Monoprice Maker Select Plus Review

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Monoprice Maker Select Plus

Monoprice is crushing the 3D printer game right now. Over the past couple years, the company has released a handful of printers that are not only extremely affordable, but also packed with high-end features that you typically can’t find on such inexpensive machines.

Perhaps the best example of this is the company’s $160 Mini Delta printer, which earned high marks in our review despite its outrageously low price point. Thing is, the Mini Delta is on the lowest end of the price spectrum when it comes to Monoprice 3D printers — so we got our hands on a $400 Monoprice Maker Select to see how it compares. Luckily, we weren’t disappointed.

Standout Features and Specs

The Maker Select Plus boasts an impressive set of features, and arguably the most significant one is its spacious 7.9″ x 7.9″ x 7.1″ build area. While this isn’t the biggest print envelope we’ve ever encountered, it’s much larger than what we’ve seen on other machines at similar prices. As an added bonus, the print bed is also heated, which boosts adhesion and helps prevent print warping.

In terms of print quality, the Maker Select Plus punches way above its weight class

The printer’s 100 micron (0.1mm) minimum layer height puts it squarely in the middle of the pack in terms of resolution, but it makes up for that with an absolutely massive range of material compatibility. The Maker Select Plus supports almost any type of filament that you can get your hands on, from ABS and PLA, to some stranger filaments like Jelly and Felty. This greatly expands the range of objects you can make with your printer.

To top off this already impressive package, the MP Maker Select Plus also features a built-in touchscreen LCD panel in lieu of a dial or physical buttons. This is practically unheard of on any printer under $500.

Setup and Configuration

Out of the box, the Select Plus comes almost completely assembled — but not quite. The machine comes out of its packaging as two major parts that require four screws and some plugging in to come together. Thankfully, there’s a great manual to guide the setup process, and a handy accessories bag filled with all the fasteners and tools you need to get the job done. 

After assembling the two pieces, it sets up like any other FDM printer: Plug it in, run the plate leveling wizard (also included is a super handy business card-sized leveling guide for the 1mm test), and get the included filament loaded up. After that, you’re ready to print.

Design and Build Quality

Building on the great qualities of Monoprice’s Maker Select design, the Maker Select Plus has an all-metal body and Prusa i3-inspired design — but with an all-in-one form factor that folds a 3.25 inch touch screen directly into the machine’s front. After dealing with so many knob driven controls on other printers, the simplicity of this printer’s touchscreen was incredibly refreshing.

Monoprice Maker Select Plus Compared To

SparkMaker

Monoprice Mini Delta

Ultimaker 3

Zortrax M300

Robo C2

FormLabs Form 2

NewMatter MOD-t

M3D Micro

MakerBot Replicator (5th Gen)

Pirate3D Buccaneer

3Doodler 2.0

3D Systems Cube

Ultimaker 2

Formlabs Form 1+

The Select Plus also doesn’t take up much space, and runs more quietly than almost any other FDM printer we’ve tried — which means you don’t necessarily have to hide it in your garage just to isolate the noise. You also won’t need to visit your garage if you need to work on it, as the MP Select Plus is extremely accessible and easy to repair. The included accessory bag even includes a few replacement parts for things that you’ll likely need to fix after a couple years, like the teflon tube inside the print head.

User Interface and Software

Running the Select Plus out of the box is one of the best first-time setups we’ve had, and that’s largely thanks to its simple interface. After putting it together, a satisfying click of the power switch brings the touchscreen online.

The printer’s touchscreen is a feature that we didn’t realise that we wanted until we had it. Deviating from the knob style control scheme is the best thing that Monoprice could have done, as it removes the monotony of navigating menus.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

When it comes to slicing software, Monoprice takes an approach that not many manufacturers do. Rather than forcing you to install a proprietary slicing program, Monoprice ships its printers with config profiles for the popular open source slicer, Cura. This is great, because Cura is arguably one of the best slicers in existence, and it’s well-suited for users of all experience levels.

If Cura isn’t your bag, the Select Plus also supports many other open source and commercial slicers, so no matter what program you’re used to working with, you can likely get this machine to play nicely with it. 

Print Performance

The first print we ran was a swan: one of the four models that came pre-loaded onto the printer’s SD card. It came out almost flawless, but that was what we expected. Oftentimes, companies will pre-load highly-optimized test prints onto their machines to show off a printer’s abilities, and for this reason these objects aren’t necessarily a good indicator of overall performance. So for our next print, we ran a standard 3DBenchy: a tugboat-shaped torture test designed to tease out a printer’s strengths and weaknesses.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Much to our delight, the tugboat came out just as clean and accurate as the pre-loaded swan had. The fine details on the Benchy’s bottom and stern came through astonishingly well, and tricky elements like spans and overhangs were executed perfectly. We did notice a few vertical striations the boat’s cabin, but concluded that they were most likely slicing artefacts caused by the printer’s software, not a flaw in its hardware.

In terms of print quality, the Maker Select Plus punches way above its weight class, but print quality alone does not a good printer make. Luckily, this machine is also quite reliable. After testing a few duds in the past few weeks, we were relieved to find that this machine has a very low failure rate. You can just queue up a model, hit print, and walk away without worrying that it’s going to mess up on the first layer and waste a bunch of plastic — which we really appreciate. 

Our Take

This printer checks all the right boxes. It’s cheap, it’s well-built, it has a large build envelope, it has a heated bed, it works with tons of materials, it has intuitive software, it prints like a dream, it’s super reliable, and it costs just $400. It’s certainly not perfect, but no other printer on the market will get you this much bang for so few bucks.

Is there a better alternative?

If what you’re looking for is the highest print quality possible, you can get better results from an Ultimaker 3 or a Formlabs Form 2. Both printers offer considerably higher maximum resolutions, and are capable of printing with more detail than the Select Plus. That said, both cost over $3,000.

If what you’re looking for is build volume and the ability to print large parts, then you’d be better off with a Lulzbot Taz 6 or any Ultimaker machine. There are plenty of printers out there that have larger build envelopes than the Maker Select Plus — but again, they’re almost all over $2,500.

If you’re shopping on a tight budget, Monoprice offers other printers (like the Mini Delta and the Maker Select V2) that cost even less than the Select Plus. Just keep in mind that these machines have far smaller build envelopes and are therefore limited in what they can create.

So while the Select Plus doesn’t have the best print quality or the biggest build envelope or the lowest price tag you could possibly get on a printer, it does offer one of the best combinations of quality, size, and price that we’ve ever seen in a 3D printer.

It’s worth noting, though, that you can also opt for the non-premium Maker Select ($300), which is essentially the same printer, but with slower print speeds and without the built-in touchscreen.

How long will it last?

With proper maintenance, this printer should last a long, long time. Thanks to its all-metal construction, durable components, broad software compatibility, and regular firmware updates from Monoprice; this printer should keep on chugging along for years to come. 

Should you buy it?

Absolutely. If you’ve been holding off on buying a 3D printer due to high prices, or are tired of that Makerbot you bought four years ago and are looking for something more reliable, this is the printer you’ve been waiting for.

City of Austin is hoping the blockchain can help protect the homeless

Blockchain technology is most often discussed in terms of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, but the ledger has implications beyond a new kind of currency. Governments and private organizations are seeking to put the blockchain to work solving some of our society’s biggest problems. The city of Austin, Texas, is launching a program meant to help the homeless protect their identities in the event that their IDs are lost or destroyed.

The program is part of a grant awarded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and aims to solve one of Austin’s most pressing issues with the homeless, which is concerns keeping their identities secure.

“If you have your backpack stolen or if your social security card gets wet and falls apart, or if you are camping and the city cleans up the site and takes your possessions, you have to start all over from the beginning again,” Sly Majid, Austin’s Cheif Services Officer told Tech Crunch. “It really prevents you from going about and doing the sort of activities that allow you to transition out of homelessness.”

Unfortunately for many homeless people, the loss of an ID or Social Security card can make it impossible for them to get the help they need, because they have no way of proving who they are, and they can’t always afford to pay for new forms of identification.

The city is hoping that it will be able to use the blockchain as a replacement for paper records which can easily be stolen, lost, or destroyed. The idea is that the blockchain can provide a secure and safe way for aid workers to verify a person’s identity.

One of the examples that Majid pointed to was in the area of securing and protecting medical records, which can be difficult to verify for the homeless. Majid is hopeful that this system will make it easier for healthcare providers to keep track of a patient’s medical history and records.

Overall, Austin aims to use the technology can help solve the problem of homelessness, though Majid warned that the program is still in its infancy. However, he is hopeful that the program will grow over time.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Microsoft will use a blockchain to decentralize data for better control
• Bitcoin’s blockchain contains links to child pornography, possible illegal image
• A snail mail code will provide added security against ad fraud on Facebook
• The flu is poking holes in hospital cybersecurity, and a shot can’t save you
• Stanford’s VR experience puts you in the shoes of one of California’s homeless

Global supply chains are often murky, but blockchain may bring them into the light

Olive oil is perhaps the most common victim of food fraud. Several manufacturers have been caught thinning out their product, even deliberately mislabeling it for profit. Patrick Landmann/Getty Images

If one were to try and visualize the modern international economy, it might resemble the tangle of cables behind a computer or television.

The supply chains that carry goods from producers to consumers weave across and around each other, stretching over borders and oceans. A product may pass through several countries before it takes its place on a retail shelf, awaiting purchase. That holds true for the clothes we wear, the electronics we use, and even the food we put in our bodies.

This article is part of our series “Blockchain beyond Bitcoin“. Bitcoin is the beginning, but it’s far from the end. To help you wrap your head around why, we’re taking a deep dive into the world of blockchain. In this series, we’ll go beyond cryptocurrency and hone in on blockchain applications that could reshape medical records, voting machines, video games, and more.

Imagine ordering a cheeseburger at a restaurant: How much do you know about the ingredients? What dairy did the cheese come from? What farms the lettuce and onions? Which factory did the beef pass through to be ground up — and is it even entirely beef.

Globalization has benefits, both to developing economies and to international peace, but a consequence of global trade is that consumers often have little insight into where the goods they buy come from, or how they are made. The companies that sell those goods may not even know. These gray areas are a problem, because they provide opportunities for mishandling or even outright fraud.

There may be a technology that can solve this problem, however: Blockchain. Introduced to the mainstream as part of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, blockchain has become synonymous with cryptocurrencies — and by extension, people getting rich quickly. Among blockchain’s key traits is the ability to render data transparent and nearly immutable, and this could make blockchain a great tool to make supply chains visible to the world and reduce opportunities for fraud, in the food industry and beyond.

Food fraud: A global problem

The food we eat travels a long distance from farms and factories to our plates, and in many cases the person eating it has no idea what winding path it took, or even what is really in it. Food fraud, in which agents somewhere along the supply chain adulterate or misrepresent their product, is a shockingly common occurrence.

A consequence of global trade is that consumers often have little insight into where the goods they buy come from.

In a paper for the Journal of Food Science, Dr. John Spink, who runs the Food Fraud Initiative at Michigan State University, defined food fraud as “a collective term used to encompass the deliberate and intentional substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients, to food packaging; or false or misleading statements about a product, for economic gain.”

Food fraud is distinct from a food safety issue; while the latter can result from mere sloppiness or neglect, as in a salmonella outbreak, food fraud is intentional. “…the concern is there’s always an economic threat, but there’s not always a public health threat,” Spink told Digital Trends. As such, “it’s not that people don’t focus on it, but it’s not a priority compared to something like food safety where people are getting ill right away.” And while fraud doesn’t always lead to public health crises, when it does, it can be disastrous.

Dr. John Spink runs the Food Fraud Initiative at Michigan State University

Those incidents can range in severity. They could be innocuous, like olive oil that is falsely labeled as “extra virgin,” Spink explains. But they could also be something as scandalous as the discovery of horse meat in ground beef, as happened in Britain and Ireland in 2013. Or the 2008 incident in which Chinese dairy producers added melamine to infant formula in order to inflate its apparent protein content. Protein produces nitrogen, and as it is generally the only thing in food that produces nitrogen, agencies use nitrogen levels to determine if a product has sufficient protein. Melamine can cause kidney problems, however, and the result was more than 50,000 infants hospitalized for issues including kidney stones.

Current food safety systems respond quickly and thoroughly to food safety incidents, Spink adds. The problem is that these responses generally require a visible health threat; if people aren’t aware of adulteration in a product, there’s no cause to investigate.

Spink explains that traditional food testing is limited. “When we test for food safety, we don’t really test that the food is safe. We test that it doesn’t have the presence of about 30 to 50 bad bugs or chemicals. Because those are the ones that we really know are mostly out there. So we don’t really test for everything.” Government agencies in Europe may be on the lookout for horse meat in products after the last scandal, “but if you’re in Europe, you don’t also test for zebra.”

It’s hard to pin down exactly how common food fraud is, but Spink estimates that “for some products it could definitely be ten percent of the market, even in the U.S.”

In supply chains, criminals see opportunities

In order to better combat food fraud, authorities must shift their focus from responding to food fraud, to preventing it.

“And if we think crime prevention,” Spink says, “that’s social science — and these are human adversaries, so using social science is the right way to focus…That’s very different than food science, and food safety, where we’re chasing a microbe and we’re trying to cook it…” Spink’s work involves something called situational crime prevention. “It’s the space of crime, the physical space of crime,” he says. “And we look at vulnerabilities, to see what’s the state of being of a location — say, a building — that allows it to be a target for crime.”

According to this theory, crimes often happen because criminals see opportunities. By anticipating those opportunities and adding deterrents, authorities can prevent crime. Spink considers a bank to be an apt analogy. If your bank is simply a building with a big pile of money in it, someone might see an opportunity to stroll in and take the cash. Add an armed guard, however, and suddenly there’s an extra factor the would-be robber must consider.

Some of the more popular targets of food fraud include olive oil, milk, honey, coffee, and ground pepper.

Of course, the robber might see the armed guard and decide they can deal with them, maybe by bringing arms of their own. That big pile of cash is once again ripe for the picking, so you add security features to make the cash even harder to steal. Put the money in a vault, now they have to think about how to open it. If they would force a teller to open the vault, make it time-locked, so that “even if they had a gun to their head, literally, they couldn’t open it.” It’s almost like a chess game between the criminal and the crime fighter; one looks for vulnerabilities, the other anticipates those vulnerabilities and closes them off, trying to stay moves ahead.

Though more abstract than banks, supply chains have vulnerabilities too, and fraudsters are always looking for ways to save or make money. For authorities, the goal with supply chains is to make fraud more difficult.

“…we’re looking at the food supply chain, to look at where are all these vulnerabilities, and what can we do to prevent them,” Spink says. Being able to trace products is key. “And then we start to look at when we have known incidents…we try to figure out ‘Well, why did someone put melamine in there? How were they able to put melamine in there?’ And then we start to look at what might we have been able to do that would have led…an intelligent adversary to say ‘You know what, let’s not even try to attack this product.’”

In order to dissuade potential criminals from committing food fraud, making supply chains transparent and ensuring data is honest are crucial; blockchain might be just the tool to do both.

On blockchain, data is shared, and nearly incorruptible

Blockchain can be a confusing concept, lying as it does at the intersection of cryptography and finance, two fields known for being impenetrable. Put simply, a blockchain is an example of a distributed ledger, a record of transactions of which a copy is given to anyone who wants one, and every copy stays current.

In a typical, cashless transaction where one party is giving money to another — such as cashing a check or buying something online — no physical exchange of currency happens. A third party, such as a bank or credit card company, makes a note that one party has less money in their account, while the other has more.

Any cash-free exchange of money requires such a go-between. To some people, this is a flaw. As Adam Greenfield explains in his book Radical Technologies, “The critical vulnerability of all pre-Bitcoin digital cash schemes was that they required parties to a transaction to repose their trust in an intermediary institution, who they’d rely upon to maintain the ledger and update it every time value was passed across the network…As a consequence, there is tremendous fear that whoever controls the mint [the institution] would have the power to prevent some transactions from taking place entirely…”

With blockchain, everyone has an identical copy of the ledger. Whenever a transaction occurs via blockchain, other computers on that network verify that the transaction is valid and add it to the ever growing log that is the blockchain itself.

Imagine two people: Alice and Bob. Alice wants to give Bob some money, and they want to do so using Bitcoin. Every person on a blockchain has a unique ID called a digital signature. When Alice gives Bob Bitcoin, the transaction involves several variables: Alice’s digital signature, Bob’s digital signature, the Bitcoin leaving Alice’s account, the Bitcoin entering Bob’s account, the time and date of the transaction. These variables are plugged into a formula, which produces a string of digits called a “hash.” Each specific hash can only be produced by the specific values entered; if Bob were to try and modify the record to say that Alice gave him more Bitcoin then she actually did, the resulting hash would be different.

When the transaction occurs, it is grouped together with others in a block, and members of the network (called nodes) run through the entire record of the blockchain, verifying that the hashes in the new block line up with the already existing blocks in the chain. Once a node establishes a block is valid, it submits it to the chain.

Because everyone on the network has a copy of the ledger, everyone can see every transaction that has occurred, from first to last. If one were to try and modify data on a blockchain, the other nodes would note that the data doesn’t align with theirs, and disregard it.

Blockchain is thus decentralized, transparent, and secure. For Tomaz Levak, CEO of OriginTrail, these traits make it perfect for supply chains, where obscurity and fraud are problems, and he and his team of collaborators have developed a protocol specifically for supply chains.

A protocol “tailor-made” for supply chains

The founders of OriginTrail got their start in 2011, working with food companies to show where the ingredients in their products came from. By 2013, the company that would become OriginTrail was taking shape.

“And then two things started happening,” Levak explains. “One was that one of the most common questions that we got was about data integrity — how can we vouch for the data…” The second was their desire to unite entire supply chains on one platform. “And both of those things are connected to trust.”

Levak and his team gravitated toward blockchain, a technology built to be transparent and incorruptible. They used a blockchain platform called Ethereum, securing important data with cryptographic hashes that couldn’t be forged or manipulated.

“However, we couldn’t go much further beyond that, because it can very quickly get very expensive to play around with decentralized networks,” he says.

Despite the drawbacks, the team still believed in the potential of blockchain for brokering trust and the sharing of data. They identified three key issues that their protocol would need to address: Standardizing data between companies on a supply chain, curbing the costs to store data, and protecting company secrets on a platform intended to be transparent.

Each stop in the supply chain confirms that its data matches that of the stops before and after it.

Blockchains aren’t a cost-effective way of storing data; because it is very hard to delete data on a blockchain, nodes will need to process ever increasing amounts of data when validating, using larger amounts of energy, and thus money. To get around this, the team needed to go beyond blockchain, and built the OriginTrail network in layers. While a blockchain layer handles things like “immutably storing data fingerprints and handling transactions between users and nodes in the network,” the bulk of the data is stored on an off-chain “data layer,” trimming the fat on the blockchain itself.

To verify data on the network, OriginTrail requires a “consensus check,” wherein each stakeholder in the supply chain “has to be approved by the previous and the following supply chain stakeholder,” according to the company’s white paper. This means that each stop in the supply chain confirms that its data matches that of the stops before and after it.

Although blockchains create transparency, businesses need to feel that important data isn’t on display for the entire world; companies often have data they don’t want out in the open, since it could reveal too much about their operations. Levak uses the mass of a shipment as an example. It’s important for parties to see that the mass of a shipment hasn’t changed from one stop to the next, but you might not want the mass itself to be visible to everyone.

To guarantee that businesses can feel safe putting their sensitive data on the network, OriginTrail employs a zero knowledge proof; in this process, Levak explains, “one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that a given statement is true, without conveying any information apart from the fact that the statement is indeed true.”

A famous example of a zero knowledge proof involves two colored balls. Imagine Diana has two balls, one green and one red, and wants to prove to her color-blind friend Charles that they are different. She places one in each of his hands, then he puts them behind his back, holds them back out, and asks if he switched them. Diana can tell if they have been switched based on the color, so even though Charles will never have that particular information, he can verify that she is correct.

Will companies get on board with blockchain?

While the OriginTrail network may enforce transparency, the question arises of how it will compel the industry’s bad actors to get onboard. Why join a network that could expose your crimes?

Levak is aware of the conundrum. “…if you’re a good actor,” he says, “then there is a clear motivation for you to be able to prove something like that using a decentralized technology.” Bad actors will naturally be resistant, so the early adopters will be businesses that value the efficiency OriginTrail can bring to their operations, and those who recognize the bragging rights that come from embracing transparency.

Data security is failing and there has to be a better system. Blockchain creates a secure, unalterable public record and is poised to dramatically improve the world around you, from voting systems to rental contracts.

Companies certainly have incentive to look into blockchain. Although many a post on Reddit has proclaimed that blockchain will liberate mankind from the control of banks and even governments, big organizations are actually intrigued by the technology. “Such complex organizations,” Greenfield says, “are currently compelled to make enormous outlays on systems that improve data quality, they are often exposed to significant liability for data errors they fail to prevent, and above all they bear the impact of these circumstances directly on the bottom line. As a ‘trusted framework for identity and data sharing,’ the blockchain promises to solve these problems all at once.”

Spink’s research echoes this; aside from the people eating the food, the most concerned parties about food fraud are the big businesses. “…one minute of production at a major food company could be a million pounds,” Spink says. “And if they just had the wrong pepper in there — they said it was a lemon pepper and it was really a szechuan pepper — then they have a million pounds that they have to destroy.”

The decentralized nature of blockchain leads to fervent support — perhaps because its users feel empowered — and Levak sees in OriginTrail’s early adopters a community eager to spread the word, describing them as “a little network of ambassadors all around the world.”

While blockchain’s potential is astonishing, it remains to be seen how effective it will actually be with supply chains. As Spink puts it, “For that horse meat incident, how would blockchain have helped? And where would it help? And what would we need to do to allow it to help reduce fraud?”

No matter how secure your walls seem, there will always be someone, somewhere looking for gaps.

If blockchain really can help, it can’t come too soon. The problems with supply chains go beyond food adulteration, to issues of labor and environmental destruction. Take consumer electronics, for example: The lithium-ion batteries found in smartphones, for example, contain cobalt. According to a report by Amnesty International, more than half of the cobalt in the world comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 20 percent of that comes from miners who “mine by hand using the most basic tools to dig out rocks from tunnels deep underground…miners operating outside of authorized mining zones typically lack basic protective or safety equipment, such as respirators, gloves or face protection, and do not enjoy legal protections nominally provided by the state.” Even more alarming, “Researchers found children as young as seven who scavenged for rocks containing cobalt.”

The Amnesty report lists numerous corporations whose cobalt supplies run through a particular smelter in China. “Alarmingly,” the report continues,” the majority were unable to answer basic questions about where the cobalt in their products came from and whether there were any risks of the kind observed by researchers.”

The knowledge that blockchain can provide may empower consumer to make more informed decisions about the products they buy, and companies to make better decisions about who they do business with.

However wide blockchain spreads, it may not root out corruption entirely. Technology can’t change the hearts of men, and no matter how secure your walls seem, there will always be someone, somewhere looking for gaps.

Blockchain will turn gaming into a career, and give power to the players

Spells of Genesis

Video games are more than a game. They are, at different times for different people, a challenge, a business, a lifestyle, or all the above. While professional gamers fight for titles, and the money that goes with them, millions of others are buying, selling, gathering, grouping, chatting, and organizing. While not everyone has realized it, humanity has long passed the point of projecting real value only on tangible objects. Virtual goods can command staggering sums.

This article is part of our series “Blockchain beyond Bitcoin“. Bitcoin is the beginning, but it’s far from the end. To help you wrap your head around why, we’re taking a deep dive into the world of blockchain. In this series, we’ll go beyond cryptocurrency and hone in on blockchain applications that could reshape medical records, voting machines, video games, and more

Many games, like Fortnite and League of Legends, have built themselves on top of paid transactions for characters, items, and currency. Yet the details of how these purchases interact are often unclear.  What should players own? How should goods be traded? Who should dictate pricing? The answers depend on the game you play and can vary wildly from one game to the next, sowing distrust and confusion. Players want consistency, flexibility, transparency, and privacy. They’re not getting it.

Blockchain might be the answer – and more. The promise of ownership may be what lures gamers towards it, but they’ll get more than they bargained for.

Virtual items, real ownership

Seeing the potential for profit, companies soon appeared to ‘farm’ in-game gold and items. By the mid-2000s, gold farming was in full swing, complete with digital sweatshops that saw workers spend 12-hour days grinding away in games. Free-to-play games turned that reality into a business model, selling official virtual goods for real cash. Today, gamers find themselves hurdling down the rabbit hole. Star Citizen has raked in millions of dollars selling virtual goods for a game that’s not even complete.

Despite that, the rules surrounding these transactions, and the items themselves, are nebulous. Most games prohibit selling or purchasing in-game items, pushing transactions to the black market. Middle-man businesses like PlayerAuctions have risen in response, promising a risk-free transaction between buyer and seller.

Players often take advantage of these, feeling that they own the items they’ve earned. Scams are common – these are black market transactions, after all. Even purchases that seem to go smoothly aren’t guaranteed safe. Game developers often intervene, issuing temporary suspensions, or outright bans, to anyone discovered. Most people aren’t discovered, though, so some players are willing to take the risk. In fact, it’s not uncommon for players to feel cheated when caught. They’ve spent real money, or many hours, to earn what they’ve acquired. Why shouldn’t they feel a sense of ownership?

While players take pride in the in-game wealth they’ve gathered, they rarely have legal ownership.

That cuts to the core problem. While players take pride in the in-game wealth they’ve gathered, they rarely have legal ownership of virtual goods, no matter how they’re acquired. Blizzard Entertainment’s End User License Agreement makes that clear, declaring itself “the owner and license of all right, title, and interest […]” That includes all currency, virtual goods, even entire player accounts. Pay Blizzard $25 for a mount, or spend that same money on black market gold through ZamGold – either way, your don’t own a thing.

Blockchain turns that on its head. It’s effectively a digital ledger without a master copy. Transactions aren’t stored on any on computer, but instead stored on a network of computers, and they’re verified the same way. Transactions are recorded across the entire network through a shared record that no single computer holds. Transactions remain valid even when a PC goes offline – called ‘cold storage’ in the world of Bitcoin – making always-online game clients obsolete.

Strangely, it’s decentralization that makes true ownership possible. The database exists independent of any single person or organization, which makes its records objective, fair, and true. In blockchain circles, this is counter-intuitively labelled as “trust-less.” The implication isn’t that the blockchain can’t be trusted but, instead, that blockchain makes trust unnecessary. It doesn’t matter if you trust everyone else one the blockchain, because fraud is impossible – on the blockchain itself, at least. It’s a clever, and realistic, implementation.

Vlad Panchenko, CEO and Founder of blockchain-based item exchange DMarket, explained the advantage, saying “all the transactions will be secured by blockchain technologies, eliminating any possibility of fraud. With DMarket’s blockchain all gamers’ virtual items become real. It’s like Bitcoins or Ethereum in your wallet.”

Decentralization also gives developers a chance to put responsibility at arm’s length. A crash in value, or sudden surge, can be blamed on the whims of the market. Scams would still be possible but, because the blockchain itself is secure, attacks would focus on things well outside the developer’s control, like a player’s social media accounts or email. Today, when a weak password leads to a compromised account, players can ask the game’s developer to help restore it. Blockchain would make that difficult, if not impossible. Players would have all the responsibility that comes with ownership.

A different kind of game

The obvious implications of owning virtual goods are sure to put dollar signs in the eyes of gamers. If gamers truly own in-game items, they should also be able to sell them. It’s the Diablo 3 auction house on a whole new scale. It’s easy to envision a hardcore player defeating an enemy, walking away with a legendary weapon, and immediately selling it to the highest bidder.

“If you think about a traditional video game […] there are no inherent protections to the user.”

This could become a career on its own, and would be particularly lucrative for celebrity gamers. “Information about each item’s owner and history will be secured on the blockchain,” Panchenko explained. “This will create an additional demand for these items from rare asset collectors or celebrity gamers.” Eve Online has proven the concept with rare ships awarded only to tournament victors, and blockchain could apply that rarity to any game.

Yet profit is only the tip of the iceberg. Blockchain not only holds the power to change ownership, but also to alter how games are designed – a fact that Bryce Bladon, co-founder of viral crypto-game CryptoKitties, has experienced first-hand.

Most modern games are entirely centralized. Everything, from the graphics, to game design, to virtual goods, are owned and controlled by the developer. “If you think about a traditional video game, there’s next to nothing to stop a developer from just diving in and tweaking things, copying things, and adding other things. There are no inherent protections to the user,” Bladon told Digital Trends. He’s right. Automatic updates are frequently forced on games, and players can’t opt out. Open Steam, or boot your game console, and you’re sure to see new patches arrive. You can delay them manually, but that means can’t play online or enjoy any feature updates. Sooner or later, you’ll have to accept the patch.

That’s created tension between developers and gamers, player communities have sometimes rebelled, attempting to re-create the earlier version of a game whether the developer approves it or not. In most cases, these player projects have sputtered due to uneven support or, in many cases, legal action from a game’s original creator. Control of the game is entirely out of player’s hands, both legally and technically.

Blockchain destroys that status quo because it can’t be altered. “We don’t get to just change the block chain, as it were,” Bladon explained. “That is sort of the nature of it, it’s immutable.” CryptoKitties simply doesn’t have the power to alter the game whenever it’d like, and that immediately changes the relationship between those who make the game, and those who play it. Developers become shepards instead of gods. They can attempt to nudge the game in whatever direction they want it to go, but they can’t change the rules, or alter in-game items once awarded.

Mitchel Opatowsky, Project Manager at CryptoPets, affirmed what Bladon said, using the revolutionary aspects of cryptocurrency as a template. “If a Bitcoin’s theoretical potential value is that of a decentralized world currency,” Opatowsky told Digital Trends, “the same logic can apply to the game space, where currently individual production houses control the asset sales in a centralized way.” Whether a developer feels a moral or legal right to alter a game becomes irrelevant, because the blockchain makes altering a game technically impossible. Ownership is irrevocably shared from the moment the game goes live.

That is – pardon the pun – a game changer. Its impact is so meteoric that the consequences become difficult to imagine. Perhaps it would pave the way for the virtual worlds imagined in sci-fi novels, worlds that aren’t games but instead their own entities with rules, currency, and societies that exist only virtually, yet impact the real world. At the least, it could lead to shared social games that evolve for as long as there’s enough people to play them, and which can’t be shut down, even if the original developer desires it.

The new wild west

Blockchain’s potential is huge, in gaming and elsewhere. Yet, as Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have already proven, its revolutionary nature makes its impact hard to predict. Five years ago, Bitcoin was a novelty. Since then, it’s surged in value, completely upset video card pricing, sent regulators scrambling, and consumed the savings of those who bought at the wrong time.

The disarming cuteness of virtual cats disguises the fact they’re in some cases worth tens of thousands of dollars.

The consequences are no less for gaming. Virtual goods are already testing the limits of state laws against online gambling, though the items bought or earned have no tangible value. Blockchain, by allowing ownership and the exchange of items for currency, would erase a legal buffer game companies have used to contend online gambling laws don’t apply.

We asked both Bladon and Opatowsky about this issue, and neither seemed concerned. Bladon told Digital Trends that CryptoKitties “strongly believe[s] in consumer protections and making sure the user is protected wherever possible. Gambling, and anything related to gambling, is something we are hyper aware of.” Still, it’s not hard to see the risk. The disarming cuteness of virtual cats disguises the fact they’re in some cases worth tens of thousands of dollars. That could make blockchain games an easy target for lawmakers who might accuse them of cashing on their appeal to children.

Whatever the future of crypto-games, it’s sure to go in directions unexpected. Like the internet, blockchain is revolutionary because the specifics of its design allow incredible flexibility. The world is already struggling to keep up with crypto-currency, but its narrow focus on currency compromises its scope. Not everyone wants to deal with playing market trends. Trading cartoon cats, though? That’s something we can all understand.

Honor 7A + 7C bring face unlock to the sub-£170 price point

New budget phones pack premium features.

When you’re selling a phone for less than £200, you need to be very careful about which corners you cut. This price point is rife with devices that choose the wrong compromises, and it’s this which Huawei’s Honor brand is set to counter with its new Honor 7A and 7C phones, selling for £139.99 and £169.99 respectively.

Both devices borrow heavily from the design language of the Honor 8 Pro and View 10 with curved metal adorning the 7C, and a metallic-effect plastic covering the 7A. And there are a few significant firsts in these phones: They’re the first Android phones we’re aware of at this price that pack 18:9 panels, giving more display real estate than rivals, and face recognition, a feature largely limited to flagship handsets at present. In our brief time testing the face unlock feature, we found it worked pretty well, though understandably it lacked the speed of high-end implementations, as found in the P20 Pro and Honor View 10.

The other big compromise is display resolution: While the screens are 18:9 panels, you’ll need to make do with HD+ resolution, meaning 720p and change, on both models. The displays actually don’t look bad considering the price point, and both were bright enough for clear daylight visibility, with vibrant colors. Still, the lack of pixel density is noticeable.

The 7C boasts extra RAM and storage, as well as dual cameras, for an extra £30.

The 7C also features a dual rear camera setup, which is common in mid-rangers, but pretty rare in entry-level phones. In some casual testing ahead of today’s launch, the 7C’s dual 13-megapixel-plus-2-megapixel setup. In the Honor 7A, you’ll miss out on the depth-sensing tricks offered by the second camera. Neither phone skimps on battery capacity, though, with 3,000mAh cells included and considering the efficient Snapdragon 430 and 450 processors used in the 7A and 7C, that bodes really well for battery life.

We’re a little more concerned about the RAM situation on the 7A — Android can run on the 2GB included, but whether it’ll run well once it gets loaded up with apps is another matter. By the same token, that 16GB of internal storage will likely have you offloading some apps to your SD card before long.

Both phones come equipped with Huawei’s EMUI 8 firmware, though, based on Android 8.0, and the software is kitted out with the same performance-saving AI features found in Huawei’s flagship devices. Out of the box, EMUI runs smoothly on both devices, and the software we played with ahead of launch seems to include some more recent fixes from the P20 as well. Specifically, the annoying “app running in background” message no longer displays for music apps, and lock screen notifications can be expanded.

Besides that, this is EMUI, just as we’ve seen it on many other Huawei and Honor phones, only now powered by a Snapdragon processor as opposed to Huawei’s Kirin line. All in all, a solid experience, though with some customizations that may upset Android purists.

The Honor 7A will sell for £139.99 outright when it launches in May, and it’ll be available through Honor’s own HiHonor.com store, as well as Three UK on contract. The 7C will launch exclusively through HiHonor the same month, priced £169.99.

Honor’s next big announcement, expected to be the Honor 10, will take place at an event in London on May 15.

An Honor spokesperson described the upcoming device as “the sexiest product ever.”

Is the Galaxy S9+ a better purchase over the Pixel 2 XL?

This is a tough one.

In regards to large Android flagships, the Samsung Galaxy S9+ and Google Pixel 2 XL are your two best options at the moment. The S9+ is the newer of the two phones and is certainly the most eye-catching, but the Pixel 2 XL still more than holds its own thanks to the excellent camera package and software experience.

Some of our forum users recently started debating which of these phones is truly the best, and as you’d probably be able to guess, this resulted in a lot of conversations.

A few of the top responses so far are as follows.

monicakm
04-14-2018 01:10 PM

“

HOLY SMOKES! I am SO glad I didn’t settle for the Pixel I bought last week. It took less than a couple of hours for me to realize the Pixel 2 XL wasn’t going to cut it for me. When am I going to stop believing everything I read and hear? LOL I can’t think of one thing about that phone that has an advantage over the 9+. Oh wait, yes I can. There is one thing I’ll miss. That’s the squeeze…

Reply

goji26
04-14-2018 11:40 PM

“

I received another S9+ yesterday. I also have a Pixel 2 XL. For taking pictures of my kids or pets the Pixel seems better. I don’t know if the shutter speed is faster, or if it’s some sort of processing. I’ll have both phones and take a picture of my 9 month old with each one. He constantly moves so the pictures on the S9 are always blurred. The pictures on the Pixel are always clear. If anyone…

Reply

UdiBerry
04-15-2018 01:36 AM

“

Yep, the S9+ is really amazing!
I’m enjoying it so much, what a great phone.
It’s not free of problems obviously, but they are pretty minor and hopefully Samsung will fix them soon.
I was really unimpressed with the Pixel 2xl, and the whole “stock Android” thing is way overrated IMO. I actually prefer TW and Samsung’s apps over Google’s…

You can use a Bixby button remapper app…

Reply

Itsa_Me_Mario
04-15-2018 07:01 PM

“

Pixel 2 XL has a better camera, better build materials, better and more up to date software, better and more up to date security, is better for updates on both of those fronts, out of the box is better for user privacy, has a better FPS, 128 GB option is more widely available, has smoother performance despite less RAM, has better resource management, has better battery life, better charging…

Reply

With that said, we’d now love to hear from you – Do you recommend getting the Galaxy S9+ or Pixel 2 XL?

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 second opinion review: A battery short of perfection

Samsung once again nails the one-size-fits-all flagship, but mediocre battery life holds it back from an A+.

There’s rarely a more consumer-facing phone than the latest Samsung flagship. Say what you will about the Pixel 2 having cleaner software or the LG V30 being better for filmmaking, but the fact is that the Galaxy S9 is the phone plastered on every billboard, every web ad, and every subway station. For the vast majority of consumers, it’s the Android phone to consider right now.

When Andrew Martonik reviewed the Galaxy S9 last month, he called it “the new standard Android phone by which all others are measured as a baseline.” Unexciting, but uncompromising. But he spent most of his time with the larger Galaxy S9+ which, while mostly the same, benefits from an additional camera and a larger battery. So what’s the deal with the smaller S9?

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beautiful curves

Galaxy S9 Hardware

There’s no way around it; the Galaxy S9 is one of the finest displays of craftsmanship money can buy. The curved glass and aluminum frame scream high end, and make the phone feel almost more like fine jewelry than just a gadget. If you’ve used a Galaxy S8, you should already have an idea of what I’m talking about. The Galaxy S9 is largely unchanged when it comes to the design and in-hand feel.

That doesn’t mean it’s identical to last year’s model, though. After endless complaints about the S8’s hard to reach fingerprint sensor next to the camera, Samsung has moved the Galaxy S9’s sensor to a much more sensible place beneath the camera. It’s remarkably easier to reach than before, though it’s still a bit closer to the camera than I’d like; too often, I find myself accidentally smudging the camera, and the software even warns you against it when you’re registering your fingerprints.

Dongles be damned.

Oh, and it wouldn’t be a Samsung flagship without a long list of hardware benefits. Like last year, the Galaxy S9 is IP68 water resistant, and supports great features like wireless charging and NFC. It also still contains the MST component necessary for Samsung Pay, which allows you to use the S9 to pay at any terminal — even those that don’t typically accept mobile payments. There’s also a microSD card slot, as well as a good old 3.5mm headphone jack, a constant and hopefully long-lasting staple of Samsung’s lineup.

Interestingly, there’s also a heart rate monitor next to the camera, as well as a blood pressure monitor. While not everyone will make use of these features (I know I haven’t), they can be a huge benefit for people who need to closely monitor their health status and don’t have the necessary equipment at their disposal.

This may be one of the only major flagships of 2018 without a notch.

Despite its relatively pocketable size, the Galaxy S9 carries an impressively large display. It’s a 5.8-inch display with an elongated 18.5:9 aspect ratio that occupies most of the face of the device, with reduced vertical bezels compared to last year’s Galaxy S8. The curved glass wraps the display around the sides of the phone, an effect Samsung calls the Infinity Display.

It’s a bright and vibrant Super AMOLED panel, and a reminder that Samsung does displays better than anyone else. It’s still more saturated than I care for out of the box — I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve set my phone to the basic screen mode — but it’s 15% brighter than before, and just as sharp as ever with its QHD+ resolution. That’s a whopping 2960×1440, though by default the UI is scaled to FHD+ (2220×1080).

Even better, Samsung still managed to fit stereo speakers into the Galaxy S9 despite having limited space to work with up front. No, it doesn’t have dual front-facing speakers, but like the iPhone X and HTC U11, it combines the earpiece speaker with a bottom-firing speaker grill to create a stereo experience. It’s not quite as loud or detailed as the other phones mentioned, but it’s a huge improvement over last generation’s tinny mono speaker.

same but different

Galaxy S9 Software

Last year was the first time I could say that I was finally happy with Samsung’s software experience out of the box, without having to spend hours setting up third-party launchers and alternative apps to replace Samsung’s default services. This year, things get even better — though that’s partially thanks to my unlocked model shipping without carrier bloatware.

With version 9.0, Samsung Experience feels to me like the closest the company has gotten to a stock Android feel, without giving up what makes a Galaxy phone unique. That is to say, features like Edge Panel (not my favorite feature, but it’s more useful than most give it credit for), Knox, and Samsung Pay. And yes, even Bixby, which, while still inferior to Google Assistant in many ways, can pull off some more complex system-level commands.

There’s still Samsung’s usual collection of redundant apps that effectively mirror the functionality of Google’s existing offerings — apps like Email, Galaxy Apps, and Internet — but there are less of them here than in previous generations, and they’re finally good. I actually prefer Samsung’s Internet browser to Google Chrome, though I still use the latter since it syncs my browsing history with Chrome on my computers.

Samsung can finally offer the fast, responsive UI its beautiful hardware deserves.

In daily operation, the Snapdragon 845 inside truly shines with unyieldingly fast performance. Whether I’m playing graphics-intensive games or making simultaneous use of Multi Window and Android Oreo’s floating window for YouTube playback, the Galaxy S9 never fails to keep up — the 4GB of RAM play a role in this too. Simply put, Samsung has never made a faster phone.

I still absolutely love the pressure-sensitive virtual home button, which works even with the screen off or with the navigation buttons hidden. Especially if you’re coming from an older phone with physical controls, it makes the transition to on-screen keys feel much more natural, something Galaxy S7 holdouts might appreciate.

One major annoyance I had in my first few days of using the Galaxy S9 is the app power monitor, which I eventually disabled in the advanced menu of the battery settings. Don’t get me wrong, it’s useful to have insight on which apps are causing significant battery drain, but the power monitor doesn’t do much about those apps, save for putting them to sleep after three days without use. I found the constant notifications to be more trouble than they were worth.

While we’re on the topic of annoyances, let’s talk about Bixby. One of the most common complaints with recent Samsung phones is that the Bixby key under the volume rocker is far too easy to accidentally press, flinging you out of whatever app you were in to open Bixby Voice. Whether this is by design to encourage more use of the service is debatable, but you can actually turn this into a convenience.

Disabling the Bixby key in the settings will stop Bixby Voice from opening when you accidentally tap the button, but it doesn’t disable the feature following a long press. This means that even fans of Bixby may want to disable the button, and using it this way I found myself actually using Bixby Voice more often for quick commands like disabling Bluetooth. I’d still rather remap the button to launch Google Assistant instead, but this felt like a fine compromise.

dual apertures

Galaxy S9 Cameras

Unlike its larger counterpart, the Galaxy S9 only has one rear camera — a rarity in today’s flagship space. It’s a 12MP sensor that introduces a new trick to the smartphone camera game: dual apertures. The Galaxy S9 can switch between f/2.4 and f/1.5, and you can even watch it happen on the lens. On such a small sensor, the difference in aperture doesn’t make as big of a difference as you might expect, but it still helps the S9 take on different lighting situations a little more effectively.

Samsung’s camera software has always felt a bit messy to me, and to my delight, it’s been dramatically simplified this time around. Instead of a looming grid of shooting modes like on previous devices, you can just swipe between each shooting mode for quicker access. It’s a bit slower if the mode you’re after is at the end of the list, but you can rearrange the order of the shooting modes in the settings.

For the most part, though, you’ll be just fine in auto shooting mode. The Galaxy S9 has no trouble figuring out most of the right settings on its own, and particularly in low light, the results can be stunning. I took a quick photo of my drink at a dimly lit bar and was stunned not only at the level of detail on the glass, but at the natural depth of the shot and the absence of noise in the background. Simply put, the Galaxy S9 is the most impressive phone for low light photography I’ve ever used.

Its daylight shots are nothing to scoff at either, though. Where I’ve always found Samsung’s color science to err a bit too far on the cool side, the Galaxy S9 produces delightfully natural-looking images, with sharp details and plenty of dynamic range. With other amazing shooters like the Pixel 2 and the P20 Pro, I don’t know that I’d call the Galaxy S9 the absolute best smartphone camera around, but it’s certainly in the running.

Of course, you can have fun with the camera too. This is one of the few phones capable of delivering 960fps slow motion video. You need a ton of light to make it work well, and you’re limited to 720p, but even with its limitations, it’s one of the Galaxy S9’s coolest new features if you ask me. There’s also AR Emoji, if you’re into that sort of thing, but … well, I’m not.

Something to keep in mind if you plan on shooting a lot of video on the Galaxy S9 is that it’s set to 1080p by default. You still have the option for 4K at up to 60fps if you need the extra resolution, but unfortunately, you’ll lose out on tracking autofocus in the process. If you have a compatible video editor like Final Cut Pro, you can also choose to shoot in the HEVC codec for smaller file sizes.

the Achilles’ heel

Galaxy S9 Battery life

Lastly, there’s the matter of battery life. It’s not great. There’s no way around it. The Galaxy S9 houses a 3000mAh battery inside — the same capacity as last year’s Galaxy S8 — and as usually the case, I would’ve happily traded some of the phone’s thinness away for a larger battery.

With a typical load of social media apps, work apps like Slack and Trello, and some Spotify streaming to Bluetooth devices, I can get by on a casual day with light use — say, 2.5 to 3 hours of screen-on time — but much more than that will have my phone in the red by the evening. Depending on your usage, you could see better results than I did, but if you’re rarely in close proximity to a charger, this might not be the right phone for you.

Thankfully, the Galaxy S9 is still quick to charge through either a cable or a fast wireless charger. Strangely, it only supports Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 standard, rather than the newer Quick Charge 4 like the Razer Phone, but it at least has USB-C Power Delivery in its place. From a fully depleted battery, you can expect the Galaxy S9 to take just over 1.5 hours to reach a full charge through a cable, and about 2.5 hours using a wireless charger like Samsung’s own convertible fast charger.

the bottom line

Should you buy the Galaxy S9? Yes

Despite its less-than-stellar endurance, the Galaxy S9 reminds us why Samsung remains a staple in the Android lineup every year. It refines all of the Galaxy S8’s accomplishments and improves on its flaws, fitting almost every headline feature imaginable into a phone that’s readily available across all carriers without costing an arm and a leg compared to similar alternatives. With the Galaxy S9, you don’t have to choose between a great camera and a headphone jack, or between small bezels and stereo speakers. It’s a jack of all trades that just does everything right, so long as you don’t need two-day battery life.

If you prefer a larger phone, the Galaxy S9+ is still the better option for you; you’ll enjoy (slightly) better battery life, a bigger screen, a dedicated zoom lens on the back, and an otherwise identical experience. For everyone else, it’s hard to think of many reasons not to recommend the Galaxy S9. It may not be the most exciting phone around anymore, but it offers something for everybody, and leaves little to be desired.

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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 Morning After: Google AI and talking to books

Hello, Monday! We give our verdict on LG’s latest, AI-powered smartphone, hear how the next version of Android might lift some of the smarter features of Apple’s iPhone X and get yet another Sony phone to muse on.

LG could probably trim some fat, starting with this.
LG V30S ThinQ review: a solid but pointless phone

LG’s V30, launched last year, was a surprisingly strong device from a company that has trouble selling smartphones. Ahead of a G-series flagship, though, LG decided to build this — the V30S ThinQ. But the hardware differences are nearly negligible, and the AI image recognition features that define the V30S ThinQ are being made available to the original V30. We struggle to see the point.

This is on top of screen notch support.
Android P might include iPhone X-style navigation gestures

It’s well established that Android P will support notched displays when it arrives later in the year. However, that might not be the only iPhone X-like feature in the finished release. The 9to5Google team has noticed that a Google developer blog post briefly included an Android P screenshot (below) with a very different set of navigation buttons. Instead of the usual three buttons (back, home and multi-tasking) that have been present for years, the OS includes just a back button and an iPhone X-style strip.

It’s acknowledging that players need more things to do.
‘Sea of Thieves’ updates will focus on new maps, not perks

There’s not enough to do. In Sea of Thieves, you can only dig up so many treasures on the same islands. Rare is at least aware of that and has detailed content plans for the first several months after launch, including a shift in priorities. While Rare had talked about adding pets and ship captaincy early on, those features are “on the back burner” as the company focuses on adding more raw gameplay, including maps, enemies and events.

And this being Sony, there’s a 4K HDR display.
Sony’s dual camera Xperia XZ2 Premium takes ultra-low-light photos

Sony’s regular Xperia XZ2 is a little underwhelming, without much to recommend it over its rivals. Perhaps the Xperia XZ2 Premium will fare better. The new handset preserves the 4K HDR visuals of its predecessor (this time on a 5.8-inch screen that’s 30 percent brighter), but the real centerpiece is the photography. Sony is hopping on the dual rear camera bandwagon with a focus on low-light performance: It melds the input from a monochrome sensor (for contrast, 12MP, 1/2.3-inch, 1.55um) and a regular color sensor (19MP, 1/2.3-inch, 1.22um) to capture video at ISO 12,800 sensitivity and photos at a whopping ISO 51,200. We wait to see whether low-light performance can actually rival pro cameras, but this might help you shoot with confidence in those low-lit restaurants and birthday parties y’all are always going to.

But wait, there’s more…

• SpaceX will try ‘giant party balloon’ to slow upper rocket stages
• Google AI experiment has you talking to books
• After Math: The golden age of streaming

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Samsung’s newest phone can’t connect to the internet

If you’re worried about racking up a big mobile data bill, or want a phone for your kids or elderly relatives, the options aren’t great. Mostly because the default is to just opt for whatever low-end Nokia candybar is available for $30 on the aisle end at the mall. Samsung is hoping to capture some of this market with its new smartphone, the Galaxy J1 Pro, which is shipping without the ability to access 3G, LTE and WiFi.

Essentially, it’s a low-end Android smartphone with the modems ripped out, making it perfect for kids, seniors and paranoid* types. And Samsung is offering a refund to South Korean school students aged 18 to 21 until June 30th, presumably to coincide with the country’s college admissions exams. It appears that, if you plonk down the cash for one of these phones before the exam, you’ll get your money back afterward.

Spec-wise, J2 Pro has specs that are decently mid-range, with a 1.4GHz quad-core chip paired with 1.5GB RAM and a 2,600mAh battery. The qHD Super AMOLED display measures in at 4.9-inches and, on the imaging front, there is a 8-megapixel lens on the back and a 5-megapixel shooter up top. As for pricing, the Galaxy J2 Pro is priced at 199,100 Korean Won ($185) and comes in either black or gold.

* Although, given what’s been going on recently, it’s probably not paranoia.

Via: Ayrne

Source: Samsung

watchOS 4.3.1 Beta Hints at Future Support for Third-Party Apple Watch Faces

Apple may be considering allowing third-party developers to create custom Apple Watch faces, if a line of code discovered in the latest watchOS beta is anything to go by.

Historically, Apple has resisted allowing third-party developers to create and release custom watch faces for Apple Watch, instead electing to add to its stock options for watch faces in successive iterations of the device’s operating system, such as the Siri and kaleidoscope watch faces introduced in watchOS 4.

However, a log message in watchOS 4.3.1 beta, unearthed by 9to5Mac, suggests Apple may be considering the possibility in a future version of Apple Watch software. As part of its NanoTimeKit framework which provides developer access to watch face components, the beta includes references to a currently inactive developer tools server that will likely allow communication with Xcode on macOS.

Within this portion of code is a log message that reads: “This is where the 3rd party face config bundle generation would happen.”

Image via 9to5Mac
Whether or not Apple decides to implement the missing feature for watchOS 5 or in a later version is unknown, but the mere mention of third-party face configuration will likely be cause for hope for anyone longing for additional personalization beyond the existing color-adjustable stock options, custom “Photo” watch face, and accompanying third-party watch complications.

On the other hand, any such hope could prove misplaced given Apple’s traditional reluctance to open up the most outward-facing aspects of its operating systems to third parties (such as the lock and home screens in iOS, for example). Apple imposes strict limits on changes to major interface elements out of a concern that they guarantee a high level of usability, stability and security, and it’s hard to imagine the company casting aside those principles.

It’s worth noting that Apple tends to reject third-party Apple Watch apps that closely duplicate existing functions, as per its developer guidelines, although whether watch faces would come under this provision remains unclear. At any rate, while Apple welcomes “creative ways of expressing time as an app interface”, currently it does not allow apps that look like watch faces.

Meanwhile, rival smartwatch operating systems like FitbitOS and Android Wear have allowed users to install third-party watch faces on their devices for some time, but the design and usability standard on offer is highly variable and Apple isn’t likely to warm to the idea unless it can enforce a consistent means of quality control.

Apple is expected to release the fifth version of watchOS and iOS 12 at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 4Tag: WatchOS 4Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
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