Ready player one? Razer may be working on a smartphone made for gamers

Why it matters to you

More companies building smartphones means more choice for us, especially when the resulting devices target a particular niche like gaming.

Gaming company Razer is rumored to be working on a smartphone designed to appeal to hardcore gamers. Although only a rumor at the moment, it’s not a huge surprise. Razer acquired smartphone startup Nextbit Systems back in January, and while it said at the time Nextbit would be a standalone division, it’s entirely possible the two are working on the project together.

The gaming phone’s development will apparently be funded by Razer’s initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong, with a projected company valuation of between $3 billion and $5 billion, according to anonymous sources speaking to Bloomberg. The IPO is planned for sometime around October, but there’s no indication of when Razer’s gaming phone will be released.

Razer is best known for its gaming peripherals, such as mice and keyboards, along with sleek, stylish laptops. It has also dabbled in the world of wearables, with varying degrees of success, which promoted the company’s Insider community and desire to connect millions of game players around the world together. It was one of the most tempting aspects of its wearables, and tapped into the traditional tribal-like nature of serious online gamers.

Growing niche, not without competition

With the continued rise in mobile gaming’s popularity, both at home and in the competitive world of esports, Razer may find more people are keen to join a central community and connect with like-minded people today. A smartphone that doubles as a powerful games machine would seem to be the ideal platform, especially coupled with Razer’s zVault digital wallet and zGold virtual currency, which gamers can earn-as-they-play, and pay for new equipment in the future. However, this is speculation on our part, as Razer hasn’t confirmed it’s making a phone.

If it is developing a gaming phone, it won’t be the first, and also faces competition from another startup which may have very similar plans. Acer, which like Razer has a very strong gaming brand under its Predator name, has already produced striking gaming tablets, and shown off the Predator 6 gaming smartphone. However, this was back in 2015 and since then, outside of checking out a non-working prototype, the phone has been a no-show.

Startup Wonder is also most likely building a phone. It’s potentially the centerpiece of a larger ecosystem of gaming products, if CEO Andy Kleinman’s comment about the Nintendo Switch almost-but-not-quite bridging the gap between mobile and gaming, is anything to go by. Wonder’s first device may be out before the end of the year. Companies including Sony and Nokia have made phones suitable for gaming in the past.

Nothing is official about Razer’s smartphone plans yet. We’ll keep you updated right here.

4 crazy VR experiences you can try right now, and 1 jawdropper worth waiting for

So you’ve got a VR headset — a $400 Rift, perhaps — and are keen to find the latest, coolest experiences to play on it. You’re not alone — we are too! To find them we attended VRLO in London, where virtual reality companies come together to demo their latest products, and wow us with the newest innovations.

It wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t share the cool things we tried there, so here are the five coolest experiences we saw. We’ve concentrated on those you can try out today, but one coming soon was so mind-blowing, it just had to be included.

Finding Haka

When done right, virtual reality documentaries are engrossing and engaging. Finding Haka is the perfect example, transporting you to New Zealand to see a young rugby player learn the famous Haka ritual, and learn about its history. We won’t give anything away about the story, as it’s best watched without hints; but do look out for some great editing, impressive use of camera angles, and some effects that we’d not seen in a 360-degree documentary before.

Finding Haka is the work of SurroundVision and filmed for Sky Sports. It’s Sky’s first full-length VR movie, and was apparently a real labor-of-love for the production crew — and is available to watch through the Sky VR app for iOS and Android. It’s not just for rugby fans either! It’s powerful and exciting stuff.

Try it now from:

Google Play iTunes

Fantasynth

Described as an “audio-reactive experience,” Fantasynth sees you glide through a world that comes alive with bright neon colors, jets of flame, and geometric shapes. Set to the trance track Chez Nous by N’to, it’s worth listening to wearing a great pair of headphones, and if you have one, a bass rumble backpack. We particularly loved the reflections on the ground, giving the world a metallic, futuristic look. We’re not the only ones either, it was listed as an official selection at the SIGGRAPH 2017 conference, where the world’s best computer graphics and interactive visual techniques are showcased.

You’d best to sit down while watching, as the movement can make you a little dizzy. We watched on an Oculus Rift, and it can be downloaded through Steam VR, and the Oculus Store.

Try it now from:

Steam VR Oculus Store

Horizons

Ever played the PlayStation classic Rez? It’s one of our favorite PlayStation VR releases, and Horizon VR’s is directly influenced by it. The scrolling audio experience uses the Google Daydream controller to guide you around a futuristic and often surreal world, interacting with elements and passing goals to change the music playing in real-time. We loved it, especially the stage which used Bonobo’s Outliers as the theme.

Horizons is available through the Google Play Store, and is playable only on the Google Daydream headset and a compatible Pixel phone.

Try it now from:

Google Play

Ghost in the Shell

Whether you liked the live-action Ghost In The Shell film or not, you have to try the VR experience, created by Rewind — which organized VRLO — and Here Be Dragons studios, alongside Paramount, Oculus, and Dreamworks. It’s a scrolling video experience set around the famous building dive scene in the movie, and it’s nothing short of spectacular. From the stunning design of the camouflaged figure-hugging body suit, to the neon brilliance of the city, it’s a visual feast.

We tried it out on the Oculus Rift, and the Touch controllers can be used to slow the action down, giving you a chance to check out every detail. It’s rendered in real-time on the Rift, and looks incredible. The video is also available for the Gear VR, and even on Facebook as a 360-degree video, though it’s best seen on the Oculus Rift.

Try it now from:

Gear VR/Oculus Rift

Home: A VR Spacewalk

You’re going to have to wait a short while for this one, but believe us, it’s worth it. Created by Rewind for the BBC, you become an astronaut tasked with repairing a piece of the International Space Station, and must spacewalk to complete your mission. It’s built for the HTC Vive, and uses the controllers to great effect. It’s even possible to play in a haptic feedback chair, and to monitor your heart rate in real-time.

It’s genuinely one of the most dizzying, exciting, awe-inspiring, and downright frightening VR experiences we’ve had in a long while. Like all the best VR experiences, there are moments you’ll remember in “the real world,” such as opening the hatch and pulling yourself out into space, only to see the Earth far below you.

We’re not the only ones gushing over it either. Home: A VR Spacewalk has won numerous awards, including a Silver Lion at Cannes, a BIMA digital award nomination, and an invitation to be part of BAFTA’s VR Committee Summer Showcase.

Although you can watch a video summarizing the experience, it’s nothing compared with actually doing it. Rewind is still putting the final touches to the build, and is waiting for a final release date, but we’ve been assured it’s coming out in the near future.

India’s Jio is effectively giving away its 4G-enabled feature phone

The JioPhone will come with unlimited data for just ₹153 a month.

Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani has unveiled the JioPhone, a feature phone with 4G and VoLTE connectivity that “reinvents the conventional feature phone.” The phone will be up for purchase from September, and you’ll need to pay a deposit of ₹1,500 ($25) to get your hands on a unit. Where things get interesting is that the deposit is fully refundable after three years, making it essentially free.

The JioPhone will come bundled with apps like JioCinema, JioTV, and JioMusic, giving customers access to the carrier’s digital catalog. For ₹153 a month ($2.50), Jio is giving free voice calls, texts, as well as unlimited data and unfettered access to Jio’s content library. There’s also a ₹309 plan ($5.0) that will give JioPhone customers the ability to mirror the screen to a TV via a cable.

Alongside Jio’s own apps, the JioPhone will offer access to Facebook, and there’s also a custom web browser through which customers will be able to browse the web. The phone will also have voice commands, and will be able to recognize 22 local languages.

With the JioPhone, Jio is aiming to end India’s “digital inclusion.” Out of 780 million active phones in the country, over 500 million are feature phones that offer little to no access to the internet, and it is this segment that Jio is actively targeting with its latest device. Ever since making its debut ten months ago, Jio has fundamentally changed the way Indians consume data, with the country now surpassing the U.S. and China for mobile data consumption.

Indians are now consuming 1.2 billion GB of cellular data per month, with Jio serving 85% of that traffic. The carrier has picked up 125 million subscribers in just under a year, and by rolling out a feature phone that will be available across the country, Jio is looking to significantly increase its userbase.

Jio is kicking off a beta test on August 15 — India’s 70th Independence Day — where it will make the JioPhone available in a few batches, and the device will go up for pre-order on August 24. General availability is kicking off from September, with Jio aiming to manufacture 5 million phones a week to meet the inevitable demand.

Google is making it easier to discover local events in India

Google wants to help you plan your weekend.

Google is rolling out an update to its mobile search platform in India through which you can easily find popular events in your city. The search giant issued a similar update in the U.S. back in May, and in India the company is pulling information from the likes of BookMyShow, AllEvents, EventsHigh, 10times, and more.

For instance, if you type, “show me events in Hyderabad,” you’ll see a list of events listed for Hyderabad in the aforementioned sites. There’s also the option to tailor your results — the Events card comes with tabs that lets you filter events by dates. Clicking on a link will take you to that particular service to book the tickets.

If you’re just looking to see all the events in your locale, you can just enter, “events near me.” The update is now live on Android and iOS.

ASUS teaser hints at dual rear cameras for the ZenFone 4

ASUS is the latest manufacturer to jump on the dual camera bandwagon.

ASUS is set to unveil the ZenFone 4 sometime next month, and if a recent teaser on ASUS Taiwan’s Facebook page is any indication, the phone will sport dual cameras at the back.

We’ve seen several companies roll out devices with dual cameras at the back, notably the OnePlus 5 and Xiaomi’s Mi 6. It’ll be interesting to see the direction ASUS takes with its camera setup.

The images were first spotted by Android Pure, and the publication also notes that the ZenFone 4 series will be offered in five different variants. There’s little information to go by regarding the specs, but with the official unveil set to occur sometime in August, we should know more over the coming weeks.

Top Allo features you need to know

‘Allo Allo.

Allo is Google’s latest attempt at a messaging app that competes with the likes of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, both of which boast a userbase of over a billion users. The main differentiator for Allo is Google Assistant, a chatbot that provides answers to your queries by drawing on the search giant’s machine learning smarts. AI is at the core of Google’s strategy, with Assistant available on hundreds of millions of phones as well as the Google Home and Android TV.

These are the top Allo features you need to know. If you’re just installing the app, be sure to check out our setup guide.

Your replies are now smarter

When you’re chatting with your friends and family, Google Assistant offers a series of responses based on the context of the conversation. If you’re sharing a picture of your cat, for instance, your friends will see options to reply with “Cute!”, “Adorable!”, “How fun!”, and so on. For images that contain food, you’ll see suggestions for nearby restaurants.

That’s the good part. The not-so-great bit is where most canned responses are generic right now. I had an entire conversation with my colleague Russell Holly without typing a single word. That said, most of it went down like this (exclamation points courtesy of Google):

Google Assistant learns your messaging patterns over time, and it should hopefully offer more personalized suggestions.

When in doubt, emoji

When you don’t want to type, you can use Allo’s diverse set of emojis to get your message across. There’s an emoji for most emotions (which should say a lot, really), occasions, pets, and social activities, so you’re very well catered to in this regard.

Make Duo calls from within Allo

Allo is a text-only platform, but if you’re interested in making video calls, you can now start a Duo call from within the messaging app. You’ll see the icon for Duo in the conversation window, allowing you to jump into a video call without having to launch Duo.

Scribble away

You can jazz up images you’re sharing with friends by doodling on them, or adding text.

Emphasize your point with text

Allo has a nifty trick that lets you make your text larger or smaller. To achieve this effect, you have to press and hold the send button, and slide it up to enlarge text, and slide down to shrink it.

Use stickers for everything else

Google has worked with “independent artists and studios around the world” to launch 25 sticker packs for Allo. Messaging app Line pioneered the use of stickers in chats, and ever since most messaging platforms have gotten into the act.

Also, for some reason that I can’t really fathom, a lot of the sticker packs are aimed at an Indian audience. There’s even one about a “little Indian girl who loves her country and relishes any occasion to be patriotic.” No clue what’s going on there, but for the most part, stickers on Allo are just like on any other platform. Some will use it, but most users won’t care.

Create your own stickers with selfies

Allo now lets you create a custom sticker set using your own selfies. All you have to do is take a selfie, and Google leverages its machine learning skills to “analyze the pixels of an image and algorithmically determine attribute values by looking at pixel values for for color, shape, and texture” to build a sticker pack that’s based on your image.

The messaging app creates 22 stickers based on your likeness, but the downside is that you’ll only be able to use the stickers within Allo.

Go incognito

Allo offers an Incognito Mode that doesn’t store a record of your conversation. You can set a timer specifying the duration of the chat, following which it will be automatically deleted. All ephemeral chats are overlaid with a grey incognito icon.

Ask Google Assistant anything

If you’re feeling bored, Google Assistant offers a variety of ways to pass the time. You can have a conversation with the chatbot wherein you can ask it to tell jokes, recite poems, play games, serve up news headlines, sports scores, and much more. You can invoke the assistant directly from within a chat window by typing @google.

And yes, you can have an emoji party with the chatbot.

Restore your chats

Allo initially didn’t have the option to save your chats across devices, but that feature is now available. You can set Allo to automatically create a backup of your chat history, and you’ll be able to sync chats to a new device when setting up Allo again.

Room to grow

For all of its features, Allo can’t be used as the default SMS client on your phone. It uses an SMS relay to communicate with contacts that don’t have the service installed, but it won’t be taking over Android Messages.

What do you guys think of Allo? Do you regularly use the messaging service? Let us know in the comments.

Updated July 2017 with sections on Duo calls, ability to restore chats, and selfie stickers.

The Morning After: Friday, July 21st 2017

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

Is it Friday already? We have big news from Comic-Con featuring Will Smith and Stargate. Also, a deep dive into the cautionary tale of LeEco and a date for the Galaxy Note 8 is revealed.

The next Note.Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 unveiling happens August 23rd

Last year, Samsung released the excellent Galaxy Note 7, which had just one tiny problem: a tendency to overheat and melt down. Now, after investigations and even a Fan Edition re-release, we’re close to seeing the company’s next attempt at a large-screened cellphone. It just sent out invites for a launch event August 23rd, where we’re expecting to find out everything about the Galaxy Note 8.

It may not last much longer.Inside LeEco’s spectacular fall from grace

LeEco’s fall from grace has been astonishing. Once hailed as the “Netflix of China,” the daring startup and its then-outspoken founder were bold enough to challenge Tesla and criticize Apple as “outdated.” But in recent months, the company has faced a series of setbacks and may be reaching its breaking point. Former employees told Engadget that LeEco shuffles funds between its subsidiaries to mask losses.

Worth a trip.Google Street View takes you aboard the ISS

Since there’s no gravity, the astronauts make use of surfaces in every direction, so the Street View in space truly spans 360 degrees. But that’s not all: Google included info nodes for the curious to learn more about the station’s technical machinery and points of interest.

Is Richard Dean Anderson busy?‘Stargate Origins’ will launch a new MGM streaming service

MGM is asking CBS All Access and Star Trek Discovery to hold its beer, announcing plans to launch an all-Stargate subscription streaming platform. Stargate Command will be the “official” destination not only for older content but also a brand new Stargate Origins show launching later this year.

But who?Elon Musk’s Hyperloop plan is verbally approved by someone somewhere

Elon Musk tweeted that he has “verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop.” The only problem is that, apparently, no one has told the governments of those cities about it. There’s some indication he may be talking about the White House, but for now, we’re waiting for a more “formal” approval.

‘Bad Boys’ meets ‘D&D.’Netflix drops the full trailer for David Ayer’s ‘Bright’

This movie may have cost Netflix as much as $100 million, so hopefully it’s worth it. Bright stars Will Smith and Joel Edgerton are a pair of cops, but the twist here is that one of them is an orc. In this world, elves and magic are just part of the deal, which may entice viewers to check it out when the movie launches December 22nd.

A hat with speakers.Atari introduces the Speakerhat

And ‘Multiplayer mode.’

But wait, there’s more…

• Intel’s $79 USB stick plugs image-based AI processing power into your PC
• Microsoft’s Q4 earnings: Surface, LinkedIn, and cloud revenue are bright spots
• VFX company files injunction to block three Disney blockbusters
• Sears will sell appliances on Amazon as its retail stores dwindle

The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you’ll miss if you don’t subscribe.

Microsoft is waging a quiet war against elite Russian hackers

Microsoft has proven itself to be an unlikely vigilante in the ongoing international cyberespionage story. The company started out suing the hacking group Fancy Bear for using domain names that violated Microsoft’s trademarks, and in doing so unearthed an extensive network of command-and-control servers.

Via domains such as ‘livemicrosoft.net’ or ‘rsshotmail.com’, hackers are able to communicate with malware installed on targeted computers. But once the domains are back under Microsoft’s control they’re redirected back from Russian servers, giving the company a bird’s-eye view of Fancy Bear’s server network. Since August, Microsoft has taken over 70 different command-and-control points from Fancy Bear using this lawsuit.

Fancy Bear — also known as Pawn Strorm, Stronium and Sofacy — has been carrying out cyberespionage since at least 2007. Over the last decade it’s targeted multiple high-profile organisations including NATO, Obama’s White House, TV stations and military agencies throughout Europe. Its most notable intrusion came last year when it targeted the Clinton campaign, reportedly as part of Moscow’s bid to help Trump win the presidency. Russia hasn’t been named specifically in Microsoft’s lawsuit but US intelligence findings have identified Fancy Bear as a part of Russia’s intelligence activity.

Via: The Daily Beast

Firefox 8.0 for iOS Brings New Tab Experience, Night Mode, and QR Code Reader

Mozilla has released Firefox 8.0 for iOS with several notable new features including a Night Mode, a built-in QR code reader, and a redesigned tab experience.

Changes to the web browser’s tabs mean users now see recently visited sites whenever they open up a new one, combined with highlights from previous web visits. Mozilla says this change in particular will be rolled out to users gradually over the next few weeks.

As for the new Night Mode, this refers to a web page brightness dimming feature for easier reading in dark environments, rather than a darkened interface as such.

Version 8.0 of the browser also introduces Feature Recommendations, which are basically hints and time-saving tips to help users improve their Firefox experience. In addition, it’s also now possible to send a web page or tab to another Firefox-synced device, across both desktop and mobile devices.

Other smaller tweaks to the app include yMail as one of the supported email clients, the password manager now has improved login page detection, and when users copy a link Firefox will now prompt them to open it, rather than having to paste it in manually.

Firefox 8.0 web browser is a free download for iPhone and iPad available on the App Store. [Direct Link]

Tags: Firefox for iOS, Mozilla
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Samsung Pay launches on Gear S3 in the UK

Payment service comes to all Gear S3 owners whose watch is paired to an Android smartphone.

Samsung has announced that its mobile payments service has finally arrived on Gear S3 series smartwatches in the UK, following the rollout of Samsung Pay on phones in the country a couple of months ago. Just like in the U.S., British Gear S3 owners can use an app similar to the phone version of Samsung Pay, on a Gear S3 paired with any Android device running version 4.4 or up of the OS.

Contactless debit and credit cards from HSBC, First Direct, M&S Bank, MBNA, Nationwide, and Santander can be used with Samsung Pay, and it also works anywhere you’d use TfL Oyster card in London. Samsung says more payment providers, including American Express, will be getting onboard soon.

Wearable support in the UK is an important milestone for Samsung Pay, however the service continues to lag behind Android Pay and Apple Pay in the UK, both of which support almost all major high street banks.