The unreleased Meizu M5c was just leaked online in all its glory

Why it matters to you

Meizu is helping push the boundaries when it comes to value for money, meaning our budget phones should be getting better and better.

Meizu is at it again. The Chinese smartphone manufacturer is prepping another device in the M5 series to join the previously launched Meizu M5s. This time around, the company will launch a more budget-focused M5c.

But what will the Meizu M5c look like? We’ve finally got our first look at the phone through a leak posted on Android Central, showing quite a classy look to the phone. The website shows that the phone will be available in a range of different colors, including black, blue, red, pink, and gold.

The best look we have is at the red version of the phone, and you might notice that the phone doesn’t look all that different from the Meizu M5 — although that makes sense considering the fact that the two phones are in the same family.

We don’t yet know exactly when we’ll see the phone, but considering the fact that this leak appears to have come from a non-live version of Meizu’s website, it’s likely it’ll show up pretty soon.

Before the Android Central leak, we were treated to what appears to be a spec leak from PinoyScreenCast. According to the leak, the phone will feature a 1.5GHz MediaTek processor, along with a 5-inch display with a resolution of 1280 x 720. It’ll also come with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, as well as an 8MP rear-facing camera and a 5MP front-facing camera. The battery on the phone is 3,020mAh, which should be plenty for a day’s use. If the 16GB of storage isn’t enough, the phone does offer a MicroSD card slot

All-in-all, the phone is shaping up to be pretty decent, although that will largely depend on the price that the phone comes at. The PinoyScreenCast leak suggests the phone will come at “around 5,000” Philippine pesos, which equates to around $100 — which is not a bad price to pay for this device.

Drones will watch over endangered wildlife to warn about potential poachers

Why it matters to you

Drones capable of spotting poachers could help save rhinos and elephants from being hunted to extinction in Africa.

As much fun as we dig messing around with drones, or using them to get surreptitious sneak peaks of Apple’s new campus, it is fair to say that there are a few nobler uses out there for them. One such application is the work of the Lindbergh Foundation, whose “Air Shepherd” program plans to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to fight illegal animal poaching in Africa.

This is an enormous problem to grapple with. According to the Lindbergh Foundation — whose work focuses on the link between technological advancement and environmental preservation — rhino poaching has increased by 9,000 percent in South Africa over the past decade and one elephant is killed every 14 minutes — a number that will lead to extinction within 10 years unless something is done.

The Air Shepherd program has been in test mode for the the past year, but this week the Lindbergh Foundation announced a major new partnership with machine learning company Neurala. Using Neurala’s smart image recognition tech, Air Shepherd drones will soon be able to accurately identify animals, poachers and poacher vehicles from the air before sending in human rangers to help.

“Our goal is to solve Air Shepherd’s problem,” Neurala CEO Max Versace told Digital Trends. “They can’t find humans who are willing to look at hours of infrared images looking for the needle in the haystack: A poacher chasing an endangered animal. Humans don’t want to do it, but we need human-level intelligence and perception to do this. Hence, we will substitute humans with AI, and sift through gigabytes of data with AI to find that needle.”

Versace explained that the “Neurala Brain” recognition technology was developed for the company’s previous work with NASA for use in autonomous planetary exploration. “Essentially, we were asked to build AI that can run anywhere — such as small processors that could equip a drone flying for hours over an area to collect data and monitor activities,” he continued.

The dream is that the collaboration between the Lindbergh Foundation and Neurala can help crack down on the problem of poaching, thereby saving the lives of thousands of animals, as well as aiding in the capture and prosecution of poachers who might otherwise get away with it.

Just as important, Versace says, is to demonstrate that AI can be a real force for good in the world.

“I am equally passionate about AI as not being seen as a bad technology,” he said. “To the contrary, humans are both the cause and the cure, for bad AI. With this application, we can show the world that it’s humans at the wheel of its future. AI can be as easily life-saving as life-ending — it’s up to us to steer it in the right direction.”

Asus teases its first Ryzen-powered Republic of Gamers laptop

Why it matters to you

Asus will be showing off one of the world’s first Ryzen-powered laptops at this year’s Computex, and this video is here to whet your appetite.

Following the news earlier this week that AMD had slated the third quarter of this year for the release of Ryzen APU powered laptops, Asus has teased that very sort of product with a new video. Set to be a part of its Republic of Gamers (ROG) range, the laptop remains silhouetted for now, but suggests we could get a look at the new notebooks sooner rather than later.

While Ryzen CPUs made quite a splash when they debuted earlier this year and Vega looks set to do the same over the next few months, Ryzen APUs combine technology from both new generations to create a well-rounded, one-chip solution. Asus’ ROG laptop could be our first look at a notebook with that sort of hardware under the hood.

The video that Asus released has an image of a laptop shrouded in secrecy, but sporting a clear ROG logo. It’s also nestled within the circular Ryzen logo, giving us an idea of what its internal hardware is like. That said, it’s possible that this laptop won’t sport an APU and will instead opt for a mobile Ryzen CPU and a more traditional discrete graphics chip from either AMD or Nvidia.

However, one thing we do know for certain thanks to this video is that we will have a better idea of what the new range is all about at Computex. The video’s description features the hashtag #Computex2017, which gives us all the indication we’ll need that Asus will debut its new range at the show. It’s set to run from May 30 through June 3, so it’s not far away at this point.

While that does give us quite a bit of time to speculate and salivate in equal measure, to tide you over, take a look at some of the information AMD revealed earlier this week about its upcoming Vega graphics cards. They look as, if not more impressive than the Ryzen CPUs AMD released earlier this year.

If that’s not enough for you, leaked information of AMD’s rumored Threadripper Ryzen CPUs also broke recently and they look equally devastating for the competition.

Android Go is the smartest thing Google can do to win the next billion smartphone users

Android Go isn’t a big deal, and that makes it an incredibly powerful and meaningful change for Android users everywhere.

You may know this well-known idiom: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Such a phrase can be applied to many circumstances, but it also works in the context of Google’s salvo into the world of unifying the experience of budget smartphones, Android One.

One is the loneliest number

Android One was unveiled in 2014 as a way for hardware manufacturers to spend less time building custom software, and assigning expensive engineers to update that software, by putting the onus on Google to keep those phones updated. But Android One floundered soon after its launch, since the Indian companies Google partnered with on the project didn’t put nearly as much marketing muscle behind those phones as the ones they could profitably customize to their hearts’ content.

By the time Google fixed Android One’s biggest problems, its partners were recreating its best features for less money.

And while Google rectified the problem a year later with the second generation of Android One devices, by that time the likes of Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo and Lenovo were mimicking the positive aspects of Google’s enterprise while simultaneously undercutting them on the hardware, leaving Android One to flounder. It had some success in countries like Turkey, Japan, Indonesia and Portugal, but by the end of 2016 it was clear Google’s partners were on the verge of abandoning their low-cost Android One strategy. Google learned that, especially in the low-end smartphone space, hardware vendors want Android, not Google’s Android, spurned by the very companies it wooed just a couple years earlier.

Along comes Go

Now we’re hearing about Android Go, and how it’s also going to revolutionize the Android experience for people who are just about to buy their first smartphone, or have limited budgets in developing regions where their phone is perhaps their only computer. And while we’ve heard this before, Google’s latest salvo for “the next billion” actually makes a lot of sense. Here’s how it breaks down:

• Android O and beyond will be optimized for devices with 1GB of RAM and under. These days, that’s a number that often gets derided as too little, especially for a memory-hungry OS like Android, but the foundations have been in place since Project Svelte debuted back in 2012 with Jelly Bean. Google is taking things even further by separating parts of the operating system that can be pared down. At this point, Android — Google’s Android — is as lean as it’s ever been, and with advancements in battery optimization and app caching, Android O should run well on almost any piece of hardware.
• Google is optimizing its own apps — YouTube, Gboard, Chrome — to use as little mobile data as possible. Chrome will use its Data Saver feature by default. YouTube will preview videos before using expensive mobile bandwidth. And Gboard, Google’s excellent virtual keyboard, has been updated to support multiple languages and transliteration.
• When a device ships with Android Go, Google Play will automatically populate apps that have been “lightened” — YouTube Go, Facebook Lite — to use less data. Apps installed on the phone will also remain in a compressed state and the OS won’t continually ask for “updates,” potentially saving battery life. That doesn’t mean that the Play Store will be limited, though: while Google will highlight lightweight apps on the Play Store’s home page, the entire app catalog will be available to download.

All of these together will allow Google to make any phone, not just those from manufacturers it partners with, to work really well on limited memory without necessarily forcing those vendors to use a “stock” version of Android that may not allow for its well-regarded customizations. Yes, in certain countries, customized versions of Android are preferred to what we know as vanilla Android.

The next billion

This is a platitude that we hear all the time: there are seven and a half billion people in the world, and with two billion active Android devices, there are hundreds of millions of others in countries like India, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, Philippines and Cambodia, to name a few, that, frankly, don’t have good experiences when they spend $50 to $100 on an Android device.

Android Go is about more than controlling software updates. It’s about making Android leaner and more efficient for everyone.

But Android Go isn’t about Google controlling updates, nor is it about offering a separate version of Android that needs to be maintained and continually optimized year over year. As we’ve learned since Android debuted, Google has a tendency to debut and support features for a brief time only to abandon them completely for something shinier. To put Android Go in a position to succeed, Google made the inspired decision to merely integrate it into its general Android plan. It is so simple, so uninteresting that it has a much better chance of success.

That’s because, by default, when a company builds a phone with 1GB of RAM or less, Android Go will just be the default state; the lighter configuration of Google’s first party apps will be installed, and the version of the Google Play Store users see will automatically highlight low-bandwidth apps.

But the end result will be an Android experience that will seamlessly cause fewer performance hiccups, and fewer accidental data cap overages. It may also improve the reputation of low-cost devices since, even though they are getting better over the years, there is still a stigma around using a phone with low memory.

For the rest

Android O will integrate a number of memory and battery usage improvements into its core, available to phones with 1GB and 6GB of RAM alike. That’s the beauty of the enterprise — it just works.

If OnePlus or Samsung can’t make Android smooth with 4GB of 6GB of RAM, it’s clear that there’s more work to be done.

But we’ve heard this before, and RAM usage continues to dog Android’s reputation. Companies like OnePlus and Samsung have been accused of poor memory management, despite outfitting their flagships with plenty of memory. From errant apps to poor governor management, Google can only do so much to make Android a smooth and problem-free experience. Once the code is in the hands of external vendors, all bets are off.

So once again, Google is just trying to make things a little bit better for everyone. Android is already pretty good at scaling, but it could always be better. Usually when we talk about scaling, though, we talk about it scaling up — for better screens, faster CPUs and more powerful GPUs — not down. In 2017, when it’s pretty easy to nab a great phone for $300, it makes sense that Google is optimizing the experience for the increasingly important $100 phone so that one day, when phones are $10, we’ll look back on this move and consider it a turning point.

Samsung Chromebook Pro is (finally) coming May 28

The Samsung Chromebook Plus has been around for a while, having been announced at CES and released shortly after. The higher-end, professional-aimed Samsung Chromebook Pro, which was delayed from the original launch window, is finally coming to stores May 28.

The Chromebook Pro is the best Chromebook Samsung has ever built, and it comes with a 360-degree hinge, a 12.3″ 2400×1600 touchscreen display, an included pen and Google Play Store apps, which will be on the stable channel rather than the beta channel most Chromebooks are currently using apps on.

Andrew reviewed a pre-production Chromebook Pro in the spring while Google Play apps were in beta, and it will be interesting to see how things have changed since that early look. The Samsung Chromebook Pro will be available at Best Buy, Amazon, Samsung’s website, and the Shop Samsung app.

Chromebooks

• The best Chromebooks
• Should you buy a Chromebook?
• Google Play is coming to Chromebooks
• Acer Chromebook 14 review
• Join our Chromebook forums

These are the 9 thinnest cases we could find for Galaxy S8

What’s the thinnest Galaxy S8 case?

You wanna protect your Galaxy S8 a bit, but cases make it look a li’l plump. Here are the thinnest cases we could find!

1. Impossibly thin

Impossible? Yeah! “Air Skin”? Like pudding skin? Sure, we’ll bite. You can find it for around $10.

2. Awwww mSnap!

Give your S8 a “Maxboost” (see what I did there?) with this thin’un. Only $10.

3. Thinness out the Ying yang

“Crystal” might be pushing it as far as clarity’s considered, but this one’s about as thin as they come.

4. Straight from the horse’s mouth

At 0.8mm thick, Samsung knows what’s up for thin cases for its phone.

5. Yihailu: Go ahead, we’ll wait while you try to pronounce it too

Yee… High loo? Meh. Thin case is *thin.

6. Because nudity rules!

When it comes to phones. Put your pants back on, Steve.

7. Highway to the Geekzone

That girl in the photo is crying tears of joy. Don’t worry; be happy.

8. Looking for thin cases? We have the Anccer!

GET IT? ANCCER???!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA! Love me.

9. Olixar are saying is give thin a chance

FlexiShield kinda sounds like a sanitary pad brand, but we’re not judging.

Find anything thinner?

Sound off in the comments below!

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

Verizon
AT&T
T-Mobile
Sprint

Cartoon Network beams ‘Powerpuff Girls’ to your TV with Chromecast

Cartoon Network is about to make some people very happy. The TV channel has updated its Android and iOS apps with support for Chromecast streaming, which it says was a highly requested feature by fans. In case you’re not familiar with how Google’s $35 dongle works, Cartoon Network’s apps will now let users push episode streams from their mobile device to a nearby Chromecast-connected TV, all with a simple tap of the “Cast” button.

As a bonus, Carton Network also added 40 new stickers to its app, with designs from shows like Adventure Time, The Powerpuff Girls, Steven Universe Teen Titans Go!, and more. The bad news, if you’re into that, is this is only for iOS users. You can grab the updated CN application now from the App Store or Google Play.