Xiaomi Mi Mix 2: Everything you need to know!

Xiaomi continues its dominance in late 2017 with a high end, bezel-less phone: the Mi Mix 2.

In late 2016, Xiaomi released the Mi Mix: a high end phone with a stunning, bezel-less design, ushering in characteristics now seen on the Galaxy Note 8, LG V30 and iPhone X. Xiaomi beat all these big players to the punch, and is back in 2017 to refine the formula further with the Mi Mix 2.

This is everything you need to know about the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2.

Check out our Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 review

We’ve had our hands on the Mi Mix 2 for a while now, and we’ve loved what we’ve seen. Be sure to read our full review to get a long-term look at the phone’s design, software and usability.

More: Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 review: Astounding, audacious, accessbile

It actually works in the United States

Xiaomi has long been known for offering high-end specs at lower prices than other phone manufacturers, in part because it makes up for this with revenue from its software services in its primary markets. These low prices have made Xiaomi phones attractive for consumers willing to import them, but carrier compatibility has been a mess.

Fortunately, with the Mi Mix 2 that has changed. The phone is fully compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile in the United States, with support for 42 total LTE bands. If you’re hoping to use the Mi Mix 2 in your home country, odds are good that it’ll work.

More: Xiaomi Mi Mix 2: In pictures

The camera is pretty damn good

Xiaomi stuck with a single rear camera this year, rather than follow the dual camera path that other manufacturers have gone down. Despite this, the camera is pretty great: it bests the similarly-priced OnePlus 5 in most daylight and nighttime conditions.

In our comparison with the two phones, the Mi Mix 2 is able to pick up finer details in most scenarios. The front-facing camera is still on the bottom bezel, which is still awkward in third-party apps that use the camera such as Duo or WhatsApp.

More: Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 vs. OnePlus 5: How much do you care about bezels?

There’s no headphone jack

If you’re interested in the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2, you’ll also be interested in some Bluetooth headphones.

It’s available in India

India is Xiaomi’s second-largest market, so its only fitting the Mi Mix 2 would be available in the country. The only variant available in India is the 128GB storage/6GB RAM configuration for ₹35,999 and it is available exclusively on Flipkart and in Mi Home stores.

More: Xiaomi’s Mi Mix 2 with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage lands in India for ₹35,999

Check out the forums!

Have any other questions about the Mi Mix 2, or any other Xiaomi phones? Be sure to check out our super helpful forums!

Free Google Home Mini promo codes now going out to Pixel 2 and 2 XL buyers

Free Google Home Mini codes are going out to Pixel 2 customers.

Google threw in a free Google Home Mini with all Pixel 2 and 2 XL purchases, and the company is now sending out promo codes via email to those that picked up either handset. You’ll see a link in the email which will take you to the Google Store, where you can choose the color variant of the Google Home Mini — it’s available in Chalk, Charcoal, or Coral.

The Google Home Mini is a competitor to Amazon’s Echo Dot, offering the full capabilities of Google Assistant in a compact package. Early units had a bug that recorded conversations 24/7, but Google rolled out a fix that permanently disabled the touch-activated listening feature.

The Google Home Mini costs $49, and the discount should be applied automatically as long as you’re signed into the same Google account you used to purchase your Pixel 2 or 2 XL.

Google Hardware

• Google Wifi review
• Google Home review
• Everything you need to know about the Chromecast Ultra
• Chromecast vs Chromecast Ultra: Which should you buy?

Google Wifi:

Google
Amazon

Google Home:

Google
Best Buy

Chromecast Ultra:

Google
Best Buy

Taylor Swift’s ‘Reputation’ won’t be on streaming its first week

Don’t think you can simply hop on Spotify and listen to Taylor Swift’s Reputation when it drops on November 10th. According to Bloomberg, the artist is keeping her new album off streaming services during its first week of sales. If you’ve been following Swift’s career, your first thought might have been “well, duh” — the musician is known for being one of streaming services’ most prominent critics. She famously pulled her entire catalog off Spotify in 2014 after penning an op-ed lambasting streaming companies for offering unpaid, ad-supported tiers. “It’s my opinion that music should not be free,” she wrote.

Swift seemed to have softened her stance earlier this year, because she agreed to give streaming services access to her entire catalog again. But she clearly still believes streaming (alongside piracy and file sharing) can affect album sales. Taylor wasn’t the first artist or the last to pull their music from streaming as an act of protest. As one of the biggest acts in music today, though, her voice has been the loudest and has certainly affected how Spotify did business. In addition to writing a personal appeal to Swift, Spotify also limited free streaming for Universal artists as part of its deal with the label.

Bloomberg says Spotify and its rival companies are still negotiating with Swift’s camp on when they can start offering her new album. Considering her songs tend to be huge hits, they’re likely pushing for a deal that’ll allow them to put up Reputation as soon as possible.

Source: Bloomberg

Instagram’s latest Stories feature is all about flashbacks

While Snapchat struggles to nab more users, Instagram is steaming ahead the only way it knows how: By copying Snapchat. The Facebook-owned service is adding a feature to its (vastly more popular) take on Stories that’s all about throwbacks. The update essentially allows you to add pics and videos to your Story that are more than 24 hours old — a function that was oddly amiss in the past. That way, the entire camera roll is available for your disappearing #FlashbackFridays posts.

When you add an image or clip that’s older than 24 hours to your Story, it will come with a new date sticker. As usual, you’ll have the option to resize, rotate, and move the date stamp — or just bin it. If it helps, Snapchat fans can gloat that the feature has been on the app since the launch of Memories in June 2016. The Instagram update is now available on iOS and Android.

Source: Instagram

Buried under emails? The best email clients can help you dig out

Picking the right email client is a big decision. Email is still a major component of how we communicate with one another. Doing so through an email client that has all the right features for you is important. But which are the best email clients?

In this guide, we’ll introduce you to some of our favorites and why we feel they’re worthy of your consideration.

Web-based

Online web clients are some of the most accessible, as you can use them anywhere and do so without needing to install an app – though that can often make the experience more streamlined. On top of being the best web email clients out there, the following services are all entirely free and work on both MacOS and Windows.

Gmail

As the most popular online email client in the world, Gmail remains one of the better options out there. As part of your overall Google account, the client gives you 15GB of storage space for free, which is ample space for most users, even if you aren’t the most fastidious at deleting older emails. It also has an intuitive interface that is clean and easy to navigate, and there are plenty of tabs and tools for segregating emails of different types into categories to make managing a busy account that bit easier.

Gmail has protections for users like spam blocking, virus scanning, phishing warnings, and two-factor authentication for logins. As part of the overall Google service, you can also use your Gmail account for chatting with people using the built-in messaging service, as well as initiate video calls. Gmail also has a translation service for sending and receiving messages in a foreign language.

There are a few less well-known tricks you can do, too. All of these features are accessible through the web-client or on smart devices using the official Android or iOS application.

That’s not to say Gmail is perfect. There are concerns about privacy with some suggestion that Google uses your email communication to market products and services to you on behalf of advertisers, and some have complained about the time it takes to stick attachments onto emails. As an overall web client though for handling your email, Gmail is one of the better options.

ProtonMail

For those concerned about privacy, ProtonMail comes highly recommended. Not only are all emails sent using ProtonMail entirely encrypted end-to-end, but all of the company’s servers are located in Switzerland and are therefore protected by the country’s strict privacy laws. With email, your security is only as strong as the person you’re sending the email too, but at least with ProtonMail everything at your end is as secure as it can be.

The interface for the online client is clean and a little easier on the eyes due to the use of muted greys, rather than the starker whites of some other clients. It’s also easy to navigate, and features tabs and categories for streamlined browsing. You can access your account using the free applications available on both iOS and Android.

The downside to ProtonMail is that its free account is limited to just 500MB, and you are limited to sending 150 messages per day. That should be enough for most users, but if you need more, a mere $5 a month will get you 5GB of space and up to 1,000 messages per day.

Zohomail

With more of a professional slant than some of the other clients on this list, Zohomail still ranks as one of the most recommended email clients around. It’s easy to set up and manage and it doesn’t feature adverts, even on free accounts. It also makes a firm pledge to never scan email contents for marketing purposes.

The free offering comes with 5GB of space per user, up to 25 users per account, an attachment limit of 20MB, and you have the ability to set up a custom domain name — so it’s a little more custom than just being an @Zohomail address. Paid offerings increase storage up to a terabyte, increase your attachment limit, and support multiple domain names.

Whichever account you opt for, you’ll benefit from features like anti-spam and anti-virus protection, an instant chat tool, and integration with other Zoho products like its Docs, Calendar and Notes services. You can access them through the web client, or via one of its various iOS or Android apps.

Outlook

Although Microsoft’s Outlook client might be known as a desktop tool, its online replacement for the aged Hotmail web-client is a solid option for those looking for a cloud email client. It comes with 15GB of space as standard, though Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal subscribers can get 50 GB of space instead.

As well as integrating directly with Microsoft’s offline office software, Outlook can also pair up with services like Paypal, Skype, and Uber to make various forms of communication and interaction easier. That means automatically adding events such as travel plans and shows to your calendar.. You can also attach files to emails directly from your Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox account. Those files can be up to 50MB in size, which is more than most web-clients offer.

The interface for the web-client itself is easy to navigate, and is compartmentalized, so you only need look at the most important emails if you wish.

You can access your Outlook account through the web client, via applications on iOS or Android devices, or through the local client on Windows PCs.

Yahoo

Yahoo’s email client has been around for much longer than most of its competition. Although the company behind it may long have fallen from its perch as one of the biggest web-giants, its email service is still easy to recommend.

The most immediate standout feature of Yahoo Mail is that free accounts come with 1TB of storage space. That’s much more than all of the other free clients combined, and means that you’ll never need to delete an email.

Yahoo Mail features robust spam-filtering, and any address you highlight as being a spammer will see all future communication from them redirected into your spam folder, so you can block them entirely if you so choose.

Navigation of the client is easy, though the layout is a little different to some of the other popular web clients. You can access features like instant messaging and SMS texting from within the client.

The one concern some may have with Yahoo’s mail client is privacy. The company has always had a serious presence in online advertising, and its recent purchase by Verizon was most likely due to the reams of customer data it holds. If privacy is the top of your list with a web client, some of the above entries would be better choices.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Having seconds thoughts? Here’s how to recall an email in Outlook
• Netflix members, beware: Don’t get tricked by the latest email scam
• Boomerang’s new Brief Me assistant uses AI to highlight important emails
• Email spam is about to get way worse, and you can blame MailChimp
• SMS to PC and back again: Here’s how to send a text message from a computer

Code mistake freezes up to $280 million in digital currency

Imagine if one person’s code error deprived you of a pile of money, and there was no guarantee you’d get your funds back. Wouldn’t you be hopping mad? That’s how many cryptocurrency owners are feeling right now. The digital wallet company Parity is warning users that a large volume of Ethereum funds have effectively been frozen after code contributor devops199 claims to have accidentally deleted the library needed to use multi-signature wallets (those that require more than one signature to move funds) created after July 20th. Devops triggered a long-unpatched bug that turned Parity’s wallet contract into a standard multi-signature wallet, making every wallet “suicide” and erase the guiding library code.

Whether or not you believe that it was a mistake, it could have very serious consequences. Observers estimate that there could be more than 1 million in ether locked away, which would amount to roughly $280 million. A lower estimate still pegs the damage at over $150 million. Parity describes these figures as “speculative” and suggests you should take them with a grain of salt, but there’s no question that some Ethereum holders are suddenly without a lot of cash.

This doesn’t mean that the currency is permanently off-limits, but unfreezing it and compensating users could involve a bailout. And whatever happens, the incident highlights a simple problem: digital wallets and cryptocurrency in general are only as reliable as the code that guides them. The software needs to be airtight if you’re going to tie your livelihood to non-traditional income.

Via: Comae (Medium), Business Insider

Source: Parity, Twitter, GitHub

Google is reportedly working on an AirDrop-like file transfer app

Google has a history of working on apps and services for more rural, data-lacking locations around the globe, like its mobile wallet for users in India and a search-lite app for Indonesian folks. Now, according to a now-pulled app on Google Play reported by 9to5Google, the company is testing a new Files Go app. According to now-pulled Play Store images, the app is intended to transfer files wirelessly, even without an internet connection, much like Apple’s AirDrop tech.

The app seems fairly basic now, according to screenshots shared by 9to5Google. There’s a storage tab to show users how much space is available on their device, and a files tab that groups content into different types, like images, video, and audio. The app also includes options to clear app caches, delete apps that aren’t used often and remove spam or duplicate images, says the site. One screenshot hints that file transfers work via Bluetooth, though that’s not confirmed. We’ve reached out to Google for more details and will update this post when we hear back.

Source: 9to5Google

‘MLB: The Show 18’ arrives on PS4 March 27th

Sony’s MLB: The Show franchise has earned a reputation for hitting it out of the park with each annual edition — and introducing cool new features, like last year’s Retro Mode. Now we know when the next one will come out: MLB: The Show 18 launches on March 27th. And who else to grace its cover than the titan of teeing off, the Yankees’ Aaron Judge.

Listen, I’m no fan of the Pinstripe Pugs, but seeing Judge decimate this year’s Home Run Derby was a thing of beauty. You Canadians won’t have to see him grace your copies, however: Editions sold north of the US border will feature Toronto Blue Jays’ Marcus Stroman.

There are some standard in-game goodies if you pre-order, but doing so at GameStop or on the PS Store grants early access to play the game on March 23rd. And if you’re a serious fan of the Judge, you can pony up $100 for the ‘All Rise’ special edition at GameStop and EB Games, which includes a hat, spiffy metal case and a host of extras in the game. Sadly, it seems like Sony was serious about releasing the series on PS4 only, following MLB: The Show 17, which was the franchise’s first to forgo the PS3.

Source: PlayStation Blog

A drone you can’t crash? It’s finally here, thanks to AR and smart glasses

Do you want a drone, but are too worried about either breaking it or something around you? The good folks at drone company DJI, Epson, and Y Media Labs are here to help — courtesy of the world’s first augmented reality drone for smart glasses. The three companies announced in early November that they have teamed up to create an AR drone flight simulator app for the Epson Moverio BT-300 smart glasses, which allows you to rack up hours of drone flight without the need to actually shell out for a real drone — or extra home insurance.

“Drones are expensive,” Sheila Mikailli, marketing lead for Y Media Labs, told Digital Trends. “If you’ve just invested a thousand dollars on a new drone, the last thing you want to do is crash your brand-new toy. The simulator allows drone users to practice flying and polishing their skills in a safe environment. Unlike other drone apps controlled through your phone, this truly immersive experience allows users to get comfortable with how their drone actually flies because the physics are accurate and the simulator is controlled by the DJI drone controller, not through the phone.”

One of the nifty things about the app is that it’s not just a generic drone you’re flying, with cartoony flight dynamics and handling. Instead, it offers fully realized versions of real DJI drones, including the Mavic Pro, Phantom 4, Inspire 2 and Spark. There are a couple of mini-games thrown in as well, so you can practice your drone flying skills by flying around picking up powerups. Oh, and did we mention the possibility of multiplayer drone flying?

“We can see this expanding beyond a singular experience,” Mikailli continued. “Friends who have Epson’s Moverio BT-300FPV smart glasses can fly and race drones together all within the comfort of their living room.”

The simulator app will be released on the Moverio Apps Market later this year. In the meantime, if you want to try out the technology for yourself, you can head to any DJI store to give it a go for yourself.

While we certainly don’t see this replacing people’s desire for physical drones, as a practice tool or simply a bit of entertainment when it’s impractical to use a real drone, this could be a whole lot of fun.

Editors’ Recommendations

• DJI AeroScope is an invisible license plate that knows when drones go off limits
• With new owners and major changes, the Lily drone might fly after all
• DJI says most drones already have the hardware to support a safety system
• Wish you could fly? Here are the best drones on the market right now
• The top 10 most expensive drones that you (a civilian) can buy

It’s official: Twitter is rolling out 280-character tweets to everyone

Twitter is doubling its 140 character limit.

After Twitter announced it would be testing out a new feature — a doubled character limit — with a “small group” of people, the company is now rolling out the change to users across the world.

Can’t fit your Tweet into 140 characters? 🤔We’re trying something new with a small group, and increasing the character limit to 280! Excited about the possibilities? Read our blog to find out how it all adds up. 👇https://t.co/C6hjsB9nbL

— Twitter (@Twitter) September 26, 2017

The company said 140 characters don’t give users enough space for folks to express themselves. In a blog post, Twitter shared some of its product research regarding the 140 character limit. It seems nearly every language supported on Twitter — save for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean — runs up against that 140 mark time and time again.

In languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese you can convey about double the amount of information in one character as you can in many other languages, like English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French. … We see that a small percent of Tweets sent in Japanese have 140 characters (only 0.4%). But in English, a much higher percentage of Tweets have 140 characters (9%). … Our research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people Tweeting in English, but it is not for those Tweeting in Japanese.

The company said it spent time collecting data and feedback from its test group before it making the change. The feature will be rolling out to all supported languages, except for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

How do you know when you’ve received the 280 character limit?

Once the switch is made (server-side), instead of the familiar 140-character counter you’ll see a circle with a progress indicator. Over time, the progress indicator will fill up, showing you about how much space you have left.

Instead of showing you exact character counts — which may challenge you to use as many characters as possible — the progress indicator is a subtler way to show you how many more characters you can fit in a tweet.

Thoughts?

Are you looking forward to having more characters to express your thoughts (and hot takes) on Twitter or do you wish they’d stuck with 140 characters? Give us a shout in the comments or — even better — over on Twitter!