This new router exploit is the motivation you need to switch to a mesh solution
A sneaky new exploit attacks UPnP to create a proxy inside your network and you will never know it’s there until it’s too late.
Most everyone has a Wi-Fi router in their home and their workplace. Wi-Fi is everywhere and it’s how most personal devices connect to the internet: a Wi-Fi router is connected to an internet gateway and your queries and messages zip on through. As detailed in a recent report, however, there’s a good chance someone could hijack that Wi-Fi router, thanks to a new exploit that makes it pretty simple to set up a proxy server inside a protected Wi-Fi network and have it pass internet traffic along from almost any source. In other words, we have an all-new type of botnet to worry about.
How it works
UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) is a protocol that makes it easy for one device to connect and communicate with another. It’s old, and it’s been proven unsafe many times, but because it’s designed to be used inside a protected network, nobody paid much attention to it. The new exploit can expose a UPnP socket on an internet connection to the outside world so a crafty person with the right script can connect, then inject a Network Address Translation (NAT) table and create a proxy server that any other device can use.
UPnP is not secure and is outdated, but it’s not meant to be used over the internet so nobody really cares.
This works just like any other proxy server, which means it’s almost like a VPN. Traffic sent to the proxy can be forwarded and when it reaches its destination, the origin is hidden. The NAT that is injected can be modified to send any traffic anywhere, and unless you have the right tools and are actively looking for it, you would never know if this was running on your network.
The worst part of it all is the list of affected consumer routers. It’s huge, with almost every company and its most popular products on it. It’s so long we’re not going to copy it here and instead direct you to Akami’s wonderfully put together .pdf presentation.
How bad is this?
The sky isn’t falling. It’s bad, but because it needs to query an open internet socket for information several times in different ways, then put the right information into the payload, it isn’t going to spread unchecked. Of course, this would change if someone were able to automate the process and should this become self-replicating and one bot can attack a network to install another bot, things would get really ugly really quickly.
Bots are bad. An army of them can wreck almost anything.
A botnet is a group of small servers installed on separate networks. These small servers are called bots and can be programmed to accept almost any command and try to run it locally or try to run it on a different remote server. Botnets are bad not because of what they do but what they can enable other machines to do. The tiny bit of traffic from a bot connecting to its home is unnoticeable and doesn’t affect your network in any real way, but with the right commands you can have an army of bots doing things like phishing account passwords or credit card numbers, attacking other servers through DDoS flooding, distributing malware, or even brute-force attacking a network to gain access and admin control. A bot can also be commanded to try any or all of these things on your network instead of a remote network. Botnets are bad. Very bad.
What can I do?
If you’re a network engineer or the hacker type, you can audit the NAT tables on your local network and see if anything has been monkeyed with. If you’re not, you’re kind of stuck and can only hope you don’t have a nasty bot changing how traffic is routed through your network to the internet. That kind of advice isn’t very helpful, but there’s really nothing else a consumer can do here.
You need a router from a company that will patch this quickly and automatically.
Your ISP, on the other hand, can nip this particular exploit in the bud by refusing the type of traffic that is meant for internal network communications. Should this become a serious problem I expect we’ll see that happen. That’s good — your ISP should be filtering out this traffic anyway.
The most likely scenario is that the company who made your router will prepare an update that kills it somehow. If you have a router that automatically updates you’ll then be good to go, but many routers require you to manually initiate any updates and there are a lot of people who have no idea how to go about this.
More: Do I really need a mesh network?
This is why Google Wifi is a great product. It’s not listed as affected by this exploit (though that could change) and if it were a patch would soon be on its way and automatically install itself without you ever having to worry about it. Or even know about it. There are people who do nothing but look for exploits like this. Some are paid researchers who do it to make us safer but others are doing it so they can use them. Network products that come from a company who is proactive when it can be and reacts quickly when it can’t are a must nowadays. Google has your back here.
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Google Hardware
- Google Wifi review
- Google Home review
- Chromecast Ultra: all you need to know
- Which Chromecast should you buy?
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Should you set the Galaxy S9’s screen resolution to FHD or WQHD?
Longer battery life vs. a sharper image.
Just like the Galaxy S8 series before it, the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ allow users to hop into the settings and change the resolution of their gorgeous Infinity Displays. Both phones ship with the screen set to FHD+ (2220 x 1080), but you can easily crank things up to WQHD+ (2960 x 1440) for a better-looking image.
WQHD+ is certainly sharper compared to the FHD+ mode that’s used by default, but is this increase in resolution worth the extra battery capacity and processing power that it requires?
Some of our forum users recently got to talking about which resolution is their personal favorite, and this is what they had to say.
D.P.G.
04-09-2018 07:40 PM“
Why buy the best display available then turn down the resolution. Once you use WQHD for a few days you can’t go back difference is to noticeable especially with text. I have used WQHD for a year on my S8 Plus and since day one with my S9 Plus and a few times checked the battery usage and there is no difference you can actually be 100% certain is associate with resolution.
Reply
Nodnerb
04-10-2018 07:07 PM“
I can t really see a real world difference in use ability in gaming or text with HD+ over WQHD so is stick with HD+ On my s9. There is also the argument of having more processor power to speed thing up going lower res as well. But for me I’d rather save the 5 or 10 percent battery than the extra resolution I don’t notice.
Reply
jneusch
04-10-2018 10:38 PM“
I switched to WQHD last night and had to recharge early this evening. That hasn’t happened before. I haven’t noticed a big difference in screen quality either. I’ll keep it for another couple days so I can get a better idea on battery life.
Reply
dov1978
04-09-2018 04:06 PM“
Yes. Spend a day with FHD then a day with WQHD and see how your battery compares. That’s the best way to test as your mileage will be vastly different to controlled testing.
I’ve tried both settings and noticed a slight battery improvement with FHD so kept with that as I couldn’t notice enough difference between the 2 visually to make it worth keeping on but that’s just meReply
Now, we want to hear from you – Do you have your Galaxy S9/S9+ set to FHD+ or WQHD+?
Join the conversation in the forums!
Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+
- Galaxy S9 review: A great phone for the masses
- Galaxy S9 and S9+: Everything you need to know!
- Complete Galaxy S9 and S9+ specs
- Galaxy S9 vs. Google Pixel 2: Which should you buy?
- Galaxy S9 vs. Galaxy S8: Should you upgrade?
- Join our Galaxy S9 forums
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Samsung Galaxy S9 slow motion tested and compared: We exploded beer cans for science
Once you learn the rules of this feature, it can be one of the most entertaining things you do on your phone.
Like most modern smartphones, the Samsung Galaxy S9 offers a slow motion video feature. While many offer 240fps slow motion, Samsung is one of the first companies to offer an impressive 960fps recording mode by default (the others are Sony and Huawei). I spent a little while comparing this new slow motion with my experiences on the Google Pixel 2 and iPhone X, and the biggest thing I learned is how different Samsung’s new feature — both in capture and output — is to the competition.
To take advantage of this feature, there’s a few things you need to know about capturing and editing. With these tips, you’ll be able to do some seriously cool things with the slow motion mode on your phone.
Yes, 960fps is noticeably better than 240fps
The biggest question I’ve been asked when exploring this new camera is whether the bump to 960fps actually matters. How big is the difference between what the Pixel 2 can do with slow motion and what the S9 can go with slow motion? As it turns out, the difference is fairly significant. To make it easy for you to see the difference, I recorded a few full cans of beer being fired at a target. For science.
Here’s the Google Pixel 2:
The iPhone X:
And, finally, the Samsung Galaxy S9:
As you can see, there’s a clear difference in how much slower the S9 is. The impact is way more noticeable, and the spray from impact is way more impressive at 960fps.
The next question asked about this capture mode is if it matters as much that Samsung’s 960fps capture only records at 720p, where the iPhone and others capture 240fps at 1080p. In most situations, I don’t think it matters. Watching the different versions of these recordings on a 32-inch monitor didn’t really feel like I was missing a lot of detail in 720p. Naturally, having the larger video size is nice to have if you’re recording a whole video in 1080p to share, but the difference in video size isn’t really noticeable when looking at these videos side by side.
You need lots and lots of light
While the Samsung Galaxy S9 has been rightly praised for its ability to capture amazing shots in low light, the slow motion mode plays by different rules. Capturing at 960fps means the video you are recording is going to be noticeably darker than most other photo and video modes. If you’re planning to capture indoors, you need to make sure you are in a room with lots of light. Otherwise, the resulting video will be too dark to see much detail and in many situations terribly grainy.
If you’re capturing slo-mo indoors, make sure you take lighting into account.
It’s also important to be aware of the kind of light you are using. Some overhead lights, especially the tube lights hidden in ceilings, have a refresh rate just like monitors. When you capture this many frames in a second, you’re going to see the refresh in your video as a flicker. It’s going to be a noticeable strobe that wasn’t there when you were looking through the camera to record the video. This effect is worse with different kinds of light, so make sure you know what kind of lighting you are recording in. Incandescent lights are always on and don’t flicker. Lights with a ballast or transformer cycle and always flicker. Gas lights may or may not flicker depending on the design.
The best environment for super slow motion is going to be outdoors or near natural lighting. There are some kinds of indoor lights you can use if you need, but natural lighting doesn’t refresh and you will know right away if the area you are in is bright enough to record in.
Auto capture makes a HUGE difference
With most cameras, you activate slow motion by pressing the shutter button and standing back. The camera will record for a couple of seconds, and then stretch those seconds out into a much longer video with everything slowed down. If you have a remote shutter, you don’t have to be behind the camera when the thing you want to capture in slow motion is happening, but there’s a chance the shot might not be lined up the way you want in that situation. If, for example, you have your phone relatively close to a big metal target you’re about to fire a beer can at with a nontrivial amount of force, you probably don’t want to be super close. More reasonably, if you want to record something going super fast and you want to make sure you capture all of it, relying on your reflexes to tap the shutter button at just the right moment isn’t always going to get you what you want.
What Samsung introduced into the Galaxy S9 to address this is brilliant, and I hope it becomes a standard feature everywhere. The Galaxy S9 slow motion has an auto detect mode, where it chooses when to start recording based on the motion in the frame. The app gives you a bright yellow box in the middle of the screen, and when motion happens inside that box the video starts recording right away. You get the same couple of seconds of video, but you’re able to perfectly line up your shot without having to rely on those clumsy human fingers to hit the shutter button.
Samsung’s editor isn’t great
After you record something in slow motion, you naturally want to check it out and see how cool it is. The Samsung Gallery app will show you the video you’ve recorded, and a small progress bar reveals which parts have slow motion and which do not, but editing these videos isn’t quite as easy. You don’t have any control over where the slow motion mode is used, outside of the actual capture mechanism in the camera.
What Samsung does offer in its editor is the ability to crop the video you have recorded and add music, but that’s about it. Even though Samsung’s gallery app has tons of great features for converting normal videos to gifs and all sorts of other neat tricks, none of those tools exist in slow-motion mode.
Bottom line? If you want that nice visual effect of something slowing down and then speeding up at the end of the shot, you will want to get it all in one take and hope for the best. In this one aspect, the way Apple and Google allow you to manually control when slow motion happens in a capture is greatly appreciated over Samsung’s tools.
Get a tripod
Recording 960 frames every second means lots of things that aren’t super obvious on a normal video show up in huge ways all of a sudden. This is especially true when it comes to those of us who don’t have perfectly steady hands. What would be a small shake on the screen in a normal video recorded on your phone looks like a huge wave up and down. At a minimum it can be very distracting, but in some cases, the movement can be enough to blur and distort the thing you were trying to record in slow motion to begin with.
You don’t have to have a tripod when capturing slow motion, but it helps. If you’re able to plan ahead enough to bring one with you, I’d recommend it. Any tripod will do, as long as you have a decent phone mount for it. I recommend this one.
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The bottom line here is you can have a ton of fun with this camera, but especially the slow motion when used correctly can do things most other phones can’t do right now. The next chance you get, you should give slow motion on the S9 a try.
Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+
- Galaxy S9 review: A great phone for the masses
- Galaxy S9 and S9+: Everything you need to know!
- Complete Galaxy S9 and S9+ specs
- Galaxy S9 vs. Google Pixel 2: Which should you buy?
- Galaxy S9 vs. Galaxy S8: Should you upgrade?
- Join our Galaxy S9 forums
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The new Moto Stereo Speaker Moto Mod looks good and costs just $59
Available in black, blue, and red.
Although they may not be the most practical solution at times, Motorola’s Moto Mod system is undeniably fun. The accessory line has seen a lot of growth since it was first introduced in 2016, and the latest entry in it is a speaker mod from Motorola itself.
The Moto Stereo Speaker is officially the fourth speaker mod to be released, and it also happens to be the cheapest with a price of just $59.99. JBL’s SoundBoost and SoundBoost 2 carry an MSRP of $79.99 each, and the Moto Smart Speaker with Amazon Alexa retails for $149.99.
Despite the lower price, Motorola’s speaker solution doesn’t appear to be cutting any corners. There are two 28mm stereo speakers packed inside the mod and you can easily prop it up using the built-in kickstand on the back. No charging is required as it uses power from the Moto Z phone it’s connected to, and it’s available in black, blue, and red colors.
You can buy the Moto Stereo Speaker from Motorola’s website right now for $59.99 upfront or on monthly payments that start at just $10/month.
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Will Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining increase the price of phones?
PC part prices are insane because of coin mining, and our phones use those same kinds of parts. And nobody wants to spend $2,000 on the next Galaxy Note.
You’ve probably heard of Bitcoin, but did you know it has caused the prices of consumer PC components to skyrocket, and in some cases more than double in the past 12 months?
As crazy as that sounds, it’s true. And not because everyone with a Bitcoin is building a bunch of high-end PC’s top play video games or read Facebook. If it all sounds complicated and sort of like a conspiracy theory to you, you’re partially right, but don’t worry, we got you. We’re going to break it down and ask the most important question: Could this make the prices of smartphones get any higher?
What is cryptocurrency?
It’s an incredibly convoluted system of money. In 2009 Bitcoin was invented and became an alternative and virtual form of currency. Alternative as in not related to the dollar, British Pounds Sterling, Won, Yuan, Pfennigs, farthings or any other world currency, and virtual as in not backed by any real goods and just created as needed by the people who would benefit the most from its creation. Don’t get too hung up on this, because this also describes the U.S. Dollar since 1968.
There are some “official” rules about what a valid cryptocurrency is defined as, even though there really isn’t any person or body designated to make any rules.
- There is no central authority that issues the currency.
- The system keeps track of every unit and who owns it.
- The system decides if new units can be created, how they are to be created, and who owns any new creations.
- Ownership of a unit(s) is proven by cryptography only.
- A cryptographic record of ownership follows each unit and is changed when the unit changes hands.
- If the system gets more than one command to change ownership of any unit at the exact same time, only one transaction can be performed.
Yes, this involves a lot of computational power and cryptography is what drives and sort of defines the “system” itself. There are a lot of different systems, ranging from the original Bitcoin to the hilarious Dogecoin, which was named in honor of that incredibly cute Shiba Inu dog from the Doge internet meme. Each and every one is valid in its own right, because anyone can create a cryptocurrency. I could decide to make Jerrycoin a thing, and all I need to make it marketable is enough people and companies that sell goods and services to accept it as a valid form of payment. The price of a “coin” ranges from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars, which means trading fractions of coins is necessary. Fractions of a coin are treated the same way a whole coin is in regard to the above rules, and these are the units these rules are talking about.
Confused yet? Well, hold on because it gets better.
Because cryptography takes up so much computing power, helping to validate any transactions using your own computer is rewarded with a unit of the currency. All the data about a unit is kept throughout its life and stored in what are known as blocks. As the unit is exchanged from owner to owner, more blocks are created and they comprise a chain. That’s what a blockchain is in its simplest terms. This means that if you use your own computing power to help validate transactions, when you successfully compute a cryptographic hash that can be used in a block you get paid by the organization that manages the transactions.
Cryptocurrency is a big business even of the concept doesn’t make sense in a lot of ways.
Did I mention that this is incredibly complex? If you want to understand all the nuances of cryptocurrency, I’d suggest starting at Reddit and keeping an open mind. For the basics, you can think of it like so:
I, and a small group of my friends create a virtual currency system that adheres to a few basic rules so people will trust it. I talk to other people and vendors of goods and services and convince them to participate and accept this new currency as a valid form of payment. To secure my virtual currency, cryptography is used to validate every transaction no matter how big or how small and the record of it all is attached to every unit. Because generating crypto hashes takes an immense amount of computing power, I create software that allows a pool of computers to work at it and let you help find the hashes. When you find one, you are paid with a unit of my new currency that can be spent anywhere that will accept it and administered through its own market.
Some people think this is the best way to keep track of your wealth. Others like it because it’s virtually anonymous (which is why others, including some governments, dislike it). And of course, some think it’s all crazy and makes no sense when someone like me can just invent my own system of currency. The truth is probably a mix of all the above somehow, but you need to understand that it’s a real thing and can be quite valuable.
Crypto mining has killed the DIY PC industry
That was then. Now that card costs $499 at Newegg.com at the time of this writing.
I like to play video games, and I like to do it at my computer desk instead of an Xbox or PlayStation. Lightning struck my house recently and a surge protector didn’t do its job so my gaming PC got fried. After haggling with the insurance company I got some money to build a new one and quickly found out I was about $1,000 short of what I needed to build one as good as the one that fried — not because the insurance company ripped me off, but because the demand for components is so high, retailers can charge anything they want and still sell every piece they can get hold of. And they do, naturally.
Welcome to the world of supply and demand. I hate this world.
The blame for this price boom? Crypto mining. It just so happens that the processing power and memory to mine crypto hashes for virtual currency needs two important parts: a GPU to do the calculations and some RAM to run the program. It can be lucrative to mine these hashes if you build enough machines to mine them quickly, so people are buying video cards and sticks of RAM by the hundreds whenever Newegg or any other retailer can get them.
Newegg has a hard time getting them because companies like Samsung that make “good” RAM modules (with the right type of error correction and rendundancy) can’t supply them to companies like Crucial that assemble them onto a PC board and sell them to Newegg. The same goes for GPUs from AMD or NVIDIA, which are put on PC boards to make graphic cards. It’s the law of supply and demand at work, and the pair of video cards I paid about $950 for a few years ago now each cost $700, and newer models sell at double the manufacturer’s retail price. Prepare to see the same thing happening to hard drives as newer currencies can use free storage space to help calculate hashes.
It was totally worth the extra $1,000 to play Far Cry 5 in 4K, though.
Miners take these parts and put them in a PC backplane in large groups to crunch numbers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And they make a lot of money so they keep buying more and more of them to build more mining rigs and the cycle repeats itself until I have to put an extra $1,000 over my initial budget into a PC that can play Far Cry 5 at 4K instead of buying it for the PlayStation 4. I’m lucky that I had room on my credit card and permission from my wife to do it because a lot of people can’t afford the extra costs and just aren’t building computers.
This will sort itself out eventually. Companies like AMD and Samsung have developed dedicated mining boards that use ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) to run advances hashing algorithms, but right now it’s cheaper to buy video cards from Newegg. Mining ASICs will get better and the costs will come down until that changes and it becomes more profitable to buy them instead of a big box of NVIDIA graphics cards. Hopefully, that happens soon and we don’t become adjusted to inflated prices that might not come back down to reality if that happens.
The effect on smartphone prices
You can mine crypto hashes if you have a big box filled with working Galaxy S5s and don’t mind losing money.
Your phone uses a GPU and RAM, and storage and co-processors and everything else a computer does. That’s because your phone is a computer and needs the same parts. Is this going to make my next phone even more expensive?
That’s a really valid concern as we see phones already approaching the $1,000 mark. And that’s using parts built and sold before this crazy mining boom happened and nobody wants to see the cost of these parts double. Not even the companies that make them, because that will lead to the same thing it did in the DIY PC market and people will stop spending the money.
The answer is yes, it will affect the cost of phones being manufactured right now. But don’t freak out, because it’s not going to affect it very much at all for a few different reasons.
Even in a worst-case scenario, the carriers and big players like Samsung or Apple would never allow the prices of phones to double.
It will make a small difference in the cost of RAM. But even if the cost of a RAM module doubles, we’re only talking a few dollars at most because of the way a phone is built and how it’s different from RAM sticks you put in a PC. Samsung makes good memory modules. It’s the same Samsung that builds phones, but not directly associated with the mobile division because Samsung is a huge company that builds phones, electronic components, refrigerators and tanks (the armored battlefield ones that make big booms from big guns). The division of Samsung that makes RAM modules sells them to companies that put them on something a consumer can use, including the division of Samsung that builds phones.
You can mine coin with a phone but you will lose money.
Because Samsung exists only to make a profit like every other company, they will build what they can sell the most of to maximize profits. That means the smaller modules used in a smartphone board are less lucrative than the larger modules used for PC RAM, and since Samsung does not have an infinite number of assembly lines to build them, RAM for smartphones will become scarcer and be priced accordingly.
Samsung (as well as other companies that make memory modules) can build enough to meet demand because they aren’t adding the extra step of assembling them into another thing, and once off the line and batch tested they can go straight out the doors. But the other Samsung that makes the phones does need that extra step, so supply may become more limited, which means prices may increase. But not by much, as a RAM module for a phone costs about $1 when buying in bulk and the only extra costs are market-driven.
More: What is ARM?
The GPU in our phone won’t drive prices up in any way, thankfully. That’s because the companies that make the GPU for a phone aren’t the same companies that make the kind crypto miners are buying. The bulk of phones sold use a Mali-branded GPU that’s a product of ARM (the same ARM that designs processors). The rest mostly use an Adreno GPU, which used to be an AMD product but is now designed by Qualcomm.
Semiconductor factories in Asia that make Mali or Adreno GPUs aren’t the same factories that are building NVIDIA Pascal GPUs or AMD Polaris GPUs and it’s impractical to string a bunch of phones together and mine coins with them. But Samsung shows us that you could, and Raspberry Pi mining rigs (which use a Texas instruments processor and a Mali GPU) are real things that aren’t efficient enough to make any money at all.
If you want or need to build a new gaming PC, this whole mess stinks. But it doesn’t mean the Note 9 will cost $1,800 instead of $900, though it might be $915.
Samsung Galaxy Note 8
- Galaxy Note 8 review
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- Which Note 8 color is best?
- Complete Galaxy Note 8 specs
- Join our Galaxy Note 8 forums
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This $100 UE Blast Bluetooth speaker lets you bring Alexa along everywhere
A rare discount you won’t want to miss.
As part of its Gold Box deals of the day, Amazon has the UE Blast marked down to just $99.99 in a variety of colors. It’s available in black, blue, red, and white, and this is by far the best price we have ever seen on this powerful speaker.
The Blast has 360-degree sound with up to 12 hours of battery life. It has the Alexa voice assistant built right in, so you can ask it to play music from your favorite streaming service in addition to everything else Alexa does. The speaker is water-resistant and designed to withstand a few bumps. It also comes with the Ultimate Ears app that can learn your preferences over time, helping the speaker know what you want when you’re listening.
Be sure to grab one now, before they sell out or the deal expires!
See at Amazon
Qualcomm announces new Vision Intelligence Platform for IoT applications
The QCS605 and QCS603 are powered by AI and machine learning.
If you’re rocking a modern Android phone, chances are it’s powered by a Qualcomm processor. Qualcomm’s become most well-known for its mobile processors that are found in millions of gadgets, and now the company’s further expanding into the Internet of Things (IoT) world with its new Vision Intelligence Platform.
At the heart of the Vision Intelligence Platform are Qualcomm’s QCS605 and QCS603 chipsets, and they both feature the Qualcomm Artificial Intelligence Engine, machine learning, computer vision, and Qualcomm’s “most advanced image signal processor to date.”
The platform is capable of 4K video at 60 FPS and 5.7K at 30 FPS.
Qualcomm’s marketing the platform as a tool for 360-degree/VR cameras, smart displays, smart security cameras, etc., and KEDACOM and Richo THETA have both already announced that they’ll be making products based on the new tech in the near future.
Image quality is a huge factor for these types of gadgets, and that’s something the Vision Intelligence Platform should excel at. According to Qualcomm, the system can support 4K video at 60 FPS, 5.7K at 30 FPS, and multiple simultaneous streams at “lower resolutions.” There’s also advanced electronic imagine stabilization and staggered HDR that should help to cut down on the ghosting effect that’s sometimes seen with HDR video.
On top of all that, the Vision Intelligence Platform also supports Bluetooth 5.1, aptX audio, Aqstic audio, Qualcomm’s 3D Audio Suite, and 2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO.
For even more of the nitty-gritty details, you can read through Qualcomm’s entire press release here.
Will Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining increase the price of phones?
How to stream Android games to YouTube and Twitch
Why just play games on your phone when you could be streaming, too.
If you’re not among the millions of people logging in to Twitch or YouTube Gaming to watch other people playing video games, you may not understand the trend. Back in my day, I hated having to wait my turn to play a video game with friends.
These days, record numbers of people are watching Twitch streamers play all the most popular games — Fortnite and PUBG being among the most popular.
While Twitch has been predominately used by PC or console gamers, you do have the option to stream from your Android phone — and with some bigger titles becoming available for mobile there’s really no reason not to start streaming from your phone, especially if you’re using a flagship released in the last few years.
Here’s how you can get started.
YouTube Gaming
It’s no secret that YouTube is home to a ridiculous amount of gaming content. So much so that YouTube has a version of its site and app dedicated to gaming channels and streamers — YouTube Gaming.
If you’re looking to effortlessly start streaming games from your phone, the YouTube Gaming app is your best bet. Everything you need to get started is built right into the app — all you need is games to play and a solid WiFi connection.
Download: YouTube Gaming (Free)
How to stream gameplay using the YouTube Gaming app
From the Youtube Gaming home screen, tap the Broadcast button.
Select the stream quality — 720p HD or 480p SD — and whether you want to Stream live, or Record locally to your phone.
You’ll get a few reminders that once you start streaming, you are live to the public and any on your screen including notifications, calls and passwords will be visible to your viewers.
-Basically, if you haven’t turned your phone to Do Not Disturb mode, do it now!
Next, it’s time to choose the game you want to stream. The app will give you a list of the recommended apps to stream, but you can scroll down to the bottom to expand the list to include all the apps on your phone.
Give your stream a catchy title and a description so that your subscribers and potential viewers will know what you’re playing. Click bait might be effective here 😶.
Send your stream link out on social media so all your friends and followers know what you’re up to.
From there, you’ve got one screen telling you to prepare to start recording your screen and your phone will load up your selected game along with the screen recording controls. Before you start streaming, you should be sure to set yourself up exactly how you want it.
The app will use your front-facing camera to show your face while you play, and you can position that bubble wherever you want on your screen — ideally, a place that won’t get in the way for you as you play, and won’t cover any important information for your viewers.
Once you start streaming, that floating bubble is where you’ll find all your streamer controls. Simply tap the bubble to expand the streaming menu at the bottom of your screen, which will give you stats on viewership, toggle text chat, and other settings.
Twitch
Twitch is arguably home to the largest online streaming community, but unfortunately streaming to Twitch from an Android device is much more complicated.
For starters, the Twitch app for mobile does not currently let you stream games from your phone to your Twitch account. That feature will surely be added sometime down the line. For the moment, the app does do allow you to stream “IRL” using your phone’s camera and microphone, so if you want to use Twitch as a vlogging platform or simply want to watch your favorite twitch streamers, the Twitch app is a great option.
But we’re here to stream some Android gaming, which means you’ll need to get yourself set up with streaming software. The most popular, open source streaming software is Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). Our pals over at Windows Central have a pretty excellent guide for setting up OBS so check in if you need someone to hold your hand through the process.
- Beginner’s Guide to setting up and streaming with OBS
What you’ll need: a computer running OBS, your Android phone in USB Debugging mode, and a wired connection from your phone to your computer.
OBS lets you record or stream gameplay from your PC, Mac, or Linux system to twitch. While PC or console games are the most popular games to stream on Twitch using OBS, you can connect your Android to your phone using USB debugging and a screen recording application to create a video source for OBS to draw from.
To get your phone ready to share your screen to your computer, you’ll need to unlock the Developer options on your phone.
Go to Settings > About Phone.
Tap the build number 10 times or until it says you’ve unlocked the developer options.
Enter Developer Options and turn on USB Debugging.
- All about your phone’s developer options
Next, you’ll need to find a reliable app for running your phone screen on a window on your computer. I settled on Vysor, which is free to download and test. I ended up buying an annual subscription to the pro mode for $10 because it gives you way more control over your bitrate and resolution. You could opt to just use the free version but once you see how that looks in OBS you’re going to want the Pro version.
Once you’ve got OBS set up to your Twitch account, your phone is connected and streaming to your computer, and you’ve laid out your stream with a webcam or different graphics there’s nothing left to do but start streaming!
Which do you prefer?
So these are your two best options: YouTube Gaming makes it way more convenient to stream on the go and doesn’t require much set up at all, whereas Twitch and OBS give you way more control over your stream in exchange for being a bit more cumbersome to initially set up.
Have you streamed to Twitch or YouTube? Let us know if this guide helped you get started!
Android Gaming
- Best Android games
- Best free Android games
- Best games with no in-app purchases
- Best action games for Android
- Best RPGs for Android
- All the Android gaming news!
Get a free Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit with purchase of unlocked Samsung phones
A great combo deal.
Best Buy is offering a free Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit with the purchase of an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S9, Galaxy S9+ or Note 8. The kit is a $225 value, and includes two multipurpose sensors, two motion sensors, and a smart plug.
The Samsung Galaxy S9 sells for $720 unlocked, which is the most affordable of the three options in this promotion. Best Buy sells all of the phones in a variety of colors, and if you have a Best Buy credit card you can take advantage of 24 months of interest-free payments to make it easier on your wallet to buy the phone now.
See at Best Buy
Best Google Wifi Mounts in 2018
Want to tidy up your Google Wifi system a little? Mount up.
The Google Wifi isn’t a bad looking router (or three) on its own, and it’s pretty easy to stick it anywhere in your house without offending anyone. However, every home is different and you might want something a little more elegant and organized than just plonking a node down on a window sill.
Thanks to its popularity and the fact it’s a pretty simple shape, there are plenty of options out there for mounting the Google Wifi to a wall or even a ceiling. None are very expensive and there’s something out there to suit all tastes.
Here, we’ve rounded up the best of the bunch.
Wall Mount Holder for Google Wifi System by Koroao
This mount from Koroao is good for both walls and ceilings, and completely hides the base and cables of the Google Wifi. It attaches using two screws and has silicon pads on the rear to help keep a slip-free fit.
There’s a little notch on the mount just large enough to feed the power cable and Ethernet cable through. It’s all plastic, all white like the Google Wifi and only costs $13. Or you can get a two pack for $19 and a three pack for $26, which is excellent considering you likely don’t just have a single Google Wifi.
See at Amazon
Mount Genie The Spot
If you just want to mount your Google Wifi close to a wall outlet or you want to hide the cables easily, The Spot is the mount for you. It’s a mount with an additional bracket which will rest around the plug of your Google Wifi, supporting the unit below the socket powering it.
The Google Wifi just drops in, but the neat thing about this mount is that the rear of it has enough space to coil up the excess power cable completely out of sight. So you end up with a really neat and tidy setup.
But, if you need the network cable, there’s still a cutout on the bottom to feed that through. And it costs less than $10, which makes it great value as well.
See at Amazon
Echogear Outlet Shelf
This isn’t just a mount for your Google Wifi, but it’ll do a great job of it anyway. The Echogear Outlet Shelf is designed to hold anything up to 10lbs in weight, which can include a Google Home or Amazon Echo, even a Sonos One, or, keeping with the theme, your Google Wifi nodes.
It’s a simple plastic shelf that fits around a wall outlet and has cable routing built in to keep everything tidy.
It’s a novel way to keep cable mess under control, and the most technical thing you’ll need to do is remove the existing wall plate around your outlet. A great little mount for $15.
See at Amazon
Deeroll Wall Mount
The most simple and minimalist mount here, this wall mount from Deeroll is a semi-circle that screws to the wall and you just sort of drop the Google Wifi in on its side.
The plastic used to make it is a similar material and a perfect color match to the Google Wifi, and from the front, it almost disappears entirely. Despite this, there’s enough space at the back to wind the excess power cable around and keep it all looking neat.
A single mount costs just $9, but if you need more, you can get a three pack for $24 and save a little bit over buying them individually.
See at Amazon
Google Hardware
- Google Wifi review
- Google Home review
- Chromecast Ultra: all you need to know
- Which Chromecast should you buy?
Google Wifi: Google
Amazon
Google Home: Google
Best Buy
Chromecast Ultra: Google
Best Buy
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