Best Small Android Phone of 2018

• Best overall
• Best for features
• Best on a budget
• Best tiny

Best Overall

Google Pixel 2

See at Verizon
See at Google Store

For two years, the Pixel has been the quintessential Google phone, and the HTC-made Pixel 2 is our top recommendation for shoppers in need of a small phone.

The Pixel 2 wields the same Snapdragon 835 processor as almost every other 2017 flagship, but sits in a class of its own when it comes to performance. It’s comfortable to hold thanks to a relatively small 5″ 1080p display, and features front-facing speakers, water resistance, and one of the best cameras on the market. Despite a seemingly small 2700 mAh battery, it even manages impressive battery life.

Bottom line: For the Google purist in search of a small phone, the Pixel 2 is the pretty much the complete package.

One more thing: The Pixel 2 lacks a headphone jack and wireless charging, though it does include a USB-C audio dongle in the box.

Why the Google Pixel 2 is the best

It’s Kinda Just Clearly the best Android phone money can buy.

There’s no better way to experience Android the way Google intends it than with a Pixel phone. The Pixel 2 dispells the notion that small phones can’t offer a flagship experience, with the same specsheet and performance as the larger Pixel 2 XL — without its various known issues.

The Pixel 2 is the first Google-branded phone with IP67 water resistance, and the first to offer front-facing speakers since the Nexus 6P. It also takes some of the best photos we’ve ever seen from a phone with its 12.2 MP primary camera, and the front-facing camera can capture great-looking selfies, even offering Portrait Mode by making use of machine learning. Google also sweetens the deal by including free unlimited backups on Google Photos for Pixel 2 owners.

You can buy the Pixel 2 in one of three attractive colors (Kinda Blue, Just Black, and Clearly White), and two storage options (64GB or 128GB), though there’s no microSD expandability so choose wisely.

Best for features

Samsung Galaxy S9

See at Amazon

The Galaxy S9 is one of the most powerful compact phones on the market, and even though it features a 5.8-inch display, it’s in a body barely larger than the Pixel 2. The Galaxy S9 takes all of the great design qualities of the GS8 and improves them, reworking the fingerprint sensor so it’s in a logical place, and improving the camera dramatically. And thanks to stronger glass and thicker metal, it’s less scratch-prone.

Bottom-line: The Galaxy S9 is a one-handed marvel, even though it’s got a large 5.8-inch display.

One more thing: The Galaxy S9+ is the phone’s larger sidekick, and it comes with a bigger screen, larger battery, and dual cameras.

Best affordable phone

Moto G5 Plus

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The Moto G5 Plus is one of the best smartphone deals today. It’s compact but not tiny, with a 5.2-inch Full HD display, and it packs a lot for that metal chassis, including a Snapdragon 625 processor and an excellent 12MP rear camera. The 3000mAh battery lasts a while, and the ultra-simple Nougat-based software is about as good as you’ll get for the price.

Bottom-line: The Moto G5 Plus is an excellent choice if you’re looking for an affordable unlocked phone in a compact size.

One more thing: If you want to save a bit of money, you can go with the Amazon Prime Exclusive version.

Best “really tiny” phone

Xperia XZ2 Compact

See at Sony

Sony’s Xperia XZ2 Compact brings all of the features one expects of a flagship down to the palm-able size. The line is one of the few that balances features, performance, and dimensions, and the XZ2 Compact is no exception, with a Snapdragon 845 and all the camera improvements of its Xperia XZ2 counterpart. Even though it has a 5-inch display, it’s still much smaller than the Pixel 2.

Bottom-line: You won’t find another 5″ phone with such high-end specs and small bezels, and it’s made even better with Android 8.0 Oreo on board.

One more thing: There’s now a fingerprint sensor on the back, and it works in the U.S.

Conclusion

The Pixel 2 is simply the best compact Android experience around. You get pure Google software, a best-in-class camera, water resistance, front-facing speakers, and top-end specs, all in a small form factor that can easily fit in your hand or pocket. As always, it can be a bit difficult to find certain configurations in stock, but once you get your hands on one, the Pixel 2 leaves little to be desired — except maybe a headphone jack and wireless charging.

Best Overall

Google Pixel 2

See at Verizon
See at Google Store

For two years, the Pixel has been the quintessential Google phone, and the HTC-made Pixel 2 is our top recommendation for shoppers in need of a small phone.

The Pixel 2 wields the same Snapdragon 835 processor as almost every other 2017 flagship, but sits in a class of its own when it comes to performance. It’s comfortable to hold thanks to a relatively small 5″ 1080p display, and features front-facing speakers, water resistance, and one of the best cameras on the market. Despite a seemingly small 2700 mAh battery, it even manages impressive battery life.

Bottom line: For the Google purist in search of a small phone, the Pixel 2 is the pretty much the complete package.

One more thing: The Pixel 2 lacks a headphone jack and wireless charging, though it does include a USB-C audio dongle in the box.

Update, March 2018: We’ve consolidated our small and medium phone lists into a single list to simplify your buyer’s guide experience.

This $7 precision toolkit comes with 48 pieces to help you complete electronics repairs at home

Complete your own repairs at home!

It happens to the best of us. We try so hard to care for our devices, but it’s inevitable that something will go wrong and they’ll need to be fixed, but that doesn’t mean you need to take it somewhere and pay a ton to get the job done. Thanks to the internet and YouTube, you can find information on how to repair just about anything these days, so why not try the job at home?

You’ll need some tools to do it, which is where this $6.92 48-piece toolset sold by JackyLED Direct comes in handy. Use the coupon code L3DH64VC to get it for the discounted price, which saves you $4 on the purchase.

This toolkit improves on an older version we’ve shared deals on in the past. It adds several new tools to go along with the 44 screwdriver bits. Now you get the handle, tweezers, an extension bar, and a suction cup. The multitude of bits are so varied they even come with some to fit the screws on the iPhone and other phones. You can repair anything from a wristwatch to your laptop to a DSLR if you want.

See at Amazon

Riot revamps EU ‘League of Legends’ circuit to retain pro players

Riot overhauled its North American League of Legends eSports championship to give pros a better reason to stick around, and now it’s mounting a similar effort for Europe. The EU division of the League Championship Series has instituted a slew of reforms that should ensure more sustainable careers, most notably an end to relegation and promotion. There was a lot of turnover when teams knew they could fall from grace — this lets them spend more time and money on players to create “lasting connections” with fans. In other words, a rookie with promise won’t get cut just because their team had a rough first season.

The reforms also increase the base salary to €60,000 (about $74,000), and pros are now included in the revenue sharing system to reward them when the LCS does well. There’s also a player development platform due for 2019 that should help players refine their skills and become “well-rounded individuals.” Given the Overwatch League’s troubles with players both in and outside of matches, it’s not surprising that Riot would like to avoid its own share of drama.

As in North America, the aim remains the same: Riot wants to create stability, even if it risks dropping major teams. Leagues like LCS are now major businesses, and that means creating a more predictable structure where viewers have good reasons to keep watching.

Source: League of Legends eSports

Apple CEO Tim Cook criticizes Facebook privacy standards

In a conversation with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Recode’s Kara Swisher, Apple CEO Tim Cook criticized Facebook and the way it manages its users’ data, Recode reports. During the interview — which will air on MSNBC next month — Cook commented on Facebook’s data privacy standards as well as the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal. “We’ve never believed that these detailed profiles of people, that have incredibly deep personal information that is patched together from several sources, should exist,” he said, adding that these sort of profiles “can be abused against our democracy. It can be abused by advertisers as well.”

Apple’s Tim Cook on how to protect privacy:
– I would make sure I understood the privacy policy of every app and every website you frequent.
– I would go into private browsing mode. Think about blocking cookies.
– The only way to protect your data, is to encrypt.#RevolutionCHI pic.twitter.com/ZpTsRxn4KN

— Recode (@Recode) March 28, 2018

On the topic of regulation, Cook said that no regulation is best in his opinion since it can come with unexpected consequences. “However, I think we’re beyond that,” Cook said. “I do think it’s time that a set of people think deeply about what can be done.” When asked what he would do if he were Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Cook replied, “I wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Cook called for regulation earlier this month in light of the Cambridge Analytica situation, saying at the China Development Forum that “well-crafted” regulation is now “necessary.” And he’s been critical of Facebook and Google before in regards to their privacy standards. “The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer — if our customer was our product,” Cook said during the interview. “We’ve elected not to do that.”

The interview will air at 8PM Eastern on April 6th.

Source: Recode, The Verge

How the 38 Studios scandal shaped ‘Life is Strange: Before the Storm’

Passion doesn’t equate success. It’s a hard lesson to learn in any industry — no matter how dedicated your team is, regardless of how invested they are financially or emotionally, the entire business could burst into flames at any moment. Factors beyond anyone’s control can shift the course of a project in an instant, or kill it on the spot.

Few people know this reality better than the developers at 38 Studios. Founded in 2006 by former professional baseball player Curt Schilling, 38 Studios recruited top talent including fantasy author RA Salvatore and Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, with the goal of building MMORPGs — huge, online games with dense ever-evolving worlds.

In 2010, 38 Studios received a $75 million loan from the Economic Development Corporation of Rhode Island, promising to build a universe of MMO games and bring 450 jobs to the state within two years. While $75 million was a hefty sum, it represented just a portion of the budgets of similar MMOs, where individual games could cost upwards of $100 million to develop, plus millions more just to stay online. Supporting World of Warcraft, for example, cost Blizzard $200 million over its first four years on the market.

In February 2012, 38 Studios’ first title, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, came out and was met with moderate success. Within months, the team had sold 410,000 copies of Reckoning and reviews were generally positive.

But by May that year, it was clear 38 Studios was in trouble. A $1.125 million check to the state of Rhode Island bounced, and Gov. Lincoln Chafee said he was working overtime to keep the studio solvent. The next month, the studio declared bankruptcy.

It would’ve been just another story of the perils of game development — MMO development, in particular — if not for that unsecured $75 million loan. The closure of 38 Studios meant Rhode Island taxpayers were responsible for repaying the loan, which came to $112.6 million with interest. The story rocked the video game industry and dominated the regional business news cycle. Rhode Island taxpayers are still repaying the loan today, though the total has been shaved down to about $55 million.

Zak Garriss joined 38 Studios as a writer and designer in 2008, and he left in 2011, just ahead of Reckoning’s launch.

“I left right before and then my phone blew up when it happened because my friends were like, ‘It’s the end,’” Garriss told Engadget.

Today, he’s the narrative director at Deck Nine, the house behind Life is Strange: Before the Storm, and he carries lessons from 38 with him.

“I remember meeting all the guys and gals at 38 Studios and just really seeing a synchrony there, and recognizing that these guys absolutely love making games,” Garriss said. “That’s beautiful, that’s so cool, we’re gonna kill it. And what we learned was, that’s not the totality of how the sausage gets made.”

Garriss has fond memories of 38 Studios. The team there was special — they were engaged, communicative and passionate. Still, despite successfully shipping a rich fantasy game and producing plans for two other titles, they all lost their jobs just months after launch.

Though the business aspect of 38 Studios was ill-managed, Garriss said its daily development routine was solid. Innovative, even.

“That’s not the totality of how the sausage gets made.”

“I think what I learned there built a foundation for who I am as a game developer,” Garriss said. “I got to work with some extraordinarily talented people. And part of the ethos, I think, that was particularly unique was this kind of self-production design approach where we, as writers and designers, we really sought to understand our full production pipeline and write with an eye toward the scope.”

This isn’t how it always works at AAA studios. With hundreds of developers contributing to a single game, teams are often segmented, focusing on individual slices of the project without keeping the bigger picture in mind. It’s easier at independent studios, where just a handful of developers are responsible for the entire game and it’s easier for everyone to be aware of the complete pipeline.

However, plenty of indie developers are still wary of the business side of game development, Garriss said. He attended a roundtable at GDC last week about shoestring indie development, and he noticed a trend among some developers.

“What I saw a lot of was this ideological imposition of a binary that I don’t think is actually true,” he said. “Which is, you love the thing you’re working on, or you can sell out and make money working in a studio or just working for the man.”

Indie developers often view creating a game as a noble, pure undertaking, just like producing any other form of art. Meanwhile, marketing and business dealings are seen as evil tools of soulless corporations. This simply isn’t true, according to Garriss.

“For Before the Storm particularly, it really became clear to me that marketing and PR serves a really positive role if you believe in the game you’re making,” he said. “Marketing is about getting people to play it. Introducing it to people. That experience — everything you just put your heart and soul into, marketing is about actually trying to earn a chance for someone to give it a shot.”

“Marketing and PR serves a really positive role if you believe in the game you’re making.”

Garriss saw the full effect of major-studio marketing plans with Before the Storm. It was published by Square Enix, a powerhouse in the video game industry, and it benefited from a multitude of advertisements, social media campaigns and special-edition bonuses. It helped that Before the Storm was a quality slice of video game goodness, telling a powerful coming-of-age story in a newly established, beloved franchise.

Under Garriss’ narrative leadership, the Deck Nine team kept its eye on the end goal, constantly considering the game’s complete development pipeline with every word they wrote. On top of that, they listened to everyone’s ideas and didn’t hesitate to challenge each other’s creative decisions. They weren’t afraid to fight — respectfully.

“I’ve worked in a lot of different writers’ rooms where this sort of mentality wasn’t necessarily embraced,” Garriss said. “When I was recruiting and building the room for Before the Storm, I think I found myself really drawn to these individuals who had a lot of awesome humility about them. Just as much passion as writers as anybody I’ve met, but a willingness to sort of be proven wrong, or advocate for their ideas at the same time.”

The results of this approach — honed by years of business and creative experience in the video game industry — speak for themselves. Before the Storm was a hit and it’s set Deck Nine up nicely for the future. Garriss won’t talk about the studio’s next plans, but he’s enthusiastic about what’s to come.

“I’m super excited,” he said. “Before the Storm has done wonderfully well. Everyone at Deck Nine is just very excited about next steps, and we’re all super excited to see what Deck Nine is going to do next.”

Facebook reportedly tweaks data storage on upcoming video chat device

Facebook has been working on a smart home device called Portal — a video chat gadget powered by facial recognition that could reportedly suggest a call when two users are both near their respective devices. In January, reports surfaced that Portal might launch this year, but yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Facebook won’t be unveiling its home products at its F8 developer conference in May as was initially planned. The pullback is attributed to the ongoing Cambridge Analytica controversy and growing concerns over how Facebook handles its users’ data. Now, The Information reports that the company is also considering alternative privacy safeguards among its smart home devices.

According to The Information, Facebook now plans to limit the processing and storing of video data to the device itself instead of on its servers. A source close to the company said that the move comes after months of discussions with privacy experts.

Facebook already has a massive trove of facial data on its many, many users and this latest scandal hasn’t done much towards fostering trust in how the company manages that data. Some are expressing concern over the extra power Facebook might gain from having a video device in people’s homes. “It would be concerning in my mind if Facebook is designing and releasing a hardware device that uses facial recognition, as they already have one of the largest facial recognition databases in the world,” Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Jennifer Lynch told The Information. “It would allow them to really take their algorithms to a whole new level because it would be scanning people inside the home from all different perspectives.”

Facebook already faces a number of lawsuits over the Cambridge Analytica debacle as well as other issues with how it handles users’ data. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify before Congress next month.

Via: The Information

The OnePlus 6 will have a notch

Concerned over all of the hate notches have been getting, OnePlus decided to get ahead of the issue and explain to The Verge why it’s going the notch route with the OnePlus 6 and why that doesn’t make it just an iPhone copycat. The company says that the OnePlus 6’s notch will be larger than the Essential Phone’s because going that small would’ve affected the earpiece and front-facing camera quality or required it to omit other sensors and lights. But it will be smaller than the iPhone X’s.

Importantly, OnePlus is manually testing the top 1,000 Play Store apps to see which might require a notch compatibility mode and, The Verge notes, OnePlus will disguise the notch at times that it would impede video viewing. The company said that Apple’s moves often encourage the wider adoption of phone features in the industry, but when it comes to the notch, OnePlus said it would’ve gotten there without Apple. “Maybe not as fast,” OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei told The Verge. “But we have access to the roadmaps of all the screen manufacturers, and when they gave us the opportunity to make cutouts at the top of the screen, it just made sense.” Because, ultimately, the notch means more screen.

OnePlus also shared that the 6 will have its biggest screen yet but the phone itself won’t be larger than any of its others. The screen-to-body ratio will be 90 percent and it will have a headphone jack.

Source: The Verge

Cheers, chants, and ‘Overwatch’ at NYC’s first eSports supporters club

Richard Ng didn’t plan it this way, but he might just be standing at the forefront of an eSports revolution.

The 38-year-old brand strategist finds himself moonlighting as the founder of the Five Deadly Venoms Crew, a supporters club for Overwatch League’s New York Excelsior team. What started as a simple Discord request to meet up with nearby eSports fans has quickly grown into a local phenomenon, hosting weekly, standing-room-only viewing parties at Waypoint, a cozy LAN café on the Lower East Side.

This past weekend’s event had more than 70 attendees — a lively, exuberant crowd that found plenty of reason to cheer as NYC routed the Los Angeles Valiant 4-0.

“There were no lofty aspirations at first,” said Ng, as he recalled the group’s humble beginnings. “We had 15 people come out for the first one, and it just snowballed from there.”

The crew needed a name, and Ng immediately thought of Five Deadly Venoms, lifted from a classic Kung-Fu movie and representing the five boroughs of NYC (with a wink and a nod to both Wu-Tang Clan and Waypoint’s proximity to Chinatown).

A Toronto native who has lived in New York for about five years, Ng was familiar with the concept of supporters clubs, which are common throughout the world — especially in big cities like New York — for European sports. In fact, soccer teams often rely on these groups to provide grassroots, organic marketing, and Blizzard’s emphasis on city-based teams made OWL a perfect fit for this model.

“Quite frankly, city squads have made eSports easier to talk about,” Ng said. “The product is the same as other eSports, but there’s an ease in being able to have something in common with other fans, to all unite and cheer on our city. That’s the beauty of all this.”

Indeed, OWL’s emphasis on city squads has created fans that are more in line with those found in traditional sports. For example: New Yorkers love Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr. even though neither of them hail from New York. Similarly, none of Excelsior’s players are from NYC (in fact, they’re all from South Korea), yet fans have a reason to cheer for them. Like traditional sports fans, they’re rooting for the name on the front of the jersey, not the back, something not typically seen in eSports.

The Five Deadly Venoms routinely attract a broad, diverse group of guests, ranging from video-game veterans to pre-teens, hardcore gamers to traditional sports fans. These aren’t Dota 2 or League of Legends regulars, perhaps offering proof that the nascent Overwatch League is attracting a different kind of fan to established “arena” eSports.

“This might surprise you, but I must confess: I have never played Overwatch.”

Take, for example, Alex Nagler, a 29-year-old media strategist from Manhattan who proudly wore a New York Mets sweater at this past weekend’s viewing party. He was quick to point out that Jeff Wilpon, the CEO of the Mets, also owns Excelsior, which is what first piqued Nagler’s interest.

“This might surprise you,” he told me, “but I must confess: I have never played Overwatch.” Despite a lack of familiarity with the game, Nagler enjoys the excitement of watching it live with fellow fans, not to mention the Mets connection. “Every major American sport will be involved in this industry very soon,” he added. “I’m just curious to watch the eSports space grow, and this is a fun environment.”

Arina Wu, a graduate student at Columbia University, never expected to find a supportive, real-world community through eSports. During this past weekend’s viewing party, she greeted guests at the front door, smiling ear to ear while rocking her favorite Excelsior replica jersey.

“Overwatch League has a very different kind of fan base than other eSports,” she explained. “The game attracts younger fans, females, non-binary, the queer community — it’s so inclusive. And with the supporters crew, it’s like I’ve gained a whole new family.”

And then there’s Johann Maldonado, one of the youngest members of the crew. Although he’s only 12 years old, Maldonado has a lot in common with his fellow Excelsior fans — and his excitement was palpable.

“I feel right at home here,” he said as he enthusiastically flashed a D.Va-inspired V sign, his uncle smiling behind him. “Overwatch is my first eSport,” he continued, “and I just knew I had to come here when I found out there was a New York team. We’re all here showing our hometown pride.”

Gregory Leporati

Five Deadly Venoms founder Richard Ng

Stories like these must be music to Blizzard’s ears. The company took a risk, and raised some eyebrows, when it decided to model OWL on traditional sports, complete with city-based teams. But only three months into its inaugural season, OWL boasts above-average Twitch ratings (even beating NA LCS in average concurrent viewers for the first time in late February) and — if the Five Deadly Venoms Crew is any indication — has attracted a broader audience than its competitors.

This shouldn’t come as a total shock. After all, studies have shown that more than twice the number of women play Overwatch than any other FPS, and Nielsen found last year that one of Overwatch’s main competitors, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, has a 90% male fan base.

But the city affiliations can’t be overlooked. While other eSports teams have their fair share of adoring fans — LoL’s SK Telecom T1 or Dota2’s Team Liquid, for example — they’re scattered across the world with no central location to unite them. As Ng argues, those fan bases can’t build the same type of grassroots, word-of-mouth community as a location-based supporters club.

“Rooting for those teams makes me feel like I’m rooting for a massive, conglomerate corporation,” Ng told me. “But cheering for your neighborhood, for your city, touches on a basic level of human pride that extends back generations.”

Gregory Leporati

There are more OWL supporter groups popping up throughout the country, with up-and-coming crews in Philadelphia, Miami and other locations. Ng has been in touch with these groups, lending his support and offering advice, even setting up a charity game against the Houston crew set for mid April. It’s all done in a spirit of friendship, camaraderie and philanthropy, with the groups hoping to give back to the communities in which they reside.

And what does the future hold for the Five Deadly Venoms? The crew hopes to expand its core members, perhaps even open up multiple viewing locations and grow alongside the league. Currently, all OWL matches are played in Los Angeles, but it will expand to a home-away format, a change rumored to be coming by 2020 latest. The supporters club is excited, with members already discussing how great it would be to pack Madison Square Garden or travel to other cities for road-game invasions.

As this past weekend’s match against LA came to a dramatic conclusion, with rip tires blaring and last-second triple kills securing the victory, the packed crowd at Waypoint erupted in wild cheers and applause, a “Go New York, Go New York, Go!” chant rising from the back rows. If you didn’t know any better, you’d have thought Aaron Judge had just smacked a grand slam at Yankee Stadium.

Ng just smiled.

“Remember how the knock on online gamers used to be: But they’re not your real friends?” he asked. “Well, look at us now” — he pointed at the crowd — “because these friends are real, and it’s amazing.”

EU confirms UK will lose Netflix ‘portability’ following Brexit

Thanks to Brexit, UK residents won’t be able to access BBC iPlayer or native Netflix programming when traveling around the EU. Rules just passed to let customers “carry” their copyrights with them while traveling, but that will end next year, as spotted by Politico. Currently, if you live in the UK and visit France, you can only access the French version of Netflix. New EU legislation, however, will allow you to access the library that you would normally find in your home market. Brexit, though, means Brits will lose out on these benefits starting March 29th, 2019.

Broadcast TV will be affected too. UK-based networks will have to “clear rights” with every member state of the EU where the signal lands, if they’re to serve viewers. That goes both ways, and will affect EU broadcasters as well. Music streaming will be affected too. That’s in addition to recent news that the UK will potentially be excluded from the Galileo GPS satellite program. For more info on what’s at stake when the UK exits the European Union, hit the source PDF below.

Source: Europa (PDF), Politico

‘Dragon Quest XI’ arrives on PS4 and PC in the US September 4th

The next game in the Dragon Quest franchise will arrive in North America and Europe on September 4th for PS4 and PC only, but the previously-rumored Switch version won’t be coming in 2018. Dragon Quest XI came out in Japan last summer for the aforementioned consoles and the 3DS, and sadly, the game’s maker Square Enix decided not to localize the game for Western owners of Nintendo’s handheld, according to IGN.

PS4 and Steam players will get to experience the franchise’s eleventh game with a few improvements over its Japanese version. Aside from an English voice over, it will also feature the hard mode Draconian Quest, a refined UI, better character and camera movement and the ability to sightsee landscapes and monsters.

The Switch version is in development but won’t be coming out this year and could end up being released “much later,” a Square Enix spokesperson told IGN at an event. Those interested in the PS4 version can pre-order Dragon Quest XI on PSN today.

Via: Polygon

Source: PlayStation blog