Apple Pay May Launch in the Netherlands and Poland Later This Year

In addition to Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and the United Arab Emirates, Apple Pay may launch in the Netherlands and Poland later this year.

Dutch blog One More Thing, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter, claims that ING will be the first bank to offer Apple Pay in the Netherlands. Virtual bank Bunq also supposedly plans to support Apple Pay.

Rabobank, one of the largest banks in the Netherlands, reportedly hasn’t yet taken any concrete steps towards Apple Pay.

Apple has translated Apple Pay support pages on its website to Dutch and French for the Netherlands and Belgium. Apple Pay was already rumored to launch in Belgium in May, but five months have passed and it has yet to happen.

The report cites one source who claims Apple Pay could launch in the Netherlands on November 2, but the blog could not confirm the date.

Apple’s fourth quarter earnings results are scheduled for the same day, so it’s possible that Apple will use the subsequent conference call as an opportunity to announce the next wave of Apple Pay launch countries.

MacRumors also received an anonymous tip today with an alleged screenshot of Apple Pay being tested on an iPhone in Poland.

The screenshot shows a Mastercard from PKO Bank Polski, suggesting that bank could be the first to support Apple Pay in the country. However, it could also be a placeholder card for Apple’s internal testing only.

The tipster said Apple Pay should be ready to launch in Poland by the end of this year, but we’re unable to confirm the authenticity of this information.

Apple Pay vice president Jennifer Bailey has previously said Apple is “working rapidly” to expand Apple Pay to additional countries in Europe and Asia. According to Apple’s services chief Eddy Cue, that could soon include India.

Apple Pay is currently available in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, Singapore, Switzerland, France, Hong Kong, Russia, New Zealand, Japan, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.

(Thanks, Burak Polat!)

Related Roundup: Apple PayTags: The Netherlands, Poland
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Facebook Officially Rolling Out ‘Explore Feed’ for Finding Non-News Feed Content

Facebook has been testing a new “Explore Feed” that’s designed to help users discover relevant content outside of the standard News Feed, and now the feature is officially rolling out to users on both mobile devices and the desktop, reports TechCrunch. Facebook confirmed the rollout of the feature in a statement:

“We are beginning to roll out a complementary feed of popular articles, videos, and photos, automatically customized for each person based on content that might be interesting to them,” the Facebook spokesperson said. “We’ve heard from people that they want an easy way to explore relevant content from Pages they haven’t connected with yet.”

On the desktop, the “Explore Feed” can be found on the left-hand sidebar under “Explore” by clicking on “See More.” In the Facebook iOS app, it’s also listed under “Explore” and can be accessed by tapping on the hamburger button at the bottom of the app.

In both instances, the new Explore Feed is rather buried among a long list of other options like Events, Pages, Moments, Town Hall, Buy and Sell Groups, Jobs, Recommendations, and more.

The Explore Feed houses recommended Facebook posts from companies and media sites that you might not otherwise see in your feed, with content based on topics you’ve previously liked or content that’s popular with your friends.

Facebook is aiming to use the Explore Feed to surface fresh content to entice users to spend more time using the social network.

Some users began seeing the Explore Feed earlier this year as Facebook was testing the feature, but it is now rolling out to all users and should be available for everyone soon.

Tag: Facebook
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PinOut brings you back to your pinball glory daze (review)

We’re celebrating ten years of AndroidGuys with a ton of giveaways!

I’m guessing that you have not played a game of pinball in a good long while. Let alone thought about pinball, for that matter. For a brief moment in your life, this quarter-played arcade staple was a daily calling….right up until more important things took over (cars, boys, girls, boys and girls, whatever).

While you may not have been thinking about it, there is a game in the Play Store that may be worth considering. PinOut, from the developer Mediocre, has brought a fun, lively, family-friendly mobile version of pinball to Android devices everywhere.

Setup

One of the best things about PinOut is Mediocre has kept the formula much the same: it’s very easy to get in, have some great fun, and then get out. Not a lot of setup or settings to tweak. Just download PinOut from the Play Store and you’re set.

Opening up the game is a snap after downloading it. The game takes you right into the start screen, where a play button awaits. For settings, there’s really only adjusting the quality level of the graphics (for any devices that struggle to keep up).

Gameplay & Controls

Starting out you are given the shortest tutorial ever; but this is fine, as it’s pinball. You are shown that you activate a flipper by tapping the corresponding side of the screen (left or right….doesn’t matter how high or low on the screen you tap). And you’re off.

As for controls, you just read about them. It’s just like Pinball, in that you are controlling left and right flippers. One difference is you don’t have the ball-launching spring catapult you’d have in the physical machine….the ball just comes dropping down nice and soft; ready for you to strike it.

The game is timed; that is there is an omnipresent countdown timer at the top. If it gets to zero, your game is over. You can stretch this time by striking your ball down particular “add time” rails (similar to “checkpoints” in driving games).

PinOut is presented in a never-ending road style, Your goal is to simply go as far as possible before your clock finally runs down. In the interim you can get special bonus items, some of which you can choose from; like a “bullet-time” feature that slows the timer down for a while, or an option to freeze time for a particular number of paddle flips (I loved this one; almost giggled whenever I got it while playing).

PinOut has no storylines to follow, no plot, no setup, no backstory. It’s just you, the ball, the clock, and a seemingly endless supply of boards to clear.
There’s even a side-game to play when you hit certain spots, called Lazer Racer. Using the “scoreboard” portion of the game display, you play a Frogger-style dodging game, trying to beat your best record. It’s not much but it is a cute diversion.

Graphics & Sound

An obvious point of marketing for PinOut is its graphics style. It’s a combination of Tron-style and retro groove, using strong colors against dark backgrounds. It does a great job of being aggressive without being garish or hard on the eyes, allowing you to play for longer periods without fatigue.

Paired with the great graphics is a cool, mellow, retro-arcade soundtrack that moves you right along with the endless-road presentation. The music, for me, never takes over or gets in the way of gameplay. It just sort of fits-in, and this is a high compliment for game music, nowadays.

Overall

For an easy, challenging but chill, kid-friendly game, I highly, highly recommend PinOut on your device. It’s both easy to pick up and put down; then just as easy to pick up again. It offers a short-term arcade respite from your real-world stresses, while still being a truly quality title to have in your library.

Download PinOut from the Play Store here.

Boomerang’s AI assistant for email puts the important stuff on top

Why it matters to you

If you’re drowning in email, Boomerang’s Brief Me feature might be just what you need.

When it comes to the productivity grind, assistants like Siri and Alexa do a decent job of setting reminders, shouting out calendar appointments, and checking off to-do lists. But good luck getting them to make sense of your inbox.

That’s why Mountain View, California-based Boomerang built Boomerang for iPhone, a high-tech email manager that parses and analyzes your inbound messages.

Here’s the gist: Grant Boomerang access to your inboxes and the app’s AI will pick out words, phrases, sentences, and other mail metadata from your most recent messages. It will run that data through algorithms, taking into account factors like semantics and length. After all that’s done, it’ll spit out a succinct, up-to-the-minute inbox digest — Brief Me — that includes relevant portions of emails and estimates how long it will take you to respond.

Boomerang

“Boomerang is a fully featured email app combined with a smart assistant that helps plan your day so you can avoid falling into unproductive time-sucks,” the company said in a blog post. “For instance, say ‘Hey Boomerang, Brief Me’ on your train ride to work in the morning so you’re ready for your day as soon as you hit your desk. Say ‘Hey Boomerang, Brief Me’ after getting out of a long meeting so you don’t have to dig through your inbox to know what’s important for you to handle right away.”

Boomerang knows a thing or two about email. In August, the startup grew its enterprise customer base to 500,000 businesses and grabbed headlines with Respondable, a collection of machine learning algorithms that offer real-time email composition suggestions.

Boomerang for iPhone joins Boomerang’s growing productivity suite, which is impressive in its own right. IQ Search sifts through your inbox for files, PDFs, and crucial bits of information using natural language. Its rescheduler tool automatically moves, creates, and cancels meetings depending on your calendar availability, and lets folks know if you’re running late.  And voice command support lets you manage messages by saying, “Delete all the marketing email I received yesterday,” for example, or, “Show me emails I need to reply to.”

Boomerang

Boomerang’s Brief Me feature launches on iOS today as part of Boomerang for iPhone, and on desktop and Amazon Alexa devices next year.

“Smart assistants to date have been generalists, usually best at simple things like playing a song or setting a timer,” Alex Moore, CEO and co-founder of Boomerang said in a press release. “By focusing exclusively on improving workday efficiency, we’ve created a feature set that goes beyond this catch-all approach and hopefully helps people leave work at work.”

Upgrade from your TV’s muddy speakers to this $190 Yamaha Bluetooth sound bar

The Yamaha YAS-203 Bluetooth sound bar with subwoofer is down to $189.99 on Amazon. This sound bar was selling for as high as $400 in August. Since then it has been on a steady decline, and this drop to $190 is its lowest price yet. The last time we shared a deal on this sound bar it had dropped to $240 in September.

Sound bars like this are so good and so inexpensive, it doesn’t make sense for you to keep using your TV’s default speakers. I know this thing isn’t exactly a Sonos home audio system, but at least your sound won’t sound like it’s traveling through mud to get to you.

Features include:

• Provide high-quality sound and reliable performance with 100W of RMS power:
• The wireless subwoofer delivers powerful bass for a full, rich listening experience.
• Virtual surround sound Immerses you in theater-like audio for your favorite TV shows and movies.
• Bluetooth music streaming lets you play music from your compatible device.
• The included remote allows you to control the settings from across the room.
• Inputs include optical digital audio, coaxial digital audio and analog L/R audio.

The Yamaha has 4.2 stars based on 370 user reviews.

TL;DR

• What makes this deal worth considering? – For a sound bar that was selling as high as $400 just a few months ago, this is a really low price and a great deal.
• Things to know before you buy! – This is an older sound bar, but newer models like the Yamaha YAS-207 cost a lot more.

See at Amazon

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• Amazon Prime Student is now available as a $5.49 monthly subscription
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For more great deals be sure to check out our friends at Thrifter now!

What’s the best power and volume button placement on a phone?

Where do you prefer your phone’s power and volume buttons to be placed?

Has this ever happened to you: you upgrade phones only to spend the next few days pitifully jabbing your finger at a spot the old power button used to be? The proposition sounds like the beginning of a terrible late-night infomercial, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about over the past few days: where do I prefer my phone’s power and volume buttons?

The last four phones I’ve tested, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, LG V30, Sony Xperia XZ1, and Google Pixel 2 XL, all have different placements for their power and volume buttons, and I can’t decide which one I prefer the most (or least, I guess).

The Galaxy Note 8 separates the power and volume buttons, putting the former on the right and the latter on the left. To me, this is the obvious solution, as the delineation is unambiguous — regardless of orientation, or whether the phone is in my pocket, I can change the volume without looking at the phone.

The Xperia XZ1 puts the volume rocker above the power key, which is centered on the right side of the phone. This is my second favorite placement, as I tend to hold the phone near the bottom, so it’s easy to turn on and off the phone (and in Sony’s case, hit the fingerprint sensor at the same time) without drastically shifting my hand.

It also helps when the handset itself isn’t gigantic.

The LG V30 puts the power button on the back, embedded in the fingerprint sensor. This makes sense when combined with the company’s on-screen gestures — when flat on a table, you can just double tap anywhere on the screen to turn it on, and double-tap the notification area to turn it off at any time.

The volume buttons lie on the left side of the chassis, which can be a bit disorienting, but it’s not really a big deal.

The Pixel 2 XL’s combination — power button on top of the volume on the right side — is my least favorite of all of them. (Actually, that’s not true — power button on the left side of the phone, as per the Alcatel Idol 3 and 4 series, is an abomination and should not even be considered here.)

As phones get bigger, it makes sense to keep the power key as close to where the thumb naturally rests while holding the device, but the Pixel 2 XL forces you to shift upwards to hit it. I don’t care how good that orange button looks (and my goodness does it look great!), it’s still a poor choice, in my opinion.

I’m probably leaving out a couple combinations that have appeared in the Android world over the years, and I’m also not taking into account devices like the Moto Z2 Force where the front-facing fingerprint sensor doubles as a power button.

What’s your take on all this? Let me know in the comments and see if we can come to some sort of consensus (hah!).

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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Wattpad’s new premium tier gets ads out of the way of your fanfic

Sick of ads getting in the way of your fanfic binges? You’re in luck — after 10 years, Wattpad has announced an ad-free account option for users in Canada and the U.S.

Online storytelling community Wattpad published a blog post today saying that its first-ever premium subscription tier is finally available. This new tier will offer Wattpad’s more than 60 million users an ad-free reading experience on both the Wattpad app and desktop site.

An ad-free option was, according to the site, one of the most frequent requests by current Wattpadders, and Wattpad’s CEO Allen Lau made it clear that this new tier was for their comfort:

The Wattpad community is the most important thing to us, and we want them to have the best possible experience across all our platforms. An ad-free option has been one of the most requested features from our users. Wattpad Premium gives people more control over their Wattpad experience, and allows us to continue to offer Wattpad as a free platform that anyone can enjoy.

If you’d like to upgrade to Wattpad Premium, it’ll cost you either $5.99 per month or an upfront yearly payment of $59.99 (which will save you about $12, or two months worth of fees). Here’s how to subscribe on the app:

Launch the Wattpad app and log in if you haven’t already.
Tap the button in the top right corner that says Go Premium.
Select either the yearly or monthly Premium plan.
Confirm your purchase.

That’s it! Now all you have to do is select a story of your choice (Wattpad has everything from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to self-help books to coming-of-age vampire dramas) and enjoy your ad-free reading sessions. You can also subscribe on Wattpad’s desktop site if you prefer. If you don’t already have the Wattpad app, you can get it here:

Thoughts?

If you’re a Wattpad user, are you excited about the prospect of an ad-free experience? Let us know how you feel in the comments!

Samsung leapfrogs Intel again with 8-nanometer chips

Samsung has qualified its 8-nanometer chip-making process for production three months ahead of schedule. It’s the same “low power plus” (LPP) process used for its current 10-nanometer silicon, not the next-gen extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for its future 7-nanometer tech. That’ll yield chips that are ten percent more energy efficient and ten percent smaller than the 10-nanometer ones it’s making right now. At the same time, since the 8-nanometer chips use the same process, Samsung will be able to “rapidly ramp up,” it said.

Samsung said that the new process will be ideal for “mobile, cryptocurrency and network/server” applications. It notably worked again with Qualcomm, its 10-nanometer chip launch customer, to perfect the new tech. Rumors in Korea had it that Qualcomm would switch its 7-nanometer production to TMSC, which is reportedly slightly ahead of Samsung in developing that tech.

However, Samsung confirmed with ZDNet that Qualcomm will be using its 8-nanometer process, without providing any specific details. Given that information, it seems likely that Qualcomm will build its next-gen Snapdragon chips with Samsung, using the tried-and-true LPP process instead of bleeding-edge 7-nanometer tech, which necessitates a switch to extreme ultraviolet lithography.

By that time, Samsung should have its own 7-nanometer EUV process up to speed, with 6-nanometer chips set to follow after that. Anyway, Samsung Mobile is probably Qualcomm’s biggest customer with its Galaxy S8 and Note 8 phones, so it would have been pretty awkward to split off to another foundry.

Though they don’t compete much in the same markets, the news puts Intel even further behind Samsung, at least in terms of chip trace sizes. Intel has yet to release any 10-nanometer chips, though it has said that when it does (in 2018 or 2019), it will be “generations ahead” of Samsung thanks to better feature density. By then, however, Samsung might have closed that gap by being two or three actual generations ahead of Intel in terms of lithography. Samsung is expected to reveal its roadmap for 8- and 7-nanometer chips later today.

Source: Samsung

WhatsApp lets users share their real-time locations

This week, messaging app WhatsApp announced a new feature that allows users to share their real-time location with family and friends. The feature is encrypted end to end to ensure users’ privacy and security, and it allows you to control who can see your location and when they can see it. Live Location will be rolling out in the next few weeks on both iOS and Android.

To use Live Location, start a chat with the person or group you’d like to share your location with. You’ll find the new option “Share Live Location” under “Location” when you hit the “Attach” button. You can decide how long you want to share your location, and then hit “Send.” If you want to stop sharing your location before the timer expires, you can choose to do so at any time. And if multiple people in your group share their locations with one another, it will all be visible on the same map.

WhatsApp has been steadily increasing in importance. It recently become a top news source in some countries and has a billion daily users. It’s nice to see that the company is focusing on that impressive user base and continuing to add new features.

Source: Whatsapp

Snapchat will offer European users exclusive Olympics content

Snap is clearly hungry for original and exclusive web content for Snapchat’s Discover platform. Yesterday, the company announced it was forming a studio in partnership with NBCUniversal. Then, this morning, Snap revealed that it’s partnering with Eurosport, which is owned by Discovery Communications, to bring exclusive behind-the-scenes content from the Olympics Winter Games, which will be held in PyeongChang, South Korea, in 2018. This content appears to be limited to Snapchat’s European users.

The partnership will cover both Our Stories, which are curated stories that highlight Snaps from the general user database, and Publisher Stories, which are produced and submitted by media partners. Snapchat will have a dedicated team working on Eurosport’s Publisher Story, which will complement the Olympics footage aired on the streaming platform Eurosport Player. The partnership also includes a “strategic advertising agreement.”

This isn’t the first time the two organizations have worked together. Previously, Eurosport’s parent organization Discovery produced shows for Shark Week that aired first on Snapchat. Shark Week on Snapchat ran for a week; over 17 million users tuned in to watch the show.

Source: Discovery Communications