Honor 7X review: The new budget champion

Honor’s latest affordable phone packs an 18:9 screen, a beautiful aluminum chassis and a decent camera into a device that sells for just £269.99.

The quick take

There are always trade-offs when buying a phone for less than £300, but Honor manages to successfully walk the budget tightrope, with only a few minor concerns around UI and the lack of NFC for mobile payments.

The Good

• Premium design and good-looking display
• Decent mid-range performance
• Dependable camera for general use
• Decent one-day battery life

The Bad

• Ships on Nougat
• Uses outdated microUSB port
• EMUI weirdness persists

Honor 7X Full Review

The budget phone world is a hugely competitive space, as Huawei’s Honor brand well knows from its recent efforts with the Honor 5X and 6X. These phones have generally managed to balance feature set, build quality and price with generally successful results. The Honor 5X was one of the first handsets to bring metal construction and fingerprint recognition to a cheaper price tier. And a year ago, the Honor 6X added a surprisingly competent dual camera rig to the experience.

A year on, Honor has taken the bones of the 6X, and fleshed it out into something that looks and feels more premium than anything I’ve used at its price point of £269.99. A brushed aluminum body with distinctive colors, including a trademark blue hue. A beautiful 18:9 display. And software which, though not entirely current, gets the job done.

About this review

We’re publishing this review after just over two weeks with an unlocked European Honor 7X (BND-L21). I (Alex Dobie) have been using it on Three in the UK, and also in Taiwan on Taiwan Mobile. The phone was running software version 101, based on Android 7.0 Nougat, with the October 5, 2017 Android security patch.

Metal slab

Honor 7X Hardware

On the outside, the Honor 7X broadly resembles a mash-up between an Honor 8 Pro and a Huawei Mate 10 Pro. It boasts a new, taller 18:9 aspect ratio, with a 5.93-inch Full HD+ (2160×1080) LCD panel — a first in such an inexpensive handset. The curves of the Honor 7X are more iPhone-like than other metal-bodied Android phones, including OnePlus’s just-launched 5T. As a result, it’s a little slick in the hand, though not disastrously so.

The body of the phone is furnished with a brushed, anodized aluminum finish that’s almost identical to the much more expensive Honor 8 Pro — including the signature navy blue hue that’ll be the main color for the UK. A plain old black model will also be offered, for the color-averse.

Other distinguishing features: top and bottom antenna bands, a slight bump around each of the two rear cameras, and a recessed rear-mounted fingerprint scanner. The 7X’s biometrics, by the way, are fast and accurate — though, naturally, lagging behind the speed of the Mate 10 Pro.

You could argue about whether, like the 6X and 5X, the design is a bit derivative. What’s more important is that there’s nothing at all cheap-feeling about this phone. Around the front, the 2.5D glass of the display finally has an oleophobic coating, which sounds like a small thing, but is hugely important in stopping the screen getting gunked up by fingerprints. That’s aside from the tall aspect ratio that gives makes phone just as modern-looking as a OnePlus 5T or LG V30.

The 7X’s premium finish is a leap beyond the Honor 6X.

The premium design and brushed finish of the Honor 7X takes a step beyond 6X and 5X.
Fortunately, the flagship-like aesthetics of the Honor 7X don’t come at the cost of durability. While Honor isn’t advertising the 7X as being drop-resistant in the same way as, for example, a Moto Z2 Force, the 7X does boast reinforced corners — the main impact point for any drop — to reduce the likelihood of permanent damage if it hits the floor. I haven’t put this to the test with my unit, but I did witness the phone survive a few impromptu drop tests at a meeting in London ahead of today’s announcement.

It also feels sturdy and well-built, with good weight distribution and haptics that are a little soft, but not rattly.

On the inside, the Honor 7X runs the latest of Huawei’s mid-level Kirin chips, the Kirin 659 — an octa-core 16nm part, along with 4GB of RAM and (in the UK) 64GB of storage, plus microSD. Like many other dual-SIM phones, the 7X’s hybrid slot can support either a single SIM plus SD Card, or two SIMs and no SD card.

It’s worth noting, however, that unlike some other dual-SIM handsets, the second SIM will only work in 2G mode, not 3G mode. Why does that matter? In some places like South Korea and Taiwan, 2G networks have been deactivated, making the second SIM slot useless.

Overall performance throughout my two weeks with the Honor 7X has been solid, though somewhat less dazzling than what I’ve seen from Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 630 chipset. In day-to-day tasks, the Honor 7X is performant enough to handle everything you might want to throw at it. But with heavy background tasks running — for example, app updates — a little performance jank can creep in.

There’s also no NFC, which makes Android Pay a non-starter on the phone. This omission in particular feels like a big miss.

On the other hand, at least the roomy 4GB of RAM means app reloads are seldom a problem.

A great-looking screen with no fingerprint-related issues.

And the display itself, a 2160×1080 LCD panel, has been given the attention it deserves. Along with the all-important oleophobic coating, it’s a solid upgrade from the 6X’s display in all the key metrics — outdoor visibility, color vibrance and viewing angles. This is no flagship-tier panel, but it’s also not as disappointing as the LCDs used in some of Motorola’s G5-series phones.

Audio-wise, the ever elusive 3.5mm headphone jack is thankfully present, alongside a single bottom-firing that gets reasonably loud, but is lacking in bass.

There’s another slightly weird component decision here too — the Honor 7X’s use of a fairly dated microUSB port, as opposed to the newer USB Type-C. It works just as well for charging, which maxes out at 5V/2A anyway, but it goes against the grain of what is otherwise quite a forward-looking phone.

Overall, then this is a device with good-enough mid-level internals packaged inside a deceptively high-end chassis. The Honor 7X’s hardware has just enough power to get the job done, and just enough style to stand out at its chosen price point.

EMUI 5.1

Honor 7X Software

On the software side, the compromises of running a mid-range chip are also apparent: The Honor 7X runs the older EMUI 5.1 firmware from the Huawei mothership, based on Android 7.0 Nougat. That’s as opposed to the newer EMUI 8 found in Kirin 970-powered handsets like the Honor V10 and Huawei Mate 10. Visually, this doesn’t make a whole lot of difference, and Honor has even ported some of EMUI 8’s more useful features back to the older software. Apps that don’t support 18:9 natively can easily be scaled up to fill the full size of the display. And some messaging apps can (optionally) open messages in a split-screen view if you’re watching full-screen video.

The Honor 7X’s lock screen has also been tweaked slightly compared with what we’ve seen on earlier EMUI phones (on both 5.x and 8.0). With the re-tooled lock screen, it’s now easier to expand notifications and swipe to unlock. Both changes make for a more polished experience in a part of Android you’ll use every day.

EMUI 5 adapts to a new, taller aspect ratio, with a couple of other feature additions ported from version 8.

Besides that, this is EMUI 5.1 just as we’ve seen it on a number of phones over the past twelve months. It’s an improvement on what came before, with a clean blue-and-white color scheme, but there’s still some software weirdness, including icons that don’t quite gel with the rest of Android.

However, I do appreciate many of EMUI’s many convenient additions , like the one-handed mode, which is easy to activate with a swipe along the software keys. EMUI can also run multiple instances of certain messaging apps, like WeChat, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, which is particularly useful in a dual-SIM device, where you might be juggling both work and personal numbers.

We’ve gone into much more detail on Huawei’s EMUI 5 software in our reviews of the Mate 9 and Honor 9, and much of the software experience is unchanged. It’s a fast, responsive interface occasionally held back by weird design decisions.

Dual shooter

Honor 7X Cameras

Around the back, the Honor 7X 16-megapixel main camera with PDAF (phase-detection autofocus) behind an f/2.2 lens, backed up by a 2-megapixel secondary sensor for depth-sensing and portrait mode. (Unlike some Huawei-built phones, the secondary sensor doesn’t capture fine details, it just captures depth.)

Not a huge upgrade from the Honor 6X’s camera hardware, but the 7X’s camera still impresses.

The resolution is upgraded from the 13-megapixel sensor used in the Honor 6X, but besides that, many of the strengths and weaknesses of that camera carry over. There’s no OIS (optical image stabilization), so performance can quickly degrade in darker conditions, and hand motion can introduce blurring into photos, even in relatively well-lit shots.

That’s even more noticeable in the 7X’s new portrait mode, the performance of which quickly tails off in darker conditions.

Honor’s excellent post-processing picks up the slack, though, and just like the Honor 6X, a steady hand will be rewarded with surprisingly good-looking shots. In particular, the 7X manages to eke out impressive dynamic range from daylight shots, considering the price of this phone.

Despite the general smudginess of night-time photos from the Honor 7X compared to more expensive models, I’ve been generally happy with the photo quality from this phone. Don’t expect miracles, but also don’t expect a camera that’s a total afterthought.

Around the front, there’s an 8-megapixel setup that’s also capable of capturing portrait mode shots — a feature that’s only just starting to gain prominence in the Android world. Again, in the context of this phone’s price, the selfie camera works pretty well. Noise is generally absent from selfies, though images are much softer than higher-end offerings. (And edge detection can be pretty rough considering the limits of the camera and the processor.)

Power up

Honor 7X Battery Life

Last year’s Honor 6X proved to be a pleasant surprise in terms of battery longevity. And the 7X promises at least decent performance in this area, thanks to the same 3,340mAh internal battery capacity that served its forerunner so well. That’s nothing to write home about in the flagship space, it’s plenty for a device like the 7X, running lower-powered silicon.

An average battery capacity goes a long way, thanks to efficient innards.

Between an efficient CPU using Cortex-A53 cores and a relatively large battery, the Honor 7X has enough juice to get you through a full day of use. I regularly got solid 16-17 hour days from the phone’s battery, with mixed use on LTE and Wi-Fi, and screen-on time in the 4-hour ballpark. The Kirin 659’s use of four A53s makes power draw relatively predictable, and I didn’t notice any excessive power draw even in intensive tasks like desktop web browsing or gaming.

Unfortunately there’s no advanced quick charging solution to be found here, like Huawei’s Super Charging, or even 9V quick charging. But the Honor 7X’s 5V/2A rapid charging is speedy enough that occasional evening refills aren’t too tedious with the bundled 2A plug.

The bottom line

Should you buy the Honor 7X? Yes

The Honor 7X has flagship looks, but not quite flagship brawn. You’ll need to settle for a less powerful CPU, a less capable camera, especially in low light, no NFC, and year-old Android software. Nevertheless, despite these compromises, which were surely necessary to hit the £269.99 price point, the Honor 7X delivers an enjoyable, high-performance Android experience in a chassis that’s just as desirable as phones costing twice as much.

You may well notice how much faster, say, a OnePlus 5T is compared to the Honor 7X. But in terms of the construction and overall quality, there’s really not much in it at all. And in normal day-to-day use, the 7X’s performance is perfectly fine, with no cutting of corners around RAM or internal storage.

Mid-range internals in a high-end chassis makes for a pretty good phone.

Like other Huawei and Honor phones, contending with weird-looking software continues to be a thing. As well as running an old version of Android — which, to Huawei’s credit, is no longer a given for the company’s phones — the Honor 7X’s EMUI 5 interface will be jarring to newcomers in the West. It’s not as attractive as stock Android, and niggling app compatibility issues remain.

Ultimately, though, a phone at this price is all about balance, and the Honor 7X certainly offers the best balance of any handset I’ve used in the £250-300 bracket. If you’re after a stylish budget phone that doesn’t skimp on performance or features, it’s absolutely worth a look.

Google will soon let you pay and manage your bills with Tez

In honor of 12 million users, Google has big things in store for Tez.

This past September, Google launched a new mobile payment service in India called “Tez.” The goal of Tez is to allow users to send money to friends and make payments to merchants, and it appears to have taken off quite well as Google recently announced that the service is about to cross 12 million users.

Google made this announcement at an event it held in New Delhi, and along with this, unveiled a new feature that will allow users to pay and manage their bills right within Tez.

There are more than 70 service providers throughout India that have already partnered with Google for this feature, and it’ll enable folks in the country to manage payments for their phone service, electricity, heating, etc.

Tez will show your full billing history and let you pay for new ones with just a few taps.

You’ll be able to view your full billing history for these various services in Tez, and when it comes time to pay a new one, all you’ll have to do is tap the “Pay bill” button since the amount that’s owed is automatically entered for you.

Tez’s new bill payment feature will be available through an update that’ll land in the coming weeks, and next year Google will focus on adding even more features to it so smaller businesses and independent contractors can use it for their services as well.

Google Tez: Everything you need to know

Hayato’s Favorite Things of 2017

Hayato’s Favorite Things

2017 has been sort of a rough year, but it’s at least been good to me, and good to the tech industry — there are more awesome gadgets out there than ever. I’ve gotten quite a few of them, and I figured I’d share some of my favorites. If you’re looking for a cool gift to put under the tree, or you just want something new for yourself, hopefully this list will help.

Sorry in advance that most of them are a little pricey.

OnePlus 5

No, it’s not the best phone of the year, and now that the OnePlus 5T is out it’s not even the best from its own brand. But it’s the phone that I’ve spent the most time with this year, and — as much as I hate the term — it’s been my daily driver for the majority of 2017.

For under $500, it’s hard to find a better deal than the OnePlus 5. I love OxygenOS, and this phone feels like the perfect size for me (although I wouldn’t mind that fancy 2:1 display on the 5T). If I could change anything, I wish the OnePlus 5 were waterproof like almost every other phone this year, but I really can’t complain otherwise. Since the OnePlus 5 is no longer for sale, I linked the OnePlus 5T, which is slightly better and (sorry) slightly more expensive.

From $499 Buy Now

Peak Design Everyday Backpack

I’m kind of obsessed with backpacks, so naturally I’ve gone through a few of them this year: I got the TimBuk 2 Parkside last holiday season, which was a bit too small and poorly padded; the OnePlus Travel backpack, which I love for general purposes (read: it’s not a camera bag); and the Tylt Energi Pro that, while full of handy compartments and a terrific included battery pack, is entirely too big for me. I’ve known about Peak Design for a little while because of their clever camera gear, and as luck would have it they’ve also got a clever bag. The Everyday Backpack has everything from adjustable shelves inside for smart packing to side zippers to quickly access the things at the bottom of the bag without having to rearrange everything up above. After talking to our own Andrew Martonik about his satisfaction with his, I finally decided to pull the trigger on Black Friday and I have no regrets.

From $259 Buy Now

Sony WH-1000XM2

Thankfully active noise-canceling headphones are one of humanity’s greatest creations, and my ANC cans of choice are Sony’s second-gen 1000X. They’re Bluetooth-capable and last forever on a charge, and they sound great to boot. The noise-canceling is, ahem, jarring at first, but it works so well that even on a plane or in the midde of a noisy city like Manhattan, I can sort of live in a bubble of silence. Oh, and there are some crazy useful gestures like being able to put my hand over the right cup to mute my music and turn on the microphones so I can hear the world around me without having to take the headphones off.

$348 Buy Now

Panasonic Lumix GH5

I’ve been shooting on the same Panasonic GH3 for years, and while it’s been a great 1080p camera, it was time to upgrade. The GH5 has been an absolute dream in the short time I’ve had it so far, but if you’re at all into video then you know that already. This is one of the most popular cameras around. The GH5 is one of the only consumer-grade cameras right now that can shoot 4K at 60 fps, and you can even capture 10-bit color, which is awesome for color grading and chroma keying. Add to that dual SD card slots and a USB-C port for fast transfers over USB 3.1, and this is pretty much the perfect camera for YouTube.

$1997 Buy Now

Samsung T5 SSD

When I bought a new laptop last year, I figured a 256GB SSD would be plenty for me, given that I store almost everything in the cloud. Turns out I was right — I’m barely pushing past 100GB because all I store locally is apps and files synced from Google Drive. But then I got a job editing video. I like to edit off of external storage because I can instantly pick up and work on my desktop. Samsung’s new T5 series SSDs are insanely fast, tiny, and durable; I picked up a 1TB model, and the USB 3.1 transfer speeds are more than enough for me to edit off of.

From $126 Buy Now

Nintendo Switch

Seriously, is there anybody who owns a Switch and doesn’t #$@%ing love it? Between The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey (and the cute and addictive sleeper hit Snipperclips), it’s hard to put the Switch down, but luckily when you do you can just slide it into its dock and start playing on the TV. The Joycons are the first controllers from Nintendo that I actually enjoy using (the GameCube controller is hot garbage, fight me), and I love that it has a USB-C port, since that means I can charge it with my battery pack the same way I would a phone.

$299 Buy Now

Improve your home security with this Netgear Arlo 3-camera package for $300

Home security at a bargain.

Netgear’s 3-HD camera Arlo home security system is down to $299.99 on Amazon. This package is normally around $380. It did drop to $300 for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but it has never been lower than that so this is a good match if you missed those previous deals.

The upgraded version, the Arlo Pro, sells for $160 more for the same number of cameras.

The Arlo system is one of the premiere security systems out there. Android Central breaks down the differences between three of the best connected cameras, including Arlo.

Features include:

• Works with Amazon Alexa/Echo Show/Fire TV – View your live video with a simple voice command
• Patented 100% Wire-Free design for easy placement anywhere
• Night vision cameras work even in the dark
• Motion activated cameras and real-time email or app notifications
• Records and alerts only when motion is detected so no battery power ever goes wasted
• Indoor/ outdoor weatherproof cameras
• App to securely view live video while home or away

If you find three cameras isn’t quite enough, you can always add an individual camera later. Netgear sells the one add-on camera for $137 right now.

See at Amazon

Files Go exits beta, now available for everyone to download

Files Go is available globally for devices running Android 5.0 Lollipop or later.

Last month, Google released a new app called “Files Go” on the Play Store as a tool for helping people in developing markets better manage limited storage space on their phone. Files Go was initially launched as a beta, but now it’s ready for prime time and available for all users to download.

As we learned before, Files Go is a file management app that makes it easy to see how much storage is remaining on a device and quickly delete any unnecessary apps, games, photos, etc. In addition to this, two phones that have Files Go installed can transfer files using Bluetooth to one another without any Internet connection required.

Google says that the average person using Files Go has saved an average of 1GB compared to those not using it.

If you have an Android device running Android 5.0 Lollipop or later, you can download Files Go from the Play Store now.

Google’s new Files Go app offers easy storage management and file transfers

New Honor View 10 is an Honor V10 for the rest of the world

New flagship has a headphone jack, Huawei’s latest processor and a big battery.

At its global launch event in London, Honor has announced that its high-end V10 phone will be launching in Europe early in 2018 with a new name: Honor View 10. The phone was previously announced for the Chinese market in November, boasting top-tier specs.

The Honor View 10 is the brand’s first Android Oreo phone, and its first with Huawei’s new Kirin 970 processor, which enabled AI features in apps thanks to its Neural Processing Unit (NPU) — paired with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Other key specs include a 5.99-inch 18:9 Full HD+ (2160×1080) display, all packed inside a premium glass and metal body.

A fresh take on the core specs of the Huawei Mate 10 Pro.

For imaging, there’s a dual 16MP plus 20MP rear camera setup with AI shooting technology similar to what we’ve seen in the Mate 10 Pro, alongside a 13MP selfie camera that also works for face unlock. Battery capacity is set at a healthy 3,750 mAh, and the new phone features a re-branded version of Huawei’s SuperCharge tech, with 4.5A charging for faster, cooler refills.. Unlike the Mate 10 Pro, Honor also keeps the increasingly rare 3.5mm headphone jack. And Honor has managed to fit its fingerprint scanner around the front of the phone, in the phone’s slim bottom bezel.

While it’s the first time the Honor “V” or “View” brand has been used in western Europe, it’s not the first V-series phone to launch outside China. Earlier in the year, we got the Honor 8 Pro, which was a re-badged version of the Honor V9.

The Honor View 10 be available in blue and black colors, and will sell for €499 and £449 when it launches in Europe and the UK respectively. It’ll also be coming to the United States and Russia, though no local pricing was given for those regions.

Netflix is letting adults in on choose-your-own-adventure shows

Netflix’s choose-your-own adventure TV shows for kids went down so well that it’s planning one for adults, reports Bloomberg. Or was the decision fueled by HBO’s entrance into the field with Steven Soderbergh’s Mosaic series and accompanying smartphone app? Originally unveiled in June, Netflix’s interactive programming lets iOS and TV viewers control parts of the storyline (including up to 13 choices for children’s animation Puss in Boots: Trapped in an Epic Tale).

Less forward-thinking auteurs will likely bemoan the format, which has been kicking around with little success for years. Other “branched narratives” (as Netflix likes to call them) include Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile.

And if the new series is successful, who knows? Maybe, Netflix will start adding interactive elements to future seasons of existing “grown-up” shows. Because, who doesn’t want to decide Queen Elizabeth II’s fate in The Crown, right? Wait, that’s a bad example. Targeting who Frank Castle picks off in The Punisher would make more sense. Either way, Netflix has deep enough pockets to go nuts with its new fave fad in 2018.

Via: Bloomberg

Honor squeezed more screen into its budget View 10 flagship

When Huawei sub-brand Honor revealed its new Honor 7X a few weeks ago, we weren’t exactly thrilled. You can only squeeze so many thrills out of a big screen and a mid-range chipset, after all. Thankfully, that wasn’t the only device Honor has been working on. Honor’s deal has always been about delivering solid performance on a budget, but it’s getting a bit more ambitious with the new View 10 (known as the V10 in China). Huawei and Honor are seemingly intent on building a OnePlus-style flagship that won’t break the bank, and if a little hands-on time is anything to go on, the View 10 is already shaping up to be a serious contender.

As you might’ve heard already, the View 10 uses a 5.99-inch LCD screen that takes up almost all of the room on the phone’s face. In keeping with devices like the OnePlus 5T — which the View 10 is set to directly compete with — the 18:9 “FullView” screen is taller and narrower than ones seen in earlier Honor devices. The company hasn’t rid the phone of bezels entirely, but they’re slim enough that the phone still feels easy to use with just one hand. The View 10’s all-metal body feels surprisingly light, too, considering there’s a 3,750mAh battery wedged inside. In typical Honor fashion, though, the View 10’s design is pretty bland. There’s nothing wrong with it, per se, as long as you weren’t hoping for some Honor Magic-esque flair.

What little extra space remains was put to good use, though: unlike the recently announced Honor 7X, there’s a front-mounted fingerprint sensor sitting right beneath the display, and there was enough room left over to squeeze in a standard headphone jack. And while other Android OEMs have been happy to ditch expandable memory options, the View 10 takes microSD cards as large as 256GB — not too shabby, especially when you consider the device will be available with up to 128GB of onboard storage.

That’s all fine, but let’s talk power. Like the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro before it, Honor’s View 10 uses one of Huawei’s Kirin 970 chipsets — you know, the one with the neural processing unit. Huawei is still bullish on the idea of weaving AI throughout the smartphone experience, and even though we weren’t amazed by the chip’s machine-learning chops in the Mate 10, getting that kind of power and potential in a more affordable body is something to celebrate. Now we just need developers building software that really takes advantage of that NPU. The 970 is a remarkably snappy chipset in its own right, though, especially if you spring for the model with 6GB of RAM (subject to availability, naturally).

Meanwhile, the dual camera around back should seem familiar to long-time Huawei fans. The lack of Leica branding is pretty conspicuous here, but no matter: the View 10 once again pairs a standard 16-megapixel color camera with a 20-megapixel monochrome camera. The few test shots we took looked pleasant enough (especially those captured with the monochrome sensor), but we’re a little concerned by the way both cameras jut out of the View 10’s back. If you didn’t mind the iPhone’s camera humps, this won’t be too much to worry about, but don’t forget: the Honor 9’s dual camera sat flush with the phone’s body.

Unfortunately, the unit we played with was running some seriously non-final software, so not everything worked the way we had hoped. The View 10 runs a version of Android Oreo that has been painted over with Huawei’s EMUI interface, and while it was generally quite snappy during our play session, we did notice a few occasional hiccups. Also, you won’t find Huawei’s cheeky TrueDepth Camera clone here; the View 10 will only come with a more conventional face unlock feature, but that won’t arrive until a future OTA update. There weren’t any games loaded onto our demo unit, either, so the included Gaming mode — which blocks notifications and allows for screen recording while in the midst of the action — was also off-limits.

Honor hasn’t locked down global pricing and availability yet, and for once, we’re eagerly awaiting the details. We do have some of the broad strokes, though: the View 10 will land in the US in the first half of 2018, and it should cost around $500 when it does. That’s pretty pricey for an Honor device, but it’s also safe to say the View 10 is a pretty unusual — and powerful — proposition for a brand that has mostly played in safe in the States.

Amazon offers same-day delivery on handmade goods

If you’re struggling with holiday shopping, Amazon is swooping in to make things a little easier. Amazon Handmade, which is the online retail giant’s destination for handmade goods and crafts, is now offering Prime Now delivery. This means that shoppers in certain metro areas can receive this items via one- and two-hour delivery just in time for the holidays.

This service isn’t available nationwide, but holiday shoppers in Austin, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Portland, Raleigh, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle can take advantage of Amazon Handmade’s fast shipping. This means that shoppers can place last-minute gift orders on Christmas Eve and still receive their items in time for the holiday.

Amazon launched Handmade two years ago, setting Etsy squarely in its sights. The addition of Prime Now makes it tough to beat if you’re looking online for thoughtful and unique gifts; Etsy’s shipping is dependent on merchants, and it can be a mixed bag in terms of when you receive the items you purchase. It will be interesting to see whether Amazon extends the Handmade/Prime Now combination past the holiday season, as it’s currently a pilot program.

Source: Business Wire

Turning indie horror hit ‘Neverending Nightmares’ into a manga

She stands in front of you, clutching a teddy bear to her chest. She can’t be older than 8, with long, straight black hair and a frilled dress. You don’t know her name, but she’s smiling warmly. And then, suddenly, she isn’t: Her doe eyes widen, white and afraid. Her mouth gapes and blood drips past her lips. You follow her gaze down — a knife protrudes from her stomach, staining her dress bright red, blood dribbling into her socks and Mary Janes. A knife that your hands are grasping tightly.

This is how the video game Neverending Nightmares begins, and it’s also the first scene in a manga of the same name that debuted last week. As a game, Neverending Nightmares is a chilling, powerful peek into the darkest thoughts of a person struggling with depression and intrusive thoughts. The protagonist, Thomas, is trapped in a hellscape loop, repeatedly waking up only to realize he’s still in a terrible nightmare: Headless corpses are piled against black-and-white walls; bodies hang from meat hooks in a claustrophobic cell; Thomas pulls a vein from his wrist like a stray thread.

So far, the manga is just as brazen in its depiction of suffering and death. It’s done in the same Edward Gorey-esque art style, filled with scratchy black lines and explosions of red highlighting gruesome scenes of disembowelment, murder and torture. For creator Matt Gilgenbach, these scenes are the heart of Neverending Nightmares, though they’re not gory for the sake of gore. They serve a profound purpose as he attempts to demonstrate the depth of his own depressive thoughts.

Neverending Nightmares spawned from a dark period in Gilgenbach’s life, as described to Joystiq (now Engadget) in 2014: His game, Retrograde, had just bombed and he was financially downtrodden. He slipped into depression, something he’d faced earlier in his life. His mind began to fill with images of self-inflicted violence and he longed for an outlet to express the overwhelming nature of these thoughts.

“When I started thinking about how to represent my obsessive compulsive disorder, one of the main things I struggled with are intrusive thoughts, violent thoughts of self-harm,” Gilgenbach says. “These were very upsetting, and as soon as I became comfortable with a particular image, my mind would dream up an even more intense and awful image that would make me miserable. I thought that Neverending Nightmares would be a great opportunity to bring those to life.”

Gilgenbach was onto something there. Neverending Nightmares premiered on PC in 2014 and it’s still relevant today, picking up new players and expanding to fresh platforms. Alongside the launch of the manga last week, Neverending Nightmares landed on Android and iOS with a sticker price of $4. The game is now available on Steam, PlayStation 4, Vita and mobile devices.

The prologue of Neverending Nightmares

Pixiv

The prologue and first chapter of the manga are available now, for free, on Japanese artist forum Pixiv. The remaining eight chapters — each readable in English, Japanese and simplified Chinese — will roll out once a month through July, also for free.

Pixiv played a big role in making the manga happen. Gilgenbach hadn’t seriously considered transforming his game into a comic book or any other medium, but once Neverending Nightmares hit PlayStation Network in Japan, it picked up a lot of interest on Pixiv. The company reached out to Gilgenbach with an offer to license his IP and create a manga.

“One of the most exciting things about the manga is that I can reach a different audience that might not be interested in the game,” Gilgenbach says. “When I met with Pixiv early on, I stressed to them how important of an IP to me this was and how I wanted to ensure it stayed true to the theme of the original work. They were very receptive to this and worked with me on keeping the same theme as the game.”

Developing the manga is a collaborative process: Gilgenbach doesn’t have any experience in writing Japanese comic books himself, so he and Pixiv worked with a specialist on the script. The story itself, however, resides in Pixiv’s hands.

“I feel that they have made the manga a bit faster paced, and added more gore and horror to the beginning of the work,” Gilgenbach says. “It definitely changes the feeling, but I think it really works well for the medium. I get chills reading the manga, so I think they pulled off the horror effectively.”

Gilgenbach is surprised to still be working on Neverending Nightmares after all these years. Its longevity is notable in the crowded independent marketplace to begin with, but it’s especially impressive considering the game’s dark subject matter and heaps of gore.

“I didn’t expect it to continue to have interest at this point,” Gilgenbach says. “I think because I set out to do something different and recreate my personal journey with mental illness thematically, it really resonates with a fanbase that is continuing to grow through word of mouth.”

And, now, word of manga.