One thing Apple does better than Google: The cheeseburger emoji

This has caused quite a storm — and some would say rightfully so.

Emoji looking different depending on what operating system you’re using is nothing new. Send an emoji to a friend from your Samsung phone and there’s a good chance it looks different on a Motorola phone, Google phone or Apple iPhone — sometimes to the point of confusion. But now, we have a real crisis: look at Google’s “cheeseburger” emoji. Wait … why is the cheese on the bottom of the burger?

Yes, this is one place where iOS unequivocally gets things right. Apple places the cheese on top of the patty, as we’ve all seen time and time again from backyard cookouts to fancy new american eateries. Someone at Google — presumably backed up by a vetting process — chose to put the cheese under the patty. Oh my.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai tweeted that fixing this was his top priority — provided people could come to a consensus on where the cheese belongs.

Will drop everything else we are doing and address on Monday:) if folks can agree on the correct way to do this! https://t.co/dXRuZnX1Ag

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) October 29, 2017

He is slightly joking, of course, but seriously Mr. Pichai please get this figured out. Google is clearly on the wrong side of this argument.

Despite the canonical name for this emoji actually being “hamburger” and not technically a cheeseburger, all major platforms have taken it on as such. And every single one, aside from Google, puts the cheese on top of the patty. Additional accouterments like lettuce and tomato also find various placements across the companies, but none of those issues is as big as where you put the cheese — we’ll get to those arguments next.

Go look at your phone: is the cheese on the top of the patty, or do you have the wrong emoji? If the latter, it’s time to go follow Sundar Pichai on Twitter and make sure you keep up with the developments here.

Diagnose your Car Troubles with These OBD II Scanners

What’s the best OBD II reader for Android? Here’s a few to get you started!

Car repair can be costly (duh!) and that Check Engine light could mean myriad issues with your car. Or, it could be a simple fix that you could do yourself — so why take it to your dealer or mechanic without knowing the problem first? Some places will charge you $100 or more just for the scan.

Don’t get swindled again. Get yourself your very own Bluetooth OBD II reader/scanner and figure out what’s wrong with your car, right on your phone or tablet!

• BAFX Products 34t5
• Panlong Car Diagnostic scanner
• ScanTool OBDLink LX
• iSaddle Super Mini

BAFX Products 34t5

The BAFX Products 34t5 claims to work on all vehicles in the U.S. from 1996 or later, so chances are that if you’re driving, this will work with your vehicle. All you need is a third-party app (which range from free to rather expensive paid apps), and you can connect the 34t5 to your Android phone or tablet to read out diagnostic information.

While reading out diagnostic codes, you can even clear them out at will, thus turning off your check engine light – even for manufacturer-specific codes!

Depending on the third-party app your choose, you can get real-time sensor information right on your phone, life speed, balance rates, RPM, O2 readings, and lots more.

If you feel the need for speed, this reader will even send you ⅛, ¼, ½, and 1 mile times.

Don’t spend $100 just for someone to scan your car; spend about $22, read it yourself, and maybe you’ll even be able to fix it on your own!

See at Amazon

Panlong Car Diagnostic scanner

Panlong’s small OBD II scanner is perfect for the do-it-yourselfer on a budget – you can find it on Amazon for around $13.

This reader will work on any car sold in the U.S. from 1996 or later – it just might not work with some hybrids. All you need is a third-party app, like Torque or DashCommand and you’ll be able to read and clear trouble codes, while receiving real-time data readings – and you’ll be able to turn off that damn Check Engine light!

If inexpensively is the way you like to maintain your vehicle (who doesn’t?), then opt for the Panlong scanner.

See at Amazon

ScanTool OBDLink LX

The ScanTool OBDLink LX is a professional-grade OBD II reader that features its own app, which allows you to scan, read, and clear trouble codes in all cars sold in the U.S. since 1996 (except hybrid or electric vehicles).

All you have to do is plug it in, pair it with your phone, open the app, and you’ll see real-time diagnostic data, as well as information about performance.

You can even use your Windows PC to access and compile your information without ever having to see a mechanic. Fix the stuff you can fix yourself and only take it in when absolutely necessary.

Being a professional tool, the OBDLink LX claims to service a wider range of vehicles, given more complex algorithms, and the Amazon reviews seem to agree.

It may be about $50, but if you love your car and worry that the cheaper readers might not actually do the trick, then check out the OBDLink LX. $50 is better than the $100 the dealers will charge you!

See at Amazon

iSaddle Super Mini

The iSaddle Super Mini supports all OBD II protocols and works on just about every car sold in the U.S. since 1996 (except hybrid and electric), allowing you to diagnose what ails your vehicle to help determine whether or not it really needs a trip to the shop.

For Android users, iSaddle works exclusively with the Torque app feeding you diagnostics and performance data via Bluetooth.

If you’re unsure about the DYI approach to car repair, the iSaddle’s only about $12, so you really have nothing to lose if you want to try it out yourself. If you can fix the problem yourself, go for it, but you still have the option of taking it to your dealer or mechanic if you’re out of your element.

See at Amazon

What do you use?

Do you read your car or truck’s trouble codes with another scanner that we didn’t mention? Do you read your own codes or just take your car to the shop whenever the Check Engine light comes on?

Let us know in the comments below!

Updated October 2017: These are still the best options for OBD2 card readers that work via Bluetooth.

Sprint owner SoftBank ends T-Mobile merger talks over ownership disagreement

We’ve seen this play out many times before.

The longstanding potential merger between Sprint and T-Mobile has taken another turn, and this time it isn’t a positive one. After rumors earlier in October indicating that merger talks were quite advanced, reports out of Japan claim that Sprint owner SoftBank has shut down the discussion after failing to come to agreement on details of ownership in the combined company. SoftBank, led by Japanese businessman Masayoshi Son, is expected to formally end merger talks with T-Mobile’s parent Deutsche Telekom as early as tomorrow.

The disagreement between parent companies apparently centered around which would hold a controlling stake in the new company, with Deutsche Telekom understandably wanting control considering its subsidiary is the larger of the two companies pre-merger. SoftBank was apparently willing to negotiate some in this regard, but eventually decided it didn’t want to relinquish the idea of holding the controlling stake.

Sprint is half the size of T-Mobile, but SoftBank still thought it deserved a controlling stake.

Stock in both Sprint and T-Mobile took a nosedive immediately following the news, but have since rebounded partially. But no single-day change can erase the fact that T-Mobile is currently valued at over $52 billion, more than double Sprint’s $25.9 billion market cap. Stock prices aside, it’s clear that T-Mobile (and therefore Deutsche Telekom) is in the power position with the positive trajectory as Sprint falls further behind in the fourth position among U.S. carriers. It wasn’t long ago that Sprint was the larger of the two, but it seems there’s no getting back to that position now.

Rather than see that Sprint’s best possible way to profitability (and long term viability) is the combine with T-Mobile, it seems Mr. Son is willing to ride with what he’s got rather than relinquish control of the combined company to Deutsche Telekom despite its larger stake in the deal. Whether or not such a large merger would eventually pass through the U.S. regulator bodies is another question altogether — but it doesn’t seem we’ll even get there now.

Meizu teaming up with MediaTek to create the ‘best facial recognition technology on smartphones’

Meizu’s facial recognition technology will be debuting sometime next year.

With fingerprint sensors now ubiquitous in the smartphone segment, brands are exploring new options for unlocking devices. Facial recognition is the obvious choice, and currently we have two very different implementations available: Samsung’s iris scanning on the Note 8, and Apple’s Face ID on the iPhone X.

The iris scanning feature on the Note 8 is meant to be an alternative to the fingerprint sensor, but Face ID is the default way to unlock the iPhone X. There are key differences in the way both companies approach the feature, but the premise is the same: using your face as a password to unlock your phone.

And now Meizu is looking to join the club with its own facial recognition tech. According to the company’s head of global marketing Ard Boudeling, Meizu is partnering with MediaTek to create the “best facial recognition technology on smartphones:”

We’re working together with @MediaTek to create the best facial recognition technology on smartphones. We hope to show you in 2018. pic.twitter.com/lYnFXMtblL

— Ard Boudeling (@ArdCB) October 30, 2017

The Chinese manufacturer is a relative unknown in Western markets, but Meizu has several firsts to its name. The company was the first to launch a phone with 128GB of internal storage, which it did all the way back in 2013 with the MX3. Then there’s the Pro 6, the first phone in the world with 10 cores.

This year’s Pro 7 Plus has a secondary display at the back that comes in handy when you’re tring to take photos using the rear camera. We’ll have to wait until 2018 to see what Meizu has in store for us.

CBS previews its All Access-exclusive cop comedy ‘No Activity’

CBS wants to remind you that All Access doesn’t just revolve around Star Trek: Discovery. It just premiered the trailer for its third All Access original series, the police comedy No Activity, ahead of its November 12th debut. The adaptation of an Australian TV show is produced by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Funny or Die, and it’s very much in keeping with their sophomoric style of humor. It centers on two cops (Tim Meadows and Patrick Brammall) involved in an agonizingly mundane drug bust and the hijinks that ensue. There are plenty of other odd couples roped into events, including police dispatchers, tunnel diggers and clueless crooks, while there are promises of big-name guest stars that include Will Ferrell himself.

Is this going to give Star Trek a run for its money? Probably not. The producers clearly have big-name actors and the creative freedom they wouldn’t get if they were producing a conventional TV show (the trailer is loaded with expletives and sex jokes), but there’s no denying that CBS placed its biggest bet on its classic sci-fi franchise. Nonetheless, this and The Good Fight give you an idea of what to expect. CBS is pursuing the streaming video model established by Amazon, Hulu and Netflix, where it offers a wide variety of genres and takes advantage of the looser restrictions that come with internet-only video.

#NoActivity is a new CBS All Access comedy from​ ​Will Ferrell, Adam McKay & @funnyordie. Contains explicit language intended for adults. pic.twitter.com/eki27dIPmV

— No Activity (@NoActivityCBS) October 30, 2017

Source: CBS Press Express, Twitter, YouTube

YouTube TV finally has an app built for your living room screen

When YouTube TV arrived earlier this year, it was focused on phones. Sure, you could send video to your TV via Chromecast or AirPlay, but thus far there haven’t been apps for the big video platforms like Roku, Apple TV or even Google’s own Android TV. That’s changing today, as YouTube TV will start rolling out to screen running Android TV. And in the coming weeks, it’ll be in plenty more places, including Xbox One, Apple TV and Roku, as well as Samsung, Sony and LG TVs.

Building a user interface for a full-sized TV is a lot different than making one for mobile, so the YouTube TV app for big screens is a good bit different than what we’ve seen so far. It’s pretty simple, though — when you start it up, you’ll jump into whatever you were watching last time you turned off YouTube TV. To find new things to watch, there’s a simple three-menu interface: Home, Library and Live. Not coincidentally, those are the same tabs you’ll find in the YouTube TV app.

The Home page focuses on five “shelves” of broadcast content that’ll be personalized for each user based on their viewing history and what programs they’ve saved to their cloud DVR. You’ll find shows, movies, family, news and sports shelves, and those will be rearranged depending on the relevancy of each. So the sports shelf might be up top on Sunday morning going into a big day of football, but not first thing on a Tuesday morning, for example.

The different content that’ll show up in each shelf will also be personalized and relevant your viewing history — if you’re a big football fan, you’ll see those games show up in the sports shelf ahead of other sports you’re less interested in. YouTube TV also lets you follow specific teams, so those games will be right up front as well. Finally, the Home tab also shows off top recommendations across all content types as well as a quick “resume watching” area that shows anything you’ve started but haven’t finished recently.

The Live tab, meanwhile, shows a more traditional list of all channels available and what’s airing on them; you can scroll to the right to see what’s coming and save shows to you DVR from there. The Library groups everything you’ve saved into shows, movies, sports and events, with additional tabs to show just what’s new or what you watch the most.

There’s a whole lot you can dig into further here, including finding shows and movies from specific actors, similar shows to what you watch most often, full show lists for each network YouTube TV offers and more. But the essential experience will be familiar to anyone who’s tried the service so far — you’ll just be able to initiate without having to go to your phone first.

As for why YouTube TV started with mobile in the first place, YouTube TV’s Product Management Director Christian Oestlien told Engadget that the company was trying to offer a totally different experience than most consumers were used to. “We wanted to break this association with the set top box in the living room, this idea that you have to have a cable company come in and install hardware that’s dated in a year,” Oestlien said. “There’s all this crazy stuff from the legacy [TV} business that we wanted to have a really clean break with.”

That’s a fair point, as the traditional cable TV experience remains fairly terrible. But Oestlien said that “the majority of our watch time comes from casting” — users sending video from their phones to their TVs using the Chromecast. “The most important thing we’ve heard from customers is that they want more ways to watch in the living room.”

So after six months, the YouTube TV large-screen experience is ready to go. Oestlien said that the app should be widely available. If you don’t have a screen with Android TV, it’ll be coming to set-top boxes, Xbox One consoles and other TVs within the next few weeks — it won’t be the slow roll-out that is often associated with Google launches. If you haven’t tried YouTube TV yet, the company is offering free seven-day trials. Just wait until the new app is on your set-top box of choice — because it’ll be a lot easier to give the service a fair shake.

Source: YouTube

Pandora adds curated playlists to its on-demand music service

For years, the main feature of Pandora’s music streaming service has been stations generated from the company’s vast Music Genome Project. A system that analyzes songs based on 450 different attributes, it helps Pandora build stations of songs that the company claims go together better than what other services offer. But, the company finally launched a full-fledged, on-demand service earlier this year, and now it’s expanding the kinds of music it curates for users.

Today, Pandora Premium is launching Featured Playlists, a set of 250 curated playlists across the categories you see on pretty much every other music service out there. Pandora says that in addition to genre-focused playlists, it’s also building ones for moods, activities, specific artists and “cultural moments.”

Premium subscribers will find them at the top of the “browse” section, with a top selection that matches up with the types of music that you listen to most frequently. Unfortunately, if you want to browse them all, there’s just a giant scrolling list that you’ll need to dig through. If you look under genres, moods or activities further down the browse section, you’ll only see Pandora’s typical stations. You can of course save any playlists you enjoy to your library so they’re easier to find later.

Pandora also noted that free or “plus” users (who don’t have access to Pandora’s full on-demand library) will get access to some stations based on the new playlists. Those stations might not have the exact same songs found in the playlist itself, but they should have the same general vibe. And Pandora says it’ll be updating and refreshing the playlists over time, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll be with the frequency that Apple Music and Spotify update their lists. For that, you’re probably better off sticking with Pandora’s stations.

Most music services put a priority on either playlists (Spotify, Apple Music) or stations (Google Play Music, Pandora). But having a selection of both is a good addition to Pandora Premium, a service that’s still adding the features needed to compete with the bigger options. Pandora’s new playlists sound good at first glance, and if they make them easier to discover and update them on a regular basis, they’ll prove to be a worthwhile addition.

Source: Pandora

‘Sprint Vector’ brings VR foot racing to PlayStation 4

We were impressed with Sprint Vector’s unique approach to running in VR: you swing your arms in a way that feels natural and shouldn’t make you queasy. However, there were only plans to release a PC version. What about those of us who want to run in the living room? Never fear: Survios has revealed that Sprint Vector is coming to PlayStation VR. There weren’t any firm details (certainly not a release date), but it’s safe to say you’ll want a pair of Move controllers to play this futuristic foot racer, at least as it was intended.

To recap: the story is that an eccentric robot scoops up not-so-voluntary competitors from around the galaxy to participate in “cross-dimensional” races, but this is ultimately just a pretext for an extremely fast-paced VR experience. The arm-swinging mechanic lets you smoothly dodge around obstacles, soar through the air and vault over hurdles without having to rely on a gamepad, which could easily induce nausea. You won’t want to play this when other people are in arm’s reach, but it promises a kind of intensity you don’t often get with headset-based experiences.

Source: PlayStation (Twitter), Survios

Get your first glimpse of ‘Spelunky 2’

Spelunky 2 exists! And, really that’s about all we know aside from the game potentially taking place in the sky, and you playing as the unnamed original protagonist’s daughter a la (spoiler warning) Uncharted 4. Check out the trailer below and see if you can unravel any other clues. The first game was available on practically every platform, and was a driving force behind taking the roguelike subgenre as close to mainstream as it’ll probably get.

Follow all the latest news from Sony’s PlayStation event here!

The ‘Infamous’ team is working on a Samurai game

Sucker Punch Productions, the studio behind the Infamous series, is building a new open-world game set in the mountains of ancient Japan: Ghost of Tsushima. So far, we’ve only seen a cinematic trailer for the new title, but it gives away a few clues: Ghost of Tsushima is set in 1247, and it focuses on Samurai life and swordplay, featuring a calculating and cruel villain intent on conquering the land.

Ghost of Tsushima is a departure for Sucker Punch. Infamous is a decidedly sci-fi kind of story, starring super-powered humans and lots of neon light. Ghost of Tsushima appears to be more serious in tone.

Sony revealed Ghost of Tsushima during its Paris Games Week event today. Sucker Punch is a subsidiary of Sony, so it’s safe to expect Ghost of Tsushima for PlayStation 4 some time in the future.