The Morning After: Wednesday, April 19th 2017

Hey, good morning!

This morning, we put Samsung’s Galaxy S8 through its paces, finally seeing why Facebook bought VR company Oculus, and started replaying a 20-year-old game. (Because it’s free.) Welcome to the Morning After.

Two of the best phones available right now.
Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus review: Redemption is here

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is mostly a slam dunk. It’s brilliantly designed, brimming with horsepower and has a beautiful screen. That’s all most people will need, and our gripes are minor. It’s too bad virtual assistant Bixby is still incomplete — its voice interface doesn’t work yet, and the stuff we did get can be hit-or-miss. Fortunately, Bixby is strictly optional, and the rest of the phone is remarkably polished. Long story short, if you’re looking for a new phone, this should be at the top of your list.

The headphone maker enters a new product category with help from an architect.
Master and Dynamic developed its own concrete for its first speaker

It’s important to make a statement when you branch into a new product family. Master & Dynamic has been designing some of the best-looking headphones you can buy for just under three years; today it’s introducing its first speaker, the MA770. It’s not just any wireless speaker, though. Rather than using wood, plastic or metal for the primary material on the MA770, Master & Dynamic chose concrete.

Power overwhelming.Download ‘StarCraft’ and ‘Brood Wars’ for free, right now

Blizzard just made its hit game Starcraft available for free on PC and Mac. The company will release a proper Remastered edition later this year with upgraded online capabilities and graphics upgraded for 4K-quality resolution, but you can get the old-school feeling back right now. Yes, a Zerg rush is still just as satisfying 20 years later. See you on Battle.net.

Rumors.Apple is definitely working on new iPhones

The latest batch of iPhone rumors has arrived — rather conspicuously timed to match Galaxy S 8 reviews — as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports the company is working on three new models to debut this fall. Those following along have probably heard much of this before, but this new report suggests that the anticipated “10th Anniversary” iPhone 8 or X will have a curved screen without upgrading from LCD tech to OLED. It’s also unclear whether screen based Touch ID fingerprint scanning will make it into the high-end model, or if it will launch at the same time as the two other new iPhones we’re expecting.

Still $299Sony squeezes a new 1TB hard drive into the PS4 slim

The PS4 slim just got a little more room, packing a 1TB hard drive instead of the 500GB storage it featured originally. It’s just one more thing to consider when you’re choosing between this and a PS4 Pro, but the better news is that its price hasn’t changed at all.

Steve Ballmer’s new project is an open database of government spending
USA Facts will be your new favorite website for dinner table arguments about taxes.

Our leaders may be determined to make their daily dealings less transparent, but they probably didn’t reckon on bored Steve Ballmer. The former Microsoft CEO has spent more than $10 million on a new project to open up the US government budget. USA Facts, as profiled in the New York Times, is an open, searchable database that tracks where almost all of your federal, state and local tax dollars are spent.

Five years left to train.eSports joins the 2022 Asian Games as a medal event

Esports will form part of the 2022 Asian Games, set to be held in China, with medals and everything. The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) said it wanted to reflect “the rapid development and popularity of this new form of sports participation.” It marks an evolution from next year’s 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, where eSports will debut as a demonstration sport. Come 2022 however, it will be a medal event, given equal footing with long-established athletic events.

And you can get it right in your browser, too.
Google Earth feeds your wanderlust with ‘Voyager’ stories

Google Earth’s latest update ratchets up its time-killing potential several notches. The major changes center around the home page, a new ship’s wheel icon… and adventure. Well, it’s actually called “Voyager.” Google Earth has always been about finding and investigating, but Voyager is about enabling that encouraging that with curated content. Yes, even Google Earth isn’t immune to the current trend for “stories,” or in this case, curated tales from around the world (literally). These stories are essentially themed journeys around the planet peppered with rich media such as 360 videos, and Street View (including inside buildings and underwater). And for those not sold by Facebook’s Social VR, you can also put your Oculus Rift headset to use flying around Google Earth as well.

That Oculus buyout makes sense now.Facebook Spaces finally delivers on social VR

Three years ago, when Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion, many scratched their heads in befuddlement. Social networks and virtual reality seem like such strange bedfellows; one is about connecting you to the world, while the other appears to do the opposite. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisioned a world where VR is a place for communication, not isolation. And, many years later, we get Facebook Spaces. It’s the company’s answer to social VR and Senior Editor Nicole Lee found it surprisingly compelling.

But wait, there’s more…

• AMD’s mid-range Radeon 500-series video cards are here
• Facebook’s latest Messenger makeover is all about business
• Murders, suicides and rapes: Facebook’s major video problem
• Review: Samsung’s Gear VR controller

Early Galaxy S8 owners complain of red-tinted screens

Samsung started shipping the Galaxy S8 to customers in South Korea who pre-ordered the flagship phone almost a full week ago. They were probably thinking of how lucky they were to get the phone early until some of them noticed something off about their screen. According to multiple reports posted on Korean forums like PPOMPPU and social networks like Instagram, some S8 units’ displays have a very noticeable reddish tint. It’s unclear how widespread the issue is, but it seems to be serious enough for “Galaxy S8 Red Screen” to be a trending search term on Korean search engine Naver.

[Image credit: jiweon5368/Instagram]

Samsung didn’t deny the issue and told ZDNet that it can easily be fixed in the settings:

“All Samsung phones undergo thorough testing to meet our high level of quality standards. The Infinity Display on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ has applied Super AMOLED and provides rich and expressive colors, enabling users to enjoy a clearer and more vivid viewing experience.

The Galaxy S8 was built with an adaptive display that optimizes the color range, saturation, and sharpness depending on the environment. If needed, users can manually adjust the color range of the display to change the appearance of white tones, through ‘Settings > Display > Screen Mode > Color balance’.”

An unnamed mobile industry official told Business Korea that a few Note 7 launch units also had a reddish tint brought about by the Super AMOLED display. If fixing color balance doesn’t work, his advice is to go in for a replacement — indeed, some affected users said making color adjustments did nothing for them.

Another insider pointed out to The Korea Herald that it could be caused by the company’s new deep red AMOLED tech. The S8, which is the first phone to use the technology, has two types of joint pixels: red-green and blue-green. Those two greens could cause a color imbalance, so Samsung made the red pixels look stronger and deeper. Whatever the cause is, it seems buyers’ best bet to check their phone against other devices when it arrives and adjust the color balance before panicking and asking for a replacement.

Via: CNET

Source: ZDNet, BusinessKorea

Xiaomi Unveils $360 Mi 6 Phone With Dual-Lens Camera, ‘Four-Sided 3D Glass’ Casing, No Headphone Jack

Chinese mobile maker Xiaomi unveiled the Mi 6, its latest flagship smartphone, at a packed-out event in Beijing on Wednesday.

The Mi 5’s successor features curved “four-sided 3D glass” and a front that isn’t bezel-free like the company’s Mi MIX, but the phone does boast a lot of tech for a device that starts at 2499 RMB, or $360 – about half of what a base iPhone 7 goes for in China.

Like the iPhone 7 Plus, the new 5.15-inch Mi 6 includes a 12-megapixel rear dual lens camera combining a wide-angle lens and a telephoto lens. It also matches Apple’s latest smartphone with 10x digital zoom, 2x lossless zoom, image stabilization, and depth of field effects.

Similar to the Mi 5s, the Mi 6 features a Qualcomm-based ultrasonic fingerprint reader built under the glass at the bottom of the phone. The “button-less” technology is said to recognize a 3D map of each user’s fingerprint through ultrasonic waves, although it only works within the bezel’s concave indentation that marks out the home button.

The Mi 6 includes 2×2 Wi-Fi, which is meant to improve connectivity speed, and does away with the headphone jack, settling for a single USB-C port instead. Elsewhere the handset features the latest Snapdragon 835 processor (also found in the S8), 6GB of RAM, 64GB of storage memory on the entry model, dual stereo speakers, a 3,350mAh battery, a new “night display” screen mode, and water resistance.

The Mi 6 with 128 GB option costs 2899 RMB ($420) while a special Ceramic edition goes for 2999 RMB ($435). It’s unclear at this time whether the phone will become available in Europe or the U.S.

The announcement of a new flagship phone comes at a particularly important time for Xiaomi, which suffered its first sales slump last year. The company’s former VP of Global Efforts Hugo Barra left in February, while CEO Lei Jun recently admitted the firm had grown too fast and was now entering a transitional period, as it focuses on its main markets in China and India.

Related Roundup: iPhone 7
Tags: China, Xiaomi
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Internet Archive Offers In-Browser Emulation of Classic Macintosh Software, Circa 1984-1989

This week the Internet Archive website announced it has curated a range of classic Macintosh software for interested users to download and emulate in their browser, allowing them to get a feel for Apple days of yesteryear.

The selection spans the period 1984-1989 in Macintosh history, and features classic applications like MacPaint and MacDraft, games including Dark Castle, Airborne! and Lemmings, and operating systems such as MacOS System 6.

If you’ve not experienced the original operating system for the Macintosh family of computers, it’s an interesting combination of well-worn conventions in the modern world, along with choices that might seem strange or off-the-mark. At the time the machine was released, however, they landed new ideas in the hands of a worldwide audience and gained significant fans and followers almost immediately.

In addition, the compilation of System 7.0.1 includes a large variety of software programs and a provides a vintage recreation of the later MacOS experience of 1991. Some features that System 7 boasted over its predecessor included virtual memory, personal file sharing, QuickTime, QuickDraw 3D, and an improved user interface.

The full range of software can be found in the Macintosh Collection. The emulator itself comes prepackaged in each listing and does not require a separate download.

Tag: Macintosh
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Apple May Cut Imagination Tech Royalties By Two Thirds as it Winds Down Chip Deal

Apple is likely to pay out just one third of its current royalty rate to Imagination Technologies as it begins winding down its supply deal with the chipmaker over the next two years, according to analysts at UBS financial services (via Reuters).

The prediction includes the expectation that British-based Imagination will become loss-making by 2019 without any Apple royalties to fall back on, and that the firm will have to work out a cost-cutting strategy if it is to survive.

Earlier this month, shares in Imagination plunged after Apple informed the company that it plans to stop using its graphics technology in Apple consumer devices in up to two years’ time.

The news delivered a huge blow to Imagination Technologies, which provides the PowerVR graphics architecture found in Apple’s full range of iOS devices and receives a small royalty on every sale, amounting to up to half of the British firm’s revenue.

Imagination said Apple had made the decision because the tech giant was developing its own independent graphics processing chips, which would reduce its reliance on the company.

Imagination is reportedly in talks with Apple over a new licensing deal, but UBS analysts forecast that Apple is likely to bring down the royalty rate, currently at around $0.30 per unit, to closer to $0.10, which is the rate Imagination currently charges customers such as MediaTek.

Valuing Imagination based on discounted cash flows, UBS estimated the company’s Apple business is worth 75 pence per share. Without Apple, the stock tumbles to just 35 pence. That totals 110 pence, using a sum-of-the-parts valuation. Imagination has a market capitalization of $370 million – 2,000 times smaller than Apple’s $741 billion valuation – while its stock currently trades at 103.19 pence.

Tag: Imagination Technologies
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The best movies on Netflix UK

Netflix may be best known for Originals like House of Cards and Orange is The New Black, but the streaming service also has a varied selection of critically-acclaimed movies to choose from. You can even download them onto your smartphone or tablet to watch on the go. Here’s our pick of the best movies you should be streaming on Netflix UK right now.

Whiplash

Newcomer Miles Teller stars as a promising young jazz drummer who is pushed to the edge of his sanity by a sadistic music teacher at a prestigious New York music academy. The frenetic soundtrack and J.K. Simmons’ super-aggressive mentoring skills make it an exhausting but brilliant watch.

Fargo

With the spinoff TV show in its third series, now is a good time to revisit the original film from the Coen Brothers. The darkly comic thriller stars Joel Coen’s wife Frances McDormand as a heavily pregnant police officer investigating a number of homicides in a snowy Minnesota town following a bungled kidnapping.

To Kill A Mockingbird

Based on Harper Lee’s seminal 1960 novel, this powerful film stars Gregory Peck as fair-minded lawyer Atticus Finch. In spite of local opinion, he takes on the case of a Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of rape by a white woman, in racially segregated Alabama in the 1930s. Essential viewing.

Searching for Sugar Man

This fascinating film won the 2013 Oscar for best documentary and chronicles two Cape Town music fans’ search for their musical idol Sixto Rodriguez, who was rumoured to have killed himself live onstage. Though the American singer-songwriter was never successful in his home country, his albums were huge in South Africa.

Groundhog Day

Heartwarming without ever being too schmaltzy, this classic 1996 comedy stars Bill Murray in one of his best roles. He plays a cynical Pennsylvania weatherman who finds himself doomed to keep repeating the same day over and over again after covering the local Groundhog Day ceremony.

Young Frankenstein

The best collaboration between Mel Brooks and the late Gene Wilder, this hilarious horror is a pitch perfect parody of the Frankenstein films made by Universal in the 1930s. Wilder plays Frederick Frankenstein (it’s pronounced “Fronkensteen”) who unsuccessfully tries to distance himself from his mad scientist grandfather’s work before eventually following in his footsteps.

Green Room

Things go badly wrong for a young punk band when they unwittingly book a last-minute gig at a remote neo-Nazi bar and witness something they shouldn’t have. This awesome low-budget thriller is wonderfully grisly, but definitely not one for the squeamish.

The Craft

Allstar/Cinetext/COLUMBIA

The Craft

Basically, Clueless for goths, this supernatural thriller about a small coven of witches at an LA high school stars original Worst Witch Fairuza Balk and is a perfect antidote to the typically saccharine teen dramas of the 90s. The supernatural soundtrack is also on point.

Dr. Strangelove

Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War classic about an insane US Air Force general launching a nuclear attack against the Soviets is darkly hilarious. The whipsmart political satire sees Peter Sellers playing several roles to perfection, including that of the wheelchair-bound former Nazi Dr Strangelove.

Captain Phillips

Tom Hanks stars in the true story of Richard Phillips, a merchant mariner whose cargo ship was hijacked by Somali pirates, this survival thriller is mesmerising from start to finish. The final scene is a tough watch, with Hanks reminding us why he’s still one of the highest paid actors in the world.

Labyrinth

Lucasfilm / Photofest

Labyrinth

The late musician/actor and all-round creative genius David Bowie stars as the Goblin King in this Jim Henson ’80s classic about a girl who is forced to enter a fantastical maze to rescue her baby brother. Despite appearing in a preposterous wig and eye-wateringly tight trousers, Bowie steals the show. Obviously.

The Warriors

After being framed for the murder of a gang leader, The Warriors find themselves in a race against time to get back to the safety of their Coney Island lair, pursued by every other mob in the city. The gang uniforms in this violent 70s thriller may be hilariously dated but that’s just part of what makes it a cult classic.

Sing Street

Sing Street

Perfect for anyone who’s ever been in a band – and pretty much everyone else – this 2016 comedy drama set in 1980s Dublin follows a troubled teen who starts a band to impress the girl he likes. From the shoddy homemade pop videos to the American high school dance dream sequence, it’s got everything you need for a musical ’80s homage.

Battle Royale

A strong inspiration for The Hunger Games, and many other films besides, this disturbingly violent thriller sees a group of Japanese high school students shipped off to an island and forced to fight to the death as part of the annual government-sanctioned Battle Royale game.

Annie Hall

As in many of his films, Woody Allen plays a exaggerated version of himself, in this case neurotic comedian Alvy Singer, who falls in love with flighty Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) in this sharp Manhattan-based romantic comedy. If you’re only ever going to watch one Woody Allen film, this is the one to choose.

Red Army

This documentary film tells the gripping story of the Soviet ice hockey team. As well as explaining how the squad became so dominant in the sport during the Cold War, it also tells the tale of those who defected to the US before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Fascinating stuff.

In the Heat of the Night

Screen legend Sidney Poitier stars in this 1967 classic as a Philadelphia detective who travels to a small Mississippi town to investigate a murder. With sad predictability, he’s met with hostility and a racist police chief (Rod Steiger) with whom he must work to solve the crime.

Let the Right One In

Ignore the remake (Let Me In) and stick with the original Swedish horror film about a bullied boy who falls in love with a vampire girl in the Stockholm suburbs in the early 1980s. The macabre romance is bleak and bizarre but also strangely uplifting.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Based on John le Carré’s novel of the same name, this gripping Cold War thriller stars Richard Burton as British agent Alec Leamas who is determined to ‘come in from the cold’ and give up his life of espionage. To do that, he must complete one last mission to East Germany as a faux defector, in order to spread misinformation.

13th

This Oscar-nominated documentary from director Ava DuVernay takes its title from the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S Constitution which abolished slavery in 1865. The thought-provoking film takes an uncomfortable look at the country’s subsequent history of racial inequality including the Jim Crow segregation laws and the demonisation and mass incarceration of minority communities.

Google Maps for iOS gets ‘Timeline’ feature to help you recall everywhere you’ve been

Why it matters to you

Your Timeline could be a fun way to remind yourself of where you went on a trip and what you did across any given time period.

Timeline for Google Maps has finally landed for iOS.

The feature, which launched two years ago for Android users, helps you remember travels and activities around your neighborhood and beyond by tracking your movements everywhere you go.

While some might actually find that a little creepy, Google presents Timeline as a fun and potentially useful tool for reminding yourself of past trips, or for eliminating the guesswork when trying to recall a place you visited or a time when you did a particular activity.

Aimed at providing “a daily snapshot” of your life, users can edit their Timeline if the recorded information is ever a little off, or even delete a day’s worth of data, a specific date range, or the whole darn lot if you really don’t want to be reminded of a particular day’s shenanigans.

It also includes a range of activity and transportation types, allowing you to select from a list to add more detail that could prove useful for later reference.

To access Timeline, simply hit the menu button top left and select it from the drop-down menu, or tap the place card of a location or business you’ve previously visited. In a post announcing Timeline for iOS, Google Maps product manager Gerard Sanz explained: “So if you went to Point Reyes National Seashore a few days ago, the dates of your past visits will appear on the place card (only visible to you). From there you can tap directly into Your Timeline to get the dates and details of your visits and rediscover the experience.”

Timeline also offers monthly emails “summarizing the cities, countries, and places you’ve visited.” However, if you’d rather not be reminded that you were just too darn busy to manage anything beyond the daily commute, you can turn them off by hitting the feature’s settings tab and toggling the “Timeline emails” button.

The launch of Timeline for the iOS version of Google Maps comes in the same week as the company announced it’s added a brand new exploration element to its other globe-focused tool, Google Earth. You can find out all about it here.

Xiaomi Mi 6 ditches the 3.5mm jack, picks up Snapdragon 835 and dual cameras

The Mi 6 has everything you’re looking for in a 2017 flagship, if you don’t care about the 3.5mm jack.

At a massive event in Beijing, Xiaomi unveiled its 2017 flagship, the Mi 6. The phone is the first from a Chinese manufacturer to be powered by Qualcomm’s latest 10nm Snapdragon 835, offering eight CPU cores with a max clock speed of 2.45GHz. The Adreno 540 GPU is 25% faster than last year’s Adreno 530, and has serious VR chops.

The design itself is fairly conservative, and is an evolution of what we’ve seen from the Mi 5s. The frame is made out of stainless steel, with the “four-sided 3D glass” rounding out the design, which is now splash-resistant.

The Mi 6 retains a 5.15-inch Full HD display, as well as the Qualcomm Sense ID-enabled fingerprint scanner at the front of the device. Other specs include 6GB of RAM, a 3350mAh battery, 2×2 MIMO Wi-Fi, and a dual-camera setup at the back that pairs a 12MP wide-angle lens with a 12MP telephoto lens for 2x lossless zoom.

There are pros and cons on the audio front. The upside is that the Mi 6 offers stereo speakers located at the front of the device, a welcome addition. However, the phone doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack, a surprising omission considering Xiaomi makes a lot of affordable audio products that rely on the headphone jack.

The combination of Snapdragon 835, Full HD display, and a decent-sized battery should result in excellent battery life, a trait that’s shared by all Xiaomi phones. The default color option is the blue model you see in the image above, but Xiaomi will also roll out a limited edition version of the Mi 6 in silver.

The Mi 6 will be available for ¥2,499 ($360) for the model with 64GB storage, and a variant with 128GB storage will retail for ¥2,899 ($420). Like last year, Xiaomi is rolling out a ceramic edition of the Mi 6 with 128GB storage that will be on sale for ¥2,999 ($435).

Overall, the Mi 6 looks very enticing, and the high-gloss finish will definitely make the phone stand out. The lack of a headphone jack will deter potential customers however, and given the lack of decent USB-C audio products, it isn’t clear why more and more manufacturers are insisting on getting rid of the 3.5mm port.

Galaxy S8 and S8+ make their debut in India; prices start at ₹57,900

Galaxy S8 and S8+ will go on sale in India starting May 5.

At a media event in New Delhi, Samsung launched the Galaxy S8 and S8+ for the Indian market. The phones will be available starting May 5, and are up for pre-order later today on Flipkart, Samsung’s online partner. The Galaxy S8 will retail for ₹57,900, while the larger Galaxy S8+ will be available for ₹64,900.

As always for a marquee launch, Samsung is incentivizing its flagships with several launch-day offers. Those pre-ordering the phone will receive a free wireless charger, and if you’re a Jio customer, you get to double your data quota. In addition to Flipkart, the phones will be sold on Samsung India’s online store.

The main difference between the Galaxy S8 and S8+ is the screen size — the former has a 5.8-inch display and the latter a 6.2-inch panel. Both screens sport a QHD+ resolution, and the bezel-less Infinity Display maximizes screen real estate, allowing Samsung to fit a massive display in a chassis that’s not larger than last year’s Galaxy S7.

Galaxy S8 and S8+ review: Such great heights

The increase in screen size means that the S8+ has a larger 3500mAh battery to the 3000mAh battery in the standard S8. Otherwise, you’re looking at identical phones that feature Samsung’s new 10nm Exynos 8895 SoC, 4GB of RAM, 64GB storage, microSD slot Dual Pixel 12MP camera at the back, 8MP front shooter, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, USB-C, Wi-Fi ac, LTE with VoLTE, and IP68 dust and water resistance. The fingerprint sensor has been moved to the back, but you get iris scanning as well as facial recognition.

On the software front, you get the latest iteration of Samsung’s heavily-customized UI running atop Android 7.0 Nougat. Samsung needed a hit following the Note 7 debacle, and the Galaxy S8 and S8+ deliver on that front. These are the phones to beat in 2017. Will you be picking up the Galaxy S8 or S8+ in India? If so, let us know what model and color option in the comments below.

See at Flipkart

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+

• Galaxy S8 and S8+ review!
• Galaxy S8 and S8+ specs
• Everything you need to know about the Galaxy S8’s cameras
• Get to know Samsung Bixby
• Join our Galaxy S8 forums

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Google Wifi UK review: A second opinion

Google Wifi is simple, friendly, and most important of all, just works.

A wireless router is not what you’d call an exciting product. When you buy a new one, generally it’s a “distress purchase” — you part with your money because your old one broke and a replacement is a necessity. Like most of us, if my Wi-Fi works pretty well, or even adequately, I’m not about to rock the boat.

Routers as a product category also tend to be pretty dry and technical. It’s not too long since setting one up required at least a basic knowledge of computer networking, to say nothing of the arcane web interfaces (and sometimes actual CD-ROMs!) that would accompany the setup process.

Most routers are stuffy and confusing. Google Wifi aims to fix that.

Bottom line: Most routers aren’t really user-friendly in the slightest. And although all the connected gadgets we rely on so much require Wi-Fi to keep to speed, the devices providing that connectivity are often stuck in the past.

That’s where Google Wifi aims to shake things up, with small Internet-connected cylinders you can dot around your home, and simple set-up and maintenance through your smartphone. The hardware itself isn’t particularly eye-catching, and that’s kind of the point. It’s a small, minimalist plastic stump, featureless except for a small “G” logo up top and a glowing status light (which is easy to dim or disable if the unit lives somewhere like a bedroom or home theater system.)

Setup starts with unpacking the (slick, easy to unbox) cardboard packaging and hooking your first Wifi point up to your modem or existing gateway. I opted for the latter, because I still need to connect some stuff through good old-fashioned ethernet, and Google Wifi only has one ethernet port to connect an additional device or switch.

From there, it’s simply a matter of powering Google Wifi on, installing the app on your phone (Android or iOS; I used an LG G6) and following the instructions. First, you’ll automatically locate nearby Wifi spots waiting to be set up, and scan a QR code on its base to confirm you’re setting up the right unit. Then pick a network name and password, and repeat the process for any extra Google Wifis you want to add.

Google recommends spacing them no more than a couple of rooms apart, though there’s no further guidance given. If you’re replacing an older Wi-Fi setup, chances are you know which rooms have the worst connectivity, and so you’ll want to bridge out with your second (or third, and so on) Google Wifi to extend your network’s range into these rooms.

You’ll need to use your Google account to take command of your Wifi network, but the trade-off is a great setup and maintenance experience.

All of this is handled through your Google account, which for me, as someone who’s bought into the Google ecosystem, was a no-brainer. (If you’d prefer not to do things the Google way, obviously this will be a sticking point, and maybe you’ll want to look at mesh setups without the Google account requirement.) In any case, as the owner of your Google Wifi setup, you’ll control everything, and be able to delegate powers to family members or roommates.

And each step is punctuated by beautiful Material Design animations, naturally.

Google Wifi works as a mesh system, which means all the Wifi points in the system are connected to each other at all times, whether directly, or through another point. That’s a bit hard to visualize with just two Google Wifis in a small-to-mid-sized apartment, but makes more sense when you think about having, say, three or four in a larger house.

More: How does a mesh network work?

Google Wifi could help you work around that one wall that seems to suck up connectivity.

Still, the benefits of Google Wifi even in my home setup were plain to see. The total area it’s covering isn’t massive, but like many old-ish buildings in the UK, there are certain walls that play havoc with any kind of radio transmissions. So plopping the second Google Wifi spot in the living room helped to boost coverage not just in the immediate area, but in the adjacent kitchen, which has one of those problematic Wifi-absorbing walls.

Mesh networks like Google Wifi also put an end to worries over where to put your main router, since connectivity can be expanded so easily. While a single 802.11ac point like a lone Google Wifi does a pretty good job a few rooms away, you no longer need to worry so much about which room you want to have the best connectivity. The mesh has you covered.

Once you’re set up — a process which, for me, took a little over 45 minutes, including unboxing, cable-wrangling and firmware updating — you’re good to go. The Google Wifi app gives you speed test and diagnostic options, and lets you easily set usage controls for certain devices — a great option for parents.

Google has banished just about all the pain points of wireless networks.

And you can continue to monitor and control your network from afar through the Google Wifi app, regardless of whether you’re on your home network, or out and about on a cellular connection.

Also a big deal: no more tedious manual router updates — all that stuff is handled automatically by the boxes over time, and Google Wifi pulls down the latest firmware automatically when you first set it up.

Essentially, once you’re set up, Google Wifi does what any good router should do and gets out of the way. If you need to tweak settings, give a device priority access to your connection or set up guest access to your network, the Google Wifi app is easier to use and more responsive than any web-based router admin page I’ve seen.

And that’s a good way to sum up Google Wifi, really. It’s Wi-Fi for the modern age — wireless connectivity that’s actually in step with the myriad devices it’s connected to. I couldn’t tell you whether Google Wifi has the same raw throughput as this £350 ASUS Spider Router, but it’s fast enough for everything I can throw at it, even with more than a dozen devices connected at once.

Chances are, unless you’ve paid special attention to your home network setup, Google Wifi will be a considerable upgrade for you, too — at least in terms of user experience, and probably signal strength too.

Google Wifi is on sale now in the UK, priced £129 for a single unit, or £229 for a two-pack.

See Google Wifi 1-pack at Currys

See Google Wifi 2-pack at Currys