Master your Samsung with these Galaxy S8 tips and tricks

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 is finally here, and it’s a looker. The South Korean company’s phone packs a gorgeous edge-to-edge curved screen, a beefed-up camera, a top-of-the-line processor, and a new virtual assistant powered by artificial intelligence. But like many devices of the Galaxy S8’s caliber, not every feature is easy to use — or find. Luckily, we’ve spent enough time with the Galaxy S8 to get a handle on a few of its most useful functions. Here are our favorite Galaxy S8 tips and tricks to get you started.

Tips for using Bixby, S-Health, emojis, and more

How to use Bixby

Bixby, Samsung’s new AI-powered assistant, is a command away from every screen. If you say, “Hey Bixby,” or tap the Galaxy S8’s dedicated Bixby button, you’ll get Bixby Voice, a Siri-like virtual assistant that can send photos to friends and cast videos to your smart TV.

Bixby Home, Bixby Voice’s visual companion, consists of cards that highlight weather forecasts, breaking news, and more. But it’s more than just an organizer. Home learns your preferences and habits over time; if you typically call someone after work, for example, it’ll start serving up that person’s contact info at the appropriate time each day.

There’s more to Bixby than Home and Voice. Bixby Vision, yet another component of Samsung’s AI, recognizes wine bottles, barcodes, and logos, and recommends relevant shopping links.

Looking for a more detailed guide to Bixby? Check out our guide on how to use Bixby, which tells you everything you need to know about setting up, using, and troubleshooting Bixby.

How to schedule a doctor’s appointment with S Health

Whether you’re feeling under the weather or just due for a physical, the Galaxy S8’s built-in S Health app has you covered. Thanks to deep integration with WebMD and Amwell, you can browse symptoms and drugs, find nearby pharmacies, schedule an online visit with a doctor, and reserve an appointment with a certified physician.

The new S Health app is capable of more. It can store information regarding upcoming appointments like symptoms, photos, prescriptions, and insurance information, and it offers quick access to emergency services.

How to use the new emoji

The Galaxy S8 ships with a bundle of new emoji from Emoji 4.0, the newest collection of icons approved by the Unicode Consortium. They include a giraffe, broccoli, a pretzel, chopsticks, a scientist, judge, pilot, teacher, and a boy with bunny ears.

Using them is as easy as pulling up the Galaxy S8’s default keyboard and tapping the emoji button. Then, it’s just a matter of scrolling through the the list until you find the one you want.

How to turn off notifications for specific apps

Endless notifications getting you down? What about notifications that showcase sensitive content on your lockscreen? Don’t stress — the Galaxy S8 lets you mute and hide notifications on a per-app basis.

If there’s a specific app that’s been notifying you a bit too often, you can mute it by tapping Settings > Notifications and toggling off the app’s notifications. Hiding an app’s notifications from your lock screen is just as easy. To do so, tap Settings > Notifications and choose which apps you want to hide from the lock screen.

How to enable and tweak Do Not Disturb mode

Do Not Disturb — the scorched-earth approach to notifications — mutes all alerts, but it’s also highly customizeable.

To enable Do Not Disturb mode, swipe down on the Galaxy S8’s quick settings and tap the Do Not Disturb button. You’ll get the option to switch it on immediately, and to specify a Do Not Disturb schedule. The latter feature will allow the mode to automatically kick in when you return home from work, for example.

Do Not Disturb can also let certain notifications through, if you choose to allow it. If you tap Settings > Sound and Vibration > Do not disturb > Allow exceptions, you’ll see options to allow repeat callers, allow alarms, or specify contacts that can break through the Do Not Disturb barricade. In addition, you can set priority apps — apps that always show notifications — by heading to Settings, Sound and Vibration > Do Not Disturb > Allow exceptions > Priority app notifications. 

How to customize the Galaxy S8’s volume levels

Whether you’re in a concert hall, classroom, or movie theater, sometimes you need to mute your phone in a jiffy. That’s where the Galaxy S8’s volume controls come in.

Adjusting the Galaxy S8’s volume is as easy as hitting the volume up or down button on the phone’s left-hand side. Tapping the down arrow on the right-hand side changes the ringer, media, notifications, and system volumes independently.

You can also switch the Galaxy S8 to vibrate by pushing the volume button and tapping the speaker icon in the resulting pop-up window, or by holding down the volume button until it slides all the way to vibrate.

Setting your phone to silent is a little trickier, but it’s not impossible. To do so, swipe down to access the Galaxy S8’s quick settings menu, and tap the sound shortcut until you reach the Mute setting.

Best iOS app deals of the day! 6 paid iPhone apps for free for a limited time

Everyone likes Apple apps, but sometimes the best ones are a bit expensive. Now and then, developers put paid apps on sale for free for a limited time, but you have to snatch them up while you have the chance. Here are the latest and greatest iOS app deals available from the iOS App Store.

These apps normally cost money and this sale lasts for a limited time only. If you go to the App Store and it says the app costs money, that means the deal has expired and you will be charged. 

World Recipes

World Recipes collects the most popular and distinguishing recipes around the world. The classic leather menu design may look just as good as the menu items themselves.

Available on:

iOS

Happy Hypnosis

Lift your spirits with an encouraging and uplifting hypnotherapy session by Rachael Meddows Hypnosis. Don’t forget to snap out of it!

Available on:

iOS

Relax Rain

Designed with simplicity in mind, Relax Rain is the simplest way to enjoy the relaxing and soothing sound of rain falling. Open up the app and sounds start playing automatically so you can relax, unwind, and meditate.

Available on:

iOS

MoneyCoach

MoneyCoach brings you more money and financial freedom by helping you manage all your financial accounts, create amazing reports, and give you personalized finance tips.

Available on:

iOS

Redesign Photo

Redesign Photo is a photo editing app that includes more than 100 unique filters and 240 preloaded images that can be blended in any which way.

Available on:

iOS

My Rec

My Rec is an app for managing audio recordings: it’s easy, fast and beautiful to use. It’s the ideal for working with voice memos, saving reminders, and recording calls.

Available on:

iOS

Facebook’s Sponsored Posts suck, but not how you probably imagine

If you’ve ever purchased anything from a Facebook ad, there’s a good chance someone was ripped off.

Every social network has some form of advertising baked in, and the one thing all forms of sponsored posts have in common is the potential for abuse. Anyone with a couple of bucks can broadcast to a large audience based on Facebook’s interest algorithm. For someone like me, actively babbling about tech and whatever TV show or game I am currently excited about, it’s easy to pick things to float in my feed that I would be at least casually interested in.

To Facebook’s credit, this system works well for me. I regularly see things I would honestly consider buying. Unfortunately, a significant majority of those things turn out to be either massive scams where people don’t get the things they ordered or stolen art from all over the web sold as original content. It sucks, and Facebook seems entirely uninterested in dealing with this problem.

Screwing artists over

I buy a lot of nerdy t-shirts. I give them as gifts, keep a bunch for myself, and it usually doesn’t take much to catch my interest. But that consumer habit made me deeply familiar with the most common retailers for the best shirts, which is why when I started seeing new companies hit my Facebook feed I wanted to know more about them. What I found was really, really bad.

These three screenshots all come from the same retailer, TeeChip. Facebook’s algorithm makes it so my feed is packed with stuff from this company. That’s not obvious, since the URL is masked or flat out changed. You’ll basically never see TeeChip in a URL on Facebook, because scammers know the name has gained a fair bit of negativity by now.

TeeChip lets anyone upload any image and sell it as their own product, on shirts and mugs and phone cases and posters. These “creations” can then be blasted across Facebook and sold at a fairly reasonable price to anyone, without the original artist having any clue this is happening until hundreds or thousands have been sold.

It’s not just TeeChip, though it is the most successful on Facebook by far.

When artists do eventually discover this is happening, there’s very little that can be done to stop it. Facebook is sent evidence of this theft every day, and the posts are never taken down. TeeChip, a company with zero positive BBB comments on its profile, is basically never held accountable. The stories of artists being blatantly ripped off can be found all over the web.

And it’s not just TeeChip, though it is the most successful on Facebook by far. There are dozens of other companies selling tons of other products that can be quickly branded however someone else chooses and sold as an original product. The person making the purchase has no clue, and in many cases, the product you purchase is not exactly what you thought you were ordering.

Identifying the scam

If this is a thing you care about, there are a couple of easy ways to make sure what you are buying is from the actual artist responsible for the thing you like. The first thing you can do is look on the retail page for any mention of the artist responsible. If you don’t see one listed, you can grab a screenshot of the artwork and look for the artist through a Google Image search. Take a look and see in the search results if there’s any evidence of this shirt being sold in the past.

Next, when it comes to Facebook Sponsored Posts, it’s a good idea to look up the company selling the thing before making a purchase. It’s not hard to look up TeeChip for example and see how many complaints the company has across consumer rating sites or the Better Business Bureau. Not every website will have a ton of positive or negative comments, but it never hurts to look.

In many cases, these shirts and posters are being sold through more reputable sites.

Finally, if the artist is on Twitter or Facebook or has an active email address, you can ask them if they are aware the art is being sold. In many cases, these shirts and posters are being sold through more reputable sites like TeeFury and RedBubble in ways that actually benefit the artist responsible. These sites also have things like public return policies, so you can be sure what you’re buying is what you actually ordered.

Not everyone cares about making sure the artists responsible for the clever things you find around the internet are actually pair for their work. If you’re one of the people who do, pay extra close attention the next time a Facebook Sponsored Post seems way too perfect for you.

This $14 Bluetooth speaker is a great addition to any shower

Our friends at Thrifter are back again, this time with a great deal on a highly-rated Bluetooth speaker.

Right now you can grab VicTsing’s Bluetooth shower speaker for just $13.99 with coupon code FYYLBKB5, a savings of $5. This speaker is a great option for anyone looking for something durable and waterproof thanks to its silicon casing that allows it to be shock, dust, and waterproof.

Featuring a built-in mic, you could use it for phone calls as well as music playback, making it even more versatile. Inside it has a 5W speaker for nice loud sound quality, and with more than 5,600 reviews at Amazon, it maintains a 4.2-star rating!

Odds are this price won’t last very long, so if you are looking for an affordable Bluetooth speaker that both looks great and is waterproof, act quick!

See at Amazon

More from Thrifter

• Upgrade your makeup bag this summer on a budget
• How to avoid baggage fees

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

One design decision is severely limiting my Galaxy Note 8 hype

I just don’t know if I can get over this one.

With each Galaxy Note release there comes an inevitable wave of hype in the months and weeks leading up as leaks happen and speculation grows. Much of what we’re seeing in the Galaxy Note 8 is both expected and enticing — its similarities to the Galaxy S8+ are entirely in line with previous releases, and in having much of what the GS8+ has the Note 8 is going to check just about all of the boxes for those looking for a top-end phone. It will also have the benefits of an even larger display, an S Pen and a dual rear camera setup — that’s all wonderful.

Unfortunately early leaks also point to one other shared feature with the Galaxy S8+: its extremely awkward fingerprint sensor placement. It’s this expectation of the bad rear-mounted fingerprint sensor that is truly tempering my hype for the Note 8, despite everything else about the phone looking intriguing to me.

In my three-month revisit of the Galaxy S8, I spent a considerable amount of time discussing my distaste for its fingerprint sensor placement. Even on the smaller GS8 it’s tough to find, tough to touch accurately without smudging up the camera and still remains highly necessary even if you opt to use face unlock or iris scanning primarily. Yes you can get better with practice, but it’s just never going to be as easy as the other fingerprint sensors out there.

Months with the Galaxy S8 haven’t helped me get any better at reaching that fingerprint sensor.

Things don’t get any better on the larger Galaxy S8+, and of course the Galaxy Note 8 is expected to be just a bit taller and wider still. Renders, as we see above, show a Note 8 with more clear separation between the fingerprint sensor and camera lenses … but not by much, as they still occupy the same glass cutout. This worries me from an ergonomic standpoint, and I don’t want the frustration of using the fingerprint sensor — which I use hundreds of times per day on my phones — to hurt what I expect to be a great experience in the Note 8. I’m conflicted before I even set my hands on the phone, because I’ve been living with the Galaxy S8 for months — and that’s not a great sign.

Now don’t get me wrong here, I am entirely happy with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor — provided it’s actually done properly. The Pixel XL, LG G6 and many others have shown that you can move your fingerprint sensor to the back of the phone and retain — or even improve — the ergonomics of the sensor you use hundreds of times a day.

The LG V30, which we’re set to see just one week after the Galaxy Note 8, quite clearly has a fingerprint sensor — and a fully-functional power button — mounted in a very usable position, despite sporting what seem to be dramatically similar dimensions and styling otherwise. It’s this knowledge that it is possible to have this big slab of phone with a fingerprint sensor in a more sensibly position that really sours my feelings on the Note 8. Yes I definitely understand that there are trade-offs in moving the fingerprint sensor there — LG told us about the component acrobatics necessary to make the G6 how it did — but this is a pretty big loss that I believe should’ve been weighted heavier.

Samsung could have yet another overhaul of its iris scanning solution waiting in the wings, as it clearly thinks (somehow) that technology is superior to a fingerprint sensor today. Or it could shock us with some sort of entirely new security paradigm that goes several steps further into the future. And there’s little doubt that in a handful of years we’ll look back at fingerprint sensors as old tech that has since been replaced by more secure, faster forms of authentication.

But is this something we should put up with today? We’re looking at a phone that’s launching into a world where a fingerprint sensor is still the de facto authentication method on phones, despite Samsung claiming otherwise. Today’s software and apps overwhelmingly rely on fingerprint sensors exclusively, and Samsung is making that part of the daily use of the phone more difficult than on any other device short of those that don’t have the sensor at all.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8

• Galaxy Note 8: Everything we know so far
• Rumored Galaxy Note 8 specs
• All Galaxy Note 8 news
• Should you buy the Galaxy S8+ or wait for the Note 8?
• The buttonless future of Samsung phones
• Join our Galaxy Note 8 forums

How to add a line to MetroPCS

Add a line to MetroPCS with just a few simple steps!

MetroPCS offers some amazing and competitively priced plans for multiple lines, so there’s no need to explain why you’d want to add one (or more) lines to your MetroPCS account. To add a line to MetroPCS, you don’t have to look too far — all the options for adding a MetroPCS line are available through your account online or by contact customer service directly. Let’s dive in and show you how it’s done!

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For multiple lines, MetroPCS plans start as low as $60 (the $30 plan x2, obviously). This plan will net you 1GB of data per line at 4G LTE speeds and is all-inclusive. If you add a line to MetroPCS, you can get a discount for adding multiple lines to a larger plan — $65 for 3GB per line or $80 for unlimited data. Across the board, you’re getting no contracts, 4G LTE speeds, Wi-Fi calling, unlimited music streaming, and Scam ID.

How to Add a Line to MetroPCS

Online

The easiest way to add a line to MetroPCS is by logging into your existing account online and choosing Add a Line. Do so from the MetroPCS activation page found here. After logging in, choose Add a Line, then go through the process of choosing a new device and plan that best fit your needs. When you’re finished, complete the checkout process and you’ll be up and running!

By Phone

To add a line to MetroPCS by phone, simply contact customer service via their toll-free line at 888-863-8768 (888-8metro8 ) or you can simply dial 611 from your current MetroPCS phone. Following the prompts to speak with a customer service agent, then tell them you wish to add a MetroPCS line to your existing account. They’ll walk you through the rest and you’ll be good to go!

In a Store

Of course, perhaps the easiest way to add a line to MetroPCS is by speaking with an agent in a MetroPCS store. There, you’ll be able to check out prospective new devices in person and the agent will be able to quickly answer any questions you may have regarding the process. You’ll be able to purchase a new device and add one or more lines quickly and easily.

Add Away!

Keep in mind that while you’ll always be able to add more lines to your existing MetroPCS account, the plans themselves may change from time to time. MetroPCS still offers some amazing prices and discounts as you add more lines though, so you can always feel comfortable knowing you’re getting a great deal on whatever plan you may choose.

VRHeads has an Asus Zenfone AR and Google Daydream to give away!

The promise of a phone that combines Google’s nascent Tango and Daydream technologies in one device has been a long time coming, but the wait is over! The Asus Zenfone AR is now available, and we want to share our excitement for this device with you. Keep reading to see how you can enter to win not only the phone but a Google Daydream to go with it from VRHeads!

Read more at VRHeads!

You actually don’t mind Instagram messing with your timeline

Instagram has been enjoying a blockbuster of a year. It hit the 700-million-user mark in April, and last week the service celebrated the first anniversary of Stories — the Snapchat clone that now has 250 million daily users. The amount of time people spend on Instagram has also gone up — those 25 and older now use it an average of 24 minutes a day while those younger use it 32 minutes a day.

There are several reasons for this growth — Stories and Live Video are two examples — but there is one other contributing factor: Instagram’s algorithmic feed, which made its debut a little more than a year ago. The problem is, like most algorithmic feeds, it is still highly unpopular with many users.

Instagram changed from a chronological feed to one based more on what it thinks you’ll be interested in last June. According to Instagram, one reason for the change is that people tend to miss 70 percent of their feeds. But with a feed that takes your interests into account, Instagram says this will no longer be the case; you won’t miss a video from your favorite band or photos from your best friend, even if they posted 12 hours ago. In other words, photos that are popular, or have more engagement than others, or were posted by people you like will likely surface to the top.

The initial backlash was fierce (and predictable), with even a few celebrities calling for Instagram to revert to a chronological feed. In the weeks prior to the change, several brands even took to Instagram and asked their followers to turn on push notifications so that they wouldn’t get buried in the algorithmic pile. Kylie and Kendall Jenner joined the fray, imploring the service to not “fix something that isn’t broken.” But, of course, Instagram went ahead with the change anyway.

Ugh Instagram if it’s not broke don’t fix it! Instagram is changing out of chronological order 😔 so let’s say you love someone’s photos but don’t physically “like” their pics they will bump them to the bottom. It’s called INSTAgram for a reason. I don’t really understand it and there has to be another motive because you follow people for a reason.. I’m trying to see everyone’s pics. That’s why you created the unfollow button if u don’t want to see their photos. I hate this new update @instagram is slowly trying to introduce & yes it’s true they warned us all a few weeks ago.

A post shared by Kylie (@kyliejenner) on Mar 28, 2016 at 12:27pm PDT

Instagram is just the latest social media service to switch from a chronological to an algorithm-based feed. Twitter introduced a milder version back in February 2016, with its “While you were away” tweets at the top of the timeline if you hadn’t visited the site in awhile. That, too, was met with hostility when it was first announced: people used the #RIPTwitter hashtag to voice their displeasure. After all, some say that the whole point of Twitter is to catch up on news and current events — surfacing hours-old tweets would seemed counter-intuitive.

That said, Twitter’s algorithm is not like Instagram’s. For one thing, if you’re on Twitter throughout the day, you’ll probably see the chronological feed most of the time anyway. The algorithmic feed is more for people who take extended Twitter breaks, and therefore have a greater need to catch up on what they’ve missed.

Another thing that sets Twitter apart from Instagram is that if you do want to see the chronological feed, you can just hit refresh on your browser or the app, and it instantly reverts anyway. Alternatively, you can just toggle off the “Show me the best tweets” option in the settings menu if you don’t want to see it at all.

Some people on Twitter actually seem to like the algorithmic feed as it helps them catch up on what they’ve missed. Laurie Voss, a web developer and COO of NPM, a Javascript company in San Francisco, says that he appreciates the algorithmic feed because it helps him avoiding missing out on important news. Armando Kirwin, a VR director, says that he used to hate it, but now that he’s not on Twitter as much, he finds it quite helpful.

Twitter should switch from a chronological to an algorithmic feed by default. It’s better for most users.

— Laurie Voss (@seldo) January 26, 2016

In contrast, Instagram’s algorithm is more akin to Facebook, which itself has had some form of an algorithmic News Feed since 2011. Like Instagram, Facebook essentially forces its algorithm upon you. You can select “Most Recent” instead of “Top Stories” in Facebook, but it ends up reverting back on subsequent visits. As a result, you get a feed that’s almost never in chronological order — a huge source of annoyance for a lot of users.

A quick look at Facebook’s support forums show several open threads of people complaining about not being able to make Most Recent the default view. “No one wants Top Stories,” says one user. Another criticized the top stories in Facebook’s News Feed as “just random posts from several days ago that mean nothing.” The only response users received was a boilerplate text that forwarded them to yet another feedback form.

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, however, there’s really no way to switch the Instagram feed to chronological at all. So you simply have to live with the annoyance of seeing old photos at the top of your feed. A quick search on Twitter will reveal plenty of people who dislike this, with comments ranging from “Why is my Instagram showing photos from four days ago” to “Instagram’s algorithm makes no sense.” A 22-year-old user by the name of Evie Young says she hates the way Instagram works now. “Must look like such a weirdo liking people’s pics from three days ago,” she tweeted.

hate the way instagram is now.. must look like such a weirdo liking people’s pics from 3 days ago 😅 fuck you algorithm

— evie 🌹 (@evangeliney0ung) August 3, 2017

“I really, really dislike Instagram’s non-chronological algorithm,” said Christina Bonnington, a freelance journalist in San Francisco. “I tend to see posts from the same five to ten people over and over again, and often the posts are days or even weeks old. On top of that, it’ll show me posts meant to be seen in chronological order, out of order. So annoying.”

Despite the hate, it seems that these algorithms actually work. An Instagram spokesperson said that since the service began ranking content, engagement has increased tremendously. People liked more, commented more and generally just interacted more with the app.

Indeed, according to Instagram, it’s this algorithmic feed that’s cited as a “significant contributor” to the site’s current success. And though Twitter’s user numbers remained stagnant in Q2 of this year, it stated that whatever increase it did have was driven in part by “better relevance” in the new timeline. A Twitter spokesperson told Engadget that only a small single-digit percentage of users actually turn the algorithm off. As for Facebook, you only need to look at its ever-climbing user numbers to see how the algorithm hasn’t scared too many people away.

Ideally, users will get what they want: a chronological feed that floats the latest stories and posts to the top. But the truth is, algorithmic feeds ramp up engagement, increase views and are generally better for ad impressions. In other words, as much as people seem to hate social media’s algorithms, they’re here to stay.

Still, there are workarounds. On Twitter, you can just turn it off by unchecking “Show me the best tweets first” in settings. On Facebook, you can select “Most recent” instead of “Top stories,” though you’ll have to do this every time you login.

Instagram is probably the most annoying of the lot, as there’s no such setting in the app. Even then though, a few Instagram bloggers have cobbled together a way to fight the algorithm with “pods,” a group of people that agree to boost each other’s photos with likes and comments so that their photos will surface to the top. Still, these pods are invite-only, and there’s no confirmation that gaming the algorithm like this actually works. Besides, it still doesn’t change the feed to chronological order, which is what some people want.

In the end, even if algorithmic feeds are the way forward, it would be nice if the social networks offered a switch to sort by chronological order as an option. If only a small percentage uses it, then that won’t drastically change the overall trend of higher engagement. If a huge percentage does, however, then maybe that’s a sign to rethink the whole thing altogether.

Federal scientists: US already feeling effects of climate change

The EPA and the administration might not be fans of climate science, but government scientists from 13 federal agencies have concluded that Americans are feeling the effects of climate change right now. According to the draft report obtained by The New York Times, the average temperature in the country has risen dramatically since the 1980s. Also, it emphasizes how “many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change.”

The scientists linked rising temperatures in the Western and Northern US to man-made climate change, though they can’t find a direct link in the Southeast. They noted how the number and severity of cool nights have decreased since the 1960s and how warm days and heat waves have become more common. The wetter parts of the country are getting more rainfall, while the drier parts are becoming even drier.

They also name human activity as the primary culprit for the rising temperatures in Alaska and the Arctic. Temperatures in those locations are increasing twice as fast as the global average, leading the scientists to warn that the “accelerated rate of Arctic warming will have a significant consequence for the United States…” After all, at the rate land and sea ice is melting in the Arctic, sea levels are bound to rise and threaten America’s coastal communities.

The scientists’ conclusion directly contradicts the administration’s earlier claims that our contribution to climate change is uncertain. That’s why scientists around the country will be following the draft closely — the EPA and the White House will have to approve it before it’s officially released.

The team also said that to be able to prevent global mean temperature from increasing more than 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, we need to significantly reduce global carbon dioxide levels. To make that possible, nations all over the globe will have to follow the guidelines set by the Paris climate accord. Unfortunately, the United States, one of the biggest carbon dioxide emitters in the world, walked away from the agreement in June.

Source: The New York Times

Mazda’s engine breakthrough promises big fuel efficiency gains

Mazda has made the announcement car manufacturers have been working towards for years: it’s releasing the first commercial compression-ignition gasoline engine. Dubbed SkyActiv-X, the engine will be available in 2019 and promises up to 20-30% more engine efficiency than the current SkyActiv-G, and up to 45% more than Mazda’s 2008 petrol engine.

Current gasoline engines rely on a spark plug to ignite their air-fuel mix. The SkyActiv-X will ignite the air-fuel mix spark-free through compression, like a diesel engine. This, according to the Japanese manufacturer, combines the advantages of petrol and diesel engines to achieve “outstanding” environmental and power performance.

The announcement comes just days after the company laid out its billion-dollar plans to build electric vehicles with Toyota. Speaking to reporters, Mazda’s head of R&D Kiyoshi Fujiwara said that while “electrification is necessary … the internal combustion engine should come first”. Electrification and emissions minimization is a major focus of Mazda’s Sustainable Zoom-Zoom 2030 plan, and technically SkyActive-X falls into this remit, given its advances in efficiency. But it’s still a technology reliant on natural resources. Mazda’s electric vehicles and its SkyActiv-X engine take sustainability in very different directions, so it will be interesting to see if, and how, these roads eventually converge.

Via: Reuters