Watch Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 livestream at 11AM ET

If you’ve been eagerly awaiting the return of the Galaxy Note after the drama surrounding last year’s model, today is the day. At 11AM ET, Samsung will reveal the Note 8 and perhaps a few other things during the festivities. We’ll be there to cover all the news as it happens, including our analysis and witty commentary via a liveblog. If you want to livestream the event, Samsung is hosting one of those right here. We’ve also embedded the stream down below for easy access. When the time comes, keep it locked here for all the action and reaction as the company seeks to rebound from its stumble(s) with the Note 7.

Follow all the latest news from Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 event here!

Source: Samsung

HP’s Omen X is a monstrous, customizable gaming laptop

While companies like ASUS, Acer and NVIDIA are working on making gaming laptops thinner and lighter, HP is going in the opposite direction with its huge Omen X Laptop. It weighs a whopping 10.8 lbs, which is close to other 17-inch gaming notebooks. In exchange for being able to carry it easily, you get an incredibly customizable notebook; one with enough graphics horsepower to handle anything you throw at it — even 4K gaming.

Everything about the Omen X screams power. Its sharp, angular design makes it seem like some sort of military weapon. I would liken it to a Stealth Bomber, though nothing about it is particularly stealthy. It’s a big machine — one that makes its presence known long before you ever touch it. As you can imagine, given that it’s so hefty, it’s difficult to hold even with two hands. It likely won’t even fit into laptop bags meant for 17-inch machines; you’d have to devote the main compartment of a large backpack to the Omen X. Under the hood, it can fit in an NVIDIA GTX 1080, as well as an Intel Core i7-7820HK CPU.

Clearly, the Omen X is meant for the sort of gamer who cares about getting the most complete laptop experience possible. And, ideally, they wouldn’t want to move their machine around much. It also features a mechanical keyboard, which feels wonderfully responsive, even though it doesn’t have as much room for keys to click as a desktop offering. It’s well-suited for gaming, thanks to programmable macros, but it’s also the sort of keyboard that simply feels pleasant to type on.

The Omen X’s expandability is particularly intriguing. You just need to remove ten tiny Philips screws to pop open the bottom of its case, which allows you to upgrade the RAM, storage and other components. You can even set up RAID 0 to boost your disk performance. It took an HP representative a few minutes to remove the screws, but unfortunately, they weren’t able to open the case of the prototype they were demoing. I didn’t get a chance to test out its overclocking capabilities, either, but HP claims you’ll have full control of the CPU and GPU for tweaking.

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

You can nab the Omen X with a 120Hz 1080p screen, or a 60Hz 4K display. Even though it has a large 17-inch monitor, I’d personally go for the faster refresh rate, since that lets it show much higher framerates. 4K on a laptop, even one this big, still won’t be very noticeable. It would have been nice to see a 120Hz 1,440p screen, though, just for an added bit of sharpness.

The 1080p Omen X display looked bright and fluid while playing Battlefield 1 at 120FPS. Most of that was due to the monitor’s high refresh rate, but it also has NVIDIA G-SYNC support to smooth out games that don’t reach such exorbitant FPS counts. The laptop will start at $1,999 with an NVIDIA GTX1070 GPU when it’s released in November.

Ultimately, the Omen X laptop is impressive given the sheer amount of features and customizability HP managed to stuff in. It’s not meant to take on ultra-thin gaming laptops like the ASUS ROG Zephyrus. It’s a beast, but a beautiful one.

Follow all the latest news live from Gamescom here!

Both the Amazon Echo and Google Home are under £100 right now

If you’re in the market for a smart speaker but don’t fancy shelling out the full retail price for one, Amazon and Google might be able to help. Today, both the Amazon Echo and Google Home have been given price cuts that have taken them below the £100 mark.

For a limited time only, the Amazon Echo costs £99.99 from Amazon, while Argos is offering it for £99. Meanwhile, the Google Home is £99 at Argos and John Lewis. That means you’ll save up to £50 on an Echo and and £30 on Google’s smart speaker.

If you want something a bit smaller, the diminutive Echo Dot will cost you £45 instead of the normal £50. Elsewhere, you can grab the Fire 7 for £40, saving a tenner, or pick up a Fire HD 8, which is now £65 (a £15 saving).

Upgrade those to Kid Editions — which come with a rubberised case, a year’s subscription to Kids Unlimited, parental controls and a two-year guarantee — and you’ll save more. Currently, the Fire 7 Kids Edition costs £80 (saving you £20) and the Fire HD 8 Kids Edition is priced at £100 (down £30).

Normally, you’d have to wait for a dedicated sales event like Prime Day or Black Friday to jump on deals similar to this. These summer discounts won’t be around for very long, so make sure you act quickly.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: Google Home (Argos), (John Lewis), Amazon Echo (Amazon), (Argos)

Pepper’s new job is performing Buddhist funeral ceremonies

Pepper the robot has seen a variety of gainful employment in its relatively short life. It’s worked in a mobile phone store, a Pizza Hut and a French train station, but now it seems it’s jacking in the corporate world for more spiritual pursuits: Buddhist funerals. At the happily-titled Life Ending Industry Expo in Tokyo, Aldebaran’s humanoid ‘bot could be found clothed in religious robes and chanting sutras in a computerized voice while tapping a drum.

Nissei Eco Co., which wrote the chanting software for Pepper, believes the robot could play a pivotal role in funeral ceremonies when priests aren’t available, and for a lower price too. A human priest costs around 240,000 yen ($2,200) per funeral, while Pepper is a bargain at just 50,000 yen ($450). But it seems Pepper is missing an important qualification for the job. As Reuters reports, Buddhist priest Tetsugi Matsuo said he wanted to see if Pepper could bring enough heart to the role, because for him, “the heart is the foundation of religion”. There’s no word of his final thoughts on the matter, but suffice to say Pepper has not yet been hired for a ceremony.

Via: Reuters

Live from Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 event!

After an embarrassing fiasco involving exploding batteries, recalls, apologies and assurances, Samsung is ready to re-introduce the Note line to the world. Thanks to the plethora of leaks, we have a pretty good idea of what the new device will look like. At 11AM ET today, Samsung will be sharing all the details on the highly anticipated Note 8, and we’ll be covering the event and all the news as it happens right here in our liveblog.

Follow all the latest news from Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 event here!

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 packs a giant display and a smarter pen

It’s been a long, long year for Galaxy Note fans. The Note 7 launched with much fanfare last summer, only to die in spectacular fashion as systemic battery flaws (not to mention hasty decision-making) forced Samsung to recall the fire-prone handset twice and eventually kill it off. Unless you went out of your way to get the Fan Edition, you’ve had to go without a modern Note for a long time. At last, though, a replacement is here: Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy Note 8, and it might finish the redemption process that started with the Galaxy S8.

Yes, the most obvious change is the screen. Samsung is using a 6.3-inch version of the near bezel-free AMOLED Infinity Display you saw on the S8 and S8 Plus, complete with a quad HD-plus resolution (2,960 x 1,440) and curves that spill off the sides. That’s only a tenth of an inch larger than the S8 Plus, but it’s gigantic compared to the 5.7-inch screens you’ve seen on Galaxy Notes for the past few years. We’d question the wisdom of curved screens on a pen-oriented device, but there’s no doubt that the larger screen should give you more headroom for drawing, multitasking and media playback. Appropriately, there’s a fresh App Pair feature that launches two apps at once from shortcuts on the Edge panel, such as YouTube and a chat app. You may have more of a reason to rely on multi-window support knowing that your favorite app combo is a couple of taps away.

There’s more to the phone than its visuals. The S Pen is the same as what came with the Note 7, complete with the fine 0.7mm tip and 4,096 points of pressure sensitivity, but you can do considerably more with it. You now have Live Messages that turn your handwritten messages into effects-laden GIFs for chat and social apps. Think of iOS 10’s hand-drawn art, only more elaborate. Also, Samsung is making better use of the always-on display. You can take notes the second you eject the S Pen, pin notes to the screen and edit them on the spot. An upgraded translation feature lets you decipher text by hovering the pen over text to translate whole sentences and convert unfamiliar currencies and languages.

The remaining hardware will be familiar… with one notable exception. You’re still getting the S8’s processor (a Snapdragon 835 or Exynos 8895, depending on the market), IP68 water and dust resistance, 64GB of expandable storage (some markets get 128GB or 256GB), fingerprint/face/iris detection, fast wireless charging and DeX dock support. The biggest performance upgrade is 6GB of RAM versus the 4GB of the S8, and you’re looking at a 3,300mAh battery (that’s smaller than on the S8 Plus, unfortnuately). However, the camera is a different story. Samsung has hopped aboard the dual rear camera bandwagon, giving you both the S8’s 12-megapixel f/1.7 wide-angle cam and a new 12-megapixel f/2.4 telephoto shooter to capture far-off subjects. Both are optically stabilized, unlike the iPhone 7 Plus, and offer more than the usual zoom and portrait-style modes. You can adjust the depth of field (including after the shot) and snap photos from both cameras at once. The front-facing camera is the 8-megapixel autofocusing camera you saw in S8 models.

You won’t have to wait long to get the Note 8, at least in the US. Major US carriers (including newcomer Xfinity Mobile) will start taking pre-orders for the phone in midnight black and orchid gray on August 24th, and it’ll reach stores September 15th. The pricing will vary from network to network, but there’s a consistent set of promos. If you order a phone between the 24th and September 24th, you can get either a free Gear 360 VR camera or an equally free Galaxy Foundation kit that includes both a 128GB microSD card and a fast wireless charging stand. These sorts of bonuses are par for the course with Samsung launches, but they reinforce how eager Samsung is to court cautious Galaxy Note fans. It’s willing to spend a lot to get you back.

Follow all the latest news from Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 event here!

Source: Samsung

The Galaxy Note 8’s dual camera rivals the iPhone 7 Plus

Samsung may be late to the dual-camera game, but it seems to have put that extra time to good use. The Note 8 is the first major Galaxy handset to sport two rear cameras, with a setup that includes twin 12-megapixel sensors, one with wide-angle lens and one with telephoto. This is arguably the most useful of all the Note 8’s new features, which include a refined S Pen, updated software, improved display and a smaller footprint. From my brief time with the phone during a recent demo ahead of today’s launch, it’s clear that Samsung has a camera setup excellent enough to make iPhone owners consider switching.

Like the iPhone 7 Plus, the Note 8’s dual cameras create an artificial depth-of-field effect by blurring out the background, leaving your subject in focus. Samsung’s version of Apple’s Portrait mode is called Live Focus, and it does several things differently. On the Note 8, you can see and adjust the amount of blur before you capture the picture as well as after. While you’re framing your shot, you can drag a slider to open the aperture as wide as f/1.7 to get the most blur. Apple, on the other hand, doesn’t let you edit the bokeh after the fact, nor does it show the soft focus in the viewfinder.

When shooting in Live Focus mode, the Note 8’s camera defaults to the telephoto lens for a more close-up picture. But you can activate (or disable) a feature called Dual Capture, which snaps the same picture with both lenses, so you get a tight shot as well as a wider one. Dual Capture works only in Live Focus mode, though, and is enabled by default.

This worked well during my brief demo. I got up close with several cones of mixed nuts, blurring out the ones further away from me. When I looked at the photo afterward, I was given the option to view “normal picture.” Tapping that showed me the wider version of the image, which was surprisingly well-composed. I could choose to save the alternate picture as a separate image, too.

I was also impressed by how sharp the images were. Individual lines on the cones’ ridged surfaces were crystal clear, even when I zoomed in to scrutinize the details. The Note is also adept at detecting the outline of a subject’s head when applying bokeh, although it isn’t as precise as the iPhone 7 Plus. Samsung’s software is also less aggressive than other Android phones we’ve tested: The difference between the blurred background and the in-focus subject is less pronounced on the Note 8, making the effect more realistic.

100 percent crop of previous picture.

In addition to the Live Focus tool, the Note 8’s dual cameras also sport optical-image stabilization (OIS) and 10x digital zoom. During the demo, Samsung showed off how steady the picture on the Note 8 was compared with an iPhone by sticking both to a vibrating box. Indeed, even when I jabbed at the surface on which the phones were resting, the image in the Note 8’s viewfinder didn’t budge. It almost felt like Samsung had placed a screenshot on the Note 8 (it didn’t — tapping the shutter button did trigger the camera). Meanwhile, the iPhone’s photos in the same vibration test all came out fuzzy. This is, of course, a test in a controlled scenario, so we’ll have to wait till we can do real-world testing to be certain of the Note 8’s advantages. Still, these preliminary results are promising.

The Note 8 retains the dual-pixel sensor (only on the wide-angle camera) that Samsung has used since the Galaxy S7, which helps it focus on subjects much faster than the competition. Plus, the wide-angle lens has a large aperture of f/1.7, so it can let in more light than before. This should improve low-light performance, which I didn’t get a chance to try out during my briefing.

For now, it looks like Samsung has made an excellent device that could nab one of the top three spots in the smartphone camera competition. The company may have initially lagged behind rivals like ZTE, LG, OnePlus and Huawei in delivering a dual-camera setup, but the Note 8’s superior system appears to be well worth the wait.

Follow all the latest news from Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 event here!

Galaxy Note 8 hands-on: Enough to make you forget the Note 7

After the nightmare that was the Galaxy Note 7, few people would’ve been surprised if Samsung killed the Note line entirely. But it didn’t. As an insane number of leaks have suggested, the company still believes the world needs a high-end phablet with an S Pen, and it took over a historic armory in New York to show off its latest attempt. Say hello to the Galaxy Note 8: a huge, beautifully made phone that just might be good enough to make people forget about its poorly designed predecessor.

There’s a chance you’ve already decided you need a Note 8. If that’s the case, just know that you can pre-order one starting on August 24th, and that the phone will officially go on sale September 15th. We’re not sure about the price yet, but all five major carriers in the US will sell it, and an unlocked model will also be available at launch. Enjoy. We spent a little hands-on time with the Note 8 prior to today’s event, so for everyone else, let’s take a closer look.

Design-wise, the Galaxy Note 8 doesn’t stray far from the foundation built by this year’s S8 line. No surprise there. The phone’s curved body is built from the same blend of metal and glass, and there’s an octa-core Snapdragon 835 chip lurking inside, albeit with 6GB of RAM, up from 4GB on the S8. Based on our limited demo, the Note 8 seems to run the way a flagship should, even with all of Samsung’s own software loaded on top of Android 7.1.1.

We’re also working with the biggest display Samsung has ever squeezed into a Galaxy Note: a gorgeous 6.3-inch Super AMOLED panel running at Quad HD+ resolution. More important, the Note 8 manages to feel a little smaller than it actually is because there are basically no bezels on the sides of this enormous “Infinity” display. Not everyone will find a screen this big manageable, but hey — that’s basically true of every Galaxy Note.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

The fit and finish are impeccable, too; the Note 8 is a remarkably sturdy-feeling machine, though the new Essential PH-1 has it beat when it comes to reassuring density. You’ll find the fingerprint sensor on the Note’s back, next to Samsung’s first dual-camera setup, a USB-C port on the bottom and a headphone jack right next to that. In typical Samsung fashion, the Note 8 is rated IP68 for water- and dust-resistance, and there’s a microSD slot to supplement the built-in 64GB, 128GB or 256GB of storage. (Sadly, we’re getting only the 64GB model here in the US.)

Physically, the S Pen hasn’t changed much since last year. It’s water-resistant, just like the Note 8 itself, and recognizes the same 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity as the Note 7. It’s still not quite as satisfying as doodling pen on paper, but the level of precision is still impressive. The more notable changes come down to what you can do with the S Pen. The most notable (not to mention fun) addition is a feature called Live Messages. Basically, you can write out animated messages with the S Pen, lay them on top of pictures and export the whole shebang as a platform-agnostic GIF you can message to friends. We spent more time playing with this in our demo session than we probably should have, and the results are fabulous. These files can get large, though: The Live Message GIFs we made ranged from 10MB to 20MB.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

Samsung also improved on S Pen features that we first saw on last year’s model. With the Note 7 you could use the S Pen to highlight text you wanted to translate, but the Note 8 supports translating full sentences and snippets of text instead of just words. Dashing off notes on the screen while it’s off still works, but you can now keep writing for up to 100 pages before having to save them to Samsung’s S Note app.

Other features are geared toward using efficiently using all of the Note 8’s screen space. Split-screen multi-tasking has been a thing since the early days of Android Nougat, and Samsung is capitalizing on that feature with what it calls App Pairs. Essentially, you can program two apps to launch in split-screen mode at the same time, if you’re the type of person who likes, say, thumbing through lyrics in Genius while listening to Spotify. It’s far from crucial, but hey — we’re sure someone will find it handy.

Really though, the biggest change is the camera. The Note 8 features Samsung’s first dual camera (unless you count the leaked-but-unreleased Galaxy C10), and it combines a wide-angle 12-megapixel with an f/1.7 aperture with a 12-megapixel telephoto camera. We’ve seen these kinds of dual cameras before, most notably in LG’s G-series phones, and they’re generally more flexible than the color-and-monochrome sensor setups rival devices use. After some brief testing, it’s clear that Samsung still knows what it’s doing. Our test photos came through with remarkable color and clarity, and the 2x optical zoom also worked very well. We even got good-looking photos when we were shooting in the dim corners of Samsung’s demo station. That’s thanks in part to the optical-image stabilization found in both of the cameras, though the wide-angle camera’s lens allows it to capture more light.

Engadget

Having two cameras also means you can add some background blur to your photos using Samsung’s Live Focus mode. Again, this isn’t exactly new; Apple has its popular Portrait mode, and countless other phones have artificial bokeh features. What’s neat about Samsung’s approach is that you’re able to control how much blur you want in your shot before and after you’ve taken the photo. We’ve dug a little more into the Note 8’s camera performance here, but needless to say, Live Focus works very well. It’s also worth noting that when you’re shooting in Live Focus, you can also get the phone to take photos using both cameras at once, though only one of them appears in the gallery at a time. That this isn’t a default photo option seems a little silly, so here’s hoping Samsung fixes that in a software update. We’re going to need more time to test the camera before drawing any hard conclusions, consider us optimistic. Samsung just might have built the dual-camera to beat.

As always, the Note 8 isn’t going to be for everyone. It’s undeniably big, and most people aren’t really clamoring to use styluses with their phones. It does get a lot right, though, and anyone who was disappointed by the Note 7’s sudden disappearance is sure to appreciate all these updates. OK, hardly anything about it was a surprise. That doesn’t make the Note 8 any less impressive. We’ll start working on our full Note 8 review as soon as we get one in for testing, but even at this early stage, the Note 8 seems poised to become the gold standard for big smartphones.

Virgin Mobile USA Offering One Year of Unlimited Data to iPhone Switchers For Just $1

Virgin Mobile USA today announced that customers who bring their existing iPhone, and transfer their phone number from another carrier, will receive one year of unlimited talk, text, and data for just $1 with AutoPay enabled. The limited time promotion is available until August 31, 2017.

The deal is also available to customers who purchase a brand new iPhone at full cost from Virgin Mobile, which sells the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 6s Plus for the same prices as Apple. Virgin Mobile also sells the iPhone SE for $279.99, which is $120 off its regular $399 price.

Once an iPhone is verified as compatible with Virgin Mobile, which operates on Sprint’s network, a SIM card will be shipped with instructions to install it and activate the device. SIM cards can be ordered for free on Virgin’s website until Friday, September 29, at which point the starter kit will cost $25.

During the 12-month promotional period, so-called “Inner Circle” members will receive unlimited talk, text, and data with a few caveats: video quality is limited to up to 480p resolution, music streams at up to 500 kbps, and games stream at up to 2 Mbps. Virgin promises 4G LTE speeds for “practically everything else.”

Customers who use more than 23GB of data in a billing cycle will be de-prioritized during times and places where the network is constrained.

Mobile Hotspot is available for an additional $10 per month, providing up to eight tethered devices with a dedicated allotment of 10GB of high-speed data to share each month. Unlimited calls to Mexico and Canada, and unlimited worldwide text messaging, can also be added for $5 per month.

After the $1 offer, customers will be transitioned to Virgin Mobile’s standard pricing of $50 per month for unlimited talk, text, and data, with all of the aforementioned caveats. Taxes are extra.

Overall, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious catches hidden in the fine print. Virgin Mobile doesn’t have contracts, so customers should be able to take their iPhone to a different carrier at any point. Virgin Mobile is simply looking for customers to try out its network, similar to its parent Sprint’s free-year offer.

Virgin Mobile USA became an iPhone-only carrier in June, but since it shares Sprint’s network, only CDMA models are compatible.

Tag: Virgin Mobile
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Apple’s next self-driving phase is an employee shuttle

Apple famously planned to build an entire self-driving car, but abandoned that idea to focus on autonomous vehicle technology à la Uber and Waymo. Thanks to a New York Times report, we now know some of what happened and what Apple is doing now. It reportedly plans to test the tech by building a self-driving shuttle (called PAIL, for Palo Alto to Infinite Loop) that will take employees between its current campus and the new “Spaceship” HQ.

We already know, thanks to many leaks and rumors, that Apple hired “hundreds” of engineers dedicated to building an entire autonomous car in a plan dubbed “Project Titan.” Work started in 2014, and at one point, had an ambitious release date for 2019.

However, Apple made it particularly difficult on itself by setting much-too-aggressive goals, according to new information from the NYT. Executive Steve Zadesky, originally in charge of Titan, preferred to build a semi-autonomous vehicle, much as Tesla has now. However, head designer Jony Ive wanted a re-imagined, fully autonomous car, despite the fact that no automaker or tech company has come close to that ideal.

Interesting tidbit: Apple worked on car doors w motors to open silently and spherical — yes, spherical — tires https://t.co/WatZTLWdgW

— Daisuke Wakabayashi (@daiwaka) August 22, 2017

Apple also wanted to integrate all the sensors seamlessly into the vehicle to avoid the bumps and cones on current self-driving cars. It even wanted to change the wheel designs, making them spherical instead of round, the NYT says — almost too perfect a metaphor for how Apple’s perfectionism took the project down.

As expected, Apple will use another company’s vehicle to test its PAIL shuttle, much as Waymo has with Chrysler. It has already been spotted testing a Lexus equipped with off-the-shelf technology RADAR and LiDAR units from Velodyne. If the testing goes to plan and it follows the same path as Intel, Waymo, Uber and others, it’ll eventually partner with an automaker to further develop the tech.

Source: NYT