Anheuser-Busch placed an order for 40 Tesla Semis

Last month, Tesla unveiled what it likely hopes will be the future of the trucking industry, the Tesla Semi. The announcement generated a lot of excitement, but retailers appeared to be a bit hesitant to embrace Elon Musk’s latest offering. This is likely simply a result of the untested nature of electric trucks. That being said, Walmart and other retailers did make some purchases, and now the world’s largest beer brewer is getting in on the action.

Anheuser-Busch has announced that it has placed an order for 40 Tesla Semis, which is likely the largest order the product has seen to date. The brewery says that it believes the use of the Tesla Semi will help it reduce its carbon footprint and keep the roads safer, thanks to the autonomous driving features.

In terms of the environmental impact, Anheuser-Busch has a stated goal of reducing its carbon footprint by 30 percent by 2025 which it says would be “the equivalent of removing nearly 500,000 cars from the road globally each year.”

The company also said that it believes that self-driving and electric cars are the future of the trucking industry, and it wants to embrace these technologies early.

“We can’t wait to get these trucks on the road, and keep leading our industry forward to a greener, smarter future in partnership with some of the world’s most innovative companies,” Anheuser-Busch’s James Sembrot said. “This investment in Tesla semi-trucks helps us achieve these goals while improving road safety and lowering our environmental impact.”

Despite Anheuser-Busch’s investment, the future of the Tesla Semi is far from certain. Forbes points out that, in order to see long-term success, the Tesla Semi will need to prove it is economically feasible, and there are a few hurdles in the way of that achievement. One of the largest will be the truck’s carrying capacity. Tesla has said that it is capable of hauling a gross weight of 40 tons, but Forbes estimated that the truck’s battery could weigh as much as 7 tons on its own.

Regardless, the recent purchase from Anheuser-Busch shows that some companies are willing to give Tesla a fair shot. It remains to be seen if the Tesla Semi finds long-term success, but maybe you shouldn’t count Musk out just yet.

Editors’ Recommendations

• World’s largest retailer cautiously optimistic about Tesla’s electric big rig
• Tesla Roadster pictures: Get your car porn right here
• The Tesla Semi is now ready to (silently) conquer the freeway
• After months of speculation, Tesla to open a plant in Shanghai
• Tesla Model 3: Performance, specs, and news

The world’s first graphene running shoes are coming in 2018

Graphene is a relatively new material that has recently been used to make things better, whether it’s used in headphones, or to reduce battery charge times, or to desalinate and purify water. Now, we’re finally going to see graphene brought into the world of footwear and fitness. The University of Manchester has partnered up with British sportswear brand inov-8 to incorporate graphene into running shoes, and it’s the first company to ever do so. What’s even more amazing is that the kicks will officially be heading to the market some time in 2018.

These shoes have been tested in the laboratory, and the results show that the composite rubber outsoles are much stronger and more stretchy than traditional materials, making the shoes more resistant to wear and tear. This new kind of rubber, which has been developed with the National Graphene Institute at The University of Manchester, means that off-road runners and fitness athletes will no longer have to compromise the need for grip. There is a degree of stretch, durability and traction with these new shoes that has never been seen before in footwear.

“When added to the rubber used in inov-8’s G-Series shoes, graphene imparts all its properties, including its strength,” university reader Dr. Aravind Vijayaraghavan said in a recent statement, as reported by Tech Crunch. “Our unique formulation makes these outsoles 50-percent stronger, 50-percent more stretchy and 50-percent more resistant to wear than the corresponding industry standard rubber without graphene.”

Even though it is technically the thinnest material in the world, graphene is simultaneously the strongest material ever measured. It is 200 times stronger than steel, and at the same time incredibly flexible. The material can be twisted, stretched and folded without causing any kind of damage.

“Product innovation is the number-one priority for our brand,” inov-8 CEO Ian Bailey said. “It’s the only way we can compete against the major sports brands. The pioneering collaboration between inov-8 and the The University of Manchester puts us — and Britain — at the forefront of a graphene sports footwear revolution. And this is just the start, as the potential of graphene really is limitless. We are so excited to see where this journey will take us.”

Editors’ Recommendations

• The easiest way to take graphene into the third dimension? Use a laser on it
• Like your whisky straight, no color? Graphene turns aged spirit transparent
• Great balls of graphene: New Samsung tech could charge phones five times faster
• These hiking boots will keep you surefooted even on the gnarliest of hikes
• Challenge outdoor rock or indoor plastic in the best climbing shoes you can buy

‘MechWarrior 5’ will revolve around co-op and user mods

Piranha Games is starting to open up on what MechWarrior 5: Mercernaries will entail after a year of teasing, and it’s good news if you don’t always want to play alone. The robot battler should launch in December 2018 with co-op play as a central feature — up to four players can take on the game’s central campaign. Your friends stand in for the AI teammates in your unit, which could be helpful when you absolutely need someone watching your back.

The title will also make a big deal of mod support through Steam Workshop, letting you tailor your own missions, planets and other aspects of the game. Not surprisingly, the game mostly hinges on running your own mercenary company. And if you’re wondering: yes, there’s a good chance the Clans play a role. The game starts in MechWarrior’s 3015 timeframe and lasts for about 35 years, or right as the Clan invasion is in full swing.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about MW5, but for many its mere existence is important. It’s the first MechWarrior game with a single-player mode in over 15 years, and the first new game in the series for over 4 years. For some, it isn’t so much a sequel as it is a return to the franchise’s roots.

Via: PC Gamer

Source: Piranha Games (YouTube), MechWarrior 5

New ‘Ready Player One’ trailer reveals more of the real-world story

The initial trailer for Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Ready Player One focused on the virtual world of OASIS, and for understandable reasons: it’s a visual showcase for a crucial part of the story. However, Warner Bros. wants to remind you that reality plays an important part as well. It just posted a new trailer that dives deeper into the real-world story, even as it makes a few extra nods to video game nostalgia.

As with Ernest Cline’s book, the story centers on Wade Watts and his bid to win James Halliday’s Easter Egg hunt, which promises both half a trillion dollars and (more importantly) control of OASIS. That, in turn, leads to an ideological battle — Wade and fellow competitor Art3mis are racing to find all the clues before the megacorporation IOI gets them and exploits OASIS for profit. Wade is effectively drafted into a resistance movement, and his moves will have consequences in both VR and real life.

There aren’t quite as many tributes to digital culture as in the first trailer, but there are a few pleasant surprises — there’s even a certain iconic Overwatch character that shows up. It’s hard to say if Ready Player One will live up to the rapidly mounting hype when it premieres on March 30th. However, the trailer shows that Spielberg and crew are aware that clever references and dazzling visuals aren’t enough to carry the movie.

Oh, and there’s one more thing: Cline revealed in a livestream (shortly after the 27-minute mark) that he’s writing a sequel to Ready Player One. He has precious few details, but he noted that Spielberg’s movie helped jumpstart his work on a follow-up. Even if the movie falls flat, you’ll have something to look forward to.

Source: Warner Bros. (YouTube), Ready Player One (Facebook)

Apple’s director of A.I. gives more insight into the company’s self-driving cars

Of all the tech and automotive companies working on self-driving cars, Apple might be the most secretive. So far, the Cupertino company has been relatively quiet regarding its plans for autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence, but a recent article in Wired gives some insight into the tech giant’s plans.

Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Apple’s head of A.I., addressed roughly 200 people at an event held during the Neural Information Processing Systems in Long Beach, California. One of the main topics he touched upon was a recently released study documenting Apple’s advances in using lidars (3D scanners) to help self-driving cars identify pedestrians and cyclists.

There were a few other topics that he discussed as well. One was a piece of software designed to help identify cars, pedestrians, and roadways, based on data obtained from car-mounted cameras. He showed off some images showcasing the software’s ability to function even in the rain. It was also able to detect pedestrians that were partially obscured behind parked cars.

Salakhutdinov cited the above technology as an example of how far A.I. and machine learning has came in recent years.

“If you asked me five years ago, I would be very skeptical of saying ‘Yes you could do that,’” he said.

SLAM stands for simultaneous localization and mapping, and it refers to technology that helps give robots and self-driving cars a “kind of sense of direction.” In addition to self-driving cars, SLAM also has potential applications in the fields of augmented reality, and in designing maps of cities and landscapes.

During the course of the conversation, Salakhutdinov discussed a fourth technology that uses car-mounted sensors to create 3D maps of roadways, complete with features such as traffic lights and other road markings.

One thing that was not made clear during this event was how exactly these efforts work together to help bring Apple’s vision of self-driving cars to fruition. Salakhutdinov gave out plenty of puzzle pieces, but at the moment it is unclear how the puzzle fits together. That being said, it is clear that Apple is hard at work developing the technology to help self-driving cars operate safely.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Apple fires an engineer over daughter’s iPhone X video
• 29-year company vet takes the reins as Nikon Inc.’s Americas region president
• Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson climbs aboard the Hyperloop
• Huawei’s new facial-recognition technology could be better than Apple’s Face ID
• Vine creator says he’s working on a follow-up to the original video looper

How to send large files for free

Need to transfer a something hefty to somebody over the internet, but don’t know how to send large files online? We’ve got your back. Large file transfers can be done in a few different ways, so we’ve put together this guide to cover the simplest, most effective, and most secure methods.

No matter what you’re trying to send, the techniques listed below will help you get the job done without paying a dime. Here’s how to send large files for free.

Compress files before sending

Regardless of how you choose to send your file, making it smaller will only help in terms of storage. File compression will not only shrink whatever you’re trying to send, but it’ll make the transfer go faster regardless of which method you’re using — be it email, FTP, or cloud storage. The same goes for smartphone users too.

Most computers come with file compression utilities built in, too, so making a ZIP file only takes a few clicks. Here’s how it’s done.

Windows
Mac
Find the file you want to compress
Find the file you want to compress
Right click on it and select “Send to”
Two-finger click/control+click on the file
Choose “Compressed (zipped) folder”
Select “Compress … [file name]”

If you’re transferring music or video, we suggest using RAR compression instead of ZIP because it uses a better compression algorithm that generally cuts down on data loss and file corruption. We recommend using 7-Zip for this, as the open-source file archivist is one of the best currently available.

Upload to a Cloud storage service

The best, and most popular, option for transferring large files is to upload them to an online storage service where your desired recipient can download them. Thanks to the rise of cloud computing, there are a zillion of these types of services, so we’ve taken the time to pick out some of the best ones for you.

Below you’ll find a quick list of our current favorites, all of which offer plenty of storage space, security, and sharing features. We won’t get into specifics on how to use each program, but will instead provide quick descriptions to help you find a service that suits your needs.

Google Drive

Google Drive offers up to 15GB of free storage and allows you to share large files, such as pictures and video, in just a few clicks. It even has backup and syncing options which are useful features to have.

If you’ve already got a Gmail account, you can’t beat the simplicity of Drive, as it’s effectively built right into the email service. You can ‘attach’ files to emails that are stored on your drive account in order to share them, just by clicking the Google Drive logo in the email composition window.

Upgrading to the paid version of Drive also nets you 100GB of storage for $2 per month, or a full terabyte of storage — that’s 1,000GB — for $10. There’s also a 10TB option for $100 a month and larger packages beyond that if you plan to share a lot of big files.

Dropbox

Most often compared to Google Drive, Dropbox is another great cloud storage option that offers 2GB of free storage space and a variety of sharing options. The basic suite of features is more or less the same as Google Drive, but Dropbox also offers a mobile app for non-Android and iOS devices, such as the the Kindle Fire and Blackberry.

You can expand your own storage options in a few interesting ways, but premium accounts are also available. $10 a month gets you a Plus account with a terabyte of space, while $20 a month gives you a few advanced features along with advanced sharing controls, including the ability to set passwords and create expiring links.

OneDrive

Microsoft’s OneDrive service has seen significant upgrade and renovation over the years, making it one of the more competitive solutions for storing files and folders online. With its shared folder system, you can share anything you want at any time and stop doing so at the click of a button when you’re done. A free package nets you five gigabytes of free storage, while $2 a month bumps that to 50GB. The $7  a month package increases that to a terabyte and gives you the cheapest avenue to increase your daily file sharing limit.

Box

Box has a little more of a business-slant than some of the other offerings in this section. While that doesn’t mean it lacks features applicable to individuals and has a free storage offering and affordable packages, to access its file and folder sharing features you will need to buy into a Business account, which requires a minimum of three users. Each will cost $15 a month.

Files and folders shared over those accounts can be password protected though, so that’s a useful security feature that makes Box a great choice for those concerned about the privacy and security of their data.

MediaFire

MediaFire offers 20GB of free storage and boasts incredibly simple sharing tools. In 2014, the 200MB cap on individual file uploads was upgraded to a whopping 10GB, so even large files can be uploaded with no issues. You can also land a 1TB for $3.75 a month.

WeTransfer

At this point, we’re basically just giving you a laundry list of different options that perform the same service. WeTransfer is free and it allows users to send files up to 2GB without even registering their name or email address, with a host of added features.

For those who don’t mind spending a little to get a little more, WeTransfer also offers a $12 a month “Plus” package which lets you send up to 20GB at a time and store up to 100GB on its servers. It also enables password protection on shared folders.

The Christmas Island annual crab migration is coming to Google Street View

Every year, tens of millions of red crabs embark on an annual migration across Christmas Island in Australia, from their burrows in the forest to the coast, where they breed and release eggs into the sea. It’s a spectacular sight, lasting two weeks or so, and the annual event draws tourists from around the world.

For the first time ever, you’ll be able to experience this amazing natural event yourself on Google Street View in the coming year. As Google recently posted on its blog, Dr. Alasdair Grigg of Parks Australia will be recording images of this yearly trek using the Street View Trekker.

It’s an arduous process, as swarms of the tiny critters fill the roads, pathways, and beaches of Christmas Island. The tourism board estimates there are 50 million crabs on the island, and they outnumber humans 300,000 to 1.

The crabs have the right of way, and care needs to be taken with every step. The government has even built bridges across major thoroughfares for the crabs, to ensure they arrive at their destination safely.

Grigg told CNET that he wants the Street View project to educate people around the world about this extraordinary annual event.

“We hope people can get a taste of the magnificent nature and the red crab migration through the eyes of the Google Trekker,” Grigg said. “We also hope they are inspired to appreciate the world-class conservation values of the Island”

The crabs spend most of their lives in burrows, staying out of the sunlight and conserving moisture for their annual marathon scuttle. Once the tides, rains, and moon cycle are in alignment, they emerge and begin their march to the coast to spawn and lay eggs in the sand.

Over the past few years, the Google Street View Gallery has explored some of the most remote places on Earth, joining thousands of sheep in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic, exploring Macchu Picchu in the Andes, and visiting the rim of a volcanic lake in Australia. The tech giant has even partnered with NASA for a tour of the International Space Station.

Google says you’ll be able to experience this spectacular phenomenon yourself with imagery from the Christmas Island collection in early 2018.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Wool you look at that: Sheep-powered Google Street View now live
• Google and Aclima show you how bad air pollution in California can be
• Google Home Mini review
• Explore our solar system with Google’s new maps of Pluto, Venus, and more
• A.I. predicts how you vote by looking at where you live on Google Street View

Qualcomm’s crazy new Snapdragon chips are a lot more than just faster

It’s almost hard to believe that in under a century, computers have advanced from occupying hundreds of square feet, to fitting into the palm of your hand. Even wilder is that the tiny machinery in a smartphone can process far more data, far more quickly than the behemoths of old. Don’t spend too much time marveling at the advances of the past, however, because the future is only going to get more wild. Among the most exciting things coming to smartphones soon is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845, a mighty chip that will enable the next generation of mobile devices to do miraculous things.

Qualcomm showed off the Snapdragon 845 — the successor to its already popular and powerful Snapdragon 835 — at its Snapdragon Technology Summit in December, and it boasts a suite of remarkable features. First, the technical details: The Snapdragon 845 sports a Kyro 385 central processing unit (CPU), with eight cores and a clock speed of up to 2.8GHz, and an Adreno 630 graphics processing unit (GPU).

A Snapdragon 845 device can take pictures with far more shades of color.

For virtual and augmented reality, the 845 supports room-scale tracking to render immersive environments, accurate hand tracking, and “Adreno foveation,” which detects the specific area you are looking at and renders it in more vivid detail (this last feature looks nice, and allocates resources more efficiently).

Shutterbugs (professional or otherwise) will probably love the incredible capturing capabilities of the 845. The chipset supports high dynamic range (HDR) playback, as well as HDR recording. This means you can take photos with far more data in them. For example, instead of capturing 256 shades of a primary color with 8 bits, the Snapdragon’s 10-bit color palette offers over a thousand. Instead of the Rec. 709 color standard, which contains 16 million colors, the Snapdragon 845 supports the Rec. 2020 standard, which encompasses more than one billion colors.

If you like shooting video, the Snapdragon 845 also supports filming 720p video at 480fps. The chip can also create cinemagraphs, still photographs in which certain portions are animated.

Of course, the chipset is largely about potential. It will be up to smartphone manufacturers to take advantage of the 845’s robust suite of features.

David Cogen — a regular contributor here at Digital Trends — runs TheUnlockr, a popular tech blog that focuses on tech news, tips and tricks, and the latest tech. You can also find him on Twitter discussing the latest tech trends.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Meet the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, the power behind next-gen phones
• Tune in here for Qualcomm’s December 5 Snapdragon Technology Summit keynote
• Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 keeps your next phone more secure than ever
• Qualcomm unveils a new chipset and 5G reference design at an event in Hong Kong
• Sony Xperia XZ1 review

Common Moto G5 problems and how to fix them

Having issues with your Moto G5 or G5 Plus? We’re here to help.

The Moto G5 and G5 Plus continue Motorola’s dominance in the budget segment, but like all phones, they’re not without their share of issues. Whether it’s erratic Wi-Fi connectivity, issues with the camera, or troubles with the bundled TurboCharger, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong with either device. Thankfully, you can usually rely on a workaround to solve the issues.

Here are some of the common problems affecting the Moto G5 and G5 Plus, and potential fixes.

Wi-Fi issues

There’s a Wi-Fi issue on a few Moto G5 and G5 Plus units wherein the phones routinely disconnect from Wi-Fi networks and reconnect after a few minutes. The issue isn’t limited to one region, as customers in India, UK, and the U.S. seem to be affected by the bug.

A fix rolled out by Motorola has fixed the problem for a few users, but if you’re still facing issues with Wi-Fi connectivity, you can try a few workarounds:

• Forget your Wi-Fi network: Go to Settings > Wi-Fi and select your home Wi-Fi network. Hit the Forget button to remove your network from the phone. Manually add the network again.
• Reset network settings: If removing and adding your Wi-Fi network didn’t solve the issue, then try resetting the network settings.

Finicky auto-brightness

A few G5 and G5 Plus units seem to have issues adjusting the screen’s brightness based on the lighting conditions. If your unit isn’t automatically reducing or boosting the brightness automatically, try tweaking the display settings.

Head to Settings > Display > Brightness level and disable Adaptive Brightness. Then try turning it back on and see if it fixes the issue.

Camera launch issues

Camera issues seem to be a common theme with Moto G devices, with the G5 and G5 Plus regularly seeing camera crashes during initialization. The easiest way to fix the issue is by restarting the camera, but if the camera is constantly crashing, you can also try clearing the cache.

Go to Settings > Apps > Camera > Storage > Clear Data, clean out the cache of the camera and start it up again to see if it works. Clearing out the cache seems to have fixed the issue for a majority of users, but if you’re still seeing constant crashes, see if a third-party app is to blame by booting into Safe Mode.

To do so, press and hold the power button until you see the Power off message. Then press and hold the Power off window until you see a Reboot to Safe Mode option. Hit OK, and your device will boot into Safe Mode. Launch the camera from here, and see if it crashes. If it doesn’t, then you’ll have to see which third-party app is interfering with the camera. If the camera is continuing to crash, then you’ll have to undertake a factory reset.

Running out of storage

Based on your region, your Moto G5 or G5 Plus may come with a paltry 16GB of storage. Thankfully, both phones offer a dedicated microSD card slot that can accommodate cards up to 128GB in size. You’ll be able to move your media files and photos — as well as a few apps — to the SD card, freeing up precious internal storage.

Looking for a microSD card? Here are our favorites!

All Motorola phones come with two years’ worth of free original-size uploads to Google Photos, and there’s no reason to not take up the offer. Offloading photos to a cloud storage service is one of the easiest ways to save space on your phone.

If you’re still routinely running low on storage, you should just uninstall apps you don’t use often. You can also try clearing the cache frequently to free up some space on your G5 or G5 Plus. Google’s Files Go comes in handy in such a scenario.

TurboCharging troubles

Several users in the Lenovo forums are having issues with lengthy charging times with the Moto G5 Plus even after using the bundled TurboPower charger. The Moto G5 Plus comes with an 18W wall unit that charges the phone in an hour and forty-five minutes. You’ll see a notification on the home screen that says TurboCharging when you plug in the charger.

One line in Motorola’s marketing materials in particular seems to be causing a lot of confusion: The included TurboPower charger provides up to 6 hours of battery life with just a quick 15-minute charge.

That line doesn’t mean you’ll be able to play games for six hours after charging your phone for 15 minutes. What Motorola is trying to say is that you can get up to six hours’ worth of usage — including a lot of standby time, a few calls, and some web browsing — with a quick 15-minute top up. That statement only holds up when your battery life is 15% or lower, and that’s because of the way fast charging works.

Fast charging delivers higher voltages initially and peters out as the battery starts filling up.

Fast charging delivers a higher voltage to your phone, and as a result you’ll see the battery charging up quickly initially — it takes just about an hour to charge the Moto G5 Plus from 5% to 80%. It takes another 45 minutes to get from 80% to the 100% mark, and that’s because as the battery charges up, the controller starts regulating the power to normal levels.

Think of it this way: initially, the charger delivers 18W of charge, but as the battery hits its saturation levels, the power management regulator cuts back on the charge delivered to avoid overcharging.

This is the way all phones charge. The 3500mAh battery on my Galaxy S8+ also takes two hours to charge, and the initial 80% gets finished in about an hour. This isn’t an issue isolated to the Moto G5 Plus — in fact, Motorola’s fast charging standard is one of the better solutions out there.

That said, if you’re unable to see the TurboCharging icon when you connect your Moto G5 to the wall unit, you should either get a new wall charger direct from Motorola or get another unit.

VoLTE woes

Amassing over 200 million customers in just over a year, India’s Jio has become the world’s largest data network. The carrier is also the only one that’s currently offering VoLTE in India.

The Moto G5 and G5 Plus offer VoLTE out of the box, but it looks like there was a software bug that prevented a few customers from being able to access the service. If you do not see VoLTE with your Jio SIM, you can try inserting a secondary SIM in your phone in the SIM 1 slot. If you’re using another SIM card along with your Jio number, try switching the positions of the SIM cards and restarting the device.

Other issues

What problems are you having with the Moto G5 or G5 Plus? Let us know in the comments below.

Moto G5

• Moto G5 Plus review
• Moto G5 Specs
• Top 10 things to know about the Moto G5 + G5 Plus
• Moto G5 Plus vs Moto G4 Plus
• Join our Moto G5 forums!

See at Amazon

Updated December 2017 with new workarounds for camera-related issues.

From the Editor’s Desk: A great time to re-evaluate 2017’s best phones

For many of us, December is the time to buy a new phone.

Whether for ourselves or as a gift, the holiday season presents a good opportunity to get a new device with all of the discounts being handed around. And as such, it’s a great time to re-evaluate where 2017’s top phones rank. Obviously the newer phones released later in the year will compare favorably to those from the first quarter, but at the same time those early phones deserve to still be considered — many have received deep discounts, and aged well.

The “new” phones are pretty easy to evaluate at this point. We’re just getting out of the honeymoon period with the Pixel 2 and 2 XL, but it’s clear what we have. The Pixel 2 offers fantastic value at $649 with its amazing camera, solid (though unspectacular) hardware and great software experience. The Pixel 2 XL, on the other hand, is a bit tougher to recommend at $849 with an arguably worse screen and an otherwise identical experience.

It feels like the Galaxy Note 8 has had a relatively calm couple months on the market, and that’s probably a good thing from Samsung’s perspective. Its amazing similarities to the Galaxy S8+ and super-high price tempered some of the excitement, and it seems like all but diehard Note fans are content looking for something cheaper. The phone’s ridiculously powerful, beautiful and capable, but does it really justify its near-$1000 price? Using one the past few days again, I can’t say it necessarily does. The LG V30 still lives in the shadow of the Galaxy S8+, even though it’s a newer phone — its price hasn’t dropped much, its cameras are a side-grade from the G6 unless you primarily shoot video, and you can easily say the Galaxy S8+ is a better buy.

It’s the phones released earlier in the year that deserve some renewed attention. Even though they’re “old” they’re still valid choices and ones all of the retailers and carriers are still pushing several months later. The LG G6 pretty quickly fell off the radar after launch, but is still a good phone, and more so today with ample price cuts. Sure the specs aren’t toe-to-toe with the latest phones, and the display is definitely a weak point. But the phone’s hardware has held up, has a nice overall size and those dual rear cameras are great. The LG G6 is only $399 from Amazon right now — one hell of a phone for that price.

The Galaxy S8 and S8+ have come back up around their original MSRPs after price cuts through the summer, but you can’t blame Samsung for this approach. For as far as it’s concerned, these are still its flagships and the Note 8 didn’t really introduce enough new to make the GS8 and S8+ feel old in any way. The Galaxy S8 is a great phone that’s actually compact and pretty easy to use in one hand, and the GS8+ actually manages to justify its price with good battery life and a comparatively low price with the Note 8 above it.

How about a couple of those middle-ground releases? The HTC U11 had its time to shine when it was released between all of the other big names, and is still quietly a great pickup at $649 (typically $599 with a coupon). It doesn’t do anything spectacular, but it does everything you expect really well — and it just isn’t in the news much because there isn’t any issue with it that needs addressed. On the other side of the coin, I still get a massive number of questions about my thoughts on the Essential Phone now that it has picked up a few dozen substantial software updates and a price drop to $499. Yup, it’s actually a pretty good phone right now at that price. It’s a shame it had such a horrendous launch (and honestly, it deserved it at the time) that marred its image.

Oh yeah, Motorola released a bunch of phones. I was not excited or inspired by a single one. The Moto X4 is a good phone, especially as a device to bring Android One to the U.S. and a mid-range option to Project Fi. One of the myriad Moto G5 variants is still a go-to phone in the sub-$300 range, but it’s not something anyone actually gets thrilled by.

So there’s my lighting round hot take of the big names of the year. Agree? Disagree? I want to hear from you in the comments. And with that, a few other random thoughts on the week:

• I’m enjoying our “gift guide” series where each of us here at AC list our top tech of the year. It’s one of the times we can talk about tech outside of just the Android world.
• I plan on writing up a second-take review on the Galaxy Note 8 soon. It’s a phone that’s worth revisiting after a couple months.
• Same goes for the Essential Phone. I want to get some final thoughts (again) on the phone. It’s clearly a different device and a new value proposition now than it was when I first reviewed it
• For the record, I’m not jealous of Daniel Bader’s week spent in Hawaii. Not at all.

Another week of Android ahead!

-Andrew