Google Duo picture-in-picture mode is now live on Oreo devices

Duo’s picture-in-picture mode is now available for everyone on Oreo.

Oreo introduced picture-in-picture mode for phones and tablets, and Google is now flipping the switch for Duo. The feature is now available on all Oreo devices, as noted by Duo’s technical lead Justin Uberti.

You don’t need to make any changes to enable picture-in-picture mode. As long as you’re using a device running Oreo and have the latest update installed, you should be able to use the feature.

With picture-in-picture mode, you get a miniature version of the picture window in one corner of the screen when you hit the home button in the middle of a call. You can move the position of the picture window to any corner of the screen, and the video orientation will change automatically based on whether the phone is in landscape or portrait mode.

Available now on Android Oreo! https://t.co/lYr30syCRV

— Justin Uberti (@juberti) October 5, 2017

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Grab Amazon Echo devices for 30% off in India, and get a year’s worth of Prime for free!

Get Echo devices for 30% off, an additional 10% cashback from Citibank, and a year’s worth of Amazon Prime for free.

Amazon launched the Echo family in India yesterday, with the second-generation Echo, Echo Dot, and the Echo Plus up for pre-order in the country. To sweeten the deal for early adopters, Amazon is offering an enticing 30% off on all Echo devices, and throwing in a year’s worth of Prime membership for free.

Here’s the breakdown on the pricing after the 30% discount:

• Echo Dot – ₹3,149 ($48)
• All-new Echo – ₹6,999 ($105)
• Echo Plus – ₹10,499 ($160)

That’s just the discount from Amazon. As part of its Great Indian Festival, the retailer is rolling out a 10% cashback deal to Citibank credit and debit card holders, so if you’re a Citibank customer, you get an additional 10% off the price of the Echo devices. Then there’s the annual Prime membership, which is a ₹999 ($15) value. If you’re already a Prime member, you’ll get an additional year’s worth of membership for free, but if you haven’t subscribed yet, you’ll be enrolled in the program.

The caveat here is that you just can’t head to Amazon and purchase the device. The introductory price is invite-only, so you’ll have to submit a request to purchase an Echo device. If you’re invited, you’ll receive an email from Amazon to purchase the device of your choice. After registering interest, it takes roughly around 15 hours for Amazon to send you an invite, and the invitation itself is valid for three days.

30% off an Echo device is an amazing offer, and the additional Citibank cashback combined with free Prime makes this a stellar deal. If you’ve been eyeing the Alexa platform, now is the time to make the jump.

See at Amazon

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Honor 9i with dual front and rear cameras comes into focus in India for $275

Honor 9i is the world’s first phone with four cameras.

Honor’s latest phone in India comes with four cameras in total — two at the front, and two at the back. The phone itself looks quite good, with Honor switching to an 18:9 FullView panel with minimal bezels and an 83% screen-to-body ratio.

The 5.9-inch FHD+ screen has a resolution of 2160 x 1080, and the phone is powered by an octa-core Kirin 659 chipset with four Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.36GHz and four A53 cores at 1.7GHz. You also get 4GB of RAM, 64GB internal storage, a microSD slot, 4G with VoLTE, and a 3340mAh battery. On the software front, the Honor 9i is running EMUI 5.1 based on Android 7.0 Nougat.

Now onto those cameras: the phone has a 16MP primary camera at the back that’s augmented by a 2MP shooter, which creates a depth of field effect. As is to be expected from a dual camera, you get Portrait Mode with the ability to adjust the focus area after shooting the image. Up front, there’s a 13MP camera that’s similarly joined by a 2MP secondary shooter.

It’ll be interesting to see how the dual cameras fare on the Honor 9i, considering they didn’t much on the Honor 6X. If you’re interested, the Honor 9i will be going up for sale exclusively on Flipkart starting October 14 for ₹17,999.

See at Flipkart

Russia is hacking the phones of NATO soldiers

Russia’s digital warfare campaign isn’t limited to targeting distant servers. The Wall Street Journal has learned that Russian hackers are targeting individual NATO soldiers near, such as those deployed to Poland and the Baltic states. The intruders are compromising phones or Facebook accounts, in some cases grabbing data from handsets and erasing contacts. And while the Russian government has historically denied involvement in any hacking campaign, officials have little doubt that it’s behind the attacks.

Western forces note that the efforts are not only very well-coordinated, but that the equipment involved is likely too sophisticated for criminals. A probe spotted a portable antenna used to compromise phones, for example, while drones are also part of the campaign. Even the way soldiers learn of the hacks hints at an official Russian campaign: American soldiers have had strangers (likely Russian agents) come up to them mentioning details of their personal lives.

It’s relatively easy to defeat these campaigns. In response to one incident, soldiers pulled SIM cards from their phones and were barred from going online beyond specific, locked-down hotspots. Estonian recruits are barred from using smartphones during operations.

How serious are these breaches, though? Given that the attacks have done very little damage or are harvesting info that’s already public, officials believe they’re primarily intended as a form of intimidation: we’re watching you. They may also be a way of finding out whether or not troop levels at a given base are larger than NATO claimed on the record. The concern, as you might suspect, is that there may be a time where these hacks deal serious damage. A hacked phone might serve as a Trojan horse if it connects to a secure network, for starters. Either way, the discoveries could have armies rethinking their smartphone policies to eliminate even the slightest risk of hacking attempts on the front lines.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Discovery and Google team up on globe-spanning VR travel series

Discovery is partnering with Google on a virtual reality travel series that spans all seven continents. The 38-episode experience explores the rituals and traditions of cultures in North and South America, Asia, Australia, Africa, Antartica, and Europe. Emmy award-winner Sascha Unseld, who also directed Oculus Story Studio’s Dear Angelica VR short, served as creative producer on the series. You can take in Discovery TRVLR for yourself starting tomorrow using Google’s Daydream headset (or Google Cardboard). The show will be viewable on YouTube, DiscoveryVR.com, and on the Discovery VR app.

Virtual reality travel is fast becoming a cottage industry, with everyone from travel agents to airlines boasting immersive apps that let you explore far-flung destinations from the comfort of your couch. Meanwhile, media outlets and TV networks like The New York Times, USA Today, and HBO are combining the escapism inherent in VR with storytelling, be it in the form of news, entertainment, or documentary pieces.

Discovery has been at the forefront of the mainstream media’s push into virtual reality. After making a significant investment in the tech, it began producing VR spinoffs of some of its best-known properties in 2015. Along the way, it’s found considerable success: The company claims its Discovery VR app has been downloaded 4.3 million times, and racked up 123 million organic views.

Adidas will finally start selling shoes made by its robot factory

The robot factory Adidas built in Germany is now fully functional and ready to start making the first Speedfactory shoe that will be sold to the public. Adidas has revealed that it plans to use its Speedfactory’s robots to manufacture a series of Adidas Made For (AM4) kicks designed specifically for six of the world’s biggest metropolises. The first one called AM4LDN was tailored for London and will be available in the city on October 19th. That will quickly be followed by AM4PAR (Paris) on October 26th, while the other four — AM4LA (Los Angeles), AM4NYC (New York City), AM4TKY (Tokyo) and AM4SHA (Shanghai) — will come out in 2018.

The AM4 models are all lightweight and designed using athlete data to conjure up the most comfortable shape and form. If you want to see what Speedfactory’s robot workers are capable of, check out Futurecraft M.F.G. — it’s the very first model out of the facility, though it was never released to the general public.

The company’s second robot factory in Atlanta will help its German sibling manufacture the city-specific shoes “soon.” In the future, though, they could make shoes designed for individuals in the same way the company designs pairs for famous athletes.

Source: Adidas Speedfactory

Google Pixelbook hands-on review

Research Center:
Google Pixelbook

The Google “Pixel” brand may be most known for the smartphones, but the first ever Pixel-branded device was the Google Chromebook Pixel — a top-of-the-line Chromebook with an eye-popping price tag. At its October 4 hardware event, Google announced a new version of the Chromebook Pixel with a similar price tag, but with a new name: The Pixelbook. It’s accompanied by a stylus accessory called the Pixelbook Pen. We took a closer look in our hands-on review at the event.

Great specs mean a fluid Chrome OS

Google takes on the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 with its new Pixelbook and stylus combination, but Chrome OS is quite different from the Windows 10 operating system. Most of your functions will be performed through the Chrome browser, but you can also install Android apps thanks to support for the Google Play Store. The Play Store first debuted on Chrome OS earlier this year on the Samsung Chromebook Plus, but it’s now exiting beta on the Pixelbook.

The Play Store felt fluid and fast, apps opened quickly, and there are far more optimized apps than before.

We did not have a good experience using Android apps on the Samsung Chromebook Pro — the Play Store was buggy, Android apps often crashed, and the interface was just plain slow. In our brief hands-on time with the Pixelbook, we were impressed with how much the experience has improved. The Play Store felt fluid and fast, apps opened quickly, and there are far more optimized apps than before. Spotify, for example, can go into a full-screen mode rather than a portrait mode (like on your phone). It certainly makes us think we’ll be installing more Android apps on the Pixelbook.

The rest of the OS felt fast and uncluttered, and that’s likely thanks to the 7th generation Intel Core i5 processor. There’s an Intel Core i7 model as well, and you can choose between 8GB or 16GB of RAM, and 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB of SSD storage space.

Assistant on the Pixelbook worked incredibly well in our brief use. You can activate it by saying “OK Google,” (it’s tied to your voice), but there’s also an Assistant key on the keyboard for quick access. Tapping it opens a floating window to the left of the screen, where you can type to the Assistant. The laptop screen can be rotated back 360 degrees if you want a tablet-experience. To trigger the Assistant here you can press on hold on the circular icon — similar to Assistant on Android phones.

Juliana Jara/Digital Trends

Juliana Jara/Digital Trends

Juliana Jara/Digital Trends

Juliana Jara/Digital Trends

One of Assistant’s killer features is its ability to read what’s on your screen and offer up relevant information or tools. For example, if you’re in an email and someone mentioned a restaurant, you can activate the Assistant and you’ll see a “What’s on my screen” icon you can tap. The Assistant will detect the restaurant’s name, then provide a card with additional information, such as its website, menu, phone number, address, and more. It’s much faster than having to open a new tab and search for the restaurant.

This feature is improved with the Pixelbook Pen. There’s a button on the pen that specifically works with the Assistant. Press and hold it while you circle something of interest, and the Assistant will automatically pop up a card with more details. It doesn’t just work on text — it accurately discovered the location of an image we circled, as well as an actor’s face. It worked impressively well in our brief testing, but we’ll save the verdict for the final review.

Sadly, Assistant will be exclusive to the Pixelbook for the remainder of 2017. Google told Digital Trends it will expand to more Chromebooks in 2018.

A unique, lightweight design

The Pixelbook has a unique design we haven’t really seen before on a laptop. A quarter of the front chassis is covered with glass, mimicking the design theme of the Pixel 2 smartphone. Unlike the smartphone, however, this glass design actually serves a purpose: better wireless connectivity.

The rest of the chassis is a silver aluminum unibody, but the Chromebook is impressively lightweight at just 2.4 pounds. The 12.3-inch LCD screen looks a little dated because it’s flanked by massive bezels — Google said this is to help hold the device when it’s used in tablet mode, since the screen can be rotated 360 degrees. The display looks bright, colorful, and plenty sharp thanks to its incredibly high 2,400 x 1,600 pixel resolution (235 pixels-per-inch).

Juliana Jara/Digital Trends

Google wants you to use a Pixel smartphone with the Pixelbook, and provides several unique capabilities when the two are paired to sweeten the deal. For example, you can tell the Pixelbook to instantly tether to your Pixel phone whenever it doesn’t have Wi-Fi. Both devices can also charge with the same USB-C cable. The Pixelbook has two USB-C charging ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack — we would have liked to see a USB-A port or two and an SD card slot, but that may be asking too much these days.

Google Pixelbook Compared To

HP ZBook 14u G4

Acer Swift 3 SF314-52-557Y

Microsoft Surface Laptop

Lenovo ThinkPad 13 Chromebook

Dell XPS 13 (Kaby Lake)

Toshiba Chromebook 2 CB35-C3350

Lenovo Ideapad 100S Chromebook

Apple MacBook (2015)

Lenovo Yoga 11e Chromebook

Samsung Chromebook 2

Google Chromebook Pixel

Dell XPS 13

ASUS Zenbook Prime UX32VD

Lenovo ThinkPad X230

Sharp M4000

The front camera sits at the top center and is capable of 720p video recording at 60fps; it should really do 1080p though, for the device’s price. A gyroscope on board means you’ll be able to play Android games that require you to tilt the device around.

The chiclet trackpad offered nice feedback and was spacious, but we’ll have to spend more time on it for a final verdict.

The $100 pen

To enhance your Pixelbook experience, you can purchase the Pixelbook Pen for $100. Google worked with Wacom to perfect this stylus, which offers more than 2,000 levels of pressure sensitivity, 60 degrees of angular awareness, and only 10ms of latency.

We saw virtually zero delay when putting the stylus to the screen, and its ability to pick up the varying degrees of pressure when writing and drawing was impressive. The stylus itself is quite chunky, though — it feels more like a chalk marker than a pen.

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Writing with it was fun, but the palm rejection technology was particularly neat. We were able to place our palms on the touchscreen without triggering anything; it would only pick up on input from the Pixelbook Pen. Will this be the new slate for the creative types? We’ll have to keep testing to find out.

The only button on the Pen activates the aforementioned Assistant; it only works on the Pixelbook at the moment, but the rest of the functions will work on any Wacom-supported device.

Sadly, there’s no fancy charging mechanism here. You’ll need an AAAA battery, and it’s not clear how long it will last.

Availability and price

The Pixelbook starts at $1,000, but it can go up all the way to $1650 for the Intel Core i7 and 16GB RAM model with 512GB of SSD storage space. The base model is available for pre-order now, but you’ll have to “join a waitlist” for the higher end variant. The base $1,000 Pixelbook is expected to ship at the end of October.

The Pixelbook Pen, on the other hand, is available for pre-order now for $100, but it won’t ship until the end of November.

We enjoyed using the Pixelbook in our brief time with it, but we’re not quite sure yet if it’s worth the high price tag — especially when Chromebooks are known for affordability.

Unlimited original-quality Photos uploads for Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are only valid until Dec. 2020

New Pixels get unlimited original-quality Google Photos uploads for the life of the devices.

One of the main draws with the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL is the unlimited photo and video storage on Google Photos. Whereas all other phones get unlimited high-quality uploads, Google offers unlimited storage for original-quality photos and 4K videos for all media uploaded through the Pixels. With the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, Google is guaranteeing unlimited photo and video uploads for the life of the devices, which translates to the end of 2020.

Tucked away at the bottom of the Pixel 2 product page is the following:

Free, unlimited original-quality storage for photos and videos taken with Pixel through the end of 2020, and free, unlimited high-quality storage for photos taken with Pixel afterwards.

The cut-off date varies slightly by region. In Canada and India, where the Pixels are debuting later this month, the date is listed as January 15, 2021, but you broadly get three years of unlimited uncompressed photo and video uploads before Google reverts to high-quality.

The photos and videos that you upload in that time will continue to remain in original quality, but following the 2020 deadline, you’ll only get the standard high-quality upload option if you don’t want your photos to get counted against your data quota. There isn’t similar limitation for the first-gen Pixels, but we’ve reached out to the company just the same and will update the post once we know more.

Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL

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Apple Music will stream documentary on Pink’s new album October 13th

Superstar Pink is about to launch her seventh studio album, Beautiful Trauma, on October 13th. To celebrate (and get the hype machine moving, of course), she’s teamed up with Apple Music for an exclusive behind-the-scenes documentary titled On the Record: Pink – Beautiful Trauma. The short film will release October 13th on Apple Music.

The short film should please Pink fans and anyone who wants to peek behind the curtain of a massive pop star’s professional life. In the trailer above, you can hear Pink talk about how making an album is complex, with many moving pieces. Writing and recording songs is just the start, she says. “You have to finish the songs, and somebody’s in New York and someone’s in Philadelphia.” Then there are photo and video shoots for the album, but she also has to perform at festivals and regular shows, too. The documentary seems to include all of P!nk’s trademark honesty (and f-bombs). According to Variety, the film will also include video of her performing the new songs at an intimate Los Angeles theater.

Via: Variety

Source: P!nk / Facebook

Solar power is the fastest growing source of global energy

Solar power was the fastest-growing source of global energy last year, overtaking growth from all other forms, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The spurt is largely attributed to lower prices and changing government policies encouraging a shift away from traditional power sources, such as coal. China, for example, has played an important role in renewable energy’s prominence, accounting for almost half of all new solar panels installed worldwide.

Many experts are heralding a “new era” in solar photovoltaics (PV), anticipating that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology up until 2022. In fact, the IEA has admitted it had underestimated how fast green energy was growing, noting that many countries are set for a solar boom in the coming years. India’s renewable energy capacity is expected to double by 2022, overtaking the EU.

However, the IEA has said that despite these encouraging figures, there are uncertainties ahead. Donald Trump’s pledge to revive coal has put the country’s position as the second fastest-growing renewables market in jeopardy, especially if the US International Trade Commission were to impose tariffs on imports of Chinese solar panels. However the forecast for now, according to the IEA, remains bright.

Source: IEA