OnePlus wants to begin talks with U.S. carriers, Snapdragon 845-powered phone coming in Q2 2018

The next OnePlus phone will also be here in late Q2.

Ever since the launch of the OnePlus One in 2014, OnePlus has always sold its phones unlocked through its website to customers in the United States. Buying unlocked typically makes the most economic sense in the long run, but there’s no doubt that availability on wireless carriers results in greater visibility and considerably more sales.

In an interview with CNET, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau confirmed that the company is interested in beginning talks with U.S. carriers this year and that “if the right opportunity and right timing come along, we’ll be very happy to experiment.” Along with this, Lau also said that the next OnePlus phone — powered by the Snapdragon 845 — is scheduled for a release at some point in late Q2 2018.

Huawei, another China-based company that’s much older than OnePlus, recently tried launching its Mate 10 Pro smartphone on U.S. carriers and was met with less than desirable results. AT&T was the first to back out of the deal, and Verizon shortly followed suit.

OnePlus already sells its devices on wireless carriers in other countries (such as O2 in the United Kingdom), but following the recent Huawei situation, OnePlus could be faced with a similar uphill battle.

Assuming OnePlus can make a deal with carriers in the United States, which one(s) would you like to see it partner with?

OnePlus 5T and OnePlus 5

• OnePlus 5T review: Come for the value, not the excitement
• OnePlus 5T specs
• Should you upgrade from the OnePlus 3T?
• OnePlus 5T vs. Galaxy S8: Beast mode
• All of the latest OnePlus 5T news
• Join the discussion in the forums

OnePlus
Amazon

Everything you need to know about Google Play Music

There is more music than you can imagine right at your fingertips.

While there are many apps that stream music, and stream it well, Google Play Music is Google’s music service, and as such is an app that comes on millions and millions of devices. While the app has gotten clunkier in recent years, the app is still undoubtedly one of the most useful on the Android scene, and with generous benefits to both paid and free users, it’s an app worth getting to know.

Getting started

Google Play Music is a streaming service that allows users to stream up to 50,000 of their own songs for free across most platforms, in addition to allowing free users to listen to curated stations and paid users to stream up to 40 million songs in their streaming library. It’s an app with a lot of functions, so finding your way around can be a bit of a task. Here’s how to get what your want out of Google Play Music:

Getting started with Google Play Music

The best deal in music — and video

There’s a lot of music services out there that want your money and your music habits. Unfortunately for most of them, Google’s got a secret weapon in their music subscription: YouTube Red. That’s right, the best feature of Google Play Music’s subscriptions isn’t even in the Play Music app: it’s getting rid of commercials in YouTube.

Google Play Music and YouTube Red are the best deal in streaming

Putting your music into Google Play Music

Whether you’re a free user just looking to get your music into the cloud to stream or you just want to get the music you purchased in Google Play Music out of an encrypted cloud and into your hard drive, there’s a few tricks to getting music in and out of Google Play Music’s online locker. Here’s what you need to know before you burn a device authorization downloading or uploading music.

Downloading and uploading music in Google Play Music

Google Play Music needs a change…

No service is perfect, but if anyone tries to tell you Google Play Music, give them a firm smack on the arm, because they’re either lying or delusional. Google Play Music has more than a few flaws that need fixing, from a skewed device policy to an outdated and clunky UI. Before you become chained to Google Play Music and flaws, see what they are and how those flaws could impact your use.

Fixing Google Play Music

…And change is on the horizon

Even with Google currently offering three subscriptions in one with Google Play Music, YouTube Red, and YouTube Music, there’s been speak of yet another streaming service based on YouTube. Rumor has it that with how scattered Google’s current music offerings are, this new service would wrap everything together into one encompassing offering rather than piecemealing it. We’re not sure what’s on the horizon, but we can only hope that whatever comes, Google’s music services only improve in value and experience.

YouTube signs deal with labels ahead of new streaming service

Updated January 2018: This guide was rewritten and updated to make the guide easier to read and include a wider variety of information on Google Play Music’s current standing and possible future.

Best Touchscreen Gloves for Winter 2018

What are the best touchscreen gloves? The ones that keep your hands warm and actually work!

There are still a few weeks left in winter, and that means that using your phone outside is uncomfortable and makes for frigid digits. That is, unless you have some awesome touchscreen gloves that let you use your phone with toasty phalanges.

Not all gloves of this nature work very well, so here are the best of the best to keep you texting even when Jack Frost is nipping at your butt.

• Mujjo double-layered touchscreen gloves
• Agloves
• The North Face ThermoBall Etip
• Glove.ly Classic Touch Screen Glove
• Moshi Digits
• Elma luxury Italian leather gloves
• Women’s Gloue gloves
• Nanotips

Mujjo double-layered touchscreen gloves

These dual-layer gloves are Mujjo’s response to customers asking for something a bit thicker for colder climes. They added a layer of wool (just like grandma used to do!), so you can now have your phone and keep your hands warm too. For $35, that’s not a bad deal at all.

Silicone grips all over the palms of these gloves make sure your phone doesn’t slip out of your hands in slippery weather, and Mujjo has made it so that you can use any fingertip, knuckle, and even the palm or heel of your hand. It’s almost like you’re wearing nothing at all… Nothing at all… Nothing at all!

See at Amazon

Agloves

These acrylic gloves have ten-finger functionality, meaning you can use any finger to use your phone, while keeping warm.

They come in black, red, brown, navy, or white and in a few different sizes depending on the color you choose, with pricing starting around $7. These aren’t the thickest gloves around and probably won’t do the trick when temps drop below zero, but what are you doing standing around long enough to use your phone when it’s that cold anyway?

See at Amazon

The North Face Etip

As a Canadian, I can attest to The North Face’s quality. The Etips are a little on the bulky side for touchscreen gloves, so movement is somewhat difficult, but they work exceptionally well, even in colder weather.

They come in men’s and women’s sizes and styles, so there’s an for everybody, with pricing starting around $40. Pricing starts around $40.

See at Amazon

Glove.ly Cozy Touch Screen Glove

Glove.ly Cozy gloves (around $9 to start) let you use any part of your hand to control your phone. They’re not for arctic temperatures, but they’re warmer than most of the thinner touchscreen gloves you might find.

If your screen gets smudged and dirty, you can use the built-in microfiber label to keep it clean, and magnets hidden under the logo help to make sure you don’t lose a glove.

They come in small or medium/large, so make sure you choose the right size.

See at Amazon

Moshi Digits

Moshi’s gloves are nice and thick and woolly, making them perfect for places where the winter game is strong. The $30 Digits are the Wirecutter’s top pick, since they work well while also keeping your hands toasty, and in their testing, they found that the raised rubber lines and dots provide such good grip that they could use their phone one handed.

If you’re looking for the best in touchscreen gloves, these may be just that for you. Only available in light gray, but at least it goes with everything?

See at Moshi

Elma Italian leather gloves

If you love the luxurious feel of genuine Italian Nappa leather and wouldn’t mind only paying $25 for that feeling, then have I got the gloves for you.

These gorgeous gloves come in a few different colors and come lined with either fleece or cashmere (for $10 more). Amazon reviews say that the touchscreen fingers work incredibly well, the gloves fit well, look awesome, and keep your hands nice and toasty. Hell, for $20-$30, you could grab a few pair. Just make sure you choose the right size before checking out.

See at Amazon

Women’s Gloue gloves

These cashmere-lined gloves come in red and black are just for the ladies. They feature a touchscreen forefinger and thumb and come in red or black, starting at only $14 for the red pair.

The stylish button cuffs with a bit of the lining visible make these really stand out and the price is right to grab both!

See at Amazon

Nanotips

Don’t feel like buying a brand new pair of gloves? Nanotips makes it so you don’t have to. Just paint a coating onto the thumbs and fingertips of your favorite gloves and they become touchscreen gloves.

The efficacy of Nanotips really depends on the what material your gloves are made of, and you may see varying results with different pairs of gloves. Nanotips does make a leather formula and one for fabric/acrylic, so make sure you choose the correct formula. Pricing starts around $17.

See at Amazon

Got a favorite?

Do you have a favorite pair of touchscreen gloves? Do you even use them? Let us know in the comments below!

Updated January 2018: Added pricing for each item, removed the 180s Sustain, and added the Elma and Gloue gloves to the list.

LG will stop releasing new phones every year

A new strategy to cope with 11 quarters of consecutive losses.

While Samsung and Apple dominate the global smartphone market, LG continues on its never-ending struggle.

The company’s mobile division has been losing money for 11 consecutive quarters at this point, and in an attempt to try and fix this, LG’s Vice Chairman, Cho Sung-jin said that the company will be shifting away from releasing new flagship phones every single year.

As a response to a question regarding the LG G7, Sung-jin said:

We will unveil new smartphones when it is needed. But we will not launch it just because other rivals do. We plan to retain existing models longer by, for instance, unveiling more variant models of the G series or V series.

A few days before this, a spokesperson for LG said that the company would be ditching its G-series branding in favor of something new for the G7 in an effort to help boost sales. Sung-jin’s mention of the G-series has us uncertain what’s going on with the name of the phone, but no matter what happens there, this is a big change for LG.

Yearly flagship releases have become a norm of the industry, and in some cases with companies like OnePlus, a bi-yearly thing. We aren’t sure what to expect from “more variant models” of LG’s phones, but supporting current models for longer than other companies is something that we’re sure some our readers will be able to get behind.

LG G7 (2018 flagship) rumor roundup: Everything you need to know

WhatsApp group chat security flaw: What you need to know

Relax, nobody is going to be hacking your WhatsApp messages, at least not this way.

A lot of talk went down recently about a new way to exploit WhatsApp and bypass the end-to-end encryption the company likes to mention that it has whenever it can. I’ve seen tweets and comments that run the gamut from “it’s FUD” to talking about some backdoor that Facebook had installed.

The good news is that it’s neither. In fact, it’s not really one of those things you need to be concerned about and instead is one of those things that make you wonder how it ever happened in the first place because it’s pretty sloppy. But don’t worry — it will be fixed long before anything happens.

What it is

Researchers Paul Rösler, Christian Mainka, and Jörg Schwenk at Ruhr-Universität in Bochum, Germany released a research paper (.pdf link) that found a peculiar flaw in WhatsApp’s group chat administration. WhatsApp offers the same end-to-end encryption for group chats that it does for individual chats, and that usually means we should be able to feel safe in knowing that the things we say won’t be read by anyone who shouldn’t be reading it unless one of the group members lets it happen.

Apparently, it’s theoretically possible for a stranger to add themselves to a group chat on WhatsApp. “Theoretically” and “possible” being the key words here. I’ll explain.

WhatsApp offers group messaging that uses strong end-to-end encryption.

In a WhatsApp group chat one or more of the original members is an administrator. From the server’s point of view, that means that these people are able to add and remove people from the group. Everything is good so far, even though the way it works — an administrator sends a signal to every member of the group with his or her signing keys and in return, each member sends a return message with their signing keys then the originator of the message notifies each member that there is now a new person in the group — is a bit of a kludge in order to create a good user interface. If you’re not an administrator, the only thing you know is that you see a message that Jerry is now a member of the group. You can either accept that or leave the chat.

A similar flaw was found with group messaging through Signal.

The problem is that WhatsApp isn’t properly authenticating these group management requests on its own servers. A WhatsApp server needs to properly ID the sender of a message that would add a person to a group chat. The person sends a message that IDs both the group and the member it wishes to add and the server checks to make sure the person who sent it is actually a chat administrator. These messages aren’t end-to-end encrypted, and instead use standard transport encryption — the message coming from a chat administrator and going to a server that requests a user be added to a chat is not signed by the sender with their encryption key.

This means a WhatsApp server can add any user it wants to any group, at any time. The server can, not another user. That’s important, and it means any privacy expected in a WhatsApp group chat depends solely on trusting the WhatsApp chat server. That defeats the entire purpose of end-to-end encryption, which is designed so that privacy is guaranteed even if a server is compromised because only the sender and recipient can decrypt a message.

And then the internet loses its collective mind because that’s what the internet is really good at doing.

This won’t happen but still needs fixing

The only way this flaw can be exploited is by someone with access to the server doing it. That means a server gets compromised, or an employee goes rogue, or a three-letter government agency files a warrant. Any of those things could happen, might have happened in the past, and could even be happening right now. But one other thing needs to be considered — you’ll know if it happens to your chat.

You are notified whenever a person is added to a group chat, encrypted or not.

The first thing that a server does after a member is added is notify every other member of the group that “Jerry was added to the chat.” You will see the message telling you someone was added, and so will everyone else. When Jerry arrives to the private chat party with his bad jokes and cheap beer, and nobody invited him, that’s going to be a sign that something’s wrong and nobody should consider anything they are about to type as private. Pack up and move to another chat without Jerry and maybe even a different service that won’t let him crash.

So nobody is going to be able to secretly check out your encrypted group chat, but this still undermines end-to-end encryption in every possible way. It needs to be fixed right away, and maybe even the whole group management method needs to be revamped. At the bare minimum, we all need to scratch our heads and wonder how something like this slips by programmers and code auditors. It’s a ridiculous premise that will never be exploited, but still.

What you need to do

Nothing, really. Appreciate the work done by Rösler, Mainka, and Schwenk in finding this flaw because security researching is a thankless and often mind-numbing job, but past that you don’t really need to change your routine at all. A method of authenticating the request to add a member to an encrypted group chat will be sorted out by the folks who keep WhatsApp’s wheels spinning shortly and this will change from a flaw that will never be exploited to a flaw that can no longer be exploited at all.

What’s important is that you were paying attention, because the next flaw might very well be one that does need action on your part. And there will be another flaw, so make sure you keep paying attention.

Yup, the LG V30 is beautiful in its new ‘Raspberry Rose’ color

I wish more manufacturers took risks with colorful phones like this.

LG just announced it was making a new V30 color, dubbed “Raspberry Rose,” a week ago — so naturally, we tracked it down at CES 2018 to see what it was all about. And yes, it’s absolutely stunning in this new color.

Now most people would agree the V30’s design is quite good, and the combination of shining glass and smooth lines suits it in just about any color. But this new Raspberry Rose is so different from the rest of the current crop of V30 colors that it’s wonderful to see.

The only bad part about the Raspberry Rose V30 is that it won’t be available worldwide.

Oddities with custom brand names for colors aside, “Raspberry Rose” is actually a pretty accurate description of what this color looks like. It definitely isn’t just a plain red, nor is it light enough to be considered pink. In regular lighting at a glance it’s more like a light raspberry color, but with less light it gets very deep into a nice red rose color. The color-shifting property comes mostly in the back glass, which actually sports a bit of texture underneath for a neat effect when it shines in the light.

Of course the metal frame is also a matching red shade, though without some of the color shifting properties it has a narrower range of color depending on lighting. It’s just barely noticeable when you’re holding the phone from the front, but from some angles you do get those little glimpses of the red, reminding you that your V30 is special.

The only sad part about the Raspberry Rose V30 is that it’s seeing a limited release in only certain markets — a fate bestowed on so many of the best “special edition” colors. South Korea gets it first, of course, followed by a wider Asia expansion and then parts of Europe. No plans are being made for a North American release.

LG V30

• LG V30 review: The no-BS flagship
• Top LG V30 camera features
• Full LG V30 specs
• LG V30 vs. G6 vs. GS8
• The V30 is the first phone to support 600MHz spectrum
• Join our LG V30 forums

Facebook Messenger Kids comes to Amazon Fire tablets

A new way to keep an eye on who your kids are talking to.

Last December, Facebook launched Messenger Kids as an app for youngsters to safely communicate with one another and family members. Following this, it’s now expanded to Amazon’s line of Fire tablets.

Messenger Kids is targeted at kiddos 13 years and younger, and it allows them to have access to a lot of Messenger’s regular features in a more secure environment. They can send GIFs, use stickers to add to photos that they take, and even make group calls over Wi-Fi.

The UI’s been tweaked to be brighter and more kid-friendly, and to help give parents/guardians some added peace of mind, messages can’t be deleted or hidden and you have full control of contact lists to ensure your young ones aren’t talking to people they shouldn’t be.

Facebook Messenger Kids is available to download from Amazon now.

Amazon Fire tablets

• Amazon Fire 7
• Amazon Fire HD 8
• Amazon Fire 7 Kids Edition
• Amazon Fire 8 Kids Edition
• Amazon Fire HD 10

See more at Amazon

How to upgrade to a new Philips Hue Bridge

If you’ve been using Hue bulbs for a while, you should upgrade your Bridge.

Philips has been roilling out lots of exciting new updates to its Hue lights, including the recent integration with Razer’s Chroma lighting platform for gamers. There’s a lot more coming, but not all of those features are going to be compatible with the original round puck that came with your Hue lights. Fortunately, Philips includes a feature in the Hue app that makes transferring your lights and settings super easy.

See at Amazon

Here’s how it works!

How to transfer lights and settings from your old Bridge to your new Bridge

Leave the old Bridge plugged in and connected to your network.
Connect your new Bridge to power and Ethernet.
Open the Hue app.
Tap the Settings gear.
Tap Hue bridges.

Tap the information icon next to your Bridge.

Tap Transfer settings.
Tap the orange Prepare Transfer button.
Press the button on your old Bridge.
Press the button on your new Bridge.

Tap Start transfer

Tap blink lights to confirm the transfer worked.
Tap Next when everything works.
Press the reset button on your old Bridge (you’ll need a pen or paperclip or something) to wipe your old Bridge.
Unplug your old Bridge.
Tap Done.

Once you see the Congratulations screen, all of your lights have been successfully transferred to the new bridge and your app will behave exactly the same way it always has. Everything should work in the app as though nothing has changed. Outside of the stock Philips Hue app, you may run into some confusion. Here’s how you deal with it.

Another phone on the network can’t use the Hue Bulbs now

Sometimes the transfer doesn’t register on other Hue apps, or the connection just isn’t registered because the phone wasn’t connected to the network when the change happened. Either way, the fastest way to address this problem is to re-connect to your Hue Bridge. To do this:

Open the Hue App.
Tap on the Settings gear.
Tap Hue bridges.
Tap the Plus icon to add a new Bridge.
Press the button on your Bridge when prompted.

Once you have connected your Bridge to this app, it should no longer have any problems communicating.

A third-party Hue app won’t talk to my Hue bulbs anymore

Not every Hue app is created the same way, and some misbehave after switching bridges. There are two ways to fix this, depending on the app.

• Option 1: Find the Bridge feature in your app and re-connect to your Hue Bridge
• Option 2: Uninstall and Reinstall the app

Your mileage may vary on this one due to how many third-party Hue apps there are, but so far these solutions have worked with everything we’ve tested.

Google Home no longer activates Hue commands

If upgrading caused Google Home or Google Assistant to no longer be connected to the Hue lights, all you need to do is re-add the lights to your Home app.

How to set up Philips Hue integration in Google Home

Android Central’s Best of CES 2018 Awards!

These are the best products we saw at CES 2018!

Thousands of products debut each year at CES, but only a few of them are award-worthy.

And while Android isn’t particularly well-represented at the world’s biggest technology show anymore, there are still plenty of reasons to be excited about the products and services that were shown off this year. From awesome phones to innovative VR headsets and a weird-and-wonderful prototype, here are our picks for the Best of CES 2018!

Best of CES / Design Huawei Mate 10 Pro

Huawei didn’t have a great CES. The world’s number-three handset maker had every intention of announcing a carrier deal with AT&T for its Mate 10 Pro flagship, but according to numerous reports, and confirmed by Huawei itself, pressure from the U.S. government put an end to those ambitions.

Still, the Mate 10 Pro is coming to the U.S., and it’s being backed up by an enormous awareness campaign. That’s great news, because the phone is stunning, with a curved glass back and racing-stripe overlay on the camera, a vivid 6-inch 18:9 OLED display, and one of the most powerful processors ever made in the Kirin 970.

When the Mate 10 Pro debuts on February 18 for $799, it may not be as accessible as it could have been on AT&T’s store shelves, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that this is one of the best-looking phones coming to market in early 2018.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro coming to the U.S. in Feb, but carrier deal is dead

Best of CES / Innovation Lenovo Vital Moto Mod

Lenovo’s Vital Moto Mod came out of left field, to be honest, but we’re glad it exists: the accessory pairs with any Moto Z phone and offers important health stats through the built-in finger insert, including heart rate, respiratory rate, Pulse Ox, core body temperature, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure. These metrics usually require expensive arm cuffs, but the Vital Moto Mod gets it all done portably in under two minutes.

It’s a remarkable piece of technology and a testament to the continued versatility of Motorola’s Moto Mods ecosystem.

Fingers-on with the new and weird Vital and Keyboard Moto Mods

Best of CES Lenovo Smart Display

Let’s talk about the evolution of Google Assistant, because Google’s ubiquity was a big part of what made this year’s CES so exciting. Assistant is seemingly in everything, from cars to thermostats to… screens. Google’s smart display strategy gets going with Lenovo’s Smart Display, which is coming later this summer starting at $199. The beauty is in the simplicity: the Smart Display runs Android Things, so it combines the intuitive voice actions of Assistant with the power of Chromecast.

Part of what makes this particular model so great — there are other smart displays coming later this year from JBL, Sony, and LG — is its design, which is both minimal and bold. On the 10-inch version, the bamboo back adds some extra design flair, which we like.

Lenovo’s Smart Display is the Google Assistant-powered Echo Show we’ve been waiting for

Best of CES Razer Project Linda

To say we weren’t expecting this is an understatement, but Project Linda is the latest in a long history of interesting and innovative projects from gaming company Razer. What is it? Think a laptop without most of the guts where you insert your Razer Phone into the area where a trackpad would be. Once installed, the Razer Phone’s screen is mirrored on the laptop display and you can play games, browse Chrome, or do whatever else you feel like.

Right now, Project Linda is just a prototype with no release date

Razer’s Project Linda turns your phone into a laptop

Best of CES Sony Xperia XA2 + XA2 Ultra

Sony is back with another pair of mid-range phones — wait, don’t go anywhere! — and they’re important for a few reasons. First, the Xperia XA2 and XA2 Ultra are the first Sony phones to be sold in the U.S. with working fingerprint sensors since 2014, and they’re also rocking the battery-friendly and speedy Snapdragon 630. Second, the larger of the two devices has a second, optically-stabilized front-facing camera so your selfies will turn out better in any lighting condition, including near-pitch black. Third, these phones ship with Android 8.0 Oreo and have huge batteries and 23MP rear cameras.

Finally, they should ship later this quarter for under $400, putting them among the best deals in mid-range smartphones right now.

Sony Xperia XA2 and XA2 Ultra hands-on: No more quirks, these are just good phones

Best of CES LG 2018 OLED AI TVs

LG’s new 4K OLED TVs are stunning, but they also have a Google trick up their sleeves: Google Assistant support built into LG’s webOS platform, which is now mature and intuitive.

Even if you don’t think you want Assistant on a TV, we’ve learned that having it nearby while watching Netflix or cable is enormously valuable for quickly checking stats or turning off smart home devices. LG’s OLED TVs are becoming more like big phones every year, and 2018’s models are closer to that idea than ever.

Of course, aside from the smart stuff you get what is arguably the best 4K OLED panel available on a TV right now — even Samsung can’t compete with LG in the TV space, which is ironic — and that’s what has us both excited as readying our wallets as these sets get nearer to launching.

LG’s 2018 TVs include new ‘Alpha 9’ processor for natural language processing, Google Assistant

Best of CES Lenovo Mirage Solo

Although we already knew it was coming, nothing could have prepared us for the exhilaration of being able to freely move around Daydream’s beautiful VR landscape powered by Lenovo’s (and the world’s) first phone-free Daydream headset.

The Mirage Solo has all the specs you expect from a high-end phone — Snapdragon 835 SoC, 4GB of RAM, and a Quad-HD LCD display — and some extra tricks. On the front are two WorldSense cameras that allow the wearer to freely move around, enhancing purpose-built games and other Daydream apps. Google says that a handful of WorldSense-specific experiences will be available when the headset debuts in the second quarter of 2018 for under $400. Until then, we’ll just continue Daydreaming the old-fashioned way.

Lenovo Mirage Solo hands-on: The first Daydream headset that doesn’t need a phone

Best of CES Lenovo Mirage 180 Camera

Lenovo’s Mirage 180 Camera isn’t going to be as popular as the Mirage Solo VR headset, but it also works in tandem with it. The idea is simple: instead of dealing with the onerous task of having to shoot accurately and carefully with a 360-degree camera, Lenovo envisions the Mirage 180 as a way to create VR photo experiences without all the headaches. Even better, the videographers among us can look forward to 4K video capture from the dual 13MP sensors, along with plenty of software upgrades down the line.

At under $300, the Mirage 180 Camera won’t be cheap, but after playing with it we’re excited to see what it can do.

Google is focusing on 180-degree video for VR headsets

Best of CES Vivo in-display fingerprint sensor phone

Can a phone have a fingerprint sensor if you can’t see it? That’s the idea behind Vivo’s yet-unnamed phone, whose OLED display hides a pretty neat trick: an optical fingerprint sensor by Synaptics, allowing users to place one of their digits on the near-bezelless display and unlock the phone like any other sensor.

While there are no phones yet announced for the U.S. market with this remarkable tech inside, it’s safe to assume that will change in the months to come.

Vivo’s in-display fingerprint sensor shows the future of smartphone biometrics

Best of CES NVIDIA Big Format Gaming Displays

Wow, just wow. To say that we were surprised to see NVIDIA work with ASUS, Acer, and HP on specialized 65-inch 4K gaming monitors with 120Hz G-Sync and DCI-P3 color reproduction would be an understatement. When we learned that it also had a built-in Android TV-powered NVIDIA Shield blew us away. In person, these are basically televisions without the TV tuning capabilities, since they’re meant to be used as massive gaming monitors. Sub-millisecond latency and support for GeForce NOW and Gamestream only make the prospect enticing for gamers, but we’re a bit concerned with its inevitable high price.

NVIDIA partners with Acer, ASUS and HP for new 65-inch 4K HDR gaming displays that run Android TV

Best of CES Honor View 10

A Huawei Mate 10 with a slightly different design and a much lower price? You had us at hello. Alongside the limited-edition red 7X, Honor also talked up the View 10’s impending U.S. release, and while we don’t know specifics at the moment, we can safely say that it will come in under $500 and remain one of the best “affordable flagships” of 2018.

In the meantime, lucky souls in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain can pick up the Honor View 10 right now.

Honor View 10 goes international Jan 8, Honor 7X announced in limited-edition red

Best of CES BlackBerry KEYone Bronze Edition

It’s a BlackBerry KEYone with a new color. Not exactly the most exciting pitch, but this BlackBerry is the first dual-SIM KEYone, and the bronze color goes great with a thumb of good whiskey, in our opinion.

New BlackBerry KEYone Bronze Edition goes really well with whiskey

Do you prefer small or large smartphone displays?

A big part of this decision comes down to how good (or bad) your vision is.

Seeing as how we live in a world where 6-inch smartphone screens have quickly become the norm, it’s hard to believe that the first Galaxy Note and its 5.3-inch display caused the entire industry to stop and stare at its “ginormous” size just a few years ago.

Since then, phones have become increasingly larger and larger. This is great if you’re someone that consumes a lot of media or enjoy the larger canvas to more easily see whatever it is you’re looking at, but there’s still an argument to be made for the ease of use that comes with small phones.

One of our forum users recently exchanged their Galaxy S8 for a Pixel 2 and asked the community if they’d get used to the reduction in screen real-estate with their new handset, and these are some of the top answers:

Almeuit
01-10-2018 05:57 PM

“

You can eventually get used to anything if given time — I would think the bigger bezels would be more annoying then anything else.

Reply

ilimit
01-10-2018 06:19 PM

“

I went from an iPhone 7+ to the Pixel 2’s 5″ screen and love it. Sure I’ll like for it to use it’s real estate more effectively, but it’s a great form factor.

Reply

paradroid
01-10-2018 08:35 PM

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If your eyes are good, a smaller phone screen is fine. I need to where readers to see my phone so the bigger the better so I can make out some things on the phone without fumbling for my reading glasses.

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sixty_four
01-10-2018 10:45 PM

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My near vision is much better than my distance vision so the small screen works for me. I have my display and font set to the smallest size and that gives me pretty good screen density.

I have noticed a decline in my near vision so I might be a “big phone” guy sooner or later.

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Jeremy8000
01-11-2018 10:15 AM

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While not as dramatic a percentage drop in screen size, I had gone from the Nexus 6 (6″) to the Pixel XL (5.5″) and wasn’t really bothered – though am now back to the 6″ size with the 2 XL.

Honestly, if I didn’t consume so much video media on my phone I would have gone with the Pixel 2 in a heartbeat, as it is certainly more easily pocketable and a far better bang for the buck.

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Now, we’d like to pass the question on to you – Do you prefer small or large smartphone displays?

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