Apple Releases New 11.4 Software for the HomePod Enabling Stereo Support, Multi-Room Audio Through AirPlay 2

Alongside iOS 11.4, watchOS 4.3.1, and tvOS 11.4, Apple today released a new 11.4 software update designed for the HomePod, which introduces major new features for Apple’s smart speaker.

This is the second update that’s been released for the HomePod since it became available for purchase back in February.

The new HomePod software will be installed automatically on the HomePod after you update to iOS 11.4, but you can also manually update and check your software version by following the instructions in our HomePod software how to.

As Apple announced this morning, the new HomePod software, paired with iOS 11.4, introduces support for AirPlay 2 and HomePod stereo pairing.

AirPlay 2 is an updated AirPlay protocol that’s simpler, more advanced, and more robust, enabling multi-room audio capabilities. With AirPlay 2, you can play music in any room to any room, move music from one room to another room, or play the same song in multiple rooms using an iOS device through an app or Control Center, the Apple TV, the HomePod, or Siri voice commands on any of the aforementioned devices.

AirPlay 2 controls can be accessed within any app and in the Control Center on an iOS device running iOS 11.4. In the Control Center, you will see a list of all of the available AirPlay 2 devices in your home, and you can effortlessly send audio to a single device, to multiple devices, or switch audio between devices.

The HomePod is the first AirPlay 2 device and one of the only AirPlay 2 devices on the market right now, but Apple plans to allow third-party speakers from companies like Sonos, Bose, Libratone, and more to add support for AirPlay 2.

Today’s update also allows two HomePod speakers to be set up as a stereo pair, which is ideal for larger rooms as the arrangement offers up more room-filling sound. When paired, each HomePod is able to automatically adjust audio to take into account the other HomePod, for excellent sound from each device.

The HomePods are able to take advantage of the built-in A8 chip in each speaker to play a left or right audio channel while also separating out ambient and direct energy for what Apple says is an almost three dimensional soundstage.

Stereo pairing uses an Apple-designed wireless peer-to-peer direct link to allow the HomePods to communicate with one another and play music in sync. The two speakers will act as one when paired, and just one will respond to incoming Siri requests.

Setting up stereo sound is as simple as turning on a second HomePod. Whenever a second device is set up, you’ll be prompted to form a stereo pair with a popup interface, with this information also available in the HomePod’s settings in the Home app.

The new HomePod software also introduces one other small but important change — it will allow users to check calendar appointments on the HomePod using Siri voice commands.

The HomePod is currently available only in the United States, the UK, and Australia, but Apple will expand availability to Canada, France, and Germany on Monday, June 18.

Related Roundup: HomePodBuyer’s Guide: HomePod (Buy Now)
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Apple Adds AirPlay 2 Section to HomeKit Site, Outlines Upcoming AirPlay 2 Speakers

Apple today updated its HomeKit site, which is where the company lists all of the available accessories and smart home products that offer HomeKit support, with a new AirPlay 2 section.

This section of the site lists all of the upcoming speakers and receivers that will be updated with AirPlay 2 support now that the AirPlay 2 protocol is available.

AirPlay 2 devices include the HomePod, of course, which is the first and only AirPlay 2 device available following today’s iOS 11.4 update, along with speakers from companies that include Bang & Olufsen, Denon, Libratone, Marantz, Naim, and Sonos.

Sonos, perhaps the most popular and well-known company introducing AirPlay 2 support, plans to add it to the Sonos One, the Play:5, and the Playbase. AirPlay 2 will work with other Sonos speakers, but one of these three Sonos devices will be required.

Today’s list is limited to manufacturers who have already pledged support for AirPlay 2, but it is likely to grow as additional companies announce AirPlay 2 functionality. A full list of speakers gaining AirPlay 2 support is below:

• Apple HomePod
• Beoplay A6
• Beoplay A9 mk2
• Beoplay M3
• BeoSound 1
• BeoSound 2
• BeoSound 35
• BeoSound Core
• BeoSound Essence mk2
• BeoVision Eclipse (audio only)
• Denon AVR-X3500H
• Denon AVR-X4500H
• Denon AVR-X6500H
• Libratone Zipp
• Libratone Zipp Mini
• Marantz AV7705

• Marantz NA6006
• Marantz NR1509
• Marantz NR1609
• Marantz SR5013
• Marantz SR6013
• Marantz SR7013
• Naim Mu-so
• Naim Mu-so QB
• Naim ND 555
• Naim ND5 XS 2
• Naim NDX 2
• Naim Uniti Nova
• Naim Uniti Atom
• Naim Uniti Star
• Sonos One
• Sonos Play:5
• Sonos Playbase

None of these speakers are available with AirPlay 2 at the current time, but many of them will gain support for the feature following firmware updates that will likely start trickling out now that iOS 11.4 has launched.

Related Roundups: iOS 11, HomePodTag: AirPlay 2Buyer’s Guide: HomePod (Buy Now)
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Apple Releases iTunes 12.7.5 With Minor Performance Improvements

Apple today released an updated version of iTunes, iTunes 12.7.5, which the company says introduces minor app and performance improvements.

The iTunes 12.7.5 update has been released alongside iOS 11.4, tvOS 11.4, and watchOS 4.3.1. Apple has a macOS 10.13.5 update in the works, but has not released it as of yet.

iTunes 12.7.5 can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for free using the Software Update function.

iTunes 12.7.5 comes two months after Apple released iTunes 12.7.4, an update that introduced a new music video experience for Apple Music, adding a music video section to Apple Music in iTunes.

iTunes 12.7, released in September, was the last major update to iTunes, eliminating the built-in App Store to focus solely on music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, and audiobooks.

Tag: iTunes
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Russia Demands Apple Remove Telegram From Russian App Store

The Russian government has asked Apple to help it block Telegram, the secure messaging app that’s highly popular in the country, reports WCCFTech.

A Russian court in April ordered carriers and internet providers in the country to block Telegram back in April, after Telegram refused to provide Russia with backdoor access to user messages.

Telegram, for those unfamiliar with the app, offers end-to-end encryption for secure messaging purposes. With end-to-end encryption, no one, not even Telegram, can access the messages that are sent between users.

Despite issuing the block order back in April, Russia has only been able to disrupt Telegram’s operations in the country by 15 to 30 percent.

Given the government’s inability to block the app, Roskomnadzor, the division of the government that controls media and telecommunications, has demanded that Apple remove the Telegram app from the Russian App Store. The group first asked Apple to remove the app in April, but is appealing to Apple again.

“In order to avoid possible action by Roskomnadzor for violations of the functioning of the above-mentioned Apple Inc. service, we ask you to inform us as soon as possible about your company’s further actions to resolve the problematic issue,” the regulator wrote.

Roskomnadzor has given Apple one month to remove the Telegram app from the App Store. Roskomnadzor’s director Alexander Zharov said he did not want to “forecast further actions” should Apple not comply with the request following the 30 day period.

The Russian government said that it needed access to Telegram to read messages and prevent future terror attacks in the country.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tags: Russia, Encryption, Telegram
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The New iOS 11.4 Update Fixes Three Irritating Bugs

In addition to introducing support for Messages in iCloud, AirPlay 2, and stereo pairing for the HomePod, the new iOS 11.4 update, released this morning, introduces fixes for several high-profile bugs that have been plaguing iOS 11 users for months now.

First and foremost, the update addresses the “Black Dot” unicode bug that could crash apps on iOS devices with a specific character sequence involving certain emojis. Following the release of iOS 11.4, this particular sequence of characters will no longer cause apps like Messages to crash.

Apple says the update also successfully fixes an issue that caused iMessages to appear out of order on some devices, a frustrating bug that’s been around for quite some time and has been the subject of many complaints.

The third major bug addressed in today’s update is one that caused an app on the Home screen to appear in the wrong location, often hovering out of place above other apps. This is another bug that received widespread attention given the high number of users who saw the problem occur.

Image from MacRumors reader Paulold
There are several additional bug fixes included in iOS 11.4, as outlined below in Apple’s release notes:

– Addresses an issue that could prevent logging in or accessing files on Google Drive, Google Docs and Gmail in Safari
– Fixes an issue that could prevent data syncing in Health
– Fixes an issue that could prevent users from changing what apps can access Health data
– Fixes an issue where CarPlay audio could become distorted
– Fixes an issue where selecting music from your iPhone could fail when playing music over Bluetooth or when connected to USB on some vehicles

The iOS 11.4 update is available for download on all devices capable of running iOS 11, which includes the iPhone 5s and later, the iPad mini 2 and later, the iPad Air and later, and the 6th-generation iPod touch. You can download the update by going to Settings –> General –> Software Update. All of the new features in iOS 11.4 are outlined in our video below.

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We expect iOS 11.4 to be one of the last updates to the iOS 11 operating system as Apple is preparing to introduce iOS 12 at the Worldwide Developers Conference next Monday. iOS 12 will be available in a beta capacity for developers and public beta testers ahead of a public launch in the fall.

Related Roundup: iOS 11
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Lyft Removes its Apple Watch App From the App Store

Lyft is the latest company to ditch support for the Apple Watch, eliminating its Apple Watch app in an update that was released this morning.

Lyft did not announce the removal of the Apple Watch app in the update’s notes, but the Lyft Apple Watch app is no longer listed in the App Store nor is it available as an app to install through the Watch app on the iPhone. There’s also no longer a mention of the Apple Watch in the App Store description.

It is not clear why the Lyft app was removed from the App Store, and we’ve asked Lyft for comment, but this continues a trend where major companies are removing their Apple Watch apps due to low usage or Apple’s requirement that all apps adopt the watchOS 4 SDK.

As of April, all Apple Watch app updates submitted to the App Store must use the watchOS 2 SDK or later. Apple Watch apps that use the watchOS 1 SDK are no longer able to be updated. Lyft has been updated several times since April, though, so it’s not clear if the requirement is the reason why the app was removed. Lyft first introduced support for the Apple Watch in September of 2016.

Lyft joins several other major companies that have abandoned development for the Apple Watch and eliminated their watchOS apps, including Twitter, Google Maps, Amazon, Instagram, and eBay.

Update: Lyft customer support told MacRumors reader Alec that the company is “testing the integration” for a new Apple Watch app, but does not have a timeline for when it will be available.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 4Tag: LyftBuyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
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Alcatel 3V review

Research Center:

Alcatel 3V

You could argue that innovation at the top end of the smartphone market has slowed in recent years, with annual flagship updates offering incremental improvements. Manufacturers strike on a successful design and take small steps each year to improve it. If you want to see giant leaps nowadays you have to look at the budget end of the market where phone design trends and new features are filtering down a lot faster than ever before.

With phones like the Nokia 6.1 and HTC U11 Life, Motorola’s latest is no longer the default budget champion, although we do like the Moto G6 and Moto G6 Plus. But these phones are all $250 or above. Even the Honor 7X costs $200. The phone we’re about to review is a full $50 less than that. The Alcatel 3V sounds like a real bargain, on paper at least. In the week we’ve been using it, we’ve found its poor performance may not even be worth the low price tag.

A budget beauty that doesn’t stand out

We’ve used a few Alcatel phones in the past and found them to be quirky in the design department, but the Alcatel 3V is a phone that can blend into the crowd — and that’s a good thing.

Alcatel has clearly paid attention to design trends, so the 3V has an attractive, shiny mirror finish on the plastic back. Our review unit is a dark blue, but you can also get this phone in black or gold.

There’s a dual camera module with a round fingerprint sensor below it, both with metallic silver accents around them. The frame is matte aluminum. The fingerprint sensor worked well for us, generally unlocking the phone on the first try.

The front is dominated by a large 6-inch display. The bezels are a little bigger than you might like, but surprisingly, this phone has a better screen-to-body ratio than the Moto G6, Google Pixel 2, or the iPhone 8.

The 6-inch LCD display has the modern 18:9 aspect ratio and boasts a resolution of 2,160 x 1,080 pixels which puts it on a par with the Moto G6 Plus. While it’s certainly not the most vibrant display we’ve ever used, we found it sharp and comfortable to read on for long periods of time.

The Alcatel 3V sounds like a real bargain, on paper at least.

You’ll find a textured power button on the right-hand side with the SIM tray above it, which also has room for a MicroSD card. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack up top, a volume rocker on the left, and a MicroUSB port for charging on the bottom, flanked by the speaker.

We’d be happy to see MicroUSB retired in favor of the superior, reversible USB Type-C charging port, but you have to expect some compromises in a phone this price.

It’s quite a big phone, similar in size to the Moto G6 Plus, but a lot lighter because of the plastic back. It attracts finger smudges, but what phone doesn’t nowadays?

We imagine it will handle falls and bumps better than a glass phone, but there’s no IP rating so you’ll want to keep it away from water. Overall, the Alcatel 3V is a good-looking phone that looks considerably more expensive than its actual price tag.

Performance is incredibly slow

We knew there would be a big compromise somewhere, and as soon as we turned the Alcatel 3V on, it became glaringly apparent. We didn’t even make it beyond the agonizingly slow set up before the weather app crashed and threw up an error.

Simon Hill/Digital Trends

The Alcatel 3V is packing a Mediatek MT8735A processor with just 2GB of RAM. Even switching from the budget Moto G6 Plus, using the Alcatel 3V feels like wading through molasses. There’s at least a second-long pause after every tap. Sometimes an app will take so long to load you’ll think the tap didn’t register.

It’s a bit like going back in time to the bad old days of Android lag. You get used to it quickly and start to allow that beat for your action to kick in, but it never stops being frustrating.

We played PUBG: Mobile on the lowest settings and found that, despite some dropped frames, it was playable (we even got a chicken dinner!). We also played a bit of Fallout Shelter and Super Mario Run without any problems. Just be prepared for long loading times and dropped frames on fast-paced, graphically-intensive titles.

The benchmark results say everything there is to say about the performance of the Alcatel 3V:

• AnTuTu 3D Bench: 41,440
• 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme: 159 OpenGL
• Geekbench 4: 643 single-core; 1,826 multi-core

Those results make it the slowest phone we’ve tested for a long time. To give you a few comparison points, the Moto G6 scored 70,827 on AnTuTu, the Nokia 6.1 scored 88,595, the Honor 7X scored 63,311, and even the last Alcatel phone we reviewed, the Alcatel Idol 5, scored 62,869.

Benchmarks aren’t always the best guide, but in this case, real-world performance is every bit as bad as the benchmarks suggest. It takes a long time to switch between apps and everything from the Chrome browser to the messaging app takes a few seconds to load.

Using the Alcatel 3V feels like wading through molasses.

The Alcatel 3V is running Android 8.0 Oreo, but we really wish the manufacturer had resisted the urge to add its own Joy user interface on top. It didn’t bring us any joy. It’s a bit garish and childish looking. There are a couple of apps you probably won’t use, but thankfully it’s not packed with bloatware. We have no doubt that this phone would run better with stock Android.

Alcatel has included a Face Unlock option, but we found it to be a little flaky in practice. When it worked it was fast, but it didn’t always work, and it wasn’t obvious why.

Storage is another issue. There’s only 16GB of storage out of the box and we hit 12.47GB within three days. It’s not enough. There is a MicroSD card slot, but we have concerns that putting a lot of data on a card will slow performance down even further.

You do get a set of basic earphones in the box with the Alcatel 3V and there’s an FM radio app you can use when you plug them in, so that’s a bonus.

A dual-lens camera at this price?

We were very surprised to find a dual-lens camera in the Alcatel 3V. They are creeping into budget devices like the Moto G6, but most budget devices stick to a single lens.

There’s a 12-megapixel lens with an f/2.2 aperture and a 2-megapixel lens with an f/2.4 aperture. Like everything else about this phone, the camera is slow. It takes an age to load up, but worse, it’s extremely slow to snap a shot. It’s not impossible to get decent photos in good lighting conditions, but you’re going to need to hold the phone very still.

A lot of our shots were muddy and blurred. Because of the slow shutter speed and the lack of any stabilization, any movement is liable to cause blurring, and anything that’s moving in the shot will look smudged – even slowly strolling people as you can see in the harbor shot.

It also doesn’t cope at all well with close-up photography. We took a few close-up shots and they generally turned out terrible, even after telling the camera where to focus.

Low-light and night-time shots tend to be noisy and far too dark. The small apertures here don’t let in a lot of light, so you really need decent lighting to get anything approaching a decent photo. There’s a night mode that employs the flash and tries to let in more light, but it’s incredibly slow to snap a shot.

There’s also a portrait mode designed to take advantage of the dual-lens camera to capture shots with that coveted bokeh effect, where the subject is in sharp relief and the background is blurred.

We shot a few different portraits and found that it worked best if you got really close to the subject. When it can easily determine what’s in the foreground and the background, it does a decent job. When the subject is further away as in the last shot, it has no clue what to blur and makes a ton of mistakes.

In the right conditions, if you take your time, you can get some nice photos.

Sometimes a slider pops up to enable you to adjust the effect, but we didn’t find it worked very well. Part of the problem is that it’s so slow to show any on-screen adjustment. We generally preferred the results photographing people with the automatic settings.

You can also record video on the Alcatel 3V up to 1080p at 30 frames per second. The front-facing 5-megapixel camera is a basic shooter for selfies.

Overall the camera is quite poor, but budget phones tend to have poor cameras. Snapping a range of shots, it disappointed often, but it still surprised us on occasion with a half-decent photo so it’s not a total dud. In the right conditions, if you take your time, you can get some nice photos.

We’d rather Alcatel nail the basics, though, rather than spending time adding extra features that end up not working very well.

Battery life

There’s a 3,000mAh battery in the Alcatel 3V and that’s enough for a typical day. We generally had a little left in the tank at bedtime, but you’ll want to plan to charge it up every night.

How quickly the battery fades all depends on what you do with it, of course. Playing PUBG: Mobile online ate through the battery quickly, as did a lot of camera use, but if you mostly use your phone for web browsing and messaging, then it might just stretch to two days between a charge.

Alcatel 3V Compared To

Moto E5 Plus

Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra

Nokia 7 Plus

Porsche Design Huawei Mate 10

Google Pixel 2 XL

Maze Alpha 4G

ZTE Blade Z Max

ZTE Max XL

Meizu M3 Max

ZTE ZMax Pro

Meizu M3 Note

Blu Pure XL

Huawei Mate 8

ZTE Grand X Max+

LG G Flex

There’s no wireless charging on offer, which is fine in a phone this price, but we are bit disappointed to find a complete lack of any kind of fast charging. You’re going to need to plug the Alcatel 3V in for more than two hours for a full charge.

Phones generally charge fast and then slow down as they fill, but just to give you an idea — we plugged the Alcatel 3V in to the wall outlet with the charger and cable that came in the box, and it took half an hour to go from 55 percent up to 70 percent. You’re going to want to get into the habit of plugging it in overnight.

Price, availability, warranty information

The Alcatel 3V costs $150 unlocked in the U.S., and it will work on AT&T or T-Mobile, but not Verizon or Sprint. You can buy one from Amazon, Best Buy, or Walmart.

It’s an even better deal in the U.K. where you can snap it up on pay-as-you-go at Tesco for just 95 British pounds.

Alcatel offers a standard one-year warranty for faults.

Our Take

If Alcatel had picked a slightly faster processor and squeezed in an extra 1GB of RAM, we would be recommending the 3V almost unreservedly as an amazing bargain. At $150 we can live with some of the other limitations because there’s a lot to like here, but it’s just so slow.

Is there a better alternative?

Throughout this review we’ve talked about alternative budget phones, particularly the Moto G6 Plus, which we just reviewed. While it is a better phone in almost every respect, we also must remember that it costs double the price of the Alcatel 3V — and it’s not available in the U.S.

Perhaps our favorite budget release right now is the Nokia 6.1, an Android One phone that offers a great user experience. But it still costs $270. The gap between the Alcatel 3V and the Moto G6, which is actually available in the states, isn’t as wide, but if you opt for it you’ll still have to find an extra $100. There’s the Moto G6 Play as well, which only costs $50 more, but we haven’t reached a verdict on it yet.

If the Nokia 6.1 is out of your budget, you should take a look at the impressive Honor 7X, which costs $200. You might want to also look at the Moto E5 Plus or E5 Play, but the Alcatel 3V does have some things they lack, and we haven’t reviewed those phones just yet.

How long will it last?

Alcatel’s record with software updates is questionable, so we have no idea if the 3V will ever get Android P or anything beyond that, but we’re doubtful. Because the performance is already limited, we also have concerns about how slow this phone will get as it fills and ages. We think you’ll be ready for a change well before two years is up.

Should you buy it?

No. At $150, the Alcatel 3V gives you a lot of phone — but if the user experience is frustratingly slow, what’s the point? We think saving up a little more cash to go for a Moto G6 or Nokia 6.1 will really serve you better.

Lenovo Yoga 730 13-inch review

Research Center:

Lenovo Yoga 730

We sometimes review a notebook that strikes us as very middle-of-the-road. Its performance is fine, its design is fine, its build quality is fine — but nothing stands out as particularly good or bad. Lenovo’s Yoga 720 convertible 2-in-1 was just such a machine, and the company has now refreshed it with the latest Intel silicon, polished it up a little, and dubbed it the Yoga 730.

Lenovo equipped our review unit of the 13.3-inch model with Intel’s 8th-gen quad-core i5-8250U CPU, 8GB of DDR4-2400MHz RAM, a 256GB PCIe solid-state drive (SSD), and an anti-glare Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 or 166PPI) display. This entry-level configuration prices out at $849 at Best Buy, which is a bit lower than the Yoga 720. You can save $50 by opting for a 128GB SSD or jump up to $1,350 for a faster Core i7-8550U CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD.

Lenovo touched up the previous generation, added in some new features, and lowered the starting price. Is that enough to make the Yoga 730 relevant in an increasingly competitive convertible 2-in-1 market?

An uninspired design that doesn’t stand out

Lenovo makes solid notebooks. That’s true pretty much across its entire lineup, and the Yoga 730 is no different. It’s an all-metal build that shaves a few millimeters off the Yoga 720’s already svelte dimensions, reducing the side bezels to a 7.9 mm thickness to match the HP Spectre x360 13. The chassis is slightly thinner at 0.62 inches (up from 0.60), making it thicker than the Spectre x360’s 0.53 inches and the Lenovo Yoga 920’s 0.5 inches. Its weight, though, is significantly decreased, from 2.9 pounds down to 2.47 pounds and less than the Spectre x360’s 2.78 pounds and the Yoga 920’s 3.02 pounds.

The build quality is excellent with only the tiniest bit of flex in the lid and keyboard deck. It doesn’t have the Yoga 920’s tank-like rigidity, but it’s still near the top of its class. Interestingly, the Yoga 730 also shares the surprisingly sharp edges that we noted in the Yoga 920, which make resting your hands on the keyboard deck a bit less comfortable. The Yoga 730 is a convertible 2-in-1, of course, which means the hinge is particularly important – and it does a fine job of both holding the display in place and smoothly swiveling from clamshell to tablet formats.

Lenovo is known for excellent keyboards, but we felt the Yoga 730’s version fell flat.

The 2-in-1’s aesthetic is fine, with our review unit’s professional, but boring silver-grey chassis. The Spectre x360 cuts a more striking figure and adds some panache without being ostentatious, while you’d need to focus on the Yoga 920’s watchband hinge to tell it apart. The Yoga 730 looks like it wants to simply fade into the background, and that’s fine if it’s what you’re looking for, but we do prefer HP’s Spectre splash of style.

Connectivity is very good for such a thin machine. Not only are there two USB-C ports with full-speed (40 gigabytes per second) Thunderbolt 3 support for external GPU enclosures and multiple 4K displays, but Lenovo also managed to pack in a USB-A 3.1 port for legacy devices. Then there’s the usual 3.5mm combo audio jack, 2X2 MU-MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.1. Charging is via either of the USB-C ports, and the Yoga 730 now supports Lenovo’s Rapid Charge technology that can add two hours of operation with only 15-minutes spent plugged in.

The keyboard is shallow, but touching, inking, and swiping is a pleasure

Lenovo is known for excellent keyboards, particularly on its ThinkPad line. But for some reason, the Yoga 730’s keyboard fell uncharacteristically flat. It’s too shallow, and while keystrokes are springy and don’t uncomfortably bottom out, we were yearning for more key travel. The HP Spectre x360’s keyboard is also light and springy, but it offers significantly more travel.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

The touchpad is large for such a small notebook, and it’s a Microsoft Precision touchpad, which means you’ll enjoy precise and responsive Windows 10 gesture support. The buttons have a nice click to them but aren’t too loud, something we can’t say about other 2-in-1s the Microsoft Surface Book 2. The touchscreen display is equally responsive, making controlling the cursor and on-screen elements enjoyable.

The Yoga 730 now supports Lenovo’s latest Active Pen 2, which is a $70 add-on. The pen wasn’t included with our review unit, but we’ve used it before. The stylus’ 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and tilt support to put it right up there with the Surface Pen as a great tool for Windows Inking.

The Yoga 730 was plenty fast in real-life use, making it an excellent productivity choice.

Another addition from the Yoga 720 is better voice support, with far-field microphones that make talking to Cortana more accurate from across the room. And, that will be a plus when Amazon Alexa arrives (coming soon, according to Lenovo), giving you another personal digital assistant with which to interact.

Finally, the Yoga 730 supports Windows 10 Hello via a fingerprint scanner located on the keyboard deck to the far right of the touchpad. It’s as easy as usual to set up, and it’s plenty responsive. Our only complaint with its placement is that it’s harder to get to in tablet mode than if it were on the side of the notebook as with the Spectre x360.

A display that won’t win any awards

The Yoga 730 13 comes equipped with a Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 or 166PPI) display, which has become a standard for premium and near-premium notebooks. It’s just sharp enough for its 13.3-inch size, and there’s no option to upgrade to a 4K UHD display.

According to our colorimeter, the Yoga 730 essentially duplicates the performance of the Yoga 720. And that’s not a good thing, because the result is a display that’s fallen below average in the intervening months. Contrast, color gamut, and color accuracy are all inferior compared to our comparison group, and brightness comes in at a low 276 nits – below our preferred 300 nits.

In real-world use, the display isn’t quite as bad as these objective results indicate, but they weren’t great, either. We had to crank up the brightness to over 70 percent for comfortable use with any kind of ambient lighting, which is unusual for recent machines. Watching video was less enjoyable as well due to a gamma that made things brighter than intended.

Lenovo Yoga 730 Compared To

Dell XPS 15 2-in-1

Samsung Notebook 9 Pen

Dell XPS 13 2-in-1

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga 3rd-gen

Asus NovaGo

Acer Switch 3

Lenovo Yoga 720 13-inch

Samsung Galaxy Book

Lenovo Yoga Book

Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro

Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro

Dell XPS 12 (2013)

Lenovo ThinkPad Helix

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13

The audio was equally underwhelming, with some distortion at full volume and not a tremendous amount of sound at that. Bass was lacking, as usual, and the highs and midrange were both a bit scratchy. It’s good enough for the occasional YouTube video, but you’ll want to pull out your favorite headphones to enjoy music and movies.

Perfect performance for productivity users

It’s remarkable just how consistently and how well today’s notebooks perform thanks to Intel’s 8th-generation Core processors. Our review Yoga 730 was equipped with the midrange quad-core Core i5-8250U, which in other machines has proven itself to be a great performer with some real efficiency benefits.

The Yoga 730 didn’t disappoint, and it’s a significant upgrade from the Yoga 720. As usual, the i5-8250U was a capable performer in both synthetic and real-life tests. Its Geekbench 4 results were only slightly behind some Core i7-8550U-equipped notebooks, and it scored a class-leading result in our Handbrake test that converts a 420MB video to H.265. Note that you can step up to a Core i7-8550U for an additional $100.

Lenovo’s choice of SSD was also superior, with the Samsung M.2 NVMe drive scoring at the top end of our comparison group. Simply put, you won’t find data storage to cause any a slowdown in your workflow no matter what you’re doing with the notebook.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Subjectively, the Yoga 730 was plenty fast in real-life use, making it an excellent choice for anyone with demanding productivity tasks. The relatively thin and light 2-in-1 has good thermals as well as indicated by the fans that never got overly loud and the chassis that remained comfortable to the touch no matter the task.

Integrated graphics inside means no gaming allowed

Unlike some recent notebooks that squeeze discrete graphics into thin chassis, such as the Asus ZenBook Flip 14, the Yoga 730 is limited to the integrated Intel UHD 620 graphics that come with its Core processor. That doesn’t bode well for the 2-in-1’s gaming abilities.

As expected, the Yoga 730 didn’t blow our socks off in our gaming tests. In the 3DMark synthetic benchmark, for example, it scored right where we expected for integrated graphics, no better and no worse than comparably equipped notebooks.

In real-life gaming, things were also consistent with our expectations. The Yoga 730 was able to hit 50 frames per second (FPS) in Rocket League at 1080p and performance mode, but it dropped down to a 24 FPS with high-quality graphics turned on. Again, that’s right in line with the competition, and it makes the Yoga 730 best for older titles at lower graphics and for low-end esports and casual Windows 10 games.

Battery life takes a step back

Lenovo fitted the Yoga 730 with 48 watt-hours of battery capacity, equal to the Yoga 720’s and a little below average for the class. That’s mated with a 1080p display and an efficient CPU, and so we were hoping for decent enough battery life.

In our tests, the Yoga 730 fell behind the Yoga 720 and the rest of its convertible 2-in-1 competitors. It managed just over three hours in our most aggressive Basemark web benchmark test, which was an hour behind the HP Spectre x360. It managed just over six hours in our web browsing test, where the Spectre x360 lasted for well over eight hours, and it petered out after just eight hours of video while the Spectre x360 and Lenovo Yoga 920 went for around 14 hours. The Yoga 720 lasted for almost 10 hours in the same test.

Battery life was disappointing despite a more efficient processor than its predecessor.

Those are disappointing results, and we really can’t account for them. Yes, the Yoga 730 has a smaller battery capacity, but it also has a very efficient CPU. It should have been able to last for significantly longer in our less demanding tests, and we can only hope that firmware updates can improve its longevity.

Our Take

The Lenovo Yoga 730 13-inch is a solidly built convertible 2-in-1 with great performance and an attractive price. The keyboard is a bit shallow for our tastes, but the rest of the input options are top notch. Our first complaint is with battery life, with the Yoga 730 taking a step back from its predecessor and falling behind its 2-in-1 competition in this metric. Combined with a display that is underwhelming even given the relatively low price, and the Yoga 730 just doesn’t keep up with a fast-improving 2-in-1 market.

Is there a better alternative?

Lenovo’s strongest competitor is the HP Spectre x360 13, a very similar convertible 13.3-inch 2-in-1 that’s spent some time on our list of favorites. The Spectre is a better-looking machine with similar performance, a better keyboard, and better battery life. It’s also more expensive, at $1,120 for the same Core i5-8250U, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB PCIe SSD – note that this price includes an active pen, a $70 extra for the Yoga 730. HP also offers a 4K UHD display option, making it a more attractive option for pixel peepers.

If you want a little more power in your convertible 2-in-1, then you could consider the Asus ZenBook Flip 14. You’ll spend quite a bit more for a more powerful configuration that includes a Core i7-8550U, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB PCIe SSD for $1,300. You’ll also get a bona fide discrete GPU, the entry-level Nvidia GeForce MX150 that offers better gaming on older titles and esports games.

How long will it last?

The Yoga 730 is a solidly built notebook with a modern processor and future-proof connectivity. It’s likely to last you for quite long enough to justify the reasonable investment. Lenovo offers the usual 1-year parts and labor warranty on the Yoga 730, which is no better and no worse than its competition.

Should you buy it?

No, unless your budget simply won’t stretch to the Spectre x360. The Yoga 730’s mediocre display and disappointing battery life hold it back from receiving our Recommended badge.

Apple flexes its design muscles with a patent filing for a ‘living hinge’

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

Apple could potentially eliminate the plastic strip found on today’s MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops in a future redesign if it brings its patent for a living hinge to life. The MacBook maker is continuing its research into a living hinge, which would allow the MacBook’s hinge to be constructed from a single material — Apple currently employs aluminum in its current laptop lineup — to create a stronger, more durable hinge on laptops.

Apple started work on its living hinge in 2013, and the patent filing was recently updated to state that the design would be used on a laptop, according to Patently Apple. “An enclosure for a laptop may be created from a rigid material having a flexible portion defined around approximately a midpoint of the material,” Apple wrote. “The flexible portion may allow the rigid material to be folded in half and thus acts as a laptop clamshell. In this manner, the enclosure (or a portion thereof) may be created from a single rigid material, while still providing flexibility and bending for the enclosure.”

Rival Microsoft already uses a similar type of hinge design on its Surface Book laptops. Microsoft’s dynamic fulcrum hinge is constructed using the same magnesium alloy as the rest of the laptop to form a durable design, but the downside is that unlike traditional notebook hinges there is a slight gap between the screen and the keyboard portion near the hinge when the laptop is closed. Because the screen on the Surface Book can be detached, Microsoft’s use of the dynamic fulcrum hinge to strengthen the mechanism at the laptop’s more highly stressed point, to mitigate breaking, makes sense.

Credit: Patently Apple

In its design patent filed with the European Patent Office, Apple said that the hinge would be made with “interlocking flexible segments formed from a rigid material,” and design illustrations show that metal, carbon fiber, composites, ceramics, glass, plastic, and other materials could be used to construct the shell of the laptop and the rigid hinge. While Apple notes that the clamshell design could be used for a MacBook, it said that such a design could also apply to an iPhone. Microsoft, Samsung, Huawei, LG, and a number of phone manufacturers are said to also be exploring foldable smartphone concepts that may feature a similar type of hinge.

It’s still unclear if Apple intends to commercialize its research efforts, but adding a living hinge to the design of the MacBook and MacBook Pro could help strengthen the hinge on the laptop, making it less susceptible to breaking at a time when the durability of the company’s keyboards is being called into question.

Apple’s switch to butterfly key switches on its latest notebooks allows the company to design thin laptops, but the keys on those laptops are more susceptible to failure. A recent analysis suggests that butterfly key switches are twice as likely to fail as older keyboards, and repairs are almost twice as expensive given the complexity of the design of the keyboard deck for out-of-warranty service.

Editors’ Recommendations

• A future Microsoft laptop could have a foldable touch screen
• Failure rate of MacBook Pro ‘butterfly’ keyboards is double that of older models
• MacBook Pro users file class action lawsuit over keyboard issues
• What if Apple replaced the MacBook keyboard with a giant screen?
• Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon vs. Apple MacBook Pro 13

8 Amazing CRISPR projects that could change life as we know it

Since it burst onto the scene a decade ago, CRISPR-Cas9 has shaken the field of genetics to its core. Offering a new genomic editing tool that’s faster, cheaper and more accurate than previous approaches, it opens up an astonishing breadth of possible applications.

From saving lives to potentially rescuing coral reefs, here are eight examples of exciting CRISPR projects that showcase just why this gene-editing tech has everyone talking.

Malaria-resistant mosquitos

Mosquitos play a big role in the spread of malaria, a potentially deadly parasitic disease which kills hundreds of thousands of people each year.

To help battle this, researchers from Johns Hopkins University have used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to engineer mosquitos that are resistant to the malaria parasite. By deleting a gene that enables malaria to survive in the mosquito’s gut, the parasite is left unable to survive for long enough to be a danger to humans.

Right now, there’s a hitch in the plan since the modified mosquitoes are less likely to thrive in the wild, and therefore pass on their genes, than ordinary mosquitoes. However, the researchers are working on a way to change that. Hey, who said wiping out a disease like malaria was going to be easy?

A limitless supply of transplant organs

There’s an enormous, deadly shortage of transplant organs worldwide. Could CRISPR gene editing help? Quite possibly yes, according to one international research initiative with the goal of using gene editing on pigs to turn them into safe organ donor candidates for humans.

The use of CRISPR in this case involves eradicating the pig-based diseases — known as porcine endogenous retroviruses, a.k.a. PERVs — embedded in pig DNA. So far, scientists have been able to breed pigs which are 100 percent PERV-inactivated.

The next step in research will involve carrying out additional work to make xenotransplantation (the process of transplanting tissues or organs from one species to another) achievable.

Encoding GIFs in your DNA

Scientists just used CRISPR to store this horse gif on DNA https://t.co/KUyUIQweVb pic.twitter.com/FM1j5YeqQT

— Singularity Hub (@singularityhub) July 16, 2017

No, the next entry on this list isn’t as potentially world-changing as ending transplant waiting lists or eradicating malaria. But it’s pretty darn fascinating in its own right.

Researchers at Harvard University recently showed that it is possible to use CRISPR to accurately encode images and even movies into DNA. The footage in question is a 36 x 26-pixel GIF showing a galloping horse filmed by motion picture pioneer Eadweard Muybridge all the way back in 1878.

The researchers were able to encode this into an E. coli bacteria so that it could later be reassembled with 90 percent accuracy in the correct order. Useful? Not right now.

A possible future market for geeks who want their favorite Star Wars clip or reaction GIF to be made a permanent part of their DNA? We can totally see that!

Saving the world’s coral reefs

Coral reefs dying doesn’t just mean that you’ll have fewer holiday snaps to show your buddies when you get home from your next tropical vacation. It has the potential to be an ecological and economic disaster which will affect millions of people — and a whole lot of other creatures, to boot.

Looking to change that, an international research project is using CRISPR to examine exactly how and why environmental changes hurt coral reefs. No, there are no immediate plans to create a CRISPR-enabled breed of super coral, but understanding coral genes will help researchers to get to grips with phenomena like coral bleaching. And hopefully start making efforts to reverse it.

More efficient crops

The world’s population is rapidly increasing, and that brings a range of challenges when it comes to how best to feed everyone. Research aided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has demonstrated that it is possible to use CRISPR to improve the efficiency of how crops use water by 25 percent — without compromising their yield in the process.

This is achieved by tricking the plant into partially closing its stomata, the microscopic pores in the leaf which release water. So far, the gene editing has been showcased in tobacco crops, since these are easier to modify and quicker to test than other crops. However, because the gene being altered is found in every plant, the discovery could be applicable to a vast number of crops.

Heat-resistant cows

University of Florida scientists are working to breed the “cow of the future” by studying the more heat-tolerant Brangus cow — a cross between an Angus and a Brahman.

Researchers from the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences are trying to use genetic engineering to create heat-resistant cows which can thrive in warmer environments.

The geneticists working on the project are studying the Brangus cow, a mix between an Angus and a Brahman that is good at thriving in warm climates.By isolating the specific DNA segments which allow it to regulate its body temperature so effectively, they hope to make other types of heat-resistant bovine. All without sacrificing taste, of course!

Curing ALS

The Ice Bucket Challenge may have helped raise money for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a.k.a ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, but CRISPR could one day help treat it.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have shown that it is possible to disable the defective gene which triggers ALS in mice. Although they were not able to get rid of the disease permanently, their treatment extended the mice’s life span by 25 percent.

They believe that the research could be carried over to humans, with the possibility of extending the timeframe of additional healthy years.

Home disease diagnosis

Imagine being able to use CRISPR technology as a high-tech disease diagnosis platform from the comfort of your own home. That’s the goal of a new startup called Mammoth Biosciences. The company is busy developing at-home tests which promise to be able to detect everything from STDs to cancers.

“Similar to a search engine, our scientists enter a code into the guide RNA to find the matching nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) strand in the disease,” Mammoth CEO Trevor Martin told Digital Trends. “Once the code is found, instead of only snipping the strand of matched RNA or DNA like one would for editing, it also has a collateral effect on reporter molecules that release a color to visually show the presence of the disease.”

The tests will reportedly be as straightforward as an at-home pregnancy test, with answers available to customers in under an hour. There’s no word on when these tests will be available but, when they are, it could prove to be a game changer.

Editors’ Recommendations

• CRISPR could one day help conservationists save our ocean’s coral
• In new breakthrough, CRISPR tools target RNA to tackle dementia
• CRISPR gene-editing could help feed future generations
• Johns Hopkins scientists genetically engineer malaria-resistant mosquitoes
• New startup promises ‘world’s first’ CRISPR-powered disease detection