Amazon Cloud Cam review: A Nest Cam rival with Alexa smarts

The home-security-camera market is a saturated one, with contenders from the likes of Logitech, Netgear and, perhaps trendiest of all, Nest. Now there’s another, rather surprising, company joining that fray: Amazon. Like the others, Amazon’s “Cloud Cam” keeps tabs on your home while you’re away, but it also works with Alexa. It’s a decent camera overall, and at $120 (cheaper per unit if you buy multipacks) it’s affordable. But Cloud Cam’s integration into Amazon’s ecosystem is likely its main selling point.

Hardware and setup

Compared to the Nest Cam, the Cloud Cam is pretty lightweight. Thanks to its all-plastic build, it weighs only 5 ounces (compared to the Nest’s 7.5). But lightweight doesn’t mean flimsy. On the contrary, the Cloud Cam is equipped with a 70 mm-wide sturdy base with rubberized footing. The camera is mounted on a flexible ball pivot that rotates 360 degrees. Unlike the Nest, however, the Cloud Cam’s base is not magnetic, and you can’t remove it, either. The Cloud Cam does ship with an optional wall mount, however.

Setup is simple: Plug the Cloud Cam into the wall, download the app and follow the pairing instructions. The LED above the camera flashes blue on startup and blue/green in pairing mode. In my experience, the app discovered the camera pretty quickly. From there, I entered my WiFi and Amazon credentials — for access to videos and linking with other Amazon services — and it was up and working. I also had to name my camera, which comes in handy when used with Alexa (which we’ll get to later).

Oh, and that LED light? It’s permanently green when the camera is on; there’s no way to turn it off. Amazon says this is so users know exactly when you’re on camera and when you’re not. This is understandable, but also means you can’t have the camera on in stealth mode. The Nest Cam, for example, lets you disable the status LED for this purpose.

In use

I was immediately impressed with the image quality from the Cloud Cam. It has 1080p resolution and a wide 120-degree field of view. My apartment is small, so this was more than enough to capture both my living room and my kitchen. The camera also has night vision, which activates automatically when dark (the Cloud Cam has an ambient light sensor). Night-vision recordings looked bright and crisp, which is valuable when browsing clips to see exactly what triggered the motion-detection.

That motion sensor also happens to be one of the main features of the Cloud Cam. Essentially, whenever the camera detects motion, it’ll start recording a video and send you a push notification. You can adjust the sensitivity, from high to low (high detects a person-size object up to 20 feet away, medium at 10 feet away and low up to 5 feet away). You can set notifications to arrive every time an event occurs, or at certain intervals (every few minutes, hourly, daily or never at all). Unfortunately, you can only receive notifications via the app, and not via email or text.

By default, the Cloud Cam stores up to 24 hours of recorded clips, with support for up to three cameras. If you want more storage you’ll need a subscription. Basic ($7 a month or $69 a year) increases the limit to the last seven days for up to three cameras; Extended ($10 a month or $99 a year) stores 14 days of video for up to five cameras and Pro ($20 a month or $199 a year) offers a full month of clips for up to ten cameras.

One of the ways to access those clips is via the aforementioned app. You can download them to your phone, share them via Airdrop or social media or simply delete them altogether. The clips are also stored automatically in your Amazon Drive account, which you can access via a browser.

A subscription will unlock two other features: Person-detection and Zones. Person-detection fine-tunes the Cloud Cam’s motion-sensitivity to detect when a person is in the room versus a pet (or Roomba, etc.). There are options to receive notifications of person-detection but not motion-detection, or vice versa, or both. Zones, on the other hand, blocks out certain areas of the room from being detected. So, for example, you can draw a square around the TV or a ceiling fan in the app, and the camera will ignore any motion in those areas.

In my experience, the motion sensors worked really well. It let me know when our cat was on the couch (which is fine) or when she was on the kitchen counter (which is not as fine). Since I also had the Pro subscription, it also let me know someone was in my apartment when my husband walked in. I also tried out Zones with a corner of the room, and sure enough, no matter how much I waved around in that corner, I couldn’t trigger the motion sensor.

The Cloud Cam also has geofencing that deactivates the camera when you’re home or switches it on when you leave. To enable this, select the “Home/Away” toggle in settings and specify your camera’s location. Now, whenever you leave the house (with your phone, of course), the camera will turn on automatically. And when you arrive home, the app will let your camera know you’re in close proximity and it’ll shut off.

What’s nice is that the feature works with multiple phones: If more than one person has the Home/Away feature enabled, all parties need to leave the house for the camera to turn on. If one person arrives home early, then the camera turns back off — it doesn’t need everyone to be home.

While that sounds useful, I had trouble getting it to work reliably. Sometimes when I was home, it wouldn’t turn off; sometimes when I was out, the camera wouldn’t turn on. When I asked Amazon about this, a spokesperson said to try relaunching the app. I did, which made the camera work as intended, but I ended up having to do this pretty often. It was so annoying that I just decided to turn the camera on and off manually.

Perhaps the main reason you’ll want the Amazon Cloud Cam above all other security cameras is that it works with Alexa. Amazon loaned me a Fire TV Stick to use with Cloud Cam, but the company tells me that it will also work with the Echo Show, Echo Spot, any Fire TV product and any Alexa-enabled Fire tablet.

The feed from the Amazon Cloud Cam as streamed on the Fire TV Stick

Remember when I signed in with my Amazon credentials during the Cloud Cam’s setup? I was also asked to do the same during the setup of the Fire TV Stick — so that all the Alexa devices could communicate with each other. To test it, I held down the voice button on the Fire TV remote and said: “Alexa, show me the ‘Family Room’” (which is what I named my camera) and voilà, live video from the Cloud Cam popped up on my television. I could even use the remote to talk to whoever’s in the room with the Cloud Cam, as it has a microphone for two-way communication.

Obviously, this is useful only if you’re already invested in the Amazon ecosystem, but if you are, I can see how this would be helpful for keeping an eye on your kids when you’re somewhere else in the house.

I should mention here that Amazon plans on selling a different camera called the Key Edition Cloud Cam, which costs $140. This works in concert with a special Amazon Key-compatible smart lock, which is to be used with the Key service (that lets delivery people in the door when you’re not home). The Key app lets authorized people in the door, and the Key Edition Cloud Cam will help confirm deliveries or identify friends and family.

The competition

Amazon’s Cloud Cam is surprisingly affordable for what it offers. It costs $120 for a single unit, but that drops to $100 (or less) if you get a multipack — a two-pack is $200 while a three-pack is $290. Other brand-name cameras with similar features are more expensive; the Nest Cam is $200, Logitech’s Logi Circle 2 is also $200 (though you can get it on Amazon for $140) and Netgear’s Arlo is $200 as well. The Blink home security camera is $100, but it doesn’t have two-way audio nor geofencing, and it only has 720p video.

Both the Logi Circle 2 and the Cloud Cam offer 24 hours of video as part of the default package, which is great. That’s a lot better than the Nest Cam, which doesn’t offer any kind of archives at all unless you pay for a Nest Aware subscription.

That said, the Cloud Cam doesn’t have facial recognition. For that, you have to either cough up $300 for the Nest Cam IQ or $200 for the Netatmo Welcome. Another downside is that the Cloud Cam needs to be connected to AC power. Logitech’s Logi Circle and the Blink camera both run on batteries, so they have way more placement options.

Wrap-up

Overall, Amazon’s Cloud Cam is a pretty decent choice. It’s well-built, affordable and has an advanced motion sensor that can separate people from pets (if you cough up the subscription money). The 1080p video quality is great, the default 24-hour archive is a nice bonus and the night-vision mode isn’t bad, either. The geofencing feature is a little finicky, and you can’t turn off the camera LED if you want it to be in stealth mode, but I didn’t find those to be deal breakers.

If you already have an Amazon device with a screen, like an Echo Show, the Cloud Cam is especially useful thanks to its integration with Alexa. On the whole, I found the Amazon Cloud Cam to be a surprisingly good value for a home security camera, with or without its Alexa tricks.

Apple may be working on an AR headset for 2020

Apple has been talking a lot about AR lately. ARKit allows developers to create augmented reality apps for iOS devices, and it’s already resulted in some pretty interesting stuff. This is apparently just the first step, though. Bloomberg reports that Apple is developing an AR headset that will be ready by 2019 and ship to customers in 2020. The company is looking to create a device that will change the game as much as the iPhone did back in 2007.

Apple isn’t interested in the current crop of AR devices that use a phone as both the screen and the processor. The AR headset will be all inclusive, with its own screen, and an Apple-designed chip. It will also have a brand new OS, currently labeled “rOS” for “reality operating system.” It’s possible that users will be able to download and install apps from an AR app store, much like they do across other Apple devices. The mechanisms for launching and interacting these apps — whether via head gestures or through Siri — hasn’t yet been decided upon, according to Bloomberg.

Because Apple doesn’t yet have an augmented reality headset of its own, it’s using other companies’ devices to develop and test features for their new device. Anonymous sources told Bloomberg that the HTC Vive is the headset of choice for developers. The team is currently working on an AR device that will use the iPhone’s screen, camera and processors, but notes that it will not be available for consumers. This will be a device for internal development only.

The emphasis on AR at Apple isn’t surprising — we’ve known that the company is working on a slew of augmented reality projects, including AR glasses. In July of this year, Tim Cook said on an earnings call earlier this year that Apple’s interest in AR wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. “We are high on AR for the long run,” he said. “We think there are great things for customers and a great commercial opportunity.”

Source: Bloomberg

Postmates Announces New Grocery Delivery Service ‘Fresh’ Alongside iOS App Redesign [Updated]

Postmates today announced the dual-launch of a new curated groceries and essentials delivery service called “Postmates Fresh,” alongside a revamp of the company’s iOS app. Postmates has long allowed customers to order groceries for delivery on its app, but the company said Postmates Fresh is its “first-ever grocery product” offering the delivery of everything from paper towels to free range chicken to your door in minutes.

When ordering through Fresh, the average delivery time is estimated at thirty minutes, which Postmates said makes it a good source for last minute items. Postmates Fresh will also work directly with local partners to build out the new service, providing users with “curated, locally-sourced groceries,” and more directly competing with grocery delivery services like Amazon Fresh. Postmates Fresh will launch first in Manhattan, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Our first-ever grocery product launched today in Manhattan, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The launch of Fresh— a new category that curates high quality groceries and ingredients, is rolling out the same day as our brand new app design. This means customers can now get pesto, paper towels, LaCroix, Halo Top, Kombucha, free range chicken, prosciutto, salmon filet, organic apples, avocados — and pretty much all the essentials they need, in minutes.

Postmates said that the goal of Fresh is to make “locally grown groceries more accessible,” leading to the partnership with Farmstead in San Francisco, East Village Farm in New York City, and Urban Radish in Downtown Los Angeles. As the service expands to more markets, Postmates will look for more direct-to-consumer grocers who source from organic farms with the “highest-quality products” to integrate new partners into Postmates Fresh.

Additionally, the new app has been optimized for iPhone X and features a new collections view and scheduled deliveries section, where you can place an order for the future even if the grocery location or restaurant is closed. Postmates consumer product lead David Byttow told TechCrunch that the app’s new design and features are the basis for “a whole bunch of things we’ll be launching and bringing in the coming weeks.”

Update: Bloomberg reports pricing for Postmates Fresh will be $3.99 per delivery or $9.99 per month.

Tag: Postmates
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Galaxy S9 Will Likely Still Have Rear Fingerprint Scanner as Apple Rumored to Ditch Touch ID Entirely

Samsung has decided not to include a fingerprint scanner under the display of its next-generation Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ smartphones due to continued technical difficulties, according to South Korea’s The Investor.

Instead, the fingerprint scanner will likely remain positioned on the back of each device, just like the current Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ models.

Fingerprint scanning is one of three biometric options for unlocking the Galaxy S8 alongside iris scanning and facial recognition. Samsung says all three solutions provide “defense-grade security” around the clock.

Shortly after the Galaxy S8 launched, however, videos surfaced showing that Samsung’s facial recognition system could be fairly easily duped with a picture of someone. The iris scanner was also tricked with contact lenses.

In fine print on its website, Samsung admits that its facial recognition system is “less secure than pattern, PIN, or password.” Facial recognition can’t be used to authenticate access to the Galaxy S8’s Secure Folder or Samsung Pay.

“It is important to reiterate that facial recognition, while convenient, can only be used for opening your Galaxy S8 and currently cannot be used to authenticate access to Samsung Pay or Secure Folder,” the company told Ars Technica in March.

Apple was widely rumored to be attempting to integrate Touch ID under the display on the iPhone X, or even on the side or back of the device, but the company’s hardware engineering chief Dan Riccio suggested it ditched any form of fingerprint scanning after hitting “early line of sight” with Face ID.

Samsung’s facial recognition system is unquestionably less secure than Face ID, which uses significantly more advanced 3D facial recognition and has a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of being duped by a stranger, according to Apple.

Apple is so confident in Face ID that it is planning to abandon Touch ID in favor of the TrueDepth system on all of its new iPhone models released in 2018, according to well-connected KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Apple says Face ID only has a possibility of being less reliable for identical twins, siblings who look alike, and children under 13 years of age, the latter because their distinct facial features may not have fully developed.

Apple’s Face ID security paper explains how the TrueDepth camera projects and reads over 30,000 infrared dots to form a depth map of your face, along with a 2D infrared image. This data is used to create a sequence of 2D images and depth maps, which are digitally signed and sent to the Secure Enclave.

Face ID is designed to confirm user attention, ensuring a lower false match rate, and mitigation against both digital and physical spoofing.

Tags: Samsung, Touch ID, Galaxy S9
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Vive Studios’ latest project will let you visit the Berlin Wall – before it fell

Vive Studios has announced a new funding and development program that seeks to get virtual reality experiences to more people in the form of art installations and VR museum exhibits. The HTC subdivision announced early partnerships for the initiative with museums such as the Somerset House in London, and The National Palace Museum in Taiwan.

“Some of the earlier museum VR experiences, or full-stop VR museums, were basically taking scanning artifacts and photographs and putting them in a virtual museum you could walk around in. We looked at that and felt that it wasn’t very compelling,” head of the studio Joel Breton told us. “We’re going to create virtual reality content and experiences that will show people how immersive technology can make their learning experience even richer.”

One example is Berlin Wall: The Virtual Reality Experience, an exhibit that’s currently available at Newseum in Washington DC. The installation replicates the experience of being there from multiple perspectives, including people on the west side of the wall, and soldiers standing guard atop it.

“It’s chilling,” he said. “It’s absolutely chilling. You’re fully immersed in 360 degrees, you can look around, and you feel like you’re there. That’s the power of virtual reality for us, especially on room-scale and Vive that we have to work from. The power is that we can take the user anywhere in the entire universe throughout all of time for historical experiences like this.”

Vive Studios was created in December of 2016 to kickstart first-party content for the HTC Vive VR headset. In contrast with the HTC Vive’s partnership with game company Valve, Vive Studios was started with the specific goal of expanding VR experiences beyond the realm of gaming. 

Breton explained that as both planned exhibits and future ones are rolled over the next few years, some will also be available in Viveport, HTC’s VR app store. Outside of Vive Studios, HTC sponsors Vive X, a global accelerator program with the goal of cultivating “the VR startup ecosystem.” The company seems determined to not only expand access to VR experiences, but also make sure HTC plays an important role in shaping the future of the medium.

“It’s definitely a stepping stone on the way to where we get to exponential adoption of VR as a mass medium. We think a lot of people that’ll experience this content will be first time VR users. What we’ve learned from our partners is that the age range is from eight to eighty that will view the collections, depending on the museum. There are still seven and half billion people that haven’t tried premium VR.”

Breton stated that the exhibits would be supporting the HTC Vive headset, but also confirmed that museums and art galleries have expressed interest in the future standalone VR headset from HTC, which has yet to be unveiled. We’ll have to wait and see whether or not the masses are really ready for this technology in museums, but it’s a big move to ensure that HTC and Vive Studios stay relevant in the future of the VR space.

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DKNY Minute hybrid smartwatch merges tech and fashion for a neglected audience

The DKNY Minute is further proof the fashion world is really taken with the concept of the hybrid smartwatch. Rightly so. It’s the ideal device to introduce loyal fans of a brand to new technology, as they require little setup, no charging, and work with most smartphones. The DKNY Minute is the brand’s first wearable, and rather than being made for men or as a unisex device, it’s expressly made for women — a rarity in the world of wearables.

DKNY’s Minute hybrid smartwatch comes in three different 38mm stainless steel body styles: A plain silver and a plain gold, plus a fetching silver and gold combination. The gold model has a bold DKNY branded watch face, while the other two versions have more subtle, traditional styles. The body is matched with three different strap options, a black or white leather and a quilted red strap. DKNY includes a second quilted pinstripe strap made from silicone with each watch. Each is interchangeable, so if you own several it’s quick and easy to change the look.

Functionality is similar to most other hybrid smartwatches. Receive a notification on your phone and the watch will vibrate and the hands move to a designated number, identifying the app source of the alert. The watch functions as a fitness tracker with steps, calories, and distance covered being recorded, plus if it’s worn to bed it will track your sleep, too. The buttons on the side can be used to control music playback on your phone, or as a remote shutter release for the camera. Other features include adding different time zones, and to remotely force your phone to ring it gets lost.

A coin cell battery powers the DKNY Minute, and they typically last for five to six months, making the watch very low maintenance compared to a full Android Wear smartwatch, or the Apple Watch. A DKNY Minute app is required to link the watch to your phone, and it’s available for both Android and iOS. The black and gold versions are ready to buy from DKNY’s website for $155, but at the time of writing the silver/gold model isn’t listed. It’s likely to be slightly more expensive when it arrives.

DKNY’s Minute hybrid smartwatch joins other examples available from fashion brands, including Tory Burch, Kate Spade, and Emporio Armani. The early EA Connected hybrid was followed later by a full Android Wear smartwatch, meaning if the Minute is well received by DKNY fans, a similar DKNY Android Wear smartwatch may follow in the future. It’ll be good news, as unlike hybrid smartwatches, only a few Android Wear watches are designed for women.

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Best Buy’s Black Friday ad is here with a 50-inch 4K TV for $180 and more

Best Buy’s Black Friday ad may have you thinking about lining up on Thanksgiving!

Black Friday will be here before you know it, and there’s no better time to start preparing than now. Best Buy’s Black Friday ad is usually one of the most anticipated ads of the season, and this year the retailer doesn’t disappoint.

• Best Buy 2017 Black Friday Ad Analysis
• Best Buy 2017 Black Friday Ad Scan

Best Buy will be open from 5 p.m. to 12 a.m. on Thanksgiving and will re-open at 8 a.m. on Black Friday. The retailer won’t be waiting for Thanksgiving to start the fun, though. There are already a bunch of deals that you can purchase at Black Friday pricing, and new doorbusters will be announced on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

Some of the hottest deals that we’ve spotted include a $180 Sharp 50-inch 4K TV, up to $100 off Sonos speakers, $30 Amazon Fire Tablets, $100 Amazon Cloud Cameras, and various other tech and smart home goodies.

There will be video games starting at $25, the Nintendo Switch will be widely available, and 4K Blu-ray’s will start at just $10.

Check out the Thrifter Black Friday Hub

Samsung Gear Fit2 Pro review: The best fitness tracker for most people

Samsung’s latest waterproof fitness tracker is smarter — and cheaper — than many smartwatches.

It’s taken a few years, but Samsung’s wearable strategy has settled — as has much of the industry — on fitness as its primary selling point. This year’s crop of wrist-worn products from the Korean giant include the excellent Gear Sport, along with the Gear Fit2 Pro, both with the intention of making it easy to track steps and workouts while receiving notifications.

In other words, the value proposition hasn’t changed dramatically from the original Gears of a few years ago, but the 2017 refreshes put an emphasis on durability, longevity, and comfort.

See at Amazon

Gear Fit2 Pro What you’ll love

The Fit2 Pro is the direct successor to last year’s Fit2, and besides the new strap design, the two could be interchangeable — at least on the surface. With a 1.5-inch vertical OLED display that gets really bright, the Tizen-based interface — black background throughout to lengthen battery life — is easy to understand and extremely touch-friendly. Samsung has this down pat.

• Display: 1.5 inches 216×432 pixels
• OS: Tizen
• Price: $169.99
• Processor: Dual Core (1GHz Exynos 3250)
• RAM: 512MB
• Storage: 4GB
• Weight: 34 grams
• Size: 25 x 51.3 x 12.6 mm
• Wireless: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS
• Sensors: Heart rate, Accelerometer, Gyro, Barometer
• Battery: 200mAh (three to five days)
• Colors: Red+black, black
• Compatibility: Android + iOS

While 2016’s Gear Fit2 had a built-in GPS, it wasn’t waterproof, which has since been corrected in its sequel. Not only can the Fit2 Pro plumb the depths of your average pool, it’s certified waterproof to 5 atmospheres — even if you dive to the bottom of a pool, it’ll survive. The red plastic casing has two buttons on the right, one to go back to the previous screen and the other to enter the app drawer, and they’re both clicky and responsive. No complaints there.

The Fit2 Pro lives up to its name: it effortlessly tracks workouts, automatically after 10 minutes or as directed by you when engaging in something specific like a bike ride or swim, and records a number of worthwhile metrics including heart rate, steps taken, floor climbed, and more.

It actually takes heart rate measurements constantly throughout the day, similar to the latest Fitbits, and does so with accuracy; I wore a Fitbit Ionic on another wrist for a day and found the metrics to be close enough to satisfy me. I’m no athlete; I just want a fairly robust approximation of my steps taken, calories burned, and route taken. That the Fit2 Pro is comfortable enough to wear the whole day without noticing it is helpful, too.

All of those things are table stakes for a so-called fitness tracker, but the Fit2 Pro emulates a smartwatch in a number of impactful ways; it shows notifications in a dedicated area to the left of the watch face, and even allows users to action them — reply to a text message, for instance — in certain situations. Generally, if you can reply to a message on an Android Wear watch, you can do the same here (though only with a selection of canned responses or emoji).

Notifications are easily one of my favorite aspects of the Fit2 Pro; it’s ostensibly a fitness tracker, but it conveys what’s happening on your phone better than the more-expensive Fitbit Ionic, and about as well as its “real” smartwatch counterpart, the Gear Sport. Yes, the long-and-thin screen wraps sentences oddly at times, but it requires less scrolling as a result, and the touchscreen is capable of keeping up. I missed the Gear Sport’s rotating bezel, but not as much as I thought.

Finally, battery life is the cherry on this smart milkshake. It’s really, really good — like three days plus from this little 200mAh cell. Mind you, I didn’t regularly run with GPS turned on because I always have my phone with me, but Samsung promises nine hours when engaging the GPS. That’s pretty good, but not remarkable when compared to the Gear Sport or Fitbit Ionic.

Gear Fit2 Pro What you’ll hate

Don’t expect to track your sleep properly with this tracker — rather, use it as a bedside clock.

I don’t think you’ll hate anything about the Gear Fit2 Pro, but here’s what you’ll leave wanting, especially if coming from an Android Wear or Apple Watch — apps. While the tracker comes with a handful of decent first-party and third-party apps from the likes of Under Armour (MapMyRun and Endomondo) for tracking runs, and Speedo Go for tracking swims, the Galaxy Apps “store” is, as it is on the Gear S series, a wasteland of expensive, poorly-designed watch faces.

The actual app downloading and update procedure is less than convenient, too, showing just how far Samsung still has to go when it comes to designing and curating its software experiences. Even the sparse Spotify app, which for some reason isn’t pre-installed on the tracker, is basic to a fault and difficult to use.

On the tracking side, you’ll probably find fault with the sleep tracking, should you choose to use it. I wore the Fit2 Pro to bed for a week or so and found the metrics to be almost useless.

Moreover, the screen doesn’t automatically turn itself off once it detects you’re snug in bed, which makes for constant disruption unless you explicitly enable Do Not Disturb — which requires disabling it in the morning. These things are automated on Android Wear.

I’m also not a huge fan of the rubbery, cheap-feeling strap. While the latch design is an improvement over the more sporty (and uglier) button clasp that shipped on last year’s Fit2, the 24mm replaceable straps on the Fit2 Pro are neither robust nor attractive. Thankfully, Amazon has plenty of alternatives that look and feel better.

Finally — and this is no big deal, really — I dislike the plasticky charging dock that, somehow, always seems to fall over when the tracker is magnetically latched to it. Didn’t Samsung test it?! At least, when properly supported, the Fit2 Pro dock doubles as a nice bedside clock.

Should you buy it? Yes!

I really like the Samsung Fit2 Pro. Yes, it’s not as robust a smart thing as some other trackers out there, but at its current price of $170, it’s a steal. The screen is out-of-this-world good, and the tracking is fantastic for those who’d rather be reinforced with kind messages and automatic number crunching than to-the-millimeter perfection.

At the same time, the notification system on the Fit2 Pro is better than some smartwatches (coughFitbitIoniccough), and even most of the negatives are nitpicks.

The Fit2 Pro goes up against the Fitbit Blaze, Garmin Vivosport, TomTom Spark 3 Cardio and a Series 1 Apple Watch, and it largely comes out ahead against all of them. If you’re looking for more accurate fitness tracking or better sleep metrics, you’re better off with a Garmin or a Fitbit, but nothing touches Samsung for an all-around experience.

And, wow, that screen.

See at Best Buy

Samsung Gear Sport review: The company’s best smartwatch yet

Are you using a screen protector on the Note 8’s curved display?

The Note 8’s curved display looks great, but it makes applying a screen protector nearly impossible.

There’s a lot we can say about Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8, but one of its hallmark features is its massive 6.3-inch curved AMOLED display. This display is a true beauty for watching movies, playing games, and browsing the web, but as some of our forum users are quickly discovering, it’s not necessarily the most practical thing in the world.

Because of the Note 8’s curved edges, a lot of our forum users are having a tough time trying to apply a screen protector to the thing. This is an issue that all phones with curved displays are susceptible to, but it’s even more pronounced on the Note 8 due to its ginormous size.

Here’s what some of you have had to say.

pasva007
11-01-2017 04:05 PM

“

After several attempts with tempered glass and film screen protectors, I give up. The curved screen seems to make it impossible for the screen protectors to adhere for any length of time. Aside from not adhering, the tempered glass screen protectors I’ve tried caused a significant reduction in response to the touchscreen. Looking at reviews, it doesn’t appear there is any screen protector for…

Reply

durandetto
11-01-2017 06:57 PM

“

I haven’t used a screen protector since the s8+ they make the experience with the phone unbearable. That and it was costing too much money trying to find one that worked. I do however have a little nick in the screen on the curve. It’s not really noticeable, but I know it’s there. Still not as bad as dealing with a crappy screen cover.

Reply

Morty2264
11-02-2017 10:23 AM

“

I understand what you are saying, OP. My phone has a curved screen too; which definitely affects the placement of the screen protector.

I would recommend a plastic one, as they are less expensive and wouldn’t set you as far back; but after going from plastic to tempered glass, myself, I definitely understand that you’d wanna stick with glass if anything.

How cautious are you with your…

Reply

bassjo
11-02-2017 08:09 PM

“

Yeah, I’ve been looking through it and have only seen lots of recommendations for the use of screen protectors… I got a screen protector at the Verizon store when I bought the phone and in two weeks the corner started to peel. I didn’t realize it was doing this until I noticed the lack of sensitivity when trying to drag the notification bar down. Since then I ripped it off and have rocked it…

Reply

If you’re rocking Samsung’s latest, we’d like to know – Are you using a screen protector with the Note 8?

Join the conversation in the forums!

Samsung Galaxy Note 8

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• Join our Galaxy Note 8 forums

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HTC’s VR arts program brings exhibits to your home

Virtual reality is arguably a good medium for art: it not only enables creativity that just isn’t possible if you stick to physical objects, it allows you to share pieces that would be difficult to appreciate staring at an ordinary computer screen. And HTC knows it. The company is launching Vive Arts, a “multi-million dollar” program that helps museums and other institutions fund, develop and share art in VR. And yes, this means apps you can use at home… including one that’s right around the corner.

The first project to officially arrive under the Vive Arts banner is Modigliani, a collaboration with London’s Tate Modern museum that will showcase its namesake artist’s work in VR. Once the exhibition opens on November 23rd, you’ll both get an “integrated” VR experience if you visit the museum and a Viveport app you can use in your den.

HTC is promising over a dozen art projects on launch, including team-ups with the UK’s Royal Academy of Arts, the French National Museum of Nature, the Newseum (for a Berlin Wall exhibit, shown above) and Taiwan’s National Palace Museum. Will this persuade you to get a VR headset? Probably not, at least not by itself — gaming and 360-degree video are still VR’s core uses right now. This helps make a stronger case for VR as a creative medium, though, and might just expand VR’s audience. Whatever HTC spends on Vive Arts might be worthwhile if it leads to greater acceptance of VR and a wave of first-time Vive headset buyers.

Source: Vive Arts