An Apple repair center in California can’t seem to stop calling 911

Apple

Emergency dispatchers keep receiving calls from an Apple repair center in Sacramento County, California. The dispatchers are taking up to 20 calls a day from the center, with around 1,600 logged since they started hitting the switchboard last October.

No, they’re not for real emergencies — Apple CEO Tim Cook would have to be really concerned if the center was suffering that many calamitous incidents every single day. Instead, the calls are being made in error, apparently from iPhones during the repair process.

Police dispatcher Jamie Hudson told a local CBS news outlet that the location of each call shows up on a display, and Apple’s address in Elk Grove keeps flashing up. There’s no one on the other end of the line when the erroneous calls come through, though with some of them you can apparently hear people talking in the background — about Apple devices and repairs.

The tech giant says it’s now investigating the matter. “We’re aware of 911 calls originating from our Elk Grove repair and refurbishment facility,” it said in a statement, adding, “We take this seriously and we are working closely with local law enforcement to investigate the cause and ensure this doesn’t continue.”

So what exactly is happening? It seems that during the repair process, technicians are somehow triggering the emergency call on the iPhone. Notably, the false calls seem to have started with the launch of iOS 11 last fall, which is when Apple included a new Emergency SOS feature.

Apple describes Emergency SOS as a “quick and easy” way to call the emergency services. With the iPhone X and iPhone 8, an emergency call is made by pressing and holding the side button and one of the volume buttons until the Emergency SOS slider appears. It’s then a case of dragging the slider across to place the call. Alternatively, if you continue to hold down the side and volume buttons, a countdown starts and an alert sounds. Keep the buttons pressed until the countdown ends and the iPhone will automatically call emergency services.

For the iPhone 7 and earlier Apple handsets, you need to rapidly press the side button five times, at which point the Emergency SOS slider will appear. But it’s not clear why it seems to be only this particular repair center that’s making all the calls.

Jason Jimenez of the Elk Grove Police Department described 911 as “a lifeline for everyone in our community, so having these lines open and available is paramount,” but insisted that despite Apple’s regular calls, “public safety is not in danger.”

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Airbnb woos well-heeled travelers with new listings for fancy homes

Airbnb is looking to woo well-heeled travelers with the launch of two new tiers of service: Plus and Beyond. The company made the announcement at an event in San Francisco on Thursday.

Plus offers slightly pricier accommodation that should guarantee exceptionally good value and service, while Beyond is a bid by Airbnb to attract wealthier travelers.

Airbnb personally inspects its Plus listings to verify them for quality, evaluating everything from style and comfort to easy check-in and well-equipped kitchens. Hosts at these places are described as “exceptional” for going “over and beyond to create the perfect stay.”

“Airbnb Plus is a new selection of only the highest quality homes with hosts known for great reviews and attention to detail,” the company says on its website. Every Plus listing is “one-of-a-kind, thoughtfully designed, and equipped with a standard set of amenities — whether you’re in a private room or have the entire place to yourself.”

Airbnb Plus listings are showing now for locations in Austin, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, the New York Times confirmed, and further afield in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Milan, Rome, Cape Town, Melbourne, Sydney, and Shanghai. It start with 2,000 places to stay, with an average rate of $200 a night compared to $100 a night with Airbnb’s regular offerings.

To become part of Plus, hosts have to apply to the company and make an appointment for an inspector to visit. They also need to have a minimum rating of 4.8 out of 5 from guests. Listings that make the grade will get their own “Plus” badge to make them easy to spot on Airbnb’s website.

Beyond

Beyond, coming in the spring, emerges from Airbnb’s 2017 acquisition of Luxury Retreats and will list plush and pricey residences from around the world.

Airbnb is placing these high-end properties on a separate website away from its regular listings, perhaps because they’ll be beyond what most of us can afford. Ah, that’s what it means.

Another change announced on Thursday pertains to how the website is organized. Airbnb now has nearly five million listings globally, so it’s decided to revamp its search system to make it easier for travelers to find what they’re looking for among all the different kinds of properties. For example, coming in the summer, new categories will appear for boutique hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, and another called “uniques” will point people toward quirkier accommodation that could be anything from a “land yacht” to a treehouse or even a cave.

These latest developments are significant for Airbnb as it seeks to widen its appeal and offer a more reliable experience for travelers around the world. Since opening for business in 2008, the online service has enabled around 300 million overnight stays and currently has more than 4.5 million listings in 81,000 cities.

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More than 40 companies working on new generation of text messaging

More than forty carriers and phone manufacturers are working together to bring RCS messaging, the radical new version of text messaging, to people around the world, according to a blog post from Google.

RCS — Rich Communication Services — is a replacement for SMS text messaging, and it promises to offer features that the humble SMS text messaging service never could, including read receipts, group chats, and high-res imagery. Essentially, RCS aims to take your SMS messages and upgrade them to the level of the interactive and useful chat systems you’d find on apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat. SMS messaging has long been seen as out-of-date, having been introduced in the early nineties. Without a major update since that time, users have been stuck with such antiquated restrictions as MMS messaging, 160 character limits, and so on. RCS messaging would change that.

Google has been working on this for some time — default Android messaging app Android Messages had RCS support enabled last year, Google’s Jibe service was launched around the same time, and aims to bring RCS services to businesses, and last year the service announced that it was working with 27 carriers and manufacturers to introduce the next generation of text messaging. With yesterday’s blog post now highlighting 43 different carriers and manufacturers working with Google, it’s clear that there has been progress on this front.

Google’s big push for RCS at the moment seems to be business-oriented. The traditional example for RCS messaging was an airline boarding pass being sent via text message and being instantly scanned at the gate. Google seems keen to push that particular angle and is highlighting the ways that businesses can use RCS’s features to bring their products to customers, and even let them buy and process orders through a messaging app.

Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 is due to start in but a matter of days, so it’s clear why Google has chosen to make this announcement now. The blog post states that members of the RCS community will be showcasing RCS messaging for businesses at stands at MWC, and with Google’s annual I/O conference also around the calendar’s corner, it’s a safe bet to assume that we haven’t seen the last of Google’s push toward an RCS-future.

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Multilingual Google Assistant to add more than 20 languages to its repertoire

Ahead of MWC 2018, Google has laid out its forward plans for Google Assistant on iOS and Android smartphones, announcing that it aims to bring the ever-present assistant to more than 30 languages by the end of year, as well as rolling out updates that make Google Assistant instantly multilingual and capable of responding in different languages.

At the moment, Google Assistant is available in eight languages, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese (Brazil), and Google’s plans would see that total expand to over 30, with Google claiming that the coverage would increase to 95 percent of Android users. Since that’s a pool of 2 billion users, that’s a heady boast. Users can expect to see updates that add Danish, Dutch, Hindi, Indonesian, Norwegian, Swedish, and Thai in the coming months — on both Android and iPhone devices — while the rest of the planned updates will come throughout the rest of the year.

Other plans include the ability to make Google Assistant multilingual, so if you speak more than one language or live in a multilanguage household, then Google Assistant will soon be able to detect the language you’re speaking and respond quickly and fluidly. According to Google, it will be even able switch between languages for a single user, perfect for people who use different languages throughout the day, and also useful for anyone learning another language.

But it’s not all about software updates. With the mobile world gathering in Barcelona next week for Mobile World Congress, Google also took a moment to reflect on the progress of making hardware more compatible with the Google Assistant package. While Google’s own Pixel range obviously supports the Assistant, support for phones from other manufacturers requires a close working relationship with Google. Google has been working closely with some manufacturers for the last year, in an initiative it calls the “Assistant Mobile OEM program,” which should help manufacturers to introduce helpful features like activating “OK Google” while the screen is off, and introducing device-specific keywords. While there has been no timetable given for those plans, we should expect innovations from LG, Sony Mobile, and Xiaomi to be coming soon.

Also tied into those improvements is a closer relationship with network carriers like Sprint, Koodo, Telus, and Vodafone. Google wants to let users find out more about their current plans from their Assistants, hinting that users may soon be able to add services to their plans, get support, and more.

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Frederique Constant debuts world’s first mechanical smartwatch

Luxury brand Frederique Constant officially unveiled its latest timepiece — the Hybrid Manufacture. The new watch is the first of its kind to merge mechanical movement with smartwatch features.

The Hybrid Manufacture is similar to any other hybrid smartwatch with an analog watch face and underneath has all the smartwatch capabilities. But the one distinguishing factor is the way it works. Its timekeeping functions, including hours, minutes, seconds, and date, are completely mechanical and set by the crown. By using the pusher on the left side, you can control the electronic parts of the watch which enable the smartwatch functions.

Normally, hybrid smartwatches run on a coin cell battery that typically last six months. With the Hybrid Manufacture, the time operates mechanically while the smartwatch functions are enabled by a battery. This means that even if the battery dies, you’ll simply be left with a self-winding mechanical watch that still tells time. As for the smartwatch battery, you’ll have to charge it once every seven days.

When it comes to its smartwatch capabilities, the Hybrid Manufacture tracks sleep, steps, and calories burned using its dedicated phone app that you connect via Bluetooth. The sub-dial on the watch face also indicates your progress which you can see by pressing the left pusher.

Through the app, you’ll receive detailed breakdowns and summaries of your activity. There’s also a ‘Dynamic Coach’ feature that provides tips to help you meet your health goals, along with an analysis of how you’re doing.

Another helpful tool on the connected app involves the watch analytics — which give you detailed information on amplitude, rate, and beat error of the timepiece. That way, you’ll always be informed of when it’s time to service your watch by simply checking your phone.

Aesthetically, the Hybrid Manufacture keeps it traditional. The 42mm case comes in either stainless steel with a black alligator strap or rose-gold plated stainless steel with a brown alligator strap.

We had a few minutes of hands-on time with the smartwatch and thought it looked nice on the wrist — especially for a unisex timepiece. Even though 42 mm might be larger than most smartwatches out there for women, it didn’t look too big or bulky.

The Hybrid Manufacture is slated for a May or June release — the stainless steel colorway with a silver or navy dial will cost you $3,495 and the rose-gold is priced at $3,795. There’s also a limited edition option stainless steel model with a grey dial for $3,595 — but there are only 888 pieces available.

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Get ready for more AR apps — Google brings ARCore to version 1.0

Google is working hard on improving its augmented reality prowess and announced ARCore 1.0, meaning that ARCore is now out of Preview mode. What does that mean for you? Basically, you’re about to see a whole lot more augmented reality apps on the Google Play Store.

According to Google, ARCore works on more than 100 million Android devices, including many flagships. All Google Pixel phones work with it, as well as the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, Note 8, Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, LG V30, Asus Zenfone AR, and more. Google also announced that it is working with partners to develop more ARCore-enabled phones, including the likes of Samsung, Huawei, Motorola, Sony, and more.

Still, ensuring that ARCore works on devices is only one part of the equation — with the other being ensuring that developers come on board. Thankfully, according to the blog post, Google has that covered too — it’s working with the likes of Snapchat, Porsche, Otto AR, and more. Through them, you will be able to do things like check out the Porsche Mission E Concept car from your phone, see how furniture looks in your home, and more. With Snapchat and another partnership with FC Barcelona, Google is helping users experience what it’s like to be on the field at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona, Spain.

Also in the theme of AR, Google announced that it is now expanding the availability of the Google Lens preview. The feature will now be available in Google Photos across all devices with Android or iOS 9 or later, provided users have the latest Google Photos app.

Google Lens is basically Google’s take on image-based search. In other words, you can use the feature to translate text, search for products to buy, and more. Google is also adding new features in the next few weeks — including recognition for common animals, different dog breeds, different plants, and so on.

Eventually, Google wants to bring Lens to Assistant — and it is actually already available as part of Assistant on Google Pixel devices. While it is a handy feature, it will be interesting to see how Google improves it as time goes on.

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Samsung rescues data-saving app Opera Max, launches new version

Samsung has saved the defunct data-saving VPN app Opera Max from shutdown, rebranding it as Samsung Max.

The app came from well-known browser developer Opera, and sought to reduce users’ data usage, compressing images and videos and blocking requests for data from unauthorized apps. Despite a loyal following and solid reviews over its lifespan, the app had been consigned to the recycling bin following a decision from Opera, citing that the app was too different from Opera’s popular browsers, and that it would be shelved as a result.

Following the decision, the app was pulled from the Google Play Store, according to VentureBeat, and was awaiting execution at the hands of Opera. Thankfully for users, it has arisen, like a phoenix from the ashes, in the form of Samsung Max, a Samsung-branded version of the same app.

However, it’s not all good news. While users of Opera Max can expect to receive an update, it would be a wise move for some to switch off updates, as Samsung Max does not currently work on any device that isn’t a compatible Samsung phone, essentially breaking the app for some users.

VentureBeat also reports the VPN feature has been removed, replaced with a DNS masking service that still shows your true IP address. However, there are still significant privacy modes included, including monitors that watch your system to highlight which apps are making data requests, as well as suggestions of data-saving versions of apps you have installed. Samsung’s press release also promises that the app will secure open Wi-Fi hot spots with features like one-tap encryption and tracker blocking, ensuring that you stay safe.

While it’s unclear whether Samsung paid much — or anything — for the app, it is clear that Samsung saw an opportunity in the doomed app. Samsung Max will come included on all Galaxy A and Galaxy J-series smartphones sold in India, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam, while other Galaxy devices can choose to download the app from the Play Store. The move is a part of Samsung’s larger plans for “Make for India” — a reach into the emerging smartphone market, and especially important in countries where data is scarce and users work to conserve the mobile data they have. We saw Google launch a similar app, Datally, a few months back, with the same aim of reducing data usage in emerging markets.

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Photo FOMO: VSCO gets advanced color edits, Samyang’s 50mm for 50 MP

Afraid of missing out on the latest photo industry news while you’re out, well, actually taking pictures? Photo FOMO is all the news you might have missed this week, published on the weekends. Alongside the biggest stories of the week, like the new Pentax K-1 Mark II, Sony’s flash that can keep up with 10 fps bursts, and Tamron’s first Sony FE mount lens, find briefs on the latest in accessories and photo industry news from this week with Photo FOMO.

VSCO X gets advanced color tools

VSCO

Photo editor VSCO now allows mobile photographers to play with color — earlier this week, VSCO launched an HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness tool) inside the mobile app. True to the company’s promise, that new feature is coming first to VSCO X subscribers, so the app’s free users don’t have access yet.

The HSL tool allows photographers to adjust six different color families individually — a similar tool has long been a part of desktop apps like Lightroom, but the tool is less common on smartphone-based apps. The hue control will adjust the color’s shade while saturation adjusts the amount of that color, and lightness (also called luminance) changes how light or dark the color is.

Photographers can use the HSL tool to draw more attention to a specific part of the photo, to correct color errors or simply to create stylistic adjustments.

Samyang launches 50mm designed for 50 megapixels — without autofocus

High-end lenses help high-resolution cameras reach their full potential, and lens company Samyang is unveiling another option for 50-plus megapixel Canon shooters. On Tuesday, January 20, Samyang announced the XP 50mm f/1.2 in a Canon mount. As part of the company’s high-end XP series that now has three lens options, the new glass is designed for 50 megapixels or higher and 8K.

The manual focus lens, Samyang says, is optimized particularly for portraits, and paired with a high-resolution camera will capture details down to strands of hair. The bright f/1.2 aperture is adjusted with nine blades for smooth bokeh.

Constructed from 11 lens pieces in eight groups, Samyang says the lens’ design is tailored for high-resolution cameras while working to minimize distortion and aberrations. Multiple lens coatings reduce glare and ghosting. All those pieces make the lens tip the scales at 2.65 pounds.

The company hasn’t yet announced U.S. availability, but the lens retails for 800 British pounds (roughly $1,170) and ships in March 2018 in Europe.

Smartphones could be going square — for filters anyways

Square filters tend to have several advantages over circular filters — they can be stacked, and for graduated filters, photographers can place the start of that graduation anywhere in the image. And those same perks could be coming to smartphone photography. Earlier this week, accessory company NiSi shared an unboxing of an upcoming square filter system for smartphones.

The system uses a filter holder that screws onto a clip that keeps the filters in place over the phone. The mini-square filters can then be used similar to a filter system on a DSLR, stacking filters or adjusting the placement. Nisi hasn’t yet shared pricing or availability on the upcoming smartphone accessory.

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Technology has given us more time than ever … to waste on technology

The team of Apple engineers who built the first Macintosh were lifesavers. Or, at least, that’s what they were — or could be — according to a quirky bit of Steve Jobs motivational thinking. One afternoon in August 1983, the 28-year-old Jobs came up with an unusual way to coax the Mac engineers into making the machine boot faster.

“How many people are going to be using the Macintosh?” Jobs asked. “A million? No, more than that. In a few years, I bet five million people will be booting up their Macintoshes at least once a day.”

His idea was that, should the Mac be adopted by five million users, and should the team be able to shave 10 seconds off its boot time, this added up to 50 million seconds saved every single day. “Over a year, that’s probably dozens of lifetimes,” Jobs continued. “So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you’ve saved a dozen lives. That’s really worth it, don’t you think?”

The engineers thought so, and over the next couple of months they worked hard so that Jobs got his faster boot time.

Tech’s big promise

The story strikes a chord because it sums up one of technology’s biggest promises: saving us all time. If there is one guiding principle behind every one of today’s tech giants it is this.

Google saves us time searching for information; reminding us with every search that it has delivered millions of possible results in 0.66 seconds. Facebook saves us time on social interactions, since its algorithms select only those details about friend’s lives that it thinks we need to know. Amazon saves us time on delivering products, since we no longer need to wait in line at the store and can have a product in our hands with just a few clicks and an increasingly short wait. Apple saves us time on demonstrating that we are a superior, high status individual, since the iPhone in our pockets and the MacBook in our bag signals to potential mates that we are among society’s most discerning and successful members.

And so it goes on. NFC payment technologies save us the time of pulling out our wallet. Email saves us time posting letters (and now messaging apps like Snapchat save time on sending emails.) Kindles let us know exactly how long is left of a particular book we’re reading. Tinder streamlines the dating process into a simple swipe left or right. Et cetera.

“…in order to keep himself alive, he becomes a slave to the machine.”

The idea that technology can do extraordinary things for time saving is not new. An influential 1960 essay, “Cyborgs and Space,” by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline, introduced the idea that the melding of human and machine would have an extraordinary impact on our free time. The essay suggested that a sufficiently advanced space suit would be but one example of a self-regulating man-machine system, able to take care of problems so that we would have one less chore to consider.

“If man in space, in addition to flying his vehicle, must continuously be checking on things and making adjustments merely in order to keep himself alive, he becomes a slave to the machine,” the authors wrote. “The purpose of the Cyborg, as well as his own homeostatic systems, is to provide an organizational system in which such robot-like problems are taken care of automatically and unconsciously, leaving man free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel.”

By the 1970s and 1980s, the idea that technology would free us from drudgery and give us all more free time was everywhere. In the 1979 book The Mighty Micro, author Christopher Evans predicts how technology will have advanced by the millenium to the point that we can enjoy “a twenty-hour working week and retirement at fifty.”

An erroneous prediction

Needless to say, this hasn’t happened exactly. Instead, technology has saved us time on dozens of tasks, but we seem busier than ever. The German sociologist Hartmut Rosa writes about this in the book Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, in which he describes the paradox of a world in which the more apps we download to streamline our lives seems to add to the overload.

As Rosa writes, “The ‘tempo of life’ has increased, and with it stress, hecticness, and lack of time … In almost every sphere of social life there are enormous gains in time by means of technology, [but] we don’t have any time.” One of Rosa’s points is that technology has opened up new possibilities we could never have previously dreamed of, but this had added new complications.

Who hasn’t started researching a single statistic, only to find themselves watching some tangentially connected music video on YouTube?

Sure, productivity apps and the like can help us carry out these tasks more efficiently, but many of them are tasks we wouldn’t previously be doing. Consider, for instance, the way that the internet’s hyperlinked structure has changed the way that we research information. While it has doubtless helped to democratize information, and saves time versus visiting a library to look up information, it has also opened up myriad potential rabbit holes of information it’s easy to get lost in. Who hasn’t started researching a single statistic, only to find themselves watching some tangentially connected music video on YouTube?

This illustrates the double-edged sword of technology. As jobs can be carried out (theoretically) faster, there is also more we are expected to do. Emails take a comparatively short time to respond to so there is an expectation we should respond quickly. A related example was the way that companies issued smartphones to employees, beginning in the mid-2000s. This was initially presented as a reward to hard-working employees, but carried with it the implicit understanding that employees would be more accessible outside of regular working hours.

After all, who wouldn’t reply to an email on a family holiday when it only takes a minute? And if you don’t do, Bob from the next cubicle certainly will…

Is there a backlash brewing?

Decoupling time and technology is not easy. But a few people are trying. From February 23, the Wyndham Grand hotel chain will be piloting a scheme in which they offer guest 5 percent off their room rate if they agree to lock their phones away in a timed lockbox for the duration of their stay.

“In my own life, I see how my phone has crept into those spare minutes waiting in a line, sitting at a restaurant waiting, or even when I’m on the floor playing with my kids,” Noelle Nicolai, the Wyndham Grand “resident reconnector” who developed the initiative, told Digital Trends. “We’ve seen the same at our hotels, with many guests distracted from each other while on vacation; less interpersonal interaction and more screen time. We’re in the business of memory making, so we wanted to create a program that would result in uninterrupted fun and family time, by removing the distractions that come with today’s technology.”

Jeff Zurschmeide/Digital Trends

It’s a cute idea, and hopefully one that will catch on. But is it part of a bigger backlash against the way that technology has gobbled up our time under the guise of saving it? A look at today’s tech giants reveals how difficult this change will be to make. Big technology platforms such as Google and Facebook are, after all, based on continuous user engagement in order to bring in the cash. Even projects like Google’s self-driving car, which would appear to save us time, is really a covert attempt to open up an extra couple of hours each day to use its money-making services.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the denizens of Silicon Valley, a place where 70-hour work weeks are a badge of honor, isn’t the best group of people to help us save time and lead relaxed, lower stress lives. After all, even in the example of the Mac team’s “life saving” efforts, they did so by working ridiculous hours for months on end. Things may be changing, though.

Apple, meanwhile, has revealed that it is responding to concerns about smartphone addiction

Recently Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is busy making changes intended to actually decrease the amount of time people spend using it. The aim is that, by doing this, people will experience an improvement in the quality of time they spend browsing Facebook.

Apple, meanwhile, has revealed that it is responding to concerns about “smartphone addiction” among young people by providing new tools for monitoring the time users spend staring at their iPhones. These are likely to arrive with iOS 12 later this year.

Making changes so that technologies really do save us time, rather than just giving the illusion of it, is a challenge — but possibly an achievable one. Should concerns like that of smartphone addiction gain momentum it’s possible to imagine other companies following the lead of Mark Zuckerberg and Apple’s Tim Cook.

But in a world in which more and more low-end jobs will be carried out by A.I. — and the power of interconnectivity will make those higher up the food chain more sought after — perhaps tech just needs to give up on the pretence that it’s designed to make our lives simpler and easier.

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Best Wireless Mice for Chromebooks

Which wireless mice are best for Chromebooks?

While your Chromebook’s trackpad works well enough for most situations, there are some tasks for which a wireless mouse is better.

Whether you need a wireless mouse to scroll through long documents faster, or to perform fine manipulations, there’s a great wireless mouse out there with your name on it. Here are a few of our favorites.

• Logitech M535 Compact Bluetooth Mouse
• Logitech Wireless Mouse M320
• AmazonBasics Wireless Mouse with Nano Receiver
• Logitech Triathlon M720
• Logitech MX Master

Logitech M535 Compact Bluetooth Mouse

A compact Bluetooth mouse without any compromises.

The Logitech M535 is a great mouse for any Chromebook. It’s comfortable thanks to the ergonomic design and rubber grips and the compact design makes it easy to slip into a laptop bag or backpack. Best of all, it has an accurate optical sensor to keep everything nice and tight when you’re not able to use a mousepad.

At just $23 bucks, it’s a steal.

See at Amazon

Logitech Wireless Mouse M510

Available in black, blue, and red, the Logitech Wireless Mouse M510 has received positive reviews from users and reviewers alike for its long battery life and excellent functionality.

Logitech states that this mouse will last up to two years on a single AA battery. Mileage may vary, but in general, users report that the battery does last a while — maybe a year or more on average.

Another benefit of this mouse is that its curved, asymmetric shape and rubber surface make it comfortable to use for long periods of time.

If you want a wireless mouse that has a long battery life, is comfortable to hold and comes in different colors, then check this one out for under $20.

See at Amazon

AmazonBasics Wireless Mouse with Nano Receiver

The AmazonBasics Wireless Mouse is a 2.4 GHz mouse that connects to your Chromebook via a small USB transceiver. Customer reviews state that it works well and is easy to use, providing an amazing value for a bargain price.

This optical mouse comes with a one-year warranty, so if anything goes wrong, you can always get a replacement.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive wireless mouse that does the job, then the AmazonBasics Wireless Mouse is for you. Get yours for just $10!

See at Amazon

Logitech M720 Triathlon

The unnamed successor to the M705, the M720 takes things up a notch.

Still designed with long battery life in mind, the M720 has a newly sculpted body design and an improved mouse wheel and a thumb button.

You have the same excellent laser for tracking that makes for precise pointing and clicking, but the M720 brings a feature from the bigger more expensive options — multi-device pairing.

With a Bluetooth option as well as support for an included Logitech Unifying receiver, you can pair the M720 with up to three devices at the same time and change with a click of a button. If you want performance and features in a smaller package, you want to look at the M720 for just $30.

See at Amazon

Logitech MX Master 2S

The Logitech MX Master 2S is the master of all wireless mice because of its ability to track well even on glossy surfaces and its long battery life. Reviewers and users agree that it’s a top-notch wireless mouse.

With a shape sculpted for your right hand, it is comfortable to use all day. In fact, it was designed for people who use their mice a lot, all day, every day.

It has a rechargeable battery, so you never have to replace it. Simply connect it to your Chromebook using its USB cable and continue using it while it charges. If you don’t have an extra USB port, you can use its wall-charger unit instead. Either way, four minutes gives you four hours of use and a full charge will last you up to 40 days.

At $80 it’s by far the most expensive mouse on this list. But if you’re looking for a wireless mouse that will work, even on glass, and has a long-lasting rechargeable battery, the Logitech MX Master 2S is a great choice.

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Which wireless mice are your favorites?

We’ve looked high and low for great wireless mice that work with the Chromebook, but we’re only human, and we might have missed something super-amazing. Tell us all about it in the comments below.

Update February 2018: Updated our selections here and added price information.

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