Today Weather – Forecast Android app review

There are many weather apps on Android that all tell the weather but very few do it in a way that looks as good as Today Weather – Forecast.

Today Weather is a great weather app that puts the information you need to know right in front of you in a clear and easy to understand way. What makes Today Weather stand out are the vibrant colors and in particular the black background that seems to make everything pop.

There is an easy to use slide-in menu to easily access the weather at your location and also various pre-set locations to get an idea, for example, of what the weather is like at your next vacation destination. There is also a 7-day forecast so you’ll be sure to not get caught out when planning your days out.

Each weather update and location are complimented by crowd-sourced photos that make the weather overview look stunning. Breaking down the weather per day, you’ll see the air quality with UV index, actual temperature, humidity, wind speed, air pressure, and sunrise/sunset times. Simply swipe left or right to move between your many different locations.

The settings for the Today Weater app are super simple and this is what I like about the app, in that you don’t have a ton of settings to tweak and configure; simply set your location and you’re good to go.

The app looks great on the Galaxy S8 because of the black background and display on the device, but the app is just very well designed so would look great across the board. I’d love to see an Android Wear companion for this and hope the developer continues to develop this great app.

Today Weather is free and is ad-supported with in-app purchases available to remove the ads. You can grab it now on the Google Play Store here.

Nekteck NK-S1 is a pint-sized powerhouse bluetooth speaker (review)

Go ahead and enter “Bluetooth speaker” into Amazon or Google’s search bar; you will be hit with a ridiculous wave of dozens (if not hundreds) of models to choose from. Some highlight special features, like water-resistance, portability, or some funky shape to get your friends talking.

But in almost every case, you, dear consumer, are just looking for a small, but quality audio product. A speaker that checks off your baseline wish list:

• Portable size
• (At least fairly) non-descript and classic-looking
• Easy and consistent Bluetooth pairing
• Great sound; or at least sounds pretty good at louder, outdoor levels
• Reasonable price. Ok, cheap.

Well good news, I’ve been testing a speaker that checks all of these plus a couple more! It’s the Nekteck NK-S1 Bluetooth speaker.

It’s a mighty mite that is still more than a respectable powerhouse in terms of usability & audio performance.

“But who the heck is Nekteck?!?”, I hear you asking. In all honesty, I asked the same question when offered to review this speaker by my editors; I had zero interaction with them beforehand. Turns out you can think of Nekteck as a competitor to Aukey or even an Anker: a company that has found its niche in offering various low-price but rather high-quality hardware and accessory products to the consumer masses.

In addition to various Bluetooth speakers, they offer earbuds, wireless/battery/wall/solar chargers, iPhone battery cases, car jump starters (the increasingly popular battery-powered style), solar-powered lights, selfie-sticks, USB/Lightning cordage, screen protectors, and even a wireless doorbell system for your home. There’s even a back & neck massager in its offerings.

1 of 4

Speaker straight out of the box

Side-by-side with a Big Jambox

Size difference w/Big Jambox

Top view vs. Big Jambox

The speaker is smaller than I thought when it arrived in its box, coming in at a petite 3″ x 3″ x 7.5″. It feels almost half the size if my Big Jambox. The unit comes in a classy, low-slung black look, with the Nekteck logo low & right. it looks like the sound could come out the unit in a 360° arc, but there are three directions that the speakers fire: front, back, and down.

In the box you get the speaker, USB-to-microUSB charging cable (wall wart not included), a short 3.5 mm audio cable, and a small how-to guide.

The speaker is marketed as a “2.1” unit; meaning you get the normal “2” front-firing channels for stereo sound @ 10 watts, plus there’s an additional “.1” down-firing subwoofer speaker that is meant to add some meat to the low-frequency notes, at an equal 10W. Off this subwoofer are a pair of passive bass radiators front and back to fill out these low-frequency tones.

All the controls are on the top, including:

• Power
• Mute
• Play/Pause
• EQ/Equalizer (more on this in a bit)
• Volume -/+
• Pairing/Bluetooth
• Aux

This control layout is just about perfect, in my opinion. It doesn’t overwhelm you with choices, but it doesn’t make it so sparse that you’re left scratching your head as to how to operate the thing.
On the back of the unit is the micro-USB charging port and 3.5 mm aux audio jack, if you feel the need to cable the speaker to your phone or a different audio unit.
(Why would you do this? Well, two reasons that I can think of: 1.) Your device, like an older stereo or TV, may not have Bluetooth, or 2.) You may like the sound coming via a cable that much better.)

After the requisite charging and firing up the speaker, you are greeted with a pretty awful female recording to confirm power is on. As nice as the speaker sounds, this voice-over is pretty bad.

One feature of this speaker I absolutely adored is its ease of pairing with Bluetooth sources I’ve had some speakers that have flat-out refused to pair up, or seem to only when the moon is at a waning crescent….it can be that weird with some units.  All you do is press the wireless/Bluetooth button (looks like a wi-fi simple, but it gets the point across), and turn on ‘search’ in your source’s Bluetooth settings. I’ve tried it on a half-dozen devices, and every time the pairing happened within mere seconds (complete with a cringe-worth “Pairing successful!” announcement from the voice-over). My 14-year-old figured it out without a blip, which simply made me smile.

OK, now for the audio performance. In all, I’m pleasantly surprised by the audio chops of this little speaker. It can handle both small room background filler (accomplished with aplomb playing Vitamin String Quartet while preparing a meal), as well as outdoor bass-booming party music (rocking Jock Jams while CRUSHING my middle-schoolers in driveway basketball!).

This speaker has two secrets that allow for this to happen so well.

The first we’ve covered already; the dedicated subwoofer. It fires downwards, and because the speakers sits on wide rubber feet, this down-firing bass can then radiate out in all directions in a reflected fashion. Also, the front and back-facing ‘radiators’ (essentially tubes), allow for any remaining bass to escape laterally, filling the sound in a more direct vector. The overall sound can be just a tiny bit muddy (missing some of the filled-out mids & piercing high notes), but given the size of the unit, it’s completely forgivable. And I must emphasize the tiny bit part, as once you consider this speaker retails for $60, you realistically cannot fault it. Or you’re some kind of audiophile-butthead expecting $500 performance out of a $60 unit. Either way.
The second is that EQ/equalizer button on top of the unit. This switches the speaker between two modes: a low-power ‘clean mode’ and a bass-pumping ‘party mode’. The clean mode is perfect for in the kitchen during cooking, or in the bathroom while you’re
Listening to some very clean string music while powdering my nose….

prepping for the day. The mids and highs are really allowed to shine, and your music comes out extra-crisp here (I also highly recommend this mode when you’re using it as a speakerphone extension….voice frequencies are so much clearer). The party mode pumps up the subwoofer, adding extra “oomph” into all your tracks. Don’t get me wrong, this mode was used in-house on more than one occasion, and worked very well here too; just don’t expect your classical music to really sound great in this mode.

The battery is listed as a 2000 mAH, stating you should get 8 hours of playback and 300 hours of standby. I never did get close of either of these number to really test the unit, but it’s likely close and also probably depends on how loud you blasting your music, as well. The speaker uses Bluetooth 4.1 with a 10 meter rated coverage; I feel safe in giving that claim a thumbs-up as I ran all through and around the house during my time with it and never had a single dropout….it actually performed much better than my bigger (and more expensive) Big Jambox.

Overall I really, really love the Nekteck NK-S1 Bluetooth speaker. I received a great combination of size, audio quality, Bluetooth consistency, and ease-of-use, that I had yet to really grasp in the world of wireless audio. The thing was an instant hit with my family, was quickly became the go-to unit around our house, leaving several other options collecting dust. I can only highly recommend the NK-S1 speaker for you home, too!

You can pick up the Nekteck speaker from Amazon.

App Highlight: Astro – AI Meets Email

The App

Developed by Astro Technology, Astro: AI Meets Email is a new app from a new developer who believes there is room to declutter your inbox using artificial intelligence. Having been recently updated on May 11 to version 1.0.5, Astro is very much in its infancy but the developer is working to patch any bugs quickly. Astro is an intelligent, modern email app for Gmail and Office 365 with a chatbot that helps you declutter your inbox and focus on important messages.

What it does

Astro – AI Meets Email has all the modern features you’d expect to see in an email client, including Snooze, Unsubscribe, Send Later, Email Open & Reply Tracking all in a great design. What makes Astro different is the included Astrobot that will tell you what to unsubscribe from, what to archive, and who to make an VIP to help out declutter your inbox.

Astrobot organizes your inbox with a simple, natural language conversation that claims is the fastest way to inbox zero. Astrobot learns how you manage emails, and makes suggestions about messages that can skip your inbox. This helps to prioritize your inbox by making it smarter, putting the emails you want to see in front of you and removing those you don’t.

Why we like it

As someone that gets a ton of emails of which 90% I don’t need to see, the idea of having someone take care of that for me that is constantly learning is extremely appealing to get to inbox zero. Having the smarter inbox management features like email open/reply tracking, and snooze-to-desktop is a great way to make sure I pick up emails that I can deal with on the move but don’t forget about them. As a new app, Astro is extremely promising and I can’t wait to see what new features the developers keep adding as it will only get better.

How to get it

Astro: AI Meets Email is available for free from the Google Play Store. You can download it right here.

Race Robotics’ training lab is designed for dynamic disorientation

Why it matters to you

This kind of workspace is hoping to inspire engineers to help build the next level of manufacturing automation.

It makes sense that you wouldn’t train engineers about robotics in a barn or by a lake. Singapore-based Race Robotics commissioned architects Ministry of Design (MOD) to create a robotics lab and training facility, according to Dezeen. The result is a futuristic space that could pass for Tron‘s family room.

The 2,615-square-foot Race Robotics Laboratory serves as a branding and spatial experience for the company. The facility will be used to educate and introduce robotics engineers into automating existing manufacturing industries. Various modular robots will also be on display.

Functional flexibility was the primary need. Race Robotics needed a large, continuous open space with smaller cluster-sized areas for hands-on training.

Visitors are immediately aware they have arrived at an out-of-the-ordinary space when they visit the Race Robotics Lab. The first effect is one of intentional disorientation.

The feeling begins when guests step off the elevator into the lab’s lobby. The area is all black, except for a lighted company logo and angular lighted lines that “disorient the floor from the ceiling.”

Directly off the lobby, visitors enter the open lab space through an enlarged doorway, another unexpected visual effect that sets them up for the lighted, angular planes within. The walls and ceiling are painted black and the gleaming floor is also black.

MOD built a “second skin” of black aluminum screen cladding inside the lab. The inner layer is broken into separate facets. Each facet consists of parallel stacked aluminum tubes and custom LED light strips. All cables, outlets, and other mechanicals needed for the robotics lab are behind the inner skin where they will not be visible. Access hatches in the inner skin placed around the room so personnel can get to the sockets and other mechanical devices.

The varied angles play with the perception of proportion and direction, creating visual nooks for small groups. Visitors are supposed to get an immediate sense of “industrial automation and precision,” according to MOD.

Google’s smart, conversational Assistant is coming to the iPhone

Why it matters to you

Don’t have an Android phone? Google Assistant will still find its way to you via the iPhone and all sorts of other devices around your home.

Google’s using artificial intelligence to accomplish incredible feats like predicting the properties of new molecules, discovering new drugs, and improving DNA sequencing. But it’s also using AI smarts to improve the Google Assistant, its answer to Apple’s Siri assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. At Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco, Google announced improvements across the Assistant platform on smartphones, Google’s eponymous Google Home smart speaker, and more.

Starting today on smartphones, voice won’t be the only way to interact with the Assistant from the beginning. Now, you can text message the Assistant about upcoming calendar appointments, nearby restaurants, and more, making for a more comfortable experience in public places like elevators and crowded train stations, Google said.

Dovetailing with the new texting feature, Google’s improved the Assistant with native Google Lens integration. The Google Lens, a computational vision engine the company unveiled on Wednesday, can analyze and describe photos better than human beings, in some cases. Here, Google’s using Lens to parse photos — once you invoke it in the Google Assistant, you can point it at a sign in a foreign language to get an instant translation, or at a marquee above an auditorium to get links to the venue’s ticket platform. It’s even smart enough to surface pictures of items on a restaurant menu.

The Assistant’s already available on more than 100 million devices, Google said, but it’ll soon come to a new platform: Apple’s iPhone. Starting this week, you can interact with the Assistant via the new app for iOS. Like the Assistant on Android phones and Google Home, it can save reminders, track your flight statuses, and more.

That debut is in addition to new hardware. Google said it’s working with Panasonic, LG, Onkyo, Sony, and other partners to build the Assistant into future speakers, TVs, and the like.

Those devices will be able to understand more languages. At I/O, Google announced that the Assistant will gain support for Italian, Spanish, Korean, French, German, Japanese, German, and other dialects later this year.

And the company’s working with third-party developers like the Food Network, CNBC, Song Pop, Uber, and more to expand the Assistant’s capabilities. Starting today, Assistant integrations — called Actions — are coming to the iPhone and Android.

Some of those apps will support the Assistant’s new payments platform. Now, apps like Panera can handle orders via voice — you can ask the Assistant to add items to your cart, switch the payment method, and place the order. You don’t need to enter your credit card information or name — Google pulls those details from a cloud-stored account.

Finally, Google said it’s working with hardware partners like August, LG, and GE — 70 in all — to bring Assistant support to more smart home devices.

The Assistant announcements follow Google Home improvements. In the coming weeks, Google’s Home speaker will gain opt-in reminders, improved support for Cast-enabled devices like Google’s Chromecast, and the ability to call any number in the United States or Canada for free.

Google’s smart, conversational Assistant is coming to the iPhone

Why it matters to you

Don’t have an Android phone? Google Assistant will still find its way to you via the iPhone and all sorts of other devices around your home.

Google’s using artificial intelligence to accomplish incredible feats like predicting the properties of new molecules, discovering new drugs, and improving DNA sequencing. But it’s also using AI smarts to improve the Google Assistant, its answer to Apple’s Siri assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. At Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco, Google announced improvements across the Assistant platform on smartphones, Google’s eponymous Google Home smart speaker, and more.

Starting today on smartphones, voice won’t be the only way to interact with the Assistant from the beginning. Now, you can text message the Assistant about upcoming calendar appointments, nearby restaurants, and more, making for a more comfortable experience in public places like elevators and crowded train stations, Google said.

Dovetailing with the new texting feature, Google’s improved the Assistant with native Google Lens integration. The Google Lens, a computational vision engine the company unveiled on Wednesday, can analyze and describe photos better than human beings, in some cases. Here, Google’s using Lens to parse photos — once you invoke it in the Google Assistant, you can point it at a sign in a foreign language to get an instant translation, or at a marquee above an auditorium to get links to the venue’s ticket platform. It’s even smart enough to surface pictures of items on a restaurant menu.

The Assistant’s already available on more than 100 million devices, Google said, but it’ll soon come to a new platform: Apple’s iPhone. Starting this week, you can interact with the Assistant via the new app for iOS. Like the Assistant on Android phones and Google Home, it can save reminders, track your flight statuses, and more.

That debut is in addition to new hardware. Google said it’s working with Panasonic, LG, Onkyo, Sony, and other partners to build the Assistant into future speakers, TVs, and the like.

Those devices will be able to understand more languages. At I/O, Google announced that the Assistant will gain support for Italian, Spanish, Korean, French, German, Japanese, German, and other dialects later this year.

And the company’s working with third-party developers like the Food Network, CNBC, Song Pop, Uber, and more to expand the Assistant’s capabilities. Starting today, Assistant integrations — called Actions — are coming to the iPhone and Android.

Some of those apps will support the Assistant’s new payments platform. Now, apps like Panera can handle orders via voice — you can ask the Assistant to add items to your cart, switch the payment method, and place the order. You don’t need to enter your credit card information or name — Google pulls those details from a cloud-stored account.

Finally, Google said it’s working with hardware partners like August, LG, and GE — 70 in all — to bring Assistant support to more smart home devices.

The Assistant announcements follow Google Home improvements. In the coming weeks, Google’s Home speaker will gain opt-in reminders, improved support for Cast-enabled devices like Google’s Chromecast, and the ability to call any number in the United States or Canada for free.

Android O Developer Preview: Our first take

Why it matters to you

Your next phone is likely to run Android O — and based on our tests, it sure looks sweet.

Android Oreo, anyone? Or maybe it’s Android Oatmeal Cookie?

Whatever Google ends up calling it, the Mountain View, California, company is prepping its next major Android release: Android O. On March 21, it made everything official except the name.

Just like last year, Google is offering developers (and intrepid users) the opportunity to test drive the new version of Android before it launches publicly later this year. That means it’s unfinished (and a little unstable), but packs most of the features that will make it into the final version.

The first Developer Preview is available for the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, Pixel, Pixel XL, and Pixel C. It’s not available as an over-the-air update — it has to be installed manually, which isn’t for the faint of heart.

Luckily, Google’s spilled the details about Android O in a lengthy blog post. And after many trials and tribulations, we managed to get Android O up and running on a dusty old Nexus 6P. Here’s everything we’ve learned, and everything you need to know.

Android O is now in beta

Google I/O is here and at the show, Google announced Android O is in beta — meaning that if you’re a developer, or just an Android hobbyist, you can now get the latest and greatest version of Android on your phone. Keep in mind, the operating system is in beta mode so you should expect bugs and probably should not install it if you don’t know what you are doing. You can sign up for the Android O beta by heading to the signup page.

While Google didn’t necessarily announce any new features for O at Google I/O, it did highlight a few aspects of the operating system. For example, the company mentioned Project Treble, its new initiative aimed at pushing updates to Android far faster. Project Treble essentially allows manufacturers to easily push low-level firmware updates to Android without having to update the operating system as a whole.

Google is also speeding up Android, in general. The company announced that through a number of operating system optimizations, boot time is now faster and apps should run a lot better. It is also implementing “wise limits” on apps that run in the background — ensuring they do not take up too much battery life and processing.

Revamped notifications

The previous version of Android, Android Nougat, added the ability to prioritize certain notifications over others. Android O tweaks that behavior.

Users can snooze alerts and schedule them to reappear at a later time, and developers can change the background color of notifications and cause notifications to dismiss themselves after predefined time increments: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 1 hour.

The snooze feature is perhaps the most obvious change, and it works rather well. After dragging a notification to the right-hand side of the notification shade, a clock-shaped icon appears, and tapping on it brings up the aforementioned list of time increments. In our testing, Gmail, Slack, Allo, and Hangouts notifications all reappeared without issue. A word of warning, though: It’s easy to accidentally dismiss notifications while pulling up the Snooze menu. Drag slowly.

Of course, not all notifications are compatible. For example: “Persistent notifications” or ongoing notifications that can’t be dismissed can’t be snoozed, either.

There’s a new prioritization feature in Android O called Notification Channels. More details are forthcoming, but here is Google’s description of how it works: If an important email from a colleague comes in among a flood of junk mail, the colleague’s message will appear on top. Depending on how users tweak Android O’s notification settings, they may not see the junk emails at all.

App developers can also choose to aggregate alerts of the same kind in a single Notification Channel. If you get several “tech news” updates across a handful of apps, for example, they’ll show up bundled in a single channel — much like Google’s Gmail sorting, which offers granular control over what emails users receive notifications for.

The onus is on developers to implement Notification Channels. We’ve yet to see an app that supports them, because Android O is so fresh out of the oven. We expect to hear more as the new version of Android progresses.

Battery

Android Nougat introduced Doze, a battery-saving feature that automatically “hibernated” apps running in the background. With Android O, Google has taken that idea one step further with “automatic limits” that place strictures on background apps — specifically those that update location of background services. Android O can impose “execution limits” on the latter, which limit system access to certain processes when the app isn’t being used. Location limits, on the other hand, prevent apps that access a device’s location (via GPS or Wi-Fi) from doing so gratuitously. Google’s calling it a “significant change” to the way Android manages apps.

We’ll have to run Android O through its paces to figure out how dramatically the under-the-hood changes impact battery life.

High-quality Bluetooth audio

Wireless Bluetooth headphones, earbuds, and speakers are all the rage these days, so it’s not all that surprising that Android O brings major improvements to wireless audio.

New Bluetooth audio codecs promise to make music crisper, clearer, and richer than on Android versions of the past.

Android O supports Sony’s LDAC wireless codec, which promises big audio performance gains. Here’s the gist: it lets phones transfer roughly three times the amount of data (990kbps) over the same Bluetooth connection as the average smartphone. That’s more than twice as fast as Spotify’s requirement for Hi-Fi streaming (320kbps), and just short of Tidal’s lossless quality (1,411kbps).

LDAC has been around a while — Sony introduced it at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, and has since built it into its high-end Walkman music players, Xperia smartphones, and MDR-1000X headphones. But Android O will mark the first time the codec’s made available on non-Sony devices.

Unfortunately, not everyone will be able to take advantage. LDAC requires that both the sending device (a smartphone) and receiving device (a pair of headphones) support it — if you don’t have cans with LDAC, you’re out of luck.

AptX, another low-latency Bluetooth streaming format, is also in tow. It’s hardware-dependent, but an increasing number of flagships — including those running Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon processors — support it. Android O’s audio is a dramatic upgrade from Android 7.0 Nougat for wireless fans.

Adaptive icons, picture-in-picture mode, and UI tweaks

Android O is relatively light on UI tweaks and changes, but there are a few notable ones in tow. The status bar is cleaned up. In Android O, new icons indicating your phone’s Wi-Fi and mobile connectivity status sit next to the battery icon. The Settings menu has been overhauled. Compared to Nougat, there are roughly half the number of top-level menu options thanks to aggressive consolidation. Google has done away with the slide-out menu.

Android’s System UI Tuner gained a bunch new features. Just tap and hold the settings gear at the top of Android’s Quick Settings menu. Once you’ve held it for a few seconds, the gear will begin to spin and a little wrench icon will appear next to it, indicating that the System UI Tuner has been enabled. From now on, you’ll see it near the bottom of Android’s Settings menu.

Android O gives you full control over the navigation bar’s appearance and behavior. You’re free to change the layout of the buttons, or add an extra right and left button. A new Compact mode squishes them closer together. If you’re the methodical type, you can assign buttons custom codes that trigger actions like launching the calendar app, pausing/playing music, and opening the default dialer.

Not all of them work equally well. We were able to add a custom button for the Calendar (code 208) and Dialer (5), but others like the Camera (27) and Calculator (210) seemed buggy. We expect Google to fix these sorts of niggles in developer previews to come.

A second welcome addition to the System UI Tuner is lockscreen shortcuts, which allow you to add shortcuts to your phone’s lockscreen. You can add a dedicated button for Chrome tabs, or a shortcut to the settings menu — the sky’s the limit, really.

A feature called Adaptive Icons let developers adjust the look and shape of app icons depending on what home screen theme users select. If a user swaps Android’s default theme to a custom pack they downloaded from the Google Play Store, for example, app icons that tap Adaptive Icons will automatically switch to match the styling and color scheme of said theme.

There’s growing evidence that Android O will introduce support for themes. In the display settings, there’s a section for “Device theme” and two options: Inverted and Pixel. The former, as you might expect, swaps the color palette of every Android settings menu — white icons become gray, and grey backgrounds become white.

Google didn’t announce themes as part of the first Android O Developer Preview, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see the feature fleshed out down the road.

Also in tow with Android O is support for iOS-style home screen badges. Apps that support them will show animated notifications for things like the number of unread messages in your email inbox or the number of mentions you’ve gotten on Twitter.

Android O packs a picture-in-picture mode for videos, too, plus support for launching activities on a secondary display and a pop-up window for third-party apps. It’s already working for apps like YouTube, but enabling it is not exactly a walk in the park.

Here’s how to do it: Head to Settings > System UI tuner and add a cursor button to the navigation bar. Map it to keycode number 171, and when you’re in a compatible app, press it to enable PiP mode. Press it again to disable PiP.

An optional “wide-gamut color” promises to make apps more vibrant and colorful than ever on high-contrast screens.

It’s incumbent on developers to support Adaptive Icons, home screen badges, picture-in-picture mode, and wide-color gamuts — as of now, there doesn’t appear to be a way to manually enable them. We’ll keep searching, but it seems we’ll have to wait for developers to do their part.

Other conveniences

Android O is also packed with miscellaneous goodies aimed at addressing longstanding annoyances.

It’s easier to add custom ringtones, alarm sounds, and notification sounds in Android O. Head to the ringtone selector in the Settings menu and select Add ringtone. Then, you can select an audio file you’ve downloaded.

Good news if you’re a frequent Skype user: Android O’s “telecom framework” will let you swap out your phone’s default dialer for a third-party VoIP alternative.

A new Networking Aware Networking feature will allow Android devices to communicate directly with each other over Wi-Fi, even if the network isn’t connected to Wi-Fi, GPS, or cellular data. There’s a low-power connection mode that allows for sharing small bits of data like sensor readings, location, and more.

New keyboard shortcuts including “arrow and tab button navigation” will make using physical keys a little less painful.

An autofill API will make it easier for password, address, and user name managers to register themselves as the system’s official autofill app. When a user encounters a password field, they’ll be able to paste a stored password from a list.

Apps installed from outside the Play Store now have to be granted permission manually. In Android Nougat and older, a toggling a universal “Install from unknown sources” option was enough to permit any third-party app access to your phone’s internal storage. Now, you’ll be prompted every time an app attempts an install.

HTC U11 vs. LG G6: Android heavyweights go head-to-head

After months of rumors and speculation, HTC has finally made its new flagship official. It’s called the U11, and rather than simply a sleeker, faster version of last year’s HTC 10, the U11 boasts a more distinctive and bold design, as well as a few quirky features that set it apart from the competition.

Among that competition is LG’s G6, which we praised as the best Android smartphone on the market when it launched in April. The release of the Samsung Galaxy S8 in subsequent weeks has complicated that assessment a bit, however, the fact remains that LG’s latest offering is still one of the finest on the market, with a cohesive blend of premium hardware, slick software, and a processor that’s plenty powerful.

With that in mind, we’ve put together a spec comparison to illustrate how HTC’s best matches up against the LG G6. Could Android have a new frontrunner? Read on to find out.

Specs

HTC U11

LG G6

Size
153.9 x 75.9 x 7.9 millimeters (6.05 x 2.99 x 0.31 in)
148.9 × 71.9 × 7.9 millimeters (5.86 × 2.83 × 0.31 inches)
Weight
5.96 ounces (169 grams)
5.75 ounces (163 grams)
Screen
5.5-inch IPS LCD touchscreen
5.7-inch IPS LCD touchscreen
Resolution
2,560 x 1,440 pixels
2,880 × 1,440 pixels
OS
Android 7.1.1 Nougat
Android 7.0 Nougat
Storage
64GB (128GB in select markets)
32 (64GB in select markets)
MicroSD Card Slot
Yes
Yes
NFC support
Yes
Yes
Processor
Qualcomm Snapdragon 835
Qualcomm Snapdragon 821
RAM
4GB (6GB in select markets)
4GB
Connectivity
 4G LTE, HSPA+, 802.11ac/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi
4G LTE, HSPA+, 802.11ac/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi
Camera
12MP rear with OIS, 16MP front
13MP rear dual with OIS and wide-angle lens, 5MP front
Video
4K
4K
Bluetooth
Yes, version 4.2
Yes, version 4.2
Fingerprint sensor
Yes
Yes
Other sensors
Edge Sensor, barometer, gyroscope, accelerometer, compass, proximity sensor, iris scanner
Barometer, gyroscope, accelerometer, proximity sensor
Water Resistant
Yes, IP67
Yes, IP68
Battery
3,000mAh
3,200mAh
Charger
USB Type-C
USB Type-C
Quick Charging
Yes
Yes
Wireless Charging
No
Yes, Qi and PMA (United States only)
Marketplace
Google Play Store
Google Play Store
Color offerings
Blue, black, silver
White, black, platinum
Availability
Sprint, Unlocked

AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile

Price
Starting at $650
Starting at $650
DT Review
Hands-on
4.5 out of 5 stars

Most of the time, spec comparisons between top-tier Android smartphones don’t answer a whole lot. They’re usually running the same processor and filled with similar hardware components, so it really comes down to software and optimization to determine the real winner.

Of course, straight numbers don’t always provide the full story of user experience. However, this is one of the rare instances where a new flagship is noticeably more powerful than its rival, even if the latter launched just a few weeks prior. The LG G6 packs Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 821 system-on-chip, while the HTC U11 is driven by the newer, superior Snapdragon 835.

What does this mean when it comes to everyday use? Well, Qualcomm says the 835 can deliver 27-percent better performance across the board compared to its predecessor, which is also found in the Google Pixel and OnePlus 3T.

The 835 first debuted in the Galaxy S8, and benchmarks and real-world testing so far have shown it to be snappier than the outgoing silicon. Qualcomm has also pledged improved energy efficiency, thanks to the 835’s smaller, 10-nanometer construction.

That generational gap is the primary difference between the two phones. The U11 also comes with 64GB of stock storage, which is double what you’ll find in the G6, though both phones allow MicroSD card expansion. In terms of memory, both have 4GB to work with.

It’s also important to point out that audio is a pretty important factor in both phones, though, for different reasons. The U11 benefits from HTC’s BoomSound speakers and Hi-Fi audio certification, along with four microphones designed to record three-dimensional sound. The G6 can’t claim parity with any of those features, however, it does have one thing U11 owners will undoubtedly miss: A 3.5-millimeter headphone jack.

On paper, there’s no contest here. The U11 comes with Qualcomm’s latest-and-greatest chipset, and although the 821 was certainly no slouch, the numbers indicate HTC’s product will be better equipped to keep up with anything you could throw at it.

Winner: HTC U11

Design

The U11 and G6 feel similar to hold, thanks to all-glass construction and glossy finishes that easily pick up fingerprints. In just about every other respect, however, these phones look very different.

The LG G6 resembles little else on the market, thanks to its minimal bezels, rounded corners, and 18:9 aspect ratio. In many respects, it’s the direction smartphones appear to be headed in the future. The G6 makes maximal use of its surface area by filling it almost entirely with screen, forcing the fingerprint sensor to the back.

HTC’s flagship, on the other hand, is less forward-thinking in its design. The bezels at the top and bottom are pretty thick, and exceptionally chunky along the sides, too. The display is of the conventional 16:9 variety, which will look and feel even narrower thanks to the surrounding real estate. With the front-facing home button and fingerprint sensor, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re looking at an iPhone 7 at first glance.

Around the back, however, the story is a little different. HTC’s U series is marked by vibrant, loud colors and a deep metallic finish that blankets the rear. It looked nice on the U Ultra, if not for the fact that it made the phone one of the worst fingerprint magnets on the market. The G6 is just as clean, but certainly not as striking. Here’s where your sense of style will make all the difference.

Overall, however, we have to give the nod to the G6. There’s no disputing the value of that wider screen dominating the chassis, and with companies such as LG and Samsung cutting down on bezels as much as they have, the U11 simply feels dated. So long as you don’t mind using your index finger to unlock your phone, the G6 wins this round.

Winner: LG G6

Display

Although the U11 and G6 are similar in size, the G6’s screen is noticeably larger at 5.7 inches. The U11’s is 5.5 inches. Both are Quad HD LCD panels, though, thanks to the LG’s wider aspect ratio, you’ll get more pixels on the G6 (2,880 x 1,440 on the G6 vs. 2,560 x 1,440 on the U11).

We came away very impressed with the G6’s display when we reviewed the device in April, and found it to be as excellent an LCD screen as we’ve ever seen in a smartphone. LG also outfitted the panel with support for Dolby Vision and HDR 10, allowing for more vibrant colors, improved contrast, and expanded viewing angles. The company also optimized all its apps for the 18:9 form factor.

The U11’s display, though perfectly fine, doesn’t boast either of those enhancements, nor is its display as roomy. Although 18:9 content isn’t commonplace by any means, watching videos that are appropriately sized for the G6’s screen is a sight to behold, and U11 owners will miss out on that experience. For that reason, the G6 wins this bout.

Winner: LG G6

Google Lens turns your phone’s camera into an all-knowing information oracle

Why it matters to you

Computer vision technology is at the forefront of Google’s 2017 I/O conference. Its Google Lens makes smartphone cameras intelligent.

Want to know the name of that flower or bird you encounter during your stroll through a park? Soon, Google Assistant will be able to tell you, using the camera and artificial intelligence.

Google jump-started its 2017 I/O conference around AI and machine learning, and one computer vision technology it highlighted is Google Lens, which lets the camera do more than just capture an image — it gives greater context around what it is that you’re seeing.

Coming to Google Assistant and Google Photos, the Google Lens technology can “understand what you’re looking at and help you take action,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said during the keynote. For example, if you point the camera at a concert venue marquee, Google Assistant can tell you more about the performer, as well as play music, help you buy tickets to the show, and add it to your calendar, all within a single app.

When the camera’s pointed at an unfamiliar object, Google Assistant, through image recognition, can tell you what it is. Point it at a shop sign, and using location info, can give you meaningful information about the business. All this can be done through the “conversational” voice interaction the user has with Assistant.

“You can point your phone at it and we can automatically do the hard work for you,” Pichai said.

With Google Lens, your smartphone camera won’t just see what you see, but will also understand what you see to help you take action. #io17 pic.twitter.com/viOmWFjqk1

— Google (@Google) May 17, 2017

If you use Google’s Translate app, you have already seen how the technology works: Place a camera over some text and the app will translate it to a language you understand. In Google Assistant, Google Lens will take this further. In a demonstration, Google showed that Google Assistant not only will translate foreign text, but also display images of what the text is describing, to give more information.

In a demo, Scott Huffman, Google VP of engineering for Assistant, demoed how Google Lens within Google Assistant can translate the Japanese text of an image, but also give further context about what the word is.

Image recognition technology isn’t new, but Google Lens shows how advanced machine learning is becoming. Pichai said that as with its work on speech, Google is seeing great improvements in vision. The computer vision technology not only helps recognize what something is, but can even help repair or enhance an image. Took a blurry photo of the Eiffel Tower? Because the computer recognizes the object and knows what it’s suppose to look like, it can automatically enhance that image based on what is already knows.

“We can understand the attributes behind a photo,” Pichai said. “Our computer vision systems now are even better than humans at image recognition.”

No longer will you need to write down what’s in your vacation photos. Google VP Anil Sabharwal for Google Photos showed how Google Lens can recognize objects in a photo and bring up relevant information about it.

To make Lens effective at its job, Google is employing sophisticated computational architecture of Cloud Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chipsets, to handle training and inference for its machine learning. Its second-generation TPU technology can handle 180 trillion floating point operations per second; 64 TPU boards in one super computer can handle 11.5 petaflops. With this computing power, new TPU can handle both training and inference simultaneously, which wasn’t possible in the past (the previous TPU could only handle inference work, but not the more complex training). Machine learning takes time, but this hardware will help accelerate the effort.

Google Lens will also power the next update of Google Photos. Image recognition is already used in Photos to recognize faces, places, and things to help with organization and search. With Google Lens, Google Photos can give you greater information about the things in your photos, like the name and description of a building; tapping on a phone number in a photo will place a call, pulling up more info on an artwork you saw in a museum, or even enter the Wi-Fi password automatically from a photo you took of the back of a Wi-Fi router.

Hate entering Wi-Fi network passwords? Snap a photo of the wireless settings, and Google Lens technology through Google Photos can automatically enter it for you.

Assistant and Photos will be the first apps to use Google Lens, but it will be rolled out into other apps. And with the announcement of support for Assistant in iOS, iPhone users will be able to utilize the Google Lens technology as well.

Like a cyborg Sherlock Holmes, this AI detective finds clues humans might miss

Why it matters to you

VALCRI is a crime-solving computer system its creators hope will give human investigators a much-needed helping hand.

There’s a recurring theme in David Fincher’s brilliant 2007 movie Zodiac concerning the various ways potentially crucial pieces of crime scene evidence fall through the cracks as the result of poor information-sharing between police departments.

More than 40 years after that movie was set, things have moved on in a big way, but there’s still the problem of data silos — meaning isolated pockets of data that aren’t shared and cross-referenced in the way they should be. That’s a massive problem because, as William Wong, a computer science professor at the United Kingdom’s Middlesex University London explains, criminals aren’t always easily categorized.

“If I’m a criminal, I might usually be a house burglar, but if I see a car that’s unlocked I may burgle it, even though that’s not what I usually do,” Wong told Digital Trends. “Because of this, it’s important that investigators can search across different data silos.”

Middlesex University is one of a number of international universities working on a new system called VALCRI, which is designed to solve this challenge, among others. Short for “Visual Analytics for sense-making in Criminal Intelligence analysis,” VALCRI is an automated Sherlock Holmes-style crime-solving computer system that uses the latest machine learning tech to scan through masses of police records, relevant interviews, crime scene photos, videos, and a whole lot more, and then find links where they might not be obvious. The project began back in 2014, when the University of Middlesex benefited from a $17 million investment to kick-start research. Since then it has gone from strength to strength.

“What we’re doing is creating machine augmentation tools that allow people to analyze crime data in new dynamic ways,” Wong said. “It’s about joining the dots. The problem in a lot of cases is that investigators don’t know what the dots are that they need to connect.”

VALCRI focuses on breaking down classic fixed crime categories, and instead turning criminal profiles into sets of behaviors that can be easily searched. In this way, Wong’s proverbial car thief opportunist might have his or her profile flagged for the crime, even if they’ve only ever previously robbed houses. It’s also able to suggest lines of research that investigators may want to follow — and present all of this data in a highly visual touchscreen interface that makes every link or piece of evidence easy to analyze in detail.

Rather than just presenting more information, the ultimate idea is to use its smart AI tech to come up with hypotheses about the “how” and “why” a crime has been committed, en route to finding the “who” involved.

As of now, VALCRI is still being tested in the U.K., but Wong and his colleagues are confident that it could represent the future of policing. Minority Report, here we come!