Mass Effect Andromeda review: RPG heavyweight returns with promise… and pitfalls

Role-players have had a great year so far. First, Horizon: Zero Dawn, then The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Now Mass Effect: Andromeda has arrived after many years of eager anticipation. You can say goodbye to spring, that’s for sure.

The last of those game is more accessible than the others. It’s the only one of the three that is multi-platform, so finally Xbox One and PC gamers also get an RPG to sink their teeth into, alongside their PS4 and Switch chums. The big question is, would they want to?

Our answer would be yes, we think so. Although there are caveats. Several, actually.

Mass Effect Andromeda review: A huge game world

Mass Effect: Andromeda is a massive game, with so much to see and do outside of the main campaign that you could be lost in a fog of fetch quests for weeks. Much of it is unnecessary if you’re the sort of player who couldn’t care less about the detail and minutiae of the new galaxy in which it is set, but we’re the sort of players that must complete everything on offer. Everything. And there is plenty.

After the last Mass Effect trilogy ended, was complained about, then ended again, Bioware knew that it had crafted a sci-fi mythos almost on a par with Star Wars, but what to do with it? The former trilogy came to a definitive conclusion, so a new adventure and setting was to be crafted, new characters too. That meant an awful lot of new backstory and exposition was needed, which makes Andromeda bloated at times.

Its pace suffers as a result. But in return you get a detailed, rich gamescape that, by the end, sets up future chapters well. Hopefully they will be leaner, presuming you have a lot of knowledge already, so the groundwork here should set you in good stead in future. Think of it as a new Spider-Man or Batman film – every so often we need to be told the origin story again as part of yet another reboot – but it pays off in the end (well, almost).

In terms of Mass Effect, the reboot/sequel this time actually has a simple premise. You are a human on a quest to colonise new worlds in a far galaxy, Andromeda, as part of a wider, multi-species initiative. Things don’t quite go to plan though, with the giant space arks of the other races disappearing, and you are soon given the role of pathfinder and having to discover new planets to inhabit.

EA

This brings you in contact with a few new alien races, including the biggest threat this time around, the Kett, and so your adventure begins.

One interesting aspect to the campaign is that, not only can you customise your lead character to your own visual parameters, you can choose to play as either Scott or Sara Ryder, brother and sister twins. Previous games in the series have allowed you to play male or female characters, but not one of two different people.

Mass Effect Andromeda review: Thunderbirds are go!

It doesn’t really make much difference in the long run, but is a nice thought and much needed in a games market dominated by male heroes, with one or two exceptions. The only issue is, whichever you choose, they’ll suffer from one of the game’s biggest caveats: poor character animation.

EA

To be fair, Mass Effect: Andromeda looks amazing on the whole. There are many planets to visit throughout the story, with huge open-world landscapes to explore, and they each look individual and stunning. From the ice-covered, Angaran resistance planet of Voeld (Hoth anyone?), to the sulphur-barking toxic playground of Kadara, the vistas are beautifully rendered – even more so on PS4 Pro in 1800p and HDR.

However, during conversations, animation can look plastic. At times, Scott or Sara look like Thunderbirds puppets, not only in their movement but with dead eyes and blank expressions. We particularly like Thunderbirds (Gerry Anderson’s original anyway) but it does distract from an otherwise visually rich game.

The animations were tweaked a bit for a day one patch released by Bioware slightly before release, but we expect this to be addressed and improved further. It needs to be.

EA/Bioware/Nvidia

We also expect the litany of bugs to be wheedled out. Or, at least, we hope they will. Slightly dodgy animation aside, it is these that irk the most and stop Andromeda being the five-star game it could have been.

Having played the vast majority of side missions, as mentioned, we found a fair few that were broken – often to the extent that they couldn’t be completed. Sometimes waypoints remained even though we’d completed that segment. Sometimes they didn’t appear at all, so we couldn’t continue. And sometimes characters we were meant to meet at a mission point didn’t show, again leading us to a dead end.

We did find that some of these bugs could be circumnavigated through quitting and reloading, going back to an earlier save game or heading back to the Tempest (your ship) and to the planet again, but these are all experiencing-breaking fixes. The bugs shouldn’t be there in the first place.

The same goes for graphical glitches, with the occasional shimmering texture, lackadaisical background pop-in and, at times, floating enemies sitting at odds with their Frostbite Engine-fuelled surroundings.

EA/Bioware/Nvidia

Of course, Andromeda isn’t the first RPG to have such issues – not even the first Bioware game – but they are irritating to find after such a long development and testing phase. There has been a five-year gap between the last two Mass Effect games, after all, and this is a triple-A game we’ve been awaiting with baited breath all that time.

Mass Effect Andromeda review: Crafting and depth

Perhaps because of that wait we’re willing to overlook some of the issues though. The size and depth of the game certainly lives up to the hype.

EA/Bioware/Nvidia

Combat has also been tweaked significantly to the extent where it feels more like The Division or Destiny than previous Mass Effects. Jet packs have been added to characters, so verticality comes into play during fast-paced skirmishes.

And while battles, like exploration, are conducted in a third-person view, they feel like multiplayer first-person forays. They can be tricky to get to grips with initially, they are so quick and you are so under-powered, but you soon get the hang of it. Better weaponry and powers help too.

Character development, in fact, is essential in Andromeda, as it is in 99 per cent of role-playing games, and Bioware has finely tuned its systems to ensure it is as smooth and quick a process as can be. It is easy to assign different abilities and powers to your lead, as well as the accompanying NPCs on your team – of which you can take two at a time into fights, as in earlier games.

EA

You no longer have to rely on looting or vendors for the best weaponry though. Crafting has been introduced to the series and while it can be a chore to collect the right amount of materials, elements and augmentations to research and develop new guns, armour and the like, it is highly rewarding when you use something you build yourself to take off the top of a Kett soldier’s noggin. It’s not as intuitive as in some games – the latest Zelda especially – but a good addition that we think will be refined for future games in the series.

Verdict

That’s Mass Effect: Andromeda in a nutshell. It feels like a new beginning that holds great promise once the less welcome aspects are ironed out – partly through bug fixes for this chapter and partly through gameplay choices for subsequent outings.

It won’t float everyone’s boat, there’s far too much bloat and noise for many, but there’s no doubting its ambition. Bioware has exhibited a fine mastery over storytelling many times in the past and does so again here. The direction, over voice-acting especially, is also top drawer.

It just needed more polish to be a game of the year contender. As it stands, it offers a lengthy, in-depth and, ultimately, satisfying journey. You’ll just need to accept that it won’t always be a smooth one.

Geneva Lab Touring S is all the radio you need in a compact, portable package

Swiss audio brand Geneva Lab has just unveiled a new range of portable radios called Touring S. They’re designed and marketed as an entry level series, but don’t scrimp on the features.

Being a radio first and foremost, you get both FM and DAB+ tuners; an FM antenna is cleverly hidden inside the body and can pop out at a moment’s notice. Keen radio users among you will know DAB+ isn’t available in the UK, but you’ll still be able to pick up ‘regular’ DAB broadcasts. 

But we live in an age of streaming, and the Touring S is more than happy to cater for the new generation by having built-in Bluetooth for wireless connectivity to smartphones and mobile devices.

Everything is packaged inside a portable body that’s half precision-engineered aluminium and half leather, which is available in four colours: red, black, cognac and white.

Geneva is a bit of an expert when it comes to sound quality, and so the Touring S radio series has high-quality neodymium speaker drivers under the hood, which claim to deliver an “exceptionally wide frequency range and low distortion”. The result is “rich and powerful sound that shines when listening to vocals”.

The built-in rechargeable battery claims to provide up to 20 hours of playback time, depending on use, of course. If you don’t want to listen to radio, and have an older device you want to connect via 3.5mm jack, then you’re more than welcome, as there’s a port on the back next to the charging input.

The complete range of colours will be on sale from April for £170.

Stacked is a genuine wireless charging solution for iPhone

All smartphones, no matter their size or operating system, suffer from battery life issues. If you use yours constantly while out and about you’ll soon find you’re out of juice and looking for the nearest wall socket…provided you have you charger with you.

Portable battery packs have been introduced to the market as an attempt to offer a fix, but they involve a separate box and an unsightly cable.

Danny Guez, CEO of Stacked, believes he’s come up with the perfect solution to ensure you never run out of power, and from our short hands-on demo, we’re inclined to agree.

Stacked is a wireless charging system that comprises a case for your iPhone, whether it be a 6/6s/7 or the larger Plus variant and a small battery that attaches magnetically to the back of the case. The batteries are charged up via a wall plug, but the clever bit is you can magnetically connect up to five batteries together and charge them all in one hit.

The case itself is incredibly slim and light and adds barely any bulk to your iPhone. We felt the weight of it compared to the Knomo case we have on our iPhone 6s Plus, and they felt roughly the same. When attached to the iPhone however, the Stacked case combination was far lighter. 

Pocket-lint

When you attach a battery to the case to charge up your phone, there’s still minimal bulk added, so you can still comfortably slide the whole package into your jeans pocket. If you do find it a bit uncomfortable, you can be safe in the knowledge that you won’t need to have it connected for long, as Stacked claims you can achieve a 60 per cent charge in just 15 minutes.

Stacked has big plans to expand its wireless charging solution too, with in-car mounts and desktop audio docks in the pipeline.

One of the factors that really attract us to the Stacked system is the price. A bundle pack comprising a case, wall plug and battery for the iPhone 7 costs just £99.99, although we were able to fit the case to our iPhone 6s Plus with no problems. 

The best external desktop hard drive

By Justin Krajeski

This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. When readers choose to buy The Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here.

After 20 hours of new research and testing, we found the best external desktop hard drive for most people is Seagate’s 4 TB Backup Plus Desktop Drive. The Backup Plus has a great balance of speed and price and enough space for your future storage needs.

Who this is for

If you’re not backing up the important documents and photos on your computer, you should start. Take a few minutes to set up a system that will back up your files automatically to an external hard drive and the cloud. Your computer’s internal drive will stop working someday, and backing up solely to an external drive isn’t a bulletproof strategy to protect yourself from data loss.

You should consider replacing your backup drives between the third and sixth year of use. If your drive dies and you have a cloud backup, you won’t lose data, but restoring from the cloud will take a very long time (and probably blow through your monthly data cap). If you don’t, well, say bye to your stuff. According to statistics from cloud backup service Backblaze, hard drives are most likely to fail either within the first 18 months of use or after three years.

How we picked and tested

Left to right: 2015 Seagate Backup Plus, Western Digital My Book, 2016 Seagate Backup Plus, and Toshiba Canvio for Desktop. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

We started with a list of 14 current desktop hard drives, and we used data from an early 2016 survey of Wirecutter readers to guide our research. Of 183 respondents, 55 percent said they’d like to spend less than $200 on a hard drive, and a third favored drives under $150. About a third of respondents said they needed 2 TB or 3 TB drives, and another third wanted 4 TB or 5 TB models. So we tested mostly 4 TB and 5 TB models, which met most respondents’ price requirements, and still left plenty of additional capacity for future storage needs. The 8 TB models usually have better prices per terabyte, but they’re costly and have more storage than most people need.

After narrowing our list of finalists by price and capacity, we tested seven desktop hard drives. For each one, we ran HD Tune Pro, a benchmarking program that tests transfer speeds, access time, burst rate, and CPU usage across the entire disk. You can read a more in-depth explanation of the program on the HD Tune website. We also timed a series of file transfers—a 7.07 GB folder of photos, a 19.7 GB music collection, and a 45.5 GB rip of a Blu-ray movie—from start to finish, running each transfer three times and determining the average to rule out performance hiccups.

To spot any widespread reliability issues, we read through Amazon reviews for each of the drives we tested, and counted the number of drive failures reported by users. This method has shortcomings—see our full guide for more on how we picked.

We also looked at Backblaze’s hard drive reliability ratings from the first half of 2016, which are based on over 68,000 drives used in its cloud backup servers. Backup servers are a very different environment than a box on your desk—bare drives in servers are accessed more often and are subject to more vibrations and more heat; drives in desktop enclosures have more potential points of failure between the power connector, the USB connector, and the USB-to-SATA logic board. Even so, the Backblaze study is the largest, most recent sample of hard drive failures we have access to.

Our pick: 4 TB Seagate Backup Plus Desktop

The Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive is the fastest drive we tested. You can also stand it vertically to save desk space. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

Seagate’s 4 TB Backup Plus Desktop Drive is the best desktop hard drive for most people because it has the best balance of speed and price. The 3 TB was faster than most of the competition in our file transfer tests, and was one of the top performers in our benchmarks, as well. We tested the 3 TB version, but we recommend the 4 TB model because it’s cheaper per terabyte and Seagate told us that they have identical performance. (Make sure you get the 2016 model, because the 2015 version is slower.) Seagate drives have proven reliable in our personal experience and after extensive research from Backblaze: Just 2.8 percent of its tens of thousands of Seagate drives fail annually.

The 3 TB Backup Plus was one of the fastest drives we tested, with average HD Tune read and write speeds of 150.7 MB/s and 135.3 MB/s, respectively. Though our runner-up’s average write speed was 2.2 MB/s faster, its average read speed was 10.8 MB/s slower. The Backup Plus was also faster than most of its competition in our multifile music and photo transfer tests, and it took just 4 minutes, 13 seconds to write a Blu-ray rip and 5 minutes, 10 seconds to read the same file.

Runner-up: 5 TB Toshiba Canvio for Desktop

Toshiba’s Canvio for Desktop posted times similar to our top pick’s, but it costs more. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

If the Backup Plus is unavailable, Toshiba’s 5 TB Canvio for Desktop is a great second choice. Though not as fast as our top pick, the Canvio was faster than the rest of the competition in our HD Tune and multifile music and photo transfer tests. It’s more expensive per terabyte than our top pick, however, and its software lacks the Seagate Backup Plus Desktop’s extra features.

The Canvio, like the Backup Plus, was among the fastest desktop hard drives we tested. The Canvio had an average read speed of 139.9 MB/s, 10.8 MB/s slower than the Seagate, and an average write speed of 137.7 MB/s, 2.4 MB/s faster than the Seagate. The Canvio and the Backup Plus performed roughly the same—within two seconds of each other—in our Blu-ray file transfer tests.

If you need more storage: 8 TB Western Digital My Book

The 8 TB Western Digital My Book has twice the storage of our top pick, but it’s also twice as expensive. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

If you want more space—say, you have a ton of large photos or an existing media library and need room to expand in the future—the 8 TB Western Digital My Book is the best option. Its average read and write speeds were much faster than the only other drive we tested with the same amount of storage space, the 8 TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub, and it had better HD Tune speeds and photo and music file transfer times than most lower-capacity drives we tested. It’s currently about $100 more expensive than our top pick, though, so we recommend it only if you want the extra storage.

This guide may have been updated by The Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Note from The Wirecutter: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

Comcast is considering a nationwide streaming TV service

Comcast is laying the groundwork for a streaming TV service similar to DirecTV Now in markets it currently doesn’t serve, including New York and LA, according to Bloomberg. It reportedly obtained nationwide TV channel rights from several unnamed cable networks using “most favored nation” clauses in its contracts. It hasn’t got plans to offer anything yet, but is holding those rights as a card to play if online services like AT&T’s DirecTV Now and Sling TV catch on.

Comcast recently said that a so-called OTT (over-the-top) internet TV service is not a priority at the moment. “There is significantly more upside and profitability in going deeper and deeper into our base versus following a video-only offering OTT,” said Comcast VP Matt Strauss at a November convention. Nevertheless, it negotiated the rights during recent carriage negotiations with cable and network broadcasters as a hedge against future developments.

Comcast would also need to acquire nationwide streaming rights with major partners like CBS and ESPN, Bloomberg’s sources say. It may be unwilling to do that soon, as it would have to renegotiate long-term contracts, possibly for less favorable terms. The cable and ISP giant recently launched its TV app on Roku set-top boxes and Samsung TVs, and will reportedly offer a “skinny bundle” of government and local channels on the devices. For now, that’s the closest thing it will have to an OTT service.

Given how fast the media landscape is changing these days, Comcast may need to consider a streaming model sooner than it expects. On top of Sling TV and DirecTV Now, streaming veterans Hulu and YouTube both recently unveiled live TV offerings. As one analyst told Bloomberg, it wouldn’t be hard for the cable giant to leap into the fray if it needed, given its size and importance in the industry. Whether the public actually wants the much-hated firm to do it is another matter.

Source: Bloomberg

Tool may finally let you stream its brooding art metal

A number of artists who were initially opposed to streaming services wind up with their music available there for one reason or another. The music of both The Beatles and Prince is now available for streaming after both were holdouts for a long time. According to Bloomberg, Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan may be the latest to change his mind.

Tool is gearing up to release its first album in more than a decade and has a US tour scheduled for 2017. Bloomberg’s sources indicate that the band’s existing catalog, which includes the triple platinum selling album Ænima, could be made available on the likes of Spotify and Apple Music ahead of the new album release. Those sources say members of the band have been in talks with streaming services about adding its catalog to their music libraries.

The band hasn’t announced a release date for the album that’s still in the works, so it could be a while before its music hits your go-to subscription service. While Tool has been one of the remaining high-profile holdouts for streaming and digital music, Keenan’s other bands (A Perfect Circle and Puscifer) are already available to stream in places like Spotify. You can’t even buy Tool’s albums digitally from iTunes or other online stores. Physical CDs and vinyl are the only way for you to get them. However, Tool’s full albums have been posted to YouTube, if you’re really eager to give ’em a listen.

Via: Billboard

Source: Bloomberg

Logitech’s CEO says you can innovate and be humble

Logitech is a rare technology company. It’s been around for 35 years, all the while finding different ways to thrive as an independent accessory maker. But despite being a well-known brand, it’s never been considered “hip” like Apple or Beats. Instead of betting big on showy new products, Logitech has always focused on finding successful niches where it can build a small, but loyal following. And according to the company’s CEO, Bracken Darrell, he wouldn’t have it any other way. At SXSW last week, I sat down with Darrell to chat about the road ahead for Logitech.

Where is Logitech now and where is it going?

When I look around, I see that everything will be reinvented. It may take 20 years, but there won’t be a single thing in this room that isn’t connected. In that world, it’s so cool because the really large companies can’t do everything, nor would they want to. It leaves room for people like us to go into small ponds where we can be a big fish. We’re never going to try to compete with the big guys in anything that’s meaningful to them. But we can go into a lot of little places.

There are so many opportunities. We have a lot technologies, great acoustics, far-field mics, video sensors. And we’re building out our software capabilities, so we can offer something where we should.

Are we going to see more products like the Circle camera relying on connected software?

I always say, we want to be capable of doing it, but we don’t need to do it. We’ll do it where it makes sense, where the business model requires it. But in general we’re perfectly happy letting cloud companies fulfill their mission and enable them through hardware. We’re also willing to jump up into the cloud and create our own service when we need to. I think the key is flexibility.

Logitech has always been known as more of an accessory company. Since tech is expanding now, does that mean there are now more areas for you to conquer?

The analogy that I always use is, if you watched us during our heyday, during the peak of the growth curve that happened between 1997 and 1998 to 2008, the platform was growing, and that was the PC. We had mice and keyboards, and we were gaining share during that period. We had different ways to grow: The platform grew, we were adding new categories like speakers and cameras, but the total mix was really exciting.

What’s happening now is that the PC has kind of flatlined, so now we peripheralize cloud-based services. Let’s take streaming music: If you took the growth of Bluetooth speakers and looked at where streaming music was going, they overlapped completely. So we offer a peripheral [the UE wireless speakers] that lets you bring that music anywhere you want and play it with people. We’re doing the same thing in gaming. In video conferencing, we’re not really creating point to point video conferencing, but we’re creating peripherals that lets anyone join the party in the cloud.

That’s the future for us. It’s about making good choices and being ready for mistakes and failures.

Logitech’s also known for its hardware, is your focus on that changing moving forward?

I would say we have changed. We now have someone in charge of software engineering in every business, more than firmware. The Circle camera is probably the best example, where we’re actually doing machine learning. Do I think we need to be a machine learning expert company? I don’t. I think we ought to be able to do it where we need to do it, and have very strong capabilities when we’re doing it. Usually, we’re going to be offering an experience at the very end, and that’s our game.

I’ve noticed a couple categories like Bluetooth speakers where Logitech has taken a lead. How does Logitech approach new markets?

We’re really not dominant in anything. We’re kind of humble about everything. We have a few moments of greatness. When we go into a category, we try to design it from a consumer experience out. So, for example, with Bluetooth speakers, the reason that product did well was because we really started with thinking, “How are people going to use this?”

We saw that people would cut the cord with a Bluetooth speaker and that was it, it would just sit in the middle of a table. That was great because it was wireless, but I don’t think it was the logical extreme of what you had. What happens? When you go out and listen to music in the wild, you tend to go to places with tables, and it’s usually not just two people. It sits in the middle of the table and everyone wants to feel like part of the party, so you’re worried about where to turn it. So we made it circular, which was hard in the beginning, but now other people [like Amazon with the Echo] have followed us.

And then we said, we know people are going to take it into places where it’s going to get wet, so we made it waterproof. We made it super sturdy so you can practically drop it out of a building without taking damage. And a lot of other people’s speakers were really fragile. The other thing we did was say, when you’re buying a portable speaker today it’s different from what it was in your home, because you’re using it with your phone. So it should have an app where we can constantly upgrade it. So we made it so that you can connect two speakers in stereo, now you can connect around 200 more and play as many as you want. And we just kept updating it.

What are you looking at in terms of upcoming categories? VR seems like it’ll need a lot of accessories.

We’re not really sure what we’re going to do next. But VR and AR, we’re doing a lot of work in there. I don’t know when we’re going to launch something, it may not be anytime soon. We certainly are interested in it, though, and we’re doing a lot of experimentation to try and understand how VR is likely unfold and what accessories will be around it, who the players are. It’s a really exciting place.

With the way Microsoft has opened up Windows Holographic, lots of PC companies will be making VR headsets. I could see a Windows Holographic Logitech headset at some point.

We’re open to everything. And we like anything that really feels like it can enhance the experience right at the end. We’ll do other things, but that really feels like home. It’s way too early for me to talk much about it.

It seems more companies want to build up their hardware expertise these days. Is Logitech fiercely independent at this point, or would you ever consider joining another company?

We have no desire to be bought, nor would I say it would never happen. At the end of the day, I don’t really even think in those terms. We’re just trying to create amazing experiences, and if we do that we’ve accomplished our goals. And we want to do it consistently over time, and have an engine that builds the capability to do that. I don’t know what that means from an ownership standpoint. We’ve always been happy being independent.

Which of your products are you most excited about right now?

That’s like asking me which of my children are my favorite! I’m really excited about all of them. I love gaming; it’s so fun and dynamic, and it feels a little like the beginning of the NBA or NFL … Have you seen Spotlight? [Logitech’s new presentation remote.] I just love that product. The cool thing is that it’s one of the ways we’ve really thought through it. It’s really an attempt to make someone more relaxed and confident when they speak. It’s about making you feel like, “Wow, I’m going to kill this presentation.”

You’ve made acquisitions like Ultimate Ears. How do you decide when to buy another company versus building something yourselves?

You know it’s really simple. We’re always working on sprints. We’re working on three to 12 things at a time, all the time, that are not things we’re in. I view acquisitions completely as a way to accelerate something we’re doing, or differentiate within it. You won’t see us just buy something. Anything we’ve bought, we’re already working on. We just bought Jaybird [makers of wireless headphones]. We love that space.

What attracts Logitech to the audio market? Most consumers generally don’t pay that much attention to their audio these days.

Now I won’t be humble for a minute: We have such great acoustic capabilities. We have a lot of people at the company who are bleeding music. They’re so into it. And then we also have the technology capabilities. It’d be a shame if we couldn’t take advantage of that. It’s obviously a hot space now, the key is finding our little niche in it. We don’t want to go taking on everyone big.

We do headphones for gaming — that’s a great business — and we do them for sports. It kind of inspires you to get out there, they’re helmet ready. Jaybird was originally built in the mountains, it was for people who were really into outdoor sports. And then we’re doing the custom earphone business.

It’s funny you’re so focused on niches, Beats came out of nowhere to make people into expensive headphones. Why isn’t Logitech playing in that space?

I think Jimmy Iovine and all of the people who worked at Beats did an amazing job building that brand. They did such a marketing job that you can’t help but be in awe of it. We admire that. We’re building our marketing capability. We’re not bad, but we could be better.

If you place us in that timeframe [when Beats was getting started], you could see we were making different choices. I think what Jimmy Iovine had that we didn’t was access to celebrities, at an incredible cost. He was sitting in a chair and he is so respected, he’s such a leader, and he was a magnet for that talent. I met him once and told him, “Wow what you and Dr. Dre did has never been done before.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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

48 new emojis are coming to your phone this summer

Near the end of last year, we got word that new emojis were on the way. With that announcement came a list of 51 proposed emojis that would come with the upcoming release of Unicode 10.0. That lineup has been pared down to 48, and as Emojipedia notes, they’ll be available to use beginning on June 30th.

Emojipedia mocked up the new images in the style of Apple’s emojis, but the site’s illustrations are not exactly what will be on your iPhone. If Apple’s come out similar to these, though, some of the new illustrations will look pretty different than when they were proposed in November. Most notably, the newer Woman With Headscarf design looks more like a person wearing a hoodie than a hijab.

This update may seem inconsequential, but emojis are a huge part of how we express ourselves now. The newcomers focus primarily on people, clothes and food, but emojis like Woman With Headscarf represent a continued push for more diversity in the emoji roster.

Via: The Ringer

Source: Emojipedia

HTC U Ultra review: Bad decisions in a beautiful body

I was almost giddy when I reviewed the HTC 10 last year. After years of casting about for the right approach, the company built a phone that seemed like a clear step in the right direction. Fast forward to January 2017: HTC revealed the $750 U Ultra, a glossy flagship that represented a totally new direction for the company. The phone packs a huge screen, a second display for quick controls and an AI-powered virtual assistant that promises to subtly help you out during the day. It’s an ambitious device, certainly, but what’s life without a few risks? Unfortunately, looks aside, HTC’s newest phone feels poorly thought-out. At the risk of sounding too grim too early, the HTC U Ultra is beautiful, expensive and misguided.

Hardware

Normally, I loathe putting phones in cases – engineers and designers didn’t slave away on these things just so you could hide them behind cheap plastic. But with the U Ultra, I didn’t feel like I had a choice. After years of crafting metal-bodied smartphones, HTC wrapped the Ultra in glass, including Gorilla Glass 5 on the 5.7-inch screen and a curved pane of colorful “liquid surface” on the back. (There’s another version of the U Ultra with sapphire crystal coating the screen, but it’ll set you back close to $1,000 — no thanks.)

I don’t have enough adjectives for how nice our blue review unit’s finish looks. Stunning? Striking? Rapturous? (That last one was a little much, but you get the idea.) Just as impressive is how those two glass sides gently curve toward each other, eventually meeting the thin metal rim that runs around the phone without any harsh or protruding seams. The only thing that breaks up the U Ultra’s sleek lines is a square hump where the 12-megapixel rear camera lives. For all of the financial trouble HTC has had lately, it still knows how to build an impeccably pretty machine. It’s too bad that the U Ultra isn’t water or dust resistant — a phone this pricey should be a little more durable.

The downside, of course, is that glass breaks. It’s a good thing, then, that a thin, clear plastic case is included in the box. HTC says the phone can handle drops from as high as a meter (3.2 feet) without a problem, but anything more than could wreck that beautiful build.

The other downside becomes apparent when you spin the phone around. Let’s see, there’s a volume rocker on the right side with the power button below that, the SIM tray up top, the USB Type-C port on the bottom and… damn: no headphone jack. HTC’s repudiation of that classic port actually started with last year’s Bolt/10 Evo, but the loss doesn’t sting any less now that we’re looking at a 2017 flagship. Since HTC already threw in a case, you’d think a freebie 3.5mm-to-Type-C adapter would be in order, but no — you’ll have to use the included USonic earbuds or find another pair of Type-C cans.

The annoyances don’t end there. I wish the fingerprint sensor and the capacitive Back and Recent Apps keys were centered in the expanse of black under the phone’s screen. That might sound like I’m nitpicking, but, as you’ll see later, HTC’s attention to detail wavers pretty frequently in this phone.

While this design is new for HTC, the stuff inside should be very familiar. We’re working with a quad-core Snapdragon 821 chipset paired with 4GB of RAM, an Adreno 530 GPU, 64GB of internal storage and a microSD slot that takes cards as large as 256GB. While your hopes for an insanely fast Snapdragon 835 chip might be dashed, this well-worn spec combo is still plenty powerful. More concerning is the 3,000mAh battery tucked away inside. That’s much, much smaller than I expected for a phone this big. Even the new LG G6, which looks downright tiny next to the U Ultra, packs a more capacious cell.

Displays and sound

The U Ultra’s face is dominated by that 5.7-inch, Super LCD5 panel, and it’s easily one of the phone’s strongest assets. Sure, there are brighter screens out there — LG’s G6 and last year’s Galaxy S7s come to mind — but the U Ultra’s panel nonetheless offers excellent viewing angles and decent colors. Thankfully, you can address that latter bit with a quick trip into the device’s settings, where you’ll find an option to tweak the screen’s color temperature as needed. Most people won’t ever bother doing this, but I found it crucial since the U Ultra’s screen is a few degrees too cool for my liking.

And of course, there’s that second screen sitting atop the main one. It’s easy enough to read at a glance and, on paper, it packs many of the same tricks I enjoyed on the LG V20. The way those tricks have been implemented, however, feels kludgy at best and completely dumb at worst.

For starters, that secondary screen can display the next event in your calendar, but there’s no way to specify which calendar you want it to use. That’s bad news if you rely on separate calendars for personal and work events, as I do. The screen displays a weather forecast for the rest of the day, but despite being a US-spec device, it insists on showing 24-hour time instead of AMs and PMs. You can control music playback in Spotify or Google Play Music, but that’s it; if, for example, you’re listening to Pandora station or a podcast in Pocket Casts, you’re stuck using the in-app controls. And for some reason, you can only access a tray of settings controls (think: WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.) when the screen is off. I get that HTC thought it was easier to swipe down into the quick settings panel, but why not make persistent controls an option? It’s sad to see that HTC’s attention to detail seemed to end with the U Ultra’s hardware.

Then again, HTC always had other plans for this additional space. It’s the little corner where HTC’s AI-powered Assistant, Sense Companion, lives, offering suggestions based on what it knows about you and your behavior.

At least the U Ultra does better at cranking out the tunes. The days of two front-mounted speakers on an HTC flagship are long behind us, but the compromise on display here works well anyway. There’s one front speaker that doubles as the earpiece and another speaker mounted on the phone’s bottom edge. Together, they’re capable of pumping out loud audio, and with decent channel separation, to boot. There’s a little software trickery at play here, too: When playing audio through the speakers, you can switch between “music” and “theatre” modes. I suppose the latter is supposed to sound more spacious, and it works to some extent, but the music mode tends to flatten out whatever you’re listening to so that it feels more present.

Similar software makes the included USonic earbuds more than just a cheapie pack-in. When you pop the buds into your ears for the first time, you’re ushered through a quick customization process that automatically tunes audio specifically for your head. I’m no acoustician, but to my ears, the difference was immediate. The earbuds are also meant to change the way that same audio sounds based on your environment, so you’ll continue to get great sound while you’re, say, waiting for the train to show up. The thing is, it’s a manual process that requires you to tap a notification every time you want to re-tune based on ambient sound. HTC fanboys might pine for the company’s audio halcyon days, but the U Ultra definitely still has some game.

Software

When HTC released the 10, it also updated its approach to the Sense interface. Long story short, the company streamlined the Sense interface, discontinued some apps where Google was clearly doing better work and added theming options so your phone doesn’t have to look like mine. The U Ultra ships with Android 7.0 Nougat onboard, but HTC’s approach to augmenting it hasn’t changed much since last year. In general, that’s fine by me: I’m a Sense fan (though it certainly isn’t for everyone) and Nougat brings enough notable changes in its own right. The less HTC messes with it, the better.

That — along with a lack of carrier pressure — explains why there are so few extraneous apps on the U Ultra. HTC’s Boost+ is a resource management app that made it very easy to free up storage space. My inner paranoiac had me frequently thumbing the controls to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of the phone, but I never actually noticed any speed gains. The app gets bonus points for letting me lock certain apps with a PIN or pattern to keep prying eyes out of my business. BlinkFeed is back too, for better or worse; a quick left-to-right swipe on the homescreen reveals a grid of content to digest.

BlinkFeed pulls content from social networks like Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and LinkedIn, among others, along with articles from NewsRepublic if you’re so inclined. I didn’t have many issues with the sorts of stories the app automatically provided. Be warned, though: BlinkFeed likes to put sponsored posts right in your eye-line when you open it. Really? If you’re going to have me look at ads by default, give me a discount on the phone or something. While the ads are easy to disable, making them opt-out rather than opt-in does nothing for the overall experience.

The stuff I’ve mentioned so far is classic HTC. Sense Companion is not. There’s a team somewhere within HTC that has spent months building an AI-powered virtual assistant that means to offer suggestions (like a reminder to bring a power bank on a day your calendar says is busy) on that underutilized second screen. As it turns out, “means to” are the operative words in that sentence; I’ve been testing the phone for nearly two weeks and Sense Companion hasn’t done much of anything. I’m opted-in; I’ve allowed all permissions, and still nothing. Every once in awhile I’ll get what looks like a Companion notification, but it’s a false alarm; the phone is asking me to opt-in to suggestions that never come.

Annoying as it is for review purposes, HTC made this choice deliberately. The idea isn’t to overload users with AI-fueled notifications; subtlety is key here, with prompts to bring an umbrella timed for blustery days you’ll be out in the thick of it. Anything more pervasive than that might make you turn Sense Companion off altogether and, well, HTC can’t have that. Even now, it’s unclear whether what I’m experiencing is wrong or not, and that doesn’t bode terribly well for the feature’s short-term prospects. Sense Companion’s true value will only be made apparent in time, and it will almost certainly get better eventually. Still, if this is what everyone who buys the phone will have to deal with, I can’t imagine people would bother with Sense Companion for very long.

Camera

It’s impossible to miss the U Ultra’s main, 12-megapixel camera — it’s tucked away in that big, squarish lump around back. On paper, the camera seems promising enough: It has a f/1.8 aperture, large, 1.55-micron sensor pixels, optical image stabilization and hybrid phase-detection-and-laser autofocus, just like many other recent flagship smartphones. What the U Ultra lacks is consistency. In good lighting conditions, I found that this 12-megapixel sensor typically captures ample detail and accurate colors, but it occasionally struggles to accurately expose photos. Even then, they’re never bad, per se — just less impactful than what you’d get out of rivals like the Google Pixels. (Yes, I get that’s not a completely fair comparison since the Pixels rely on more algorithms to make photos look good, but the difference is clear nevertheless.)

Given its track record, HTC knows just how hard it is to nail a smartphone camera. The HTC 10 seemed like a great step forward last year, earning the company a surprisingly high spot on DxOMark’s mobile scale. At its best, the U Ultra produces clearer, more brightly rendered photos than the 10. Every other time, the U Ultra walks down the middle of the road. Put another way, this camera would’ve been a remarkably solid contender last year, but last year’s performance doesn’t do HTC much good now.

That’s not to say that HTC doesn’t understand anything about cameras. I often go back and forth, but HTC’s camera interface is my current favorite: It lends itself well to instantaneous shooting and the Pro mode (which lets you capture RAW images) allows for fast, meticulous fiddling. The included Zoe mode — yes, it’s still kicking around — shoots brief snippets of video along with a photo, just because. (For you iPhone people, think of it as a Live Photo broken down into its constituent parts.) And, vain as I am sometimes, I have frequently used and mostly enjoyed the U Ultra’s 16-megapixel front-facing camera.

Performance and battery life

Rather than wait for Qualcomm’s new top-tier Snapdragon 835 chipset to become widely available, HTC went with last year’s 821. It’s the classic choice between new and tried-and-true, and it’s worth noting that other manufacturers made the same decision this year. Fortunately, the 821 is still an excellent platform and I never felt as though I was missing out. The combination of these four processor cores with an Adreno 530 GPU and 4GB of RAM should sound familiar, but more often than not, they made for fluid app use, gameplay and general navigation.

Ah, but there are those pesky words: “more often than not.” For some reason, while the U Ultra didn’t so much as hiccup while playing intense games, my week of testing has seen more random bouts of lag than I would’ve expected. They happened most frequently as I was jumping in and out of open apps or even just unlocking the phone. These slow spells occurred perhaps once or twice a day and passed quickly, but they were more frequent than I cared for considering devices like the Google Pixels use the same components and were almost perfectly speedy. Your mileage may vary, though, and it’s worth reiterating that most of the time the U Ultra was snappy.

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
HTC 10
AndEBench Pro
18,789
16,164
13,030
16,673
Vellamo 3.0
5,398
5,800
4,152
4,876
3DMark IS Unlimited
30,320
29,360
26,666
26,747
GFXBench 3.0 1080p Manhattan Offscreen (fps)
44
48
47
48
CF-Bench
38,065
39,918
46,290
49,891

The U Ultra’s high-end components can be taxing on a battery, especially when we’re working with a modest 3,000mAh cell. I typically got between a day and a day and a half of moderate use on a single charge — and by “moderate” I mean I pick up the phone and fiddle with it a few times an hour, rather than sitting around glued to it.

Since I’m the kind who charges his devices every night, that kind of battery life is more or less adequate for me. With that said, there’s no denying that some of its fiercest competitors do a better job. With a Google Pixel XL, a physically smaller device with a bigger battery, I could get about two full days of use without having to overthink it. The Moto Z Force, another smaller device, could last for about three days if I played my cards right. (LG’s V20 had a bigger battery, and it was removable, but it actually fared a little worse than the U Ultra in daily use.)

The point is, I’m struggling to understand why HTC couldn’t give us something better. There’s also no denying that the U Ultra didn’t fare well in the standard Engadget rundown test, where we loop an HD video at fixed brightness with WiFi turned on. On average, the U Ultra lasted for about 11 hours and 40 minutes before dying. That’s far short of the Pixel XL’s 14 hours, but still a half-hour better than the V20.

The competition

If you’re in the market for a fancy new smartphone and you need it now, stop and look at a Pixel XL first. It has a bigger battery. It has the same Snapdragon chipset but feels faster in use. It packs a superior camera. And don’t forget: HTC also built the thing for Google. Sure, it lacks the U Ultra’s sheer style, but the promise of fast and frequent software updates should help ease the blow. Some people really like the idea of a second screen, and those folks need to see the LG V20. It has more pronounced audiophile tendencies and the controls on the auxiliary display just work better

And then, of course, there’s the current crop of 2017 flagship phones. Despite its odd aspect ratio, LG’s G6 is a return to slightly more conventional hardware, and so far I’ve been impressed with the not-quite-final version I’ve been playing with these last few weeks. (Our full review will come when after we’ve tested a finished model.) It uses the exact same Qualcomm chip as the U Ultra, but squeezes those components into a tiny, sturdy metal body that also houses a great 13-megapixel dual camera setup. The G6 also packs Google’s Assistant, rather than something like Sense Companion, which has so far been a notable positive.

Meanwhile, the U Ultra’s biggest competitor — Samsung’s heavily leaked Galaxy S8 — is almost here. We know it will have a Snapdragon 831 chip, we know it has an AI assistant that could find a life beyond just phones, and we know it’s pretty damn good-looking. We’ll have to wait to confirm the rest of the juicy details at the launch event on March 29th, but based on what we know so far, I’d be a little worried if I were HTC.

Wrap-up

I can’t stress this enough: the HTC U Ultra is not a bad device. It’s beautiful, well built and plays home to a lot of good ideas. I think HTC was right to build a big phone, and the way it wants to subtly integrate an AI assistant into that second screen is genuinely smart. It’s just unfortunate that the good ideas here have been obscured by bad design decisions and what seems to be a terminal a lack of focus. Now, it’s very, very possible we’ll see another flagship phone from HTC before the year is over. For the company’s sake, I hope it takes a hard look at what the U Ultra does and doesn’t get right before it bothers to release its next big thing.

We’re playing ‘Splatoon 2’s Global Testfire and you should too

You won’t be able to buy the follow up to Nintendo’s hit Wii U competitive shooter until Summer, but if you have a Switch you play the game today. Over the course of the next three days, Nintendo will hosting the Splatoon 2 Global Testfire — an online multiplayer demo that teases gamers with the sequel’s levels, weapons and whimsical style in six, one hour chunks. The first two are today at 12pm PT (3pm ET) and 8PM PT (11PM ET).

Nintendo marketed the original Splatoon in almost the exact same way — by giving Wii U owners a small taste of the game’s frantic 1990s inspired battlegrounds a few weeks ahead of the title’s launch. Unfortunately, this Testfire is just as limited as the original: if you aren’t available during the event’s short one-hour stints, you’re out of luck. At least there are a lot of options. If you miss today’s times, you can try again on March 25th at 4am PT (7am ET), 12pm PT (3pm ET) and 8pm PT (11PM ET) and once more on March 26th at 4am PT (7am ET).

Can’t do any of those times? Don’t worry. We’ll be streaming the first session on Facebook Live to give you a preview of what you can expect when the game launches later this year.