Latest Galaxy S8 leak reveals on-screen navigation buttons

Samsung is switching to on-screen navigation buttons for the first time.

Previous leaks of the Galaxy S8 gave us a look at the design of the upcoming flagship, and this time around, we’re treated to a leaked image that highlights the front of the device. Unlike its predecessors, the Galaxy S8 won’t have a home button up front, with Samsung switching to on-screen navigation buttons for the first time.

The image shows off a bottom bar that features the back button on the right. The lack of a home button suggests that Samsung is moving the fingerprint sensor to the back of the device, although its orientation to the right of the camera sensor doesn’t seem ideal.

Even as Samsung is switching to on-screen buttons, it doesn’t look like the company will adopt Google’s approved layout for navigation keys. As for the legitimacy of the device in question, it looks remarkably similar to an earlier leak, so it looks like this could be the final design of the Galaxy S8. That said, we’re still more than a month away from the launch of the handset — which is rumored to be March 29 — so a lot could change by then.

How to set an alarm on Android Wear 2.0

Is it easy to set an alarm in Android Wear 2.0? Absolutely!

Buzz! Buzz! That’s the sound a smartwatch makes as it’s buzzing you awake. You can set up your Android Wear 2.0 smartwatch to do the same by following these directions. Take note these directions only apply to the smartwatch, and not your Android smartphone. You’ll have to set that alarm separately.

How to set an alarm with a Android Wear 2.0 smartwatch

In the app launcher, select Alarm.
Tap New Alarm.
Move the hands around the dial to select your preferred time.
Tap on the checkmark to approve.
Tap once more.

Sleep tight!

Android Wear

• Everything you need to know about Android Wear 2.0
• LG Watch Sport review
• LG Watch Style review
• These watches will get Android Wear 2.0
• Discuss Android Wear in the forums!

Updated Amazon Fire TV Stick brings Alexa to TVs in the UK

Amazon’s Alexa-powered Fire TV Stick is coming to the UK in April.

The updated variant of Amazon’s Fire TV Stick with Alexa integration has made its way to the UK for £39.99. The device is currently up for pre-order on Amazon UK, and will be releasing on April 6. The new Fire TV Stick comes with a redesigned user interface, a faster processor, and a remote powered by Alexa.

With Alexa integration via the bundled remote, you’ll be able to issue voice commands to search for TV shows and movies, control playback, search across apps, check the weather, book an Uber, and so much more.

Amazon mentioned that last year’s Fire TV Stick was its fastest-selling device ever, and the company is now looking to continue the momentum by bringing the second-generation model to the UK. The Fire TV Stick will also be available from Dixons Carphone, Argos, John Lewis, Tesco, Maplin and Shop Direct starting April 6.

Moto G5 leaks once again ahead of official unveil

The Moto G5 could come with a metal chassis and a removable battery.

Press renders of the Moto G5 leaked last week, giving us a look at the design and internal hardware. Motorola is set to unveil the phone later this week at Mobile World Congress, and ahead of the event, we’re now being treated to another leak that offers a better look at the upcoming budget handset.

The leak comes by way of Brazil’s Dudu Rocha, and shows off the front and back of the Moto G5. According to the site, the Moto G5 will feature a metal chassis with a removable battery, and a front fingerprint sensor that doubles up as an all-in-one navigation key, much like what Lenovo has done with U-Touch on the Z2 Plus.

Motorola is likely to offer two variants of the Moto G5, a standard version with a 5-inch Full HD display and a larger 5.2-inch model that also features a 1080p panel. Based on the latest rumors, the Moto G5 will be powered by a Snapdragon 430, while the G5 Plus is likely to feature a Snapdragon 625. With the phone set to go official on February 26, we don’t have to wait long to find out more. What are your thoughts on the Moto G5 based on the leaked images?

HTC U Ultra costs $900 in India, U Play with Helio P10 debuts at $600

HTC’s latest devices will go on sale in India next month.

A month after their global debut, HTC has launched its latest devices in India. The U Ultra will be available in the country for ₹59,990 ($900) starting March 6, and the U Play is set to retail for ₹39,990 ($600), with availability kicking off from March 6. HTC is bundling a one-year insurance — which covers liquid and physical damage — with both phones, and is providing a 7.5% cashback to Standard Chartered customers.

The U Ultra is a decent proposition considering the 32GB Pixel XL is still retailing for ₹67,000 ($1,000). The device offers a 5.7-inch QHD display Gorilla Glass 5 and a secondary 2.0-inch display that can be used for viewing notifications (à la LG V20), Snapdragon 821 SoC, 4GB of RAM, 64GB storage, microSD slot, 12MP rear camera with laser autofocus and 4K video recording, 16MP front shooter, USB-C, and a 3000mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0.

The mid-range U Play isn’t as interesting, however, with the device offering a 5.2-inch Full HD display, MediaTek Helio P10 SoC, 4GB of RAM, 64GB storage, microSD slot, 16MP front and rear cameras, and a 2500mAh battery. Both phones run Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box.

The retail pricing of the U Play puts it at a disadvantage over the likes of the OnePlus 3T, which is available for ₹29,999 ($450). That’s not taking into account the specs on offer. While HTC has done a commendable job of optimizing the software to run smoothly on underpowered hardware, there’s no way of getting around the fact that the Helio P10 doesn’t come close to matching the Snapdragon 821 on the OnePlus 3T.

HTC Ultra + U Play hands-on

The real sticker artists behind Allo, Google’s underrated messaging app

Mauro Gatti and Marylou Faure walk us through what the design process is like for art that’s used in a messaging app.

Ever wonder who the artists are behind the digital stickers you use in your favorite chat app? I certainly have, especially after I started using Allo. The app’s included Google-commissioned sticker packs are not only unique, they were designed by prominent and prolific artists, including Gemma Correll, GIF animator Cecile Dormeau, and BuzzFeed.

I managed to sneak some talk-time with two of Allo’s artists, Mauro Gatti and Marylou Faure. Gatti’s sticker packs include Funder the Sea, a collaboration with Stefano Meazza, while Faure’s include the vibrantly colored 90s Baby and Worst Day Ever sticker packs. I talked to both about how they each became artists, what their respective processes in designing, and what it was like to design for a messaging app.

You’re an artist. Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get started doing the kind of design you do now?

Gatti: I was born and raised in Italy — my obsession for pizza comes from there! Now, I live in Los Angeles, where I work as VP of Content and Programming for JibJab (the funniest company in the world) and as an illustrator on a wide range of projects. One of my dearest projects is Mojimade, a small shop focused on creating the best static and animated stickers for brands, startups, and agencies.

My passion for illustration goes a long way back. I’ve always considered myself a person who loves telling stories through pictures, stories that make people laugh. Turning my passion into a career (and a pay check) has been an incredible adventure made of failures and achievements, endless nights of work (and cold pizza), curiosity, friends that inspire me, and dogs — lots of dogs.

Style wise, I’ve always cared more about the message than the style and I found my inspiration in the art of amazing artists like Ed Emberley, Ryohei Yanagihara, and Raymond Savignac.

Faure: It was a bit of a discovery journey to be honest, I worked on a lot of different illustration styles until I found one that I felt really suited me and that I was happy to take on forward. I did a project called ‘The Ultimate Summer’ that was really a turning point for me, that’s when I realized I was having a lot of fun working with this vibrant, bubbly, quirky style!

Does your design method typically include digital cartooning and animation? What software do you typically use?

Gatti: Ninety-nine percent of my work is digital. Sketching, illustrating, and animating are all done on a pen display. I’m not a great animator, so for projects like the Allo sticker set I collaborated with one of the greatest animators that I know, Stefano Meazza.

The software I use is part of the Adobe Creative Suite: Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects.

Faure: I will always create the digital artwork on Photoshop or Illustrator, and if I’m animating anything, it will mainly be done on After Effects.

Did designing stickers for Allo feel like an extension of your craft, or just a fun side project?

Gatti: Designing the sticker set for Allo was right up my alley. All the right ingredients were there: mobile content, character design, animation, and lots of fun. Working for brand the size of Google is always challenging and stimulating because their standards are very high and you have to give your best. The roster of artists involved in the project was packed with people I admire and respect.

Faure: It was nice working on a sticker set (especially for Google!) because there was a challenge of making the illustrations work on a small format. But it was a bit different from the projects I usually work on; I had to make [the sticker set] not too simple so that it would be boring, but also not too complex that you wouldn’t be able to understand [the context].

Let’s talk about your characters. Where did you derive inspiration? And are they related to your other character art?

Gatti: I always liked the juxtaposition of a cute little character with a big clumsy one, and these two guys were just perfect together.

Faure: I’m very much inspired by people I see in my everyday life. I will often see something about their outfit or their attitude that I’ll find inspiring and portray through my characters.

Was there a theme you adhered to?

Gatti: The theme assigned was “best friends.” I sent ten different ideas — including a squirrel/acorn and a lumberjack/sasquatch [variation] — inspired by things around me, like pop culture, or sketches from my sketchpad. In the end, they picked the Starfish and Octopus.

Faure: I had a theme for both of my sticker sets — Another one just came out called “90s baby”.

The first theme was “negative comment” and I had to come up with phrases and visuals that would follow that theme.

How long does it take to design the stickers used in a chat app? For instance, do you go through the same iterative process an animator would, like with a storyboard?

Gatti: The process is pretty linear. I start sketching the characters in different poses, focusing on the few best actions that really underline the synergy between the two characters. Once the client approves this first step, I start working on the colored version of the characters and a sketch for each of the stickers. When all the sketches are approved, it’s time to work on line test animations so the client can see a quick preview of the stickers in action.

The final phase is animating the finalized illustrations and export all the stickers. I’ve designed sticker sets in as quickly as five days. Some have taken as long as three months. It really depends on who the client is, the approval time in between each phase, or how detailed the illustrations and animations are.

Faure: There is a first phase of sketches that needs approval. Once that’s done, there will usually be a few rounds of feedback once we get to the color versions. The feedback is mainly about changing the color palette, removing or adding elements to make an expression more obvious, things like that.

Were you aware what Allo was when you were designing the stickers?

Gatti: No, I knew it was a new Google product, but we were working on the sticker set while Allo was in the making.

Faure: I was told that I was creating a set for a new messaging product from Google, but didn’t know the name or anything more specific about it.

Do you use Allo?

Gatti: Yes, absolutely! I love all their stickers and to chat with Google Assistant!

Faure: I do, actually. Especially with my family and boyfriend.

Qualcomm Snapdragon makes your Android Things devices more powerful, better connected

Qualcomm has announced that it will be supporting Android Things with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 chipset, aiming to bring more power and connectivity to the next wave of smart devices.

Android Things is an evolution of Android that’s designed for connected smart home devices. Announced at the end of 2016, Android Things is a new platform that’s very much in its infancy and aiming to become the foundation for any number of security cameras, thermostats, smart speakers and so on.

• What is Android Things and when will the first devices arrive?

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 chipset supports a range of offerings that immediately make sense in connected devices. The inclusion of the X5 LTE modem means you can have an autonomous 4G connection, which is just the sort of thing a security camera might want. 

Wheeling back to a consumer level, Snapdragon 210 supports Google Cast, for example, so can natively support audio functions in connected speakers, as does the power that’s offered to complete local processing tasks, like natural language interpretation.

One of the main attractions is having one SoC (system on chip) that will cover a range of hardware functions from one single solution, rather than needing a range of different hardware providers.

Support for Snapdragon 210 will be available later in 2017, but Qualcomm will be demonstrating the Android Things platform on the hardware a Mobile World Congress 2017.

The Morning After: Tuesday February 21 2017

Welcome to Tuesday.

If you thought the Galaxy Note 7 saga was over — we wish it was — you’d be wrong. Samsung might bring refurbished devices back. Kind of. We also toured the New York Toy Fair for its high-tech toys and games, and fell in love with PS4-exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn.

Also: Keep an eye out for a new episode of The Future: IRL coming at 9AM ET.

Just not in the US or EuropeReport: Samsung will sell ‘refurbished’ Galaxy Note 7s

Now that Samsung has officially determined that there’s nothing wrong with the Galaxy Note 7 itself, did you think it would let all those phones go to waste? Korean media reports that the company will take the 2.5 million or so phones it has laying around and shove them into new cases with slightly smaller batteries (to alleviate any issues that caused power pack meltdowns the last time around). Those refurbs are headed to developing markets like India and Vietnam, so you can forget any ideas of grabbing a value-priced phablet off of the scrap heap.

Move quicklyNab your new Nintendo name now

With the launch of the Switch, Nintendo is revamping its online services once more, and for gamers that means registering yet another username. If you don’t want to be SuperMarioLover8734567, then immediately head towards the accounts page to reserve your new choice.

An unexpected treat‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ review

Horizon Zero Dawn may not be Gaming Editor Jessica Conditt’s typical kind of game, but the character design and massive, beautiful open world drew her in. But for such a huge game environment, is a 30-hour campaign long enough?

Toys and tech.Highlights from Toy Fair 2017

This year’s New York Toy Fair has a few blasts from the past, whether it’s a glowing-eyed Teddy Ruxpin, or the classic game of Simon reimagined for some reason, as a headset. At least it’s more imaginative than another cheap VR headset. Barbie has hologram tech now, too.

Under the sea! Under the sea!Endless nuclear power can be found in the seas

Climate change is such an urgent issue that despite problems with radioactive waste, nuclear power is once again viable until renewable solutions like solar and wind are more widely adopted. The ocean is a good source of uranium fuel, but it exists in such small quantities that extracting it hasn’t been economically feasible. However, Stanford researchers have developed a new technique that can capture up to three times more than existing methods, meaning we might soon get a new source of uranium.

But wait, there’s more…

• Hyundai chooses efficiency over range with its new Ioniq vehicles
• Space particles could be screwing up your smartphone
• Oh, there’s one more way Facebook can rip off Snapchat?
• The Pacific Ocean is hiding a whole continent: Zealandia

Soundwall’s Nova art speaker boasts magic touch and backlights

The latest version of Soundwall comes with a couple of extra features that make it even more interactive. You can think of a Soundwall either as an aluminum artwork that plays music or a flat-planel speaker disguised as a painting. Its new iteration called “Nova,” however, kicks things up a notch by turning it into a touch-enabled artwork that can play music with a matching light show.

Nova’s Magic Touch feature gives you the power to play, pause and skip songs — streamed from your phone through Bluetooth — by touching the artwork. “Mood Lights,” on the other hand, helps you set the ambiance. You can switch between blue lights for a relaxed, jazzy atmosphere, red for a more romantic one and white if you want some simple yet elegant, all within Soundwall’s companion app.

According to the Boulder-based company, Soundwall’s whole surface is a speaker that uses Distributed Mode Loudspeaker technology to give off brilliant sounds. The aluminum adds to its sound’s richness, as well. As for the artwork, the company uses archival inks and a dye-sublimation process to print it into aluminum and make sure it doesn’t fade.

You can get a Soundwall through its website for a minimum of $900. It’s pretty pricey, but then again, some people might see it as getting a piece of art and a speaker at the same time. If you do shop through the website, you’ll have around 150 designs to choose from, though you can always upload your own for the most personalized option yet.

Source: Soundwall

Qualcomm chip promises phone data that’s faster than fiber

Just because true 5G wireless is edging closer doesn’t mean that 4G’s peak speeds can’t improve in the meantime. Qualcomm has unveiled a new LTE modem, the Snapdragon X20, that promises 1.2Gbps download speeds on mobile devices. That’s 20 percent faster than the company’s previous best, and enough to make even landline services like Google Fiber seem a bit pokey. The X20 manages the feat through more aggressive carrier aggregation (which bonds carrier frequency ranges) that lets it download 12 unique data streams of up to 100Mbps each. Upload speeds are healthy, too, at 150Mbps.

There are a few other party tricks. Qualcomm’s new chip supports the 3.5GHz airspace used by Citizens Broadband Radio Service in the US, which opens the door to private LTE networks. It can also handle high-quality LTE phone calls on dual SIM phones, which is particularly handy in China and other countries where dual-line phones are relatively commonplace.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait to see what this modem can do. Samples of the X20 are available to device makers now, but the first shipping products aren’t expected until the first half of 2018. It’s just as well, though, when the most advanced LTE networks tend to stop at ‘just’ hundreds of megabits per second these days. And of course, the likelihood of hitting 1.2Gbps on a compatible carrier will be small unless you’re close to an uncongested cell tower. It’s better to think of this as laying groundwork for a transition — Qualcomm will be ready to tide you over with breakneck LTE speeds while you wait for meaningful 5G coverage.

Source: Qualcomm