BlackBerry KEYone now available for pre-order at Carphone Warehouse

Pre-order today for delivery by May 5th, priced at £499.

UK retail giant Carphone Warehouse has today kicked off pre-orders for the new BlackBerry KEYone. BlackBerry Mobile’s new keyboard-toting device is available to order SIM-free for £499. That’ll get you a security and productivity-focused handset with a full QWERTY keyboard, Android 7.1.1 Nougat and BlackBerry’s full loadout of apps, including BlackBerry Hub and DTEK.

On the inside, it’s running one of the Android Central team’s favorite mid-tier chips, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 625, and that’s paired with a 3,505mAh battery — a combination that bodes well for extreme longevity. And around the back, the KEYone boasts the same 12-megapixel Sony IMX378 sensor used in the Google Pixel, a solid foundation to build upon. You’ll be dealing with a slightly unusual aspect ratio to allow space for that full keyboard though — 4.5-inch, 1620×1080 panel that sits above a row of capacitive keys.

Wondering why people still love a physical keyboard in 2017? Be sure to watch these two videos where I jump into the details. The first video explains the love affair many still have with pushing buttons. The second shows what makes the KEYone’s smart keyboard so smart.

Pre-orders from Carphone Warehouse will begin shipping from May 5.

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Google Home multi-user support lets you connect up to 6 accounts simultaneously

Now everyone gets a properly personal Google Assistant in the home.

From the beginning Google Home wasn’t going to make much sense if it was tied to a single account, and now several months after launch we have proper multi-user support for the connected smart speaker. Google Home will now connect to six Google accounts simultaneously, and tailor responses based on the voice profile of the person who asked the question.

This makes Google Home dramatically more useful for those who have the speaker placed in a shared space in the house, letting each person in the family get responses on their appointments, commute and tasks individually. As Google’s promo video shows, questions can be asked from different people in succession with no confusion, as the Home responds with the person’s name before relaying their own tailored information.

To set things up, all you have to do is open up your Google home app and look for a card that says “multi-user available” (which will appear once everything’s updated). There’s a quick process to teaching the Google Home what you sound like and linking that profile to your account, and then setting up your preferences for specific apps and integrations.

Google notes that this multi-user support is available only in the U.S. for now, with the UK getting the feature in “the coming months.”

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Sprint offering Galaxy S8 2-for-1 deal until April 27, so long as you open a new line

New Sprint customers and upgraders can get a solid deal when picking up two Galaxy S8s this week.

The Galaxy S8 launch hype is real, and Sprint is capitalizing on the buzz with a two-for-one deal that gives you two of the hottest Samsung phones for the price of one. The caveat, of course, is that this deal comes by way of Sprint’s “Galaxy Forever” lease program, meaning you’re actually signing up for two leases, but only have to pay for one.

The price for the deal is $31.25 per month per phone, and you’ll be refunded for the second phone each month so long as your account is active. Sprint’s Galaxy Forever program lets you upgrade to the new Samsung Galaxy model once every 12 months, continuing to pay your monthly fee while returning your Galaxy S8 for whatever comes next. It’s not too far removed from the other upgrade schemes carriers like T-Mobile have pushed for a while now.

Unfortunately, there’s one piece of information that makes the deal less interesting. Further fine print shows that the deal is only available for people starting two new lines with Sprint or one new line and one upgraded line, so this deal isn’t available for current Sprint customers unless they’re growing their plan. Chances are Sprint will have other incentives for people who are already customers, but they won’t be as big as these aimed to lock in new lines.

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Prepare for the world’s first nanocar race this month

Nanotechnology is fascinating, but for most people who aren’t full-time chemists, it’s a ridiculously dense field of study. An international team of scientists are trying to make nanotechnology more accessible to the public with the world’s first nanocar race, scheduled to start on April 28th in the French city of Toulouse. Six teams hailing from three continents will gather at the Centre for Materials Elaboration and Structural Studies and attempt to jolt their custom nanocars across a polished gold track 100 nanometers in length (roughly one-thousandth the width of a human hair).

The nanocars come in a variety of shapes and functionalities, and they’re not technically “cars,” since they don’t have motors (and most don’t even have wheels), as noted by Nature. The teams will make their nanocars move by shooting electrons at them from the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). They won’t be allowed to actually push the tiny vehicles, but many designs will take advantage of this specific racetrack environment.

For example, the entry from the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, has butterfly-like wings that are meant to flap when the STM gives it a jolt. Some nanocars will react to the electrons in ways that should raise their energy states, propelling them even further down the track.

Of course, the entire race will be broadcast, almost-live, on YouTube and the event’s official website. The researchers have developed a creative method of filming the race: After each prod of the STM, the teams will take three minutes to scan the track with the microscope; these scans will be collected every hour and posted online as short animations.

The race isn’t all fun and games, of course. The scientists plan to use it as an opportunity to collaborate and further study the way isolated nanomachines behave on solid surfaces — research that could impact the future of medical treatment and other integrated technologies.

Via: Nature

Source: Nanocar Race

OWC Debuts New Thunderbolt 3 Products: SSDs, PCIe Expansion Chassis, Six-Bay RAID, and External GPU

OWC has announced that it will be debuting a range of new Thunderbolt 3 products at the 2017 NAB Show this weekend in Las Vegas.

Envoy Pro EX with Thunderbolt 3
First up is the Envoy Pro EX with Thunderbolt 3, a pocket-sized, bus-powered SSD with desktop-class performance and speeds up to 40 Gb/s. Storage capacities will start at 240GB. As it remains a prototype, no release date was specified. OWC’s existing Envoy Pro EX with USB 3.0 starts at $199.99.

Mercury Helios 3
OWC’s new Mercury Helios 3 is a PCIe expansion chassis with a dedicated cooling fan and two Thunderbolt 3 ports with speeds up to 40 Gb/s. It can accommodate a half-length, full-height, double-width PCIe card. OWC said it will be available in the second quarter of 2017. Pricing was not disclosed.

Other products include the Helios FX external GPU powered by Thunderbolt 3, ThunderBay 6 six-bay RAID with Thunderbolt 3, and Mercury Viper portable Thunderbolt 3 SSD suitable for daisy chaining. OWC said the ThunderBay 6 is coming in late 2017, but no word on pricing or availability for the other products.

OWC’s previously announced Thunderbolt 3 Dock and DEC for the 2016 MacBook Pro will also be on display at the show.

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Apple Announces LivePhotosKit API for Embedding Live Photos in Websites

Apple today announced the launch of a new LivePhotosKit JavaScript-based API that’s designed to make it easy to embed Live Photos taken with Apple’s latest iPhones into websites.

This new JavaScript-based API makes it easy to embed Live Photos on your websites. In addition to enabling Live Photos on iOS and macOS, you can now let users display their Live Photos on the web.

Introduced alongside the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus in 2015, Live Photos are designed to add life and vitality to the standard still photo by adding a bit of motion. A Live Photo captures an extra 1.5 seconds of movement before and after a shot, animating an image with movement and sound.

Live Photos can be captured using the iPhone 6s, 6s Plus, SE, 7, and 7 Plus, and can be viewed on all devices running iOS 9, OS X El Capitan, and watchOS 2 or later.

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Though Live Photos have been around since 2015, few social networks support them, and there have been limited ways for non-Apple users to view them. The addition of a LivePhotosKit API may help make Live Photos more popular.
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