Ming-Chi Kuo Says All 2017 iPhones Will Have Lightning Connectors With USB-C Fast Charging

All three iPhones rumored to be launched in 2017 will retain Lightning connectors with the addition of USB-C Power Delivery for faster charging, including an all-new OLED model with a larger L-shaped battery and updated 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch models, according to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

An excerpt from his latest research note obtained by MacRumors:

New 2H17 models may all support fast charging. We believe all three new iPhones launching in 2H17 will support fast charging by the adoption of Type-C Power Delivery technology (while still retaining the Lightning port). A key technical challenge lies with ensuring product safety and stable data transmission during a fast charge. In order to achieve that goal, we think Apple will adopt TI’s power management and Cypress’s Power Delivery chip solutions for the new iPhone models. We note the OLED version may have a faster charging speed thanks to a 2-cell L shaped battery pack design.

Kuo expects Apple to retain the Lightning port given it has a slightly slimmer design compared to a USB-C port, to sustain MFi Program licensing income, and because he believes USB-C’s high-speed data transmission is “still a niche application” for iPhone. Lightning officially supports up to USB 3.0 speeds.

Kuo’s prediction comes just two days after The Wall Street Journal seemingly reported that at least one upcoming iPhone model would have a USB-C port instead of a Lightning connector. However, the report’s wording was somewhat vague and sparked a lot of confusing reaction among the Apple community.

Apple’s latest MacBook Pro models are equipped with Thunderbolt 3 ports, which share the same connector design as USB-C, while the 12-inch MacBook also has a USB-C port. Apple could still bundle a Lightning to USB-C cable with its next iPhones to allow for connectivity with those notebooks out of the box.

Related Roundup: iPhone 8 (2017)
Tags: KGI Securities, Ming-Chi Kuo, USB-C, Lightning
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Nintendo Switch Acts as External Battery Pack for USB-C MacBook Pro, Parental Control App Available

The Nintendo Switch launches worldwide tomorrow, March 3, and as journalists and reviewers have had their hands on the console for the past week, news of its hardware and software features have been shared online.

This week, Quartz technology reporter Mike Murphy discovered that when plugging the Nintendo Switch into a MacBook Pro through a dual USB-C cable, the Switch inexplicably acts as an external battery pack for the Apple laptop, providing charge to the MacBook instead of being charged itself. In the image, it appears that a third party USB-C cable is being used to connect the two devices (in the box, Switch only comes with a USB-C to AC adapter cable).

Lol if you plug a Nintendo Switch into a new MacBook Pro, the Switch charges the laptop, not the other way around pic.twitter.com/YJhMct6fKO

— Mike Murphy (@mcwm) March 1, 2017

Murphy also discovered a slight workaround: if users power down the Switch before connecting it to the MacBook, then the MacBook will charge the Switch. The Switch will also charge off of Apple’s USB-C wall adapter cable bundled in recent MacBook boxes, and sold separately online.

Nintendo confirmed on its website that the Switch has a non-removable 4310mAh, 3.7V Lithium-ion battery, and early FCC filings — as well as recent pictures — of the included AC adapter confirmed that the console draws power up to 15.0V/2.6A, equating to 39W. The non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro has a 54.5-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery and can draw up to 61W from a power adapter.

Since much of Nintendo Switch’s battery-related questions are still up in the air in the time before launch, it remains unclear why the console would not automatically leech charge off the larger MacBook Pro. As game designer Bennett Foddy pointed out on Twitter, the connection between the Switch and MacBook Pro isn’t inherently buggy or wrong, but it’s easy to think that the MacBook Pro (battery life ~10 hours) would naturally provide power to the Switch (battery life 2.5-6.5 hours), like it does to iPhones and iPads.

In related Nintendo Switch and Apple news, Nintendo today launched its Nintendo Switch Parental Control app for iOS devices on the App Store [Direct Link]. The app will let parents remotely control the content of the games their kids play, as well as for how long, and even be able to restrict certain ESRB ratings and online features.

Tags: USB-C, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch
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How Roborace is building driverless race cars

The lights dimmed and a hush fell over the crowd. The last hour had been building to this. Denis Sverdlov, CEO of Roborace, and Daniel Simon, chief design officer, took a step back as some knee-high panels were taken away and a silky cloth was lifted, revealing a mechanical monster underneath. More than a year after the project’s announcement, the pair had finally revealed their first production-grade Robocar: a fully electric, driverless race car built from the ground up for a new breed of motorsport. One where the heroes are programmers, concocting the smartest and most competitive AI drivers.

A design marvel

The Robocar is an imposing sight. The low profile and flowing wheel arches give it a distinct, animalistic look. Like a cheetah, it seems ready to pounce at any moment. “It needs to look like it moves when it’s standing still,” Simon told me the next day. “It needs to just tickle your senses on a very simple base level, so you say, ‘What is this?!’”

We’re at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, admiring the car once more. Up close, it’s even more intimidating. Four 300kW motors sit inside the carbon fiber chassis, capable of taking the car beyond 320KPH (199MPH). A 540kW battery fuels these electric engines and a dizzying number of sensors that act as the car’s eyes and ears. These include two radars, five laser-powered LIDAR detectors and six AI-driven cameras, as well as two optical speed sensors and 18 ultrasonic sensors. It’s a miracle they all fit inside.

Designing the car was no easy feat. Simon started his career at Volkswagen in 1999, before working on the Bugatti brand in 2001. Seven years later, he moved to Los Angeles to work on Tron: Legacy as a vehicle concept designer. Since then he’s contributed to Prometheus, Captain America: The First Avenger and Oblivion. Roborace was the perfect project for Simon, combining his love of cars and science fiction. At first, however, he was wary. “I was as skeptical as everyone else. ‘A driverless racing series — what?’ But I think that was perfect, because now I’m excited and I think that helped to make the car as cool as it could be.”

Daniel Simon, Chief Design Officer at Roborace.

Roborace

The biggest challenge, he says, was an emotional one. For years, automotive design has revolved around some obvious fundamentals. A car needs a cockpit, for instance, a steering wheel and pedals. But with the Robocar, Simon had an opportunity to break almost every design rule in the book. The problem, he explains, was creating a car that didn’t look awkward without a driver. “For more than a hundred years, we’ve seen a person controlling the car. That’s why it’s so important that the Robocar has an emotion, a feeling. You don’t normally approach motorsport like that. You don’t go to a racing team and say: ‘This has to look emotional.’ But that’s why this [project] was so cool.”

The long road

Roborace showed a render of the car in March 2016. It looked stunning, but ambitious. So many concept cars remain just that: a concept, never to be manufactured or driven. But Sverdlov was adamant that the car could be built, and to the original specifications. “The challenge for our engineers was to change it as little as possible,” he said. “So we did the wind tunnel testing and all of the computer modelling to get the right performance. [We wanted] uncompromised performance, without touching the original design.”

Easier said than done. “I think the most used line in our communication was ‘Dan, we have a problem,”‘ Simon said. “Followed by a little emoji with a tear.” Many driverless vehicles have a LIDAR setup on the roof, where it can easily survey the surrounding area. For the Robocar and its clean, sweeping lines, however, that wasn’t an option. So the team had to get creative with the sensors and their placement amongst the bodywork. The nose, for instance, is made of a special material which the radar can ‘see’ through. The LIDARs are built into the wheel arches in such a way that their viewing angles line up, eliminating any potential blind spots.

The absence of a cockpit provides some benefits, though. For one, it creates more space. Not just where the human driver would sit, but also the necessary safety features. There’s no need for a roll cage, for instance, or the gap that would normally protect someone from side impacts.

DevBots

Up to this point, Roborace has been using development vehicles called, unsurprisingly, “DevBots.” They can drive on their own, but also contain a cockpit so an engineer can sit inside and take control if required. In terms of shape and performance, they’re quite different from the Robocar. But Sverdlov says the progress they’ve made with the DevBots will carry over. That’s because the AI and algorithms are being developed as a platform. “Everything we’ve already reached in DevBot, it’s already here as a given,” he said. “So now we are starting from this point to make it even better.”

Still, the team is a long way from holding a Roborace. A documentary series on YouTube is surprisingly honest about the project’s challenges. In the very first episode, the team discovers a battery fault mere hours before a public demonstration. In another, two DevBots are put on the same track and allowed to race autonomously. For 20 laps the test is a success; one car even managed to swerve around a dog who had wandered onto the track. The dual was overshadowed, however, by a dramatic crash caused by the other DevBot bumping into a wall.

“What’s really, extremely important,” Sverdlov said, “is that those two cars started to understand each other and change their online path planner.” In short, the vehicles were behaving like real drivers, naturally changing their ‘line’ in response to the other AI.

Collisions are inevitable. But that’s the beauty of Roborace. The team is creating a space where engineers can experiment and push the limits without fear. There are no human drivers on the track. No unsuspecting public. Just a course with nine other Robocars hurtling around.

Battling with AI

Sverdlov is quick to emphasise that the Roborace will be a software-based competition. Every car on the track will be the same; it will be the AI and algorithms that ultimately decide a team’s success. The hope is that such an intense competition will accelerate advancements in self-driving transportation. If something goes wrong a few hours before a race, competitors will be forced to find a solution, and fast. “If there is an event, you cannot do it one hour later — you need it now,” Sverdlov said. What he calls “compression time” is key to the Roborace’s appeal. “We really believe that this environment will help companies to create best algorithms for road cars.”

The biggest leaps should be in collision avoidance systems. Victory in the Roborace will require more than savvy overtaking maneuvers; teams will need to avoid one another, especially at the start when everybody is bunched together. If someone else has a bad algorithm, and they hit you by accident, there’s a good chance you’ll both be forced to retire. Success will fall to the teams with the most aware and responsive vehicles. Sverdlov hopes this knowledge will translate to road cars: If a driverless car can avoid robots racing at 200MPH, it stands a pretty good chance on the streets, or so the theory goes.

Denis Sverdlov, CEO of Roborace.

Roborace

Unlike Formula 1, Roborace will be open to everyone. You won’t need enormous budgets, or huge research and development teams to compete. Just the best code. In theory, then, a student could go up against Ferrari. A University could beat Renault. Heck, a total nobody could win the Championship. Sometime in the future, the team will open up its “virtual test environment” so that anyone can test and developing a custom algorithm. “We want to push the boundaries further and this is the ultimate environment for that,” Sverdlov said.

Next steps

First, however, the team needs to put its Robocar on the track. The plan was to do just that before Mobile World Congress, but some delayed parts meant that the first test run had to be put on hold. Sverdlov says it will now happen “just after” the event, but stopped short of giving a concrete date. One thing is for sure: It will be some time before a full Roborace takes place. The team has promised further DevBot demonstrations throughout the current Formula E season, including another head-to-head competition.

Behind the scenes, the company will be working on two development “routes.” One is focused on performance, increasing the speed of the cars and improving lap times. The other is concerned with the number of robots on the track. For now there’s just two, but soon Roborace wants to test with three or four.

But I have one question: Will people want to watch a Roborace? Can you get truly invested when there are no people on the track? “We already see a lot of drama — human drama — within our developing process,” Sverdlov said. “We will see this drama occurring in the teams as well. It’s the people who have an objective to do something amazing. They will work during the nights and sometimes they’ll be angry, sometimes happy, sometimes upset. It’s all about emotion — it’s not the robots. It’s the humans that are using those tools to show the level of their intelligence. And I personally believe that’s it’s going to be super interesting to watch.”

Click here to catch up on the latest news from MWC 2017.

Snapchat accused of squeezing a gun safety group for money

A series of leaked emails reportedly suggest that Snapchat may have behaved questionably when dealing with a gun safety charity. Mic claims to have seen messages between the startup and the non-profit Everytown for Gun Safety. It appears that the company’s advertising sales team heavily implied that it would run pro-gun ads alongside Everytown’s stories unless it paid $150,000.

The story goes that Everytown reached out to Snapchat at the start of 2016 to do something for National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Snapchat employee Rob Saliterman reportedly responded, saying that any advertising team-up would cost $150,000. In exchange for the cash, users would be able to show their support for the day using lenses and custom filters.

But at the same time, Snapchat’s editorial team had contacted Everytown to develop a Snapchat News story for the event. Since the content would be broadcast as part of Snapchat’s news feature, it wouldn’t cost Everytown any money to participate. In addition, high-profile names like Senator Chuck Schumer and Kim Kardashian were apparently interested in participating.

In many media organizations, there is a “wall” between the advertising sales team and its editorial operations to ensure independence. Everytown opted to work with Snapchat’s news team on the latter proposal, and so responded to (the unaware) Saliterman saying it wouldn’t need to buy advertising for the day. The following is a quoted excerpt from the Mic report, verbatim, from Saliterman’s response:

“I just learned our News Team is doing a Live Story on National Gun Violence Awareness Day,” Saliterman’s message began. “I would urgently like to speak with you about advertising opportunities within the story, as there will be three ad slots. We are also talking to the NRA about running ads within the story.”

In a following email, he added (again, verbatim):

“To be clear, the story has the potential to be bought by any advertiser, including the NRA, which will enable the advertiser to run three 10-sec video ads within the story. This is analogous to how any advertiser could buy advertising in a TV news program about violence. The advertising will not impact the editorial content within the story as our teams are independent.”

Snap hasn’t disputed the existence of the emails, but does not agree that Saliterman was strong-arming Everytown. You can certainly take his words as a warning, rather than as a threat, since the NRA has bought rebuttal ads against gun control messages in the past. Whatever the intention, Everytown apparently decided not to work with Snapchat at all — and the messaging company ran a story on June 9th titled Guns in America using user-submitted content.

Via: The AV Club

Source: MIc.

Twitter will livestream ESL and DreamHack eSports tournaments

Twitter’s initial foray into livestreaming eSports must have went well, as it’s expanding the range of tournaments it covers in a big way. The social network has reached deals to stream 15-plus ESL One, DreamHack and Intel Extreme Masters tournaments over the course of 2017. ESL will also make its own originals for Twitter, including a half-hour show that covers competition highlights and behind-the-scenes stories. The first tourney to get the treatment is Intel Extreme Masters Katowice, which starts on March 4th.

The move could go some distance toward giving Twitter a foothold in the eSports world. Twitch still has a reputation as the go-to place to watch pro gaming events like Evo, but that’s partly due to sheer quantity. If Twitter can stream tournaments on a frequent enough basis, it might convince avid gamers to change their viewing habits.

Source: Twitter (ESL), (DreamHack), (IEM)

ICYMI: Ford’s Autolivery is the future of delivery

Today on In Case You Missed It: Ford used virtual reality to demo its “Autolivery” concept service at Mobile World Congress. The package delivery system of the future would consist of a self-driving van and a drone working together to deliver parcels and orders right to your door — even if your door is on the 30th floor. While it’s unlikely that anyone will see this system in action for several years — the company anticipates the fleet won’t be ready until at least 2021 — it would go a long way to reducing urban gridlock and pollution.

Meanwhile, Facebook is testing out an AI feature that uses pattern recognition to detect posts from users who may be in distress or suicidal. While users already have the ability to report a friend’s status if they believe they’re in trouble, the AI will flag status’ for review by the Community Operations team. Additionally, there are new Messenger tools that help users connect to suicide prevention organizations in chat, and a report feature for potentially concerning livestreams. We give the thumbs up to any feature that helps users who are struggling.

As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

Apple Among 53 Companies Supporting Transgender Student in Supreme Court Case

Apple and 52 other major companies have signed a Supreme Court brief in support of seventeen-year-old Gavin Grimm, a young transgender man who’s fighting with his local school district for the right to use the bathroom of his corresponding gender identity (via The New York Times).

Other than Apple, the tech companies include Amazon, Microsoft, PayPal, Twitter, Yelp, eBay, Airbnb, and more. There are also a few companies not in the tech field that have signed the brief, among them including GAP, Warby Parker, Williams-Sonoma, and MAC Cosmetics.

All of the companies signed a brief that will be filed today by gay rights organization the Human Rights Campaign, who is urging the Supreme Court to rule in Grimm’s favor. Grimm is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union in his fight against the Gloucester County School Board in his home state of Virginia. The case dates back to 2015 and the Supreme Court agreed to rule on it back in October of 2016.

“These companies are sending a powerful message to transgender children and their families that America’s leading businesses have their backs,” Chad Griffin, the Human Rights Campaign’s president, said in a statement announcing the support.

Grimm’s case is heating up in the face of President Donald Trump’s decision to remove guidelines put in place by the Obama administration, specifically covering the use of public bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms by transgender students. The previous rules allowed transgender individuals to use the bathroom of their corresponding gender identity, but now it’s up to the states to decide whether or not to support the guidelines or put in place a more restrictive system.

Last week, when Trump’s decision was announced, Apple spoke out against the move and reiterated on its belief that “everyone deserves a chance to thrive in an environment free from stigma and discrimination.” The Cupertino company also vocally disagreed with Trump’s immigration executive order, joining another legal brief supported by nearly 100 U.S. companies in opposition to that immigration policy.

Apple has long supported and fought for the rights of LGBTQ individuals, marching in the annual San Francisco pride parade each summer and condemning legislation that would freely allow businesses to turn away gay and lesbian customers — which was signed into law by Mike Pence in Indiana two years ago. A subsequent amendment to the religious freedom legislation was passed in the weeks after the initial law was signed, granting more protection to LGBTQ customers in the state of Indiana.

For the new case regarding Gavin Grimm, the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments from both sides at the end of March.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
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Google increases Gmail attachment limits to a heftier 50MB — but only for recipients

Why it matters to you

If your colleagues still regularly use email for larger attachments, now you can receive them up to 50MB through your Gmail.

While email attachments continue to be a potential attack vector for hackers and cyber criminals the world over, they are still a popular way to share files. Looking to cater to that audience, Google has increased the size of incoming attachments on its Gmail platform to 50MB, doubling its previous limit.

File lockers and cloud collaboration are becoming a much more common way for people to share files and documents and Google even alludes to that in its announcement of the changeup to attachment sizes. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still a lot of people doing things the old-fashioned way, and they are now getting some more file-size leeway. But it is only in one direction.

While Google has upped the Gmail recipient limit to 50MB, you still can only send out 25MB files through Gmail. That means if you want to send larger files, you will need to have them sent from an email provider that does allow larger attachments.

Google does highlight that anyone wishing to send out such attachments from its services can use Google Drive to do so, though.

More: Reluctant to give your email address away? Create a disposable with one of these services

This update was made on Google’s Rapid release and Scheduled release tracks at the same time, so there should be no wait for anyone wishing to be sent files with a larger footprint. Google also clarified that it would be available to all G Suite editions, too.

As nice a feature as this is for those still sending files via attachments, we’d recommend using encrypted file lockers in the future. They allow for much larger file transfers, protect your documents through obfuscation, and reduce the chance of you, your friends, or colleagues being hit with ransomware of other malware attacks through nefarious files.

Gmail users, don’t forget you can easily set the app up on your iPhone or other iOS device, too.

Netflix is doubling mobile streaming quality without increasing bandwidth

Netflix is making big improvements to the quality and efficiency of mobile streaming, and it’s working with LG to add HDR support to the G6.

Every year during Mobile World Congress, Netflix gets away from the hustle and bustle of the Fira Gran Via and the core of Barcelona itself, renting a large house somewhere in the city’s northwest, busing in press and analysts during the week to speak to various executives about whatever the company is promoting this particular year.

It’s a very well-oiled machine, and 2017 was my second time sitting in the back of a van with international press — a couple from the UK, a few from Scandinavia, a German, and me, a Canadian.

Two years ago, Netflix barely talked about smartphones. In fact, its mobile strategy was unclear. Sure, it had apps for Android and iOS, and they were even pretty good, but they weren’t well-used. At the time, the vast majority of Netflix usage was limited to televisions, and to permanent high-speed internet connections. But since the company expanded its global footprint to including over 200 countries, mobile video has also proliferated more than any trend line could have extrapolated in 2015.

The upside is, according to Netflix, double the video quality for the same amount of bandwidth used, or half the bandwidth for the same video quality.

I had an opportunity to talk to Todd Yellen, the company’s vice president of product — the technology underlying Netflix’s app ecosystem, rather than the content — about why mobile has surged as a priority in the past 12 months, and what’s next.

Yellen said that almost immediately after expanding in early 2016, Netflix saw mobile usage spike, buoyed by the incredibly mobile-only penetration of India. With hundreds of millions of Indians with inexpensive 3G access and an increasing amount of disposable time, the company realized that it had to refactor elements of its Android app to suit the market. The additions of offline watching — the ability to download content for viewing without a cellular or Wi-Fi connection — and, later, microSD storage, was a reaction to developing markets like India trying to find solutions for unstable connections or limited data buckets.

Relatively near to India, Netflix users in Japan and South Korea boast some of the fastest LTE connections in the world, and also spend most of their time on the service using smartphones — but streaming at much higher quality. It’s this delta, between the sustained usage of 3G users streaming Netflix at relatively low bitrates in India, and those in the pacific afforded the service’s best quality over the air that convinced Netflix into looking into a new encoding method for its content to ensure a better overall experience for everyone.

That encoding method is a relatively new video codec called VP9, an ultra-efficient algorithm controlled and open-sourced by Google, and has been widely used on YouTube. The upside is, according to Netflix, double the video quality for the same amount of bandwidth used, or half the bandwidth for the same video quality.

With HDR greens were more verdant, and reds more varied, and that blue sky was no longer washed out.

To demonstrate this, Netflix set up two stations of Nexus 6Ps, each with the same show — Stranger Things — playing. The left phone used the old codec, and the right VP9. The first example was a 100kbps stream — practically the lowest quality Netflix offers over the air. Boxy, blocky and barely discernible, the older codec was not a great viewing experience; the same amount of bandwidth encoded in VP9 was drastically clearer, with fewer artifacts and improved detail.

In the second test, the two Nexus 6Ps were showing the same clip, and each looked almost identical in terms of quality. But the VP9-encoded stream reportedly used just half the bandwidth — 277kbps to the original’s 544kbps. Netflix says that it is in the process of re-encoding its entire library in VP9, and all users — even those on high-speed LTE connections in the U.S., Canada, Japan, South Korea and parts of Europe — should see notable improvements in mobile streams.

Netflix is also working with LG to enable HDR on its upcoming G6. The company showed off a third demo, of two G6s with clips from Chef’s Table, one of its latest hit shows. The left G6 had muted colors, and it was difficult to discern the blue of the sky in scenes with brightly lit foregrounds. To my eyes, the scene looked good, but when compared to the right G6, with HDR enabled, the difference was significant. Greens were more verdant, and reds more varied, and that blue sky was no longer washed out.

In the next few months, a number of its own shows will be encoded to support HDR, but only a handful are available at this point. Amazon has also jumped on board with HDR, and is rolling out more shows than Netflix to support the growing standard in the short-term, but it’s good to see LG taking the reins on this one from a hardware perspective.

Netflix says that two-thirds of its viewing is still on televisions, but that number is changing more quickly than ever before, moving to where all eyeballs are going: smartphones and, to a lesser extent, tablets. The proliferation of phablet-class devices, and cheaper products with bigger, higher-resolution screens, has buoyed the uptake, but the company also acknowledges that there are just more and better shows to watch, ones that have been tailor-made to complete in transit, or while out of the house.

In the U.S., unlimited plans mean that more customers will soon be less worried about surpassing their monthly data allotment, so Netflix expects mobile usage to rise in turn.

Do you watch Netflix on your phone? Let us know in the comments!

Nintendo Switch online subscription service goes live in autumn, play for free until then

The day one update for Nintendo Switch has become available to those lucky enough to have the console already – including Pocket-lint – and one of the first notifications is about the new Nintendo online subscription service. It will be launched fully in autumn.

Nintendo’s much-rumoured subscription service will work much like PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Gold in that paid membership will be required to play online games. In return you’ll get a free “classic” game to play each month.

Pricing is yet to be announced, but the good news for those who will be getting their Switch consoles from tomorrow’s launch date is that online play will be free until the service launches. That should give you six months before having to shell out at least.

The online play notification comes after you sign into your Nintendo account through the Switch, which has only been available since the day one update was made available. It says the service will give you the following features:

• Online multiplayer: Play with or against other people over the internet.
• Plan gaming sessions with friends and enjoy voice chat while gaming: The dedicated app (coming to smartphones this summer) helps you get more out of online play.
• Take on classic games – a different title each month: Now with online multiplayer.
• Save money on Nintendo Switch digital purchases: Exclusive savings for subscribers only.

The latter two features will be launched with the paid version of the service.

You can check out what we think of the Nintendo Switch and its launch game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild by following the links below:

• Nintendo Switch review: Return of the king?
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild review: Game of the year already