Google Home is coming to the UK in Q2 2017
Google Home makes its international debut this spring.
Google Home will soon be expanding outside the United States. The smart home assistant, which arrived in the U.S. late last year, is set to reach UK shores sometime in the second quarter of the year, according to the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones, who cites a conversation with Google hardware boss Rick Osterloh.
Google’s Rick Osterloh tells BBC that Google Home is coming to UK in Q2, claims its AI skills and vast data will help it beat Amazon Echo pic.twitter.com/qs3oZabak0
— Rory Cellan-Jones (@BBCRoryCJ) February 28, 2017
Expansion outside the U.S. is vital for Google as it competes with Amazon’s Echo, which is now available in the UK and Germany. It’s also an important part of the company’s effort to bring Google Assistant to more users around the world. Assistant ships on the Google Pixel, for which the UK was a launch market, and the AI will soon be coming to all phones running Marshmallow and Nougat.
There’s no info available on exactly how much Google Home will cost in the UK, but based on the U.S. price of $129, we’re probably looking at somewhere around the £100 mark.
Raspberry Pi’s fifth birthday surprise is a Wi-Fi enabled Zero
It’s the fifth birthday of everyone’s favorite little circuit board computer and as a special surprise there’s a new Raspberry Pi Zero in town. The price has gone up, a little, but it’s adding two very important pieces of hardware to the board: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
The Raspberry Pi Zero W now has a base price of $10, which is still crazily cheap, but it also negates the need to have external accessories for connectivity. Without needing to plug in a Wi-Fi or Ethernet dongle, you also have a much neater option for building your projects, like an OSMC powered Kodi box. It uses the same chip as the larger Raspberry Pi 3 for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which means 802.11n and Bluetooth 4.0 in a much smaller package.
Everything else remains the same, but these seemingly simple additions make a world of difference to making use of the Pi Zero. They’re already selling like hotcakes, with one UK retailer shipping 1,000 units in the first few hours of availability. So if you want one you’ll have to act fast or be prepared to wait it out a little. We’ve managed to get an order in already and we’re looking forward to checking out what a wireless Pi Zero is like to use.
Also new with the Pi Zero W is an official case from Raspberry Pi. It’s similar in style to the official Raspberry Pi 3 case, only much smaller, of course. The top lid comes away exposing access to the inside, you’ve full access to the GPIO pins and there’s even a camera mount and lens hole built right in. Very neat!
See at Adafruit (US) See at Pi Hut (UK)
Samsung is bringing RCS messaging to its phones following NewNet acquisition
All Galaxy phones running Marshmallow and above will get RCS messaging.
Samsung acquired RCS operator NewNet Canada back in November, and the South Korean manufacturer is now integrating NewNet’s technologies into its phones. To that effect, the company is expanding RCS services to include “RCS-enabled devices, native/downloadable device clients, cloud-based RCS application servers, an interconnectivity hub among operators and a third-party monetization platform.” The company’s RCS solution will be available on all Galaxy phones running Marshmallow and above.
Samsung’s RCS solution features group chats, video calls, and large file transfers, similar to the likes of WhatsApp and Hangouts. Samsung also mentions that its service will support interconnectivity among other RCS-enabled operators, leading to a seamless experience for customers. Its solution is compliant with the GSMA RCS spec, and Samsung has said that it is partnering with Deutsche Telekom, KT, SK Telecom, T-Mobile and Vodafone to increase the availability of RCS.
The news comes a few days after Google announced a landmark move to pre-install Android Messages — the new avatar of Google Messenger — on phones from over 20 handset manufacturers.
Yes, Samsung’s Galaxy S7 edge won an award at MWC 2017 one year after launch
Industry event awards don’t always translate well to the consumer news cycle.
Reading the title of Samsung’s latest press release, “Samsung Galaxy S7 edge Named Best Smartphone at MWC 2017,” you may have done a bit of a double take — didn’t Samsung release this phone coinciding with last year’s MWC? Yes, but that doesn’t mean Samsung is doing anything shady here.
The Galaxy S7 edge did indeed win at the MWC Global Mobile Awards 2017 — the same show it teased the Galaxy S8 while confirming its launch date. But you need to remember that this is an industry event that’s actually rewarding companies for their products released in 2016. Indeed, the Galaxy S7 edge won the “best smartphone of 2016” category this year.
Junho Park, Vice President of Global Product Strategy, Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics, had a statement on the award you’d expect any company to make:
“We are honored to be recognized for our craftsmanship in design and innovation with the Galaxy S7 edge. This award is a testament to our constant pursuit of excellence as we continue to exceed consumers’ expectations through revolutionary mobile technology.”
The short list for the award consisted of the Apple iPhone 7 Plus, Google Pixel XL, Huawei P9 and Moto Z, and you’d bet that if any of those companies won they would be more than happy to put out a press release saying so. It wouldn’t be quite as egregious for the Moto Z or Pixel XL to be considered for an award just a few months after launch, but it does feel a bit more odd when a phone that is precisely a year old wins an award as newer phones have been released.
But that’s how these things work. This time next year there’s a darn good chance we’ll be talking about the Galaxy S8 making an appearance on the list at MWC 2018 as well.
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Best retro phones we’d all like to see come back
Everyone remembers their first mobile phone.
And with Finnish firm HMD Global bringing back Nokia’s classic 3310 — one of the most recognisable phones ever made — we can’t help but think about all the retro phones we loved way back when and how awesome they’d be if a company rejigged them for modern times. Here are a few standout models, which we’re sure you’ll all remember, and now, just imagine how they’d look and work in 2017.
- Nokia through the years: 34 best and worst phones, in pictures
BlackBerry 6210
Crackberry
The 6210 was the first BlackBerry phone to have actually have an integrated phone, all other preceding BlackBerry’s required an external headset to be attached. The 6210 was also the phone that really kickstarted BlackBerry as we know it today, combining phone and messaging, with e-mail, web browser and BlackBerry Messenger.
Ericsson T28
Mobile88.com
When Ericsson Mobile launched the T28 in 1999, it was the first mobile phone to use a lithium polymer battery. Ericsson described the T28 as “designer technology”, and unlike its bar-shaped rivals, it had a fixed antenna stub, “active flip” keypad cover, and fancy features such as voice dialing and an optional Bluetooth dongle. But its success lay in that it was the smallest and lightest phone available at the time. Weighing in at 81g, the T28 sparked the trend for pocket-ability, which we still see today.
LG Chocolate
CNET
Another handset to capitalise on the emerging clamour for pink gadgets was the LG Chocolate. While it wasn’t the first in the range, with the original colour scheme coming in a box that smelt like, well, chocolate, the pink version pretty much changed the landscape for gadgets, not just mobile phones. LG sold bucketloads of each of the variations of this slider cellphone-MP3 player hybrid. But one of the more interesting design aspects off the Chocolate was that the face had no tactile buttons, but rather touch-sensitive panels.
Motorola DynaTAC
Engadget
This phone series, made from 1984 to 1984, was made famous in many movies both released and set in the 1980s, such as Wall Street (Gordon Gekko uses it on the beach to talk to Buddy) and American Psycho. There were several handsets released over the 10-year period, but the pinnacle of the series had an LED screen, so you could at least see the number you were calling, while the battery allowed for a call of up to 60 minutes, after which it was necessary to charge the phone for up to 10 hours in a trickle charger.
Motorola i860
Digital Trends
The Motorola i860 was a flip phone from 2004. It had a colour main display, numeric keypad, and speakerphone. But it stood out because it was one of the first phones on Nextel’s iDEN network, which enabled it to offer push-to-talk, a popular feature that was basically like a coast to coast walkie-talkie capability. It also had true GPS and a rugged design. Later iterations even added a camera and other fancy features for the time.
Motorola Razr v3
eBay
It’s hard to believe Motorola’s Razr V3 hit the scene 13 years ago (in 2004). The ultra-slim flip phone had an iconic design that made it the switchblade of mobile phones. It had an magnesium and aluminium outer shell, which gave it a lightweight but solid build, and it had a backlit keypad that absolutely screamed Tron. You could also get it in an array of colours; remember that hot pink version that sold like hot cakes? It wasn’t all great, though, it was two inches wide, had a clumsy interface and a dreadful battery life.
Motorola StarTAC
Thai Visa
Announced in 1996, the Motorola StarTAC phone something we had yet to see in mobile phones: it was sleek and small. Marketed as a “wearable cellular telephone”, it was the smallest, lightest mobile phone ever. It had a clamshell design reminiscent of the communicators on Star Trek, and it was the first phone to offer vibrate mode instead of a ringer. It was a cell phone you could carry around without looking or sounding like a dork. It’s no wonder that it became one of the first mobile phones to gain widespread consumer adoption.
Motorola V70
Keyword Suggest
The V70 from 2002 simply looked (and still does) cool. As such, it remains a recognisable device. Considered a fashion phone back in its day, the V70 had a swiveling circular monochrome panel with a neon backlight keypad. It even had interchangeable frames. Despite these crazy design features, it was a fairly basic phone with just a WAP browser, GPRS, vibrating mode, and voice dialing. It was also a pretty lightweight handset at just 83g. And modern features such as Bluetooth, a camera, and colour display were absent.
Nokia Mobira Talkman
Research Gate
From 1984 to 1992, Nokia manufactured — via its Mobira partnership with TV-maker Salora — the Mobira Talkman line of crazy-large cell phones you could carry with you… if your arms were strong enough to lift the massive block/suitcase attached to the phone. It was available on the world’s first roaming international mobile phone network, called the Nordic Mobile Telephone, which was a service set up by Mobira.
Nokia Cityman
Redfield 1982
The Cityman was one of the first “compact” phones. The phone had a total weight of 760g and measured a whopping 183 x 43 x 79mm. Similar to the Mobira Talkman series, the Cityman was released by Nokia-Mobira. It became famous in 1989 when Mikhail Gorbachev, then-president of the Soviet Union, used a Cityman 900 to call Moscow during a press conference held in Helsinki, Finland. It of course then got the nickname “Gorba”.
Nokia 3310
Huffington Post
It obviously wasn’t the first phone ever released, but the 3310 stands out as one of the most iconic phones of all time. Released on 1 September 2000, the 3310 went on to sell 126 million units worldwide. It was renowned for its durability and long battery life and could be customised with interchangeable Xpress-On covers. Nokia made other versions of the 3310 that introduced different features, but the 3310 remained the phone to have.
Palm Treo 600
iFixit
The Treo 600 was a phone developed by Handspring in 2003, but it was sold under the palmOne brand after the merger of the two companies. It let you check your calendar while talking on the phone, dial directly from contacts list, take pictures, send emails, and it had a favourites screen and provided quick access to phone functions. These features, as well as the camera and bright colour screen, helped the Treo 600 to become the most successful Treo. It also fueled Palm’s transition from a PDA manufacturer to a smartphone pioneer.
Sony CMD Z1
Introduced in 1997, the CMD Z1 was a Star Trek fan’s dream phone. It’s diminutive dimensions and overall look made it feel like a Star Trek Communicator, but it was small, flip out mouthpiece that made us really feel like we were on the Enterprise. It could make phone calls and send text messages, but that was about it. There were no games, no radio and no speaker, but we didn’t care, we could pretend we were Captain Kirk.
WSJ: 10th Anniversary iPhone will have a curved OLED screen
The chorus of voices claiming that Apple will release a limited-edition iPhone with an OLED display just got a little bit louder. The Wall Street Journal’s anonymous sources, familiar with the matter, claim that the 10th iteration of the device will pack a curved OLED screen. Unfortunately, this is likely to further split Apple’s formerly seamless lineup, since the regular iPhone refreshes are believed to pack LCD displays.
Take it with a pinch of salt, but the WSJ’s current thinking is that Tim Cook will announce three devices toward the end of this year. First up, there’ll be two devices that match the company’s usual refresh cycle: a mythical iPhone 7S and 7S Plus with LCD screens. Then, as a treat, the company will pull out the iPhone 10th Anniversary Edition, that comes with the OLED display and a whopping $1,000 price tag.
The paper has also mooted that Apple will ditch both its traditional home button and the Lightning connector in favor of USB-C and a touch zone on the chin of the device. The latter claim matches what analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has been saying for the last few weeks, with the next iPhone getting a “function area” or secondary touchscreen below the primary.
As for who is making the display, it’ll be Samsung’s baby, at least initially, since LG and JDI aren’t yet ready to produce OLEDs in Apple-size quantities. A report from the back-end of last year claimed that those two companies won’t have production capacity until 2018. Apple was undeterred, however, and seemingly pushed ahead with launching one premium device before it could mass-produce the rest.
One thing that the WSJ report doesn’t cover is the rumor that the next iPhone will feature a new 3D-tracking forward camera. Apple’s acquisition of PrimeSense, the company behind the original Kinect, coupled with Tim Cook’s comments on AR, make such an addition plausible, if not expected.
We’ve said previously how unwise the creation of an ultra-premium iPhone is considering Apple’s traditional strategy. It normally offers new features consistently across its new devices, with only display size, battery capacity and cameras differing between the two units. With an iPhone X to sit alongside the 7S, 7S Plus and SE, consumers will have a confusing mix of trade-offs — not ideal for a company that prides itself on simplicity.
Source: WSJ
The Morning After: Tuesday, February 28 2017
Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.
It’s Tuesday. That means Boston Dynamics has unveiled a new robot harbinger of death, there are more new smartphones and we have an idea who screwed up at the Oscars. In more encouraging news, we checked in with some very charitable gamers, and mobile carriers keep making their data plans better. Keep an eye on the site today for more dispatches from MWC, as well as our reports from the Game Developers Conference.
Phones and more phonesAll the news from Mobile World Congress
MWC 2017 is in full swing, and our team in Barcelona is digging up all the information you need to know. Looking for a head-to-head comparison of the LG G6, Sony Xperia XZ Premium, Huawei P10, Nokia 6 Arte Black Edition and BlackBerry Keyone? We’ve got you. Hands-on time with the new motion controller for Samsung’s Gear VR? Say no more. Oh, and of course, the highlights from every big press event condensed into one six minute video. You’re welcome.
AT&T vs. T-Mobile, round whateverThe unlimited data wars rage on
Oh, you thought it was over? Yesterday two mobile carriers continued to make minor adjustments in their battle for unlimited data supremacy. First, AT&T rolled out an Unlimited Plus package with 10GB of tethering and 22GB of high-speed data (before throttling kicks in) for $90 per month, plus some credits for DirecTV subscribers. T-Mobile quickly responded, however, with a promotion allowing customers with two lines to add a third one for free. That could be a phone, or it could be the data plan that links up your car, tablet or smartwatch. The only question now is what’s next?
No strings on meRaspberry Pi Zero W packs WiFi and Bluetooth for $10
The Raspberry Pi Zero’s cheap-but-powerful computing has powered many maker projects, but networking adapters could be inconvenient. Now there’s a version with Bluetooth and 802.11n wireless aboard the credit card-sized computer. Of course, it also costs twice as much as the original Zero model, but at just $10 we doubt there will be many complaints.
You had one jobIt’s possible that a tweet was responsible for that Oscars Best Picture screw-up
If you’re still wondering how Warren Beatty could end up with the wrong envelope to present the biggest Academy Award of the night, we may have an answer. The Wall Street Journal reports that the PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant in charge of making the hand-off was busy tweeting a pic of Emma Stone instead. That led to Faye Dunaway announcing La La Land as the winner instead of Moonlight, and then everything got really awkward. Oops.
Boston Dynamics’ latest robot swaps out the peg legs for wheelsMeet ‘Handle.’
We got an early look at Handle last month via a leaked video, but now you can check out rolling, jumping, spinning automaton in all its direct-feed glory. Capable of leaping 4 feet in the air and moving along at up to 9mph, it can still easily handle obstacles like snowy terrain and stairs, so adjust your getaway plans during a robot apocalypse accordingly.
But wait, there’s more…
- Gamers Outreach Foundation: The charity that wants video game karts in every hospital
- ‘MythBusters’ revival hosts unveiled
- YouTube is coming to Comcast’s cable boxes
- Take a peek at Netflix’s ‘Bright,’ starring Will Smith
- What’s on TV this week: ‘Horizon Zero Dawn,’ ‘Moonlight’ Blu-ray
- Let’s play ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’: 15 minutes in Aloy’s robot-hunting shoes
- SpaceX is sending two private citizens around the moon in 2018
The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you’ll miss if you don’t subscribe.
Google Home is coming to the UK this spring
If you’ve been waiting for Google to bring its smart Home speaker to the UK, you may only have to hang on a little bit longer. A Google spokesperson confirmed to Engadget today that the contoured cylinder will make its journey across the Atlantic in the second quarter of this year, giving the Amazon Echo some much-needed competition in the process.
Details are scarce right now but Rick Osterloh, Google’s SVP of Hardware, told BBC reporter Rory Cellan-Jones that he believes the Home’s “AI skills and vast data” will give it the edge over its rival. The Echo has been on sale in the UK since September 2016 and has already gained support from various local apps and services, which may put it slightly ahead of Google’s offering at launch.
As for release date and price, Google will provide more information in the near future. Given the weakness of the pound, don’t be surprised if the Home sticks pretty close to its $129 price tag in the US.
EA’s Peter Moore makes a big money transfer to Liverpool FC
Yesterday’s Premier League match between Leicester City and Liverpool was notable for two reasons. First was the result: managerless Leicester, the current champions of England, pulled off a surprise 3-1 win against an in-form Liverpool team after a terrible run of losses. Then, shortly after the final whistle had blown, Liverpool made the surprise announcement that it had appointed EA’s Peter Moore as its new chief executive. As a result, Moore — known for leading Electronic Arts’ EA Sports game division — will swap digital sports for the top job at one of Europe’s biggest football clubs in June.
While Liverpool’s statement is very formal, taking time only to detail his transition, EA took time to congratulate its departing COO for his decade of service and for “following his dream to become the next CEO of his beloved Liverpool Football Club.” Although he holds dual citizenship in America and the UK, Moore was born in Liverpool and is a lifelong fan of the Reds.
Moore will replace Ian Ayre, who is taking a similar job at German side 1860 Munich, which currently plays in the second tier of the Bundesliga league. He is expected to oversee financial and other executive business when he joins the club, not help scout and develop the next Alex Hunter in a real-life version of The Journey.
Source: Liverpool FC, EA
Ubisoft’s ‘Rabbids’ invade virtual reality later this year
Virtual reality is about to be invaded by derpy, mischievous rabbits. Ubisoft’s long-running Rabbids franchise is coming to Google’s Daydream VR platform sometime this spring, the publisher announced.
In Virtual Rabbids: The Big Plan, players will help a government agency recover missing digits stolen by the furry, slack-jawed troublemakers, according to Polygon. Ubisoft Montpellier’s Loic Gounon and Fred Mizac showed off some of the game’s locations during Google Developer Day at GDC in San Francisco, calling it a “funny immersive experience.” One level takes place in a supermarket, where Rabbids interfere with your grocery shopping. In another scenario, you hand surgical equipment to the Rabbids in an operating room. Hopefully, that patient has good insurance.
While they might not be a household name, the Rabbids games have been around since 2006, spawning numerous sequels, amusement park attractions and merchandising. Ubisoft is currently working to bring Rabbids to the big screen as well. It’s teamed with Sony Pictures to produce a hybrid live-action/animated feature film, but there’s no word yet on when it will debut.
Source: Polygon
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