Ping takes the Bluetooth tracker and gives it cellular and GPS smarts

Why it matters to you

Ensuring a valuable item — or pet — can be located anywhere in the world is now possible with this device.

Bluetooth trackers are a godsend for forgetful people, but they have their limitations. If you’re out of range, there’s no other way to find the tagged object unless you want to walk around with the app and find it yourself and hope your phone detects the tag’s signal.

Ping has an idea, and it’s arguably one of those “why hasn’t this been done before?” moments. Instead of just Bluetooth, Ping’s tag also connects to GPS and cellular — meaning whether you’re 30 feet or 3,000 miles away, you’ll know exactly where you left that forgotten item.

More: The 5 best Bluetooth trackers for finding your keys

“Ping aims to solve a problem that no other locating device has been able to — always-on, global tracking,” founder Josh Lippiner says. The device is premiering on Indiegogo for pre-order at $99 (and was fully funded in less than five hours, a Ping spokesperson told us), but will retail for $129 when it goes on sale later this year.

The tag is actually smaller than the Tile by about a tenth of an inch on either side, though is about four times the cost. Ping hopes the addition of GPS and cellular connectivity makes it worth the extra expense for consumers, as those capabilities may open a whole new range of potential uses.

For example, a Ping tag could be placed on a bike, or a car for that matter, to work as a LoJack of sorts, or placed on a dog collar to track your dog in the event it runs away. The position of the tag is reported to an app and shown on a map, which updates continuously to aid in retrieval.

No data plan is needed as the Ping is built to work over AT&T’s network, however after the first year a $3 monthly charge per tag is required to access the tag’s location data. Battery life lasts is three to five months, Ping says, although the tag can be recharged unlike most current Bluetooth trackers.

Other features include check-in and SOS buttons, to either notify someone of a location or request immediate assistance, respectively, and privacy features which allow for the tracker to be shut off from continuous tracking yet still have the check-in and SOS functionality enabled.

Indiegogo pre-orders are expected to ship in July of this year. Ping has made no announcements yet on eventual retail availability.

The end is nigh: Roaming charges will be no more in the EU after June 15

The European Commission has stuck to its promise of ending roaming charges by June this year. It announced that agreements have been finalised enabling European travelers to use their phones throughout the EU, without additional charges, from June 15 2017. It has been a long time coming. Preliminary agreements were made in June 2015, setting the scene for what’s known as the “roam-like-at-home” plan, of which the latest wholesale price structure deal was the final part.

Agreeing on a wholesale price was crucial, as it’s the amount of money networks charge each other when you make calls, send messages, or use data on it. The deal doesn’t mean everything will be free. Instead it means the services you use while roaming will be charged at the same rate you pay when on your home network. It joins up with a previous rule where networks will let you use your included minutes and data abroad, and the new caps will come into play if you go over the permitted use.

More: How to avoid roaming charges while abroad

The cost caps are 3.2 euro cents per minute for calls, one euro cent for SMS, and 7.7 euros per gigabyte of data. The data cap will gradually reduce over the coming years, eventually reaching 2.5 euros per gigabyte at the beginning of 2022. It’s the end of a successful effort to reduce the cost of roaming in Europe, which has fallen by 90 percent since 2007.

Concerns dampen agreement celebrations

Excellent news, but with it comes some negativity from smaller operators, and confusion from anyone in the U.K., which recently voted to leave the European Union. A response to the agreement from MVNO Europe, which looks after Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO) in the region, believes the caps are too high, and smaller operators won’t be able to recover costs. This may lead to travelers on pre-paid or lower-cost plans being unable to enjoy the reduced charges.

For British travelers, Brexit uncertainty may dampen any rejoicing over the agreement. Scare stories spread at the end of 2016, warning networks in Europe may not have to honor any cost caps for U.K. visitors following Brexit, if a favourable trade deal isn’t reached. Worst case scenario is the return of massive phone bills for careless travelers, with a megabyte of data potentially costing up to 10 euros.

For now, European law still applies in the U.K. at least until it officially leaves the EU; and new EU president Joseph Muscat wants EU law to remain even after Brexit. However, talks regarding the legal complexities of the split haven’t officially started yet, and because a transition deal is expected to take between two and five years to complete, the fate of “roam-like-at-home” for Britain will remain yet another unknown aspect of Brexit for quite some time.

Control privacy settings for any web page with this easy Chrome shortcut

This powerful and simple tool lets you control exactly what happens when you visit a web page.

The web is rich with all sorts of content that often needs access to personal information, and Chrome is built so that you can take advantage of almost all of it. Whether that means enabling a microphone to have a chit-chat or letting Home Depot see your location so they can show you what’s on sale, deciding what type of information you share and what happens when you load a web page should be under your control.

The developers of Chrome agree, and they’ve made it easy to see what can and can’t happen when you visit a website. There is a simple tool to access all of these toggles in one place.

Everything you need to know about what a page is doing or trying to do when you visit is one click away. In the Omnibar — Chrome’s multipurpose URL address bar and search box — you’ll see an icon to the left of any website address.

Those icons are also a clickable “button” of sorts both on your Chromebook and in the Chrome browser for desktops. Here’s is everything you need to know about those icons.

When you click on the icon, you’ll see the dialog window below it. It’s there for every page and will show the individual settings you have in place for that particular one if you’ve altered any defaults.

Most everything listed there is pretty self-explanatory. We all know what images are and if there are any pages on the internet that we don’t want to load them automatically. The same can be said for Flash and pop-ups. The defaults are set by Chrome and designed to offer a rich web experience while keeping the things that are most often associated with security risks in check.

Pop-ups will be blocked, Javascript and background page syncing will be allowed, and everything else will be set to ask for explicit permission before it happens. A web page can never get your location or turn on your camera without asking you unless you’ve changed the default settings, which you can find in Chrome’s Settings .. > Advanced settings .. > Content settings.

This is a great way to keep you abreast of what’s going on for every website you visit.

You can change anything you see here on the fly. Click the combo box to make a new choice and when you’re done all you need to do is reload the page you’re viewing. None of the changes you make here affect any other sites, and you can’t permanently break anything by messing with them.

Having a per-page settings menu like this is a pretty powerful privacy tool, and we suggest everyone using Chrome take a look at what’s happening on websites they visit. Any changes you make will persist until you change them back, and the worst thing that can happen is a page doesn’t load correctly — which can be fixed by changing things back the way they were.

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Samsung sold fewer phones than Apple in Q4 2016; OPPO and Huawei see huge gains

The latest global smartphone shipment numbers highlight the increasing dominance of Chinese manufacturers.

Apple shipped 78.3 million iPhones in Q4 2016, surpassing Samsung to take the crown as the world’s number one smartphone vendor. According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung saw its shipments decline from 81.3 million in Q4 2015 to 77.5 million last quarter, largely due to the termination of the Galaxy Note 7. That said, the South Korean manufacturer shipped 309.4 million smartphones over the course of 2016, outmatching Apple’s 215.4 million shipments.

The overall market grew 3% from 1.44 billion in 2015 to 1.49 billion last year. Samsung accounted for 20.8% of the market in 2016, a minor decrease from the 22.2% in 2015. Apple came in second with a market share of 14.5%, with the company’s shipments falling by 16.1 million units. Chinese manufacturers once again had a fruitful year, with OPPO more than doubling its shipments. Huawei came in at third place overall with shipments of 138.8 million for the year, up from 107.1 million in 2015, and the brand now has a market share of 9.3%

The Chinese contingent of Huawei, OPPO, and Vivo had a stellar 2016.

OPPO shipped 84.6 million phones last year, up from 39.7 million in 2015, and is now fourth with a 5.7% market share. The company’s offline-first distribution model has paid off in China and India, where it has made inroads into tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Vivo has similarly seen its shipments hit 71.9 million from 39 million, with the Chinese vendor rounding out the top five.

The erstwhile stalwarts of the smartphone segment — HTC, LG, and Sony — have been relegated to the “others” category, with all three vendors seeing a downturn in their fortunes in 2016. Although the HTC 10 turned out to be a great device, it couldn’t match up to the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge. Meanwhile, LG’s efforts to build a modular phone in the LG G5 have backfired, with the phone seeing lukewarm adoption. Then there’s the Sony Xperia XZ, which was introduced too late to the market and had an exorbitant price tag.

For 2017, it looks like the segment will be relatively unchanged. Samsung is pulling out all the stops for its Galaxy S8, which is rumored with a bezel-less display, AI assistant, a desktop dock, and much more. The LG G6 is also turning out to be an interesting device, even though it won’t have Qualcomm’s latest processor.

Alleged Xiaomi Redmi Pro 2 leak reveals 6GB RAM, 4500mAh battery

First Redmi Pro 2 leak gives us a look at the alleged hardware.

Xiaomi rolled out the Redmi Pro last year in China, offering an OLED display and dual cameras at the back. It looks like a new model in the series is slated to make its debut, according to a leak originating out of China. The leak suggests that the Redmi Pro 2 will feature a 5.5-inch Full HD display, single camera at the back — albeit with a better Sony IMX362 sensor with 1.4µm pixel and Dual Pixel autofocus — and a 4500mAh battery.

The image also suggests that the Redmi Pro 2 will be offered in two variants: one with 6GB of RAM and 128GB storage that will allegedly retail for ¥1,799 ($260), and a version with 4GB of RAM and 64GB storage for ¥1,599 ($230).

The first-gen Redmi Pro was powered by a MediaTek Helio X20, with a higher-end version featuring the Helio X25 SoC. This time around, it looks like Xiaomi will switch to a Snapdragon 66x series chipset. It’ll be interesting to see what it offers, but considering Qualcomm hasn’t detailed anything about a new SoC in the Snapdragon 600 series, it may be a while before we see the Redmi Pro 2.

Leaked drawings show Samsung Galaxy S8 with a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner

Several images and renders of the Samsung Galaxy S8 have appeared online in recent months and all of them have one thing in common, no physical front-mounted home button and fingerprint scanner. It’s long been assumed that Samsung would embed a fingerprint scanner in the screen but some schematics uncovered by CNET Korea suggest otherwise.

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The drawings show a fingerprint sensor mounted next to the rear camera, which is where Samsung expects your finger to naturally lie, although it may depend on the size of your hands and the phone. CNET Korea quotes a Samsung official as saying: “The home button and fingerprint sensor will be on the right side of the camera lens when viewed from the front”.

“The reason why it is on the right rather than the rear centre is because most people hold their smartphone in their right hand and the right index finger touches this location”.

The schematics reference two different screen sizes, 5.7in and technically 6.1, although it’s widely considered a Plus model will feature a 6.2in screen. Samsung is expected to drop the ‘Edge’ moniker from its phones as both are said to have curved edges.

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CNET Korea also says the Galaxy S8 will have “soft keys” that appear on the screen to navigate around the menus and that the Galaxy S8 will keep the 3.5mm headphone port, but implement a USB Type-C port for charging. The site also says the phone will be released at the end of February, but we know it won’t be showing up at Mobile World Congress. Several other dates have been put forward in March and April, so we can’t say for sure when we can expect to see it unveiled.

Football in 4K and Dolby Atmos, is there anything better? Our verdict

We’ve written a lot about Dolby Atmos of late, especially about the audio tech’s ability to enhance movie viewing. But it doesn’t stop there.

BT Sport has taken the bold step to accompany some of its Ultra HD presentations of live footy matches with Dolby Atmos soundtracks. And we were amongst the first to try it out.

We were invited to an exclusive screening of Liverpool vs Chelsea to find out if 4K visuals and Dolby Atmos audio are a match made in Heaven. It was the first game to be broadcast live in the format, even for viewers at home with a BT Ultra HD YouView box, a 4K telly and the right sound system. And what a match it was.

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Watching football on the TV has always been an immersive experience. The love for your club, hatred for others, getting your mates round for food and drinks, it’s a weekly ritual. We’ve seen progress from standard definition to high definition, which made the action noticeably better, the fuzzy lines around the ball disappeared for example.

Then came 4K, with BT being the first to the punch to broadcast live sport in 4K Ultra HD.

As long as you have BT Infinity fibre broadband, the BT YouView+ 4K UHD box and the accompanying TV subscription, you can get super-sharp football in your home. BT then had another first in November 2016 when it announced it would be bringing Dolby Atmos to the home for select sporting events. We attended an exclusive event in London to watch the world’s first football match in 4K Ultra HD and Dolby Atmos, complete with half time punditry from Robbie Savage. Here are our thoughts.

Football in 4K: A thing of beauty

We’ve already experienced sport in 4K via BT’s Ultra HD sport channel as the service has been live for just over a year now. Sky Q presents matches in 4K too.

You may think that an increase in resolution won’t affect things that much, but we’d beg to differ. The extra clarity on offer really does make for an incredible viewing experience. Each screen at our event was different, so it was hard to judge exactly what BT’s service was delivering, but we settled on one display and were happy with what we saw.

The colours of the red and blue shirts were bold, punchy and vibrant, as was the green grass. The extra detail on offer meant we were also able to clearly see spots of mud all over the pitch where boots had dug up the ground. Slow motion replays really benefit from 4K, not only do they make tackles and tricks easier to see, but you’re able to see individual beads of sweat running down the players’ faces.

If you haven’t seen football in 4K, but have the opportunity to, we urge you to. Once you go 4K, you won’t want to go back.

Football with Dolby Atmos: “…as if we were sitting in the Kop…”

But it was the Dolby Atmos sound we were really interested in. Could the extra height channels and microphones placed around the stadium deliver a more immersive experience?

In a word, yes.

Right from the kick off, it was apparent that Atmos worked. The noises and cheers from the crowd were all around us, just as if we were sitting in the Kop with the other Liverpool fans. BT and Dolby were using Kef speakers with upward firing modules to deliver the height and they worked perfectly. We’d say in-ceiling speakers would be even better, but it was good to hear a more realistic setup that most people will have in their home.

We did find that commentary was lost quite a bit in the cheering. We were in a noisy environment anyway, but we could barely hear a word of what was being said.

We could hear the commentators talking, but what they were saying wasn’t clear. We’d have to listen to a match in Atmos at home to find out if this will be a regular thing or not. We didn’t feel it detracted from the experience though, the point of watching football in Dolby Atmos is to make you feel as if you’re right there in the stadium, and to that extent, it certainly did its job.

These are also early days for the format, and it’s likely BT will refine the mix for future matches. Even as it stands, football in the home (or a pub) has never sounded better.

Nintendo Plans to Launch Two or Three Mobile Games A Year

Nintendo announced on Wednesday that it plans to launch two or three mobile games every year, a day after the Japanese company made a one-third cut to its full-year operating profit outlook (via Reuters).

Yesterday, Nintendo was able to report its first quarterly profit in a year as its mobile games division started to generate revenue, but it wasn’t enough for disappointed investors who had hoped profit from games like Super Mario Run would have grown fast enough to offset falling earnings in Nintendo’s console business. Shares of Nintendo Co Ltd dropped more than 4 percent on Wednesday following the news.

Launched in December, Super Mario Run helped third-quarter revenue from mobile gaming and related merchandise reach around 7 billion yen ($61.7 million). So far downloads have hit around 78 million, although Nintendo admitted less than 10 percent of users paid the one-off $9.99 fee to unlock all of the game’s features. Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima said it would be taking steps to make the game last longer for people who had paid as well as those had yet to do so.

“We are taking a number of steps to ensure that Super Mario Run can be enjoyed for a long time, both by those who have already made the full purchase and by those who have downloaded the application but not yet made the purchase. We are also taking steps in-game to raise the ratio of purchases among consumers downloading the application for the first time.”

Putting its plans into action, Nintendo yesterday rolled out an update to Super Mario Run that includes a collection of feature additions and bug fixes, along with a new “Easy Mode”.

Nintendo’s next title, the tactical role-playing game Fire Emblem Heroes, launches on iOS tomorrow, and is a radical departure from Super Mario Run, not least because it will be a free-to-pay title, favoring micro transactions and in-game currency over a one-off unlock payment. However, like Super Mario Run, Heroes will require players to have a persistent internet connection in order to play.

Nintendo’s other planned mobile game is a currently untitled iOS version of Animal Crossing, which is expected to launch in the next fiscal year, so anytime between April 2017 and March 2018.
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Apple Overtakes Samsung As World’s Top Smartphone Vendor in Q4 2016

Apple overtook Samsung to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter of 2016 as shipments reached 439 million units.

According to independent research firm Strategy Analytics, global smartphone shipments grew 3 percent annually to hit a record 1.5 billion units in 2016. Apple shipped 78.3 million handsets in the fourth quarter of the year – around 800,000 more units than Samsung – allowing it to recapture its number one position with 18 percent global smartphone market share.

Apple shipped 78.3 million smartphones worldwide and captured 18 percent marketshare in Q4 2016, rising a steady 5 percent annually from 74.8 million units in Q4 2015. This was the iPhone’s best performance for over a year, as Apple capitalized on Samsung’s recent missteps. Samsung shipped 77.5 million smartphones worldwide in Q4 2016, dipping 5 percent annually from 81.3 million units in Q4 2015.

Bolstered by the popularity of the iPhone 7 and particularly the iPhone 7 Plus, Apple’s 5 percent increase in shipments year-over-year helped it secure a 17.8 percent share of the global smartphone market, narrowly beating Samsung’s share of 17.7 percent, which was negatively impacted by the company’s Note7 battery fiasco. Samsung captured 21 percent share for the full year, marking its lowest level since 2011.

Despite the Q4 results, Samsung maintained first position in annualized figures, with 309 million units shipped worldwide in 2016, compared to Apple’s 215 million units. Despite struggling in China against rivals like OPPO, Huawei’s impressive overseas performance helped it maintain third position, with a record 10 percent global smartphone market share in Q4 2016 – the first time the company has reached double figures – while OPPO held on to fourth position and grew 99 percent annually to capture a record 7 percent global smartphone market share.

The research comes one day after Apple released its Q1 2017 financial results, in which it reported record results over what corresponds to the fourth calendar quarter of 2016. Cook was bullish on the iPhone’s future, and talked up the smartphone’s importance across a range of segments, including home automation, health, CarPlay, and enterprise. “I think the smartphone is still in the early innings of the game,” Cook said during the earnings call. “App developers are still inventing and there are some exciting things in the pipeline that I feel really good about.”

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Snapseed’s first update of the year adds a new Curves tool and other features

Why it matters to you

Already a powerful photo-editing app, the addition of the Curves tool offers another handy way to get the most from your images.

Snapseed launched back in 2011 and for many smartphone-camera enthusiasts is the go-to app for knocking images into shape.

The app’s first update of 2017 landed on Tuesday, bringing with it a useful “Curves” tool for iPhone users that offers quick and precise adjustments to elements such as brightness, contrast, and color.

Anyone who’s used more advanced photo-editing software on their PC will already be familiar with Curves, though it’s likely that casual smartphone photographers will be seeing it for the first time with Snapseed’s update. While editing apps already offer a slew of ways to make adjustments, Curves is a fast and powerful way to transform your images that doesn’t take long to feel at ease with.

So, how do I use it?

After you’ve downloaded the update, open an image and tap on the pencil icon bottom right to access Snapseed’s suite of editing tools. Tap on Curves and your image will appear with a grid showing the Curve line.

Tap anywhere on the line to create an anchor point, and then drag it around to change the look of your photo. Tap multiple times to create multiple anchor points along the line, and move each one to make image adjustments, minor or major. You’ll soon start to see how different movements lead to different kinds of changes.

If you’re looking for ideas, try creating an anchor point close to the top of the line and another close to the bottom. Next, use the two points to create an “S” shape and see how the image starts to pop according to how pronounced you make the shape.

Alternatively, when you open the image, you can swipe through a large number of presets at the bottom of the display that show the anchor points for each one.

When you’re done, simply hit the check mark bottom right.

Android’s update, which also rolled out this week, doesn’t include Curves, but hopefully it’s coming soon.

Other Snapseed improvements for both iOS and Android include better face detection for the app’s Face filter, and the added ability to force line breaks in multi-line text styles. It’s also improved the grain quality for black and white edits.

More: Photo editing apps you can get for free

Nik Software, the San Diego-based company behind the free Snapseed app, was bought by Google in 2012. For a couple of years following the acquisition, few updates were issued for the app, leading many to wonder if the software would be shuttered.

However, since the launch of version 2.0 in 2015, multiple features have been added in a bid to retain its existing users and attract new ones looking for a simple yet powerful photo editing option for their smartphone.