Latest Nokia 3310 leak reveals new details about revived 17-year-old phone

HMD must be surprised at how the internet blew up last week when the media leaked news about it resurrecting the Nokia 3310. And that now, because of the huge interest, a new report with even more details has surfaced.

HMD Global Oy, the Finnish manufacturer marketing phones under the Nokia brand, is reportedly bringing the Nokia 6 and three budget Android phones to Europe. One of those budget phones is a revival of the Nokia 3310 from 17 years ago. It is described as “modern version of a classic workhorse” with plentiful battery life and a “nearly indestructible build”. Also, according to a new report, it will “remain a feature phone”.

A report from GizmoChina, which has cited an anonymous source that “was one of the first to report the revival of the Nokia 3310,” said the phone will not run Android. It will also look a lot like the original phone that released in 2000 (pictured below for reference), but it’ll be lighter and thinner, which makes total sense, considering phone components have slimmed down quite a bit in the last two decades.

Aman Firdaus (Flickr)

• Mobile World Congress 2017: Nokia, Sony, Huawei, and more

While the original Nokia 3310 had a 84 x 84 monochromatic display, the new one will have a larger colour display, but it won’t be high resolution in order to maximise the phone’s battery life. And finally, the default colours for the Nokia 3310 were grey/black, blue and ash, but this time around, you can expect multiple colour variants like red, green, and yellow. And it will cost only €59, naturally.

The Nokia 3310 is expected to launch alongside the Nokia 6 on 26 February at Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Pocket-lint will be there to bring you the latest as it happens, including details on UK pricing if made available.

In the NBA’s eSports league, diversity means a new kind of athlete

With millions of gamers willing to watch people play League of Legends or FIFA for fun, major players in the entertainment industry see eSports as an intriguing business opportunity. Earlier this month, the NBA announced a partnership with Take-Two Interactive, developer of the renowned NBA2K franchise, to create a one-of-a-kind eSports league. This new professional gaming competition, known as “NBA 2K eLeague,” will be the first owned by a major US sports organization when it starts in 2018. That’s assuming the NFL, MLB or MLS don’t make any sudden moves before then.

According to the NBA, each of its 30 teams will eventually have its own eSports squad, just as they’re represented in the WNBA or the lower-tier D-League. At launch, however, only eight to 12 NBA teams will participate, with the rest expected to do so later on. Every 2K eLeague team will be made up of five human players, which the NBA plans to treat the same way it does athletes who play for the San Antonio Spurs, New York Knicks or any of its other NBA, WNBA or D-League clubs. There will be contracts and endorsement deals at stake, for instance. The main difference here is that there’s room for more diversity, since these pro players can be of any age, gender or race to play on the same court — even if it is a virtual one.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick

NBA and Take-Two Interactive said they’ll create custom avatars for each player in the 2K eLeague, so players can see a digital version of themselves in every game. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says that eSports gives the league access to a new kind of athlete, different from what audiences are accustomed to seeing live or on TV. “Physical prowess, at least the way it’s necessary on an NBA court, will no longer be necessary,” said Silver during his All-Star Weekend press conference this past weekend. “It may be a different kind of physical prowess in terms of reflexes and your ability to move your thumbs very quickly, but these athletes can be any shape or size, and any age, and from anywhere.”

To get a clearer picture of the NBA 2K eLeague as a whole, I sat down with NBA VP of Global Partnerships Matt Holt and 2K’s SVP of Basketball Operations Jason Argent, two of the people involved with the project. Based on our conversation, there are still many details to be ironed out, like whether you’ll be able to watch these games on ESPN, Twitch, Youtube or elsewhere. But with the competition not scheduled to start until early next year, we’ll find out their distribution strategy soon enough, as well as which specific NBA teams are going to be part of the inaugural season.

NBA players during a 2K event at All-Star Weekend 2017 in New Orleans.

How did this partnership come about?

Matt Holt: 2K on their side had been doing their own gaming tournaments: We had “Road to the Finals” last year and then our owners have been super active in the space. We’ve been making investments, we’ve been exploring different ways that we could participate in eSports and we sort of said, “Let’s stop looking around. Let’s work with one of our biggest partners in 2K,” and the two conversations just kind of converged.

What’s next, now that the league has been announced?

Holt: The next steps are talking to our teams to find out exactly what teams are going to populate the league. We’re expecting that we’re going to get roughly half of our teams that are going to opt in and join up. Once we have that, we’re going to put together some of the details about schedule, timing, but right now we’re targeting 2018.

Jason Argent: I think the goal we all have collectively is to really create a league that’s a match and consistent with what happens in the real NBA world. We’re a simulation video game; obviously we would love to have a league that simulates that. So same team, same structure. You know, possibly a different season timing, but basically the same simulation of what happens in the real world in the NBA.

What sort of challenges do you think you’ll face trying to accomplish that kind of structure for the eLeague?

Argent: We’re creating something that has never existed, but I think everything is in our favor. We have a great momentum with eSports in general; we have a great partner with the NBA. And I think the fact that there’s never been something where there’s been a partnership with a professional sports league and a video game company before is all in our favor. But sure, anytime you’re a vanguard or someone leading the charge, there are some challenges and some unanswered questions, but I think that’s something that made both of our companies successful.

Holt: I think the other thing is, we’re starting a league from scratch. So, with the NBA, we have the NBA, we have the WNBA, the D-League, and now we have an eSports league. We have some experience in doing that, but it’s a big lift. You’re starting a league from scratch, we have to sign a partnership, we have to sign up teams, we have to figure out a schedule, we have to figure out timing, we have to build from a development standpoint, so it’s exciting, but it’s a big lift.

What about in terms of diversity? How are the teams going to work in that regard? Is it going to be male only or can women play too?

Argent: I think that’s one of the most exciting parts to us. You know, you have to have some very serious level of athletic prowess to compete in the NBA. There’s a different level of prowess with this. So, males, females, 18-year-olds, 27-year-olds, 80-year-olds, you know, that’s the cool part about this for us. Everyone can participate, assuming they have the prowess of being able to play the game at that professional level. For us, it expands our video game audience, and I’m assuming that with the NBA it expands their audience as well, so that’s one of the biggest, exciting parts of it for us.

Who are the naysayers?

And in terms of deals with networks, is the league going to be streamed on Twitch, YouTube or elsewhere?

Holt: I think the first step is we got to get some of these details locked down, and then I think media, schedule, timing, those things will start to fall into place.

What else intrigues the NBA and 2K most about this?

Holt: The main thing is, we’re starting a fourth league. It’s kind of like a fourth pillar of the game of basketball; it’s a totally different world. You know, some of the things about the different types of players that can potentially participate in the league, the fact that it could be global. You can imagine down the road, where, yeah, we have a bunch of franchises in North America, but there is no reason why you couldn’t have a franchise in London, or in Shanghai, or in some other international city, so that’s really cool.

Argent: ESports in Asia, and certainly internationally, are a little bit ahead of the United States. We’ve learned quite a bit about that, so that’s hugely exciting to us. The idea of utilizing that and being able to be on the front lines of doing what they’re doing, or replicating what the international markets are doing on our level, it’s very cool to be leading that charge in North America. But, you know, a lot of it is expanding. The NBA has done such a fantastic job growing internationally, and the video game business is obviously a big international business, so the ability for us to partner together to do that and to expand globally is super exciting for us.

Is the idea to treat the 2K eLeague the same way as your other three leagues? Will you include it in a future All-Star Weekend or maybe awards season?

Holt: We’re starting at a smaller level, and it’s in the beginning stages right now. But that’s the vision: That it runs in parallel with the NBA season and it’s a fourth league that we run and operate together.

What about for the naysayers who say eSports are not real sports?

Argent: Obviously, I don’t think we believe that. Who are the naysayers? That would be my question. Like anything that’s new, there’s a question mark. But I think there’s enough momentum, there’s enough proof, and there’s enough people, enough people and enough consumers who are playing and participating in eSports that it’s a very viable market in our opinion.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Apple speaks out against regressive transgender policies

Apple spoke out against the Trump administration yesterday, criticizing its stance on transgender rights in schools. While the previous administration offered inclusive guidance to schools on transgender rights, the government yesterday revoked a federal law that allowed transgender children access to the bathroom of the gender that they identify with.

Speaking with Axios, Apple released a statement condemning the move. “Apple believes everyone deserves a chance to thrive in an environment free from stigma and discrimination. We support efforts toward greater acceptance, not less, and we strongly believe that transgender students should be treated as equals. We disagree with any effort to limit or rescind their rights and protections.”

This isn’t the first time that Apple has spoken out against Trump’s Administration, with the company publicly disagreeing with his recent travel ban. It also took a similar stance against states who tried to use legislation to limit LGBT rights in 2015.

Source: Axios

Google improves two-step verification on phones

Last summer Google introduced phone prompts as a way of approving sign-in attempts protected by two-step verification. Instead of an email or text, users receive a simple pop-up alerting them to a new sign-in request. While useful, there wasn’t much information on the card, save for the location and device being used. Now, Google is refreshing the feature, adding more details about the associated time, location and hardware. As Android Police notes, the wording has also been adjusted slightly in the prompts, from “no” to “no it’s just me.” It’s a small change, but one that should help privacy-conscious users distinguish friend from foe.

Google Fiber launches its first wireless gigabit project

A Denver apartment complex is the first to get gigabit internet speeds from Google via its wireless Webpass service rather than Fiber. Webpass specializes in multi-unit internet service using point-to-point wireless tech instead of cables. The company already offers its services in Boston, Chicago, Miami, San Diego, Oakland and San Francisco (above), but Denver is the first new city since Google acquired it last year.

Webpass uses a combination of fiber optics, wireless and ethernet tech. It transmits high-speed cable via rooftop antennas, and the signal is then captured at installation sites (with ten or more units) and distributed to individual apartments via eithernet.

Google is having problems building out infrastructure in Fiber cities like Nashville, thanks to red tape issues and entrenched utilities that aren’t exactly cooperating. Consequently, it recently announced it would halt expansion plans and lay off about nine percent of its Fiber workforce. It is reportedly looking instead at providing internet to communities wirelessly, and Webpass is a key part of that.

The company still has to get fiber lines to the antenna transmission sites, and the tech isn’t economically feasible for single family homes. However, Webpass eliminates the need for “last mile” wiring so that Google needn’t rely on utilities or rivals like AT&T for pole or underground right-of-way access. Google Fiber co-exists with Webpass in three US cities (Chicago, San Diego and San Francisco), which could allow for rapid expansion in those areas.

Google has posted job listings for a “General manager to launch our Seattle market,” so Denver could be just a start for Webpass. Last month it revealed that six metro areas “may be eligible to use Webpass if their building has at least 10 units, and is wired with Ethernet cabling.”

Source: Google

Exploring death through the isolation of VR

I’m sitting on a field of tall, red grass staring straight ahead at a lone tree. Its leaves match the crimson landscape that stretches out before me. In the distance, a rusty orange forest fades into the background. There’s a gentle rustling of leaves, occasionally interrupted by the faint chirping of a bird, that forces me to breathe slower.

“Thank you for being here and being willing to consider moving towards the idea of dying and death,” a calm, male voice prepares me for the virtual meditative journey.

A hazy white light source rises in the distance as the voice walks me through the process of focusing on my breathing. I watch the blades of the grass swish to the left with the wind. The tree slowly starts to lose its leaves. “Feel the air around you,” the voice continues. “Feel yourself letting go as if you’re a tree dropping your leaves. The breeze takes the leaves away. Everything that you know and everything you cherish will be taken by the wind.”

As I let the weight of those words sink in, the blue sky slowly takes on a deep green hue, ushering in darker skies. Within moments, the field beneath me turns into a deep red lake that starts to rise around me. I gasp for air before I quickly remind myself that I have an Oculus Rift headset on my face.

When We Die is a virtual reality experience for perhaps the most difficult kind of contemplation: the end of life. The first half, with the metaphorical tree, presents the ephemerality of nature as a symbol of the finiteness of your own life. But the next chapter addresses the wider perception of death as a tragedy through real-life experiences.

In the second half, serene views of the cosmos shift the narrative from considering your own mortality to thinking about the process of dying as an inescapable reality for all. Celestial objects that dot the night sky reveal audio clips from a hospice worker, who shares her observations of death, and a neurologist, who grounds the experience in a physician’s approach to it.

“We wanted to create a safe space for people to have difficult conversations,” said Paula Ceballos, an NYU student who is a part of a trio that created When We Die for the school’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. “We find that in the Western culture death and dying and aging get put behind closed doors, and we wanted to bring it up and make you think about it.”

The fear of death, your own or a loved one’s, is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. It can drive the choices we make, yet it continues to be shrouded in mystery. Over the years, hundreds of research studies have probed the process of dying, the fear of confronting death and how the awareness of one’s own mortality has impacted religious, cultural and spiritual world views.

When We Die makes room for that spiritual contemplation with its abstract worlds: There are no physical bodies, only metaphors for the process of aging and dying. But the idea is rooted in a more practical understanding of the ways in which neglecting end-of-life processes can hamper the process of dying, especially for the elderly and the terminally ill.

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Dr. Devi shares her personal experience in When We Die.

“It leads to systemic challenges,” said Leslie Ruckman, an NYU student whose background in health care informed her work on When We Die. “There’s all this money that gets spent on treating patients in ICUs, and people [often] end up dying in hospitals even though advance directives might say they’d rather die at home. These are bigger issues that arise out of the inability to look at the end of life and not being able to define what a good death might look like.”

The VR experience relies on surreal visuals to make that happen. According to co-creator Dana Abrassart, when the group first started working on the project, they envisioned a James Turrell-style liminal space. But they quickly realized that a virtual take on the light and space movement would trigger motion sickness.

Nausea in a death-related experience would defeat the purpose of their work. So instead, the group found inspiration in Richard Mosse’s infrared imagery. “It’s this idea that there’s a light spectrum around us but the human eye can’t see it,” Ruckman told me. “We liked that as a parallel to this natural process that is always present and yet, we choose not to see it.”

Death is a constant. Yet its prevalence is hidden behind hospital doors. “In the US, there’s a sanitization of death,” Dr. Gayatri Devi, the neurologist whose voice floats through the cosmos in the second half of the VR experience, told me at her clinic in Manhattan. “Our current view of death might be a victim of industrialization and development. There’s less contact with ill people who are dying so they get sequestered and put in a different place. Whereas in India, for example, there is a philosophy of maintaining contact with family and contact with death is not uncommon.”

More than 80 percent of Americans with chronic illnesses would prefer to forego hospitalization, but according to the CDC, 70 percent of that population dies in a hospital or nursing home. Even in cases where patients have advance directives to avoid aggressive measures, a widespread study revealed that only 25 percent of the physicians were aware of their patients’ end-of-life choices. The discrepancies are jarring. Even though the rise of palliative care and hospice work in the past few years is starting to close that gap, the inability to talk about death continues to get in the way of making better choices.

“Death is not a contagious illness,” said Dr. Devi. “But in some ways, we treat it like one. We need to talk about it and get comfortable around it and maybe use VR to experience it. The better the conversation about death, the more likely we’ll be to allow more of us to die at home so we’re not scared of it.”

Conquering those fears has been the focus of recent psychological explorations in VR. While When We Die uses a light meditative touch to approach conversations around death, a Spanish research group recently simulated an out-of-body experience to tackle the full spectrum of thanatophobia (or the fear of dying) in an attempt to reduce anxiety.

“Death is not a contagious illness. But in some ways, we treat it like one. We need to talk about it and get comfortable around it and maybe use VR to experience it.” — Dr. Gayatri Devi

The idea of one’s own nonexistence has always been a tough one to conquer. “But it’s a reality and we can’t opt out of it,” said Dr. Devi. “When you allow yourself into that space of thinking you’re dead, where you lose agency over yourself — that can be a powerful experience. Allowing yourself to sit with that makes you vulnerable and to be able to think about death. You have to allow that to happen.”

While some might consider this exploration of death terrifying or even futile, in many cases the practical rewards offer the required motivation. Preparing beforehand, for instance, allows people to get their affairs in order, which unburdens families from making end-of-life decisions.

“When people are faced with death, if they haven’t done any preparation, there’s too much fear and anxiety to let anything else in,” Stephanie Hope, the hospice nurse who shares her experiences in When We Die told me. “It makes it important to talk to people who aren’t faced with that yet.”

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Stephanie Hope talks about the “dignity of dying” in When We Die.

Hope, who has been a hospice worker for about four years, points out that when people think about having limited time, they start to withdraw and often show an inclination to spend time with people they’re close to. She likens that purposeful shrinking of the world to a kind of intimacy and peace that can be felt in the aloneness of VR.

The isolation, which tends to be one of the biggest criticisms of the medium, lends itself to the deeply personal experience of contemplating death. “You’re in your own world and this is your moment,” said Hope. “So to think that that’s what it might be like at the end for you can be powerful thing.”

19th century phantasmagoria

While the immersive possibilities of VR feel contemporary, tools that address the human predisposition to death have been around for centuries. John Troyer, director of the center for death and society at the University of Bath, traces the lineage of the visual format all the way back to mediumship. “For me, a lot of it, although a different kind of technology, has a relationship to this idea of connecting with the dead in some way,” he said. “To understand any kind of new tool that is supposed to help people think about death, we have to place it in context of the long history of tools that were created by humans to help other humans make sense of their mortality.”

Troyer pointed to theatrical experiences like phantasmagoria of the 19th century, which played with themes of monsters and death long before VR. The use of projection systems like magic lanterns turned those imaginative ideas into visual experiences for audiences, which in a way is comparable to the current applications of the immersive technology.

The visual trickery of present-day VR, however, is far more profound than its predecessors, both in terms of the visual display as well as its potential for real-world impact. Death-related VR experiences can help prepare people for the inevitable but can also be used to train hospice nurses. Hope believes that bringing VR headsets into nursing school simulation labs, where trainees already work with dummies to stage scenarios, could provide crucial insight into hospice work from a patient’s perspective.

While hospice workers are trained to care for the dying, physicians are primed to prevent death. “In medicine we’re taught to keep that heart beating,” said Dr. Devi. “There’s an attitude of ‘let’s do whatever we can to keep this person’s heart beating, even if that doesn’t improve their quality of life.’ But why are we putting our elderly or very ill patients through these aggressive ways when the outcome is not going to be a good-quality life?”

When We Die doesn’t address those questions directly. Instead, it gets at them with an acknowledgement of death as a potentially positive experience. There’s an inherent belief that dying is depressing. It continues to be a terrifying unknown because we lack experience in it. But as the VR experience reveals, the tragedy of death isn’t true for all.

Apollo 11’s crew capsule is going on tour

The Apollo 11 space capsule was displayed around the country in 1970 and 1971, shortly after it safely brought Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins back from their iconic 1969 moon trip. Since then, the command module has lived in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Over the next few years, though, the spacecraft will get some fresh air as it embarks on its first national tour in nearly half a century.

The traveling exhibit, called “Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission,” will reach four US cities in 2018 and 2019, the lunar mission’s 50th anniversary year. All told, the display will include the space capsule, along with other “one-of-a-kind artifacts.” The exhibition’s locations and dates are as follows:

• Space Center Houston — October 14, 2017 to March 18, 2018
• St. Louis Science Center — April 14, 2018 to September 3, 2018
• Senator John Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh — September 29, 2018 to February 18, 2019
• The Museum of Flight, Seattle — March 16, 2019 to September 2, 2019

Once the module is off the road, it will return to its home at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. There, it will be part of a permanent “Destination Moon” exhibit, which opens in 2020 and will explore humanity’s relationship with lunar travel from ancient times to today.

The space capsule isn’t exactly easy to transport or host: Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service project director Kathrin Halpern told NPR that the module weighs over 13,600 pounds. She added that for these and other reasons, this tour is “likely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to see this historic spacecraft outside of Washington, DC. So enjoy it while you can, since it’s not a giant leap to say it will be awhile before Apollo 11 leaves the Smithsonian museum again.

Via: NPR

Source: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Apple Expanding Seattle Hub Working on AI and Machine Learning

Apple will expand its presence in downtown Seattle, where it has a growing team working on artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, according to GeekWire.

The report claims Apple will expand into additional floors in Two Union Square, and this will allow its Turi team to move into the building and provide space for future employees.

“We’re trying to find the best people who are excited about AI and machine learning — excited about research and thinking long term but also bringing those ideas into products that impact and delight our customers,” said computer scientist Carlos Guestrin, Apple director of machine learning. “The bar is high, but we’re going to be hiring as quickly as we can find people that meet our high bar, which is exciting.”

Apple’s director of machine learning Carlos Guestrin, who founded Turi and is a University of Washington professor, said the Seattle team collaborates “extensively” with groups at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, including working on new AI features for upcoming Apple products and services.

Guestrin said AI, for example, will enable the iPhone to be more understanding and predictive in the future:

“But what’s going to make a major difference in the future, in addition to those things, for me to be emotionally connected to this device, is the intelligence that it has — how much it understands me, how much it can predict what I need and what I want, and how valuable it is at being a companion to me,” he said. “AI is going to be at the core of that, and we’re going to be some of the people who help with that, here in Seattle, but of course there will be tons of groups in Cupertino doing amazing things with that, too.”

Guestrin said Apple is doing long-term research in Seattle, looking ahead “three to 10 years,” while also focusing on the near term by developing new features for upcoming Apple products.

“We work on the whole spectrum,” he said. “It’s not just about doing research, but it’s about the technology transfer and how that gets embedded into experiences that customers love.”

Today, the University of Washington will reportedly announce a new $1 million endowed professorship in AI and machine learning, which is said to have been made possible by Apple’s acquisition of Turi last year. The endowment is named after Guestrin, and it will allow the university to attract more top talent in the field.

Last month, Apple became a member of the Partnership on AI, a non-profit organization established “to study and formulate best practices, to advance the public’s understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society”.

A recent report, which referenced Turi, said Apple is working on “enhanced” Siri capabilities for next-generation iPhones.

Tags: Seattle, Apple real estate, machine learning, artificial intelligence, Turi
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iPhone 8’s Longer Battery Life Said to Entice Those With Older iPhones to Upgrade

Apple’s rumored iPhone with an edge-to-edge OLED display will have longer battery life, which will drive customers with older iPhone models to upgrade at an accelerated rate, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty.

Huberty also expects the high-end iPhone to have a significant form factor change with wireless charging, 3D sensors, and more advanced AI software capabilities, which are all features that have been previously rumored.

In addition to more modest updates to current iPhone SKUs, we expect Apple to launch a higher priced device with AMOLED display that allows for a curved form factor and longer battery life, wireless charging technology, 3D sensors, and more advanced AI software capabilities. While we see accelerated upgrades for Apple’s highest end users in all regions, our work suggests China users are especially sensitive to new technology and form factor changes.

Her research note said a larger base of customers that own at least a two year old iPhone, particularly in China, has resulted in “pent-up demand” for the significantly redesigned “iPhone 8,” and this “supercycle” will help drive sales growth alongside modestly updated 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch models. Morgan Stanley raised its Apple stock price target to $154 accordingly.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the “iPhone 8” will have a stacked logic board design that provides room for a larger 2,700 mAh L-shaped battery. As such, while the “iPhone 8” is expected to have a 4.7-inch form factor, Kuo said it will have comparable battery life to a 5.5-inch Plus model. For comparison, iPhone 7 has a 1,960 mAh battery and iPhone 7 Plus has a 2,900 mAh battery.

Related Roundup: iPhone 8 (2017)
Tags: Morgan Stanley, battery life
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LG Watch Sport and Watch Style review

Android Wear 2.0 has finally come, and it brings with it a lot of enhancements that were sorely needed in Google’s wearable platform. But before we even get to the new bits in the software, let’s talk about one of the first smartwatches that bring Android Wear 2.0 to the masses. Both are able to leverage certain features from the new platform, making them a good showcase for the future of wearables in Google’s perspective.

This is a review of the LG Watch Sport and the LG Watch Style.

See also:

Android Wear 2.0 announced – everything you need to know

2 weeks ago

Quick note: This review and its score focuses on the LG Watch Sport, as it is the more featured-packed watch and it showcases all of the features that Wear 2.0 brings to the table. The LG Watch Style lacks a few of these features, but we will only touch upon it where applicable.

Design

The LG Watch Sport is definitely the chunkier of the two devices, and its size is likely to put off some of the more casual users of Android Wear. Its larger body helps to house a number of additions, like an upgraded microphone/speaker combo compared to the Style, a SIM card for cellular network activity outside of just Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the heart rate monitor, and a couple extra buttons.

Those buttons come alongside the new rotating crown, which is a wonderful new way of navigating around the interface. While it is not a new idea, it is an addition that Wear has sorely needed. Much of the navigation still relies on touching and swiping on the screen, but the crown is great where it counts – scrolling through different elements and reading long notifications. The two buttons that flank the crown are programmable shortcuts, but by default they activate Google Fit workout tracking and Android Pay.

Turning the body of the LG Watch Sport shows the heart rate monitor, but the entire backing can be removed using a special tool included in the box. This exposes the SIM card tray and the actual module for the heart rate monitor. This explains the larger size of the body.

The size of the watch is not one of its better points – even for me, the watch is a little bigger than is truly comfortable and this large form factor looks to be a trend for Android Wear 2.0 enabled watches, especially those that are going to bring more than the bare minimum of features. The other sore point for the Sport is the fact that the bands cannot be changed – this isn’t a huge deal for the most part as the watch looks pretty good already, but it definitely lowers the customization aspect quite a bit.

Speaking of the bare minimum, enter the LG Watch Style. Our own David Imel wore the watch for a number of days and felt that it was definitely more accessible for the less hardcore user. The Style sacrifices the heart rate monitor, SIM card support, extra buttons, and Android Pay support in order to provide the barebones experience – it is definitely just a smart wearable notification center.

What was odd to us was how stiff the band felt due to its connection mechanism – the flat profile of the watch would bleed off of our wrists and then the band comes down at a sharp angle. Those bands can be changed, however, compared to the all-inclusive package of the Sport.

Overall, the LG Watch Style is smaller and definitely less conspicuous, but it also comes off looking a little too generic for its own good. That’s mostly okay though – it is less about the hardware and more about the software that it is powering.

Display

Both watches sport full touchscreen displays, though the Sport is a bit bigger with a 1.38-inch 480×480 resolution screen, compared to the 1.2-inch 360×360 resolution panel of the Style. Both screens are protected by Gorilla Glass 3. That larger screen on the Sport is definitely appreciated for longer form notifications and navigation, but the Style is still reliable enough for the same tasks like swiping on the new Wear 2.0 reply keyboard. David felt that the responsiveness of the display on the Style had a few periodic hiccups, but I didn’t have those issues with the LG Watch Sport.

Always-on display functionality is, of course, available and is a nice way of keeping the watch presentable when not in use, but it will obviously bring down the battery life quite a bit. Brightness is also not a problem for either of these devices, as they both remained viewable even in broad daylight.

Android Wear 2.0 gets more of the credit for leveraging the screen space better, but we give credit where credit is due and award the Sport some good points for a high-end display experience.

Hardware

As it has probably become really clear by now, the LG Watch Style is lacking a lot of the features that we are about to mention from the Watch Sport. It is best used as a notification-centric app-enabled wearable – you won’t be tracking too much fitness with it despite a IP67 rating, which is itself even outmatched by the IP68 depth resistance rating of the Sport.

Android Wear 2.0 doesn’t require the kind of power that regular Android on smartphones needs, but that doesn’t keep the LG Watch Sport from providing as much as it possibly can. Both it and the Style sport the same Snapdragon Wear chipsets, but the Watch Sport brings 768MB of RAM over the 512 of the Watch Style. There has hardly been any issue with either of the watches, as apps and interface elements all slide in and out smoothly. Notifications, in particular, have had no hiccups when coming in and acting up on them.

Storage is a relatively new thing in the wearable space, and both watches have 4GB that can be used for storing local music files. From there, users can connect Bluetooth headphones to the watch in order to listen during workouts or just in general.

The Watch Sport has support for cellular networks, and it can be leveraged in a couple different ways – a separate SIM card that connects to all networks or one that is set up via services like AT&T Numbersync, which allows your phone’s number to be mirrored to the watch for usage outside the paired range. Taking calls on the Sport is serviceable, then, but is definitely something we found best used in a pinch, rather than as the main way of talking.

Android Pay is new to Wear 2.0 and the LG Watch Sport is the one to get if you want to pay at stores using your wrist. It works well enough – just press the bottom button to trigger it, pick a card, and hold up the NFC enabled watch to any support terminal. Especially if you are already using Android Pay, this feels even more like the future is at our fingertips, or on our wrists, in this case.

Fitness is a bigger focus in Wear 2.0, and the Watch Sport includes GPS alongside all of the connectivity options for tracking hikes, runs, and walks. The heart rate monitor is about as good as it can be for a wrist mounted unit, and adds to the fitness data that Google Fit records. Google Fit on Wear has been given more workouts that could please weightlifters too, as the watch tries to understand and record when reps of any given movement occur. However, a large watch like this might not make the most sense in certain fitness situations.

Battery life obviously favors the larger device, but the Sport also has a lot more features to power. The Watch Sport has a 430mAh battery over the 240 unit of the Watch Style. A charging cradle takes care of getting the battery up to speed for the Sport, but charging the device takes upwards of two hours – this makes quickly topping up the watch with power a little bit tougher than we would have liked. While David had just over a day’s worth of battery life even with a fair bit of usage throughout, I found that the Sport required a little more diligence to get over the one day hump.

Always-on Display is a big battery drain, but to make sure that I got a day and a half from the Sport, I also turned off the Gesture to Wake feature. That way, the watch display would not light up after most movements of my wrist – that would only happen if I hit the button. Without these measures, the watch would get through a solid workday but would require a top up in power before bed if I wanted to track sleep using Sleep as Android.

Software

Which brings us to the software, the portion of this review that has gotten the biggest update from previous Android Wear devices. It took quite a while, but Google has finally brought refinements to the platform that were sorely needed. Not only does it look a lot better, but functionality has been given a big boost in Android Wear 2.0.

Let’s start with the watchfaces, the first thing that users see. “Complications” is a weird name to use for this new functionality, but Android Wear 2.0 now allows developers to leverage appropriate parts of the watchface to show off data from their applications, making each compatible watchface that much more useful at a glance. Not all watchfaces support this yet, but that is the nature of software upgrades.

And this holds true for the updated app ecosystem, as well. Android Wear basically has its own Play Store that is accessed on the watch itself, and apps can be installed on the watch without needing to use the phone. This comes in a couple different flavors – general searching and discovery in the Wear Play Store to find apps or via a populated list that matches watch applications to ones that are already installed on the paired smartphone. A ton of apps found in the Wear Play Store are still just companions to their smartphone counterparts, but that should change overtime – having a functional, standalone watch version of Google Maps or Hangouts is pretty nifty, and we’re looking forward to seeing this continued evolution.

On the functionality front, Google Assistant has also been included in the Wear 2.0 update, bolstering the voice enabled searches and actions of these smart wearables that much better. Plenty of useful functions have been transferred over to the convenience of the wrist, including asking simple questions and activating different installed applications.

All of these new features come in a shell that looks a lot better, thanks to a move toward Material Design and a streamlining of the interface at large. I have maligned the cards method of notifications in Android Wear for a while now, and I’m personally very happy to see them go away. Notifications first show up over the watchface for a few seconds before tucking away underneath, to be scrolled up using swipes of the rotating dial. Though they are still a one-by-one setup, making notifications full screen instead of cards that needed so many extra taps and swipes is a proper step forward.

Not to mention the updates to mainly messaging actions that have been added in – responses don’t have to rely on mainly voice input anymore, as a full keyboard can be swiped on for text responding. Though the small screen doesn’t lend itself to the most comfortable keyboard experience, it is serviceable enough when users take the time to get it right.

And that is basically the crux of the new Android Wear software – and, ostensibly, the devices: Wear was always a “make it work for you” platform, but now the 2.0 update makes that diligence a little easier to bear. Minimizing the number of taps and swipes required to get stuff done on the LG Watch Sport and Style have made them better smart wearable companions than pretty much any previous Android Wear device that we’ve used in the last two years since the wearable OS’ inception.

Wrap up

Unfortunately, all of that good still comes at a rather high asking price – the LG Watch Style is obviously the less expensive of the two, starting at $249. The feature-packed Watch Sport is $349 on the Google Play Store, putting it squarely in competition with other fitness oriented Android Wear devices and the Tizen powered Samsung Gear S3. But in either respect, the watches are still a bit steep in price for anyone that isn’t already big on smartwatches. Especially to enjoy all that Android Wear 2.0 has to offer, having to pay almost half of what a smartphone costs is a tough sell for new adopters of smart wearables.

See also:

Best smartwatches (February 2017)

2 weeks ago

The Watch Style will be a better fit for those who want a more accessible experience all-around, but users who opt for it have to accept its omissions. That said, the LG Watch Sport is a great showcase of Wear 2.0, itself an update that should make any Android Wear user quite happy. If you have a watch that will not be getting the update to Wear 2.0, moving to a newer wearable is highly recommended – and we’ve already been given a great device for doing just that.

The LG Watch Sport is a great showcase of Wear 2.0, itself an update that should make any Android Wear user quite happy.