Nokia is once again partnering with Zeiss to make its cameras stand out

Nokia is teaming up with Zeiss to deliver the “ultimate imaging experience possible on a smartphone.”

Nokia’s lengthy collaboration with Zeiss resulted in some of the best cameras in the smartphone segment (RIP Lumia 1020), and that partnership is kicking off once again. HMD Global — the company with the exclusive rights to Nokia’s brand name — has announced that it has signed an exclusive partnership with Zeiss to deliver the “ultimate imaging experience possible on a smartphone” and set “new imaging standards within the smartphone industry.”

Nokia teamed up with Zeiss over a decade ago, bringing several innovations to this industry, including the first multi-megapixel mobile phone, PureView, and more. By rekindling its partnership, Nokia is looking to once again raise the bar for smartphone cameras:

With a joint ambition to advance the quality of the total imaging experience on smartphones spanning the entire ecosystem from software, services, through to screen quality, and optic design, the partnership will see ZEISS and HMD Global co-develop standard-defining imaging capabilities and will bring the ZEISS brand back to Nokia smartphones.

From Arto Nummela, CEO of HMD Global:

Collaborating with ZEISS is an important part of our commitment to always deliver the very best experience for our customers. Our fans want more than a great smartphone camera, they want a complete imaging experience that doesn’t just set the standard but redefines it. Our fans expect it and, together with ZEISS, we’re delivering it – co-developed imaging excellence for all.

The Nokia phones that already made their debut this year — the Nokia 3, Nokia 5, and the Nokia 6 — are aimed at the budget segment, and it looks like the Zeiss optics will be reserved for Nokia’s oft-rumored flagship, the Nokia 9. Earlier leaks showed off two dual 13MP cameras at the back, and Nokia alluded the same in a tweet announcing the partnership with Zeiss:

Nokia smartphones to feature ZEISS optics. Together, we look forward to an exciting journey into the future of smartphone imaging. pic.twitter.com/GNWwuMAveK

— ZEISS Camera Lenses (@ZEISSLenses) July 6, 2017

It’ll certainly be interesting to see what comes out of Nokia’s renewed partnership with Zeiss, considering camera quality is a key differentiator in the high-end segment.

OnePlus 5 OxygenOS 4.5.5 update brings Wi-Fi, calling + video improvements

OnePlus continues to push ahead with incremental updates for its new flagship phone.

OnePlus has today started rolling out yet another software update for the OnePlus 5. The upgrade to OxygenOS 4.5.5 takes care of a handful of remaining bugs, while making improvements to areas like Wi-Fi performance, video recording, battery life and call quality — as the official changelog shows:

Optimizations:

• Further improvements to Wi-Fi connectivity
• Clearer voice calling
• Video recording now consumes less battery
• Vibration intensity when receiving calls is now tuned to a gentler level

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed Wi-Fi signal consistently being displayed as weak
• Fixed certain apps not able to work under IPv6 network settings
• To restore connectivity to a Windows 10 PC, please turn off USB debugging prior to the upgrade

For what it’s worth, there’s no mention of the “jelly scrolling” effect that some OnePlus 5 owners are noticing, which is understood to be a hardware characteristic and won’t be addressed in software.

The update won’t be available on all OnePlus 5 phones right away — instead, OnePlus is doing its usual staged rollout thing, where a small percentage get the update on day one, before the floodgates are opened sometime later. For the impatient among us, the old VPN trick (using an app like Opera VPN or TunnelBear) to switch to a Canadian IP address will allow you to get in on the first wave of downloads for this version.

Updating your OnePlus 5 today? Let us know how you’re getting on down in the comments!

OnePlus 5

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• Camera comparison: OnePlus 5 vs. Galaxy S8
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Three UK zero-rates some streaming services with new ‘Go Binge’ feature

New Three subscribers can stream from Netflix, TVPlayer, Deezer and SoundCloud without eating into their data allowances.

Three UK has followed the lead of T-Mobile over in the U.S., with a new offering that zero-rates data from certain streaming services, so they don’t count against customers’ data allowances. “Go Binge” (even the branding is remarkably similar to T-Mo’s BingeOn) is included as standard for new and upgrading Three customers on SIM-only, “Advanced” handset and mobile broadband contract plans with allowances of 4GB or more per month.

Existing customers will need to change to a new, more expensive plan to take advantage of Go Binge. Three says Go Binge can be used with its “Feel at Home” roaming service, which allows customers to roam at no extra cost in 60 territories around the world — though other fair-use restrictions still apply.

Three has hinted that more services will be added in the future.

The number of services supported by Go Binge is pretty limited right now — only Netflix, TVPlayer, Deezer and SoundCloud at launch — so it’s disappointing to see staples like BBC iPlayer and Spotify missing the boat. However Three says it’s “always looking to add more services” — and for what it’s worth, BingeOn also started small, adding more supported services over time.

So despite the big marketing push behind Go Binge, it’s starting out relatively small, both in its base of supported streaming platforms, and the customers who’ll be able to take advantage of the feature — remember, none of Three’s current subscribers will benefit unless they upgrade or switch to a more expensive contract. It’s also unclear how Go Binge will coexist with Three’s unlimited “All You Can Eat” data plans in the long term — free streaming could eventually be used to coax subscribers off unlimited plans.

Three does at least appear to have dodged the bullet of downgraded video quality, an area of controversy for T-Mobile in the early days of its unlimited streaming offering. Jonathan Morris reports that streaming quality on Go Binge won’t be restricted in any way.

What big carriers won’t tell you about prepaid alternative carriers

Being informed is great for us, but big carriers would rather keep you in the dark when shopping for phone service.

There are plenty of reasons to use an MVNO instead of one of the four major network providers here in the U.S. We have talked about many of them and most center on the service to cost ratio and how an MVNO can usually be a better value for most people. We think that value is a big consideration — who doesn’t love paying less without getting less?

There are a few little things that carriers won’t mention about MVNOs that can make using one even more attractive. Here are a few things you won’t hear about when you see a commercial from the Big Four.

These are the cheapest data plans you can buy in the U.S.

They are MVNOs themselves

All four carriers have at least one MVNO that is part of their corporate entity. They can incorporate them individually and appoint someone else as a company CEO, but when you follow the money back to the bank it’s going to the same account in the end.

All four carriers run one or more MVNOs.

They have several reasons for doing this. One is that if they didn’t, they would risk losing more customers to smaller companies that operate independently as MVNOs. For example, Virgin Mobile USA and Boost Mobile are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Sprint Corporation. Together they have about 11 million subscribers. Sprint can’t afford to lose revenue from 11 million accounts, and the revenue from Boost and Virgin USA goes directly to Sprint.

What is an alternative carrier?

Sprint also has its own Sprint-branded prepaid service. It doesn’t try to hide the fact that it owns Boost or Virgin USA, but it lets them act as if they were their own MVNO because they can offer different plans at different prices marketed to all types of customers. You can feel good about saving money on Boost instead of paying more for a Sprint plan, even though you are on a Sprint-owned plan and network.

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Sprint counts everyone with a Sprint postpaid plan and one of its MVNO subscribers in its subscriber count every quarter because it’s all the same company. It sees the value in an MVNO for the same reasons we see the value: to get more for less. It’s not just Sprint: AT&T and T-Mobile both run their own MVNOs for the very same reasons. (Verizon offers prepaid service, but only as part of its main brand. It also sells its service to other alternative carriers.)

You are paying for things you don’t need or use

If you have a post-paid account with one of the four major operators in the U.S. you are paying for things you don’t use. You don’t use them because you don’t need them.

Customer service, international “extras” and other plan perks aren’t free. Neither is the cost to develop and maintain extra services the companies offer like live TV broadcasts or cloud storage accounts or NASCAR sponsorships. The cost of all these things, as well as corporate facilities and accountants and lawyers, come from you and me. It’s part of our monthly bill and a big reason why you pay more for a data plan than you would through an MVNO. Many of us make use of some of these services, but think about the ones you don’t use and are still paying for.

An MVNO buys bulk data from these same carriers at a highly discounted rate. It can pass those savings on to you because it isn’t building billion-dollar corporate headquarters or paying millions of dollars to be an internet television service provider. It deals in phone calls and data plans. That’s what it sells you and that’s what you are paying for.

Hardly anyone needs huge data plans

Someone is going to comment that he use hundreds of gigabytes per month on his unlimited data plan. I’m sure that’s true, and it’s great that there’s an option to do it. But the simple fact is that most of us don’t use very much data, and the smaller 1GB or 2GB plans are all we would ever need. We still want to help save you money if you need unlimited data, though.

Which unlimited plan should you buy: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile or Verizon?

This doesn’t diminish anyone’s need for 100GB of data per month. If you need that much, stick with one of the Big Four and their unlimited plans. But if you don’t need a shared family plan with 10GB of data for your family, you don’t have to pay for it. An alternative carrier usually offers small data packages or services that can be maintained by paying for calls and texts that you can top up with data as you need it. This can mean substantial savings over the course of a year compared to even the smallest “smartphone” data package from a postpaid carrier.

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They use the same wires as an MVNO

T-Mobile (for example) has the same network footprint as MetroPCS (which is an MVNO that’s really part of T-Mobile like we talked about earlier) or any other MVNO that uses T-Mobile’s network. It doesn’t split the network into different areas when it sells wholesale data to another company.

A carrier only has one network and it’s the one it also sells to MVNOs.

If a carrier tells you it has a bigger network footprint that an MVNO that uses its network, it’s because it is paying another carrier to use its data network in some places. This is more common that you think, and even the U.S. telecom giants that are AT&T and Verizon have agreements with other carriers for places where their networks needs some help. If you are in one of these areas, some features of the plan you pay for aren’t going to work, and your data speeds may be diminished, but it’s still better than a dead spot. And cheaper than network expansion.

This isn’t a bad thing. Plenty of people travel all over the place and need service to follow them, and roaming agreements between companies help make that happen. But for the majority of its network coverage map, the service and data connection is the same as an MVNO that uses its network.

They love MVNOs as much as we do

Selling bulk data to an MVNO is very profitable for a big carrier. It doesn’t need to do anything extra when selling wholesale data to an MVNO so it means it is getting more (money) for less (work).

Big carriers have to maintain the network for their own customers. They have to expand the network for their own customers. They have to improve the network for their own customers. These are real costs, and selling data to an MVNO helps the bottom line because there isn’t anything they need to do after they sell it.

They can even make more money by offering things like billing services and in-store sales for an MVNO as an extra service. And after all that, your MVNO can still offer service cheaper than the company it is buying it from. Makes one wonder just how much profit is in every megabyte of data the Big Four sells, doesn’t it?

An MVNO isn’t making deals with hardware companies

At least not as many deals and not the same kinds of deals.

For a long time, AT&T was very interested in getting you to buy an iPhone every year. That’s because it had a special deal with Apple, and for that deal to be profitable it had to sell a whole lot of iPhones. That’s great for Apple and AT&T, but not so great for you and me.

A Galaxy S7 works great on an MVNO, but nobody is pressuring you to buy one.

That hasn’t changed now that everyone can use a Galaxy S7 on any network (it’s awesome on an MVNO, by the way!). Apple, Samsung, LG and everyone else works with the major carriers to find ways to make even more money, and employees are directed to do certain things to help make it happen.

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When you sign up for service from an alternative carrier, you might find a deal on an older model phone or a refurbished phone, but nobody is there to steer you towards a specific brand or model. MVNOs are interested in selling you good, cheap phone service. Not the next big thing from Samsung or Apple.

And that next big thing from Samsung or Apple will work just fine if it’s what you really want.

Alternative carriers are businesses and designed to make money. They aren’t out to be our friends or to operate at a loss. But there are plenty of reasons why they can make money by selling the same service for a lot less, and the Big Four carriers don’t really want to talk about them.

Updated June 2017: Made sure all the information was still great and current.

Alternative carriers (MVNOS)

• What is an alternative mobile carrier?
• What are the advantages of going with an alternative carrier?
• How to make sure your phone works on a prepaid alternative carrier
• 8 Important Considerations When Switching To An MVNO
• These are the cheapest data plans you can buy in the U.S.
• Mint SIM vs. Cricket Wireless: Which is better for you?

Try hands-free mode on the Amazon Tap with a certified refurb for $70 today

With Prime Day rapidly approaching, the team at Thrifter is back again with a great deal on an Amazon Tap!

The Amazon Tap sits in the middle of Amazon’s Echo lineup, and if you’ve been looking to grab one for your home or the office, today is the day. Amazon is running a bunch of one-day sales leading up to Prime Day, and this one scores you a certified refurbished Amazon Tap for just $69.99, a savings of $40 from its normal price. What makes the timing of this deal even more important is that Amazon plans to offer voice exclusive discounts on Prime Day, meaning you’ll need an Alexa-enabled product to take advantage of them.

Amazon states the certified refurbished Amazon Taps have been tested and will look and work like new. If these sell anything like the Echo Dots did, this deal won’t last all day. If you aren’t already a member of Amazon’s Prime service, now is also a great time to sign up for the free 30-day trial. This will not only allow you to grab a discounted Amazon Tap today, but also take part in all the Prime Day fun that is right around the corner.

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For more great deals be sure to check out our friends at Thrifter now!

How to buy things with Google Home

Google makes it easy to shop using your voice.

It seems as though every year our lives get even busier than they were the year before. Between your commute, working, hitting doctor’s appointments, making it to the gym, and ensuring everything gets done on time, it can be hard to figure out the best time to run out to the store. That’s where Google Home wants to make things a bit easier for you.

You can set up voice purchasing and even reorder items that you’ve ordered previously. It only takes a few minutes to set up voice purchasing, and we have the details on how to do it right here!

• How to set up Google Home to make purchases
• How to make a purchase using your voice

How to set up purchasing on Google Home.

Open the Google Home app.
Tap the menu button(it looks like three horizontal lines in the upper left corner of the screen).

Tap More Settings.

Tap Payments.
Tap Get Started.

Tap accept after reading the Terms and Conditions.

Tap to choose your default payment method.
Tap Next.

Tap to choose your delivery address.

Tap Next.
Tap the toggle to choose the Google Home that can make payments.

Tap Done.

How to make a purchase using your voice.

Say “Buy [product]”, “Order [product]”, or “Purchase [product]” to make a single order.
Say “Buy [product] from [store]”, “Purchase [product] from [store]”, or “Order [product] from [store]” to order a specific product from a specific store.
Say “Reorder [product]” to reorder a single item that you have purchased previously.

Questions?

Have you set up purchasing through Google Home? Do you have a question we didn’t answer? Be sure to leave us a comment and let us know about it below!

Google Home

• Google Home review
• These services work with Google Home
• Google Home vs. Amazon Echo
• Join our Google Home forums!

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The Morning After: Thursday, July 6th 2017

Hey, good morning!

Welcome back! After a quick holiday break, we have a social-media scandal involving a Kardashian (no, the other-other-other one) and big EV news from Volvo.

Back at it.
Virgin Galactic will conduct its first powered spaceship tests in three years

A 2014 crash undid Virgin Galactic’s private space-travel plans, but now the company says it’ll resume powered test flights. This comes after a series of glide-only trials since December, and it hopes to reach the edge of space by the end of this year. Richard Branson is targeting the middle of next year for his first trip to space, with commercial passenger flights starting soon after.

The first manufacturer to step away from gasoline.
All Volvo’s new models will be electric or hybrid within two years

Volvo isn’t quite going full-Tesla, but the company has announced that from 2019 on, it won’t launch another car without an electric motor inside. All new models will be full electric, plug-in hybrid or ‘mild-hybrid’ cars that run mostly on gas or diesel. Of the five new models Volvo plans to introduce between 2019 and 2021, two are high-performance Polestar vehicles.

What’s next?
Disney’s first 4K Blu-ray will be ‘Guardians of the Galaxy 2’

Ending months of speculation, Guardians 2 director James Gunn confirmed his movie will be available in Ultra HD this fall. The flick is especially colorful since it was filmed on a new Red Weapon 8K camera, and home viewers will enjoy more detail thanks to 4K and HDR. We’re still waiting for an official announcement from Disney, but it could go on sale August 22nd, leaving just one more question — when will we see Star Wars in 4K?

“It’s crazy but it might work.”
NASA will crash a satellite into an asteroid

NASA is one step closer to testing its proposed line of defence against the threat of a potential asteroid impact on Earth. The “kinetic impactor technique” essentially involves smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid to bounce it away from Earth. It sounds a lot saner than the plan hatched in Armageddon: send oil drillers and a nuclear bomb. Don’t cry, Liv Tyler.

Sure, that’s reasonable.
Volvo’s parent company just bought a flying-car outfit

According to reports, Chinese company Geely (which owns Volvo) has agreed to buy up Terrafugia. For years, Terrafugia has been working on designs for its Transition flying car, and a boost of capital could be enough to make that a real product.

A fold-up 3D person scanner.
The Big Picture: Digitize yourself with the 3D Copypod

Copying yourself digitally is not easy. Ideally, you want multiple all-around, soft-illumination photos taken from every angle at the same moment. A company called People’s Industrial Design Office in Beijing, China, has created something called the 3D Copypod, which can do all that for you in one neat package. It’s based on the Hoberman sphere, a type of geodesic dome that can fold down to a much smaller size thanks to its scissor-like joints.

Robocop and a monster truck are missing their love child.
The T-pod looks like a giant self-driving freezer on wheels

Einride has just revealed the prototype of the T-pod, its autonomous electric truck. The Swedish company’s driverless vehicle can transport 15 standard pallets and travel 124 miles on one charge. And because there’s no need for a person, the T-pod has no cab space and no windows.

Further proof that streaming-only albums work.
Jay-Z’s Tidal-exclusive ‘4:44’ went platinum in less than a week

Jay-Z’s latest album, 4:44, had a very exclusive release. To hear the new album, fans had to be Sprint customers and, if they hadn’t already, join the floods signing up to the Tidal streaming service before the album dropped. But despite those limitations, the album is the latest streaming-only release to go platinum.

But wait, there’s more…

• Twitter left Rob Kardashian’s revenge porn live for 30 minutes
• You don’t need a headset to see these ‘no-lograms’
• Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dunkirk’ will get the biggest 70mm release in years

Russian exoskeleton suit turns soldiers into Stormtroopers

In a bid to make its armed forces look even more intimidating, Russia has taken inspiration from science-fiction to create some futuristic-looking new combat suits. Developed by the state-owned Central Research Institute for Precision Machine Building, this very Star Wars-esque combat armor features a powered exoskeleton, ballistic protection from bullets and shrapnel and a heads-up display. While just a concept at the moment, the suit’s designers hope it will enter full production in the next few years.

While they haven’t detailed what the heads-up display would be used for, the combat armor’s powered exoskeleton helps the wearer carry heavy loads, bearing some of the brunt to lower the soldiers’ fatigue. While its designers have clearly spent a lot of time playing video games, we’ve already seen that Russia’s not alone in its bid to create an army of Master Chiefs. Now, taking that idea one step further, a U.S program called Tactical Light Operator Suit (or TALOS) is underway, which is creating an Iron Man-esque suit for American special forces.

With exoskeleton-powered soldiers and flying Volvos on the horizon, at this point we’re just patiently waiting for the first real-world superheroes to reveal themselves.

Source: Reuters

Steve Jackson’s ‘Sorcery!’ Fantasy Role-Player is a Free Download on the App Store

Chapter one of Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! fantasy role-playing game is currently available for free for a limited time on the App Store.

Usually $4.99, the critically acclaimed interactive adventure by Inkle is the first in a four-part series loosely based on the mechanic so successfully employed in the popular Fighting Fantasy role-playing gamebooks of the 1980s.

The fully interactive story allows players to make thousands of possible choices as they plot their journey across a hand-drawn 3D world map, with the narrative being rewritten in real-time based on what decisions gamers make.

Sorcery! also includes touch-based sword dueling battles and 48 magic spells to master. MacRumors’ sister site TouchArcade had this to say in their original review of the game:

The journey through those hills is still a gamebook trip, no doubt about it. There are stats, interactive combat scenes and plenty of big decisions to be made. It’s just that nothing feels restrained; nothing feels all that formulaic. Sorcery! goes big where needed, and the app shines for it.

The game features original illustrations by John Blanche, character art by Eddie Sharam (DC Comics), an interactive map by Mike Schley (Wizards of the Coast) and music by David Wise (Donkey Kong Country).

“The Shamutanti Hills” is Part 1 of 4. Part 2, “Kharé: Cityport of Traps” loads all of players’ completed Part 1 games to continue their adventure. Sorcery! is available for iPhone and iPad. [Direct Link] Part 2, 3 and 4 are also available on the App Store.
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Samsung Will Supply NAND Flash Chips for 2017 iPhones to Ease Shortage

Apple’s upcoming range of new iPhones could be hit by a 30 percent shortage in the supply of storage capacity chips, according to a new report by DigiTimes on Thursday.

The article claims that both SK Hynix and Toshiba have suffered from lower-than-expected yield rates for their 3D NAND flash chips, resulting in fewer supplies available for Apple’s 2017 series of iPhones. Apple is said to have called on Samsung in an effort to secure more.

Apple has turned to Samsung for more NAND chip supplies for its upcoming phones, since Samsung has relatively stable yield rates for 3D NAND technology and has scaled up its output of 3D NAND chips, the sources indicated.

Apple began using non-volatile 3D NAND chips in its mobile devices last year because of the technology’s ability to pack more storage space into equivalent dimensions compared to previous flash memory. However production of the chips is a more delicate process, and it looks as if Apple’s priority suppliers haven’t been able to increase their yield sufficiently to provide for the devices the company is planning to launch in 2017.

Apple’s reliance on Samsung to shore up the supply isn’t exactly out of the blue. Back in April of last year it was reported that Samsung would again become an Apple supplier of NAND flash chips, ending a five-year hiatus dating back to the iPhone 5 in 2012.

Apple is expected to announce a “tenth anniversary” OLED iPhone in September alongside more typical “S” cycle updates to its iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. One rumor has suggested the so-called “iPhone 8” will include increased storage space, while two additional rumors say it will be available in 64 and 256GB capacities.

Related Roundup: iPhone 8
Tags: Samsung, 3D NAND
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