Where to buy the LG G6 in the U.S.

You can now buy the LG G6 in the U.S.

Updated December 2017: This post was last updated with new pricing and the latest offers from U.S. carriers and retailers.

One of our favorite phones of 2017 so far is now available on American shores. The big four U.S. carriers have started selling the LG G6. Here’s how much you’ll be paying.

Buy the LG G6 from Verizon

Verizon is offering the G6 for $22 per month for 24 months with $0 down, which equals $528 when you’re finished paying the phone off. Oddly, the device is also available for $672 if you’re paying the full retail price, in black and platinum colors.

See at Verizon

Buy the LG G6 from AT&T

AT&T has the same two colors available for $19.50 per month for 30 months, which equals $585. The phone is also available for $584.99 if you’d like to pay the full cost up front.

See at AT&T

Buy the LG G6 from Sprint

Over on Sprint, it’s $20 monthly on Sprint’s Flex 18-month lease (totaling $360), or $480 on Sprint’s Unlimited outright. Those that get the phone on Sprint Flex can

See at Sprint

Buy the LG G6 from T-Mobile

T-Mobile has one of the better deals for the LG G6 right now: $20 down and $20 per month for 24 months, or the same $500 outright.

See at T-Mobile

Buy the LG G6 from other retailers

B&H Photo has the U.S. unlocked G6 (LG-US997) available for $599.99, as does Amazon for the same price. Best Buy has it for $699.99 but it should get a price drop shortly.

The LG G6 is also one of the newest Amazon Prime exclusive phones, available with lockscreen ads for about $600 at the time of writing. Amazon also has the LG G6+, which is the same as the standard G6 but with 128GB of storage (up from 32GB) and a more powerful DAC. At the time of writing, the Amazon Prime version of the G6+ is available for $500, even cheaper than the standard G6.

LG G6 at Amazon

LG G6+ at Amazon

Picking up a G6? Hit the comments and let us know!

LG G6

• LG G6 review!
• LG G6 specs
• LG G6 vs. Google Pixel: The two best cameras right now
• Everything you need to know about the G6’s cameras
• LG forums

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Android 8.0 Oreo with ‘Stock+ UI’ coming to Axon 7 in April 2018

Don’t expect any Oreo updates until April.

The ZTE Axon 7 was one of 2016’s best mid-rangers, and earlier this month, it was confirmed that the phone would be updated to Android 8.0 Oreo at some point in 2018. Since then, ZTE Germany has taken to its official forums with a more precise time frame of when to expect the update.

According to ZTE, the Axon 7 will get the Oreo update in April of 2018. Having to wait four more months for Oreo certainly isn’t ideal, but then again, it could be worse.

In addition to this, ZTE also says that the update will bring “our new Stock +UI.” We aren’t sure exactly what this will entail, but the name suggests that the software experience will be a lot closer to what’s found on stock Android. ZTE’s custom Android skins have never been particularly bad, but you’ll never find us complaining about OEMs taking a lighter approach to Android customization.

If you’ve still got an Axon 7, what would you like to see with Stock+ UI?

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

Huawei’s Mate 10 flagship may launch on AT&T in February

Chinese phone makers rarely get top billing in the US, but that might change in a matter of weeks. Sources speaking to The information have claimed that Huawei has scored a previously rumored deal to offer its Mate 10 flagship through AT&T in February — the first time Huawei has ever sold a phone through a major American carrier “for its main service,” the insiders said. It’ll reportedly have some “technical adjustments” based on US standards (most likely network frequency support), but it would largely be the handset you first saw in October.

The tipsters indicated that this was really part of a bigger strategy to not only gain acceptance in the US, but to take on Huawei’s biggest competitors, and Apple in particular. While Huawei hasn’t needed American customers to become a powerhouse, it believes that it needs to succeed in the US if it’s going to challenge Apple in the high-end smartphone world beyond technological oneupmanship. And if it wants any chance of that, it has to strike deals with big carriers and understand American tastes. The sources said that Huawei’s US staff has been quietly scouting stores to gauge buyer habits, and Huawei consumer electronics head Richard Yu has publicly announced plans to spend $100 million in advertising to raise awareness.

If the leak is accurate (neither company has confirmed the launch), Huawei will likely face an uphill battle. Never mind the latent distrust some may have for Chinese companies — it’s brand recognition that’s most likely to hurt the Mate 10’s chances. Many Americans haven’t even heard of Huawei, let alone its history in smartphones. Even Google’s Pixel line hasn’t managed to seriously challenge the dominance of Apple and Samsung despite a familiar name, a major carrier deal and a massive marketing campaign. A February launch might not help, either, as the Mate 10 could be quickly overshadowed by the Galaxy S9.

There’s also the matter of software. Yu said that Huawei would better integrate Assistant and other Google services in US devices, but there’s no denying that its software is skewed toward a Chinese audience where Google services don’t exist and you don’t always see Android staples like the app drawer. Yu has reportedly declared in company-only messages that some of Huawei’s software decisions were “stupid,” and that’s not good news for a tech giant that needs to give you clear reason to switch from your iPhone or Galaxy. The Mate 10 launch may give Huawei a foothold in the US, but it could take years before its brand and its hardware are strong enough to make Apple or Samsung feel nervous.

Source: The Information

Sony’s A7R III mirrorless can take anything you throw at it

On paper, Sony’s $3,200 full-frame mirrorless Alpha A7R III is a beast. With an ultra-high-res 42.4-megapixel sensor that can shoot bursts at 10 fps, you can capture landscape photos one day and sports the next. It also handles video like a boss, recording 4K without line skipping, and super-slo-mo 1080p at 120 fps. To find out if the performance measured up with the specs, I took it for a week-long spin with high expectations, and can report that the A7R III is the real deal — provided you get to know it, first.

Handling

I own a first-gen Sony A7S and have access to an A7R II, so it’s interesting to see how the A7 series has evolved. The A7R III is certainly larger than the last model, but it’s not that much heavier (657 compared to 625 grams) and the extra size has made everything better.

Borrowing from the more expensive A9, the A7R III has a beefier, deeper handle, something that might convince (some) Canon or Nikon pros to consider it. As some reviews have pointed out, though, it’s a bit too close to the lens mount, making it hard to grasp the camera with gloves on.

There are manual controls for everything on this camera, and the buttons and dials are largely the same as on the A7R II — except for two major changes. The first is the addition of a touchscreen, which is dedicated to changing the focus region with just a tap. The other is a joystick, which offers more convenient focus point adjustments when you have your eye to the electronic viewfinder (EVF).

Speaking of, the EVF is both larger and has a higher resolution than the A7R III’s predecessors. It’s also impressively fast, though that’s something to be expected on a high-end mirrorless camera nowadays.

The bigger body allows a bigger battery with over twice the capacity of the last model, meaning you won’t be sweating battery life (as much) on a shoot. However, you still get just 650 shots max compared to 1,840 on the A7R III’s biggest rival, the $3,300, 45.7-megapixel Nikon D850.

AOL/Steve

The A7R III now has two SD card slots, compared to one on the A7R. Only the bottom slot supports UHS-II, for some reason, but at least there’s finally UHS-II support. To best try out high-bandwidth 4K, I purchased a 128 GB UHS-II card, and let me tell you, those things are expensive (around $150 for the Lexar model I got).

One of the perks of the A7 series is a full complement of ports, including headphone, microphone, HDMI, flash sync and micro-B USB. The A7R III ups the ante with a USB type-C connector, which can not only be used for speedy transfers, but charging as well — handy for tethered photography (the micro USB port also supports charging). Having both standards is a welcome change for Sony, which hasn’t always been so forward-looking with ports.

Sony’s menu system has always been confusing and while the A7R III is less of a mess, the sheer number of functions makes it easy to forget where things are. Luckily, you can program most everything you need into the four buttons (C1 to C4) or use the three Recall settings on the main control dial to change a wide range of things at once. To avoid any disasters during a shoot, you’d do well to learn the menus ahead of time and pre-program any functions you use often.

Shooting and image quality

The Sony A7R III uses the same sensor and has the same 42.4-megapixel count as its predecessor. As you’d expect, then, image quality is pretty much the same, which is to say, excellent. Thanks to new circuitry, though, you can gather those shots a lot quicker at 10 fps with the mechanical or electronic shutter. That’s actually faster than the lower-resolution A9, which shoots 5 fps in regular shutter mode (albeit 20 fps with the electronic shutter).

You’re less likely to get out-of-focus shots, too, as Sony has drastically increased the number of autofocus contrast detection points from 25 to 425 (both cameras have 399 phase-detection points). With new circuitry as well, Sony says the A7R III focuses twice as fast as the A7R II.

In the real world, the difference is obvious. Using the center-spot AF, focus is dead accurate nearly 100 percent of the time. The “Lock On” mode, which lets you track anything that moves, manages to keep focus unless something passes in front of the subject.

RAW images are now captured at 14 bits instead of 12 and Sony has increased the dynamic range as well. That means you can crank up the ISO levels a bit more, because dark parts of an image are less noisy at higher ISOs. At the same time, its NR filters do a good job of smoothing any grain you do get.

For me, shooting night scenes at ISO 12,800 resulted in good images, and usable ones at 32,000 to 64,000 ISO. That allowed me to get images like one below, shot at 32,000 ISO, that might have been blurry at a lower sensitivity.

Sony’s A7S II is still the low-light champ, especially for video, because it squeezes a quarter the resolution (12.2 megapixels) into the same size sensor. On the other hand, the A7R III keeps getting better at handling low light, and if you reduce an image from 42.4- down to 12.2-megapixels, that’s going to substantially reduce the appearance of noise, too.

AOL/Steve Dent

Sony promised and has delivered on better JPEG images too, with more true-to-life color accuracy and less aggressive sharpening than before. I tend to shoot both RAW and JPEG images to have a backup, and for one particular photo, I was comfortable using a JPEG in place of a glitched RAW image.

Early reviews of the A7R III indicated that it didn’t work with Sony’s PlayMemories smartphone app, but Sony seems to have fixed that issue — it worked fine for me. The app lets you connect to the the camera via NFC, WiFi and Bluetooth, see a live view, change settings like f-stop and aperture, and trigger photo or video capture. You can also transfer images from the memory card to the app. PlayMemories has always been clunky and connecting to the camera can be a pain, as its meager 2.2 iOS app store rating shows. (It has a much better 3.8 score on Google Play.)

Video

With 8-bit (16.8 million colors), Sony’s A7R III may not support 10-bit video and a billion colors like Panasonic’s GH5, but it’s still arguably the best full-frame, mirrorless camera for video on the market. There are two 4K shooting modes: One at full-frame with some line-skipping, and the other that uses APS-C cropping with a full sensor readout. The latter produces a better image if you peep close, but if you want full-frame depth-of-field, you’ll have to settle for slightly more noise and moire. Personally, I could barely see the difference.

Continuous focus worked very well on the A7R III, locking solidly on subjects in decent light. It was less accurate in dim illumination, but the results were still acceptable. Focus speeds when shooting video are also very fast, as shown in the video below. Suffice to say, it’s much better than my A7S, so Sony has made some big improvements over the last three years.

All the 4K video I shot in dim, drizzly conditions at 100 Mbps in standard mode was sharp with rich, accurate colors. If you’d rather sort out colors in post-production, you can shoot in the neutral S-log 2 mode, included with the A7R III for free (Sony used to charge for it). Sony also offers a new shooting mode called Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) that’s also found on the Panasonic GH5. That saves metadata so you can easily create HDR-ready video.

As before, Sony gives video shooters both microphone and headphone inputs, audio levels, histograms and pretty much everything else you need. The five-axis in-body stabilization, coupled with lens stabilization, makes handheld video about as steady as it can possibly be. The extra heft also helps in this regard, I find. Overall, the A7R III is about as close a pro video camcorder as you’re going to get in a mirrorless camera.

Wrap-up

AOL/Steve Dent

For someone like me who shoots my own photos and video, the Sony A7R III is an awesome, multi-pronged tool. Yes, it should be for $3,200, but just a couple of years ago it would have been hard to believe that a camera with nearly medium-format resolution could be so good at video, too. On top of that, the A7R III is so unbelievably fast, both in frame rate and autofocus speeds, that it’s even feasible to use it for action or spots.

Its only real rival is the superb Nikon D850, and which you choose may depend on whether you prefer mirrorless or DSLR. DP Review called them “genuinely two of the best cameras the world has ever seen.”

With a new battery, touchscreen and joystick, and USB-C port, Sony has solved many of the problems of its predecessors. The result is a camera that not only shoots great images and video, but also handles extremely well.

It still has some work to do on its clunky PlayMemories app and sprawling menu system, but if you take a few hours to set it up, you can mostly avoid diving into the menus altogether. Otherwise, the A7R III is the best camera, mirrorless or otherwise, that Sony has ever made. In fact, it so good that it may give a lot of Alpha A9 buyers pause.

Human Go champion backtracks on vow to never face an AI opponent again

Back in May, AlphaGo from Google, an AI algorithm that is part of DeepMind, defeated the human world champion Ke Jie in a three-part match. After it was over, Jie vowed never to play a computer again. But apparently something has changed his mind because Chinese news sources report that Jie will once again play an artificial intelligence at an AI tournament to be held in China in April 2018.

Ke Jie is one of the tournament’s ambassadors, and he will play against the AI Tianrang. Normally, a human representative places pieces on behalf of the AI, but in this case, a robotic arm developed by Fuzhou University will fulfill that role. Tianrang previously ascended to the semi-finals of Japan’s AI Go tournament, called AI Ryusei, earlier this month. Tencent’s AI was the ultimate winner of that tournament.

The complement of AI competitors for the Chinese tournament are Tianrang (Shanghai), DeepZenGo (Japan), CGI (Taipai) and more. Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo has since retired from competition, so it will not be playing in the tournament.

Via: BBC

Source: NetEase

Snapchat Stories may be coming to the web

Snapchat may have a new way to fight Facebook’s me-too efforts: make Stories available beyond its mobile app. A Cheddar source has claimed that Snap is working on Stories Everywhere, which (surprise) would make Stories available on the web and other apps. It’s reportedly in the early stages, but there would be an embedded web player that would encourage you to download the Snapchat app. It’s not certain when the feature would be available.

Snap has declined to comment.

There’s no shock as to why this might happen. As with Twitter’s support for embedding tweets, it’d be about exposure. The more you see Snapchat’s content online, the more likely you might be to use Snapchat or at least watch its content — important when the social service is struggling to attract new users. Facebook and Instagram don’t offer embedded stories, so Snapchat could have the edge. With that said, this could be a short-lived advantage. Facebook is well-known for quickly imitating the Snapchat features it wants to use, so Snap may not want to bet on Stories Everywhere for a comeback.

Source: Cheddar

Anyone can buy the Surface Pro with LTE on the Microsoft Store

As Microsoft had previously announced, it began selling Surface Pro models with LTE to business customers only on December 1st. But if consumers want to pick one up, the LTE-equipped commercial 2-in-1 is available for anyone to buy on the Microsoft Store.

The Surface Pro with LTE Advanced comes in two versions: The lower has a 128GB SSD with 4GB of RAM for $1,150 while the pricier model doubles the specs for 256GB of space and 8GB of RAM for $1,450. Both come with an Intel Core i5 and claim up to 13.5 hours of battery life, but be aware that both the Signature Type Cover and the Surface Pen are sold separately. It’s unclear if consumers will get their own configurations, possibly including larger SSD and RAM packages available for the costlier non-LTE Surface Pro kits.

Via: The Verge

Source: Microsoft Store

Instagram Adding ‘Recommended for You’ Posts to Main Feed

Instagram has been testing a “Recommended for You” feature that is now rolling out widely to all users, reports TechCrunch. Recommended posts show up in your standard image feed and are suggested based on posts liked by accounts you follow.

When shown in a feed, these posts are denoted by a label at the top that clearly marks them as recommended, similar to how sponsored posts are handled. With recommended posts, though, Instagram shows several in a row instead of just one.

Recommended posts and videos have previously been displayed in the Explore tab, but are now being featured more prominently. Instagram users now have several feed interruptions, including these new recommended posts, sponsored posts, and stories.

According to an Instagram spokesperson who spoke to TechCrunch, recommended posts are meant to appear “after you’ve viewed all the posts in your feed.” There is no disabling the Recommended for You feature, but recommended posts can be temporarily hidden by tapping the three dots at the top of a recommended post and choosing “Hide.”

Instagram has been slowing introducing changes that bring posts from people who aren’t actively followed into the Instagram feed. Earlier this month, for example, Instagram added a feature allowing users to follow hashtags rather than individual Instagram accounts.

Recommended for You is still rolling out to all users on iOS and Android devices and may not yet be available for everyone.

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