‘Destiny 2’ gives Bungie’s online shooter the narrative it deserves

Bungie’s shared-world shooter is known for a lot of things. It has a dedicated community and excellent gunplay mechanics — but Destiny has never been known as a game with a great story. In fact, the original title’s story is notoriously vague, to the point that a single quote from the core game is both emblematic of the entire narrative and an in-joke: Destiny doesn’t “have time to explain” what it doesn’t have time to explain. The original game’s storytelling was bad enough that I almost dismissed its sequel without playing it — but Luke Smith promised me that Destiny 2 was being written for players just like me. I gave the game a shot at a recent review event and you know what? He’s right. Bungie has finally figured out how to tell a story.

If you played Destiny 2’s free open beta, you already know how the game begins. A race known as the Cabal have launched a surprise attack on Earth’s last human city, engulfing the first game’s primary social hub in chaos. The player and the Guardians try to defend The Tower and drive off the attack, but ultimately fail. Our heroes are driven out of The City, stripped of their powers and scattered throughout the solar system. The symbolic intent of this first mission is clear: forget the first game, it says — we’re tearing it down and starting fresh.

This isn’t to say that the lore established by the first game no longer counts, it’s just not a prerequisite for understanding or enjoying the narrative of Destiny 2. It’s okay if you don’t know who the Guardians are, how “the light” gives them superhuman powers. You won’t be at a loss if you don’t understand what the moon-like object the heroes call The Traveler is — you’ll learn the pertinent details of each as the game’s opening missions separate you from them. It effectively sweeps the first game’s narrative problems under the rug to make the story easier to understand. It works, too. Stripping the game of its status quo is what gives Destiny 2 the freedom to introduce itself to new and old players alike.

Unfortunately, this also means that Destiny 2 is evoking a hated and tired old gaming trope — a cliche that gives players a taste of power before unceremoniously ripping it away from them. The opening missions cast the player in the role of a seasoned and powerful Guardian, but takes those abilities away after the first two levels. Gamers who earned that power in the original Destiny will undoubtedly find this bait and switch mechanic frustrating, but for new players, the trope serves an important purpose. Bungie actually uses the cliche as a vehicle for revealing the game’s lore to the player in a natural and endearing way.

New players won’t come to understand the importance of The Traveler and the blessings the mysterious orb bestows upon the Guardians through overwrought narration or exposition, but by experiencing the loss of those blessing firsthand. During the game’s first story mission, players will witness the Cabal destroying humanity’s last safe city, watch helplessly as enemy ships ensnare the mysterious Traveler and fall to their knees in front of Dominus Ghaul, the game’s main villain and the warlord who cuts the Guardians off from the Traveler’s light. As the player falls off of Ghaul’s ship to the ruins of the city below, the game embraces the cliche of its power-tease trope to show the player the importance of everything they just lost.

It’s here that the game’s narrative truly begins. Destiny’s iconic spongy gameplay temporarily fades to the background as it forces the player to helplessly trudge through a third-person stealth mission that sets the scene for the rest of the game. Stumbling through rocks and debris with your depowered Guardian imparts the gravity of the situation. Without the blessing of the Traveler’s light, the game’s hero can barely walk.

When the player eventually finds their Ghost, the floating robotic counterpart to their Guardian, it warns them that it can no longer resurrect them — revealing that re-spawning in Destiny 2 isn’t just a game mechanic, but lore. Every time the player dies in-game, their Ghost uses The Light to literally bring them back to life.

What makes all of this work so well isn’t so much the hooks of the story — those are actually fairly formulaic — but the fact that Destiny 2 tells its story by making the player live it. The game didn’t tell me that the Traveler was the source of my character’s powers, it showed me by taking those powers away from me and rendering me helpless without them. The game didn’t tell me the Cabal was a threat the likes of which I’d never seen before, it showed me by making me live through the loss of the Guardian’s Tower and the last city.

The theme of learning the game’s lore through loss doesn’t last long. Eventually, the player stumbles across The Farm — Destiny 2’s new social zone — and regains their lost “light” and basic superhuman abilities — but by the time the game’s introductory story arc close, the stage is well set. The player knows that the Guardians are now an underdog, rebels who need to fight to regain what they’ve lost. They understand what their character is without the blessing of the Traveler — a theme underlined by a cast of new human characters that drive the point home that most Guardians are no longer any more special than the average person.

Most importantly, we have a clear understanding of who the villain is by the time the first chapter closes — and not only are his motivations threatening, but relatable. Destiny 2 is a game that has the strong start its predecessor never did.

Better still? The narrative doesn’t let up. As the campaign proceeds, it keeps the player hooked on a personal level, telling the story through action rather than exposition. It’s not always detailed, but it doesn’t embody the infamously vague storytelling that plagued the original. It’s a stark, but wonderful contrast.

From a story perspective, the actual game that was the original Destiny felt like a waste of the universe built around it — the franchise’s Grimorie had countless pages of lore and story, but most of it wasn’t part of the game experience, making it hard to really understand the story by merely playing the game. There’s undoubtedly more to the world of Destiny 2 than what the game reveals, but players who don’t want extracurricular reading won’t be lost this time around. For players like me, that’s an enormous step forward.

Okay, okay, the narrative is better. You probably get it by now — but how does the game actually play? For fans of the original Destiny, it’ll feel like a familiar experience, but as I said in our preview of the European Dead Zone area, the structure around the game is vastly improved.

Destiny 2’s missions are now offered out in a more accessible open-world environment. It’s all about presentation — the core mechanics aren’t too different, but it feels more like a massively multiplayer sandbox than the original game. It’s less formulaic, too. Sure, there are still plenty of campaign missions that amount to fighting through waves of enemies, but there are also some surprises, including large set-piece missions with tanks and vehicle combat.

Unfortunately, I can’t speak too much to the quality of Destiny 2’s multiplayer and end-game content. Strikes, Daily Challenges, Patrols and Raids don’t unlock until well into or after the end of the game’s campaign. The game shares enough fundamentals with the original that if you liked those events in the first Destiny, it’s likely you’ll find them satisfying in the sequel as well — but we won’t know for sure until the community dives into the next chapter of the franchise.

I spent two years trying Destiny off and on, trying to understand the appeal that had hooked so many of my friends. I never found it — but my aversion was never because of bad game mechanics or a frustration with PVP balance, I just couldn’t get invested in a game that clearly had such a wealth of lore yet failed to effectively tell a story until The Taken King expansion was released. Destiny 2 doesn’t have that problem. This is a space opera that makes full use of the interactive medium of gaming. It’s not perfect, but if an engaging narrative is what you felt the first game lacked, the sequel may be what you were looking for.

Teamosa brews tea using ultrasound

We’ve seen a handful of tea-brewing gadgets over the years, but none have managed to break into the mainstream. The latest to step into the ring is Teamosa, a startup that’s planning to launch its first product on September 13th. Teamosa itself is a small, Keurig-style device that uses ultrasonic extraction technology to brew your tea much more gently than traditional methods.

The project is the brainchild of Dr Catherine and Irven Liu, a brother-and-sister team whose parents have grown tea in Taiwan since the early ’80s. Mindful of the family business they stand to one day inherit, the pair wanted to try and modernize the way that tea is brewed.

The end-result of the project is the squat, black kettle on a bamboo plate that uses either loose leaf tea or sustainably-made tea pods. Users will simply either pour tea onto the plate, or subscribe to buy the company’s compostable paper capsules.

Then, the system will use a reservoir of water (in the base of the device) to pour through the tea before the liquid is somehow treated ultrasonically. The company claims that you’ll have a perfect cup of tea within three minutes, and can tweak the system to your particular taste using the companion app.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to test the device for ourselves, and so can’t say if Teamosa produces as tasty a blend as promised. But we’re planning to source one in the future in the hope of seeing if it can replace our humble teapot and kettle combination.

That said, if you already want to get your hands on this device yourself, you can do so on Kickstarter from September 13th. Early birds will be able to grab the hardware for just $239, while latecomers will need to spend $299, or wait until it makes its retail debut at some point next year for $399.

Follow all the latest news from IFA 2017 here!

Source: Teamosa

Lilium secures $90 million to develop its electric VTOL plane

Like a few other startups, Lilium wants to make our flying car dreams come true with an electric VTOL craft you can summon with an app. Thanks to $90 million worth of new investment from China’s Tencent and others, the startup may now have a leg up on its rivals. It will use the funds to drastically expand hiring in order to take the electric jet into the next stages of development.

Lilium differs from Ehang’s passenger drone and other like concepts. Rather than using multi-rotors to both lift and propel it, the craft uses flaps with electric “jets” that rotate from a vertical to horizontal position. By tilting them into a vertical position, it can take off like a helicopter, than rotate them horizontally to transition into conventional flight. That’s similar to how Boeing’s V-22 Osprey works, for instance, but with many more engines. It also works the same way as NASA’s smaller-scale “Greased Lightning” VTOL craft.

Lilium is backed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and has actually flown a full-sized, two-seat prototype, albeit with nobody in it (below). It recently hired engineers and employees from Gett (an Uber and Lyft ride-sharing rival), Airbus and Tesla. The company plans to build a five-seat “air taxi” that could ferry passengers 186 miles at around 186 mph. It has ambitiously planned its first manned tests by 2019, and passenger flights by 2025.

It’s going to be tough for the the company to get aircraft approved in the US, however. FAA certification is notoriously difficult, for one thing, especially for an all-new type of aircraft. There’s also no current battery technology that can give Lilium the range it wants, and VTOL requires much more energy than regular airplanes. Elon Musk — who has designed his own electric plane, of course — said the battery density threshold is about 400 Wh/kg, compared to around 250-300 Wh/kg available in current Tesla models.

However, Ilium seems confident it can overcome those problems via its efficient “electric jet” engines, lack of a tail and other technological innovations. If it can pull it off, it would be a grand feat, and the smog-free craft could definitely revolutionize urban transport. Hopefully, it’s painting a realistic picture for investors, because 2025 is just eight years away, barely an eyeblink in the world of aircraft development.

Via: Bloomberg

Source: Lilium (PDF)

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 review: Excellent, but still a tough sell

Last year’s Galaxy Note 7 was a big step forward for the Note line, pairing an impeccably built body with an updated S Pen and excellent performance. Then they started blowing up. The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus did well to rehabilitate Samsung’s image as a top-notch phone maker, and now the company is trying to make up for past mistakes with the brand-new Galaxy Note 8.

Samsung had a lot to prove, and it mostly succeeded. There’s no doubting that the Note 8 ($929) is a great smartphone — it packs all the usual flagship amenities, not to mention a dual camera that works very, very well. The problem is, the Note 8 feels a little… by-the-book. Samsung, frankly, got so much right with its other huge phone, the Galaxy S8 Plus, that the Note 8 doesn’t feel as triumphant an improvement as the Note 7 did in comparison with the S7 line. Don’t get me wrong: The Note 8 is still Samsung’s best smartphone, and one could even argue it’s the best big phone out there. Just know that it’s a pretty conservative update, and that it’s going to cost you.

Hardware

As always, this year’s Note takes major inspiration from the Galaxy S8s that launched earlier in the year. What’s interesting is how subtly different they feel despite all those similarities. The physical differences between the Galaxy Note 8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus are minute; the former is just a hair larger than the latter in every dimension. Still, Samsung’s new Note feels denser, and a little more… masculine. It’s slightly heavier, and the Note 8’s curved glass front and back come together in a way that makes the metal frame separating them feel more prominent. They’re subtle changes, to be sure, but they’re enough to make the Note 8 feel a little sturdier. These tweaks won’t mean much for some of you, though. While the Note 8 is surprisingly narrow and manageable for its size, it’s still a big phone that some smaller-handed people will struggle with.

Also noteworthy is just how uncluttered the Note’s face is. There’s just enough room above the screen for an earpiece, an 8-megapixel front-facing camera and an iris scanner. Below the screen, there’s nothing at all, since the Note 8 uses a virtual home button, but beneath that is the now standard USB-C port, a speaker, a headphone jack (!) and the S Pen’s hidey-hole. Despite that glut of ports, the Note 8 is rated IP68 for water and dust resistance, allowing doofuses like to me to use the phone as a cold brew coffee stirrer. (Pro tip: It makes coffee taste terrible.) Meanwhile, the power button lives on the Note’s right edge, and on the left you’ll find the volume rocker and the love-it-or-hate-it Bixby key. (In case you were wondering, no, there’s still no way to remap this button to do anything else.)

The back is where things start to get interesting. The Note 8 is the first major Samsung smartphone to pack a dual camera, which includes a pair of 12-megapixel sensors. I’ll dig into that more later, but suffice to say, Samsung knows how to craft a camera (or two). Next to that is the LED flash and the pulse oximeter, for measuring how much oxygen is in your blood (in case you’d ever want to do that), and next to that is the fingerprint sensor. No, it hasn’t moved, and yes, it’s still annoying, since people are likely to smudge their camera lenses trying to reach for it. (Some might scoff, but I think LG has the right idea when it comes to rear-fingerprint-sensor placement.) Aside from that misstep, there’s little to fault here. I wish the tray for the nano-SIM and microSD cards was a little sturdier, but the Note 8’s fit and finish is otherwise top-notch.

Display and sound

Chris Velazco/Engadget

The 6.3-inch Super AMOLED screen here is the biggest Samsung has ever squeezed into a Note. That the phone isn’t crazy uncomfortable to use is a testament to Samsung’s fastidious tweaking. As with the S8 line, this display runs at 18.5:9, meaning the screen is a little over twice as long as it is wide. Combine that narrower screen with an almost complete lack of side bezels and voilà: We’re left with a big phone that’s smaller than you’d expect. In any case, the screen itself is just lovely — colors are bright and punchy right out of the box, and if they’re not exactly what you were looking for, fiddling with Samsung’s various display modes will certainly help. Viewing angles are great, brightness is among the best I’ve seen and text and photos look crisp at the default resolution.

Unless you’re paying very close attention, you probably won’t even notice at first that the screen isn’t running at its maximum resolution. By default, the Note 8’s display runs at Full HD+ (2,220 x 1,080) rather than the maximum WQHD+ (2,960 x 1,440). Blurred edges really become noticeable only when you drop the screen’s resolution down to the Infinity Display’s version of 720p, but you’ll probably never see that unless you drop the phone into its most stringent power-saving mode. These options are nice to have, though most people will probably never know that they’re there.

It’s also worth noting that, like the S8s, the Note is one of a handful of Mobile HDR Premium–certified phones on the market. Thanks to services like Amazon and Netflix, it’s surprisingly easy to get HDR content running on the Note 8, and it’s absolutely worth it. I swear I’m trying not to gush, but screens are the one thing you could always count on Samsung to get right, and the tradition continues.

Now, if only the company spent just a little more time on the Note 8’s single speaker. It gets points for being able to pump up the jams to respectable volume levels, but that doesn’t count for much when the audio comes through sounding hollow and unsatisfying. Good thing there’s a solid pair of AKG earbuds tucked inside the box.

Software

Chris Velazco/Engadget

The Galaxy Note 8 runs a highly tweaked version of Android 7.1.1, but that’s no surprise. Aside from a handful of new add-ons, the software here is a dead ringer for what we got on the Galaxy S8 line. I’d argue that’s a good thing: Samsung polished up its custom interface dramatically this year, and it finally feels mature and well thought out. It will still be way, way too much for Android purists, but I’ve surprised myself by sometimes missing Samsung’s tweaks when I test other devices. (File that under: “Sentences I never thought I’d write.”)

I won’t call out every feature carried over from the S8 family, but it’s worth going over the highlights. Since there’s just no room for it, Samsung ditched the physical home button for a virtual one that you press on the screen; you’ll get a little jolt of haptic feedback to let you know you’ve done it right. Right of the box, the virtual home key takes just a little too much pressure to actuate, but it’s easy to fix this in settings. The old-school launcher button is gone too, so you’ll have to swipe up or down on a home screen to see all of your installed apps. More important, actually managing those apps is a lot easier. Long-pressing an app brings up a menu with options to quickly clear its notification badges, disable it or uninstall it entirely. It’s a minor touch, sure, but it makes wrangling ornery apps radically simpler.

The Note 8 also packs a few relatively new interface tricks that S8 owners got in a software update over the summer. See that little dot near the on-screen navigation keys? A quick double tap on that forces the navigation bar to hide off-screen; it takes a swipe up from the bottom of the screen to bring it back. It’s been handy for moments when I really wanted my apps to use every pixel of this enormous screen, but in general, I like my nav keys where I can see them. And since some apps don’t natively play nice with this long screen, the Note 8 will sometimes display a button you can “tap to fill the entire screen” to force things to fit.

Samsung’s Edge UX is back too, and as usual, it offers access to app shortcuts, favorite contacts, device maintenance tools and more. This is where you’ll find one of the few new additions to the mix: App Pair. The concept is simple: You can create a shortcut to two apps, and with a tap they’ll both launch in split-screen windows. There’s a little fun to be had in finding neat combinations of apps that work well together — I’m a fan of Spotify and Genius for lyrics running side by side — but it’s a moot point for people who never do any multi-window multitasking. Nice try, though.

Bixby isn’t going anywhere either, and, for better or worse, it essentially works as well here as it does on the S8 and S8 Plus. The Bixby Home experience, which lives in a panel to the left of your main home screen, did a fine job highlighting how many steps I had taken and what was up next on my calendar. Bixby Vision, which attempts to interpret whatever the camera is pointed at, remains hit-or-miss: it’ll identify bottles of wine and clearly marked products without trouble, but anything other than that feels like a crapshoot. In my experience, Bixby is also a reliable listener when you hold down its dedicated button to offer voice commands.

Here’s the problem, though: You can also activate the assistant with a friendly “Hi, Bixby,” but the Note 8 has been more prone to false positives than either of its predecessors was. In fact, as I write this sentence, Bixby came to life in a quiet office no less than four times, and I have no idea why. That was with the microphone sensitivity set to low, mind you; it’s seriously obnoxious and it shouldn’t be happening.

Life with the S Pen

Chris Velazco/Engadget

Whether the Note 8 makes sense for you depends largely on how you feel about the tiny pen stuck inside of it. If you’ve never been a stylus person, well, I’m surprised you even read this far. For people at least open to the idea, know that the S Pen offers the best writing experience you’ll find on a phone… not that there’s much competition.

A few words on the S Pen’s design: It’s mostly unchanged from the Note 7’s version, meaning it’s still IP68 water-resistant and supports 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity. The nib is the same 0.7 mm as it was before, but that seems to be the sweet spot — writing on the Note 8’s massive screen is smooth and snappy, though it still lacks the pleasant tactility of using a pen on paper. I was never much of an artist, but the level of precision was more than adequate for dashing off quick sketches of — what else? — robots and anime faces. I’m an adult, I swear.

While the S Pen hasn’t changed much physically, a handful of software tweaks and additions make it more capable. One of my favorite features, Screen Off Memo, now lets you jot down up to 100 pages of notes on the phone’s screen without having to unlock the device. Whether anyone will actually ever use all 100 allotted pages is another story, but it’s nice to have the option. So far, I’ve jotted down daily to-do lists that were several pages long; not having to unlock the phone to continue writing has been helpful. Translating text with the S Pen is much improved too, since you can now translate whole sentences and passages instead of just single words. Why the feature didn’t work this way to start with escapes me, but it still works a lot better than Bixby Vision’s translations.

The most notable new S Pen feature is also the most fun. Samsung has gone a little insane with GIF creation on its recent phones, and Live Message is the logical next step in that insanity. Long story short, you can use the S Pen to write animated messages that can be shared far and wide as GIFs. The concept is simple, but that simplicity belies its addictiveness: I’ve been sending out handwritten messages and marked-up photos that sparkle for a week, and I’m starting to think I have a problem. The only issue I’ve noticed is that resulting GIFs can get pretty big (think: between 10MB and 20MB), so people with tightly metered data plans might want to steer clear.

Cameras

Chris Velazco/Engadget

Samsung is late to the dual-camera game, but the extra time has paid off: The company’s first attempt is among the best I’ve ever used. The Note 8 combines a 12-megapixel telephoto sensor with another 12-megapixel sensor for wide-angle shooting, and most of the time you probably won’t know which camera you’re actually using. Unlike the newly announced LG V30, which has a toggle to switch between wide-angle and telephoto shooting, the Note 8 quietly switches between the two cameras depending on how closely you’re zoomed into your subject. In that way, it’s more like the iPhone 7 Plus’s camera — good news for people who don’t want to think much before shooting, but bad news for people who crave flexibility (that would be me).

In any case, both cameras produced great-looking photos, with consistently lively colors and impressive levels of detail. They’re right up there with the photos produced by the Galaxy S8s, though shots captured with the wide-angle sensor benefit from that camera’s f/1.7 aperture; the telephoto lens has a respectable but unimpressive f/2.4 aperture. Thankfully, both of those sensors pack optical image stabilization, which helps the Note 8 tremendously in low light. You’ll still find the occasional soft edge, but these sensors excel at sucking up whatever light is available so even shots taken in dim, dingy bars came out brighter and more vivid than I expected. Devices with a single dedicated camera, like the HTC U11, sometimes produced photos with better dynamic range, but the sheer number of options available to the Note 8’s camera make it a more capable all-around shooter.

Having two cameras also means we can add bokeh to photos in the new Live Focus mode. It’s not as finicky as similar features on other phones either: The camera recommends you stay about four feet away from the subject, but a couple steps closer won’t screw things up. More important, you can easily control the amount of blur in each shot before and after you’ve taken it. It sometimes has trouble picking up every edge of the subject in front of it, but in general it’s been very good at separating the foreground from the background.

Honestly, my biggest gripes have more to do with the camera interface than the cameras themselves. Let’s say you’re trying to zoom in on a subject. By default, you can tap a button to switch between 1x and 2x zoom modes, but it disappears for a while after you tap on the screen to lock focus and exposure. You can still pinch to zoom in and out, but it would’ve been nice if the shortcut button showed up again sooner. Shooting in Live Focus mode also offers close-up and wide-angle views of your photo, and you can switch between them in your gallery. Strangely, there doesn’t seem to be a way to save the view you didn’t select as a separate photo, even though earlier demo units did it just fine. There’s definitely a little software strangeness going on here, and while it’s never outright frustrating, Samsung could have stood to polish these apps further.

Performance and battery life

Chris Velazco/Engadget

The Galaxy Note 8 is the latest in a long time of high-end smartphones with a Snapdragon 835 chipset, but this time Samsung paired it with 6GB of RAM rather than the 4GB we got in the S8 line. My workdays involve plenty of running around and multitasking, and I was really hoping that extra 2GB of memory would make for a noticeable difference in speed. It hasn’t. If you’ve used a Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus this year, you know exactly what to expect when it comes to how well the Note 8 runs. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though: Barring some minor software strangeness, the Note 8’s performance was effortlessly solid throughout my week of testing. Launching apps and jumping between them all willy-nilly proved to be no issue, and neither did visually sumptuous games like Afterpulse and Hearthstone.

I’ve said basically the same thing about most other flagships this year, and that’s a testament to just how good this year’s crop of high-end phones is. Still, the other side of that argument is that, since performance is starting to feel almost equal across the board, the Galaxy Note 8’s doesn’t feel like a huge improvement over the competition. It runs like a champ, but so does everything else.

Fun fact about the Note 8’s battery: With a capacity of 3,300mAh, it’s actually a little smaller than the one in the S8 Plus. While the Note 7 also had a smaller battery than the S7 Edge, I don’t think anyone could blame Samsung for keeping the conservative streak going here. Smaller doesn’t necessarily mean safer, so Samsung subjected its batteries to an eight-point safety check and worked with UL for additional independent testing. That’s reason to be cautiously optimistic.

Anyway, even though this smaller cell has to power a slightly larger screen, the Note 8’s battery life was largely in line with the Galaxy S8 Plus. In our standard video rundown test, wherein we loop an HD video at 50 percent screen brightness with the phone connected to WiFi, the Note 8 lasted 15 hours and four minutes — that’s just four minutes less than on the S8 Plus. Of course, you’re not always going to be sitting around watching the same video over and over. During the week, when I turn into a phone-obsessed workaholic, the Note has consistently run for full days and still had a little juice in the tank the next morning. On weekends, when I didn’t need to pick up the phone too often, the Note 8 would stick around for a day and a half to two days.

The competition

Chris Velazco/Engadget

I’ve been talking about it a lot in this review, but I can’t help it. The Galaxy S8 Plus offers almost everything the Note 8 does, and it’s not hard to find some great deals — a recent one had the S8 Plus for under $700. That’s more than $200 less than the Note 8 will cost at launch. Remember, the S8 Plus uses the same chipset (with a little less RAM), runs almost exactly the same software, has a slightly bigger battery and has an excellent single camera. For anyone who doesn’t care about writing on a screen or doesn’t mind about adding bokeh to their photos, the S8 Plus is an absolutely first-rate device that won’t break the bank the way the Note 8 will.

It’s not out yet, but LG’s V30 deserves a nod here, because it’s by far the best smartphone Samsung’s rival has made in a long, long time. More than that, it squeezes a handsome screen and a Snapdragon 835 into a slim, sleek body that’s almost shockingly light. The V30 also packs a dual camera, but this one is heavily geared toward shooting excellent video. We haven’t reviewed a final unit yet, but the sheer flexibility and nuance afforded to smartphone shooters is astonishing.

And, of course, you should be mindful of the flagships launching soon. Apple is holding a press event next week at its spaceship in Cupertino to show off a new iPhone (or three of them, if the rumors are correct), and Google won’t be far behind with its new line of Pixel phones. If you’re really on the fence about what your next smartphone will be, this is the perfect time to wait and see what happens.

Wrap-up

Chris Velazco/Engadget

The Galaxy Notes were always pretty niche devices, and that hasn’t really changed. If you’re intrigued by the idea of doodling on a phone with a pen, you simply will not do any better than the Galaxy Note 8. That’s just a fact. For the vast majority of people who probably don’t care about that, the Note 8 remains a tough sell. It’s an undeniably powerful, well-made smartphone with surprisingly thoughtful features and a great dual camera. Does that mean it’s worth its sky-high asking price when the Galaxy S8 Plus — which, remember, does almost all of the same things — can be had for between $100 and $200 less? That’s up to you. While the Note 8 might be Samsung’s best big phone, it’s not dramatically better than the S8 Plus and probably won’t be worth the extra cash for most people.

Apple Announces New Tianyi Square Retail Location in Ningbo, China Coming September 16

Apple has announced that its newest retail store will be opening on Saturday, September 16 within the shopping district known as Tianyi Square, located in Ningbo, in the Zhejiang province of China. As with all Apple retail grand openings, Apple Tianyi Square will open at 10:00 am local time.

Under the leadership of Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts, the company began aggressively expanding its retail footprint in China over the last few years. In January 2015, Ahrendts said that Apple’s goal was to open 40 stores in the Greater China region within two years, which it eventually accomplished ahead of schedule in June 2016.

Tianyi Square image via China Tour Advisors
Earlier this year, Apple Stores worldwide debuted a new “Today at Apple” program that introduced various classes and activities for visitors to take part in, each one focusing on a particular Apple software or hardware product. The company’s new stores also feature a next-generation design, putting an emphasis on community and the new Today at Apple programs with areas for these sessions separated from the retail portion of the stores.

Tag: Apple Stores
Discuss this article in our forums

Plex for Kodi is now free for everyone

If you’re all about a customized media center then you’ll be familiar with Plex or Kodi, but getting the best of both services meant having a Plex Plus subscription. Until now, that is, as Plex has quietly made its Kodi add-on free to everyone. Now you can run both media centers simultaneously without losing any customizations, enjoying what Plex calls “settings nirvana”, without paying for the privilege.

Some settings remain unavailable, though, such as audio fingerprinting, multiple users and parental controls, but these features are unlikely to be especially important to anyone who just wants an easier way to bring their content together. Interestingly, the add-on has been launched less than a week after it emerged Plex had taken legal action against unofficial versions, so this is the company recognizing demand and getting ahead of a potential issue down the line. A smart move with happy consequences for its users.

Via: Windows Central

Source: Plex

Europe rules employers must inform staff of email snooping

A landmark privacy judgement by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) could impact the scope of email monitoring in the workplace. The Strasbourg-based court ruled on Tuesday that employers must inform staff if they are spying on their work emails and communications.

The final decision in the long-running case of a Romanian man against his dismissal over his use of a work messaging account, saw the judges rule in favor of Bogdan Bărbulescu. The engineer was fired by his employer ten years ago after being presented with printouts of his private chats with his family. The judges found the company had infringed Bărbulescu’s right to privacy by not informing him ahead of accessing his communications. Some of the messages were described as being of an “intimate nature.”

European nations such as France have already taken steps to give citizens more rights concerning their business communications. Earlier this year, the country enacted a law requiring companies to negotiate times when staff can ignore email and other correspondence.

Although the ECHR cannot establish new laws, its decision could impact when and how monitoring is acceptable. The judges even issued a set of criteria that suggest probing the “degree of intrusion” into a worker’s privacy on a case-by-case basis. “A distinction should be made between monitoring of the flow of communications and of their content,” states the Q & A section of the judgement. “Whether all communications or only part of them have been monitored should also be taken into account, as should the question whether the monitoring was limited in time and the number of people who had access to the results.”

Source: European Court of Human Rights

London is now awash with bike-sharing schemes

How many bike-sharing schemes does London need exactly? Well, at least five if you ask the companies behind such services. Today, Ofo comes to the capital, following a limited trial in Cambridge that began earlier this year and a launch in Oxford last month. Initially, the Chinese firm has dotted 200 bikes around the London Borough of Hackney. Yesterday, European outfit Urbo announced it was also arriving in London this month, putting 250 bikes on the streets of the Borough of Waltham Forest.

Alongside London’s ‘Boris bikes,’ of which there are over 11,000, we now have four nigh-identical dockless bike rental services vying for custom in the capital. oBike was first, arriving in July, followed by Mobike, Ofo and Urbo this month. Unlike Boris bikes, the schemes don’t require riders to end their journeys at designated docking points. Finding, unlocking and paying for bikes is all handled via mobile apps, and there’s basically nothing that differentiates one service from another.

Choice is a good thing for consumers, of course, but all these new London players plan to put more and more bikes on the capital’s pavements as appetite for rentals you can park up almost anywhere grows. That is, if you can find a spot to legally lock the thing up. Dockless bike-sharing schemes have caused problems in Chinese cities saturated by thousands upon thousands of the things, leading to mounds of wheels and frames forming at popular hop-off points.

Urbo

Though the companies in question are operating on a much smaller scale in London right now, similar issues are starting to appear already. Wandsworth Council reported last month that it had impounded 130 oBikes for blocking pavements. Ofo had to seriously reduce the scope of its Cambridge pilot before even launching, too, after local authorities expressed concerns over the potential for pavement clutter.

As the Evening Standard reports, Hackney Council transport bod Feryal Demirci said of Ofo’s launch: “We are going to work with Ofo to make sure that users are given information on locations where they can park their bike in hot spot areas to prevent issues such as obstructing the footway and parking on busy, narrow pavements.”

Ofo, oBike, Mobike and Urbo all say they are in dialogue with councils, but even formal approval doesn’t mean much when the bikes can end up in any London borough. If any more dockless bike-sharing schemes launch in the capital, we might hit saturation point pretty quickly. It seems inevitable, then, that Transport for London (TfL) will probably start regulating these services before too long, just as it now does with Uber.

Source: The Evening Standard, Urbo

Scientists use molecular ‘sieve’ to purify water

Researchers have taken a major step forward in making previously undrinkable water drinkable, therefore tackling one of the biggest challenges faced by the planet — some 1.2 billion people lack access to clean drinking water (a number which is set to grow as populations increase). By modifying graphene oxide membranes, the international team of researchers has created what is essentially a molecular “sieve”. The selectively permeable membrane lets some molecules through while trapping others behind, producing water at various levels of cleanliness suitable for drinking or for industrial applications.

Even in the early stages of development, the membrane — which uses a simple spray-on technology – rejected 85 percent of salt and 96 percent of dye molecules, and represents a relatively inexpensive and much more environmentally-friendly alternative to current desalination methods, which are typically very energy intensive.

“Our dream is to create a smart membrane that combines high flow rates, high efficiency, long lifetime, self-healing and eliminates bio and inorganic fouling in order to provide clean water solutions for the many parts of the world where clean water is scarce,” says Mauricio Terrones, professor of physics, chemistry and materials science and engineering, Penn State. “This work is taking us in that direction.”

Via: phys.org, PopSci.com

Magic Leap is experimenting with light-bending nanomaterials

Mixed reality company Magic Leap is cagey with its tech, to say the least. However, it recently released a research paper in conjunction with Berkeley Lab that some hints on what it’s doing. The team developed new materials that can take in light from more angles than ever before and redirect it with minimal losses. That could help not only its mixed reality (MR) headset, which reportedly uses wave-guiding tech similar to the Hololens, but spark breakthroughs in holograms, invisibility cloaks and more.

Magic Leap isn’t exactly saying “we’re using this tech in our headset,” but one can infer that it’s at least looking at that. The company has described its “lightfield” chip, which uses waveguides to deflect light toward the users’ eyes, as a “three dimensional wave component that has very small structures in it, and they manage the flow of photons that ultimately create a digital lightfield signal.”

That’s a fancy way of saying that it projects synthetic images onto a chip, which bounces it toward your eye with minimal loss and more precision than a mirror. To do that, you need to use so-called meta-materials, which have nanoscale features that mess with light reflection and refraction. It’s the same principal or iridescence that gives color to butterfly or peacock wings — there are no pigments, just tiny features that refract light into specific color wavelengths. The same science is used for anti-reflective eyeglass coatings.

That brings us to the research. According to Berkeley Lab, the team developed two new ultrathin silicon-based optical chips by carving 20- to 120-nanometer “beams” into silicon using electron beam etching (above). That formed an infinitesimal “diffraction grating” like the type you might remember in high school science class. Those split and bend light into different colors depending on the beam pattern, much like a prism.

This has been done before, but in previous designs, light had to enter the surface at a right angle to avoid steep drops in efficiency, and was limited to infrared spectra. “We are now able to create silicon surfaces that can take in light from a large number of input angles and wavelengths with minimal loss of diffraction efficiency,” said Berkeley Lab’s director of Nanofabrication, Stefano Cabrini. Furthermore, being made of silicon, the chips can be fabricated using widely available technology.

The devices may or may not be used by Magic Leap in any yet-to-be-unveiled eyewear. However, there are other potential applications including water-repelling “smart surfaces,” data processing, holograms and so-called invisibility cloaks, Berkeley Lab says. Call me a grumpy mouse tech blogger, but I’d honestly settle for something, anything from Magic Leap.

Via: Berkeley Lab

Source: Nature