Apple Watch Boosts Verizon Activations Amid Phone and Tablet Subscriber Loss

Verizon, the largest carrier in the United States by subscriber count, saw a monthly subscriber increase of 260,000 during the first quarter of 2018, reports Bloomberg, largely due to an increased number of smart watch activations.

The company actually lost phone and tablet subscribers last quarter, but the dip in subscribers did not hurt its bottom line because of smart watches, wearables, and other connected devices like vehicles.

Image via Bloomberg
Verizon says it added a total of 359,000 subscribers who are using smart watches and other devices during the quarter, making up for the loss of 24,000 phone customers and 75,000 tablet customers.

There was no breakdown in the number of activations by specific device, but Verizon’s jump in smart watch subscribers comes following the September release of the Apple Watch Series 3, the first Apple Watch with LTE connectivity.

The Apple Watch Series 3 allows customers to use the Apple Watch sans iPhone for the first time, as it has its own cellular connection. Verizon and other carriers charge customers $10 per month to add a smart watch to an existing smartphone plan.

Verizon shared the numbers during its first quarter 2018 earnings results, released this morning. Verizon stock has since surged as much as 3.6 percent.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 4Tag: VerizonBuyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
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Flipboard’s latest update makes it easier to stay on top of all things tech

On Tuesday, April 24, Flipboard officially launched its latest update designed specifically for those interested in technology — whether you’re a professional, an insider, or an enthusiast. Ranging from the ability to put together team magazines to a richer overall content experience, the new features gives users more opportunities to easily stay on top of tech news.

For those unfamiliar with Flipboard, the app curates news stories gathered from blogs, news publications, and social networks based on your interests, all in one place. After downloading the app and picking your interests, Flipboard creates a Smart Magazine for you, filled with different content that you can then add to your own magazine that you create.

Flipboard currently has over 35 million different magazines curated by its community — based on topics like politics, travel, recipes, and more. But in its latest update, the company focused on deepening the personalization around tech specifically — whether it’s tech professionals, insiders, or enthusiasts.

Once you start following the tech section on the mobile app, Flipboard starts the selection process off with a couple of editorial roundups chosen for you. But you can deselect these and add other topics to influence what you see in the feed, such as specific companies or people in the industry. This then generates the experience for you, incorporating the best of what well-known tech publications, editors, experts, and the algorithm are choosing.

In addition to showcasing articles like reviews, long-form pieces, news stories, and breakthroughs, there’s also a new “Book Picks” feature. This is where industry insiders and thought leaders can pick books and recommend them to anyone following technology. Every Saturday, users also receive an email with the five book recommendations.

There’s also now a way to privately share stories with teammates or co-workers. By starting a team magazine, you’re able to invite colleagues to join by sending a link via email, text message, Slack, or other messaging apps. From there, your teammates can begin to flip stories they find into the magazine, and can also add different comments.

“A lot of times what people tend to do is, they’ll share stories in Slack or they’ll share stories in email. And that’s fine, but they tend to get lost in the midst of all this other communication that’s going on,” Flipboard co-founder and CEO Mike McCue told Digital Trends. “And so what we’re trying to do is create one place you can go when you’re ready to really read about your industry, to see everything that everyone in your team is sharing all in one place.”

Users are able to start a magazine on either Flipboard’s tech section or through the mobile app as well. The magazines you start with co-workers are private by default, but you’re able to toggle the mode off if you want to make the magazine public.

The information you see on the app is accessible through desktop as well. You can quickly scan top stories of the day, what’s happening in the team magazine, your personalized feed, and other suggested tech-specific content from the Flipboard team. All of this content will be rolled up in a new daily email sent Monday through Friday — allowing users to easily flip top stories into the app and then add it to their team magazine.

Flipboard’s new features are now available for users on its app via Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store. While these capabilities are only currently available through its tech section, Flipboard does plan on adding the same collaborative features across more verticals over time.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Keep up-to-date with the best news apps on iPhone and Android
• A.I. email assistant Astro includes a built-in calendar feature in update
• Google begins testing Bulletin app that allows anyone to share hyperlocal news
• Clear out your inbox with the 10 best third-party email apps for iOS
• The best iPhone apps available right now (April 2018)

U.S. Galaxy S9 handsets can be forced into a reboot by a ‘complex shader’

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

The Samsung Galaxy S9, one of the most advanced smartphones in the world, can be forced into a reboot by a particularly complex shader, says research by U.K. GPU testing company GraphicsFuzz and XDA Developers.

According to GraphicsFuzz, the discovery came about during testing of the Galaxy S9’s rendering capabilities, and was not intended to be malicious. The issue stems from a problem with how the phone’s Adreno 630 graphics driver attempts to render a particularly complex shader inside Samsung’s default Samsung Internet app.

According to a deeper investigation, the graphics driver starts the process of creating the shader, but fails at one of the initial steps of allocating resources. The browser fails to terminate the process properly, which causes the phone to panic and reboot.

The issue is reproducible on other browsers — but though the shader does cause the phone to freeze, only on the Samsung Internet browser is the phone forced to reboot, meaning the problem is seemingly specific to Samsung’s browser. Since the issue only affects the Galaxy S9 models equipped with the Snapdragon 845 (unfortunately means the majority of the models in the U.S.), it seems that it’s the pairing of Samsung’s browser and Qualcomm’s graphics driver causing the problem.

This assumption can be backed up by reproducing a similar error on the Google Pixel 2 XL. That phone is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 and Adreno 540 graphics driver, and when subjected to the same test on Samsung Internet, the browser slows to a crawl — though a reboot isn’t forced.

A video of the problem has been made available, and shows the lengthy freeze, as well as the forced reboot of the device.

The problem here is that the bug is reproducible, and capable of being deployed to remotely attack and force affected Samsung Galaxy S9 models into reboots. Thankfully, as soon as this became apparent to GraphicsFuzz, it reached out to XDA Developers in order to contact Samsung. In a disclosure timeline, XDA reported that a Samsung engineer had been assigned to the case on April 4, and it can be hoped that a fix will be deployed to rectify this problem soon.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Smartphone speed demons! Is Samsung’s Galaxy S9 Plus the fastest off the line?
• Leak reveals list of upcoming Samsung Galaxy devices in 2018
• Meet the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, the power behind next-gen phones
• Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus review
• Samsung Galaxy S9 review

Google Play Awards nominees include ‘Lifesum,’ ‘Pokemon Go,’ and ‘PUBG Mobile’

Google announced the nominees for this year’s annual Google Play Awards, including awards for all kinds of different apps and games that can be downloaded straight from the Google Play Store.

The winners for each category will be announced on May 7 at Google I/O, and are aimed at representing the best of the best apps on Google Play. This year is the third year that Google is running the Google Play Awards and Google is highlighting a few new categories this time around — including augmented reality and virtual reality categories.

There are a few categories of apps. First up, there are well-being apps, which are defined by Google as apps that empower users to “live the best version of their lives, while demonstrating responsible design and engagement strategies.” There are a few apps in this category — including Clue, a period-tracking app; Lifesum, a diet planner and calorie counter; and Headspace, a meditation and mindfulness app.

The second category is “Best Accessibility Experience,” and is aimed at offering a game or helpful app to those with disabilities or special needs. Apps include Audio Game Hub, which is an audio-based game, and Be My Eyes, in which users who can see can help blind people with tasks through a video feed.

There are a few gaming categories, including “Standout Indie” games, which have to be developed by independent developers, and “Best Community Building Game,” which are aimed at connecting gamers. In the latter category, you’ll find apps like Pokémon Go and PUBG Mobile.

As mentioned, AR and VR experiences are highlighted, too. There is a category dedicated to “Best AR or VR Experience,” and in that category, you wéill find a few different apps. For example, BBC Earth: Life in VR and Porsche Mission E are both nominated as the best in that category.

There are a few other categories, including “Standout Startup,” which highlights apps from new developers, and “Standout Build for Billions Experience,” which includes apps and games optimized for performance and localized for emerging markets. Last but not least is “Best Breakthrough Hit,” which includes high-profile apps like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, and Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Apple AR glasses: News and rumors about ‘Project Mirrorshades’
• 100 awesome Android apps that will transform your tired tablet
• Draw a line on the world around you with Google’s ‘Just a Line’ ARCore app
• Google’s $1.1 billion ‘big bet on hardware’ deal with HTC is final
• Who you gonna call? ‘Ghostbusters World’ AR game will slime phones in 2018

Spotify revamps its mobile app, adds on-demand listening for free users

Free users are also getting recommended playlist creation and a low-data mode.

During a recent event in New York City, Spotify talked about a heap of new goodies that are in the works for its mobile app and free users.

Looking first at the new app, there are visual changes in tow for just about everything – including the search page, now playing tab, and more. The bottom navigation bar is also less cluttered, and Spotify says it’s currently in the process of pushing the new UI to all of its users.

Spotify’s main focus was clearly on its free members, however, and there’s a lot in the pipeline for them.

Perhaps the biggest feature for free users is the ability to listen to certain titles on-demand. Free Spotify members have previously been limited to listening to only shuffled playlists, but now they’ll be able to pick and choose which songs they want to listen to as many times as they’d like – as long as those songs are offered in one of Spotify’s personalized playlists (such as Discover Weekly, Daily Mix, etc.)

Speaking of playlists, Spotify’s also adding “assisted playlisting” to the free version of its mobile app. Previously reserved for Premium subscribers, this will show recommended tracks to add to a playlist you’re creating based on what’s currently in it.

Along with all this, free members will also be able to turn on a new data-saver mode that’ll decrease data usage by as much as 75%.

While these new features for Spotify’s free service are great to see, there are still plenty of reasons to pay for its Premium offering. If you want to get rid of ads, listen to any song on-demand, or download your tunes for offline listening, you’ll still need to cough up 10 bucks each month.

Download: Spotify Music (free)

Best Verizon Wireless Deals of April 2018

No matter what T-Mobile says, you can actually find some pretty great deals on Verizon.

Verizon Wireless has some of the largest coverage for customers in the United States, and although T-Mobile likes to continually poke fun at the carrier for having high monthly rates, there are actually some really solid deals to be found if you know where to look.

You can typically find quite a few deals being run by Verizon at any given time, but if you only want to look at the best of the best and don’t have time to sift through the garbage, that’s where we come in.

These are best deals on Verizon Wireless right now.

Get 50% off the Pixel 2, two months of YouTube TV, and a free Home Mini + Chromecast

The Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL are two of the finest Android phones you can buy, and right now Verizon’s offering one of the best deals for them that we’ve seen yet.

As long as you trade in an eligible device, you can get up to 50% off the cost of a Pixel 2 or Pixel 2 XL. You’ll also get two free months of YouTube TV, as well as a free Google Home Mini and Chromecast.

This deal goes live on April 5, and you’ll need to pay for the Pixel 2/2 XL on a monthly installment plan.

See at Verizon

Take $200-$300 off the Galaxy S9, Note 8, and more

If the Pixel 2 isn’t for you, Verizon’s still got you covered.

Although you won’t be able to get the free Home Mini, Chromecast, and two months of YouTube TV, you can still score between $200 and $300 off a number of the carrier’s best Android phones — including the Galaxy S9/S9+, Galaxy Note 8, and Moto Z2 Force.

In order to take advantage of this, all you need to do is buy one of the phones on a monthly installment plan. You don’t need to add a new line of service and no trade-in is required! This is about as simple of a deal as you can get, and that’s something we’re always excited to see.

See at Verizon

Buy the Moto Z2 Play for only $10/month

Motorola’s Moto Z2 Play isn’t the best Android phone ever made, but it is a reliable, mid-range handset that comes with a lot of possibilities thanks to its accompanying Moto Mod system.

Verizon usually sells the phone for $17/month with 24 monthly payments, but right now you can pick it up for just $10/month. There’s no trade-in required to get this deal, but you will need to add a new line of service.

See at Verizon

Carriers

• Which unlimited plan should you buy?
• Verizon’s Unlimited plans: Everything you need to know
• Everything you need to know about the T-Mobile ONE unlimited plan
• Everything you need to know about the AT&T Unlimited plan
• Everything you need to know about Sprint’s Unlimited Freedom plan
• Join the Discussion

Updated 4/24/2018 – Added new deals for April!

Treat your home to an ECOVACS DEEBOT N79 Robovac for just $160 today

Let it do the work.

Right now you can grab the ECOVACS DEEBOT N79 RoboVac for just $159.98 when you use coupon code ECOVACS1 during checkout at Amazon. With over 4,500 reviews, this RoboVac has a 4.2 out of 5-star rating, which is rather impressive.

You can use the free ECOVACS app to create a schedule, monitor cleanings, receive error alerts, and much more. It has four different cleaning modes and a 3-stage cleaning system to ensure your hard floors and carpets are nice and clean once it finishes.

See at Amazon

Pay once to host your website for life with Dragify

As business moves online and people’s attention moves to the web more and more, having your own website is more than an asset — it’s almost a necessity. But maintaining a website means paying monthly or yearly hosting fees which can quickly add up over time.

Fortunately, there are companies like Dragify Website Hosting which will keep your website hosted and domain registered for a one-time payment of just $49.99.

This deal from Windows Central Digital Offers is here to alleviate frustration and to alleviate the strain on your bank account. Dragify is also a custom website designer that lets you create your own website the way you want it, which is included for free to allow you to create professional-looking sites without scripting or coding. Typically this service would cost you upwards of $600, but with this deal, you’ll save 83%.

Dragify uses Litespeed Web Servers which handle traffic spikes and neutralizes DDoS attacks with ease, while CloudLinux prevents individual sites from using too many resources while also providing better security. You’ll also be able to create as many 500MB email accounts, forwarders, and auto-responders as required for your business or site.

Having your own website, whether it’s for personal promotion or for your business, is an important tool to have in your promotional arsenal. And if you’re creating a site just for fun or to have as a creative outlet, then it’s even more important that Dragify is incredibly easy, since you want to get to the fun and creativity sooner rather than later. And why continue to pay monthly hosting fees get a lifetime subscription to Dragify Website hosting for only $49.99 at Windows Central Digital Offers?

See at Android Central Digital Offers

Google ‘Chat’: Everything you need to know

Google might have finally found a way to fix online chat for everyone after years of trying.

Google Chat is said to be the latest messaging solution from the company and if the rumors are true, every problem with online messaging could disappear. That’s a pretty bold statement, but what Google Chat is (and what it isn’t), as well as how it’s different from previous attempts, makes me believe that there’s nothing else any one company can do and it this doesn’t work nothing ever will.

Let’s have a look at what it is and why it’s different than previous attempts to “fix” online messaging.

The current problem

Right now online messaging is a digital battlefield filled with companies who only care what’s best for themselves instead of making it easier for us. Services like iMessage and WhatsApp are great, but only if both sides of any online conversation are using the same app. There are several different standards that can be used and two of them we’re all familiar with — SMS and XMPP — but that doesn’t seem to matter because no service seems to want to use them the right way. SMS has been corrupted by companies like Verizon who try to use their version as a marketing tool and XMPP (what old apps like Jabra or Google Talk used) has been all but abandoned.

As usual, corporations are being corporations and making money comes before what’s best for users. Same as it ever was.

The solution

RCS (Rich Communication Services) is a standard that can enhance and replace SMS and is able to give users an experience like iMessage or WhatsApp without both parties needing the same app, being on the same platform or through the same carrier. It’s based on the premise that both users will have an active data connection and messages can be sent like they would through an instant messenger client using a set of protocols about how and what can be displayed. There’s also a fallback that can use SMS for a “lesser” version of a message if a user doesn’t have a data connection for a short period of time.

More:What is RCS and why is it important to Android?

SMS is one of those things that needs to die. We use it because it works, but it’s expensive to maintain and horribly insecure and your phone company would be very happy for it to go away forever. That’s not really feasible just yet, so the next best thing is for SMS to be a last resort when all the better ways to chat won’t work. That’s exactly what services like iMessage or Verizon Advanced Messaging are doing right now. When both sides are using it you’ll have a nice messenger experience but if one side isn’t the chat falls back to a text-only affair. Apple and Verizon both use this as a way to let you know how much better things would be if you used their products in the way they want you to use them.

RCS would make this become universal. No matter what app you are using on any phone, you’ll have that enhanced experience as long as you have a data connection.

Where Google comes in

Google has tried all sorts of ways to give users a rich service for chatting that doesn’t depend on SMS. This started with Google Talk (which used the XMPP standard) then Hangouts became a thing then Allo arrived and each service was a little bit better than the last. But each had a problem, and while that problem was different each time it always went back to one thing: Google was trying to fix it with an app and not a standard.

This has one major flaw — both sides need to use the app. Google made the app free and available for everyone, but everyone already had an app for chat and there was no incentive to change. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — Allo is a wonderful app that everyone would love if there was anyone else using it. But nobody is ever going to switch away from iMessage or WhatsApp or Verizon Advanced Messaging and use Allo, and they shouldn’t; switching from one app that locks you in to another that locks you in is silly.

What needed to be done is to find a way to get every company to adopt the same universal RCS protocol, and that’s what Google seems to have accomplished. Mostly.

There have been a handful of carriers that jumped on the RCS train as soon as it became available. Sprint, Orange and Claro are names that come to mind and are also not the major players in each of their markets (that’d be AT&T, Vodafone and Vivo) so you always had more users unable to use a fully RCS capable messenger than you had that were. Android, Windows and iOS are all able to use RCS capable messaging clients but without carrier support that doesn’t mean much.

Google Chat looks like it will just be a rebranding of the Messages app that already exists (and is already RCS-ready) and it’s not the important part of of all this. The important part is that Google somehow convinced carriers to adopt the RCS universal profile and got Samsung to include it in their Messages app. These are the two things that kept us all from having a good chat experience by default all along and if the reports about Google Chat are true, we’ll all be able to have that rich messaging client we want by using the same messaging client we’ve been using all along for texting.

The one unknown

It’s important to remember than Google hasn’t said much of anything just yet. Google Chat is one of those things that exists as a leak or rumor that looks to be 100% legitimate and comes from a trustworthy source. But there will probably be more details once Google makes it all official.

With that in mind, there is one big piece that will still be missing and that’s the iPhone. iMessage is not RCS capable and actually uses the fact that it’s not fully compatible with any other messaging service as a selling point. Because you can’t change the default messenger app on an iPhone, this means that messages between an iPhone and everything else will still fall back to just text. Google can’t fix this and it would take Apple adding the RCS universal profile abilities to iMessage to make things just work.

We expect more details about Google Chat and the RCS solution to come up at Google I/O 2018 in a few weeks. There are certainly a handful of unanswered questions and once we get any more details we’ll add them right here. In the meantime we can think about all the extra space we’ll have once we can uninstall all the various messaging apps we use now and just use one really good one for everything.

These are the best Android apps of 2018 nominated for a Google Play Award

Check out the apps Google thinks are the best available today.

There are millions of great apps on the Google Play Store, so it can be tough for apps to get noticed and pick up the traction they deserve. That’s one of the reasons why Google runs a yearly “Google Play Award” system, where it picks a couple dozen apps to highlight for outstanding design, user experience, performance, innovation and overall quality. Google just released the full list of nominees for the award, which in itself is a huge deal for these developers, but at Google I/O 2018 we’ll see the actual award winners.

Here are all of the nominated apps, divided up by category — there are nine categories in total, and five nominees for each one.

Standout well-being app

• Clue by BioWink GmbH
• Fabulous by TheFabulous
• Headspace by Headspace, Inc.
• Lifesum by Lifesum
• Simple Habit by Simple Habit, Inc.

Best accessibility experience

• Audio Game Hub by Sonnar Interactive
• Be My Eyes by Be My Eyes
• Open Sesame by Sesame Enable
• Universal Copy by Camel Corporation
• Voice Volume Catcher by LITALICO lnc.

Best social impact

• Forest by forestapp.cc
• Khan Academy by Khan Academy
• Otsimo by Otsimo
• Tala by Tala Mobile
• TODXS by TODXS

Standout indie

• Agent A by Yak & Co
• Bridge Constructor Portal by Headup Games
• Flipping Legend by Noodlecake Studios Inc
• Old Man’s Journey by Broken Rules Interactive Media GmbH
• OPUS: Rocket of Whispers by Sigono Inc.

Best community building game

• Clash Royale by Supercell
• Episode by Pocket Gems
• Lineage 2: Revolution by Netmarble Corporation
• Pokémon GO by Niantic, Inc.
• PUBG MOBILE by Tencent Games

Best AR or VR experience

• ASTEROIDS! by Baobab Studios
• BBC Earth: Life in VR by BBC Worldwide (Ltd)
• Brickscape by 5minLab
• Figment AR by Viro Media
• Porsche Mission E by Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG

Standout build for billions experience

• Cricbuzz by Cricbuzz.com
• Flipkart by Flipkart
• Mercado Libre by Mercado Libre
• Moovit by Moovit
• Viki by Viki, Inc

Standout startup

• Astro by Astro Technology
• Canva by Canva
• Drops by Language Drops
• Kredivo by FinAccel Pte Ltd
• N26 by N26

Best breakthrough hit

• Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp by Nintendo Co., Ltd.
• Cooking Craze by Big Fish Games
• Empires & Puzzles by Small Giant Games
• Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition by SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd.
• PUBG MOBILE by Tencent Games

We’ll see the awards for each category handed out on May 7 at Google I/O, but you don’t have to wait until then to check out these awesome apps. Google has created a handy link to the Play Store where you can see and download all of the nominated apps in one place.