Are you still happy with your Samsung Galaxy Note 8?

To switch or not to switch.

Without a doubt, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 is one of the best phones you can buy right now. It’s got a gorgeous display, fantastic camera package, zippy performance, and more than enough features. It’s one heck of a device, and for people that bought it as soon as they could, they’ve been rocking the Note 8 for just about six months at this point.

Six months isn’t that much time in the grand scheme of things, but in the world of mobile tech, that’s identical to a millennium. Some Note 8 owners in the Android Central forums recently started talking about whether they’re still content with the phone or if they’ve been thinking about switching to something else, and this is what they had to say.

amyf27
02-16-2018 05:44 AM

“

As a daily device, no itch. For me personally, this is the best phone out there. I mean… maybe another Note 8 in a different color? Lolo. I do wish it were wider. It would be fun to doodle around with another phone but none come close to the Note for me.

Reply

areyes163
02-16-2018 06:04 AM

“

I got the itch and got the 8 plus and the X. Then went came back to the Note. Feels good. Like all is right.

Reply

dov1978
02-16-2018 06:36 AM

“

Yep itchy here. Just about jump ship to the Pixel 2 XL or the Huawei Mate 10 Pro. Not sure which yet, I’ll probably end up tossing a coin

Reply

zoomis
02-16-2018 09:45 AM

“

No itch – yet. But I will likely get the Note 9 this fall. That’s the current plan, at least.

Reply

Now, we’d like to hear from you – If you’ve got a Galaxy Note 8, are you still happy with it?

Join the conversation in the forums!

Samsung Galaxy Note 8

• Galaxy Note 8 review
• Galaxy Note 8 vs. Galaxy S8+
• Which Note 8 color is best?
• Complete Galaxy Note 8 specs
• Join our Galaxy Note 8 forums

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Uber officially launches ‘Uber Express Pool’ in select cities

After being piloted in Boston and San Francisco, Uber is officially launching Express Pool in those two cities along with Los Angeles, DC, Miami, San Diego, Philadelphia and Denver. The ride-hailing company plans on launching the service in more cities soon.

Express Pool, like Uber Pool matches a driver with riders along a similar route during a trip. But instead of the door-to-door service found in Pool, Express Pool requires riders to walk a block or two to a location to maximize the efficiency of a trip. It then drops those riders near their locations, also within walking distance.

Uber says these Express Pool trips will be up to 50-percent cheaper than Uber Pool and 70-percent cheaper than Uber X. That’s a substantial savings for commuters willing to hoof it down the street for a ride.

When you hail an Uber Express Pool, the app will take an additional minute or two while it figures out the best route, pick up location, driver and other riders. It’ll then direct you to a location taking into account the time needed to walk to that location. The ideal ride is basically a straight line to your destination while accommodating others.

Uber says it’s been working for a year on the technology powering Express Pool and that some of the tech will be used to power Pool soon. But don’t fret fans of having a car come to their home filled with strangers, the company has no plans to discontinue Uber Pool.

The Morning After: Spotify plots its own smart speaker

Hi there! Watching the PyeongChang Winter Olympics? Been watching them in VR? We have. We also have news of a Burnout comeback (The Best Driving Game) and Amazon brings its Prime rewards to Whole Foods shoppers.

This is how the robot revolution starts.
Boston Dynamics’ robots won’t be held back by puny humans

Are you looking for the exact moment robots decide to turn on their human creators? You might want to mark this day on your calendar. Boston Dynamics has posted video of a SpotMini test where it gauged the bot’s ability to adjust to interference — in this case, from a pesky human.

It needs hardware.Spotify might be building a smart speaker of its own

Spotify might be working a smart speaker, according to new job listings. “Spotify is on its way to creating its first physical products and set up an operational organization for manufacturing, supply chain, sales and marketing,” one ad states. So far, it has relied on other products like Google’s Assistant, Amazon Echo and Sonos One to stream its service. However, Apple recently launched its HomePod speaker with only native Apple Music support, showing Spotify’s need to take action on its own hardware.

The ads show the new operations manager, senior product manager: hardware production and project manager: hardware production and engineering would be handling manufacturing and supply for the new product. It all sounds like it’s closer to being made, whatever form it takes.

Rivals like NextVR have set the bar much higher.
If NBC can’t improve its VR Olympics coverage, it should just stop

If you’re watching the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics on TV like a normal person, you may not realize there’s another option. Steve Dent tested the VR waters with NBC, here’s how he fared.

Improved graphics, 60 frames per-second and that sweet, sweet online mode.
‘Burnout Paradise’ is back March 16th with a $40 4K remaster

Burnout Paradise was one of those rare racers that transcended its genre and was just so good. If its recent 10th birthday had you feeling nostalgic, then we’ve got good news: Come March 16th, you’ll be able to hit the streets of Paradise City once again, with the complete original soundtrack, and all 150 cars and eight main expansion packs — including the Big Surf Island premium DLC. Burnout Paradise Remastered will run in native 1080p on PlayStation 4 and Xbox hardware, and EA promises 4K resolution and 60 frames per-second on PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X.

Five percent return on purchases at both Amazon and Whole Foods.
Amazon will reward Prime members for shopping at Whole Foods

Amazon says its Rewards Visa will now offer users the same level of reward when they shop at Whole Foods as they receive at Amazon itself. Eligible Prime members will now receive a flat five-percent bonus on all purchases at Whole Foods, just as they do online. By comparison, shopping beyond Amazon’s universe will net you two percent back at restaurants, gas stations and drugstores and a single percent elsewhere.

Whether or not it’s easy is another matter.
Modders turn Nintendo Switch into a full-fledged Linux tablet

For all of its Nintendo customizations, the Switch is ultimately a tablet running a garden variety NVIDIA Tegra processor — and that means it can potentially handle the same software as other mobile devices. To prove that point, the fail0verflow team has shown a Switch running honest-to-goodness Linux. The touchscreen, networking and accelerated 3D graphics are all functioning, but you’re not about to run Steam games on it (many Linux apps aren’t built for ARM-based chips), but you could theoretically use the Switch as a basic computer.

But wait, there’s more…

• HoloLens adds mixed reality to a Japanese national treasure
• Existing EV batteries could be recharged five times faster
• Google Pay is the new Android Pay
• The ESA says preserving old online games isn’t ‘necessary’
• Netflix: ‘Stranger Things’ directors aren’t leaving the show
• Jessica Jones confronts her anger in new season two trailer

The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you’ll miss if you don’t Subscribe.

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Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 streams music to multiple Bluetooth devices

Qualcomm’s newest flagship platform, the Snapdragon 845, already promises a lot of things to be excited about in terms of its graphics, camera support and AI processing, and now the company has announced a Broadcast Audio function, which will let users stream music to numerous Bluetooth devices simultaneously. So a group could listen to the same music via Bluetooth headphones, for example, or you could play a podcast throughout your house via multiple speakers. And with automatic retransmission and packet-loss concealment, the feature promises near-perfect synchronization.

This kind of one-to-many sound broadcasting pushes the capabilities of traditional Bluetooth in a way that makes it a viable alternative to platform exclusive smart speakers, especially if you’re all about multi-room playback. Why commit to multiple HomePods or Echos if you want to listen to Classic FM on a Sunday morning while you potter around the house, when you can just stream to your existing devices? Putting smart speakers to one side, though, Broadcast Audio lets users share and participate in sound in a way that brings people together, which is what music is all about, so it’s surprising that Snapdragon didn’t get this feature sooner.

Qualcomm’s sample headset teases what’s next for mobile VR

Ahead of Mobile World Congress, which is taking place in Barcelona next week, Qualcomm has announced a VR headset reference design based on its latest Snapdragon Mobile VR platform. The new system works on the Snapdragon 845, the company’s latest premium mobile chipset, and will bring about new features like foveated rendering and room-scale tracking. According to Qualcomm, it’ll also be 30 percent faster and use 30 percent less power than the Snapdragon 835 version.

The Snapdragon 835 is already in some notable VR headsets, including the HTC Vive Focus and Lenovo’s Mirage Solo. With the 845, devices can support higher-res displays, with “more than twice as much display throughput compared to the Snapdragon 835 mobile platform,” according to the company’s announcement. That means dual screens, each with 2K resolutions, can be powered by the chip at the same time.

The Snapdragon 845 will also enable what Qualcomm calls Adreno Foveation, which is basically foveated rendering using its Adreno GPU. The reference design headset has four cameras — two of which are pointing at the user’s face to track your pupils. The GPU uses that information to render higher quality graphics where the eyes are paying attention.

The new platform will also support what the company calls Roomscale tracking, using inside-out 6-DoF (degrees of freedom) tracking with SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) to follow your body and the room you’re in. This way, it can detect obstacles in front of you so you can avoid them while remaining immersed in VR.

Although we first heard about the Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform in December, seeing the reference design gives us a glimpse of what to expect in the next generation of mobile VR headsets. The reference design is available for both standalone goggles as well as those where you have to slot in a smartphone to power the VR experience. While we’ve seen examples of foveated rendering and SLAM in other devices, it’s likely that Snapdragon-powered headsets will be more widely available.

According to Qualcomm, the Vive Focus was a derivative of its Snapdragon 835 reference design, which is another reason why this is a taste of upcoming VR devices. To date, the company said it has “supported customers in the launch of more than 20 XR (Xtended Reality) devices across standalone head-mounted displays and XR-capable smartphones.” We’ll be checking out the actual device itself at MWC next week, so stay tuned for our impressions.

Facebook Messenger adds an easy way to start group calls

If you’ve ever tried initiating a group voice or video call on Messenger, then you know that it’s not intuitive at all. You’d have to hang up on your friend, start a new group convo and then call from within that window to be able to talk to several friends at the same time. Facebook must have realized that the process shouldn’t be more complex than setting up a three-way call on a landline, so it has launched an easier way to initiate group calls. Now, when you want to bring the rest of your circle into an ongoing call, you simply have to tap on the screen and select the “add person” icon.

From there, you can choose the people to add and be able to see them all on your screen if it’s a video chat. The original person you’re talking to won’t have to miss anything if you called to show them, say, an event going on in real time — and yes, filters work even when you’re talking to several people. The feature is most likely one of the improvements Facebook promised for group chats back in January, when it announced its plans to simplify Messenger this year. It’s now available for both iOS and Android devices around the globe; you just have to update your app to be able to make initiating group chats a more seamless experience.

Source: Facebook

Watch SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch its internet satellite payload

A SpaceX Falcon 9 is blasting into the skies today carrying Hisdesat’s PAZ satellite, which will spend five and a half years carrying out radar and imaging work for the Spanish government and businesses. The launch, which uses a first stage booster previously used last August during the FORMOSAT-5 mission, will also have on board SpaceX’s first demonstration satellites for its proposed satellite broadband service, which will be tested out before a full constellation launch over the next five years. Weather permitting, you’ll be able to watch the launch live on PAZ’s YouTube channel at 9AM EST (6AM PST), although a back-up window has been scheduled for Thursday 22 February, should things go awry — since today’s launch was initially slated for February 17, that’s not entirely unfeasible.

Via: TechCrunch

Parallels Toolbox 2.5 for Mac Gains Web Page Screenshot Feature, Batch Image Conversion, and More

Parallels has released Parallels Toolbox 2.5 for Mac, bringing a handful of new features to the standalone application which aren’t necessarily tied to virtualization. Essentially, the Toolbox places a drop-down menu in the Mac’s menu bar, allowing users to do certain tasks more quickly. Tasks include the ability to record the screen, take screenshots, record audio, archive files, convert and download video, lock the screen, and more.

New one-click tools in this version include: a Screenshot Page function, which lets you capture and print lengthy web pages that don’t fit on a single screen; a Free Memory tool for checking available RAM and quickly reclaiming memory; and a batch image resizing utility to convert multiple images to your desired file size and format.

Elsewhere, Toolbox 2.5 includes enhancements to existing functions, such as Clean Drive live disk monitoring, extended Download Video and Record Video options, and new delay settings for Screen Capture. In addition to the above, Parallels has streamlined the video/photo capture and conversion process, and enhanced the presentation and screen sharing modes to make additional options available to the host user. This version also has Archive and Unarchive utilities bundled to improve workflows involving file compression.

Lastly, Parallels has announced Toolbox Business Edition, offering IT admins focused time-saving tools that aim to solve help tickets more efficiently, such as license and subscription management features, mass Toolbox deployment, and customizable Tool libraries for individual users.

Parallels Toolbox 2.5 for Mac is available at the Parallels website as a standalone product for $19.99 per year. Each annual license includes free updates of new and enhanced tools as they become available.

Tag: Parallels
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Google’s Gboard can now search emoji, stickers and GIFs at once

Gboard is making it easier to look for the perfect emoji, sticker and GIF in one go — at least for beta testers on Android. As 9to5google reports, the keyboard’s latest beta update adds a “Search all media” option that surfaces all the results it has on offer that corresponds to your query. So, if you search for a smiley face, it brings up all the emoji, all the stickers and all the GIFs you can use at the same time. To find the new search bar, tap on the Google icon, then any of the other icons that pop up and then the search button that appears on the bottom left-hand part of the keyboard.

In addition to the new search function, Gboard beta version 7.0.2 also adds support for Korean and Chinese languages. Japanese, which first went live on beta version 6.7 but was pulled back down, is now also available in Preferences under Languages. Simply tap on the Google icon, go to More options, click on Settings and add a new keyboard under Languages. You will have to join the keyboard’s beta program to be able to access all these new features. Once you are, you’ll only need to update your app on Google Play to be able quick-search for graphics and animations you can use to flood your friends with.

Source: 9to5google

10 Essential Tips for Using the macOS Finder More Efficiently

The Finder is a classic Mac system component that’s ever-present on your desktop, ready to help you find and organize your documents, media, folders, and other files. It’s the smiling icon known as the Happy Mac logo on your Dock, and includes the Finder menu bar at the top of the screen.

A lot of hidden power resides in every Finder window. In this article, we’ve highlighted some of our favorite Finder tips and tricks to help you work more efficiently with files and folders on your Mac.

1. Quickly Adjust Column Widths

The Column view is one of our favorite ways of working with files, and we’ve got two quick column adjustment tips to make it work better for you.

If you open a new Finder window and the column width is too small to view the names of your files, double-click the bottom of the column divider and the width will automatically expand to fit the longest filename.

Another useful trick is to hold down the Option (⌥) key when adjusting the column width manually (by click-dragging the divider). This adjusts all of the columns in the same window at the same time, and also sets the chosen size as the default column width for all Finder windows going forward.

2. Set a Default Folder for a New Finder Window

If you often work with files in a specific folder, then it’s worth setting it as the default folder that every new Finder window opens with automatically.

Click Preferences in the Finder menu bar, and under the General tab you’ll see a dropdown menu under “New Finder windows show:”. Select one of the options in the list, or click Other… to choose a custom location.

3. Customize the Toolbar

You can put more options at your fingertips when working with files and folders by adding more action buttons to every Finder window’s toolbar.

To do so, right-click (or Control-click) the Finder window’s toolbar and select Customize Toolbar…. You’ll see a dropdown menu of buttons any of which you can drag up to the toolbar with your mouse cursor, as well a default set that you can drag up to replace any you’ve previously added.

4. Add Shortcuts to the Toolbar

You can add convenient shortcuts along the top of the Finder window to any app, file, or folder you like, simply by holding down the Command (⌘) key and dragging the item onto an available space in the toolbar.

5. Merge All Open Finder Windows

If your desktop is being taken over by multiple Finder windows, you can quickly unify them as tabs in a single window: With a Finder window active, simply click Window in the menu bar and select Merge All Windows.

6. Reveal the File or Folder Path

The location of a folder or file may not be immediately obvious when viewed in a Finder window, so here are a few ways to find out.

The easiest method is to right-click (or Control-click) the folder name and icon in the title bar. This will show you the full path in a dropdown menu, allowing you to quickly jump to any folder in the list.

Alternatively, you can make the path constantly visible at the bottom of every Finder window, by selecting View -> Show Path Bar in the Finder menu bar. Note that you can double-click on any folder in the Path bar to jump straight to it in the current open window/tab.

If you don’t want the Path bar taking up space in each Finder window, you can make the path appear by default in the title bar. Simply open Terminal (in Applications/Utilities) and type the following command into the Terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool true; killall Finder

If you no longer want the path to appear in each Finder’s title bar, just run the above command again but replace the word true with false.

7. Show the Status Bar

Surprisingly turned off by default, Finder’s Status bar displays two pieces of information that will come in handy when organizing your files.

In the Finder menu bar, select View -> Show Status Bar, and at a glance you’ll be able to tell how many items are contained in the open folder, as well as the current disk’s available storage space.

8. Reveal the Library Folder

Apple hides the Library folder by default to prevent less savvy users from fiddling with its contents and causing app/system issues, but if you’d rather have easy access to the Library folder, here are two ways to reveal it.

For quick access to the Library folder from the Finder menu bar, click the Go menu, hold down the Option (⌥) key, and then select Library in the dropdown menu.

If you want to reveal the Library folder permanently, navigate to your home folder (found in /user/[yourname]/… from the system root directory), select View -> Show View Options from the menu bar, and then check “Show Library Folder” at the bottom of the options pane.

9. Search Only the Current Folder

The Search bar in every Finder window searches your entire system by default, but there’s an option in Finder’s preferences that lets you automatically limit searches to the folder that’s currently open.

In the menu bar, click Finder -> Preferences and select the Advanced tab. In the dropdown menu under “When performing a search”, select Search the Current Folder.

10. Enter a Fullscreen Slideshow in Quick Look

Most macOS users are familiar with Finder’s spacebar-activated Quick Look mode, which offers a preview of the currently highlighted file or files, but fewer users will be aware of Quick Look’s fullscreen slideshow feature.

You can enter a fullscreen slideshow preview by holding the Option (⌥) key when you next press the spacebar to activate Quick Look. The desktop will fade out for a close-up of your selected images and/or documents, which can be scrolled through using the arrow keys or using the onscreen navigation overlay. You can also select the index card icon on the overlay to glance at all your selected files on the one screen.

Related Roundup: macOS High Sierra
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