Apple Lets Several YouTubers Get Closer Look at iPhone X Ahead of Friday’s Launch

In addition to journalist Steven Levy’s first impressions of the iPhone X, Apple recently invited a number of YouTube channels to try out the highly-anticipated device at a nondescript building in New York City.

Brian Farmer and Noah Thomas of lifestyle website Highsnobiety shared a five-minute video in which they demo Animoji, 4K video playback at 60 FPS, Face ID, front-facing Portrait Mode, wireless charging, and other features.

YouTube personality Mark Watson, known as Soldier Knows Best, praised the iPhone X’s design and performance. He said the new swipe-up gestures for unlocking the device and multitasking will take some time to get used to.

BooredAtWork.com’s executive editor Enobong Etteh said the iPhone X is one of the best looking iPhones ever. His video provides a side-by-side comparison of the iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X, along with hands-on time with Face ID and Animoji.

Sam Beckerman went to New York on behalf of Canada’s FASHION Magazine for an exclusive hands-on look at the new iPhone X. The video recaps her 10 favorite features of the device, such as Face ID, Animoji, and ARKit.

Beyond the event in New York, a few other videos of the iPhone X have surfaced on YouTube today. We’ve embedded videos from Popular Science, French channel TheiCollection, and Turkish channel ShiftDelete.net below.

iPhone X pre-orders began on Friday, with shipping estimates now at five to six weeks for orders placed today. The device launches November 3, with limited in-store availability for walk-in customers on a first come, first served basis.

Related Roundup: iPhone XBuyer’s Guide: iPhone X (Buy Now)
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YouTube TV Announces New Smart TV App With Apple TV Support Coming Soon

YouTube today announced that its live-streaming service, YouTube TV, is now launching as a dedicated app for smart TVs, streaming devices, and gaming systems. The company also confirmed that an Apple TV app for YouTube TV will launch “in the coming weeks.”

Today, YouTube TV will be available on Android TV devices and smart TVs, as well as the Xbox One, Xbox One S, and upcoming Xbox One X.

So today we’re excited to unveil the new YouTube TV app built for TV devices. In the next few days, you’ll be able to stream live TV through the new YouTube TV app on Android TV devices including NVIDIA SHIELD and TVs with Android TV built-in, such as Sony, as well as on the Xbox One family of devices (Xbox One, Xbox One S, and soon Xbox One X).

In the coming weeks we’ll be launching the new app on Smart TVs, such as LG, Samsung, Sony, along with Apple TV.

The new YouTube TV app is similar to the app on mobile, with Home, Live, and Library tabs for viewing content. New features include a dark background, Live guide to look at upcoming shows, and the ability to navigate the app while keeping video running in the background.

YouTube TV originally debuted in early April and continued expanding throughout the spring, and was initially available only for iOS and Android mobile devices, as well as on the web. YouTube TV allows viewers to live stream and watch shows on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CW, Disney, ESPN, FX, USA, and dozens of other major cable channels, alongside standard YouTube video content.

Related Roundup: Apple TVBuyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Buy Now)
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Apple Maps Transit Directions Now Available in Phoenix and Birmingham, AL Areas

Apple Maps has been updated with comprehensive transit data in the Phoenix, Arizona and Birmingham, Alabama areas, enabling navigation with public transportation options such as buses and trains in those regions.

In the Phoenix area, supported vehicles include Valley Metro buses and trains, and the PHX Sky Train at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Routes extend to and from suburbs such as Chandler, Mesa, Glendale, Scottsdale, and Tempe.

In the Birmingham area, supported vehicles include MAX Transit buses operated by the Birmingham Jefferson County Transit Authority. Transit directions have also recently been enabled in Montgomery and Huntsville.

MacRumors reader Bernd Keuning, who keeps close tabs on Apple Maps, also sees hints of transit directions eventually expanding to Nordic and Baltic countries. Progress is visible in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Keuning has a good track record, having tipped us ahead of time about transit in several cities and countries where the functionality eventually launched, including Las Vegas, Phoenix, Ottawa, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Taiwan, and Singapore.

The telltale sign is that Apple Maps typically adds station outlines to a region shortly before launching transit directions in the area.

Apple Maps gained a Transit tab in iOS 9. The feature lags several years behind Google Maps, but Apple’s public transportation support is at least exhaustive, mapping all station entrances and listing departure times. Apple Maps also provides detailed advisories about service interruptions and other changes.

At launch, the feature was limited to Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, and over 300 cities in China. Since then, Apple has been working to expand support for public transportation to other cities around the world.

For an occasionally updated list of cities and regions with Apple Maps transit directions, visit the iOS Feature Availability page on Apple’s website.

Tags: Apple Maps, transit
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Apple Releases First Beta of iOS 11.2 for Developers

Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming iOS 11.2 update to developers, just over two weeks after releasing iOS 11.0.3 and while the upcoming iOS 11.1 update is still in beta testing.

Registered developers can download the iOS 11.2 beta from Apple’s Developer Center or over-the-air once the proper configuration profile has been installed from the Developer Center.

It’s not yet clear what’s included in the iOS 11.2 beta, but it could potentially introduce support for features that were not included in the original iOS 11 release.

Apple has said both peer-to-peer Apple Pay payments and iCloud support for iMessages will be introduced in later iOS 11 updates, and neither of these features has appeared in the iOS 11.1 beta, though employees have been testing Apple Pay Cash.

iOS 11 marks a major update to the operating system, with systemwide design tweaks, a new Lock screen experience, a revamped Control Center, and an entirely new interface for the iPad that includes a Dock, Drag and Drop support, and a redesigned App Switcher for better than ever multitasking.

Related Roundup: iOS 11
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Apple Seeds First Beta of watchOS 4.2 to Developers

Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming watchOS 4.2 update to developers, more than a month after releasing the new watchOS 4 operating system to the public and while watchOS 4.1, the first major update to watchOS 4, is still in testing.

Once the proper configuration profile has been installed from the Apple Developer Center, the new watchOS 4.1 beta can be downloaded through the dedicated Apple Watch app on the iPhone by going to General -> Software update.

To install the update, the Apple Watch needs to have at least 50 percent battery, it must be placed on the charger, and it has to be in range of the iPhone.

It’s not yet clear what new features watchOS 4.2 will introduce, but it could bring support for Apple Pay Cash, Apple’s new peer-to-peer payments feature. We’ll know more about what’s included in the update once developers are able to download the software and dig into the new features.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 4Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Buy Now)
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Apple Seeds First Beta of tvOS 11.2 to Developers

Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming tvOS 11.2 update to developers for testing purposes, more than a month after releasing tvOS 11 to the public and while tvOS 11.1, the first tvOS update, is still in testing.

Designed for the fourth and fifth-generation Apple TV models, the tvOS 11.1 developer beta can be downloaded onto the Apple TV via a profile that’s installed using Xcode.

According to the release notes accompanying the tvOS 11.2 beta, the update fixes several bugs related to 4K support and introduces new 4K features.

tvOS 11.2 includes new features, bug fixes, and security improvements in the OS and SDK, including:
– Automatic mode switching to native frame rate and dynamic range of video content with Apple TV 4K
– Support for switching Apple TV 4K display output to SDR for apps that are GPU-bound when running in HDR
– Restoring Unwatched category in Home Sharing for Movies, TV Shows, and Home Videos

Apple has released a video for the new AVDisplayManager feature for developers. With tvOS 11.2, Apple TV 4K is able to automatically switch video display modes to match the native frame rate and dynamic range of video content, so developers will need to make sure their apps and video content are ready to support the new functionality.

Does your tvOS app play video? Learn about the new mode switching options in tvOS 11.2 using AVDisplayManager: https://t.co/P1vzpBeSIV

— Josh Tidsbury (@joshtidsbury) October 30, 2017

tvOS 11 was something of a minor update, introducing features like full support for AirPods, automatic switching between light and dark mode based on local time, Home screen syncing options designed to keep multiple Apple TVs in a single household in sync, and new background modes and notification support.

Related Roundup: Apple TVBuyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Buy Now)
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Apple Releases New Firmware for HomePod Ahead of December Launch

Apple this morning released new firmware for the HomePod ahead of its December launch. The new firmware isn’t available through the Developer portal, but it will be downloadable by testers who have a HomePod and it is listed on third-party iOS software sites, making it available for download by the public.

HomePod devices are currently in the hands of Apple employees who are testing the smart speaker to iron out bugs before it becomes available for purchase later this year.

Apple previously released publicly available HomePod firmware in July, unwittingly leaking many secrets about the iPhone X. The HomePod firmware referenced the unreleased iPhone and confirmed its design and several features like Face ID facial recognition.

The update also highlighted details about the HomePod like its startup process and internal features that include display resolution and RAM.

This time around, there are no unreleased iOS devices coming in the immediate future so the new HomePod firmware is unlikely to be as exciting as the first, but it could potentially unveil new information about the HomePod itself as developers dig into the firmware code.

HomePod is Apple’s Siri-based smart speaker that focuses heavily on high-quality sound. It incorporates a 7 tweeter array, an Apple-designed 4-inch upward-facing woofer, and an A8 chip to power features like spatial awareness.

When it launches this December, HomePod will be priced at $349.

Related Roundup: HomePod
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iOS 11.2 Beta Fixes Calculator Bug Causing Incorrect Calculations when Numbers Are Rapidly Entered

The new iOS 11.2 beta, released to developers this morning, addresses a Calculator animation issue that’s been present since iOS 11 was released to the public in September and throughout the iOS 11 beta testing process.

In all versions of iOS 11 prior to iOS 11.2, a calculator animation causes some symbols to be ignored when entered in rapid succession. As an example, if you tap 1+2+3 and then hit the equals sign quickly, animation lag is likely to case the result to be 24 instead of 6.

With the iOS 11.2 beta, Apple has removed the animations from the calculator app, so calculations can be conducted rapidly with no need to pause between entering numbers to obtain the correct result.

Though the Calculator bug was present throughout the iOS 11 beta testing process, it gained significant attention last week, likely prompting the fix in today’s beta. An Apple engineer said dozens of people had filed bug reports about the problem, and hundreds of complaints were lodged on reddit and the MacRumors forums.

iPhone users who regularly use the Calculator app should find it to be much more accurate with the slow animations removed.

Related Roundup: iOS 11
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How to tune in for Sony’s Paris Games Week press conference

Why it matters to you

If you’re a PS4 owner, Paris Games Week promises to showcase a ton of new and upcoming games.

The holiday game rush is here, but for those who are still looking toward the future, Paris Games Week is right around the corner. Sony has had a presence at the annual trade show since 2015, when it delivered a long list of new trailers and details for hotly anticipated games of the time such as Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Gran Turismo Sport, and Horizon Zero Dawn. After forgoing a traditional conference in 2016, Sony will take the stage to show off 21 upcoming games. Of that large batch, seven will be fresh game announcements across both PS4 and PSVR. And that’s before the main event even begins. Here’s how to watch Sony’s showcase at Paris Games Week.

How to watch

Paris Games Week runs all of next week, but Sony kicks it off at 9 a.m. PT on Monday, October 30. As mentioned, however, Sony will announce seven new games before the event even starts. The introductory presser begins at 8 a.m. PT. We’ll be streaming the event right here in this post, so you can bookmark this page and join us. The event will also stream on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and on the PlayStation site. When the press conference wraps up, the stream will continue by taking a closer look at some of the announcements.

What to expect

Paris Games Week has become substantially more popular year by year since its inaugural event in 2010. Attendance surpassed 300,000 in both 2015 and 2016. While those numbers may not mean very much for those situated in North America, it does mean that the event is important enough to warrant some enticing announcements from Sony. The seven new games alone are worth tuning in for, but expect to see new footage from Sony’s big exclusives that are still in the pipeline.

Perhaps we’ll learn more about God of War, Days Gone, or Detroit: Become Human, three huge PS4 exclusives that have received significant attention at other media events. Or maybe we’ll finally learn what is going on with Media Molecule’s Dreams. The ambitious title from the creators of LittleBigPlanet was expected to enter beta this year but has been MIA.

Editor’s Recommendations

• Face the ‘Destiny 2’ Trials of the Nine PVP challenge at 10 a.m. PT today
• Sony will hold a PlayStation media showcase during Paris Games Week 2017
• Get your tickets! PlayStation Experience 2017 set for December
• New LG V30 phone brings OLED goodness ahead of Apple’s OLED iPhone 8 debut
• What to expect from IFA 2017, and how to watch major live-streamed announcements

Samsung Gear Sport Review – middle of the road

Think smartwatch and, chances are, Samsung Gear comes to mind. Running the company’s custom Tizen OS rather than Android Wear, Samsung’s Gear range has had many additions over the past few years. From fitness devices to feature-rich smartwatches and everything in between, Samsung’s approach to wearables is that there’s something for everyone.

Earlier this year, the company unveiled the Gear Sport and the Gear Fit 2 Pro. While the latter is a fitness-focused wearable, the former is designed to fill the gap between the Gear Fit 2 Pro (at the lower end), and the company’s flagship wearable, the Gear S3 Classic and Gear S3 Frontier.

With new partnerships and a feature set that combines most of the features of the Gear S3 with a few of its own, should the Gear S3 be your new smartwatch? Is a fitness-first approach right for a smartwatch? Let’s find out – this is our Gear Sport review.

Design

The design of Samsung’s Gear smartwatch range hasn’t changed much since the Gear S2 and that continues to be true with the Gear Sport. The watch brings a lot of the design cues of the Gear S3 to a lower price point. It looks good on the wrist and, crucially, it’s smaller than the Gear S3 which should mean it’ll fit more wrists.

Like the Gear S3, the signature rotating bezel has grooves that provide subtle tactile feedback. This time, though, there are no indentations to signify seconds on the clock. Instead, the bezel is free of any markings which provides a subtler and more understated experience.

The bezel is my favorite feature on the Gear Sport and it provides what is arguably the best way to navigate any smartwatch on the market. A little tug or a little push is all that’s needed to make it move, and it feels a little easier to use than the Gear S3’s bezel, which seems to be slightly firmer. While you can use the touchscreen, the rotating bezel provides a simple way to navigate the Tizen experience.

One of the biggest complaints with the Gear S3 was its large 46mm casing and Samsung is aiming to make the Gear Sport compatible with more wrists. The body casing is noticeably smaller at 42.9mm. It may still be a little large for some people, but should fit most wrists comfortably.

The Gear Sport comes with a silicon band in the box (either Black or Blue, depending on which color Gear Sport you buy) but there’s plenty of other bands available as well. As we saw back at the Gear Sport launch last month, there’s 10 different designs of Nato bands, and there’s also a hybrid strap that combines rubber at the bottom with leather on top for those who want a more stylish experience. The Gear Sport also supports any 20mm watch band, which allows you to change the band out and make it truly yours.

The rest of the Gear Sport follows the design we’ve come to expect from Samsung with a back and home key on the left and a heart rate monitor under the watch face. During my testing, a key thing I found is that you’ll want to pick the right loop when clasping the watch as too loose and the Gear Sport has a habit of rotating around your wrist rather quickly.

Unlike the Gear S3 Frontier or Gear S3 Classic which have the ability to work with multiple outfits, the Gear Sport is firmly designed for fitness fanatics. The sporty nature (and name) of this watch means it’s designed with a fitness-first approach, but it looks good most of the time. The Gear Sport should work with most outfits, though if you’re wearing business dress you might want to pick something else.

Hardware

Unlike its Gear S3 sibling, the Gear Sport is designed to be a fitness companion on your wrist. While it possesses many of the features that make the Gear S3 a smartwatch, Samsung has removed a few to make the Gear Sport a more affordable watch.

The features removed don’t deter from the experience of the Gear Sport much. For example, the Gear Sport comes with Samsung Pay but only via NFC-enabled terminals. The Gear S3 and Samsung’s smartphones also come with MST technology, which allows you to use contactless payments even at terminals that don’t support NFC.

The Gear Sport is the first Samsung smartwatch to come with 5ATM support, allowing you to swim up to 50 meters underwater

The Gear S3 is rated at IP67 for dust and water resistance up to 1 meter for up to 30 minutes. The Gear Sport comes with 5 ATM support instead, which allows you to swim up to 50 meters underwater. It’s with this that the Gear Sport takes fitness much more seriously than the Gear S3.

Other hardware features include a 1.2” 360 x 360 pixels Super AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass 3 support that’s even bright outdoors in direct sunlight. There’s also 4 GB of internal storage, a dual core 1 GHz processor and 768 MB of RAM which provides a snappy experience. An array of sensors and connectivity options also make it onboard, including Bluetooth 4.2, WiFi, NFC, a Barometer, Heart Rate Monitor, and ambient light monitor to automatically adjust the display brightness based on the conditions.

We found that while the display is great at all brightness levels, keeping it at level 4 brightness or lower significantly helps the battery life. At levels 3 or lower however, it can be quite hard to see in bright sunlight so you’ll want to tweak it based on your conditions. I preferred to manually control the brightness rather than use the ambient light sensor as this helps ensure you can maximize the battery life.

The Gear Sport is powered by a 300 mAh battery that lasts between two and three days on average. During ten days with the Gear Sport, the battery was never a concern, but we found it to last around two days when you’re using all of the features. Overnight, you’ll find the Gear Sport drains around 8 to 15%, although if you enable the power saving mode and turn on Do Not Disturb, this can be as low as 5% in a whole night.

Battery life is not a concern and lasts around two days on average

From empty, the Gear Sport takes around 2.5 to 3 hours to charge when using the included charging dock which uses USB-C, but beware: if you use the charger from the Gear S3 (which uses microUSB), it takes noticeably longer to charge the Gear Sport so we’d recommend using the charger that comes with the Gear Sport.

Some Gear S3 features make their way to the Gear Sport, one of which is GPS, which allows you to see a live map of your route, as well as the route you took after the run. Combined with the new calorie counter feature – more on that below – this is great for those who take fitness seriously.

A fitness-first experience

The Gear Sport is definitely a worthy contender if you’re serious about your fitness. Like the Apple Watch, it brings several watch faces designed to show your workout and fitness stats at a glance. Automatic workout tracking also makes it easy to keep track of your fitness goals and the addition of a partnership with Speedo for swim tracking is perfect for tracking laps in the pool.

Part of the Tizen experience is based around the different home screens, each of which are occupied by a widget. A turn of the bezel to the left of the home screen pulls up different screens for each notification but it’s when you turn to the right that you see the full dedication to fitness in Tizen.

Out of the box, there are several widgets dedicated to showing your fitness stats. From the calories burned counter – with a helpful reminder of yesterday’s calories so you can compare – to your step counter, floor counter and average heart rate, there are several ways to check your stats at a glance.

One widget that is particularly useful is the workout screen which allows you to activate trackers for running, walking, cycling and swimming with just a couple of taps. The automatic workout tracker is definitely useful but we found that it can mistake brisk walking for a run. This widget makes it simple to ensure you’re accurately tracking your various exercise routines.

There’s also plenty of other widgets available, like a screen dedicated to showing your Samsung Health info (exercise, steps and sleep), a counter to show you how many cups of water you’ve consumed and various others around challenges, a leaderboard – where you can compare your weekly step count with your friends – and particularly useful for coffee lovers, a caffeine counter.

Of course, there are other non-fitness related widgets like App shortcuts, calendar, contacts, news briefings, an alarm, and a world clock. There are a few others available to download via Gear Apps but I found no need for these as the preinstalled widgets offer the functionality that I personally want to use.

Samsung has updated its Health app to offer you personalized fitness advice. After setting up your profile in Samsung Health, you’re able to pick from a variety of fitness programs that are tailored specifically to you. Once you pick your fitness program, you can either watch them on your phone or on your home TV.

Partnerships

Samsung partnered with a few companies in launching the Gear Sport.

The first of these is Under Armor, which launched an exclusive set of apps on the Gear Sport. As mentioned earlier, the live mapping of your run is through the Map My Run feature, which is now exclusive to Gear Sport. It’s unclear whether this will launch with other Gear devices via an update, but Samsung has said it’s under consideration.

The biggest partnership – for me at least – is Spotify. The Gear Sport is the first device to come with full offline capability for Spotify free and Premium users. This is my number one music streaming service and on the Gear Sport it’s great to have the ability to store around 400-500 tracks on the 4GB of internal memory.

I found it works rather well and while it takes a little bit of time to download to the Gear Sport, it’s incredibly useful for those times when you don’t want to take your phone with you. There’s also a collection of Spotify Run workout playlist. While I have very specific tastes in music, I found that these playlists are great to increase the tempo and get your heart rate pumping.

I’m not personally a swimmer so I’ve not really been able to try out the watch’s final partnership, with Speedo. This is Speedo’s first wearable partnership and while I’m yet to try out the feature, Samsung says it can track your laps in the pool, the distance, and the time of each lap. After each swim, the app supposedly produces a report on your swim workout. We’ll put this to the test in the near future and update with our findings.

Gear Sport – should you buy it?

Android-compatible smartwatches have undergone several changes in the few short years they’ve been available to purchase. Initially billed as a way to stop looking at your phone screen unnecessarily, they quickly became a method to track fitness. Samsung’s own internal research shows that 92% of active smartwatch owners use their watch primarily for fitness and this shows in the approach to the Gear Sport.

Designed to affordably bring the fitness benefits of the Gear ecosystem to a larger audience in mind, the Gear Sport mostly delivers on its goal. Rather than make a smartwatch with some fitness tendencies, Samsung opted to make a fitness device that fits sleekly on your wrist and offers the main smartwatch features that people use (fitness, communication, news and entertainment, and utilities).

As someone who’s getting back into fitness, I found the Gear Sport useful to keep track of my fitness goals

As someone who’s getting back into fitness, I found the Gear Sport useful to keep track of my goals. The subtle prompts around my progress coupled with at-a-glance reporting of where I am with my day’s fitness goals provides a welcome companion to keep me on track.

Should you buy the Gear Sport? If you’re interested in a device that offers a fully-fledged smartwatch experience with an emphasis on fitness, then the Gear Sport certainly delivers. If you’re more interested in a smartwatch that fits every outfit you’re wearing and also has fitness options, then the Gear S3 might be a better pick.

What do you think of the Gear Sport and do you plan to buy one? Do you use a smartwatch and if so, which one? Let us know your views in the comments below!