The Morning After: Thursday, July 13th 2017

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

The internet took a stand on net neutrality and Microsoft’s default font settings have the spotlight in Pakistan’s political drama. It must be Wednesday.

Thousands of sites stood up against the FCC’s plan to gut net neutrality.The internet rallies around the fight for net neutrality

Yesterday was the net neutrality Day of Action, and with the first deadline for comments on the FCC proposal up in five days, plenty of sites are making it easy today to voice an opinion. Some websites, including Netflix, Twitch, Spotify and PornHub, have added banners to their pages. Mozilla, Vimeo and Airbnb have added more-substantial additions to the top of their pages while websites like Twitter and Google have opted for blog posts. In short, lots of reminders to speak your mind here.

A political scandal that’s not in the US for onceMicrosoft’s Calibri font is at the center of a political scandal

Meet #FontGate. And yes, it deserves the name. In Pakistan, financial documents submitted by the prime minister’s daughter are under scrutiny because of the Panama Papers leak and due to the font used — Calibri. The documents were supposedly submitted in 2006, but use a Microsoft font that wasn’t available by default until 2007. It’s a big deal.

A sled hit 70 MPH at Devloop in Nevada this past May.Hyperloop One claims its first successful test run

The potential is an easy sell, but until now, we haven’t seen Hyperloop One’s proposed mag-lev transit system in action. The company has now announced that on May 12th, it completed its first full-scale test. The sled hit 70 MPH, in a vacuum, at the company’s Nevada testing facility. Eventual target speed? 250 MPH.

It got a nose job.See how Tesla’s Model 3 has changed since its debut

We’ll let the gif do most of the talking.

Now we just need the TVs.MIT solves a major problem holding up glasses-free 3D TVs

One of the reasons you don’t have at-home 3D without glasses is a lack of content that would be compatible with such a display. MIT’s Home3D system makes it easy to convert traditional stereoscopic 3D movies to formats ready for ‘automultiscopic’ displays without glasses.

Third time’s the charm?LG teases a V30 reveal for IFA 2017

A teaser image promising an August 31st unveiling likely means we’ll see the third iteration of LG’s V-series phone at IFA next month. Unsurprisingly, the image suggests we’ll see another version of its extra-tall FullVision screen. The bad news, unfortunately, is that it could be the end of the line for the V’s secondary display feature (and removable battery).

New ‘dog, new tricks.AirDog’s ADII ‘follow me’ drone doubles down on action sports

It seemed every other new drone a few years ago was quick to publicize its ‘follow me’ features, but only a few of the companies behind these bots remain. The small AirDog team survived, and now it’s back with the ADII, which follows its pilot even better than before — and with a slightly more subtle color scheme.

But wait, there’s more…

• Sports and tech pros own the first seven Overwatch League teams
• Louis Vuitton’s $2,490 smartwatch is an extravagant take on Android Wear
• High-tech solutions top the list in the fight against eye disease
• Audi’s AI future tackles autonomous driving one solution at a time

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Link your Blizzard and Bungie accounts in time for ‘Destiny 2’

PC players may be a bit sore about having to wait longer to play Destiny 2 compared to console gamers. However, there is some good news for mouse and keyboard fans: You can now link your Blizzard account to a Bungie.net profile. Hurray!

Okay, that’s not as good as getting your hands on the sequel to the intergalactic grind-fest as soon as everyone else, but it has its benefits. Authenticating your account lets you sign into the services that Bungie.net offers, which should appeal to the Blizzard faithful and newcomers alike. These include access to the Bungie forums, special offers, and the ability to redeem codes for special in-game items, like emblems. Gamers with PlayStation Network IDs and Xbox gamertags already had the option available to them. You can find out more about linking your profiles here.

Blizzard account authentication is live. Blizzard accounts may now be linked to https://t.co/4ucwiEYycJ profiles: https://t.co/MgxGthKirX

— Bungie Help (@BungieHelp) July 12, 2017

Bungie announced in May that PC gamers will have to download the Blizzard app to play Destiny 2, and its beta. Using the service formerly known as Battle.net makes sense. It gives those hooked up to Blizzard’s gaming hub access to chat functionality and the ability to see when friends are online. These types of social interactions could also draw more Blizzard players to Destiny 2 (which probably factored into publisher Activision Blizzard’s decision to link the two gaming networks).

Destiny 2 lands on PC on October 24th — over a month after it arrives on consoles. Yes, the extra wait sucks, but at least those of you with powerful gaming rigs will be able to play it at a solid 60fps.

Source: Bungie (Twitter), Bungie.net

Apple Offers Free Redeem Codes for ‘Infltr’ Photo Editing App

Apple is offering users of its Apple Store app free redeem codes to download photo editing app Infltr. Usually $1.99, the acclaimed photo app for iPhone and iPad offers more than 7 million possible filters thanks to a sophisticated color gradient mapping algorithm, and lets users choose a filter before they take a picture or record video.

Moving a finger in any direction over the screen causes the photo filter to change its hue, while double-tapping shuffles the filter for a random pot-luck effect. Users can save customized filters to their collection, which can be synchronized to an online account to make it available on multiple devices.

Using 3D Touch gestures on supporting iPhones brings up a secondary menu that flips the camera front or back, lets users enable Live Photo, add vignette, and change the flash setting.

Infltr can be used to edit photos, videos, animated GIFs, and DSLR shots in HD without a loss in resolution, using over 10 included adjustment and transform tools. Users can also apply Infltr filters to the live camera feed while in iMessage.

Infltr is compatible with Apple Watch, allowing wearers to shoot remotely and adjust filters using the Digital Crown. The app also features an optional Home screen/Notification center widget that showcases new curated filters on a daily basis.

To get the app, first download the free Apple Store app [Direct Link]. The Infltr offer is featured in the Discover section on the main store screen. Offer ends August 15.

Update: Users running the iOS 11 public beta appear unable to redeem the offer through the Apple Store app.
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Amazon Working on Echo Successor to Rival Apple’s HomePod

Amazon is reportedly working on a successor to its Echo connected smart speaker for release later this year in a clear attempt to one-up Apple and its HomePod speaker, which is due to launch this December.

Sources who saw a working unit spoke to Engadget, claiming that the new Echo will improve on the first speaker “in every way”, being shorter and slimmer than the original, with rounded edges and a cloth-like covering preferred over the current Echo’s plastic shell and flat ends.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given Apple’s focus on the HomePod music experience, Amazon is aiming to significantly improve the sound quality of the next Echo, according to sources. The company’s new flagship smart speaker will feature multiple tweeters as opposed to just one large one (Apple’s HomePod packs in seven tweeters).

Amazon is also reportedly enhancing the new Echo’s far-field microphone technology, but it’s not clear how. The current Echo has a seven-mic array, while the HomePod has six and Google Home has two, although the software running the mics significantly dictates their listening quality.

Pricing remains unknown, but Amazon’s new Echo is likely to significantly undercut Apple’s HomePod, which will retail at $349 and go up against the likes of Sonos in the premium speaker market. The existing Echo costs $180 as a reference.

First impressions of Apple’s HomePod were largely positive following its unveiling in June, with journalists agreeing that the 7-inch tall device easily beats the Sonos Play:3 and 9-inch-tall Amazon Echo in terms of pure music playback quality. The HomePod initializes by playing 360-degree audio and listening back so that it can dynamically adjust sound output to fit environmental acoustics. Apple claimed it honed the technology over many years, so Amazon’s next smart speaker has plenty to live up to.

Related Roundup: HomePod
Tag: Amazon Echo
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NASA releases close-up photos of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

Anybody who’s taken a look at images of Jupiter has seen its Great Red Spot, the planet’s massive storm that’s been raging for the past 350 years. This is the first time we’re seeing it this close, though, and it’s all thanks to NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The probe flew 5,600 miles above the spot on Monday, the closest it’s even been to the planet’s iconic feature, while all eight of its instruments collected data. Now, NASA has released the first batch of close-up images taken by JunoCam, showing the ancient storm in greater detail than we’ve ever seen before.

The agency has uploaded raw images featuring the spot and the area around it on the JunoCam website. They’re unprocessed, but people have begun editing them to look like the sharper, prettier images of space we’re used to, such as the photo above. NASA is hoping to figure out the inner workings of the storm and the turbulence surrounding it using the info Juno collected. It’s expected to release an analysis of the images coupled with the data gathered by the probe’s other instruments in the near future. For now, you can check out the red spot’s close-up photos right here.

Via: Wired

Source: Junocam

Pokémon Go celebrates first birthday with events across the globe

Still playing Pokémon Go? Might as well have fun on its first anniversary. Now that we’re only a few days away from the Pokémon Go Fest taking place in Chicago, Niantic has revealed more details about its game’s first birthday celebration. Apparently, you can participate in the event no matter where you are in the world by working with the participants at Grant Park during three Challenge Windows that will take place throughout the day.

During the Challenge Windows, trainers at Grant Park will have to catch monsters that will give remote players various perks, such as reducing the distance needed to hatch an egg. Trainers elsewhere in the world will then have to do their part and catch as many critters as they can to extend the duration of the perks unlocked by the participants in Chicago.

In addition to Pokémon Go Fest, Niantic will also hold several Safari Zone events in Europe featuring monsters previously unavailable in the region. And if you’re in Japan from August 9th to 15th, you can use the game as an excuse to attend the annual Pikachu Outbreak in Yokohama. The gamemaker is promising a special experience for players during the event. A word of warning, though: you might get tad distracted by the thousands of Pikachus marching and dancing around.

Source: Pokémon Go

EVE Online starts putting players to work finding exoplanets

EVE Online has finally launched the Project Discovery mini-game it announced earlier this year, and you know what that means? You can now defend all the hours you spend in the game by telling your mom or SO that you’re helping the scientific community find exoplanets. EVE has uploaded real astronomical data from the CoRoT space observatory that you can analyze within the mini-game as a pilot — once enough players reach the same conclusion on the data’s classification, that piece of info will be sent to the University of Geneva for a deeper look.

The space sim’s developers teamed up with Massively Multiplayer Online Science (MMOS), Reykjavik University and University of Geneva professor Michel Mayor for this particular project. However, it’s far from the their first time to crowdsource a scientific endeavor. Back in 2015, they also asked their users for help analyzing images for the Human Protein Atlas. The new Project Discovery effort is more connected to the game’s theme, though, so you may want to take a peek and see if you’re willing to put in a few hours for this one.

Source: EVE Online

Google Home Owners Can Now Stream Songs They Uploaded to Play Music

Google has updated its Home smart speaker software so that owners can now listen to music they have uploaded to and purchased on Google Play Music.

Previously, using a free Play Music account through Google Home was limited to playing radio stations, while paying subscribers could listen to tracks in the streaming service’s own online catalog. But now both types of account holders can also play music they have personally uploaded to the cloud (up to 50,000 songs) or bought outright on the Play Music store.

As detailed in the company’s product forum post, Google Home will now prioritize uploaded and purchased tracks over radio mixes when users ask to play a certain artist, but on-demand content will play before purchased/uploaded content unless paying users specifically ask Home to play something from their library.

The feature is currently rolling out to all regions where Google Home is supported. See Google’s help page on the subject for more.

Tags: Google Play Music, Google Home
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OnePlus 5 vs. OPPO R11: Identity crisis

The OnePlus 5 is indistinguishable from the OPPO R11 in terms of external design, but the internal hardware tells a different story.

The OnePlus 5 is one of the best affordable flagships you can buy today, and although it’s costlier than previous generations, you still get a lot of value. With the OPPO R11, the spec sheet isn’t necessarily the primary focus, with the brand instead focusing on the overall experience.

The OPPO R11 is limited to China, and the phone is unlikely to be available outside a few countries in Asia. As such, the OnePlus 5 will be the default choice in most global markets. But that doesn’t make it any less interesting to compare both devices and observe their similarities and differences.

Hardware

Earlier OnePlus designs didn’t have a lot in common with OPPO phones, but OnePlus’ decision to put dual cameras in its latest flagship limited its design choices. The company opted to use OPPO’s sensor configuration, and that meant moving the antenna bands to the top and bottom of the phone. The result is that the OnePlus 5 looks identical to the OPPO R11 from the back. There are a few subtle differences through — the OnePlus 5 has a secondary microphone between the camera and the flash module, and the antenna bands are more pronounced on the device.

At 6.8mm, the OPPO R11 is 0.5mm thinner than the OnePlus 5, and the phone compensates for it by being marginally wider at 74.8mm (versus 74.1mm). Essentially, the R11 feels like a flatter version of the OnePlus 5, and it makes a difference during everyday usage. Of the two, the OnePlus 5 is more comfortable to hold and use.

Although the exterior is identical, the same cannot be said of the underlying hardware. The OnePlus 5 features Qualcomm’s 10nm Snapdragon 835, whereas the OPPO R11 is running the 14nm Snapdragon 660. OnePlus sells its devices exclusively online, and is able to cut down on the overhead that is normally associated with selling phones at retail stores. In doing so, it is able to offer the latest hardware for a few hundred dollars less than the competition.

That isn’t the case with OPPO, which built its brand name by aggressively marketing its products and making them available at thousands of offline stores in China. As a result, the OPPO R11 ends up costing the same as the 6GB variant of the OnePlus 5. Instead of offering the latest specs available, OPPO caters to what its customers want most from a phone — which usually includes a premium design, great camera experience, and all-day battery life. In that context, the OPPO R11 absolutely delivers.

While it may not be as fast as the Snapdragon 835, the Snapdragon 660 is no slouch. The SoC has eight Kryo 260 cores — a step down from the Kryo 280 on the 835 — with four clocked at 2.2GHz and four at 1.8GHz. There weren’t any issues in day-to-day performance, and the R11 handled everything I threw at it with ease. There’s not a whole lot to say about the OnePlus 5 in this area — the phone is an absolute beast.

Both phones use similar AMOLED displays, but the OnePlus 5 supports the DCI-P3 wider color gamut and allows you to adjust the color temperature. There’s also a Reading Mode, which automatically calibrates the display for reading text. On the R11, you’re limited to changing the font size. The color saturation is great on both handsets thanks to the AMOLED panels, but I found the overall brightness to be lacking.

The OnePlus 5 has global LTE bands, and the R11 is limited to Asia.

Both devices have fingerprint sensors at the front, but the R11 has a slender edge when it comes to authentication. It certainly is one of the fastest fingerprint sensors I’ve used, taking just a few milliseconds to unlock after putting my finger on the sensor. It was so instantaneous that I had to try a few times with a finger that I didn’t register (it stores up to five fingerprints) just to see if the sensor was actually working (it was).

The one downside on the R11 is the fact that it uses microUSB and not the newer USB-C standard. With even budget phones offering USB-C, it’s puzzling to see OPPO sticking to the older protocol. The R11 also misses out on NFC, but it does offer a 3.5mm jack.

The OnePlus 5 also wins out in terms of connectivity — the company is selling a single SKU throughout the world, offering global LTE bands. The R11, meanwhile, is designed for Asian markets, and as such has limited LTE bands — FDD-LTE Bands 1/2/3/4/5/8 and TDD-LTE Bands 38/39/40/41 — that allow it to work in China, India, and a few Southeast Asian countries.

Battery life

The OnePlus 5 has Dash Charge, and the R11 features VOOC Flash Charge. They’re the same standard — the only difference is the name and the red charging cable that you get with the OnePlus 5. VOOC offloads the charging circuitry to the wall charger, which ensures the phone doesn’t overheat while charging. The result is the ability to charge your device up to 65% in just 30 minutes. To get Dash Charge or Flash Charge speeds, you’ll have to use the wall unit and cable that’s included in the box.

The OnePlus 5 manages to deliver a day’s worth of usage consistently from the 3300mAh battery, and the combination of a 10nm chipset and larger battery allows the phone to edge out the R11. ColorOS’ aggressive memory management ekes out the maximum out of the 3000mAh battery on the R11, but there were instances where the battery fell below 10% after about 18 hours of use. Both phones offer power saving modes that let you extend the battery life once it goes below a certain threshold.

Software

Although the OnePlus 5 and OPPO R11 share a lot of similarities when it comes to external design, there’s a clear dichotomy when you look at the software implementation. OxygenOS 4.5 on the OnePlus 5 is a skin devoid of customizations, offering a near-stock user experience with a smattering of useful additions, like gestures and accent colors. Overall, the software experience on offer with the OnePlus 5 is unmatched in this segment.

Meanwhile, ColorOS 3.1 (based on Android 7.1.1 Nougat) is a quintessential Chinese ROM — there’s no app drawer, the notification shade doesn’t have quick toggles, and the interface is heavily skinned. The toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and location services are accessible by a slide out gesture from the bottom of the screen, much like how Control Center works in iOS.

OxygenOS is designed for a global audience, whereas ColorOS is made for China.

You get customizable toggles along with a brightness slider, a blue light filter, and a list of your frequently used apps along the bottom row. The status bar has the cellular and Wi-Fi signal icons on the left, with just the battery indicator located at the right.

The bottom of the notification pane has a data counter that gives you an overview of your data usage for the current day, as well as total data consumed in that particular month. You also get to see the time, day, and weather information from the pane. While the notification window itself is customized — like the rest of the user interface — you do get the option to send Nougat-style quick replies without having to go into an app.

The user interface certainly has a learning curve, but it does offer a ton of extra features. The only other Chinese ROM I’ve used with any regularity is MIUI, and ColorOS offers a similar set of additions, including the ability to run two instances of the same app simultaneously. There’s also a split-screen mode, but you’ll need to enable it from the settings.

There’s even a handy guide that runs you through the various features on offer with ColorOS, along with troubleshooting tips and contact information for OPPO’s after-sales service.

Camera

The camera is once again an area where both phones sport identical hardware — a 16-megapixel primary shooter augmented by a 20MP secondary sensor. The secondary shooter is a telephoto lens, allowing the devices to offer 2x lossless zoom. While the sensor setup is the same, the resulting images aren’t identical, mainly due to the differences in the SoC and the software processing algorithms implemented by both companies.

OnePlus 5 on the left, OPPO R11 on the right.

Photos shot with the OnePlus 5 are oversaturated, and the phone loses out on a lot of detail in 2x zoom when compared to the R11. The 20MP camera on the R11 also has a slender edge over the 16MP shooter on the OnePlus 5. That said, the OnePlus 5 benefits from the newer ISP on the Snapdragon 835, with the phone offering better dynamic range.

Images taken from the primary shooter on the R11 tend to be overexposed, resulting in colors looking washed out. That isn’t the case on the OnePlus 5, which produces consistently decent photos in daylight conditions.

Which should you buy? OnePlus 5

For a majority of customers outside of China, the OnePlus 5 is the only viable option. OnePlus has managed to carve out a niche for itself by offering top-notch hardware for a few hundred dollars less than the competition, and that strategy has worked very well for the manufacturer.

The R11 doesn’t come close to the OnePlus 5 in terms of the value proposition, but it doesn’t matter anyway as both phones are targeted at different segments. The OnePlus 5 is sold online and caters to enthusiast users, whereas the R11 is sold via thousands of OPPO stores across China.

The hardware on offer along with the software experience makes the OnePlus 5 one of the best devices in this segment.

See at OnePlus

Xiaomi Mi Smart Shoes review: Obsessively track your workouts

Xiaomi’s smart shoes automatically detect and catalog your workouts.

Xiaomi is no stranger to the wearable segment — its $20 Mi Band is immensely popular worldwide — and the brand is once again turning to fitness tracking with its latest product, the Mijia Smart Shoes. Like the rest of its Mi Ecosystem portfolio, Xiaomi’s smart shoes offer great value for money.

The heel and ankle portion of the shoe is made out of SBR (styrene-butadiene rubber), and the rubber outsole has an anti-slip patch. The knitted fabric upper allows the shoe to be lightweight, and there’s a “torsion balance sheet” inserted in the midsole that protects you from spraining your feet.

If you’re running at night, there’s a reflective thread that’s woven into the shoelace and a reflective stripe at the back.

The brains of the smart shoe is an Intel Curie module, a coin-sized 32-bit SoC based on the Quark SE platform that has a 6-axis sensor, accelerometer, and gyroscope. The module can run for up 60 days on a standard coin battery, and it has enough compute power to crunch all the data recorded from the bevy of sensors and transmit it over Bluetooth LE.

The module is IP67 water-resistant and can be inserted into either the left or right shoe. The system is similar to the Nike+ sensor from several years ago, but it does a much better job of cataloging your data. Like the Mi Band, Xiaomi’s smart shoes are manufactured by Huami. I picked up the black colorway, but they’re also available in grey and blue.

The module automatically differentiates between running, walking, and climbing, and you’ll be able to see an overview of the total distance covered in a day along with the calories burned through the Mi Fit app.

You’ll need to initially pair the Curie module with the Mi Fit app during initial setup — the pairing process involves you placing the module in the shoe and shaking it to activate the sensor, and then enabling Bluetooth on your phone so the app can detect the shoe. Once set up, you can view your activity history broken down into daily, weekly, and monthly increments. There’s also the option to sync your activity data with Google Fit.

The success of the Mi Band allowed Xiaomi to clinch the second spot in the wearable category, and a lot of that had to do with the fitness band’s affordability. Xiaomi’s $60 sneakers are similarly worth the purchase, even without the smarts. Factor in the Curie module and you have one of the best options in the wearable segment.

See at GearBest