The Eve V came from nowhere to challenge the Surface Pro

The Eve V convertible has become something of a media darling lately, mostly because it claims to be the first PC to be developed by consumers, not massive corporations. The idea of the populist PC was intriguing enough that Microsoft and Intel both worked with Eve to make the V happen, but c’mon — we’ve seen countless, less ambitious projects fail after building loads of hype. (Especially on Indiegogo, where Eve raised over $1.4 million last year.) After spending a little time with the V at Computex though, the hype is starting to seem warranted.

The specs have been well-defined for a while now — the Eve V will be available with Intel Core Y-series i3, i5 or i7 chipsets along with either 8 or 16GB of RAM. While you’ll have to choose between 128, 256 and 512GB storage options, all versions of the Eve V pack a full complement of ports: two full-size USB 3.0 ports, two USB-C ports (one of which supports Thunderbolt 3) and a slot for microSD cards.

Meanwhile, the centerpiece is a 12.3-inch, 3:2 IGZO display running at 2736 x 1824. At 400 nits, it was plenty bright for the dim atmosphere in the Computex show hall, though it struggled when we took it for a spin under the bright Taipei sun.

All that’s fine, but this is the first time we’ve see the Eve V in person. How well did all of these components come together? Well, considering this is the Eve’s first original hardware project, I’d say that answer is “pretty damned well.” The models we played with here at Computex weren’t final yet, but even then, there was little to complain about. The V’s aluminum unibody felt sturdy and well constructed; the fit and finish were mostly spot-on. Look closely enough at the machine and you’ll find your share of whimsy, too. The backspace key just says “oops”, and the area under the (quite nice) kickstand is subtly decorated with Eve logos.

It’s a handsome machine even beyond those little touches. The Eve V is a bit thicker than the Surface Pro 4, but not to the point of ever feeling bulky. In fact, its gently angled body serves as a handsome counterpoint to Microsoft’s flat Surface slab. CEO Konstantinos Karatsevidis told Engadget this slightly thicker body was one of the bigger decisions made by its community of crowdfunders. Turns out, they’d rather have a bigger body with better battery life than a slimmer machine that was forced to make compromises. Karatsevidis shied away from making firm battery claims, but he himself gets out 8 hours of fairly intense work out of the Eve V before needing a recharge.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

Even the keyboard manages to impress. Besides having multicolored backlit keys (another point the community insisted on), the Alcantara-coated keyboard also works when it’s disconnected from the Eve V body. It’s a neat touch, but I’m more impressed by the level of key travel and the responsiveness of the trackpad. If a device can’t nail the basics, no amount of gimmicks can save it — thankfully, that’s not the case here.

Karatsevidis admits the company almost got it wrong a few times. Among the most notable near-misses for the CEO was ditching pen support altogether, a move the community strongly opposed. While the Eve V comes with a relatively basic stylus called the V Pen, the convertible also works fine with Microsoft’s own Surface Pen. Design by committee gets a bad rap, but in this case, Eve had a legion of passionate fans who have a handle on what makes a compelling computer.

In short, it’s an impressive machine, especially when you consider its unorthodox origins. The Eve V will start at $799, and is poised to offer more bang for the buck than the Surface Pro. So, what’s the catch?

Chris Velazco/Engadget

Karatsevidis readily points to a few — you’ll only be able to get an Eve (or one of its possible sequels) online, in a bid to keep costs down. People interested in taking the plunge who haven’t already locked down a unit are in a for a wait, too, and I want to see how well the small team grows to handle customer service.

Lingering questions also remain regarding the company’s ability to spin up production and produce these things for the masses. After all, Karatsevidis’s only experience delivering products was when the Eve released the T1, a white-label Windows tablet. Don’t get me wrong: that takes work, but it’s nowhere near as hard as building a product from scratch.

So yeah, there are many reasons to be skeptical. Still, I’m cautiously optimistic. Out of nowhere, a startup built a serious PC contender, and they’ve cleared the first hurdle — building a device that feels worth using. Now it’s time for the hard part: making these machines for everyone who wants one and keeping quality high along the way.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from Computex 2017!

Snapchat Spectacles Now Available to Purchase Across Europe

Snap made its Spectacles available across Europe today, almost seven months after the company debuted them in the U.S.

For anyone unfamiliar with Snapchat’s first hardware product, the Spectacles are a one-size-fits-all pair of sunglasses that can record 10 seconds of video at a time and sync wirelessly with the mobile Snapchat app.

More than 55 million people use Snapchat daily in Europe for at least 30 minutes a day, according to Snap. It’s unclear what sales number the company is targeting on the continent, given that the launch of the Spectacles in the U.S. didn’t raise significant revenue, but today’s rollout comes as part of a planned substantial investment in the product’s marketing and distribution.

The camera-equipped sunglasses cost £130/150 euros and can be purchased from the product website or through “Snapbot” vending machines, which will appear on Friday in London, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, and Venice. The vending machines dispense the Spectacles in either Black, Coral or Teal, and allow customers to try them on virtually using a built-in augmented reality display. A case and charging cable are included.

Tags: wearables, Snapchat, Snap
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The extraordinary ‘Stratolaunch’ is the largest airplane you’ve ever seen

Why it matters to you

The team behind this huge airplane claims it to be a “consistent, flexible, and viable alternative to traditional ground-launched rockets” for getting satellites into space.

If you’ve ever seen an Airbus 380 up close, you’ll likely have dropped a comment along the lines of: “That plane is $#+$%# massive.”

But for the recently unveiled Stratolaunch aircraft, you’re going to have to search for even more colorful language, for this particular plane, with its wingspan of 385 feet and 28 wheels, is supposed to be the largest in the world.

The gargantuan aircraft, which thanks to its twin-fuselage makes it look rather like two planes welded together, was hauled out of a Mojave Air and Space Port hangar in California this week to begin preparations for a series of ground-based tests.

Designed by Vulcan Aerospace — a company launched in 2015 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen — the Stratolaunch is 250 feet long and stands 50 feet high. It can carry a payload weighing up to 550,000 pounds, and uses six engines typically used by a Boeing 747 to power it along.

It’s not a passenger plane, nor a ridiculously ostentatious private jet for Mr. Allen, but instead an aircraft designed especially for releasing rockets that’ll carry satellites into space.

The Stratolaunch, rather like the rocket systems designed by SpaceX and Blue Origin, focuses on reusability as a cost-effective way of launching space missions. Allen’s design, however, clearly differs in that it takes an “airport-style approach.” The plane is designed to carry a rocket on the underside of its central wing, releasing it when it reaches around 35,000 feet. Such a system would therefore incur cheaper fuel costs than a rocket launched from the ground. Also, with its 2,000-mile range giving it greater flexibility over where it can take off and land compared to fixed-location rocket launches, the system “significantly reduces the risk of costly delays or cancellations,” the team says on its website.

With the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin in mind, Allen says that the Stratolaunch will offer its customers “a consistent, flexible, and viable alternative to traditional ground-launched rockets.”

Cheaper access to low-Earth orbit, Allen explains in a blog post, would allow the launch of more satellites for scientific research and monitoring, though it’s not clear how the Stratolaunch’s running costs will compare to rival systems.

If tests over the coming weeks and months go according to plan, the enormous Stratolaunch could take to the skies as early as 2019. And that’s something we can’t wait to see.

Tekken 7 review: The king of fighters

Fighting games more than any other often get stick for not innovating, for not changing up the core gameplay they’re built on. Tekken 7 manages to balance a decades-old fighting system with some fancy new mechanics that charge the game up with enough violent energy to make it a worthwhile release in a console generation that’s already brimming with fighters.

Tekken 7 does an exemplary job of bringing the 3D fighter kicking and screaming into 2017. Considering the game has been alive in Japanese arcades now for over two years now, the core balance of the title feels perfect on console release. Every kick, every punch, every headbutt and every grapple feels perfectly weighted and satisfying to pull off.

For casual fans that remember Tekken 3 back on the original PlayStation and want some light beat-’em-up action, this game won’t let you down. The massive character roster is accessible enough for casual players to understand but deep enough for more serious fighters to get their teeth into, too, and in balancing those two sides of the game, Tekken 7 has done what the likes of Street Fighter V failed to do: appeal to an audience that might not typically be interested in fighting games.

Tekken 7 Review: The Best 3D Fighter Of 2017?

This appeal is helped by the game’s story mode: a single-player affair that most fighting games seem to be adopting these days (see: Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter V and Injustice), which takes you on a tour of the impressive roster of characters whilst playing cutscenes that serve to explain Tekken’s absolutely insane storyline. Which is all about patricide, murder and international zaibatsu vying for control of global power. It’s a well-presented action film that errs on the edge of the ludicrous but totally owns it, and the way fights seamlessly run out of cutscenes is inspired.

Bandai Namco

Single-player fighting fans might find the content offering a little short, especially if you enjoyed what Injustice 2 had to offer. Standard character endings in Tekken (traditionally unlocked via finishing the Arcade ladder) are gone, mixed instead into the main story mode.

There is an endless Treasure mode that apes previous Tekken games’ infinite ladders, and this is good fun if you want to fight ghosts from the game’s proper arcade iteration, but other than that and the story mode, there isn’t an awful lot to do if you’re a lone wolf.

Fun ol’ Tekken modes like Ball or Force or Bowl have gone; the focus is instead on the fighting and to be honest, that’s not really a bad thing.

Bandai Namco

On the PlayStation 4, there is a VR mode, too, but it’s totally forgettable – you’ll use it once and never boot it up again.

Tekken 7 Review: Street Fighter Goes 3D

Street Fighter’s mascot villain Akuma makes an appearance in Tekken 7 as both a playable character and a huge part of the story. You’d think thanks to his penchant for projectiles and reliance on moves that can absorb the impact of other fighters’ attacks, he’d be a bit overpowered but Akuma actually fits into the world of Tekken wonderfully. His presence in the story doesn’t feel as crowbarred-in as you’d expect, either, and Bandai Namco, the game’s publisher, does an impressive job of making him feel like a powerful, threatening force.

Bandai Namco

Playing Akuma and spamming fireballs at your opponents makes you realise how well balanced the game is, overall. Once you get hit by Akuma’s ranged attacks a few times, you’ll learn how to get in close (sidestep, dash) and then you can start to mitigate damage and play your counter. The same is true of just about any other character – like Tekken games past, every seemingly overpowered combo or setup has a very distinct counter, and you need to mix up your tactics if you want to come out on top.

There’s a playstyle for everyone, too: from the rushdown flailing of Lili, to the grappling of King or Shaheen, to the cautious zoning of Dragunov – every type of player will find their niche.

Bandai Namco

Tekken’s trademark juggle mechanic makes its return, too. Where 2D fighters rely on frame-perfect inputs for certain attacks, Tekken relies instead on bounds and bounces and keeping the player aerial, disabled and unable to punish you for missed attacks. Bandai Namco makes this advanced technique accessible enough for new players by loading new characters like Katarina and Claudio up with really simple combos that give you a taste for the advanced facet of Tekken 7 and tempt you to really get your teeth stuck in.

There’s also a new revenge mechanic in play in Tekken 7: once you get reduced to the final third of your health, you can trigger either a Rage Drive or a Rage art. The former buffs all your existing moves and makes them do more damage, the latter is basically a Super Move (it can even be mapped to a single button on your pad to make it easy to pull off).

Bandai Namco

This means you can never take your place in the fight for granted, and that there’s always a risk of throwing a game away… even if you’ve been dominating the entire match. It gives every fight a unique ebb and flow and really keeps the adrenaline up for the duration of what can sometimes be quite cautious games of footsie.

Verdict

Tekken 7 recaptures all the fun of the PlayStation era of fighting games without getting bogged down in useless mechanics and slapping contrived, over-the-top meters and bars all over the place. It’s a high-damaging, high-impact fighting game that offers great replayability, an enjoyable learning curve a ludicrous story mode that catches up on the history of the Tekken universe and unveils new revelations, too.

Tekken 7 is among the best 3D fighters on the market right now. It offers a varied cast of fighters with a wide range of styles to master, it works on a cosmetic and technical level, and whilst it may not offer as much of a single-player experience as Injustice 2, it at least offers one of the most complete, satisfying fighting products out there at the moment. Pick it up for the memories, then stick with it for the mechanics.

MSI GS36VR Stealth Pro preview: Taking gaming laptops to the Max-Q

The announcement of Nvidia’s Max-Q during Computex 2017 in Taiwan has seen some interesting slimline gaming machines launched this week. Pocket-lint had some time with the MSI GS63VR Stealth Pro on the show floor and it’s a fantastic piece of work.

The GS in the name stands for Gaming Slim and through using Nvidia’s Max-Q design ideals – also announced at Computex – MSI has slimmed down the Stealth to a mere 17.7mm chassis.

The Stealth refers to the discrete design – there are no oversized vents here. To the untrained eye this could pass as a regular laptop, making it perfect for gamers who want to take their gaming on the go and maintain a professional look. This is a nod to MSI’s recognition of gamers fitting more than the tired old stereotypical profile.

Pocket-lint

It’s full of beautiful design points but before we get to those let’s run through the specs. It runs Nvidia’s GeForce 1070 8GB GGDR5 (although marketing staff hinted a 1080 version may well be in the offing) and up to an Intel Core i7 7th gen processor.

• Computex 2017: All the announcements that matter
• Best of Computex 2017: The top 5 tech products on show

There’s a 2.5-inch HDD slot and an NVMe M.2 SSD PCIe Gen 3 x 4 SATA SSD Combo – which can offer up to 2,200MB/s data transfer. Plus up to 32 GB (2 x 16GB) of DDR4 memory can be spec’ed.

You have a choice to make on the 15.6-inch display front with both Full HD and Ultra HD IPS options available. You can also use the Thunderbolt 3 to achieve a 40GBps rate on a 4K external display. Each screen is individually tested to ensure it meets the True Color standard to boot.

And it features the Killer Network card to reduce lag and assist with bandwidth control.

Pocket-lint

Now with all this going on in such a slim form factor, overheating would normally be a matter for concern but MSI’s Cooler Boost Trinity kicks in to take care of this. Essentially, you’re talking copper tubes with copper bumps inlaid to increase the surface area so that heat transfers more quickly. Three fans with 41 individual blades add to the cooling power.

The Max-Q architecture assists with thermal management too, although a lot of the credit should go to MSI for coming up with this design.

Hardcore gamers will be pleased that there’s a Turbo mode for overclocking that should help the GTX 1070 Max-Q get closer to achieving the performance levels of the original GTX 1070.

There is a napped, almost suede-like fabric on the base of the alloy chassis to make sure that heat isn’t a problem if it’s literally being used on a lap. Through the base vents you can see the red accenting on the fans too. It’s such attention to detail that helps to make this feel like exactly what it is: an exceptionally well-crafted machine with great attention to design details.

Pocket-lint

Neither has MSI skimped on the keyboard, having teamed with SteelSeries for its brand new RGB backlit number. Or for that matter on the audio. There’s a built-in digital audio convertor from Nahimic Audio to provide well-rounded low and high ends.

The Stealth is a great looking, discrete, slim gaming machine that shows a lot of promise. We’re really looking forward to getting hold of it to put it through its paces in the near future.

Snap Spectacles now available in UK, take videos with your eyes

Snap, the parent company behind Snapchat, has finally released its Snap Spectacles in the UK.

The sunglasses come with two mini cameras – one situated on the side of each eyepiece – and can capture small bursts of video, from 10 to 30 seconds. The resulting Snap clip is uploaded to your Snapchat Memories section of the iPhone or Android app via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi respectively.

At present, they can only be bought from a Snapbot vending machine in London, for £129.99. It’s currently on a Europe-wide tour, with similar machines being situated in Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and Venice.

If you’re not planning on visiting any of those cities anytime soon, you can also order a pair from Spectacles.com, which now ships to Europe too. They will be delivered between three to five working days and are available in black, red (Coral) and a greenish-blue (Teal).

The case they come with is also the charger.

• Snapchat Spectacles: What are they, how do they work and where can you buy them?

The London Snapbot is currently located near the London Eye, as tweeted by the official Spectacles Twitter account. The same account shows where other European Snapbots are placed too.

US Snapchat fans have been able to buy Spectacles for the last seven months, with a huge flurry of interest when they launched – so much so that Snap ran out of its initial stock.

Snap Spectacles: What are they, how do they work and where can you buy them?

For those who don’t already know, Snapchat’s parent company Snap sells its own Google Glass-style pair of sunglasses. 

They’re a bit more basic than Google’s defunct headset or other augmented-reality devices, but they’re certainly striking. The idea is you use them in order to capture your adventures while on the go. A bit like a GoPro, but for your face.

Intrigued? Here’s everything you need to know about Snap Spectacles, the firm’s first big dive into hardware.

What are Snap Spectacles?

In October 2016, Snap announced a pair of connected sunglasses called Snap Spectacles. They can record video snippets that automatically save to your Snapchat Memories, a feature in Snapchat that stores all your saved snaps, stories and locked content. The sunglasses feature a camera with a 115-degree lens, which is designed to mimic how humans actually see.

Snapchat

How do Snap Spectacles work?

According to Snap, its Spectacles are easy to use.

To record a snap (picture or video), you tap a button the top left-hand corner of the glasses. It will automatically stop recording after 10 seconds, but you can tap again to add another 10-second increment (you can record up to 30 seconds at a time). You’ll see a inward-facing light when you’re snapping, while an outward facing-light to show others when you’re recording and they’re in your field of view.

Snap Spectacles work with Android and iOS devices. If you own an Android phone, you can transfer your snaps over Wi-Fi, but if you have an iPhone, they’ll transfer either via the sunglasses’ Bluetooth connection or Wi-Fi. Keep in mind you can use the sunglasses as a standalone device (they’ll store up to 200 snaps until you have access to your phone). To play back your snaps, you’ll need to use the Snapchat app for Android or iOS.

When watching your snaps recorded with Snap Spectacles, you’ll notice a new “circular” format that is meant to display your footage the way the human eye sees, though you’ll watch them cropped in either landscape or portrait orientations.

The specs are not waterproof though, so you’ll need to be careful at the beach.

How long will Snap Spectacles’ battery last?

Snap Spectacles’ batteries will last about a day, and the outward-facing light on the sunglasses will serve as a battery indicator. Double tap and you can see how much life they have left. To charge the Spectacles, simply use the charging case and cable that it comes with (the case can actually charge them up to four times before needing to be recharged itself).

How much do Snap Spectacles cost?

The glasses cost $129.99 in the US, £129.99 in the UK. They come in one size and are available in three colours: black, teal (red) and coral (blue).

They are also available across Europe.

When will Snap Spectacles be available? 

Snap Spectacles are available on a dedicated website, for US, UK and European customers.

The company also sells them in five major cities around Europe through pop-up Snapbot vending machines. It did site a few of them around the US initially, but they have since been removed.

Is this Snapchat’s first hardware product?

Not technically. The company has developed merchandise in the past, such as a plushie, deck of cards, backpack, ice cube tray, and more.

What is Snapchat (and Snap)?

Snapchat began in 2011. It’s a popular photo-sharing app that allows you to send pictures and videos – both of which will self destruct after a few seconds of a person viewing them – to friends. Snapchat is also a fun messaging app. When you take a picture or video with the app, you can add a caption or doodle or lens over top, and then send the finished result to a friend along with a chat message.

Alternatively, you can add it to your “story”, a 24-hour collection of your photos and videos (also called snaps), which you broadcast to the world or just your followers. Snapchatters were sending about 700 million snaps a day as of May 2014.

• You can read all about Snapchat here.

In October 2016, Snapchat announced that its company would now be known as Snap. It also described Snap as a “camera company” rather than a mobile app developer.

In a blog post, Evan Spiegel, Snapchat’s CEO and cofounder, said Snapchat is evolving into Snap because Snap offers more than just Snapchat (ie, Snap Spectacles), and it wanted to better distinguish product information from company information.

In other words, Snapchat the mobile app will remain Snapchat, while Snapchat the company is now called Snap.

Want to know more?

Check out Pocket-lint’s Snapchat hub for related news.

Make your phone battery last longer: Top Huawei P10 and P10 Plus management tips

With phones ever thinning, battery life from some of the known brands has seemingly been thrown out the window for the sake of size. Not so Huawei, with its latest P10 and P10 Plus handsets benefitting from the smarts of its EMUI 5.1 software for all-day longevity and beyond.

The two new smartphones – the smaller P10 with a 5.1-inch screen and 3,200mAh battery, the larger P10 Plus with a 5.5-inch screen and 3,750mAh battery – also come with SuperCharge technology for speedy top-ups at the plug.

With all of EMUI 5.1’s tools at your fingertips it’s possible to optimise your experience to eke out extra battery life for even longer use per charge. Here are out tips and tricks to get the most out of the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus.

Huawei P10 and P10 Plus battery tips: Power Saving & Ultra Power Saving

One of the great things about the P10 and P10 Plus is that they’re really powerful. Stream from YouTube, then flick over to play a top-tier game with no worry about the Kirin 960 octa-core processor not being able to keep up.

Just doing emails? Browsing online? Well, all that power is over the top. Fortunately, EMUI has a Power Saving mode which you can activate to limit the processor, which will extend longevity per charge without dramatically affecting use. To activate: swipe down from the top of the screen > hit the settings cog > select Battery > activate Power Saving Mode.

Handily, each saving setting offers an approximation of how much battery life you have left in the tank. And if you really, really need almost never-ending battery life then Ultra Power Saving – which is available by selecting the option below Power Saving – disables all but the most basic functions of the phone. You’ll get Dialler, Messaging and Contacts by default, but a select number of apps can be assigned to the three spare slots on this screen – they’ll not run as well as when fully optimised, but the device battery life is around three times longer overall.

Huawei P10 and P10 Plus battery optimisation: Close power-intensive apps

One of EMUI’s special features is that it constantly monitors active apps and how much power they’re using. The software then prompts you via an alert to suggest closing said apps when they’ve been idly using energy. This is something that stock Android doesn’t do, so can be a benefit if you heed its advice.

It’s possible to see which apps are power-intensive at any time: swipe down from the top of the screen > hit the settings cog > select Battery > hit Power-intensive Apps and whatever is running can be individually or batch closed to save on power consumption.

Of course there might be certain apps you want to always have running – and to not receive repeat power-intensive prompts. This is possible on an app-by-app basis: swipe down from the top of the screen > hit the settings cog > select Battery > hit Power-intensive Apps > click through to the app in question and there are options to activate/deactivate Power-intensive Prompt, System Wakeup and Close After Screen Locked.

Huawei P10 and P10 Plus battery tips: One-touch optimisation

Within the battery settings is the Optimise function, designed to see if your features are setup sustainably. Thsi mode will scan all current settings, assess what can be optimised for longer battery life and display its findings to you in easy-to-activate optimisations.

Don’t need mobile data? Vibration not really necessary? All small things, but add them together and switching them off – as prompted – can aid battery longevity. The software doesn’t force you to take its optimised advice, however, so it’s a tailored experience.

Huawei P10 and P10 Plus battery optimisation: Lock Screen Cleanup

One fancy feature is the ability to turn off all or select apps when you hit the power button to lock the screen. It fades to black and those background apps jump out of memory.

You can decide whether this is reserved for occasional-use apps or everything all at once: swipe down from the top of the screen > hit the settings cog > select Battery > hit Lock Screen Cleanup and toggle your apps on or off as applicable. Bye bye wasted RAM!

Huawei P10 and P10 Plus battery optimisation: SuperCharge

It’s not called SuperCharge for nothing. This low voltage (4.5V), high current (5A) fast-charging system will deliver a huge kick of battery life that will last for a casual day’s worth of use after just 20 minutes at the plug.

Better still, it doesn’t push charge into the battery dangerously, with five gates at various points around both the P10 and P10 Plus to ensure no overheating. The charging system is variable voltage, too, so it’ll only achieve its maximum rate in the right conditions and with the supplied SuperCharge plug and cable.

So even when you do run low on battery life, perhaps the best solution is a quick stop at the plug socket.

Huawei P10 and P10 Plus battery optimisation: Basic tips for boosting longevity

In addition to all those deeper-dive tips, there are also some simple adjustments you can make to ensure battery life doesn’t jump off a proverbial cliff.

The first: disable auto-brightness and dim the screen brightness as appropriate rather than blaring out at full brightness all the time. It’s easy to do: swipe down from the top of the screen > hit the Auto button by the brightness slider and adjust as necessary.

In addition, the likes of GPS and Mobile Data might be unnecessary to have activated if you’re connected to Wi-Fi and browsing. You don’t always need the Optimise feature to tell you this, you’ll know it yourself. They’re also easy to deactivate: swipe down from the top of the screen > hit the appropriate icon so it greys out, then hit it again so it turns blue to re-activate.

Snap’s camera-equipped Spectacles arrive in Europe

Snap’s camera-equipped Spectacles have made their way across the pond. The creators of the famous ephemeral messaging app are bringing their first hardware product to Europe through their bright yellow vending machines called Snapbots. According to Wired, you’ll find the first European Snapbot at the London Eye, where it’s already dispensing Spectacles for £130.

Snap plans to deploy more vending machines in the city over the summer, but if you want to get a pair now, you may want to keep an eye on the company’s social media accounts. It typically moves its vending machines to other locations after a day, so the one at the Eye won’t be there for long.

London won’t be the only European city where you can get a pair of Spectacles, though: the company plans to place Snapbots in Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and Venice in the near future, as well. However, if you can’t bothered to hunt one down, you can always go the device’s official website, change your country of origin and buy a pair online.

Spectacles have landed in Europe! https://t.co/KdmMnzNkYW pic.twitter.com/JpWMU2fxWY

— Spectacles (@Spectacles) June 2, 2017

Source: Spectacles (Twitter)

Check out the gorgeous design of Google’s ‘landscraper’ London HQ

Why it matters to you

Google’s

Having been stuck at the design stage for years, Google has finally submitted plans for its new London headquarters to be built in the city’s vibrant King’s Cross district.

Designed by Heatherwick Studios and Bjarke Ingels Group, the striking design has been dubbed “the landscraper” as it’s far longer than it is tall.

Indeed, the 11-story structure will stretch for 330 meters and cover around 100,000 square meters, with the tech company occupying about 65 percent of the space. It’ll be the first wholly owned and designed Google building outside of the U.S.

The first floor of the new campus will be home to a variety of shops and market halls and open to the elements. Entrances to Google’s office will be scattered throughout the space to create a “varied and open ground plane that can change with time,” the architects said in their plans submitted to Camden council.

So what will the 7,000 Googlers find when they move into the new building from their current offices dotted around town. Well, besides enjoying “light and airy workspaces,” they’ll also be able to make use of a multi-use games area for various sports activities and a three-lane, 25-meter swimming pool. If such exertions sound too much like hard work, they can head straight to the massage rooms and nap pods instead.

Perhaps the most striking part is the roof garden stretching almost the entire length of the construction. Decked out with wildflowers and woodland plants, the elevated green space will also feature a cafe and a 200-meter jogging course.

Heatherwick Studio founder Thomas Heatherwick described the King’s Cross area as “a fascinating collision of diverse building types and spaces  … Influenced by these surroundings, we have treated this new building for Google like a piece of infrastructure too, made from a family of interchangeable elements which ensure that the building and its workspace will stay flexible for years to come.”

Bjarke Ingels, meanwhile, described the design as “rooted in the local character of the area [and] creating continuously cascading work environments that will connect Googlers across multiple floors.”

Google has been working on the design of its London office for a number of years. The original plan, which sported a similar-looking exterior to the final design, was the work of British firm Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM) and greenlit in 2013. But soon after, Google went back to AHMM and asked it to rethink the design. In 2015 the two parted company, with Google turning to Heatherwick Studio and Bjarke Ingels Group to continue the project.

Construction work on the new campus is set to start in 2018 … as long as Google doesn’t change its mind again.