Get free shipping from Mint SIM for a limited time only

The plans are already affordable, and now the SIM card ships for free!

Nowadays we love to shop online and hate paying for shipping. We also love to pay less for things, like our cell phone plans, so what happens when we combine great deals with free shipping? We get things that everyone wants to buy! Mint SIM, a popular mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) which operates on T-Mobile’s nationwide network, is back with yet another promotion to help keep its service as affordable as possible.

For a limited time, when you sign up for a new Mint SIM plan, you can have your SIM card shipped to you for free. All you need to do is use the coupon code ACFREESHIP during your checkout, and you won’t be charged for the cost of shipping. Shipping starts at around $4, so while it may not seem like a huge savings, it is actually a great deal.

With Mint SIM, you prepay for a designated length of service when you are signing up, and currently, the options are 3, 6, and 12-month plans. Mint SIM offers 2GB, 5GB and 10GB per month plans, with prices starting at $45 for 2GB per month (prepaid for three months) and going up to $300 for 12 months with 10GB.

If you aren’t 100% sure about Mint SIM and how it will work for you, don’t worry. All 3-month plans are backed by a 7-day Money Back Guarantee, so you can try it out and if things don’t work out you can simply initiate a return and get your money back!

See at Mint SIM

Display analyst sheds light on complaints about Pixel 2 XL’s display

Let’s clear some things up.

There’s no shortage of blogs and YouTubers to follow these days when it comes content about the mobile tech industry, and for a number of people, one of the go-to personalities on YouTube for tech-related videos is MKBHD. Marques Brownlee that runs the channel recently published his review for the Google Pixel 2, and in part of it, talks about the Pixel 2 XL’s display.

François “Supercurio” Simond (a relatively popular app developer and display analyst) quickly reached out following this to indicate a number of errors throughout the video when Marques is talking about why the Pixel 2 XL’s display looks and works the way that it does. After being told that Marques didn’t have time for a phone call, François shared an email that he sent to Marques on Google+ in which he outlines the biggest errors in the video.

One of the biggest complaints we’ve seen for the Pixel 2 XL is that its display isn’t quite as bright or vibrant when compared to the likes of a Galaxy S8 or Note 8. This is due to Google’s decision to calibrate the Pixel 2 XL to an sRGB profile, and in the video, Marques says “For whatever reason Google decided on Oreo on the Pixel 2 XL they would show just sRGB.”

However, François points out that this was done because the colors that most Android phones are currently showing are arbitrary and make it more difficult for content creators to work with them.

The Pixel 2 XL’s display has been faced with a heap of controversy since its release.

Later on, Marques claims “most phones are now showing that wider range of colors, they all have P3 displays.” Although it’s true that phones with AMOLED displays have the capability to show a wide color gamut by default, not all phones are actually P3. François also reminds us that IPS panels using the sRGB profile choose to show the more narrow array of colors because it’s power-efficient and more accurate to what our retina are sensitive to.

“All phones with AMOLED panels have a native wide gamut capability…They’re wide-gamut by not really P3”

Near the end of Marques’ explanation, he talks about editing a photo on the Pixel 2 XL to look more colorful to his eyes, “and boom, this super saturated photo shows up on everyone else’s device because they’re all showing more colors.” Once again, François comes to the rescue to say that while AMOLED displays and IPS panels with a wide color gamut will showcase the wrong colors, all of Apple’s devices (iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, and iMacs) will show the colors as they’re supposed to look.

You can check out François’ full post here for even more detail, and we suggest doing so as there’s a lot of valuable information to be found – especially for owners of a Pixel 2 XL that want to know more about why their display looks the way it does.

Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL

• Pixel 2 FAQ: Everything you need to know!
• Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL review: The new standard
• Google Pixel 2 specs
• Google Pixel 2 vs. Pixel 2 XL: What’s the difference?
• Join our Pixel 2 forums

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This one-day sale features plenty of camera bags, tripods, and more

Take your photography hobby to the next level with this gear.

Is this deal for me?

There’s a large selection of camera accessories on sale during Amazon’s Gold Box deal of the day today. The selection includes tripods, camera bags, carrying cases for drones, and more. Many of these are going for their lowest prices.

We’ve picked out a few of the best deals:

• Case Logic SLR Camera Backpack for $44.24 (from $60)
• Davis & Sanford Voyager Tripod with 3 Way Pan and Tilt Head for $49.50 (from $66)
• Nanuk DJI Drone Waterproof Hard Case for $89.96 (from $120)
• Datacolor Spyder5PRO color accuracy solution for $149.99 (from $237)

There are a variety of cases and tripods and such on sale, so check out the others if these don’t appeal to you.

TL;DR

• What makes this deal worth considering? – If you’re a photographer, professional or amateur, there’s probably something in this sale you can use. Most of them are going for their lowest prices ever, too.
• Things to know before you buy! – This is a straight forward sale from a variety of brands on a variety of products. There’s not much you need to know except that if you’re not into cameras it probably won’t appeal to you. For you, Amazon has several other things on sale today including a large flashlight sale you might be interested in.

See at Amazon

Happy thrifting!

Lexus LS+ Concept previews automated driving technology for 2020

The LS+ also shows of the direction of Lexus design.The newest iteration of the Lexus luxury flagship, the 2018 LS, is on the stand at the 2017 Tokyo Motor Show, but it is also joined by a high-tech version. The Lexus LS+ is a concept that represents a lofty goal: to eventually eliminate traffic casualties. To help do that, the LS+ is equipped with “Highway Teammate” automated driving technologies that preview what is to come in consumer cars in 2020.

“Highway Teammate” tech allows the LS+ to drive under its own control on restricted access (motor-vehicle-only) roadways. It can take over driving duties from entrance ramp to exit ramp, says Lexus, including merging and lane changes. The tech also keeps the car in its lane, and maintains an appropriate following distance behind other vehicles, similar to today’s lane-keeping assistance and adaptive cruise control functions.

The LS+ goes a bit further than current mainstream technology, though, and communicates with a data center, which allows it to update its software with new functions (think Tesla’s over-the-air updates). Its AI also learns from collected data to help inform its automated driving system about the roads and surrounding areas, making it safer and more precise.

In addition to the autonomous highway driving technology, the LS+ Concept offers a glimpse into the future of Lexus design. It features a version of the the automaker’s signature spindle grille, which incorporates a large grille shutter to help with cooling and aerodynamic efficiency. Its headlights and taillights incorporate laser lighting. It also replaces bulky side mirrors with slimmer, electric camera units.

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Source: Lexus

PSVR, one year later

PlayStation VR hit the market with a bang in October 2016. It debuted at $400, without the PlayStation Camera or motion controllers. By February, Sony had sold 915,000 headsets — far surpassing the combined number of HTC Vive and Oculus Rift units estimated to be out in the wild. Sony Interactive Entertainment head Andrew House went on a press tour to brag about the numbers, telling The New York Times the PSVR sales were on track to outpace the company’s internal goal of 1 million in the first six months. That would have been mid-April.

“The company will almost certainly surpass that forecast,” The New York Times wrote.

April came and went. It wasn’t until June that Sony announced it had sold more than 1 million PSVR headsets — missing its internal estimate by about two months, in the opposite direction that House had initially touted.

One year after the debut of the PSVR, Sony hasn’t publicly updated that sales figure. The VR market is chugging away, with three standalone headsets — PSVR, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift — dominating the conversation. Sony is assuredly ahead of this pack when it comes to hardware sales, even though PSVR came out roughly six months after the Rift and Vive.

Superdata Research estimates HTC sold 420,000 Vives and Oculus sold 243,000 Rift headsets in 2016. Meanwhile, it says Sony sold 745,000 PS VR units with just three months on store shelves. Note that, at launch, the Vive cost $800, the Rift was $600 and PS VR came in at $400. Today, the Vive is $600, the Rift is $400 and PSVR is still $400 — but, now, that includes the $50 PlayStation Camera.

The sales discrepancy could come down to accessibility: Vive and Rift are PC headsets, each requiring a fairly hefty rig to run smoothly while PSVR is a plug-and-play device for anyone with a PlayStation 4. That’s not a bad market to bet on, considering there are more than 60 million PS4s in living rooms across the globe.

Sony has a sizable lineup of games, with more than 100 VR experiences available and 60 more expected by early 2018. PSVR can’t compare with the libraries for the Rift or Vive, however: On Steam, there are 2,133 titles that support Vive, Rift or both.

Still, Sony’s software sales figures are impressive: As of September, the company has sold 9.97 million PSVR games. This includes titles like Rez, Farpoint and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. That last one is especially noteworthy for Sony — it’s a timed exclusive to PSVR and one of the first AAA games to be fully playable in this new medium. Plus, it’s fantastic.

“Different users enjoy different experiences, and it’s hard to pinpoint a particular app or experience that is most popular, but we’ve found that certain genres work very well with VR, and horror is one example,” a Sony spokesperson told Engadget. “When Resident Evil 7: Biohazard launched earlier this year, the average amount of time PSVR users spent playing doubled.”

PSVR players spend an average of 25 minutes with the headset on at a time — “a lot of bite-sized experiences,” Sony PR said — but Resident Evil 7’s special brand of bloody terror stretched that to nearly an hour. It was a smart way to kick off the PSVR’s year.

Still, the VR market overall is moving at a more sluggish pace than many watchdogs expected. In March 2016, a Macquarie Securities analyst said he expected Sony to sell 8 million PSVR headsets in its first two years; another analyst estimated 4 million sales in its first year. Nokia recently shut down production of its OZO VR camera, citing the “slower-than-expected development of the VR market.”

But virtual reality is far from dead. The second generation of VR devices is on its way: Oculus has two wireless devices in the works — the $200 Go is scheduled to land in early 2018, and Project Santa Cruz, a truly impressive untethered headset, should ship to developers sometime that year. Earlier this month, Sony revealed an updated version of the PSVR with integrated headphones and HDR passthrough support; it’s already on sale in Japan. Microsoft is also diving into the world of mixed and virtual reality in a big way, recently opening a collaborative studio space in San Francisco to help developers create these types of experiences.

Globally, Superdata Research expects the VR market to generate $2.2 billion this year, and that estimate jumps to $28.5 billion by 2020. Much of this growth is driven by mobile VR devices including Google Daydream and Samsung Gear VR.

PSVR has proven there’s healthy interest in accessible, standalone VR, at least when it comes to gaming — what’s left to see is how long this intrigue can last.

O2’s flexible plans let you change your data allowance each month

When signing a new mobile contract, you typically pick a monthly plan with strict call, text and data allowances. You’re then tied to that decision as you see out the contract for the next two years, before starting the process all over again. With O2’s new flexible tariffs launching tomorrow, however, you can jump between different plans each month, shrinking or growing your data allowance, and thus how much you pay that month, too.

You might want to make sure you have a larger data allowance in a month you anticipate uploading a lot of pictures, for example, or a more frugal plan if you’re going on holiday and expect to spend more time looking at vistas instead of your phone. Subscribers can select a different plan once per calendar month, in-store, over the phone or via O2’s app, with the new allowance kicking in next billing cycle. You only need to worry about how much data you’ll need, really, since every relevant O2 plan includes unlimited calls and texts as standard.

This flexibility is available to new and existing O2 Refresh customers from tomorrow, but there is, of course, a catch. You need to have a relatively new phone supplied by O2 to qualify: Either of the new iPhones or the soon-to-be-released iPhone X, a Galaxy S8, S8 Plus or Note 8, or a OnePlus 5. O2 is in a slightly unique position to offer shapeshifting plans because of the way it structures monthly payments.

O2 Refresh portions your monthly bill into two parts. One is the charge for paying off your handset, and the other is the charge for your mobile service (calls, text and data). This means O2 can make the latter charge flexible without changing the amount you pay for the actual phone each month. The carrier is understandably keen to promote its transparent pricing at the moment, after Citizens Advice recently reminded people they are at risk of overpaying if they don’t upgrade immediately when their current contract expires.

Most mobile providers bundle your phone and service bill together, you see, so if you continue to pay the same amount after your contract is up, you’re effectively giving the carrier free money since you’ve already paid off the cost of your handset. But O2 isn’t the only provider that splits bills in this way. Sky Mobile does the same thing, for example, and offers a similar style of flexible plan you can change each month — incidentally, the MVNO piggybacks on O2’s network. There is a benefit to Sky’s way of doing things, though, in that any data you don’t use that month goes into a pot you can tap if you exhaust your allowance in any following month.

Rollover data is not a feature of O2’s flexible plans, however. If you think it’s going to be a particularly busy month and you want a 50GB cap to tide you over, but you only end up using 10GB of that. Well, the other 40GB you paid for is lost forever.

Source: O2

Alexa can control all the Dish TVs in your home

Dish has been cozying up with Amazon of late. The Pay TV provider already offers an Echo Dot to new customers, which lets you control its Hopper DVR or Wally with your voice. And, now you can do the same with all the Joey-enabled TVs in your home as well. As long as you have one of Amazon’s smart speakers in earshot, you’ll be able to bark orders at your extra television sets, which is great for when you want to pause and resume the action between rooms. And, if you seek to rule the TV in the kid’s bedroom.

Dish’s latest Hopper supports up to six Joeys, and older models work with up to three. That’s enough for all the family, so you can avoid the shouting matches that come with communal viewing. Despite Amazon opening up voice support to TV and streaming services, Dish is thus far the only US company to take advantage of it.

Source: Dish

Baidu updates its open-source autonomous driving platform

It’s odd that the search engine company known as the “Google of China” says that its open-source autonomous driving platform Apollo is the “Android of the auto industry.” But that’s exactly what Baidu is trying to be with Apollo and it’s racking up partners worldwide (including Ford, Daimler, NVIDIA and others) to make it a reality.

At an event in Sunnyvale, California, the search company unveiled Apollo 1.5, its latest version of its autonomous driving platform. The new version supports HD maps, LiDAR, obstacle detection and deep learning technologies. All of which, like the rest of the platform, is open source and modular so developers can pick and choose what they want to use in their own systems.

But it’s not a completely open system. At some point a developer will have to contribute to the platform to access more of the data for their own needs. It seems like a fair trade. Why build up your entire stack on the backs of others without at being an active part of the community?

Baidu has big plans for Apollo. It expects it will be powerful enough for a Level 3 car on the road by 2019, and primed for Level 4 vehicle in 2021. It’s an impressive feat for a company that’s not even building cars… and also in line with Google’s own autonomous car plans, its US counterpart.

Source: Baidu

eBay’s New Image Search Feature is Now Live Within iOS App

Following an announcement earlier in the summer, eBay this week launched an “Image Search” feature in its iOS application. Image Search uses computer vision technology powered by AI to let you search the popular auctioning site by snapping a picture — or uploading one from your Camera Roll — and receive similar results based on image recognition abilities.

Live now in the eBay iOS app, you can tap the camera icon in the search bar at the top of the home screen, choose “Image Search,” then take a picture or upload one from Photos. You’ll have to grant eBay access to both your iOS Camera and Photos apps for the feature to work properly.

After you take a picture or choose one, you can crop it so it focuses on the item you want to search, and then tap “Search.” eBay will then show you listings for items that are a “close match” or “visually similar” to the product in your picture. Image Search takes into account all of eBay’s over one billion listings, according to the company.

Leveraging the latest advances in two core parts of artificial intelligence — computer vision and deep learning — these new features make it easier to find and buy the things that inspire you. When you upload images to run Find It On eBay and Image Search, we use a deep learning model called a convolutional neural network to process the images.

The output of the model gives us a representation of your image that we can use to compare to the images of the live listings on eBay. Then, we rank the items based on visual similarity and use our open-source Kubernetes platform to quickly bring these results to you, wherever you are in the world.

eBay also launched “Find It On eBay” for Android smartphones only, which lets users start an image search on another social platform, like Facebook. Using a share extension on an image, Android users can tap eBay and the retailer’s app will open to show similar listings.

We’ve performed a few quick Image Searches today and found mostly solid results for some items (an Apple Watch and band), although other products stumped the software so much we got an error (Nintendo Amiibo, Apple Watch dock). eBay still hasn’t said if some products are more reliable than others, but it did mention that Image Search will gain intelligence as customers use it more, as is typical with machine learning technology.

Image Search is live now on iOS and Android, and Find It On eBay has also launched on Android this week. The eBay app on iOS doesn’t require an update for Image Search, so it appears the company is rolling out the feature through over-the-air installs.

Tag: eBay
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Apple vs. Samsung Lawsuit to Drag Into Eighth Year With Retrial Scheduled Next May

The never-ending legal battle between Apple and Samsung over the design of the iPhone will likely stretch into its eighth year of proceedings.

Apple’s original complaint accused Samsung of copying the iPhone’s design
Lucy Koh, the judge who has been presiding over the case since it began in April 2011, has scheduled a five-day retrial between May 14 and May 18 of next year, according to court documents filed electronically on Wednesday.

Earlier this week, Koh ordered that a new trial is required to determine whether Apple’s $399 million award for Samsung’s design patent infringement should stand or whether a new damages trial is required.

Apple successfully sued Samsung for infringing upon the iPhone’s patented design, including its rectangular front face with rounded edges and grid of colorful icons on a black screen.

Apple’s damages were awarded based on Samsung’s entire profit from the sale of its infringing smartphones, but Samsung argued that the amount should be a percentage based on individual components like the front bezel or display.

The case progressed all the way to the Supreme Court, which recommended that the U.S. Court of Appeals reconsider the damages amount that Samsung owes. The trial has since returned to the U.S. District Court in Northern California where it began.

Apple’s statement about the case from last December:

Our case has always been about Samsung’s blatant copying of our ideas, and that was never in dispute. We will continue to protect the years of hard work that has made iPhone the world’s most innovative and beloved product. We remain optimistic that the lower courts will again send a powerful signal that stealing isn’t right.

Apple was initially awarded nearly $1 billion in damages, but a significant part of the decision was reversed in 2015, leaving Samsung owing $548 million. The amount was eventually lowered to $399 million, and now it may be adjusted again.

Tag: Samsung
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