Google is giving a $1 Play Store credit to some users

Google Play is giving out money.

Google Play has an offer for some select users right now that gives them $1 of Play Store credit to use on apps or paid content before the end of September. Not everyone’s getting the lucky offer, but hey, shouldn’t you head to Google Play and check?

Google giving away promotions to only some users is nothing new. A few months back, select users got half off a movie or TV season. This promotion is a bit less valuable, but far more flexible than those, as that dollar of credit can go towards apps, books, music, movies, TV and, of course, games!

A dollar can’t buy you much, but if you’ve got an icon pack on your Wishlist or a book you’ve been dying to read, this could help push you to pull the trigger — which is probably the point.

Check to see if you have $1 of credit at Google Play

Honor 6A hands-on: Premium style, budget price

Honor’s latest budget model is going on sale in the UK. Here’s our first look.

Honor, the sub-brand owned by Huawei, is putting out some great phones. We love the Honor 9, and over the past year or so even the less-expensive models have also been pretty noteworthy.

The latest phone hitting European shores is the Honor 6A, and in the UK it’ll be available to pre-order from Monday, July 31 ahead of a general sale on August 4 with carrier Three. This phone has previously been announced in China, but this is the first time we’re seeing it further west.

With a low price of £149.99, it’s sure to interest those looking for a great phone on a budget, and after a brief hands-on we’re quite impressed.

There’s no fingerprint sensor, but everything else here is solid.

For the price, there’s a fair amount of phone crammed in. Powering the Honor 6A is a Snapdragon 430 CPU, paired with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage expandable by microSD card. It’s also dual-SIM, accepting one nano SIM and one micro SIM.

Inside is all well and good, but it’s outside where the Honor 6A shines, frankly. In times past, budget phones would look like they were designed to be cheap. Then you look at the Honor 6A, with its sleek metallic body that comes in at 8.2mm thin, and you imagine the possibilities. It’s a very clean looking phone, in part due to not having a fingerprint sensor on it at all.

That’s one area where the 6A does fall short, even for a budget phone. It’s possible to buy cheap and get a fingerprint sensor nowadays, and if you’re moving from a phone that had one you’ll probably miss it. There’s also no NFC, so no Android Pay.

That slight disappointment aside, the Honor 6A is a really nice little phone, The 5-inch display is 1280 x 720 resolution but has nice colors and seems bright enough to use outdoors in the London morning. It’s light, too. And while it’s only coming to the UK in the gray and black combo seen here, that’s OK, because it looks great.

This is one of the cheapest phones to run EMUI 5.1.

Battery life should be pretty good, too, all things considered. Honor has squeezed a 3020mAh cell inside, which should be adequate for even the most demanding of days. We’ll put that to the test in the course of a full review. Additionally, Honor says that the battery inside should retain at least 80% of its total capacity after two years of charging and discharging.

On the back, you’ll find a 13MP camera with phase-detect auto focus, and on the front a 5MP shooter with the usual beauty mode software you find on any Huawei or Honor phone. Additionally, the screen will light up in darker conditions to act as a flash to better illuminate your late night selfies.

The software doesn’t seem to pack any surprises for anyone familiar with EMUI. The Honor 6A runs EMUI 5.1 atop Android 7.0 Nougat, and at least on the tester units we saw weren’t particularly loaded with any bloat to speak of. However, we’ll reserve final judgment until we’ve a retail unit in hand.

The Honor 6A is a direct replacement in the lineup for last year’s Honor 5C, and for £150 seems like a pretty nice smartphone. It combines styling you might expect to find on a more expensive phone with solid hardware and EMUIs own take on Android. No fingerprint sensor is disappointing, but potentially not a deal breaker for everyone shopping in this price point.

We’ll be spending more time with the Honor 6A soon for a full review. Pre-orders go live in the UK on vMall as of Monday, July 31 for £149.99. On August 4 it’ll become available from Three, too, for £149.99 on pay as you go and with no upfront cost on a new contract from £11 a month.

See at vMall

The Best VPN Services of 2017

What are the best Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)?

A VPN can be described as an encrypted tunnel that shuttles your internet activity between your PC, Mac, or phone and a host server. While the internet is a public space, a VPN works by extending an invisibility cloak across the user’s activity and allows people to send and receive data in a mostly-anonymous manner. In the simplest terms, a VPN makes it hard for someone to track your activity.

There are many different reasons people would want to use a VPN. In some countries, VPNs become a journalist’s main tool to get around government censorship and geo-blocks.

It’s true, there are plenty of free VPN services out there, but paid services are almost always a better option. You need a service that has fast speeds even when streaming video, and you want a service that doesn’t keep logs of its users’ activities. To help you decide which VPN is best, here are some great options that are available now.

NordVPN

NordVPN is operated in Panama, which means it has no legal obligation to record any of the activities of its users. You’re free to connect to any of the 1,109 VPN servers in 61 different countries, and you can use NordVPN on up to six different devices at once. To get around this restriction, however, it can be set up on your router, in which case it will handle any devices connected to your network.

Windows Central awarded NordVPN a near-perfect score in their review, focusing on the large set of extra features available to users. Want to watch Netflix from a different country? No problem. You can also take advantage of a double VPN, P2P-dedicated servers, a DNS leak resolver, and a dedicated single IP service.

With rock-solid encryption and plenty of connection protocols for you to use, including OpenVPN, this is one of the best VPNs operating today. Grab a yearly subscription for about $5.75 per month.

See at NordVPN

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ExpressVPN

Voted the top VPN by BestVPN, this service has plenty of servers all over the world, it doesn’t keep a log of user activity, and torrenting is allowed on all servers. In BestVPN’s review, it stated:

ExpressVPN is a British Virgin Islands-based VPN provider that has always led the way when it comes to offering a customer-focused service. Ease of use, a highly responsive 24/7 customer service team, and an industry-leading, no quibbles, 30-day money-back guarantee ensure ExpressVPN’s place at the top of the VPN industry.

The service is easy to use with a simple setup (if you get stuck, there’s always a live customer support chat on their site), and it has strong encryption with minimal logs. If you’re ready for unlimited bandwidth, unlimited server switches, unlimited speed, servers in 94 countries, and more, have a look at ExpressVPN. A yearly subscription costs about $8 per month.

See at ExpressVPN

IPVanish

IPVanish is one of the easiest VPNs to use, thanks to an app with a user interface that appeals to both novices and experts alike. In our review, we gave IPVanish a high rating for their strong encryption, excellent performance, and large set of servers. While it is based in the U.S., they promise to keep no logs other than payment information, which can be avoided by paying with Bitcoin.

IPVanish has more than 40,000 shared IP addresses on more than 850 servers in more than 60 countries. That’s some serious diversity, and there’s no limit on how many times you can switch servers. You can essentially move around until you find one that’s fastest. Toss in a kill switch, IPv6 and DNS leak protection, and manual port selection, and this becomes a very attractive option. Yearly plans start at about $6.50 per month.

See at IPVanish

Private Internet Access VPN

When it comes to a VPN and its apps, some people want a UI that has only what is needed. Private Internet Access is exactly this. With one click, you’ll be connected to a server of your choosing. There are over 3,200 servers in 25 different countries, and they support torrenting without jeopardizing speeds. Private Internet Access is based in the U.S. but does not log its users’ activity beyond payment information.

Private Internet Access VPN received a high rating at TopTenReviews and was chosen as an Editor’s Choice at PCMag. The latter site concluded its review with this:

With government spooks, hackers, and advertisers all hungry for our personal information, virtual private networks (VPNs) are essential tools. And Private Internet Access is among the best, offering a robust collection of features in a feather-light package for less than the price of a Netflix subscription.

Toss in some ad-blocking features as well as varied, budget subscription options — get a full year for just $40 — and this service might be your first choice, especially if you like your UI as simple as possible.

See at PIA

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How do you stay anonymous?

Do you have a favorite VPN service? Have you ended up with a dud before? Let us know your experiences in the comments.

Updated July 26, 2017: We’ve refreshed this list to ensure you’re still getting the best VPNs available right now.

The ‘Final Fantasy XV’ bromobile invades ‘Forza Horizon 3’ next week

Final Fantasy XV’s Regalia hot rod is coming to Forza Horizon 3 next week. So yup, you can continue that game’s epic road trip across Horizon’s digital Australia come August 1st. Assuming you’ve played either game on Xbox, next week you’ll get an Xbox Live message containing a download code.

Horizon has had rides from other games appear in it prior. The Warthog from Halo was more than just a gimmick and actually worked pretty well as a stunt car or as a main in the snowy “Blizzard Mountain” expansion. Hopefully that utility carries over to the Regalia. It’s just a shame this one won’t fly. That’s to say nothing of Fallout-4-branded cars appearing in Horizon’s serious simulation cousin, Forza Motorsport 6.

No, you won’t have Noctis or Prompto along for the ride here, but if you squint the Outback almost looks like Eos in spots. Fire up the Cup Noodles.

Source: Forza

Amazon debuts its own fashion label for women’s shoes and purses

Amazon has been making their foray into fashion for awhile now (really, what area are they not at least exploring?), and now they’ve announced a new private label. Called “The Fix,” and available exclusively to Prime members, it will focus on women’s shoes and handbags inspired by current design trends.

This isn’t the first in-house brand Amazon has created. It has several, all of which are aimed at being affordable, and The Fix is no different. Footwear News, which first reported the label’s launch, claims that items in the collection will start around $50 but will not be priced higher than $140. Additionally, The Fix’s shoes and handbags won’t rely on traditional fashion seasons; instead, new products will be rolled out on a monthly basis, to more quickly be able to keep up with what is currently fashionable.

If your mental alarm bells are telling you that this sounds a whole lot like Amazon is getting ready to rip off trendy designs, well, you probably aren’t wrong. TechCrunch reports that there are already knock-off Birkenstocks in the Fix collection. And the fact that they are introducing new items on a monthly basis, rather than seasonal, means they can copy designs and roll products out a lot faster than other retailers. The fashion industry might be unwilling to work with Amazon, but it looks like the retail giant is carving its own path, and the results might be bloody.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Footwear News