Nokia’s Android phones are coming to India on June 13

Nokia’s long-awaited Android devices will land in India on June 13.

HMD Global has sent out invites to the Indian media for a launch event on June 13, where the manufacturer is likely to roll out the Nokia 3, Nokia 5, and Nokia 6 in the country. HMD Global’s VP for the Indian market Ajey Mehta revealed earlier this year that the phones will be launching in the month of June, with Foxconn locally assembling the devices.

We’ll know more about pricing and availability at the launch event, but HMD Global has reiterated that the devices will be sold both offline and online, and that they will be affordable. All three phones will also offer dual-SIM and VoLTE support.

Best Tempered Glass Screen Protectors for Amazon Fire 7″ Tablet

Protect your new Amazon Fire 7 tablet with a tempered glass screen protector.

Amazon has refreshed its line of Fire tablets, delivering a lighter and thinner tablet than its predecessor with Alexa built right into the OS. It’s a compelling option at $50, and that means you should have some money left over to spend on accessories to keep your new device protected.

Here’re your best bets for tempered glass screen protectors for the 7-inch Amazon Fire tablet.

• Mr Shield 2-pack
• AILUN Case-friendly Screen Protector
• Spigen GLAS.TR Slim
• OMOTON Premium Tempered Glass

Mr Shield 2-pack

When you’re buying accessories, it never hurts to get a spare. Mr Shield offers a two-pack of screen protectors for the 7-inch Fire Tablet, giving you more bang for your buck.

Each screen protector is made of HD clear ballistic glass, which has been precisely cut with lasers with polished, rounded edges to exactly fit the dimensions of the Fire 7 screen. Not only do you get two screen protectors here, but Mr Shield backs up its products with a lifetime, no-hassle replacement warranty.

If you’re planning to buy a Fire tablet for you and your loved one, this is a great deal to keep both devices safe from damage.

See at Amazon

AILUN Case-friendly Screen Protector

If you only need one screen protector for your device and don’t want to spend more than $10 to get it, you’ll want to check out this option from AILUN.

It includes all the features you’d want from a tempered glass screen protector — it’s scratch- and shatter-resistant, features an oleophobic (oil-resistant) coating to prevent smudges and fingerprints, and is also compatible for use with a case. The package comes with guide stickers, wet and dry wipes, and dust removal stickers to ensure a clean, bubble-free installation.

AILUN offers a 12-month warranty for its Fire 7 tempered glass screen protector.

See at Amazon

Spigen GLAS.TR Slim

Spigen offers a two-pack of tempered glass screen protectors for the Amazon Fire 7 tablet. Regularly priced at over $45 (that’s nearly the cost of the tablet!), you can get the pair for under $15.

Each screen protector is made of rugged tempered glass with rounded edges to help avoid any chips, and there’s an oleophobic coating to help prevent your fingerprints from smudging up the screen.

Spigen offers really great customer support if you run into any issues during installation, and it consistently makes great accessories, so you can buy with confidence.

See at Amazon

Worth the price?

Are you upgrading to the new Amazon Fire 7 tablet? If so, will you be picking up a screen protector to keep that screen protected? Let us know in the comments!

Eve V preview: What makes the crowd-funded Surface Pro rival so special?

A crowd-funded tablet/laptop hybrid might not usually catch the eye, but clearly Microsoft feels there’s something special about the Eve V. It highlighted the relatively unknown product during its Computex keynote.

This is especially significant considering it is broadly in the same market as Microsoft’s own Surface Pro.

We caught up with the developer to learn a little more about the unusual design process and a little about its ethos. And perhaps the most unusual aspect is the small company’s determination to remain independent of any investors.

The Eve project started off as an experiment in 2015 to see if an unknown PC/tablet brand could be successful, launching and selling its products online.

Pocket-lint

It originally made an 8-inch Windows tablet, the Eve T1. And after that sold reasonably well, a WhatsApp group formed with users giving feedback directly to its developers. This grew into a forum and the development team used consumer responses to find out what their fans wanted to see in a follow-up device.

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Eve claims that the now 4,800-strong forum is a friendly and positive place for the most part, even though responding to all the issues can be time consuming. It still maintains some of the original WhatsApp groups too, growing the user-base so much the company has recently added a Community Manager to the team. This approach has led to a very interesting device.

The community wanted USB-A, USB-C and Thunderbolt capability. The Eve therefore has two USB 3.0, one Thunderbolt-capable USB-C and a 3.5mm audio jack with dedicated audio amplifier.

Straight off the bat it starts to become apparent how much attention Eve has spent on design. The ports are all geometrically aligned and to achieve this with the audio jack they had to put it in at a slant. That was expensive, but the overall effect is lovely.

Pocket-lint

The Bluetooth keyboard is another strong point. The whole thing is wrapped in soft, lightly-textured Contra Italian fabric. It looks stunning. The company also discovered that users wanted a keyboard they could use on the lap – to be used during presentations and so on.

The pogo pin handles charging (for up to 16 hours of typing using Bluetooth 4.2). It’s also an RGB backlit affair which looks great with the fabric cover. The community was very specific about the key travel they wanted: 1.2mm. There are some nice quirks too, such as the “Oops!” key and the V key being the Eve Logo (an inverted triangle).

The developer asked the community what they preferred: thin and light with a smaller battery or thicker and heavier with a bigger battery? The community pumped for the latter and so it put in a very impressive 48Wh battery – the highest of any device in this form factor. There seemed to be some vagueness about how this translates to battery life but the dvelopers did mention they had watched the entire first season of Game of thrones on one charge.

In terms of the CPU, the community – which is not made up of gamers – went for the Y series of Intel’s Core i7 and Core i5. There are a couple of options for RAM – either 8GB or 16GB plus a 128, 256 or 512GB SSD.

Cooling is handled through a copper heat sync and Intel heat pipes which dissipate the heat through the curved cushion style aluminium chassis. The developer says that this is how the Eve V running on a Core i5 outperforms an Asus Transformer 3 running Core i7.

The choice of going for 8GB or 16GB RAM actually pushes up the licence costs from Microsoft but once again the developer fed that information back to the community and they made the call.

Pocket-lint

The community were also given an option of a better pen and an ‘okay’ screen or vive versa. They plumped for the latter so the Eve comes with 12.3=inch IGZO LCD (2763 x 1824, 450 nit) screen. It’s covered in Gorilla Glass 3 and, again by request, has anti-reflection coating.

Two-and-a-half thousand devices were snapped up on Indiegogo between November and mid-December 2016 with the first 500 devices being shipped to 84 different countries. Eve’s largest market is the US, with the UK coming in third. The Finnish company has received support from Microsoft, Intel and the Finnish government. Its commitment to the project is clear, as is its determination to stay investor free.

“We want to do cool stuff and have fun doing it, stay in control and never have to compromise on user experience,” we were told by the development team.

The Indiegogo version shipped from $699 (£621) to $1,399 for the community members that initially signed up.

There’s no word on the price for the higher spec’ed versions when they are on general release but the lower end should start at around $799.

India will be the first to power its ports with green energy

As the US comes to terms with President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement, India is celebrating government efforts to promote green energy. Earlier this week, officials announced that all 12 of its major shipping ports will switch to renewable sources, making India the first country to convert all of its dockyards to run on electricity generated from solar and wind installations.

According to an Economic Times report, the government will install 200 megawatt solar and wind plants at the ports by 2019. Around 75 percent of the total output will be generated via solar panels, with the remainder falling to on and off-shore wind farms. Should it be a success, officials believe capacity could be expanded to 500 megawatts in the following years.

“These renewable energy projects will help in the reduction of carbon emission and lead to improvement of environment around the ports,” a government official said. “All our ports are cash-rich […] The ports have started the process of setting up renewable energy projects from profits.”

The project won’t come cheap, with early estimates reaching 500 crore (or $77.6 million). However, it will build upon the Indian government’s Green Port initiative launched early last year. The project is designed to reduce carbon emissions and offset the cost of purchasing power from the national grid, boosting the government’s pledge to increase the share of renewable sources in its overall energy strategy.

Source: The Economic Times

‘Rime’ goes DRM-free after hackers crack the game in days

That didn’t take long. Rime developer Tequila Works promised earlier this week that it would remove Denuvo, the anti-tampering/DRM system on the Windows version of Rime, if someone cracked it. Just five days later, and that’s already happened and the makers have already released an update that’s DRM-free. Interestingly, the developer tweeted saying its publisher was the one promising to make the game DRM-free if cracked. The developer says it didn’t implement the protection in the place. The tweet has since been deleted.

Baldman, a member of the game-cracking site Skidrow Games Reloaded, published a workaround yesterday — less than a week since Rime’s release. The makers themselves assumed it would take a few weeks before someone found a workaround to the anti-tampering code. Steam users demanded that the game should have the DRM security (the resource-hogging Denuvo) removed. Many players have noted that Rime’s DRM is slowing save game load speeds as the software checks you’re running a legit copy of the game. Development studio Grey Box’s Cody Bradley noted that Denuvo could cause “a small performance hit”.

The studio maintains that any game cracks can create quality problems with the title, but has already made good on its promise. On both Steam forums and its own official site, it told gamers that the new update, out now, will replace “the current build of Rime with one that does not contain Denuvo.”

Via: Steam forums, Greybox (Rime)

Google teaches kids to code with scenes from ‘Wonder Woman’

Google has an interest in teaching kids how to code. After all, they’re going to be the next generation of engineers and developers inventing and supporting Google’s products. Yesterday, the tech giant announced that they’d teamed with Wonder Woman to inspire teen girls to learn coding.

Made with Code, a Google initiative that encourages teen girls to pursue coding, has released a new Wonder Woman-based coding project. With this system, users can code three different scenes from the Wonder Woman film, which arrives in theaters today, utilizing introductory programming techniques.

Using drag and drop blocks of code that comprise actions, objects and variables, those new to coding can see how the different aspects of code fit together to create a finished product. Young coders can use these code blocks to help Wonder Woman overcome obstacles in her path and reach her goals. It’s not the first time Made With Code has partnered with a new film to teach girls to code; it did so previously with Pixar’s Inside Out.

Google is also releasing an updated version of DC Legends, a game available in the Google Play store, with exclusive movie content and special events inspired by the Wonder Woman film. Additionally, over 100 teen girls were treated to an advance screening of the film as a collaboration between Google Play, Made with Code and Warner Brothers. Through these initiatives, Google’s goal is to help young women realize that coding can help them empower Wonder Woman — and themselves.

Source: Google, Made with Code

Relive monster dunks and other NBA finals highlights in VR

The NBA has been bolder with virtual reality than most other leagues, producing weekly VR games on its League Pass on-demand network with NextVR. If you’re interested in checking it out without paying for a pass or the $7 à la carte price, NextVR is offering highlights for each game of the finals between Cleveland and Golden State. All you need is a GearVR or Google Daydream headset, plus the NextVR app, available on Google Play or Oculus Stores.

In case you haven’t tried it, NextVR’s NBA broadcasts aren’t that much different from regular ones, except that they’re in stereoscopic, 180 degree VR. The company has up to eight 6K RED 3D camera rigs strategically positioned behind the basket, at the scorer’s tables and floating mid-court. Announcers describe the action, and directors display graphics and choose the best camera angles, while keeping in mind that it’s easy for VR viewers to get seasick.

The highlight packages will feature “play-by-play calling of the most dynamic one-on-one drives, deep three point shots, and the biggest dunks from the rematch of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors,” according to the PR. That should be pretty fun to watch on its own (the production quality looks great on the GearVR), and also help viewers decide if they want to make a deeper plunge and watch entire games.

Where to buy HTC’s U11 and Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium in the UK

Over the past couple of days, two new flagship smartphones have landed on UK shores — HTC’s U11 and Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium — and both have their merits. HTC’s latest marries powerful innards with elegant looks, all the AI assistants and quirky edge pressure sensors that let you interact with the device in new and interesting ways. Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium, on the other hand, is all about top-tier specs and couple of stand-out features, including a 4K HDR display and 960FPS slow-motion video capture. As you’ll discover, one has proven far more popular with carriers and retailers than the other, but if you’re interested in either handset, we’ve got the low-down on where to pick it up.

HTC U11

HTC’s new flagship isn’t getting much love from the UK’s major carriers. EE’s on board and the device is listed as ‘coming soon’ on O2’s website, but it’s slim pickings at the moment. MVNOs are no keener, with only giffgaff ranging the handset (whenever stock arrives, anyway).

An unlocked model is also pretty hard to come by, but Carphone Warehouse is the place to go. It’ll sell you a U11 for £600, while HTC’s own site and Amazon are asking £650 for the handset.

Sony Xperia XZ Premium

Networks are much more enthusiastic about Sony’s new Xperia XZ Premium, even if Vodafone still has the device listed as ‘coming soon.’ As is becoming more common, though, only resellers have contract options that don’t demand an upfront payment.

MVNOs Sky Mobile and Virgin Media are also ranging the handset, but (as usual) Tesco Mobile has the most attractive deal at £36 per month and no upfront payment for a 2GB data allowance.

There’s no killer deal to be found if you’re after an unlocked Xperia XZ Premium. Mobiles.co.uk is your best shout with its £639 price tag, and Mobile Phones Direct isn’t far behind at £643. Elsewhere, however, you’re either looking at £649 or a quid either way.

Snapchat’s first episode of MTV’s ‘Cribs’ lands June 3rd

MTV is finally ready to debut its first Cribs episode for the new generation — and, yes, it’s broadcasting the show on Snapchat, just like it promised last year. The reimagined reality show will offer sneak peeks of celebrities’ houses on Snapchat’s Discover platform, where each episode will be live for 48 hours before vanishing. As much as we’d love to see Mariah get in a tub in front of a camera again, MTV will kick things off on June 3rd by featuring DJ Steve Aoki’s Las Vegas home. The episode will show his rare collector’s items, custom-made playroom and pool, which is the deepest in the city.

The next episode airing on June 10th will feature professional skateboarder Nyjah Huston’s LA pad, while the June 17th episode will show 2015 Superbowl MVP Von Miller’s Texas-inspired house in Denver. Another thing to look forward to are the arcade machines and poker tables in Miller’s tricked-out basement. If Cribs isn’t your jam, maybe MTV’s other Snapchat show is — the network is also launching comedy series Girl Code on the platform on July 27th.

‘Need for Speed Payback’ adds higher stakes and familiar ideas

On paper, Need for Speed Payback sounds a lot like Grand Theft Auto V crossed with a modern Fast and the Furious movie. Tale of revenge? Check. Three distinct protagonists with differing skillsets? Check. Heist missions? You see where I’m going with this. There aren’t a ton of other details to go on, but Electronic Arts says that the arcade racer will once again be open world and will feature “jaw-dropping set pieces.” Like a submarine surfacing in an ice floe?

The big difference with Payback, though, is that it doesn’t sound like taking anything other than first place will impede your progress through the narrative. “With Need for Speed Payback, it’s no longer just about being the first to cross the finish line or racing to prove to be the best, it’s about building the perfect ride, getting behind the wheel and playing out an action driving fantasy,” according to a press release.

While the latter three details there have been kind of standard for the series for an awfully long time, the notion of coming in second place and still advancing through the story is somewhat unique. 2015’s Need for Speed flirted with something like this, but ultimately in order to progress you needed to take the gold to keep pushing the game forward. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a focus on winning. In fact, you’ll be able to bet on your own performance in a given race, potentially multiplying your winnings from a given event.

As you can see from the box art, the other difference between this and 2015’s game is that you can race around during the daytime as well. While the sounds minor, it’s a pretty big deal and may help the races from feeling repetitive. Oh and of course series hallmarks like cop chases and car customization will return, too. The game will be released November 10th on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but if you want an early peek ahead of E3 next week, that’s what the trailer below is for.