FCC listing likely means we’ll soon see a successor to the Samsung Galaxy J3

Why it matters to you

The Samsung Galaxy J3 was a great midrange phone option in 2016, and it looks like the 2017 version will follow in its footsteps sooner rather than later.

Samsung launched a Galaxy J3 last year, but it looks like the company is preparing a refresh for the mid-range phone. A device called the Samsung Galaxy J3 has passed through Federal Communications Commission certification, suggesting that it may well hit shelves in the very near future.

The listing doesn’t reveal all that much about the phone beyond the fact that it will boast a 2,400mAh battery — which is actually a little disappointing considering that the 2016 version boasted a 2,600mAh battery.

Apart from the FCC listing, however, there is some speculation as to what the phone will offer. For example, rumors suggest the device will boast a Samsung Exynos 7570 processor, along with 2GB of RAM. The rear-facing camera will reportedly be 12MP, while the phone will come with a 5MP front-facing camera. The display will sit at 5-inches. These specs were leaked onto GFXBench and picked up by Dutch website Galaxy Club.

Apart from that, we still have a lot to learn about the phone — namely when it will be released and how much it will cost. As far as release date goes, we think it will launch pretty soon — an FCC listing is usually one of the final steps before a phone is officially unveiled. We also don’t know where the phone will be released. It’s a pretty safe bet to assume we’ll see it in the U.S. considering the FCC listing, and it’s likely to show up in Europe as well.

The phone will likely launch alongside the Samsung Galaxy J5 and Galaxy J7, with the difference being slightly better specs for the higher-numbered phones. The 2016 Galaxy J3 was launched in January 2016, so Samsung has well and truly missed the one year update mark — but it’s entirely possible that the company has a different update schedule in mind for the device.

How to improve Alexa’s voice recognition

It’s time to send Alexa to voice training school.

Out of the box, the impressive microphone arrays in most Amazon Echo and Echo-like products ensure your voice is clearly heard from across the room. Being heard isn’t the same thing as being understood, and whether it’s due to an accent Alexa doesn’t quite process or some audio interference in the room, if Alexa doesn’t get what you’re saying, there’s a relatively simple fix. Contained within your Alexa app is a tool to improve its ability to understand you, and as long as you have a couple minutes to spare and a quiet room that tool can make a significant difference in making the Echo, and Alexa, your best assistant friend.

Ready to send Alexa to voice school? Here’s how you improve voice recognition!

Set your room up for the best results

Voice training is a process in which you are speaking predetermined phrases to Alexa so it can better listen to the differences in the way you say certain words. For the best results, the room needs to be completely silent. No music or television in the background, no one else speaking, and no chirps or beeps from your phone. Close any windows you may have open, and if you have nervous tic like tapping your ring on the counter you’ll want to try avoiding that as well.

When you do start speaking to Alexa, don’t alter the way you normally speak. If you try to speak with perfect enunciation when you normally don’t Alexa will become trained to a speech pattern that isn’t yours and it won’t learn how you actually speak. Talk to Alexa casually, like your super casual robot friend that is always listening and can occasionally go shopping for you. It’s not weird at all.

How to improve Alexa voice recognition

Setting up a voice training session is easy, and can be done differently for each Alexa device in your house if you want to personalize each one to a specific person. Go sit near the Echo you want to train, pick up your phone, and open the Alexa app. From there:

Tap the menu button the in the top right corner.
Tap Settings from the list of options.

Scroll down until you see Voice Training and tap.

Tap the downward arrow at the top of the screen.
Select the Alexa device you want to train.

The app will now walk you through 25 Alexa commands for you to speak out loud to the device you’re trying to train. Once you have completed all 25 commands, the session will be complete. You did it! From here you can choose to train other things if you have them, or you can close the app and enjoy your new and improved Alexa experience.

Amazon Echo

• Amazon Echo review
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• Get the latest Alexa news

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ZTE launches 6-inch, $149 Blade X Max with Cricket Wireless

Another budget phone for AT&T’s discount brand.

ZTE and Cricket Wireless have teamed up to launch another budget device in the U.S. market, and this one is definitely worth looking at.

The Blade X Max, similar to the Max XL that launched at Boost Mobile last month, is a massive 6-inch device with entry-level specs for $149. For that, you get an octa-core Snapdragon 435 processor, 2GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage, along with a 13MP rear camera and a pretty sizeable 3,400mAh battery. That’s all well and good, but the Blade X Max also ships with Android 7.1.1, and isn’t too different from the stock Android experience you’ll see on the Axon 7, the company’s current flagship.

ZTE has made a name for itself in the U.S. in the past year, selling excellent unlocked phones like the Axon 7 and Blade V8 Pro, while partnering with carriers like Cricket and Boost to target the entry level market.

The phone will be available on May 12 at Cricket Wireless for $149.99, but new port-in customers can get it for $99.99.

See at Cricket Wireless

Portal Home Wi-Fi System review: Life in the fast lane is great if you’re ready for it

Portal offers DFS “fast lane” technology, whether we’re ready for it or not.

Portal promises something different when it comes to Wi-Fi. It advertises this difference as being able to bring “fast lanes” to the devices you connect to your router so the connection is, well, faster. It can do this by using wireless channels normally reserved for radar systems in the unlicensed 5Ghz spectrum. Don’t worry if that sounds complicated, we’ll explain it further down the page. Just know that Portal actually does something different than most routers to help speed things up, especially in dense places where there’s a lot of interference from other wireless devices.

I’ve been looking at Portal’s Home Wi-Fi System router for a while. Much longer than I would normally take to look at a router, because this tech is different than what most of us are used to, and I had some issues I needed to get to the bottom of. And because I love playing with routers.

So after an extra month or so using the Portal Home Wi-Fi System, is the verdict thumbs up or thumbs down? Both. It depends on the things you’re going to connect to it.

See at Amazon

What is DFS?

We have to start here because most of us will have no idea what DFS is. And it’s a very important feature of the Portal. DFS stands for Dynamic Frequency Selection. Within the 5GHz spectrum, there are multiple channels your router can use. There are also channels that the FCC has set aside for other things to use. DFS an extension of the 802.11 standard that describes how devices can use some of these other channels in the 5GHz range for Wi-Fi. These channels are traditionally reserved for radar installations, which makes the switching part of the descriptive name important. DFS started in Europe and is relatively new in the U.S.

80 and 160MHz 802.11ac Wi-Fi channels make DFS something we need, not just a luxury.

Because other, more critical, things use the same channels there are hard and fast rules about when and how a router can use them. Before a router switches to a DFS channel it has to make sure it won’t interfere with anything and then continuously monitor to make sure it doesn’t start interfering. Finally, a router can’t just camp on a DFS channel like an annoying COD player on Xbox Live. If there is no activity after a certain amount of time, it has to leave and find another.

The channels designated as DFS in the United States (this varies by country) are all between channel 48 and 149. It’s actually easier to check if a router uses DFS by seeing what channel it’s not connected to. If you see a connection to any channel other than 36, 40, 44, 48, 149, 153, 157, 161 or 165 your router uses DFS. For network nerds, DFS channels are all in the 5260 to 5320MHz frequencies.

If you have a relatively new phone or tablet, it probably supports DFS. You can check any device at the FCC by entering the FCC ID of the device here. If you see support for the 5260 – 5320 range in the list, you’re good.

So, DFS is a real thing and what it offers is carrying your signal and all the data on channels most other consumer wireless devices can’t use. If you’ve ever lived in an apartment building where a lot of people had Wi-Fi routers, you know the struggle that happens at prime time when everyone is on the internet. DFS can bypass it by using a different channel.

So how good is the Portal router?

Think of this as two different reviews. One thing in common for both is that DFS works and there is an instantly noticeable difference in an off-campus apartment building near the University of West Virginia. Watching HD video or downloading gigantic files (we used the 58GB Fallout 4 High-Resolution Texture Pack DLC for testing) are no problem even when there are 25+ other routers (most with separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSIDs) in range. Wi-Fi speeds were effectively double what they were on a “regular” 5GHz router during the busiest times, and the Portal router lives up to its fast lane promise in this regard.

With the right equipment Portal’s fast lane promise rings true.

A single Portal router is rated to cover 3,000 square feet and that’s a conservative estimate based on my usage. If you need to cover a larger space, you can mesh two Portals together to cover 6,000 square feet. Each unit has 10 radios and nine high-gain antennas to push signal along five 5GHz operating bands and two 2.4GHz bands. In simple terms, this thing is a beast. I’m confident in saying that most of us will be able to put one Portal router in the middle of our home and have really good Wi-Fi signal everywhere you want a signal.

Portal’s web interface

Setup is dead simple. You can use an Android or iOS app to set things up but there is also a web interface for people who prefer it. All the standard features like forwarding and MAC filtering are available, and while there were a few early hiccups the software has continuously been updated and there are no pain points for most users.

Most any modern router or mesh system can offer the same type of signal blanketing as Portal, but very few incorporate DFS technology to keep Wi-Fi fast when things get crowded. This is enough for me to say Portal is a winner. But there is one big problem and it’s not Portal’s fault — not all devices are DFS compatible and that’s when things get ugly.

The slow lane

The “slow” lane, which is also the intermittent connection lane, is otherwise known as 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. That’s where products that aren’t DFS compatible live in what Portal calls Compatibility Modes. Most products with a 5GHz Wi-Fi radio will work just fine even if they don’t benefit from DFS, but there are some pretty popular devices on the list of products that need special settings: Vizio Televisions, Amazon Fire TV and Firestick, all Roku devices and anything with an ASUS Wi-Fi adapter. I just so happen to have most of those connected to my home network (I could not test a Visio TV).

Going back to 2.4GHz is bad. Portal’s 2.4GHz radios are worse.

Let’s just say an Amazon Fire TV or Roku box is pretty worthless on a 2.4GHz “Compatibility Mode” connection. Network speeds are slow and the connection pauses at just the wrong time. This is a big reason why devices like a Fire TV or a Roku have a 5GHz Wi-Fi radio inside. To compound the issue, Portal seems to have very bad 2.4GHz performance compared to other routers here. It’s just not stable at all. Until I realized what the issue was, I was ready to pull my hair out over my Chromebook Flip’s connection three feet away from the router.

Another (potentially bigger) issue can be seen with an Amazon Echo and NVIDIA Shield TV. Neither will stay connected with any degree of reliability and several times one of these products has brought the entire network down. These products are supposed to be compatible with Portals automatic mode, but in real-world testing (at least with my Portal) they aren’t. When both are removed there are zero network-wide issues.

Odds and ends

What’s great

• + Portal is fast when you’re using devices that support DFS properly. It’s also stable, even when there are too many routers in the same area.
• + The range is huge. The listed 3,000 square feet is conservative, and one Portal router covers a bigger area than three Google Wifi routers.
• + The company was quick to bring new features and fix issues with software updates. Portal is the Google Pixel of routers in this regard.
• + A web interface is always a plus.
• + Portal has a functional USB port and supports DynamicDNS and OpenVPN.

What’s not so great

• – You can only install the app on one device at a time. Change phones and you’ll have to reset your Portal’s firmware.
• – You have to fiddle with settings to use any 5GHz devices that aren’t DFS ready.
• – 2.4GHz performance is spotty at best.

The verdict?

Check your devices. If you’ll be using something that’s not fully DFS ready, you’re going to have a bad time.

If the things you plan to connect to your network are DFS ready, you’ll love this thing.

It’s not Portals fault that many devices aren’t yet ready for DFS. You find that with any new tech, and early adopters sometimes are forced to buy more new equipment than they bargained for. But that doesn’t change anything. Only buy a Portal router if you’re sure your devices are ready for DFS or are willing to buy new devices.

It’s a 👍 and a 👎 from me.

See at Amazon

Microsoft will offer 3 flavors of Linux on the Windows Store

Microsoft made headlines at last year’s Build developer conference when it announced that it would build support for the Bash shell and Ubuntu Linux binaries directly into Windows 10. Doing so enables developers to run command-line tools while building apps as well as allows power users to run limited instances of Linux directly on top of Windows without installing a virtual machine. For 2017’s Build conference in Seattle, Microsoft one-upped itself and announced that it is expanding Linux support to include OpenSuSE and Fedora distributions.

What’s really wild is that you’ll be able to pick up any of these three distros directly through the Windows Store. Users will first have to enter “Developer Mode” on their Windows 10 machine and enable Linux support. Then, rather than side load a virtual machine and Linux on top of that, users just have to head over to the Windows Store and download the distro with a single click.

The announcement comes as Microsoft increasingly courts a developer community that has traditionally worked in the Linux domain. The entire industry, in fact, has been slowly embracing open source platforms like Linux as a means of developing its online services. For its part, last Just the company released .Net core 1.0, a popular open-source software development platform, and ported it to Linux and OSX. Microsoft also released a preview of its SQL Server database for Linux around the same time.

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

Netflix’s next original is basically a French ‘Black Mirror’

One of the great things about Netflix’s global expansion is that it allows audiences to enjoy new movies and TV shows that have been produced in other countries. French subscribers, for example, saw their first local original — Marseille — debut around this time last year. Today, as part of a wider statement confirming the creation of 400 new European jobs, Netflix announced that it has greenlit its second French-language TV series, Osmosis. Judging by the show’s synopsis, fans of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror could be in for a treat.

Netflix says its new original will be an 8-episode drama set in Paris in the near future. It’s centered around a new dating app called “Osmosis,” which is capable of reading its users’ thoughts and feelings — or brain data — to “find a perfect match with 100 percent accuracy.”

“But is there a price to pay when letting an algorithm decide whom you will love, using technology that can access the innermost recesses of your mind and your best-kept secrets?” teases Netflix. In Black Mirror season three, also a Netflix Original, you might remember Nosedive, an episode which presented a future where people use an app to rate each other based on their social interactions.

Production on Osmosis is expected to start next year, and will take place entirely in France. There’s no word on when it will be made available, but it becomes one of at least six new European original Netflix projects that have been confirmed this year.

Source: Netflix

6 things we’d like to see in The Sims Mobile

EA has announced that a fully-fledged version of everyone’s favourite life simulation game, The Sims, will be released on iOS and Android mobile devices.

However EA hasn’t yet given an exact release date, or how much we can expect to pay when it launches. Nevertheless, it’s certainly whetted our appetite, and we can’t wait to recreate some of our favourite moments of the original game, which launched 17 years ago.

EA hasn’t given away everything we can expect from the game, or at least, we hope the features listed so far aren’t the whole package. So we’ve listed a few things we’d like to see make a comeback in The Sims Mobile.

EA says of the new game: “Shape your Sims’ families over multiple generations. When your Sims accomplish their career goals and retire, you’ll be rewarded with Heirlooms that unlock hobbies and careers for future generations, allowing new Sims to tell deeper stories.”

Heirlooms is a new feature that unlocks hobbies and careers for future generations, provided your current Sims accomplish their career goals and retire.

You can register your interest and notified when the game is available to buy from EA’s website.

The Grim Reaper

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Be honest, at some point in your Sims’ life, you killed them. Whether you sent them swimming and deleted the steps leaving them to drown, or locked them in a burning building, killing your Sims was a sadistic, yet pleasurable thing.

Upon your Sims’ unfortunate death, the Grim Reaper would show up to turn your deceased Sim into an urn or tombstone. Although, because it was The Sims, and therefore could bend the rules of life, you could have other Sims plead with him to bring your ex-Sim back from the dead. If the Grim Reaper obliges, you’d have to have your Sim win a game of rock, paper, scissors.

The pleading feature was removed from The Sims 3 for PC, so we’re hoping it makes a return in The Sims Mobile

Ghosts

Norman Average

Tying into the death theme, ghosts would be great to see in the mobile version of The Sims. Ghosts would appear on lots with tombstones or urns on them between midnight and daybreak, and you’d hear some specific music to indicate their arrival.

You weren’t able to get your living Sims to interact with the ghosts, but the ghosts could spook your Sims. EA expanded ghosts’ abilities in The Sims 2, as different ghosts would appear based on the type of death the Sim suffered. Seeing ghosts even became a want that you could give your Sim.

Pets

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Your Sims were able to have their very own four-legged friend, bird, guinea pig and more in all of the original Sims games. Initially you could only adopt cats or dogs, get some fish, birds and reptiles but in the next couple of games you could get horses, snakes and turtles.

Of course, a pet is for life, not just for Christmas, or selecting from the buying mode. You had to look after them just as you would in real life, which means feeding them, training them and playing with them.

With pets being such a popular feature among Sims fans, we hope EA includes them in the mobile game.

Affairs

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Another thing that we’re sure most Sims players have done at some point is to get a married Sim to have an affair with the neighbour or a family friend. You could take it further and get your Sim to fall in love with someone and marry them, only to run off with the milkman the very next day.

Because there’s no real life ramifications, you could do whatever you wanted! How many of your Sims got pregnant from a one-night woo-hoo session? Playing around with your Sims’ feelings was somewhat rewarding, if completely heartless, but still, we’d love to be able to carry it on in the new game

Children

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Legitimate or accident, children were a popular feature of the original Sims series. You could either create them when making a new family, or have a baby in game, where it would turn into a toddler after 72 game hours.

Your children would also be required to go to school and keep up their grades by doing homework. If they missed a day their grade level would go down, which meant more studying to get it back up. If your child’s grade level stayed at an F for too long, they’d be sent away to Military School forever.

Expansion packs eventually let your teenagers go off to University, where you could live out their student life, and having this as a feature in the mobile game would be amazing. Children will feature in the game, as you can see them in the trailer, but just how much you can do with them remains to be seen.

Motherlode

Ok, so we shouldn’t condone cheating at all, but lets be honest, the Motherlode cheat made everything better. You could live your your Sims’ lives as if they’re real, making them go to work day in, day out to earn a small wage, become too tired and then not have enough time to shower or eat. Or could you gift your Sims several hundred thousand Simoleons (the in-game currency) and let them live out their wildest dreams.

We’re not sure how cheats would be enabled in a mobile version of the game, but if there are ways of taking shortcuts to reach the top, we’re interested. 

Microsoft follows Google Daydream and Oculus with own Mixed Reality controllers

After rebranding its augmented reality system to Windows 10 Mixed Reality, Microsoft is expanding the ecosystem with motion controllers to interact with experiences.

Different manufacturers, including Acer and HP, are making their own Mixed Reality headsets that run Microsoft’s software. But to standardise input there will be a unifying control system that will work with both.

Microsoft announced the Windows Mixed Reality Motion Controllers during its Build 2017 developers conference and they are similar to devices available for other VR headsets. That includes the Daydream controller from Google and Oculus controller for the Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Rift.

• Acer Windows Mixed Reality preview: Will this $300 headset bring VR to the masses?

What’s most interesting about Microsoft’s new controllers is that will not require any additional hardware, such as sensors. The headset itself does the tracking, and sensors built into that device will tell the controllers where they are in the virtual space.

Microsoft also revealed that its Mixed Reality system does not require room configuration – it should work install-free.

The two headsets announced so far, from Acer and HP, will cost $299 and $329 respectively. Developers can pre-order them now from the Microsoft Store and delivery, in the US at least, will start in the summer.

Unlike Microsoft HoloLens, the new Mixed Reality headsets require connection to a PC, much like an Oculus Rift. This is what keeps the cost down, however.

OneDrive Files On-Demand will finally only download your files when you need them

Microsoft is finally implementing a feature in OneDrive that could be forgiven for thinking existed already.

OneDrive Files On-Demand will store all of your data in the cloud and only download it when you actually want to use relevant files.

At present, your OneDrive cloud storage syncs files across your devices, meaning it stores a copy of each file or entire folder on every device you use to access them – clogging up storage space on your hardware.

You can choose which files and folders to sync and which to remain in the cloud, via the settings (or preferences on Mac), but you still have to have entire copies sat on your hard drive of those ticked.

While that’s great when you have the space and you want to access your stored content quickly – and offline – it’s a pain when you are a heavy file user.

With Files On-Demand you can choose to keep everything in the cloud with OneDrive only downloading the required data when needed. A new status icon will show whether a file is available locally or needs to be downloaded from the cloud first, in case you need to use the service offline.

The feature will be part of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, coming for developers in September. There will be several other new features too, which will be rolled out to full consumer versions of Windows 10 after.

Microsoft Story Remix lets you edit movies on iOS, Android, or Windows

Microsoft is at Build 2017 and has introduced something interesting to consumers: a new Windows 10 app.

But it’s not just any app. It’s basically a successor to, or even a replacement for, Windows Movie Maker, an app that let regular people create videos on their Windows XP and Windows 7 machines. Called Story Remix, it works in the cloud and essentially lets you pull in images and video from any device – whether iOS, Android, or Windows. In other words, it provides a true multi-platform experience.

You can grab media from multiple devices and get started right away working on your video. We haven’t had a chance to play with it, but it reminds us a lot of Apple’s new Clips app. You can start making an video with Story Remix on an iPhone, but if you want to finish creating it on a Windows 10 PC, you can do that too. The app even supports 3D models and lets you pin objects in scenes.

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Story Remix therefore combines Microsoft’s Remix 3D and Paint 3D technologies but also seems to borrow a little from Snapchat’s augmented reality effects. And like all video makers meant for the average consumer, you can add soundtracks, including ones from Microsoft’s Groove music service. From what we can tell, this app is aimed at everyday people and not professional video editors.

So, with Story Remix, you can quickly create videos, add music and some effects, and work on the project from any device. It will launch with the Windows 10 Fall Creators update, which we expect to launch around September. Check out the video above to see it in action.

• What is Microsoft Windows 10 S?
• Microsoft will now release major Windows 10 updates twice a year