Google may jump back into the high-end Chromebook business with ‘Pixelbook’

Why it matters to you

If you were searching for a high-end Chromebook, wait another month to see what Google produces during its press event in early October.

Although we have not seen anything official from Google, rumor of an upcoming Chromebook dubbed as “Pixelbook” surfaced on Tuesday, September 19. Sold exclusively through the Google Store, the device will reportedly make an official appearance on October 4 during a special event sporting special 360-degree hinges to create a tablet-style form factor. Alongside the convertible will be the new Google Pixelbook Pen optimized for the unannounced convertible.

While we know absolutely nothing about the Pixelbook’s internal components, we suspect it will be based on Intel’s recently released eighth-generation Core i5 or Core i7 “U” processors. Here’s a brief rundown of the processor options Google may be using next month, but there is a good chance the Pixel book will rely on the i7-8650U model. Have a peek:

i5-8250U
i5-8350U
i7-8550U
i7-8650U
Cores:
4
4
4
4
Threads:
8
8
8
8
Base speed:
1.60GHz
1.70GHz
1.80GHz
1.90GHz
Max turbo speed:
3.40GHz
3.60GHz
4.00GHz
4.20GHz
Cache:
6MB
6MB
8MB
8MB
Graphics:
UHD Graphics 620
UHD Graphics 620
UHD Graphics 620
UHD Graphics 620
GPU base speed:
300MHz
300MHz
300MHz
300MHz
GPU max speed:
1.10GHz
1.10GHz
1.15GHz
1.15GHz

Based on the information provided in the rumor, there won’t be any configuration options outside the internal storage capacity. Customers will have three options:

• 128GB at $1,200
• 256GB at $1,400
• 512GB at $1,750

The Google Pixelbook will follow the company’s Chromebook Pixel laptop, which was discontinued in March. You can still purchase models through Amazon and other online resellers, such as this model listed on Amazon packing a 12.85-inch screen with a 2,560 x 1,700 resolution, an Intel Core i5 processor clocked at 1.8GHz, 4GB of system memory, 64GB of storage, and 4G LTE connectivity. They were considered to be high-end Chromebooks, surpassing the price tags seen with third-party solutions provided by Samsung, Acer, and more.

What will make the Pixelbook different than the Chromebook Pixel outside the obvious hardware upgrades will be its 360-degree hinges and support for a specific stylus. We don’t know any details about the Pixelbook Pen although rumors suggest a $100 price tag, tilt support, and pressure sensitivity. Product renders show the parent screen to be extremely thin and connected to the base with two white, thick hinges.

Unfortunately, the two product renders are all we have to go on visually. They depict a keyboard spanning the entire width of the Chromebook, huge key caps, and a palm rest that may/may not have a glassy smooth surface. The bottom half of the render is too white for reading the available ports although one side appears to sport a Type-C port and a headphone jack.

The Google Pixelbook is just one of the rumored products scheduled to strut their stuff during a special event on October 4. Other devices supposedly slated for the show include new Pixel-branded smartphones, Google Home Mini, and maybe one or two additional gadgets. Once revealed, Google is expected to list the Pixelbook here and the optional Pixelbook Pen accessory here.

Be prepared for your next at-home electronics repair with this $25 iFixit toolkit

Got any ongoing do-it-yourself projects? Need some precision repair work done? This deal is definitely for you, then!

We know. You’re clumsy and break things, and fixing them gets expensive, right? Doing it yourself is a great option, but only if you have the right tools around. Right now you can pick up the 64-piece iFixit driver kit for $24.99. This is the best price you’ll find on the kit right now, which is around $20 lower than it normally sells for.

• Complete solution for precision repair, 64 bits selected using data from thousands of repair guides.
• Ergonomic Aluminum Handle provides plenty of torque, & is magnetized with a ball bearing swivel top.
• Case features magnetic closure for durability and a screw sorting tray integrated into the lid.
• All the bits to repair cell phones, game consoles, wearables, laptops, desktops, tablets, and more!
• Covered by iFixit’s Lifetime Warranty

Whether you have a broken device right now that you want to take a crack (get it?!) at fixing, or want to upgrade your existing tech with a new hard drive or graphics card, you won’t want to miss out on this deal.

See at Amazon

More from Thrifter:

• Which Warehouse Shopping Club is Best for You?
• Priority Pass Select Memberships can save you big at airports

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

Google Pixel 2 will start at $649, offer ‘Kinda Blue’ third color option

How many more leaks will we see? This about wraps it up.

The Google hardware leaks are coming hard and fast, and the latest of the group reveals fresh information about the forthcoming Pixel 2 — the smaller sibling to the Pixel 2 XL. According to Droid-Life, the Google Pixel 2 will launch at the same starting price as last year’s Pixel, $649, which will put it well below the purported $849 price of the Pixel 2 XL.

For that money you’ll get the same base 64GB of storage, and the same step up of $100 will bump that to 128GB. According to the report, the Pixel 2 will also offer a third color, “Kinda Blue” (shown above), alongside simpler black and white options. Interestingly the white Pixel 2 is shown to have a white-backed glass portion at the top of the phone, while the latest Pixel 2 XL leaks show a black portion on the white phone. The Kinda Blue color is obviously … less blue than the “Really Blue” Pixel of last year, and shows Google likes to have a chuckle while it names its device colors.

Hardware and design between the two models could be more similar than we first expected.

The rest of the hardware looks like a simple smaller version of the Pixel 2 XL, at least from the back, with the smaller glass portion at the top holding a single camera lens once again. If you’re really paying attention to details you’ll see the flash is situated to the left of the camera rather than the right as on the Pixel 2 XL. At the $649 price we’d expect the Pixel 2 to have a metal body, and these leaks make it look like it should be similar to the original Pixel — which aside from being rather basic shouldn’t be a bad thing in terms of quality or feel.

We’ll see all of this unveiled officially, with some explanation of the specifics, at a Google event on October 4 in San Francisco.

Google Pixel + Pixel XL

• Google Pixel and Pixel XL review
• Google Pixel XL review: A U.S. perspective
• Google Pixel FAQ: Should you upgrade?
• Pixel + Pixel XL specs
• Understanding Android 7.1 Nougat
• Join the discussion in the forums!

Google Store
Verizon

Kohl’s will now pack and ship Amazon returns for you

A couple of weeks ago, Amazon and Kohl’s announced a new partnership, which added spaces in Kohl’s stores dedicated to selling hardware like the Echo and Dot smart speakers, called the Amazon Smart Home Experience. Now Kohl’s is planning for 82 of its stores in Los Angeles and Chicago to offer free return service for Amazon customers. The Kohl’s stores will pack and ship “eligible” Amazon return items for anything you buy from the online retailer, for free, starting this October.

To take advantage of this new offering, you just need to head to one of the participating Kohl’s stores. There are even dedicated parking spots for the service near the entrance, oddly enough. “We are thrilled to launch this unprecedented and innovative concept, allowing customers to bring in their unpackaged Amazon returns to Kohl’s and we will pack them, ship them, and return them to Amazon for free,” said Kohl’s Richard Schepp. “This is a great example of how Kohl’s and Amazon are leveraging each other’s strengths –- the power of Kohl’s store portfolio and omnichannel capabilities combined with the power of Amazon’s reach and loyal customer base.”

Via: AFTV News

Source: Kohl’s

Now all ‘Overwatch’ players can visit Junkertown

At Gamescom last month, Blizzard teased fans of its hero shooter Overwatch with a new map: Junkertown. The escort map across the post-nuclear Australian wasteland was opened up to PC test realm players a week later, but now it’s live on all platforms for all players.

In Overwatch lore, Junkertown is the violent frontier settlement that Junkrat and Roadhog call home. On top of the new map, the game’s patch includes two small tweaks to Mercy and D.Va that the team announced last month to balance the straightforward characters. The winged healer is getting an entirely new ultimate, Valkyrie, that gives her unlimited flight and ammo, while her resurrect has been downgraded to a regular ability that only revives one hero at a time. D.Va’s Defense Matrix drains twice as fast, but she has a new skill, Micro Missiles, for nominal area-of-effect damage. Read the full patch notes here.

Finally, if you haven’t picked the game up yet, try out Overwatch for free from September 22nd to 25th.

HEROES WANTED.

Play Overwatch FREE Sept 22–25 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One!

💻🎮 https://t.co/Pq264DygsZ pic.twitter.com/VIvddmWpjH

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) September 14, 2017

Source: Overwatch (Twitter)

Pee on a postcard to determine if you have a UTI

Among the many startups on display at the TechCrunch Disrupt hall in San Francisco this week are companies focused on health and biotech. The products ranged from smart exercise bikes to breast pumps that look like they’re from a science-fiction film. One of them, however, stood out from the rest with a large sign that simply read “Take the piss,” with the last word in big bold letters. The company is called Testcard, and it claims to tell you if you have a urinary tract infection just by peeing on a postcard. It’s just one of many medtech startups vying for legitimacy in an increasingly crowded field.

The postcard comes with four different pull-out tabs, and each tab is equipped with a QR code as well as three tiny square pads, each with a different color. You then either pee on the tab — or, as Testcard would recommend, dip the tab in a cup you’ve already peed into — and the three tiny squares may or may not change in color. After that, you then use the companion Testcard app to scan the QR code and then align the colored squares with the in-app camera. Within about 20 seconds, the app will let you know if you have a urinary tract infection or not. Testcard is also working on different postcards to test pregnancy (it’ll even tell you how far along you are) and sexually transmitted infections as well.

Dr. Andrew Botham, Testcard’s co-founder, explains how it works: “The app uses the camera as a colorimeter,” he says. “It converts the color to a signal, and then compares to an internal calibration curve for the test substance.” A pregnancy test, on the other hand, would measure density rather than color. It compares the test response to a control, which then approximates how pregnant the person is. According to Botham, the tests here are very similar to the kinds you would take in an office — a doctor testing for UTI would also be comparing your results to a color chart, for example — except the postcards are more accessible, especially to those who live far away from clinics and hospitals.

“Point-of-care testing has never been able to show improved patient outcomes,” says Botham. “I feel this is because it is being done in doctors’ surgeries and clinics, and at this point, patients are already being managed.” The key, he says, is to make testing like this more convenient, so that those concerned can take the tests in the privacy of their own home.

Testcard sounds like a really interesting idea, but as with any medtech startup these days, it’s probably wise to approach it with a healthy dose of skepticism. As we’ve seen with Theranos, for example, sometimes these claims amount to nothing more than snake oil. Accusations of pseudoscience have even permeated the field of genetics testing — sure, services like 23andMe and Helix can offer an interesting insight into your genetic past, but the results aren’t always conclusive. Plus, while FDA clearance has been awarded to certain disease-assessment DNA tests, the ones that focus on giving diet and fitness advice aren’t given the same level of scrutiny.

For Testcard’s part, Botham tells me it’s still in a pre-regulatory phase. It’ll launch next year through clinical trial testing in certain laboratories in the UK as it seeks regulatory approval. This way, he says, the company can still make revenue while undergoing testing — the app itself is free, but each postcard will cost around $3 (the pricing is not yet final). Plus, the clinical trials will be a great way to figure out what’s working and what’s not.

When asked about how Testcard can differentiate itself from Theranos and learn from its mistakes, Botham says that its product is already proven. “The revelation is not in the technology, it’s in the accessibility,” he says. “We are pushing laboratory grade testing into the home.”

HP’s rugged Chromebook x360 convertible is available to all

If you saw HP’s Chromebook x360 and yearned for the day when you didn’t have to be a student to try it, you now have your chance. HP has made the 11-inch convertible Chrome OS machine available to everyone, with a starting price of $300 in the US for a system with a 1.1GHz Celeron, 4GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage. You can spring for 32GB of storage if you depend heavily on Android apps or don’t quite store as much in the cloud as Google might like.

As with the educational model, the party trick here is the combination of a rugged frame with a ‘360-degree’ touchscreen well-suited to running Android apps. This is a laptop that can survive a tumble to the ground at one moment and serve as a YouTube viewer in the next. It’s not necessarily the best hybrid Chromebook you can get (you’d want to consider ASUS’ more powerful Chromebook Flip, for example), but the price could be right.

Source: HP

Twitter now displays popular articles from your timeline

Twitter keeps looking for ways to improve its service to better meet the needs of its diverse and, er, passionate audience. Last September, code in the Android app pointed to an experimental “tweetstorm” feature aimed at helping longer-form content make sense on Twitter. Just a few months earlier, the company also added a new inbox that separates out direct messages from people you don’t follow, too. Now, Twitter is rolling out a new feature that will show you articles shared or liked by the people you follow on the service.

Twitter confirms that it has been testing the news feature for a while and is now rolling it out to everyone on iOS and Android. A spokesperson also reminded us that news has been a focus of Twitter before, like the time it tested a dedicated news tab in 2015. Buzzfeed‘s Alex Kantrowitz also points out that Twitter’s new feature apes that of standalone app, Nuzzel, which aggregates news articles that have been liked and shared by people in your network, as well.

The popular articles feature may take some time to show up on your own mobile device; some Engadget staffers can see the feature while others are still waiting.

Via: Buzzfeed

Cellular Over-the-Air App Download Limit Increased to 150 MB

Following the launch of iOS 11, Apple today announced that it has increased the cellular over-the-air app download limit from 100 MB to 150 MB, meaning users can now download apps and app updates that are as large as 150 MB over a cellular connection.

Apps and app updates over 150 MB will require users to connect to Wi-Fi for content to be downloaded.

It’s been awhile since Apple last updated the cellular download limit. The last increase was introduced in 2013, increasing the 50 MB limit to 100 MB.

Apple has limits in place to avoid causing customers to unwittingly use high amounts of data when downloading apps, but the introduction of unlimited plans from all of the major carriers in the United States has likely alleviated some of those concerns.

Developers often aim to keep their app sizes under the cellular limit whenever possible to prevent customers from having to hassle with connecting to Wi-Fi to download an app or app update.

Tag: App Store
Discuss this article in our forums

Procreate 4 for iPad Offers New Painting Engine, Layer Masks, Drag and Drop, and More

Popular iPad painting and sketching app Procreate was today updated to version 4, offering an overhauled experience that provides improvements to the app’s core elements and introduces support for iOS 11.

Procreate 4 adopts support for Metal 2, Swift 4, and Core Video, introducing a new Silica M painting engine that’s been engineered with better color depth, more fluid and accurate painting, and faster performance.

A new brush engine and interface allows for new effects and settings, and there’s a new, faster smudge tool for smudging and mixing paint along with a new wet painting experience. Blending colors in Procreate 4 is 250 times more accurate than in the previous-generation Procreate app.

Layer Masks have been added in Procreate 4 for non-destructive image modifications, and there are new Brush Blend Modes, with support for applying existing blend modes to any brush.

When using the Apple Pencil, there’s a new Bleed setting, and the Tilt and Sketching brushes available with the accessory offer better realism and responsiveness.

With Drag and Drop support, multiple paintings can be dragged out of the app into another for sharing, and brushes and palettes can be dragged in. Layers can be dragged as individual images, and images taken directly from the web browser can be quickly dragged into Procreate for faster editing.

Other improvements include P3 Wide Color support, a new color interface to make it easier to switch between colors, a new interface for image adjustments, and a new gallery for managing artwork and interacting with the Files app.

Procreate 4 can be downloaded from the App Store for $9.99. [Direct Link]

Tag: Procreate
Discuss this article in our forums