One Button Nav on the Moto G5 is an exciting new way to interact with your phone

The Moto G5 puts the fingerprint sensor to good use.

One of the more interesting features in the Moto G5 and G5 Plus is a new Moto Action called One Button Nav. The feature made its debut on the 5.0-inch Lenovo Z2 Plus last year, and after seeing positive feedback from its user community, Motorola included it in the G5 and G5 Plus.

The feature eschews the on-screen navigation buttons, instead relying on the fingerprint sensor of the G5 and G5 Plus to navigate. A single tap on the sensor takes you to the home screen, a right-to-left swipe takes you back within an app’s interface, and a left-to-right swipe reveals the multitasking pane.

A single-button interface makes navigation much more simple.

As with other Moto Actions, the goal with One Button Nav is to simplify the way you interact with your phone. Motorola claims that One Button Nav makes it much more convenient to use the G5 and G5 Plus one-handed, and that statement holds up in day-to-day usage. Having used the feature in the Z2 Plus (it was called U-Touch at the time), I immediately took to One Button Nav on the G5 Plus and haven’t looked back since.

The feature certainly takes some getting used to (it took me three days), but once you’re acclimated, it makes for a much better experience when compared to the on-screen nav keys. I primarily use it as it allows me to quickly go back in an app with a quick gesture across the fingerprint sensor instead of having to reach across the device to hit the back button. It sounds trivial, but it makes a lot of difference in real-world usage, particularly if you’re clumsy and have a propensity to drop phones.

Interested in giving it a go? Here’s how to enable One Button Nav on the G5 Plus:

Open the Moto app from the app drawer.
Select Actions.

Select One button nav.

Hit Show me how to see the feature in action.

Keep tapping Next to proceed along.

Select Turn it on to enable the feature.

If you decide that you don’t like One Button Nav after using the feature, you can always disable it and switch back to the standard on-screen navigation keys.

This is the difference between VR and AR

How would you like your reality served?

Two of the three major technologies we talk about here have the word reality in the name, and when you see the shortened version of these names it’s even easier to get confused about the purpose of these two things. We frequently see “Is there a difference between VR and AR?” or “Can my VR headset use AR apps?” when doing Q&A sessions, and for good reason. The line between the way these two technologies gets used is blurry. Both can be used for games, both can be used in professional settings, and both can be headsets worn for extended periods of time.

The big difference between Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality is one you can see with your eyes, and that makes it very easy to explain.

Read more at VR Heads!

Qualcomm doesn’t want you to take its Snapdragon 835 benchmarks too seriously

Qualcomm wants — needs — the Snapdragon 835 to be about more than just CPU speed.

Qualcomm is in a bit of a bind. The company is readying its first Snapdragon 835 chips for the world’s best phones, and though Samsung — the world’s biggest Android manufacturer — will be co-opting much of the releases’s spotlight with the Galaxy S8, Qualcomm wants to make it clear that there are still many advantages, both for other companies and consumers, in going with its products.

It pointed out that no other company fulfils the promise of a platform architecture like Qualcomm.

So it’s trying to play two hands at the same time. Last week, it offers journalists a glimpse at what makes the Snapdragon 835 tick, including the opportunity to benchmark a MDP unit (Mobile Device Platform) that runs the latest hardware and a stock version of Android Nougat. Judging from the thorough set of benchmarks by Anandtech, the Snapdragon 835 is an evolutionary upgrade from the 820/821 in terms of CPU and GPU performance, and in a couple of benchmarks actually falls behind its predecessor.

Nominally, though, users can expect a 10-25% gain in CPU performance, and around a 20-30% gain in graphics abilities, switching from the Snapdragon 820/821 to the 835, which is significant but not groundbreaking. And then there’s other more comparable SoCs like Huawei’s Kirin 960, which despite being released in November is neck-and-neck with the Snapdragon 835 in many performance benchmarks.

That’s why Qualcomm doesn’t want the story to end there, and rightfully so. It went out of its way to show that CPU and GPU benchmarks are no longer indicative of the company’s strengths as a whole, which is why it went on a media blitz this month to push the message that its processors are actually “platforms”.

To that end, it made an effort to point out that no other company fulfils the promise of a platform architecture like Qualcomm: in addition to the CPU, GPU and memory, there’s camera performance, video encoding and decoding, audio excellence, charging improvements, biometrics integration cellular advancements, and readiness for VR standards. But while these are all essential parts to a SoC platform, the computing and memory speeds are the most easily quantifiable, and to a subset of the population have a very heavy impact on buying decisions. This is true more so in the desktop space, but as Qualcomm butts up against Moore’s Law the same way Intel and AMD have in the desktop world, it will continue having to find new ways to market its product (and platform) advantages.

The most important announcements at MWC 2017 were also the most boring

Much of that advantage, at the end of the day, will come down to how much more efficient the Snapdragon 835’s 10nm manufacturing process is, and how much that will benefit the battery life of the average phone user. Early benchmarks on a non-commercial piece of hardware won’t be able to tell that story, so we’ll have to wait until the first phones ship with the part — the Galaxy S8, the Sony Xperia XZ Premium, and many others — to learn that particular part of the tale.

In the meantime, Anandtech sums it up nicely:

Based on these preliminary numbers and feature additions, the Snapdragon 835 looks like a solid evolutionary upgrade over the S820.

What do you think of the Snapdragon 835 so far based on what you’ve seen and read? Let us know in the comments!

How to set up Plex Media Server on your NVIDIA Shield TV

Turn your Shield TV into a Plex Server is both easy and convenient!

When it comes to the centralization of your media in one place, nothing does it better than Plex. It’s a very versatile and user-friendly application that lets you stream all your media to any device with the Plex app installed.

Best of all, it comes preinstalled on all NVIDIA Shield TVs, making the Shield a natural choice to set up as your Plex Media Server.

Why the Shield is a natural fit as your Plex Media Server

The NVIDIA Shield is an incredibly powerful Android TV box with support for 4K Ultra HD resolution, hardware acceleration for the top media codecs, and features a great user interface. The Shield Pro, in particular, is an ideal candidate for the Plex Media Server what with the 500GB of onboard storage for all your music, movies, TV shows and photos.

Plex has included the software for setting up a Plex Media Server on your NVIDIA Shield right out of the box and as with pretty much everything involving Plex, setup is intuitive and user-friendly.

See NVIDIA Shield Pro TV on Amazon

Creating an account with Plex

If you’ve never used Plex before, the first thing you’ll need to do is create an account on the Plex website. It’s free to set up an account and get the basic functionality from Plex, but you might want to consider going premium for some valuable features including Cloud Sync, which lets you sync your library to a supported cloud storage service so you’re able to enjoy all your content even when your Shield is turned off or disconnected from the internet.

Setting up a Plex Media Server on your NVIDIA Shield

First thing you’ll need to do is link your Plex account to the Plex app on your Shield. To do so, simply open the Plex app on your NVIDIA Shield and sign into your account. To do so, you simply have to enter the provided code at the Plex Account Link in a web browser. Once you’ve got your account linked on your Shield, it will instantly start searching for your Plex Media Server — and won’t be able to find one unless you’ve previously set one up on another device.

Don’t sweat it, because on the next screen you’ll see the option for setting up the Plex Media Server. Setup is a breeze — simply keep tapping Next to enable Plex Media Server, create default libraries for your Media Server, and accept the permissions that Plex requires to do its thing. It will take some time for the Plex Media Server to set up at first, so you’ll have to be patient. Once it’s set up, you’ll be able to view your server’s settings by logging into your account at Plex.tv.

The NVIDIA Shield TV Pro has 500GB of internal storage, which makes it the ideal candidate to be your Plex Media Server.

Next, you’ll want to load up your Shield with all your favorite media. This is where having the NVIDIA Shield TV Pro comes in real handy, because you’ll have 500GB of internal storage to use compared to the 16GB of space on the basic model. The easiest way to transfer files to your Shield is over your local network. Go into your Shield Settings > Storage & reset, and toggle on Over local network under Shield storage access.

It will give you a username and password to connect to your Shield on your computer. Then, simply hop onto your PC or Mac, find your Shield in the shared devices, and start dragging and dropping into the appropriate folder in your Shield’s file system.

If you’ve opted for the 16GB Shield, or simply don’t have the space on your Shield to accommodate all the media you want to add, you can always connect a USB drive filled with your media to one of the USB ports on the back of the Shield, or set up a network storage device. Once you’ve got your media added, you’ll want to go to Plex Media Server settings in a web browser and add your media folders as libraries, whether they’re stored internally, on a USB, or connected via your network storage device.

Access your media on the go!

Once you’ve set up your NVIDIA Shield TV as your Plex Media Server, you’re able to access all of your media by logging into your Plex account on any other device you own that has the Plex app installed. Your NVIDIA Shield will need to be up and running for remote access, so if you want your file accessible all the time, you’ll want to go into the Screensaver settings and set it so your Shield never goes to sleep.

And that’s all it takes! You’ll probably want to bookmark the Plex Media Server settings so you can quickly add or remove content as needed.

Questions? Thoughts?

Let us know what you think about Plex as a media storage companion on your Shield, and perhaps how it compares to Kodi in your opinion.

NVIDIA Shield Android TV

• Read our Shield Android TV review
• The latest Shield Android TV news
• Shield vs. Shield Pro: Which should I buy?
• Join the forum discussion
• Complete Shield Android TV specs

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Samsung CCP means you don’t need a bank account to make contactless payments

Samsung has announced a technology and platform that is designed to make contactless payments accessible to all. That includes people who don’t or can’t have a bank account or credit card.

The Samsung Contactless Companion Platform (CCP) comes from the semiconductor arm of Samsung Electronics and consists of a dual interface smart chip which, along with a software solution in the form of an iOS and Android app, works with NFC contactless payment machines. It can be embedded into many different wearables or devices, including smartwatches, wristbands and even a ring.

A device is registered with the app, which can be topped up with funds rather than draw from a credit or debit card. This means it will have a small set limit on how much can be paid for a purchase, so won’t be too catastrophic if lost – much like cash.

The wearable will work independently to the app as the information is stored on its chip rather than the smartphone, and can therefore be used without having to have the phone on you. You simply transfer the balance to the wearable via NFC and away you go. You will also be able to top up cash amounts through a PC or point-of-sale terminals.

This means that those without bank accounts can also pay for items using contactless as they can add digital cash to their wristband, whathaveyou, as a special top-up point.

Swiss watchmakers Winwatch and Monfort have both partnered with CCP so far, adding the chip into analogue, mechanical wristwatches.

‘Destiny 2’ is expected to arrive this September

Destiny had a rocky start, but the first-person space shooter eventually ended up living up to the promise it showed back when it was announced. Time flies, though, and the original game is nearly three years old, and Bungie has promised a full sequel will be coming soon. Now, thanks to an poster image apparently leaked by an Italian retailer (and posted by Italian site Lega Network), we can be pretty sure that Destiny 2 will arrive this September. Friday, September 8th in Europe, to be precise — which means the US release date could be the prior Tuesday, September 5th.

We haven’t heard much about the game itself so far, although we do know that most of the progress you’ve made in the original Destiny won’t carry over to the sequel. Kotaku believes that Bungie and Activision will officially release more details about the sequel today, and it also thinks the game will come to the PC in addition to the Xbox One and PS4 this time. We should find out more later today, but for now just feast your eyes on the above image and get ready to kiss the three years of progress you’ve made in the original game goodbye. At least your character will look the same when you port it over to Destiny 2.

Researchers make super-cheap smartphone sperm test

Harvard researchers have developed a new device that helps men easily measure their fertility at home with their smartphone. While similar test kits exist, what sets this prototype apart is its affordability. Costing just $4.45 to make, this impressive prototype takes less than five seconds to test your little swimmers, analyzing their count and ability to swim with 98 percent accuracy.

Instead of simply relying on an app like similar at-home fertility tests, this method also utilizes a tech-filled smartphone case. Using a disposable microfluidic chip with a tiny tube, participants can draw up to 35 microlitres of semen inside of its bulb, slotting the sealed sample safely back inside the phone case. Once contained, the device’s LEDs and lenses illuminate and magnify the sperm-packed chip, allowing the app to analyze your swimmers using stills taken from videos by your phone’s camera.

The only downside to the test so far is that it struggles to detect deformed sperm – a crucial part of assessing fertility. With the device still in the early stages, however, the researchers remain confident that better processing algorithms and upgraded hardware could quickly help the device overcome these limitations.

While this isn’t the the first method that allows men to test the potency of their seed, it’s certainly one of the best implemented. Previously announced fertility apps, Yo and Trak have offered similar at home testing solutions, with Trak already receiving FDA approval. Yet while Trak requires you to enter information from its measurement device manually, this new method allows users to get the same results with minimal effort. Yo is also a bit lacking in comparison. Offering an app-only solution which measure’s swimming ability, Yo unfortunately involves users getting sperm uncomfortably close to your phone’s camera.

With an estimated 30 million men facing fertility issues around the globe, this new device could help guys to easily and painlessly get themselves tested. Still, with the as yet untitled device currently lacking FDA approval and any kind of marketing strategy, it could well be years before the the impressive new test makes its way into homes.

Source: Science Mag

Alaska Airlines: Goodbye ‘Virgin America,’ hello comfier flights

Virgin America has been the airline of choice for many travelers due to its on-board amenities, including comfy seating, mood lighting, Netflix and Spotify. However, the name won’t be around much longer. Alaska Airlines, which bought the airline last year, announced this week that it plans “to retire” the Virgin America name and logo “likely sometime in 2019.” As you can imagine, many were upset the beloved brand was being shuttered, including Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson.

“It has a very different business model and sadly, it could not find a way to maintain its own brand and that of Virgin America,” Branson said.

Alaska Airlines says a number of the things that made Virgin America so great in the eyes of travelers won’t go away — namely its dedication to stellar customer service. The company was also quick to reveal changes coming to the in-flight experience as a way of softening the blow that the go-to airline for many will no longer be around. And yes, there will be mood lighting.

Next year, Alaska Airlines says it will debut a redesigned cabin complete with new seats and more. In the fall of 2018, all of the company’s Boeing aircraft will be retrofitted with high-speed satellite WiFi to improve internet during flights. The same upgrade will be applied to Alaska Airlines’ Airbus fleet afterwards with all planes expected to be equipped with faster WiFi by the end of 2019. The airline says you can expect to stream movies and shows from your service of choice when the upgrade to more reliable connectivity is complete.

The airline already offers a catalog of over 200 movies and TV shows directly to passenger devices free of charge. That in-flight entertainment option is now permanently available on Alaska Airlines’ Boeing fleet and it arrives on the Airbus aircraft this August. If you’re flying on an Airbus plane, you’ll still be able to purchase new releases. If you don’t mind handing over a few dollars, of course.

Alaska says it was the first and only airline to offer free in-flight chat when it did so in January. The amenity allows passengers to stay in contact with folks on the ground with apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and iMessage. This August, that free chatting will also be available on Airbus flights.

While Virgin America may be going away in a few months, it’s clear Alaska Airlines is focused on improving the air travel experience to keep faithful customers happy. More premium seats, faster WiFi and easy-to-access entertainment options are a start, but it will be interesting to see if the company takes on more of the Virgin persona after the brand is officially “retired.”

Source: Alaska Airlines, Virgin

Artificial skin with solar cells could power prosthetics

Researchers at Glasgow University have successfully developed a new type of artificial skin that is more sensitive than our own. Made of just a single atomic layer of graphene, the new soft feeling epidermis functions as its own sophisticated touch sensor. If that wasn’t impressive enough, this artificial ‘skin’ is also entirely self-powered. Housing a solar panel hidden under its graphene layer, the material manages to absorb over 98 percent of the light available, relying only on the sun to power it.

As well as having huge implications for creating more realistic looking (and feeling) robotics, the new lightweight material could have a profound impact on helping amputees. The man behind the graphene skin, Dr Ravinder Dahiya has begun developing his own 3D printed hands, aiming to help provide amputees with affordable and lightweight limbs.

Thanks to its lack of batteries and the relatively low price of silicon and graphene, including the hands, these robotics only cost $350 to make. This is significantly cheaper than the standard battery-operated prosthesis — which typically cost tens of thousands of dollars. Dahiya released a brief video demonstrating the capabilities of a prototype hand, showing the gentle touch in action.

Outside of robotics, he suggests that this new skin could have a wide range of different applications. With the highly sensitive material being able to detect the slightest of movements, it has the potential to make a surprisingly accurate sweat sensor for gym clothes. Outside of the touch sensor, Dahiya also suggests that the solar tech could be used to easily power devices like glucose monitors, allowing doctors to observe patients who have no access to electricity.

Yet according to Doctor Dahiya, his work is only just beginning. “The next step for us is to further develop the power-generation technology…and use it to power the motors which drive the prosthetic hand itself. This could allow the creation of an entirely energy-autonomous prosthetic limb.”

Source: Lab manager

Coffee Meets Bagel dating app is trying to end ghosting

“Coffee Meets Bagel,” a dating app that promises high-quality matches, has launched a rather pricey premium tier. The company’s cofounder told VentureBeat that they had a lofty goal in mind when they decided to offer the option: they want to end ghosting. The habit is one of the most prevalent issues with services like this, and in an effort to combat the problem, dating apps are turning more and more like the older dating sites they replaced. Coffee Meets Bagel is but the latest one to launch a premium option — its rivals, including Tinder, also offer similar tiers of their own.

If you choose to pay for membership, you’ll be able to see your matches’ activity report, like in the image below. It shows how likely they are to send the first message, how long it usually takes them to reply and the last time they were active. You’ll also see read receipts when the other person has already seen your messages. That way, you won’t have to waste time waiting for responses that’ll never come. Finally, you’ll get 6,000 “Beans” to spend on the service’s various features, such as the ability to see you and your matches’ mutual friends. All those perks don’t come cheap, though. At $35 a month, you likely have to enjoy CMB’s offerings the most to choose it over more affordable options.

Source: TechCrunch, VentureBeat