HTC’s killer deal bundles Vive, GTX 1070, and ‘Fallout 4 VR’ for a low price

Why it matters to you

If you’re looking to jump into high-resolution VR, HTC’s latest promotion for its Vive headset is a great way to get started.

If you’re looking to take the plunge into high-resolution, hardcore virtual reality experiences, HTC has a mad-crazy deal for you. For a limited time, you can purchase a bundle containing the HTC Vive VR headset kit, a GeForce GTX 1070 add-in card for desktop PCs, and the upcoming VR version of Bethesda’s Fallout 4 game. All of this can be yours for the low price of $800.

On its own, the Vive VR system costs $600, and includes the headset, two external motion-tracking sensors, two motion controllers, and a box connecting the headset to your PC. Meanwhile, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card for desktops has a base price of $400 while Fallout 4 VR will cost $60 when it arrives on December 12. Add all that up, and normally you would spend $1,060. HTC’s new bundle brings a savings of $260 to your wallet.

Here are the specifications for the GTX 1070:

CUDA cores:
1,920
Base speed:
1,506MHz
Boost speed:
1,683MHz
Memory amount:
8GB GDDR5
Memory speed:
8Gbps
Memory interface:
256-bit
Outputs:
3x DisplayPort 1.4
1x HDMI 2.0b
1x DL-DVI
Dimensions:
4.376 (H) x 10.5 (L) inches (two slots high)
Connection:
PCI Express 3.0 slot
Power usage:
150 watts
Required power connector:
1x 8-pin
Recommended power supply:
500 watts

HTC’s promotion began on October 2, and ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on December 31. Once you purchase the bundle, you will receive a code for grabbing Fallout 4 VR from Steam when the game goes live early next month. This code must be redeemed before the end of December 31, else you won’t receive the free game. The promotion is limited in quantity as well, so get the bundle while its hot or suffer with an empty plate.

“Entrants may be required to enter some personal information such as date of birth or identification number prior to entry into this Promotion solely for the purpose that Promoter verifies the entrant’s age on accordance with the applicable laws,” reads HTC’s fine print. “Such personal information obtained for age verification purpose will be deleted after the verification process is completed.”

The code for Fallout 4 VR actually ships with the HTC Vive outside the promotion, but still must be redeemed by the end of December 31. Fallout 4 originally shipped at the end of 2015, providing an open-world, single-player experience in a post-apocalyptic world. Typically, it’s played with a gamepad or a mouse/keyboard setup, but the new VR-based version utilizes motion controllers and head motion for an immersive experience. It’s a stand-alone game, thus there’s no patch for the current non-VR version of Fallout 4 sold on Steam.

Right now, we don’t know the official system requirements for Fallout 4 VR outside the need for a VR headset. But to handle the HTC Vive, your PC will need one open USB 2.0 port or newer, and one open HDMI 1.4 port (or DisplayPort 1.2) or newer. HTC recommends using the GeForce GTX 1060 or Radeon RX 480 graphics card for a great experience, so you’ll be golden with the bundled GTX 1070 card.

Editor’s Recommendations

• ‘Fallout 4 VR’ hands-on preview
• ‘Skyrim VR’ will launch in November, followed by ‘Doom VFR’ and ‘Fallout 4 VR’
• Pimax ‘8K’ headset bests original Oculus in Kickstarter funding
• Jump into virtual reality using new HTC Vive with free ‘Fallout 4 VR’ bundle
• Desktops are dead? Lenovo says no as it shoves new gaming PCs into the spotlight

Add-ins for Outlook on Android are a welcome addition

Outlook on Android was already a solid mail client, but it has gotten even more powerful with the addition of add-in support .

Microsoft has steadily been improving the Outlook app that is available on Android devices. Recently, they added support for add-ins which allow users to perform tasks without having to jump into a different app.

In addition to support for add-ins that were already available in other versions of Outlook such as Evernote and Trello, Microsoft has also brought support for Wrike, JIRA, MeisterTask, Gfycat, and MojiLaLa.

Add-ins are free to use and work with the already existing Outlook app on Android. They’re only available for Outlook.com and Office 365 commercial accounts but Gmail support is on the way. Here’s our thoughts on Outlook’s latest… addition.

Smooth as silk

The best thing about add-ins is that they just work. They’re easy to setup, easy to use, and in our testing worked consistently and quickly. A personal favorite is Gfycat, as there isn’t much I ever say that can’t be said in a GIF.

To setup add-ins you open the settings icon and then scroll down to add-ins and pick the ones you want to use. Within emails there is a box icon that opens up a menu with all the different add-ins you’ve enabled.

Add-ins are aimed to skip the process of having to open another app and to that end they serve their purpose. For example, using the Trello add-in extracts information from an email and enters it into the details for a card.

Another handy add-in is Microsoft Translate, which can translate an entire email at once without having to copy and paste text into a new app.

A good start

As is the case with apps, having more options is always better. The add-ins that are already supported within Outlook on Android are very nice but over time we need to see the library of supported add-ins grow for it to be a viable part of Outlook for mobile. There are plenty more add-ins available for the desktop versions of Outlook, so hopefully developers will take the initiative to build adapt those add-ins for the Outlook’s mobile apps.

Until then, add-ins are a useful but limited addition to Outlook on Android. But if you use any of the services that are currently supported, add-in support is a big boost to productivity.

Summing things up

Overall, add-ins work well and are a natural addition to the Outlook experience on Android that’s been available on other devices for a while.

Hopefully, Microsoft sees similar support from developers for add-ins optimize for mobile to what they’ve seen for other versions of Outlook.

The best Microsoft apps for Android

These are the apps that support Oreo’s Picture-in-Picture feature

See which apps support one of Android Oreo’s coolest features.

Of all the features that come with Android Oreo, the new Picture in Picture mode is possibly the biggest one we can see. The idea isn’t exactly new (Samsung’s had something similar for years) but Google added it at the system level in Nougat for Android TV, then for everyone — phones and tablets — in Android 8.0 Oreo so we would no longer need third-party solutions and a few lines of code can make it happen for everyone.

Adoption of the feature isn’t what we would call widespread, at least right now. Very few phones have access to Oreo so the demand isn’t there just yet. That will change in due time. Some developers are getting out ahead of the demand, though. We’ll keep updating this list as more apps that support the new feature hit Google Play.

Hi: This list is up-to-date as of November 3, 2017.

VLC for Android

VLC is an extremely popular cross-platform media player and the Android version now has picture-in-picture support. Unlike many other apps, you’ll need to use the player’s menu to engage PiP while a video is playing. Outside of that quirk, it works really well.

Download VLC for Android (free)

Netflix

Netflix has enabled picture-in-picture support for Android 8.1 only. Tap the home button while a video is playing and PiP just works. There’s no word about moving the feature to Android 8.0, but Android 8.1 is said to be released in December for people who don’t want to use a developer beta of the operating system.

Download Netflix (subscription required)

YouTube Red / YouTube TV

Subscribers to YouTube Red or YouTube TV have support for picture-in-picture as part of the background playing feature. Press the home button while playing a video to enable it, and you might have to allow it in the app’s settings. Hopefully, Google will decouple PiP from background playing so everyone has access.

Sign up for YouTube Red (subscription required)

Sign up for YouTube TV (subscription required)

Google Maps

You can press the home button while navigating to enable picture-in-picture, though we would rather everyone keep their eyes on the road!

Download Google Maps (free)

Telegram

The popular messaging service lets you watch a video someone sent in its own full-screen player, and a tap on the home button will enable picture-in-picture mode.

Download Telegram

Pocket Casts

Pocket Casts enabled picture-in-picture support in a recent update and now they support all things Oreo: Adaptive Icons, Notification Channels, and Picture in Picture. Things like this are what makes it one of the best podcast apps you can use on any platform.

Download Pocket Casts ($3.99)

Duo

Google’s Duo has picture-in-picture support and while in a call a press of the home button shrinks everything down so you can use another app and still be face-to-face.

Download Duo (free)

WhatsApp (beta)

The beta client for WhatsApp offers picture-in-picture support so you can chat with someone else or do anything while on a WhatsApp call. No word on when to expect this in the stable version.

Enroll in the WhatsApp beta program

Chrome (including Dev and Canary versions)

Google Chrome lets you zoom out of any full-screen video that’s not on YouTube with a picture-in-picture view. C’mon Google! Do something for most of the world where YouTube Red isn’t available, would ya?

Download Chrome

Facebook

When you find a video you want to watch on any feed or Facebook page, tap to play with Facebook’s built-in player which supports picture-in-picture when you tap the home button.

Download Facebook

A work in progress

This is a living list, and we’ll update it as we find more apps that support the Picture in Picture feature. And that’s where you can help!

We can’t possibly try every app, so please let us know when you find one that’s not on our list so we can add it.

Android Oreo

• Android Oreo review!
• Everything new in Android Oreo
• How to get Android Oreo on your Pixel or Nexus
• Oreo will make you love notifications again
• Will my phone get Android Oreo?
• Join the Discussion

Some Pixel 2 users are reporting Bluetooth connectivity issues

The complaints don’t stop.

Every smartphone, even flagship ones, can be susceptible to bugs, quality control issues, hardware malfunctions, you name it. Criticism regarding the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL has been considerably harsh over the past couple of weeks, some of it being wholly justified and others teetering on the edge of a witch-hunt.

One of our forum users recently created a thread to report that they were having troubles with the Bluetooth connectivity on their Pixel 2, and shortly after this, a number of other members chimed in with similar complaints.

Here’s what’s been reported so far.

husslord
10-29-2017 10:38 AM

“

I came from an iPhone transferred my music over… Have used Android phones many times set Player Pro back up and in my car I get nothing. When I tried Google music nothing, but here is the thing. When I listen to podcasts on Google music or used Spotify it worked….what am I doing wrong? Thanks!

Reply

BBook1999
10-30-2017 02:07 AM

“

I’m having a similar issue. I can play my transferred music on the Pixel 2 through the phone speakers using Google Play Music. But once I connect my phone to bluetooth (either my Bose speaker or my car), I hear nothing. The phone display tells me the song is still playing, but no sound from anywhere – phone speakers or Bluetooth device. But if I stream music via Deezer and connect to either my…

Reply

NOLATechy
11-01-2017 05:58 PM

“

Okay All – sorry to say I am having to return my Google Pixel 2 XL! I’ve had an issue with the original Pixel XL for months trying to get it to stay connected to my Honda Accord. I’ve sent in bug reports to Google’s Tier 3 tech support to help them find the fix. To date, no fix, so I decided to try the Pixel 2 XL (different manufacturer) in hopes it would work. NOPE! Same exact Bluetooth…

Reply

PixelatedReality
11-02-2017 07:01 PM

“

I have a 2014 Camry. Paired Pixel 2 just fine, but track information would not show, steering wheel controls would work about 30% of the time and then after a few presses, everything would lock up and I would have to disable/enable bluetooth to get this to work again. Sometimes I would not be able to start playback at all. Tried safe mode, reset all BT connections on the car – no difference….

Reply

If you own a Pixel 2 or Pixel 2 XL, we’d like to know – Are you experiencing any Bluetooth issues with your device?

Join the conversation in the forums!

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TripAdvisor admits deleting post warning of rape and assault

TripAdvisor is the go-to website to visit when you want to look up hotel and resort reviews. Based on what the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel unearthed, though, you might want to do more digging beyond the review portal next time you travel. According to the publication, TripAdvisor deleted several posts by users warning others of rape and assault over the past few years. In some cases it cited an old policy wherein language used in its forums should be G-rated. Other posts were declined citing “hearsay” as the reason, even though the victims were talking about their personal experiences.

The Journal Sentinel came across people whose posts were deleted while investigating the suspicious death of a Wisconsin college student in Mexico. One of those people was Kristie Love, who repeatedly posted on the website how she had been raped by a security guard at a highly rated Mexican Iberostar resort in 2010. She was told her posts had been removed, because they violated the website’s “family friendly” guidelines.

The same thing happened to a 19-year-old on vacation with her family in the same resort a year later. In 2015, another woman was raped in the same resort yet again after she and her husband suddenly blacked out in the middle of the day barely into their third drink. She, too, tried to post on TripAdvisor, but the website declined to publish it, deeming it as “hearsay.” She pointed out that if the website didn’t delete Love’s post, she might not have gone to that resort at all.

A TripAdvisor spokesperson said the site does host negative reviews, even those that contain allegations of rape. It’s just that its old guidelines were far too strict, and it has numerous filters to weed out fake reviews in order to avoid malicious posts made to ruin the reputation of good businesses. As the Journal Sentinel said, though, the company’s moderation system is a mess, so it’s hard to figure out if a post warning people about sexual assault will be published or not. Non-employees called “trusted community members” have the power to remove posts, “destination experts” made up of tour guides, property owners and managers can answer questions about safety and its policy against “hearsay” is inconsistently enforced.

After the Journal Sentinel published its latest piece, the company finally admitted that it removed Love’s original post, published it (albeit buried under years of other posts) and issued an apology:

“We apologize to the sexual assault victim reported on in the article, who had her forum post removed seven years ago on TripAdvisor. At the time, we had a policy whereby we judged content to be in breach of our guidelines if it did not adhere to family-friendly language. More than seven years ago that meant all language needed to be G-rated. A few years ago, we changed that policy to allow more descriptive reviews on the site about first-hand accounts of serious incidents like rape or assault. We recognized then that our previous guidelines went too far in preventing information like this from being shared.

Over the last several years, this policy change has yielded many first-hand accounts of serious incidents being published on the platform. A simple search of TripAdvisor will show numerous reviews from travelers over the last several years who wrote about their first-hand experiences that include matters of robbery or theft, assault and rape…

We will continue to work to improve and evolve our moderation and publishing guidelines as we work to provide the most accurate information in the travel industry available online.”

A rep also told the publication that it’s working on a “badge system” that will alert visitors to stories that expose health and safety concerns about particular businesses and establishments. It also insisted that posts like Love’s are the kind it “absolutely want[s] published.” However, TripAdvisor reportedly declined to publish one of those “first-hand experiences that include matters of assault and rape” as recently as October 16th. A user wanted to post about how he was drugged and sexually assaulted by his massage therapist at a world-renowned spa, but got a message from the website declining his review, because it’s merely “hearsay.”

Via: NPR, The Washington Post

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Social media’s biggest stars are launching a streaming service

Three of the biggest social media stars (with a combined 70 million followers across platforms) are launching their own video streaming service, reports Variety. Dubbed “Zeus,” the upcoming VOD outlet is the brainchild of Andrew “King Bach” Bachelor (who was Vine’s most-followed personality, before the video-looping app went kaput), along with fellow digital celebs Amanda Cerny, and DeStorm Power.

By sticking within the ambit of short-form content, Zeus seems like a perfect fit for the hyperactive attention spans of young web users raised on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. (But, even Hollywood is waking up to the pulling power of quick-fire episodes, so what do we know).

The trio of social powerhouses told Variety that the service will include programming across a range of categories, including comedy, beauty, fashion, and fitness. As prolific as they are, the three alone can’t muster that amount of content. Instead, they’ll be relying on other influencers to chip in, describing the setup as akin to a “farm team system in baseball.”

It essentially sounds like they’ll be nurturing talent and providing original content producers (like YouTube Red, Facebook Watch, and Netflix) with a hookup for their next shows. Chances are the three will pocket some cash from the platform, but there’s no word on monetization, or how much the service will cost.

The announcement comes at a precarious time for online video makers. YouTube’s “adpocalypse” — which saw ads mismatched to offensive clips earlier this year, resulting in legitimate creators losing revenue — ruffled a lot of feathers. And, the here-today-gone-tomorrow nature of platforms like Vine (which Twitter reportedly let fizzle out despite outcries from its talent) offers little comfort. Maybe, seizing the means of content delivery will put the power back in the hands of creators. And, so the rallying cry to take back our likes, shares, and subscriptions rang out from social media sites across the land.

Zeus will reportedly arrive in 2018 on iOS, Android, the web, and on all major streaming players and set-top boxes.

Source: Variety

The ISS is getting a long, long overdue printer upgrade

When they’re not busy spacewalking, astronauts carry out the same boring tasks as us — like printing. But, chances are, the printer in your home is newer than the one on the International Space Station (ISS). The heap of junk aboard the spacecraft is 17 years old, making it ripe for replacement. Enter HP, which is sending up a customized Envy model to save the astronauts from more embarrassment.

The company claims it retrofitted the printer to work in zero-gravity using 3D printed parts and specialized materials. Still, it’s really not that different from a regular HP printer, but the ISS crew will likely just be happy if it doesn’t cause paper jams or drink too much ink — we can’t even imagine what a pain it would be to keep sending ink cartridges into space.

If you’re wondering what astronauts print on the ISS, it’s things like emergency procedural ebooks, inventory trajectories, timelines, and personal items, including letters and photos. Altogether, they get through around two reams of paper (roughly 1,000 pages) per month.

And, what about the old printer? It’s a “museum piece,” said Stephen Hunter, manager of ISS computer resources, when describing the Epson 800 Inkjet to Mashable. But, instead of replacing it earlier, NASA just kept sending the same old model back to the spacecraft, even when the older ones broke down. Only now that the astronauts all have newer laptops is the space agency forced to send up the brand-spanking new HP Envy. But, when you’ve spent tens of billions to help build a habitable satellite, you have to cut costs elsewhere.

HP’s printers are set to blast off to the ISS on the SpaceX CRS-14 resupply rocket in February.

Source: HP

The world’s largest telescope will unlock the universe’s oldest secrets

In the predawn hours of September 20th, 2017, the cavernous hangar doors of the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona slowly swung open and the first of seven gargantuan mirrors passed through on its way to the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile where they will be assembled into one of the largest star-gazing instruments ever constructed: the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT).

Born of a collaboration between Brazil, Korea and the US, and outfitted with massive mirrors and adaptive optics, this billion-dollar telescope will deliver images 10 times clearer than the Hubble when it sees first light in 2023, enabling researchers to peer further back in time than ever before.

“We build big telescopes to discover new things,” Dr. Patrick McCarthy, vice president of operations and external relations at the GMT Organization, told Engadget. “Astronomy is different from other sciences.” Physicists, he points out, generally know what subatomic particle they’re looking for when they construct their accelerators. However, that is not always the case when searching the skies. “It’s about looking up to the heavens and letting the heavens reveal their mysteries to us.”

Once the GMT comes online, researchers will be able to search for stuff that’s “just beyond the grasp of what we can do now,” McCarthy continued, such as the nature of planets that orbit other stars, whether they’re earthlike in their composition with water and continents, weather and biochemistry. These observations could answer questions like “Are we alone in the universe?” shifting the age-old quandary from the philosophy to science.

The GMT will be able to deliver such high-quality data because of its enormous stature. When it opens six years from now, it will be the largest such observatory on the face of the planet. Its segmented collection area will consist of six 27-foot-wide monolith mirrors anchored around a central on-axis segment. The entire assembly will measure 80 feet across and cover 368 square meters. But for as humongous as each segment is, it is crafted with nanoscale precision and polished to within a wavelength of light.

Each mirror requires nearly seven years of work to complete, Dr. Robert Shelton, president of the GMTO, told Engadget. It takes a year just to make the borosilicate glass because it’s sourced from a single supplier, Japan’s Ohara Corporation, which uses a method involving clay pots and proprietary chemistry. “It takes them one year to make a mirror’s worth of glass,” Shelton explained. Once the GMT has collected enough material for a mirror, it is spin-casted on a rotating oven platform to give it its parabolic shape. After a six-month cooling period comes the meticulous multi-year process of grinding and polishing the glass into its final shape.

“When we started with the first mirror,” McCarthy said, “there was a lot of learning going on, and it was a time when the industry was moving away from optical polishing as an art and more of a predictive science using computer-controlled polishing.” That’s right, robots took our glass polishing jobs. And the world is a better place for it.

“Computer-controlled polishing is now at the state of the art for small optics but less so for these very large mirrors,” McCarthy continued. “Because there isn’t as much of a large industrial throughput.”

Through trial and error, the GMT team developed a sophisticated model for the material removal rate as a function of time (that is, how much you can grind away in x seconds), and the testing equipment needed to ensure it was accurate. Of course the team still independently measures the mirror’s shape. Once the polishing run has been programmed, McCarthy said, the team typically scales it back by 30 percent “Because as the director of the mirror lab likes to remind us, ‘It’s easy to take the glass off, it’s harder to put it back on.’”

The polishing tools themselves are computer controlled as well, changing shape several times per second. This is so “it always has the shape that we want while we’re rubbing the glass,” McCarthy explained. “These off-axis mirrors they have a different shape on every part of the glass, there is no symmetry.” Hence the need for automation.

“We plan for this telescope to be revealing new discoveries of the universe for the next 50 years,” Shelton exclaimed. “But with advances in computing and advances in electronics, there will be regular upgrades with new instrumentation. We’ve got a couple of generations of workhorse expectations out of the GMT.”

The GMT is designed to observe light in the optical and near-infrared range. For older telescopes operating on that part of the spectrum, atmospheric distortion — aka the phenomenon that makes stars twinkle — would be a problem. But thanks to the GMT’s built-in adaptive optics, that won’t be an issue.

“The resolving power of your telescope, once you get above about a half meter in size, [due to atmospheric distortion effects] they’re kind of all the same,” McCarthy explained. “You’re not realizing the full potential of the telescope.” Adaptive optics, however, use lasers to sense the distortion and counter it in much the same way as noise-cancelling headphones block external sounds.

But the GMT won’t be staring into the sky on its own; the observatory will collaborate with other telescopes both on the ground and in space. Take the Hubble’s existing work with ground-based observatories, for example. “The Hubble can look at parts of the [light] spectrum that are difficult to observe from the ground, like the ultraviolet,” Shelton explained. “The Hubble has unparalleled imaging quality but can’t take spectra that are particularly interesting.” However, by augmenting its abilities with facilities on the ground, astronomers have managed to make huge advancements in the cosmological field.

Once it gets up and running, the GMT may also turn its eye toward closer targets, potentially supplementing the observations of spacecraft orbiting the planets and moons of our solar system. “The interesting thing for solar system targets is how you connect the in situ measurements from spacecraft,” McCarthy said. “With ground-based measurements with big apertures where we can take spectra and look for polarization.”

The GMT team is also looking forward to working with the The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which is currently being constructed a few hundred miles away on the El Peñón peak of Cerro Pachón. The LSST will survey the entire sky every few days looking for things that move or change brightness, then the GMT will go back and study those objects in greater detail. “We think there’s a great synergy between us and the SST,” Shelton said.

“After that, the question is whether you can make something bigger,” McCarthy interjected. “And never say never, only 15, maybe 20 years ago the Europeans were going to make a 100-meter telescope. They eventually scaled it back but that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to happen.”

He expects that humans will eventually build 100-meter-plus telescopes, “Whenever people build the biggest telescope of their generation, they say ‘this will never be outdone, this is as big as it can get.’”

Indeed, just two years after it begins operations, the GMT will lose its title of world’s largest observatory to the European Space Agency’s Extremely Large Telescope, when it and its 978-square-meter collection area, come online in 2024.

But even though it won’t be the biggest for very long, the GMT will continue to upgrade its systems throughout its operational lifespan. McCarthy foresees further growth in aperture size as well as advances in adaptive optics. “We’ve got one adaptive mirror on the telescope, but you could put in multiple adaptive mirrors to push the adaptive optics to shorter wavelengths.”

“There’s also the emerging field of photonics, which are miniaturized self-contained optical systems that effective use every photon,” Shelton said. “They work at the quantum level and have people thinking about photonic spectrographs, telescopes that work in the aperture plane rather than the focal plane. There’s a whole interesting frontier of photonic applications, we just don’t know which of those will bear fruit and which of those will be great ideas that are just not practical.”

Images: GMTO

iPhone X Teardown: TrueDepth Camera System, Stacked Logic Board With 3GB RAM, and 2,716 mAh Battery

iFixit has completed an iPhone X teardown, providing a closer look inside the device, including its new TrueDepth camera system, stacked logic board, L-shaped two-cell battery pack, and Qi-based inductive charging coil.

Like every other model since the iPhone 7 Plus, the iPhone X is a sideways-opening device. A single bracket covers every logic board connector.

iFixit said the miniaturized logic board design is incredibly space efficient, with an unprecedented density of connectors and components. It noted the iPhone X logic board is about 70 percent of the size of the iPhone 8 Plus logic board.

The extra room allows for a new L-shaped two-cell battery pack rated for 2,716 mAh, which is slightly larger than the iPhone 8 Plus battery.

iFixit’s teardown includes some high-resolution photos of the iPhone X’s new TrueDepth camera system that powers Face ID and Animoji.

For those unfamiliar, a flood illuminator covers your face with infrared light. Next, the front-facing camera confirms a face. Then the IR dot projector projects a grid of dots over your face to create a three-dimensional map. Last, the infrared camera reads this map and sends the data to the iPhone X for authentication.

Like the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, the inside of the iPhone X’s rear shell is affixed with an inductive charging coil based on the Qi standard.

Other components in this iPhone X include Apple’s custom A11 Bionic chip, 3GB of LPDDR4x RAM from SK Hynix, 64GB of flash storage supplied by Toshiba, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X16 LTE modem, and a Cirrus Logic audio amplifier.

Some minor changes: Apple’s Taptic Engine continues to be a linear oscillator vibration motor, the earpiece speaker has been shifted down, and the Lighting connector is said to be more greatly reinforced with a wider bracket that screws into the sidewall of the iPhone X’s stainless steel frame.

iFixit gave the iPhone X a so-called repairability score of six out of a possible 10 points. It said a cracked display can be replaced without removing Face ID’s biometric hardware, but it added that fussy cables tie unrelated components together into complex assemblies that are expensive and troublesome to replace.

Related Roundup: iPhone XTags: iFixit, teardownBuyer’s Guide: iPhone X (Buy Now)
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Apple Celebrates iPhone X Launch Day as Sales and Deliveries Begin Around the World

Apple today celebrated the launch of the new iPhone X by sharing some images of customers around the world buying and trying out the smartphone for the first time.

George Street, Sydney
Apple Stores globally open at 8:00 a.m. local time to allow customers to pick up their reserved devices and make walk-in purchases, and Apple posted pictures of customers at Apple Stores in Dubai, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, and Sydney.

Years in the making, the iPhone X (pronounced “iPhone 10”), is Apple’s latest and most advanced flagship device to date, featuring a 5.8-inch OLED display, Face ID facial recognition, wireless inductive charging, and a faster A11 Bionic processor.

Apple Store, Fifth Avenue, New York (Image: @jonfortt)
Initial demand for the smartphone appears to be strong, with long lines forming outside Apple Stores around Europe, Asia, and Australasia, following advice from the tech giant that people get to stores early if they want to be in with a chance of purchasing the smartphone on launch day.

Apple Store, Tokyo
Large queues have been seen in Singapore, Madrid, Amsterdam, Belfast, Edinburgh, and Liverpool. Outside the Apple Store in Regent Street, London, a line of several hundred people snaked right around the corner. Stores are just now beginning to open in the U.S., where queues were sighted across the country overnight and have been growing ever since.

Apple Store, Shanghai
The only exception seems to be in Belgium and France, where due to anti-terrorism restrictions, Apple is not selling the iPhone X to customers there without a pre-order or pickup reservation.

Meanwhile, customers in New Zealand and Australia were first to receive their shipped iPhone X pre-orders today thanks to time zone differences, and now customers across Asia and Europe have been following in kind.

Pre-order delivery in the U.K. (Image: MacRumors reader Stormchasejg)
In the United States, the first iPhone X deliveries will take place on the east coast starting at 8:00 a.m. iPhone X pricing starts at $999 for the 64GB model, with the 256GB model priced at $1,149.

Stay tuned to MacRumors for more coverage of the iPhone X launch throughout the day.

Related Roundup: iPhone XBuyer’s Guide: iPhone X (Buy Now)
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