Google might be hit with a lawsuit over Pixel 2 XL’s display complaints

When will this be over?

We understand you’re tired of hearing about “Display-gate” for the Pixel 2 XL, but we swear this will (hopefully) be the last time we need to bring it up.

Girard Gibbs LLP is a law firm based out of New York and San Franciso, and it’s now offering “free and confidential case consultation” for those that purchased either the Google Pixel 2 or Pixel 2 XL. The reasoning for the suit mostly boils down to the numerous complaints about the Pixel 2 XL’s reported burn-in and the smaller Pixel 2’s clicking noises, and the full statement reads as follows:

Girard Gibbs is investigating claims against Google, HTC, and LG for manufacturing, marketing, and selling defective Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL phones. Both phones have exhibited abnormalities. Owners of the more expensive Pixel 2 XL have reported that the devices’ OLED screens are suffering from “burn-in”—a phenomenon where a portion of the display remains visible even after changing the screen to display something else, degrading user experience. Pixel 2 XL owners have also reported significant “black smear”—a problem affecting certain OLED displays, in which the movement of pixels against a black backdrop creates a black smudge, distorting the display. Finally, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL owners have reported persistent whistling and clicking sounds while attempting to make phone calls.

In regards to the clicking noise found with the Pixel 2, Google’s already announced that a software update is on its way that will soon cease its existence. All it is is a quirk with the NFC radio, and in the meantime, you can disable NFC on the phone to temporarily stop the noise.

The Pixel 2 XL’s display has been met with controversy since its release.

Now, the Pixel 2 XL’s display. While it may not be the best-looking compared to other flagships, Google’s already issued a statement here as well and reports that the OLED panel on the phone is working as intended. The burn-in and blue shift are definitely annoying to some users, but there’s nothing technically wrong with the phone. You’re absolutely entitled to not like the Pixel 2 XL’s display (I’m not a fan of it myself), but in no way is that grounds for a class-action lawsuit.

It’s very possible that Google could get hit with this suit assuming enough people get in touch with Girard Gibbs LLP, and this is especially true when you consider that this is the same firm that was responsible for the bootloop case with the LG G4 and V10 a couple years back.

This really could go either way at ths point, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens next.

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Everything you need to know about Sony Playlink

Turn your phone into a controller with Sony Playlink.

Sony Playlink games deliver a new kind of experience on PlayStation 4 by linking up your mobile phone with your console. While these new games can easily be played solo, they’re really meant to be played with friends, as each one turns your phone into a controller. It’s only just made it’s debut, but we’ve got all the details on Playlink for you here!

What is Sony Playlink?

We first heard about Playlink at E3 2017, where we got a sneak peek at this new kind of gaming. Playlink games are built to be social experiences, best enjoyed with a few friends. They aim to be easy to pick up, even for those folks who don’t usually ever touch a game controller.

You use your phone or tablet as a controller, which means it’s a wireless gaming experience with all of the action played out on your television, making it easier to ensure that everyone can play at once.

What kind of games are available?

For the moment there are only a handful of games out, but all of them are somewhat competitive in nature. Playlink games are built to be social experiences for you and your friends to enjoy together.

In some cases, you’ll be directly competing during gameplay in trivia with Knowledge is Power or with crazy minigames in Frantics. While you are pitted against each other in a variety of ways depending on the game you’re playing, it’s generally in a fun and lighthearted way versus an out and out competition.

What do I need to play Playlink games?

In order for everyone to enjoy Playlink games, you’ll first need to download one of the Playlink games from the PlayStation Store. Each person who plans on gaming will also need a smartphone or tablet.

Most importantly, you’ll need Wi-Fi that both your PlayStation 4 console and all of the mobile devices can connect to. There isn’t a main Playlink app that you need to use. Instead, each game has it’s own app that can be found in the Google Play Store.

How does it work?

Each game is a bit different in terms of mechanics and controls, but the basic premise remains the same. Once your mobile device is connected to the same network as your console, you just need to open up the companion app on your phone and sign in.

After you’ve done this, your phone will sync up with your console and act as a controller with all of the action playing out on your television.

Do I need a group to enjoy Playlink games?

While Playlink games are really made to be played with friends, it isn’t mandatory. Different games offer different functionality in single player mode, but you can definitely play by yourself if that’s more up your alley.

Questions?

Do you still have questions about Sony Playlink? Do you plan on checking it out with friends? Are the Playlink games up your alley? Let us know about it in the comments below!

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Galaxy S8 Oreo + Samsung Experience 9.0 beta launches in U.S., UK, South Korea

Now you can sample the latest tasty treat.

After an early roll-out that saw a couple people get in on the update early, Samsung has officially announced that it has opened its beta program for testing Android 8.0 Oreo on the Galaxy S8 and S8+. Not only does it bump the core Android version to 8.0, but the beta update also includes the latest “Samsung Experience” version 9.0, which is shaping up to be a nice jump up from version 8.5 launched with the Galaxy Note 8.

Samsung says that the software being previewed here will be closely related to what launches on the “next flagship Galaxy device” — aka the Galaxy S9.

As usual, there are a few caveats here. For those of us in the U.S. to get in on the beta, we’ll need to have a Sprint, T-Mobile or U.S. unlocked version of the Galaxy S8 or S8+. (For what it’s worth, I wasn’t prompted for the registration until I put an active SIM in my phone.) If you’re in the UK, you need to have a non-carrier SIM-free model. Unfortunately the Note 8 isn’t included in the beta at this time — though we can expect to see very similar software on the Note 8 when it exits beta.

The process of signing up for the Oreo beta is pretty simple. Just download the Samsung+ app from Google Play (or Samsung Members app outside of the U.S.), sign in with your Samsung Account and wait to see if you receive the prompt to enroll in the app — it’ll show up right on the main screen.

Last year’s beta program for testing Nougat on the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge was severely limited at first to just several thousand people, but Samsung has bumped that up this year to 10,000. It does say that there will be “additional rounds” of registration, but it isn’t clear if that means it will open up more slots overall.

Have you enrolled in the beta program on your Galaxy S8 or S8+ yet? Let us know in the comments!

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Press release:

Samsung Experience 9.0 Beta Now Available

Samsung Electronics today announced the launch of the Samsung Experience 9.0 beta, part of the Galaxy beta program which offers select customers a chance to experience new features available through the Galaxy ecosystem.

Previously known as TouchWiz, Samsung Experience is based on the Android OS and has expanded beyond the user interface to provide Galaxy users with a consistent and seamless experience across all Samsung mobile software, apps and services. This change is in recognition of the increasing suite of unique services Samsung has developed for the Galaxy devices.

Following Samsung Experience version 8.5, which was released with the Galaxy Note8, Samsung Experience 9.0 is based on the latest version of the operating system built on the Android Oreo UI and UX, and will be available on the next flagship Galaxy device.

Samsung is launching a Samsung Experience 9.0 beta program for select customers. Starting on November 2, 2017, Galaxy S8 and S8+ users based in South Korea, the U.S. and the U.K*. will have the opportunity to preview the upcoming Samsung Experience 9.0 before its official release, with additional rounds of registration.

The beta period will allow Samsung to gather helpful insights and feedback from customers on their first impressions of the Samsung Experience 9.0 beta’s performance** and usability during the testing period*** to develop a more reliable, high-performing software package and provide Galaxy users with an improved and optimized experience.

To apply for the program, users must have an active Samsung Account and meet certain requirements. The Galaxy beta program may be provided via the Samsung Members app or the Samsung+ app for the U.S., which are available through the Google Play store or Galaxy Apps, depending on the user’s country of residence.

Video: Watch our HTC U11+ hands-on!

HTC kicks off November with new flagship smartphone launch. It has the Taiwanese company’s biggest screen to date, encased in hardware that finally feels as polished and modern as the M7 and M8 did back in the HTC glory days.

This is the HTC U11+, with a huge screen, an enormous battery and, unfortunately, little chance of a US launch. This one’s Europe and Asia-only for the time being.

In our hands-on video with the HTC U11+, we’ll get an early look at a slimmer, elongated, slightly flattened U11 with a bigger screen and a gigantic battery. Is this the phone the HTC U11 should’ve been from the beginning?

• Android Central on YouTube
• HTC U11+ hands-on preview
• HTC U11+ specs
• HTC U11 review

Oprah will be Alexa’s first celebrity-voiced shopping assistant

Alexa is getting its first celebrity voice. To go along with the Oprah’s Favorite Things storefront on Amazon, users of Alexa-enabled devices can have Oprah herself guide them through this year’s 102 favorite things. To do so, you’ll just have to say, “Alexa, let’s shop Oprah’s Favorite Things.” Oprah will then describe one of the products on her list and tell you why she recommends it. If you want to buy it, say “yes,” if you don’t, say “no,” and Oprah will move on to another item.

To be clear, Oprah’s voice is not a permanent Alexa fixture — it’s limited to just guiding you through the Favorite Things storefront, which this year includes earphones, various food products, clothing items and, naturally, Amazon’s Echo Show. And while it may seem like a fun companion to Oprah’s iconic holiday list, it’s also another way for Amazon to encourage you to shop. The company has developed a few different ways to attract customers and add convenience to shopping recently including the introduction of Spark — Amazon’s Instagram-like shopping feed — the addition of Alexa assistance in the Android Amazon app and the launch of its AR View feature that lets customers get a preview of how a range of products will look in their homes. Just having to say “yes” in order to buy one of Oprah’s Favorite Things certainly makes for an easy shopping experience.

If you don’t have an Alexa-enabled device or if you’d rather just scroll through Oprah’s Favorite Things yourself, you can take a look at this year’s list here.

HTC will make a ‘noteworthy’ return to dual-camera phones in 2018

Shortly after showing off the squeezable U11+ in Taipei today, HTC President Chialin Chang confirmed that his company is re-entering the dual-camera smartphone space in 2018. “We’ll definitely be releasing a dual-camera phone next year, but we’ll need to figure out how to make this feature stand out,” the exec told the media in an interview session.

Folks who are familiar with HTC’s history will no doubt be amused by this move. Its EVO 3D was one of the first smartphones equipped with a dual-camera system, but after the short-lived mobile 3D hype, the Taiwanese firm eventually started championing its pseudo-depth-sensing “Duo Camera” to offer bokeh photo effects on two generations of flagship devices. Ironically, just as HTC decided to ditch the dual camera for the 10, the likes of LG, Huawei, Xiaomi and even Apple started pushing this feature.

While Chang didn’t provide further detail about HTC’s upcoming dual-camera device, he did mention that much like this year, next year his company will be releasing just five to six smartphone models in total. HTC also plans to tackle the fierce 2,000-yuan (about $300) smartphone market in China at some point, as opposed to just focusing on the premium tier which is currently covered by its U Ultra, U11 and U11+.

As for the progress on Google’s acquisition of HTC’s Pixel team, Chang said it’s still on track to be approved and closed by early 2018. I then followed up with a related question that had been on my mind for some time: was the U11+ originally destined to be Google’s Pixel 2 XL? We understand from a reliable source that HTC designed both the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, but Google only kept HTC’s Pixel 2 and took the other design to LG for a cheaper production (ouch). Also, unlike the U11, the U11+’s fingerprint sensor is placed on the back, which led to me thinking that the latter wasn’t originally intended to be a sibling device. Maybe this was HTC’s way of making use of components that it had already ordered before Google changed its mind.

“The question you asked is too tough, I don’t know how to answer you,” Chang replied, followed by a long pause. “I can’t comment on Google’s products. Due to our relationship with Google, there are obviously things that we know and don’t know about them, but either way, we can’t comment. I can only comment on our own U11+: we actually started planning it as such around end of last year, like the way we sourced its key components and whether they made sense, it was planned that way at the time. We are also very happy that our U11+ used these parts.”

It’s hard to tell whether this vague response confirms my theory. It is possible that at one point the U11+ coexisted with HTC’s original Pixel 2 XL design, because after all, one would get a better deal for parts by ordering in larger quantities, and then share them amongst similar models — a practice that our source also confirmed. And to address my observation on the repositioned fingerprint reader, Chang said placing it on the back makes more sense for a device carrying a long 18:9 display, so if HTC had really designed two similarly-specced variants, it could well have wanted the same rear fingerprint reader design on both, anyway. Either way, one thing’s for sure: the outcome looks promising, but HTC will have to work its magic to sell a lot of U11+.

The future of VR is social: A conversation at Engadget Experience

The Engadget Experience is a day-long celebration of the future of entertainment, gaming, media and art in downtown Los Angeles on November 14th. That day, we’ve invited the top minds in virtual and augmented reality to the Ace Hotel Theater, where they’ll showcase their latest projects and dive deep into the state of these new platforms.

For instance, is VR a passing fad or is it here to stay? The answer to that question may lie in VR’s ability to be social.

In “The Social Medium,” we’ll sit down with Boo Wong of The Mill, Adam Arrigo of TheWaveVR and Dedric Reid of HelloVR — veterans of gaming, music and VFX — to talk about their attempts to infuse virtual reality with human interaction. On the surface, VR looks like a disconnected, isolating experience, but it has the potential to connect people in brilliant new worlds, in myriad ways. Imagine shared VR music festivals and sports games, or living, world-scale simulations populated by friends and strangers. These experiences are necessary to VR’s survival, and they’re exactly what our panelists are building.

Humans are social creatures, and that doesn’t change when we strap on a VR headset. If developers want more folks in VR, they’ll have to turn the platform into a space where people can play — together.

Grab tickets for the Engadget Experience right here.

Russian hackers had hundreds of US targets in addition to the DNC

Various US agencies continue to look into the role Russia played in last year’s presidential election, and targets of those investigations include interactions between Trump advisors and Russian officials, ads purchased by Russian agents through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and whether the Kremlin was involved in the DNC email hacks of last year. In regards to the latter, Russia has been suspected of being behind the hacks for quite some time and just this week, reports have surfaced that the US Department of Justice has pinpointed six Russian officials it believes to have been involved in the hacks. However, a report released today by the Associated Press suggests that the group behind the DNC email breaches actually had a much wider range of targets.

While targets of DNC networks were rather successful, the AP’s investigation uncovered a number of other US leaders and groups that were of interest to the hacking group Fancy Bear. Those include at least 573 email accounts belonging to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-NATO Supreme Commander Philip Breedlove, predecessor Wesley Clark and many others. Employees of defense contractors Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin were also on the target list as well as intelligence officers and over 130 staffers and supporters of the Democrats. The AP said it also found a small number of Republican targets.

This cyber hit list comes from data collected by cybersecurity firm Secureworks, which included 19,000 malicious links used by Fancy Bear to gain access to its targets’ email accounts. Secureworks’ information was collected after one of its researchers came across a Bitly account Fancy Bear was using to push its malicious links through Google’s spam filter. The account had mistakenly not been set to private, so the company kept an eye on it and noted whose emails the group was targeting. From that list, the AP worked it down to around 4,700 email addresses, half of which it was able to link to account holders. That list was then compared to known phishing emails received by individuals around the time of the DNC hacks.

While these findings highlight a much more widely cast net than what was previously known, it also provides more evidence that Russian officials were behind the attacks. Along with the US targets listed above, Fancy Bear was also trying to infiltrate accounts in Ukraine, including those of the country’s president and his son, as well as accounts of individuals in Russia that the Russian government has openly had issue with. Those targets include dozens of journalists, Kremlin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Pussy Riot’s Maria Alekhina and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny. Keir Giles, one of the experts that reviewed the AP’s list, said, “It’s a wish list of who you’d want to target to further Russian interests.” He added that it was “a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence.” Andras Racz, a specialist in Russian security policy, told the AP, “This is the Kremlin and the general staff. I have no doubts.”

Though evidence has mounted against the Kremlin, it still maintains that it had nothing to do with the hacks and wasn’t involved in any election meddling. As the AP reports, a Kremlin spokesperson has said that the idea of Russian interference is “unfounded.”

Via: Gizmodo

Source: Associated Press

Waymo inches closer to driverless car launch with repair deal

Google’s spin-off company Waymo has hired AutoNation, America’s largest auto retailer, to maintain and repair its fleeting of driverless vehicles around the country, AutoNation said in a press release. That represents a very positive step for Waymo toward its driverless car and possible ride-sharing launch. “AutoNation will help assure that Waymo vehicles are always in top condition as we bring fully self-driving cars to the public,” Waymo CEO John Krafcik said.

Once Waymo ditches drivers, its autonomous Chrysler Pacifica minivans can operate nearly constantly, day and night, so the cars will need to be mechanically perfect or the results could be catastrophic. “These vehicles need to be in service for hundreds of thousands of miles, much more than personal-use vehicles, to make them economically viable,” said AutoNation CEO Michael J. Jackson. “You have to do much more proactive, preventative maintenance that what a normal person would do with a car.”

Waymo plans to operate fully autonomous, driverless vehicles as early as this fall. The company decided to skip Level 3 and other driverless modes that require human intervention, because test drivers were too distracted by things like sleeping and doing their makeup to take over quickly enough. However, Waymo engineers reportedly think Krafcik is too optimistic about launching fully autonomous, Level 5 cars so soon.

AutoNation operates in 16 states, and has already started servicing Waymo vehicles, it said. The news is certainly a strong sign that Google is nearly ready to put its tech onto city streets, something that Krafcik confirmed with reporters at a recent self-driving demonstration, the NYT notes. “We’re really close,” he said.

Via: New York Times

Source: AutoNation

Samsung wants you to beta test the next Galaxy phone’s software

Are you champing at the bit waiting for a taste of what the next Galaxy phone will be like? You don’t have to wait until 2018. Samsung is launching a public beta for Experience 9.0, its customized take on Android Oreo that will show up on the next Galaxy flagship. As of November 2nd, “select” Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus owners (more on that later) in South Korea, the UK and the US will get to peek at the next-gen interface in return for feedback on performance and usability.

Samsung hasn’t said what 9.0 entails as of this writing, but early release notes suggest that Oreo’s architectural improvements are the focus. That means interface tweaks like notification badges, contextual actions when you long-press an app icon, higher sound quality and performance improvements. There are some Samsung-specific additions: you should see a GIF keyboard, more flexible Samsung Cloud file storage (including support for backing up your Secure Folder) and a game mode in DeX. You can even install second copies of messaging apps so that you can easily juggle multiple accounts, although this won’t work for services that insist on a phone number for verification.

When Samsung says the beta is coming to “select” devices, it’s not kidding. On top of the prerequisite Samsung Account (you can enroll through the Samsung+ app), Americans will need an S8 or S8 Plus running on Sprint or T-Mobile, whether or not it’s carrier-locked. And in the UK, it’ll have to be an unlocked or open market model. The company is promising “additional rounds” of beta registrations, mind you, so it’s possible that you’ll still get in if you aren’t part of the initial group. The biggest question is when Samsung will release the finished version. It took until January for Android Nougat to reach Galaxy S7 owners, and we wouldn’t be surprised if Oreo has a similar wait.

Source: Samsung