15 handy Gear S3 tips and tricks you’ll want to know about

With a stylish look, that clever rotating bezel, decent battery life, and Samsung Pay support, the Gear S3 smartwatch is one of the best options for Android phone owners right now. Because it runs Samsung’s Tizen OS, there’s a bit of a learning curve, so we have a fresh batch of Gear S3 tips and tricks to help ease you in. The Classic and the Frontier sport slightly different designs, but underneath, they’re exactly the same, so these tips will work regardless of the model you have.

More: Check out 25 of the best Android Wear apps for your smartwatch

How to change watch faces

All you need to do to browse your watch face options is long press on your current watch face and swipe left or right. Some of the watch faces have a Stylize option that you can tap for color variations and other customizations. You can also browse your watch face options and make selections in the app on your Android phone.

How to access quick settings

If you swipe down from the top on your watch face, then you’ll find the quick settings menu where you can quickly access the music app, airplane mode, do not disturb, volume, and brightness.

How to reboot

You may find that your Gear S3 locks up from time to time and the screen just freezes on you. Don’t panic! All you need to do is hold down the Home button for a few seconds, and you’ll see the watch reboot, after which it should be back to normal.

How to uninstall and organize apps

You can open your Apps by pressing the Home button when you’re on your watch face. Press and hold on the center to open Edit mode. You can rotate the bezel to select a page. Rearranging is easy, simply tap and hold on an app and drag it where you want it. If you want to change pages, drag it onto the multicolored next page icon at the top left. If you’re able to uninstall an app, then you’ll see a red minus symbol on it and you can tap that and confirm the uninstall. When you’re done in Edit mode, press the Back button to get out of it.

How to change and organize widgets

Simply rotate the bezel clockwise to check out your widgets. Press and hold on the screen if you want to edit one of them. You can tap the minus sign to remove one, or tap and hold on it to move it to a new position in the list. Rotate all the way to the end to find the Add widget option.

Razer Power Bank looks good while keeping USB devices charged up

Why it matters to you

You can charge your USB devices many time over — and in style — with Razer’s new Power Bank.

Razer is best known for its gaming notebooks and accessories, but the company makes a number of other products as well. Some, like its Nabu wearables, are more stand-alone products that aren’t directly related to gaming, while some others augment the company’s better-known lines.

One example of the latter is a new product aimed at helping gamers play longer. The Razer Power Bank smart charge accessory can power USB devices up to and including Razer’s own Blade Stealth notebook while upholding the classic Razer aesthetic.

More: Razer Blade Stealth review

The Razer Power Bank packs in a large, 12,800mAh battery that can provide the Razer Blade Stealth with enough additional power to last a full 15 hours of work, specifically an extra six hour of batter life from only two hours of charging time. The smart charger is encased in a black CNC aluminum casing adorned with the Razer logo for good looks, durability, and portability.

With dual USB-A ports and a USB Type-C connection, the Razer Power Bank can work with a host of devices, and it incorporates intelligence that allows it to instantly recognize devices as they’re attached for optimal charging. Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 support works with compatible devices to charge up to four times faster than a conventional USB charger.

“High-performance mobile laptops like the Razer Blade Stealth are more a part of daily life than ever before, and keeping them charged and ready is a high priority,” says Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder and CEO. “The Razer Power Bank enables true mobility for users who can now quickly and smartly charge their laptop, phone, and tablet at the same time when an outlet isn’t an option.”

The Razer Power Bank will ship in March and priced at $150. The company will be selling the portable charger exclusively at the Razer Store.

Can police compel a building full of people to apply their fingerprints to unlock phones?

Why it matters to you

Being compelled to unlock your phone with your fingerprint implicates constitutional protections.

Touch ID might have paved the way for iPhone features like Apple Pay, but the fingerprint sensor is also at the center of a recent opinion by a federal judge that denied a search warrant request, reports Motherboard.

The opinion, handed down by U.S. Magistrate Judge M. David Weisman, has some of its roots in a search warrant uncovered by Forbes back in May 2016. The warrant, executed by federal officials, compelled folks in a Lancaster, California building to apply their fingerprints in order to unlock phones the police believed contained evidence of a crime. The news outlet has since uncovered similar warrants, all of which allowed similar access to devices.

Fast forward to 2017, when the government submitted a similar warrant application to an Illinois federal court as part of a child pornography investigation. According to the court, the application did not do enough to establish probable cause sufficient to permit the government to compel anyone at the location to give up their fingerprints to unlock a collection of phones suspected of containing evidence of crime. As such, the application ran afoul of the Fourth Amendment.

More: Can you subpoena a fingerprint? Debate over biometrics in court heats up

“This Court agrees that the context in which fingerprints are taken, and not the fingerprints themselves, can raise concerns under the Fourth Amendment,” reads Weisman’s opinion. “In the instant case, the government is seeking the authority to seize any individual at the subject premises and force the application of their fingerprints as directed by government agents. Based on the facts presented in the application, the Court does not believe such Fourth Amendment intrusions are justified based on the facts articulated.”

Weisman also opined that the warrant application potentially clashed with the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination as well. As The Washington Post notes, someone indirectly admits that a phone belongs to them in the event that they respond to an order by picking a finger that was selected to unlock a phone.

“Essentially, the government seeks an order from this Court that would allow agents executing this warrant to force ‘persons at the Subject Premises’ to apply their thumbprints and fingerprints to any Apple electronic device recovered at the premises,” reads Weisman’s opinion.

On a more granular level, the application makes no specific mention of which devices at the premises would be searched, with only the vaguest mention that “it is likely” Apple devices will be found.

The decision has the interesting effect of pairing fingerprints with digital evidence when it comes to warrants, though it also implies that such warrants can be granted if issues with the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are somehow rectified.

Best app deals of the day! 6 paid iPhone apps for free for a limited time

Everyone likes apps, but sometimes the best ones are a bit expensive. Now and then, developers make paid apps free for a limited time, but you have to snatch them up while you have the chance. Here are the latest and greatest apps on sale in the iOS App Store.

These apps normally cost money, and this sale lasts for a limited time only. If you go to the App Store and it says the app costs money, that means the deal has expired and you will be charged. 

More: 200 Awesome iPhone Apps | The best Android apps for almost any occasion

Stream

Stream was created to give you a seamless experience in listening, managing, and syncing cloud-based music. It allows you to create a personal streaming service with cloud storage and have access to all of your music.

Available on:

iOS

ToDoCal

TodoCal lets you manage, organize and control your daily tasks with an easy-to-use interface that will please even the most organized of users.

Available on:

iOS

YConvert Pro

YconvertPRO was developed to be fast, easy to use, accurate, lightweight, compatible with iOS10, and remarkably easy to use.

Available on:

iOS

Tweety Pro

View your Twitter timeline and mentions on the lock screen or inside any app to quickly get updated about the world around you with Tweety.

Available on:

iOS

Love Test Meter

This love calculator provides an accurate relationship compatibility score, just using the power of numbers in your name. Kitschy? Sure. Fun? Probably.

Available on:

iOS

Web Explorer

This app has a full-featured web browser, ad remover, power downloader, complete webpage saver, and FTP client. What more could you want?

Available on:

iOS

Microsoft’s DeepCoder wants to take away the drudgery of coding

Why it matters to you

Programmers might one day be able to focus on the problems that need solving instead of the most tedious work involved in solving them.

There’s a great deal of controversy lately over artificial intelligence and robotics, specifically the potential for both to replace human workers and cause economic dislocations. While concerns about robotics tend to focus on physical labor, AI has some people worried that jobs requiring purely intellectual labor are at risk as well.

The jury is still out on whether those concerns are justified, but the areas where AI is starting to make its mark continue to increase in number. Recently, Microsoft Research worked with researchers at the University of Cambridge to create DeepCoder, a machine learning system built to solve programming challenges, as New Scientist reports.

More: Not all jobs equally threatened by robotics in next decade — how about yours?

DeepCoder uses program synthesis, the process of combining existing code to create new applications, to search and integrate the best source code in the best combinations to solve problems. Once the system knows what a human programmer wants it to accomplish, along with the available inputs, the system can then search more quickly and more completely than any human coder to create a new application.

The system also learns as it goes along, meaning that it’s not only initially many times faster than previous systems but it also gets faster the more it works. Ultimately, a system like DeepCoder could enhance human programming by taking over the most tedious work and completing it in a fraction of the time, freeing the human coder for more interesting and sophisticated work.

According to Armando Solar-Lezama, an unrelated researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “All of a sudden people could be so much more productive. They could build systems that it [would be] impossible to build before. The potential for automation that this kind of technology offers could really signify an enormous [reduction] in the amount of effort it takes to produce code.”

DeepCoder is currently limited to working with limited code samples, around five lines of code in total. That’s not so great a limitation, however, given that the largest applications are themselves made up of smaller pieces of code. Given the system’s overall speed and the ever-increasing power of AI in general, we can look forward to a time when programmers let a computer do the dirty work and focus themselves on defining the problem.

Google’s Gboard keyboard on iOS adds new languages, voice typing, and more

Why it matters to you

Google’s versatile Gboard keyboard serves up Google Search results from a dedicated button, and a new update makes it even more useful, no matter where you live.

As far as third-party keyboards are concerned, few come close to the versatility of Google’s Gboard. The popular digital touchpad for iOS and Android boasts predictive typing, a growing gallery of GIF and emojis, a one-handed mode, and built-in Google Search. And on Thursday, Google announced an update that’s going to make it even better.

Gboard now speaks in 15 more languages. Google has added support for Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Catalan, Hungarian, Malay, Russian, Latin American Spanish, and Turkish. And voice typing — the ability to dictate messages by pressing the mic button on the keyboard’s space bar — is in tow, bringing the iOS release up to par with its Android counterpart. And finally, it now includes the new emojis added as part of Apple’s iOS 10 update.

More: Google app digs deeper into the iOS ecosystem with Gboard preinstalled

Those emojis are kind of a big deal. The new crop of wordless iconography, approved as part of the Unicode 9.9 standard earlier this year, were “beautifully redesigned” to “reveal even more detail,” Apple said at the time. More than 100, including new clowns, bacon, and other foods, animals, sports, and professions, joined the existing iOS collection.

Those aren’t not the only new features in store for Gboard users on iOS. Google’s added a way to more easily access Google Doodles, the commissioned animations that honor holidays, anniversaries, and notable people. They’re now accessible from the keyboard’s “G” search button, which will animate on the days there’s a new Doodle.

The updated Gboard’s available for free from the App Store on iTunes.

More: Google brings Gboard search features to Google keyboard app on Android

Google, which introduced Gboard in May 2016, hasn’t let it stagnate. In August, the search giant added support for five new languages (Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, and French) and Smart GIF, a feature that automatically suggests emoticons for certain things you type — texting “let’s party,” for example, serves up images of balloons, dancing skeletons, and other thematically relevant doodles. And in January, Google rolled out the keyboard to Google app users on Android — if you have the Google app installed, you can enable Gboard without needing to download it separately.

Privacy concerns marred Gboard’s release, but Google later clarified that words and phrases typed using Gboard weren’t passed onto the search giant’s servers.

“Gboard will remember words you type to help you with spelling or to predict searches you might be interested in, but this data is stored only on your device,” according to its support page. “This data can’t be accessed by Google or by any apps other than Gboard.”

There’s no real reason then not to take Google’s smartphone keyboard for a test drive.

Chrome 58 Canary update adds MacBook Pro Touch Bar support

Why it matters to you

If you have a Touch-Bar-equipped MacBook Pro, there’s one more supporting app to look forward to. If you don’t, then there’s one more reason to buy one.

An upcoming browser update, Chrome 58, looks likely to include support for the MacBook Pro Touch Bar, as a recent Canary release has that functionality included. This represents the first time that Chrome has shown any support for the Touch Bar, but shows that Google now sees it as a worthwhile feature to develop.

When Apple debuted the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, many people weren’t convinced it was a worthwhile feature. There is still some debate on the topic, but bedroom hackers and corporations alike have found a multitude of different uses for it and now Google’s Chrome looks set to join that list of supporting applications.

In the Canary build of the browser update, the Touch Bar gains support for a number of features. There’s the ability to refresh a page, go forward and back, search, open a new tab and access the the usual Touch Bar media controls.

More: Google makes Chrome for iOS open source

You can also add a website to your list of favorites, though these base functions are all you can expect in this build. As 9to5Mac reports, the controls and options don’t contextually change when you watch a video or open up a new tab.

Still, now that we’ve seen these Touch Bar functions appear in the Chrome Canary build we expect them to show up in the stable Chrome 58 update too. It will likely pass through a couple of additional testing channels first, but MacBook Pro Touch Bar support is almost certainly coming to Chrome, which will be a nice addition for those running the browser on their new laptops.

For anyone not willing to wait though, you can dive into the testing pool and grab yourself the Canary build of the Chrome 58. It’s available via the Chromium repository, where you’ll find all stages of the latest Chrome builds.

For those of you with MacBook Pros with Touch Bars, what are some of the interesting uses you’ve found for the touch interface?

Your next device could run on a network called LTE-U thanks to T-Mobile

Why it matters to you

LTE-U adds additional bandwidth to your network, which could mean faster, smoother connections.

T-Mobile is tapping into a new resource. On Wednesday, the Bellevue-based mobile service provider announced the deployment of a new technology called LTE-U, and it’s hoping that it’ll provide a greater edge over competitors like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint when it comes to network capabilities.

So what exactly is LTE-U? It’s a newly approved (the Federal Communications Commission gave it the green light on Wednesday) variant of the 4G LTE network that actually shares radio frequencies with radio routers and Bluetooth headphones. It basically adds additional bandwidth to your network, which could mean faster, smoother connections. And just yesterday, Nokia and Ericsson were given permission to start deploying LTE-U devices, something T-Mobile has been quick to take advantage of.

More: Sprint still wants to merge with T-Mobile so it can take on Verizon and AT&T

T-Mobile says that its customers will be able to leverage “the first 20 MHz of underutilized unlicensed spectrum on the 5GHz band and use it for additional LTE capacity” with its new mobile data.

“T-Mobile’s network is second to none, with more capacity per customer than the Duopoly … and LTE-U will only accelerate our lead,” said Neville Ray, CTO at T-Mobile. “T-Mobile’s built a track record of introducing new innovations first, including deploying more LTE Advanced technologies than anyone in the U.S. All that innovation means one thing — a fantastic customer experience.”

The Un-carrier has actually been testing LTE-U equipment since late last year, but now that the FCC has agreed that LTE-U can work in tandem with Wi-Fi technologies, the floodgates have been opened.

“We continue to push the boundaries of bringing new technologies in the unlicensed arena. Nokia is committed to working alongside T-Mobile to bring new solutions to market,” Ricky Corker, Nokia EVP and Head of North America said. “We stand ready to enhance T-Mobile’s leadership proposition and show what the future of mobile communications can be for Un-carrier customers.”

MyKronoz ZeTime hybrid boasts analog hands that tick in time to a color touchscreen

Why it matters to you

The MyKronoz ZeTime combines the best of both worlds — it’s a smartwatch with analog hands that tick independent of a color touchscreen.

MyKronoz may be based in Geneva, Switzerland, but the watchmaker is better known for an expansive collection of digital wearables than luxury timepieces. The company offers an electronic wristband in virtually every flavor, from fitness trackers and heart rate monitors to full-color smartwatches. And at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year, it has a world’s first up its sleeve: The ZeTime, a “hybrid smartwatch” with mechanical hands over a round screen.

A marriage of analog and digital, the ZeTime boasts a physical “smart crown” and 44mm waterproof (3ATM) stainless steel case “inspired by the finest Swiss design,” and features mechanical hands mounted in a tiny hole in the watch’s 240 x 240-pixel TFT circular display. It’s a boon for battery life: The ZeTime’s mechanical hands move for up to 30 days with a single charge, and continue to tick even when the screen is switched off. And thanks to MyKronoz’s proprietary Smart Movement technology, they automatically adjust the time based on timezone.

“My inspiration has been to combine the best of our Swiss heritage in traditional watchmaking with the key features of a smartwatch to persuade the majority of consumers to adopt our wearable technology,” Boris Brault, CEO and founder of MyKronoz, said in a press release. “This has been accomplished with ZeTime, the perfect hybrid smartwatch. It combines the best of both worlds: watch hands of an elegant traditional timepiece with a full-color touchscreen.”

More: Hands on: MyKronoz ZeSplash

The ZeTime is more than just a high-tech analog watch. It boasts a three-axis accelerometer and optical heart rate sensor that can track activity statistics like steps, distance, calories, and minutes of active sleep. And when paired with a smartphone via Bluetooth 4.1, it serves up music playback controls and notifications of incoming calls, messages, weather forecasts, and calendar appointments.

The ZeTime will ship in early September 2017 starting at $200, alongside silicon, genuine leather, carbon-fiber, and other styles of interchangeable straps. Its 200mAh internal battery charges wirelessly via an included dock.

MyKronoz is forging ahead at a time when iPhone maker Apple dominates the industry. According to market research firm Canalys, the Apple Watch accounted for more than half of the 9 million smartwatches shipped last fiscal quarter and generated 80 percent of all revenues. But the company is confident in the market’s growth.

“When I started in early 2013, people thought that I was mad – why would I start a smartwatch company in Switzerland and enter such a challenging market? It turns out that my vision and passion have paid off, as our company has sold nearly 2 million smartwatches since then,” Brault said. “This disruptive mentality goes beyond the company’s mission to provide ‘smartwatches for everyone’ by striving to become an industry leader on price point, wide range, and fashionable design.”

What is an alternative mobile carrier?

Alternative mobile carriers are often cheaper and just as reliable as the networks they rely on.

Alternative carriers abound around the world, and are becoming an increasingly reliable source of low-cost connectivity in the U.S. Also known as an MVNO, or Mobile Virtual Network Operator, these alternative operators are often no-frills, and cost less than the incumbent networks on which they operate.

What is an alternative mobile operator?

The idea behind an MVNO is simple: instead of spending the billions of dollars building an entirely new nationwide network, companies enter into deals with the incumbent providers in a particular country — in the U.S., that’s T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint — to resell access to their networks. These often come in the form of contracts, where the smaller companies will buy space on the network — voice, messaging and, of course, data — at a heavily discounted, bulk rate, and sell it to you, the customer, for a profit.

This benefits everyone in the equation: the incumbent gets a bunch of money upfront to invest back into its business, or give to shareholders in the form of dividends; the alternate provider gets to sell access to the network at a lower cost to the incumbent while still making a profit; and you, the user, gets to purchase access to a high-quality, fast and reliable network at prices lower than those incumbents.

Such a market only works when there is robust competition in the wireless market, which increasingly exists in the U.S. and is extremely common across Europe, where the market was built with alternative providers in mind.

So what’s the big deal?

Alternative providers don’t often have the financial resources to build their own networks, which is why they purchase wholesale acces to the companies that do, like the ones mentioned above. But because these smaller companies don’t have the overhead of maintaining a network — the virtual in the term MVNO — they have more flexibility to provide service at lower costs. For people looking just to connect to a network without all the frills and fringe benefits that come with a contract, these are great options.

Because these smaller companies don’t have the overhead of maintaining a network, they have more flexibility to provide service at lower costs.

The other thing is that MVNOs are usually aimed at single account holders — most eschew the share or family plan model of the larger incumbents — or specific demographics that may not be hit directly by the Big Four. In other words, alternative carriers are exactly that: meant to capture the customers remaining in the margins, or those looking to pay bottom dollar to avoid the often-superflous frills — T-Mobile Tuesdays come to mind — that are, many times, built into the cost of the plans of the incumbents.

Some alternative carriers, such as Cricket Wireless and Boost Mobile, are owned by the Big Four themselves — AT&T and Sprint, respectively — which allows the major incumbents to get ahead of any customers who want to leave by offering them a simplified, often discounted alternative that keeps them in the network.

More than one network

But many alternative carriers don’t just use one network. We’ve talked many times about Project Fi, which works with Google’s Nexus and Pixel phones to make service incredibly easy and convenient. Well, Project Fi does’t just connect to one network; it connects to four — T-Mobile, Sprint, U.S. Cellular in the U.S., and Three in then UK — deciding between the top one dynamically depending on the coverage.

Instead of spending the billions of dollars building an entirely new nationwide network, companies enter into deals with the incumbent providers in a particular country.

That’s another advantage of these virtual operators: they can negotiate great deals with a number of carriers, and thanks to the beauty of the SIM card, give customers the best option wherever they are.

Fewer phones

Finally, one thing to keep in mind about alternative networks is that the companies often don’t offer the latest and greatest smartphones. In fact, they often don’t sell phones at all. That’s because they don’t want the hassle, and the overhead, of having to stock expensive devices they may not use. That’s where unlocked phones come in.

If you’re savvy enough to buy a phone that you know will connect to the network of a particular carrier, you can save big money over the same two-year period a phone is usually paid off when on a big carrier.

Your turn

Are you subscribed to an alternative carrier? If so, which one, and why? We’re really curious, so let us know in the comments!