be the best.

Like Slither.io, the goal here is to rise to the top of your arena and stay there. But unlike slither.io, there’s actually progress to be made here: you learn the ropes in the beginner arena, but then move on to more challenging arenas as your skills progress and your kill count grows. There’s also a Team Play mode for playing with friends, as well as an offline mode where you can hone your skills against wave after wave of AI bots.

Download: Arrow.io (Free)

Star Wars: Force Arena

Star Wars: Force Arena combines frantic MOBA-style action with the card casting gameplay from Clash Royale, and wraps the whole thing in wonderful Star Wars nostalgia. Freshly released from beta, you’ll want to check this game out.

Choose your side, choose your hero, then build out your deck of troop cards before you head into the online battle arena. You can jump into a one-on-one battle against another opponent, team up with a random opponent for a two-on-two battle, or join a guild and play alongside your friends. You’ll need to keep winning to unlock more card packs, which gift you more credits and cards, which you’ll need to upgrade your troops and level up your account. The game is free, but there are a ton of in-app purchases available if you’re so inclined.

Expect a full review of this game in the near future, but you can check it out for yourself right now!

Download: Star Wars: Force Arena (Free w/ IAP)

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At just $24 you won’t be afraid to try some tricks with this mini drone

Right now you can pick up Aukey’s mini-drone for just $24 at Amazon with coupon code AU2DRONE, a savings of $6. You can control this drone with your smartphone, allowing you to fly it just about anywhere, and once you get good at flying it you can even start performing some tricks as well. It takes off and lands easily with just a single tap, and the controls are super responsive so you won’t have to worry about delays. It comes with two extra sets of propellers, just in case you happen to crash and break one.

Being so small you can pack in just about any bag so you can keep it with you at all times. Remember to use coupon code AU2DRONE for the full savings. Will you be learning to fly with Aukey’s drone? Let us know in the comments!

See at Amazon

Has Samsung Display just revealed the Galaxy S8?

Samsung Display has posted two videos to its Korean YouTube channel that show a smartphone using its latest AMOLED display technology. While the technology itself is probably very interesting – it’s in Korean so we’re not sure what’s being said – it shows a smartphone that could well be the Galaxy S8.

The phone in question features a screen with incredibly thin bezels on all sides, but especially the left and right, something we already expect to be the case with the Galaxy S8. However it is a flat screen, rather than one with curved edges. While the possibility of a flat screen has been mentioned, there have been more rumours to suggest the Galaxy S8 will only be available with a curved screen, even if there are two versions. 

• Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Edge: What’s the story so far?

The phone being used in all three videos doesn’t have any branding on it though, which could mean it’s a prototype version, although it is missing a physical home button, which is something else we expect to see on the Galaxy S8.

You don’t need to understand much Korean to be able to work out what one of the videos is trying to say. It pitches Samsung Display’s AMOLED screen up against a competitor, which is likely to be an LCD panel. It shows much deeper colours and a 100 percent colour gamut compared to the rivals’ measly 74 percent. It then goes on to show a cross section of both displays and how they’re made up. Samsung’s AMOLED uses far fewer layers, which suggests whatever phone it’s fitted to, can be made a lot thinner.

• Samsung Galaxy S8 launch planned for April in New York

There is a possibility that the phone isn’t the Galaxy S8 at all, but it does show that Samsung Display has made an AMOLED screen that can take up the vast majority of a phone’s front side. It’s probably the best piece of evidence we’ve seen yet to show what the Galaxy S8 will look like.

Pandora cuts its workforce by 7 percent

Streaming is big business, although most of the companies in the space keep a nervous eye on their bank balances. Pandora, the internet radio service that seemed most at risk, has said that it’s now doing better, thank you very much. The company has posted its latest financial figures, boasting that it now has 4.3 million paid subscribers and has trimmed some of its losses. Which is nice, although there’s a poison pill buried in that news: the company will cut seven percent of its workforce in pursuit of “operational efficiency.”

As TechCrunch explains, 2016 was a difficult year for Pandora with Spotify, Apple Music and others making big gains in the streaming music space. The company also radically altered its business, with founder Tim Westergren coming in as CEO and the launch of an Rdio-style on-demand listening platform. It also began integrating with Ticketfly, the live gig marketing and ticketing service it purchased in 2015 for $450 million.

In a letter to shareholders, Westergren explained how he plans to keep the company going in the face of its bigger, wealthier rivals. He believes that having a seven day free trial is a useful way of pulling subscribers onto a paid subscription plan. The CEO also praised his advertising team for pulling in more revenue and taking a “more aggressive approach” toward commercial content. We’ll wait and see to find out if that’s enough to stay afloat in a notoriously cutthroat market.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Pandora, (2)

The Obamas bid farewell with a VR White House tour

President Obama and his family have just a few more days left in the White House, but they’re not leaving without one more surprise. Together with Facebook’s Oculus, they’ve filmed a virtual reality experience where they guide you through the building’s iconic rooms. Dubbed The People’s House (which is also a nickname for the White House) it’ll serve as both a remote tour for people who might never make it to Washington, D.C., and a reminder of the Obamas’ legacy.

Much like President Obama’s ode to Yosemite, the new experience will be available on Facebook for everyone, as well as the Oculus Store for Gear VR and Rift owners. And just like that previous VR entry, The People’s House is as much a meditation on an American institution as it is a glimpse into the Obamas’ life. You start out by coming right through the front door and towards the lone podium where we’ve seen the President deliver countless announcements.

You get to sit right beside him in the Oval Office as he talks about what it’s like to work there, and thanks to the freedom of 360-degree video, you can peer around to take in minute details of the room. Look to your left, and you’ll see the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. that keeps its watchful eye over Obama. Look to the right, and you’ll see a simple bowl of apples on a stately coffee table. Later on, Michelle Obama talks about what it was like to make a public museum feel like a home.

The People’s House is also just a taste of what’s to come. It clocks in at around eight minutes, but there’s a longer version that’s closer to 20 minutes coming later this year, according to the VR studio Felix & Paul, which filmed the experience. That extended edition will also be available in stereoscopic 3D, so it’ll have more depth and sharpness than what we’re seeing today, which is just a flat 360-degree video. I had a chance to view a few scenes in 3D, and it was like a night and day difference, with much sharper video and a greater sense of presence.

Felix & Paul shot the footage for the VR film over last November and December, and since they wanted to deliver something while President Obama was still in office, they chose to release a shorter video first. The 3D version will take more time to be edited and properly constructed. Equipment-wise, they used the same camera setup as their Yosemite film, but they also developed a robotic platform that moves in a “perfectly fluid way.” That’s responsible for the smooth motion in some of the VR experience’s shots — it feels akin to seeing a traditional movie camera on rails.

If anything, The People’s House shows how VR can create snapshots of history that are fundamentally different than photos and film. It’s not quite a perfect medium yet, but it’s the closest method we have so far for capturing the feeling of “being there.”

Self-driving Nissan LEAFs will hit London streets next month

If autonomous cars are to be made available in the UK, car makers first need their vehicles to do hard miles on domestic roads. Nissan knows this, so today it confirmed that it will deploy a fleet of LEAF vehicles in London next month, giving it the opportunity to publicly test its autonomous drive technology for the first time in Europe.

Nissan says that while it hasn’t yet finalised the routes its cars will take, they “will be public roads with full agreement from the relevant local authorities.” The government, which has already spent millions funding intelligent car trials, supports the pilot, noting that such trials will help the UK become “a world leader in the development and testing of auto technology.”

It’s not the first time Nissan has demonstrated its self-driving capabilities on public roads. The first tests began in Tokyo in October 2015, expanding to Silicon Valley in January 2016. Just before CES, Nissan’s CEO rode in an autonomous Infiniti Q50 sedan to show off how far along its technology has come. It’s also not the first time a self-driving car has hit Britain’s roads — the “Lutz Pathfinder” pod has that claim to fame — but Nissan’s tests will mark the first of many UK tests major car makers will conduct in 2017.

Not long ago, Nissan looked like it would pull its manufacturing operation from the UK following the Brexit vote. However, a new deal saw the car maker commit to its Sunderland plant, which will help build the new autonomous Nissan Leaf and Qashqai models.

The UK government is also in the process of developing new laws to govern the use of driverless cars on Britain’s roads. Current laws dictate that a human driver will need to sit behind the steering wheel while the LEAF does its thing, helping collect the data it needs to be ready for when it can go it alone.

Source: Nissan