HTC U12 Plus vs. LG G7 ThinQ: Which powerful flagship prevails?

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

While we’re always the first to acknowledge excellence, it’s important to remember there are a lot of great phones out there that don’t have “Apple” or “Samsung” stamped on them. High on that list will almost always be the latest offerings from LG and HTC, and if you’re not keen on the latest iPhone or Galaxy flagship, then these companies are a great place to start. That’s especially true with the LG G7 ThinQ and the HTC U12 Plus.

Now, the question becomes which of these two should you buy? With powerful specs, great displays, and 2018-worthy designs, it can be hard to pick between the two. We’ve taken an in-depth look at both phones, so you know which one is best for you.

Specs

HTC U12 Plus
LG G7 ThinQ

Size
156.6 x 73.9 x 8.7 mm (6.16 x 2.9 x 0.34 inches)
153.2 x 71.9 x 7.9 mm (6.03 x 2.83 x 0.31 inches)

Weight
188 grams (6.63 ounces)
162 grams (5.71 ounces)

Screen size
6-inch Super LCD
6.1-inch IPS LCD

Screen resolution
2,880 x 1,440 pixels (537 pixels per inch)
3,120 x 1,440 pixels (564 pixels per inch)

Operating system
Android 8.0 Oreo
Android 8.0 Oreo

Storage space
64GB, 128GB

64GB, 128GB

MicroSD card slot
Yes
Yes, up to 2TB

Tap-to-pay services
Google Pay
Google Pay, LG Pay (in South Korea only)

Processor
Qualcomm Snapdragon 845
Qualcomm Snapdragon 845

RAM
6GB
4GB, 6GB

Camera
Dual 12MP and 16MP telephoto rear (both with OIS), dual 8MP lenses front
Dual 16MP (with OIS) and 16MP wide-angle rear, 8MP front

Video
Up to 4K at 60 frames per second, 1080p at 240 fps
Up to 4K at 30 frames per second, 720p at 240 fps

Bluetooth version
Bluetooth 5.0
Bluetooth 5.0

Ports
USB-C
3.5mm headphone jack, USB-C

Fingerprint sensor
Yes (back)
Yes (back)

Water resistance
IP68
IP68

Battery
3,500mAh

QuickCharge 3.0 (4.0 with adapter, not included)

3,000mAh

QuickCharge 3.0 (4.0 with no adapter included)

Qi wireless charging

App marketplace
Google Play Store
Google Play Store

Network support
T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon
T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint

Colors
Translucent Blue, Ceramic Black, Flame Red
Aurora Black, Platinum Gray, Raspberry Rose, and Moroccan Blue

Price
$800
$750

Buy from

HTC, Amazon

Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Project Fi

Review score
Hands-on review
3.5 out of 5 stars

Performance, battery life, and charging

With the brand-new and powerful Snapdragon 845 powering these devices, you’re likely to get similar great performance out of them. The U12 Plus has a small advantage with 6GB of RAM as standard, but the impact is likely to be minimal. Expect great performance from both in a variety of apps and games.

The G7 ThinQ’s 3,000mAh battery surprised us during testing, providing strong performance that belied its smaller capacity. It could easily manage more than one day on standard usage, and it’s unlikely to disappoint. We’ve not had a chance to fully test the HTC U12 Plus’ 3,500mAh battery yet, but we expect the extra capacity will prove to be a strong contender in this fight. There’s QuickCharge 3.0 support enabled for both right out of the box, with the option to attach a QuickCharge 4.0 adapter, if you have one. There’s wireless charging on the G7 ThinQ, but none on the U12 Plus, despite the glass back.

This is an exceptionally tough fight for us to judge. There’s a lot here that’s equal between the two phones. Without proper testing of the HTC’s battery life, we think the inclusion of wireless charging just ekes out the win for the G7 ThinQ.

Winner: LG G7 ThinQ

Design and durability

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

The LG G7 ThinQ boasts an extremely up-to-date design with a glass body, notched display, and bezel-less design — and while that’s a good thing, it’s also a little boring. While it’s a pretty enough phone, there’s not much here to differentiate the G7 ThinQ from the competition, and that’s honestly a real downside. In contrast, while the U12 Plus hits similar notes — bezel-less design and glass build — there’s enough of HTC’s unique touches to make it really stand out. The Liquid Surface design ethos that debuted last year is beautiful, and the Translucent Blue’s transparent back is stunning. There’s at least one major downside to HTC’s design choices — the death of the headphone jack started with the HTC U11 and it has not been resurrected here.

Durability-wise, you can expect similar performance from both of these phones. Both are water- and dust-resistant up to an IP68 rating, but with all that glass, you can bet you’re going to want a protective case for both.

Despite the lack of headphone jack, the U12 Plus’ improved design just barely puts it ahead of the G7 ThinQ.

Winner: HTC U12 Plus

Display

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

There are two great 1,440p screens on display here. The G7 ThinQ’s screen is the larger of the two, a 6.1-inch LCD display running a taller than average 19.5:9 aspect ratio, 3,120 x 1,440-pixel resolution. It supports HDR10, and comes with a boosted brightness mode for direct sunlight. LG refers to the area around the notch as the “second screen,” and you can turn it into black bars if you want to hide the notch.

The U12 Plus’ 6-inch Super LCD display has a more standard 18:9 aspect ratio, running a 2,880 x 1,440-pixel resolution. It’s not as sharp as the G7 ThinQ’s display, but we doubt anyone would notice the tiny difference between the two. We did notice that the U12 Plus’ display was slightly harder to see in direct sunlight though, and while we haven’t finished our full tests on the U12 Plus’ display, that leads us to suspect the G7 ThinQ has a slight lead here.

Winner: LG G7 ThinQ

Camera

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

The G7 ThinQ comes with a pair of 16-megapixel lenses — one standard, one wide-angle — and they provided some decent test images during our review. The wide-angle mode took some especially notable shots, but it’s let down by the low light performance, even with the Super Bright Camera enabled. The AI Cam does help in some circumstances, but on the whole, low-light performance is fairly disappointing. Still, the overall performance is solid.

We haven’t had a chance to really dig into the U12 Plus’ capabilities yet, but we’re hopeful. The phone has been awarded a high mark by camera tester DxOMark, placing it second only to the stunning Huawei P20 Pro right now, and the dual 12-megapixel and 16-megapixel telephoto lenses really seem to take care of business. We reckon the U12 Plus’ camera will be a surprise hit when we fully test it.

In terms of video, both are capable of 4K recording and slow motion of up to 240 frames per second — the U12 Plus can achieve 240fps at 1080p, while the G7 ThinQ is stuck at 720p.

Initial tests of the U12 Plus are strong, and we’re expecting it’ll do very well in our tests. It wins this round.

Winner: HTC U12 Plus

Software and updates

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

You won’t find pure stock Android on either of these phones, but they’re pretty close. The U12 Plus is the closest to stock Android, with the phone running on Android 8.0 Oreo, with a few HTC additions like Blinkfeed. The G7 ThinQ uses a slightly adapted skin over the top of Android 8.0 Oreo, but it’s still fairly close to a stock experience. Either way, no one with previous Android experience should have an issue with these quick and snappy interfaces.

You can bet your bottom dollar that both of these phones will be getting an eventual upgrade to Android P. However, HTC has generally been quicker with Android upgrades than LG, which wins the U12 Plus this round.

Winner: HTC U12 Plus

Special features

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

As befits premium flagships, both of these phones are chock-full of special features. The G7 ThinQ is part of the ThinQ brand, which means it’ll be able to talk with other LG devices with the ThinQ name. We suspect you’ll find some of the other features more useful though, with the amazing Boombox sound especially worthy of note, as is the dedicated button for activating the Google Assistant.

The U12 Plus also has its own special way of activating the Google Assistant — Edge Sense. The “squeeze-to-activate” feature from the HTC U11 is back, and it’s better than ever. HTC has added some new options in there, with the U12 Plus supporting single-edge squeezing. A double tap on either side will activate one-handed mode — a great idea on a phone this large. The U12 Plus also uses the Edge Sense sensors to detect how you’re holding your phone, so it’ll know whether to rotate your view based on how you’re holding it. The U12 Plus comes with HTC’s BoomSound for better sound quality.

In our eyes, the HTC phone has more special features that you’re likely to use day-to-day.

Winner: HTC U12 Plus

Price

The HTC U12 Plus is currently available for pre-order, and the base model will set you back $800. However, it’s only available on AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon’s networks. The LG G7 ThinQ is now available for sale, with prices starting from $750. The G7 ThinQ is available from most carriers, with the exception of AT&T.

Overall winner: HTC U12 Plus

It was a hard-fought battle on both sides, but thanks to its fresh design, incredible camera, and special features, the HTC U12 Plus has come out the other end as the stronger phone. That’s not to say the G7 ThinQ is a bad choice, though — it’s got amazing power, some fresh ideas, and a super-sharp display, even if the design leaves a bit to be desired. But for our money, the HTC U12 Plus is simply the better phone of the two.

Editors’ Recommendations

• HTC U12 Plus vs. Galaxy S9 Plus: Clash of the plus-sized phones
• HTC U12 Plus vs. OnePlus 6: The new kids battle for supremacy
• HTC U12 vs Google Pixel 2 XL: Can HTC take out the stock Android king?
• OnePlus 6 vs. Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus: Which big phone is better?
• LG V35 ThinQ vs. LG V30: Is the newer model worth the extra cash?

Take a VR journey to an exoplanet with NASA’s new ‘Travel Bureau’

NASA/JPL

NASA has opened a new Exoplanet Travel Bureau, a place where you can journey through the cosmos and imagine what it might be like to stand on the surface of an alien planet.

The website offers an intergalactic vacation in the form of interactive visualizations of planets beyond our solar system. No actual images of these planets exist, of course, but the artistic conceptions are based on observations from the Kepler Space Telescope.

The 360-degree visualizations are available for desktop or mobile devices, as well as virtual reality headsets.

Accompanied by cool retro-style travel posters, there are three planets to visit, with more on the way. The “nightlife never ends” on PSO J318.5-22, because it doesn’t orbit a star, but wanders freely through space. The latest entry, Kepler-186f, has a setting that lets you toggle atmosphere on or off.

“Because Kepler-186f and the majority of Kepler-discovered planets are so distant, it is currently impossible to detect their atmospheres — if they exist at all — or characterize their atmospheric properties,” said NASA scientist Martin Still in a blog post.

“Consequently, we have limited knowledge about what these distant worlds are really like, but these surface visualizations allow us to imagine some of the possibilities,” he added. “Current and future NASA missions, including TESS and the James Webb Space Telescope, will find the nearest exoplanets to our solar system and characterize their atmospheres, bridging the gap between speculation and what’s really out there.”

The Travel Bureau was designed by NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Although hundreds of potential exoplanets have been discovered so far, scientists arte particularly intrigued by those in the “Goldilocks Zone,” the orbit in a temperature range that could support liquid water and, possibly, extraterrestrial life.

The Kepler spacecraft, which trails the Earth in an orbit around the sun, has produced most of the exoplanet discoveries, but it’s out of gas and about to end its mission. However, the just-launched TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope are both specifically designed to search for exoplanets, and thousands of alien worlds await discovery.

Editors’ Recommendations

• NASA’s planet-hunting TESS satellite: What you need to know
• NASA’s planet-hunting satellite sends back its first image — and it’s amazing
• NASA’s planet-hunting deep space telescope is about to run out of fuel
• NASA’s upcoming Parker Solar Probe might as well be walkin’ on the sun
• Get your Sagan on with 60 awe-inspiring photos of the final frontier

7 of the biggest scandals in tech history

Bryan Bedder/Getty Images

The tech industry isn’t immune to scandal. With literally trillions of dollars at stake and the ability to gain access to people from all over the world for personal or political gain, that’s no surprise. But what are the biggest scandals to have shaped the history of high tech as we know it? While it’s tough to narrow it down to just a short list, here are seven of the most infamous.

Samsung’s disastrous Note 7

Think of how much it would cost to have airlines read out the name of your company’s latest flagship smartphone before every single flight. That’s the situation Samsung found itself in back in 2016. Unfortunately, it happened to be because the company’s Galaxy Note 7 phones had a tendency to explode, and were therefore banned from airplanes.

After news stories ranging from a Note 7 torching a family’s car to one causing the evacuation of a Southwest Airlines flight, Samsung made the decision to recall the disastrous handset at great personal expense. It tried reissuing a corrected version, but this also suffered from similar issues. In the end, Samsung took the phone off the market entirely and put out a software update to brick any surviving handsets.

To this day, the company’s reputation as a handset maker is suffering the aftereffects of the Galaxy Note 7 scandal.

The treatment of Alan Turing

Unlike many of the scandals on this list, the death of Alan Turing was tragically not officially recognized as such for many years. Turing, the genius World War II codebreaker, computer pioneer and grandfather of artificial intelligence, killed himself in 1952.

This followed Turing’s conviction for gross indecency after he was exposed as homosexual at a time when this was illegal in Britain. Turing was given the choice of prison or a painful chemical castration, and opted for the latter. He subsequently committed suicide at the age of 41.

In 2013, Turing was given an official royal pardon. It reads: “Now know ye that we, in consideration of circumstances humbly represented to us, are graciously pleased to grant our grace and mercy unto the said Alan Mathison Turing and grant him our free pardon posthumously in respect of the said convictions.”

The death of Aaron Schwartz

Along with Alan Turing’s story, the death of Aaron Schwartz is the most tragic scandal on this list. Schwartz was a computer programmer and copyright activist who committed suicide in 2013 after being charged with downloading large numbers of academic journal articles to make them freely available online.

Schartz’s punishment entailed a potential maximum of $1 million in damages and 35 years in prison. He was found dead after hanging himself in his Brooklyn apartment, a victim of one of the most shameful chapters in the history of the U.S. Justice Department.

Foxconn suicides

Foxconn, a Taiwan-based manufacturer which assembles the iPhone for Apple, was at the center of a 2010 scandal after a string of suicides at its Chinese factories. In the aftermath, it asked employees to sign “no suicide” pledges and erected external nets to break the fall of any would-be jumpers.

Although Apple is not the only company to use Foxconn for manufacturing, the scandal threatened to engulf the Cupertino tech giant due its role as the most prominent Foxconn client. In a rare misstep, then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs made things worse when he defended Foxconn’s factories as being “pretty nice” and “not a sweatshop.” The comments made Jobs and Apple appear uncaring, as did his suggestion that, “We’re all over this.”

In the years since, Apple has continued to work to improve conditions in its supply chain. Nonetheless, the Foxconn incident was a reminder to many people about where exactly their beautiful shiny new devices come from.

Massive Yahoo data breach

From eBay to Anthem and Sony to Equifax, there have been a number of large-scale data breaches in the age of the internet. However, the one which looms the largest remains the 2013 Yahoo data breach of 3 billion (!) user accounts. The perpetrators of the massive hack haven’t ever been caught, although Russian spies were indicted for a later 2014 breach.

The fallout of the 2013 hack cost ex-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer her cash bonus and slashed the company’s value by hundreds of millions of dollars. But for most users the biggest takeaway was just how unsafe our data is in the era of ultra-connectivity.

Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal

Bryan Bedder/Getty Images

Hacking user accounts is one thing, but helping to hack democracy itself? That was the accusation leveled at Facebook following the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal. While it’s no secret that Facebook tracks user data, the Cambridge Analytica scandal involved the alleged illegal data mining of as many as 87 million users on Facebook for political ends.

The media reported links with President Donald Trump’s presidential bid and the U.K.’s Brexit vote, which further fed fears about the way that technology can help shape opinions — often without us being aware of exactly how this is happening.

NSA spying

The worry that our tech may be spying on us surfaces every year or so when an Amazon Alexa erroneously records a conversation and sends it to another user or photos show that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taped over his laptop webcam.

The biggest piece of evidence that we really are being watched by our tech took place in 2013, however, with revelations about the way that the United States National Security Agency (NSA) was carrying out global surveillance of foreign nationals and U.S. citizens. Edward Snowden was the ex-NSA contractor responsible for the leaks, which were published in leading media outlets around the world.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Facebook was always too busy selling ads to care about your personal data
• Localblox data breach is the latest nightmare for Facebook, LinkedIn
• Facebook rolls out stricter rules regarding email-targeted advertisements
• After data scandal, Zuckerberg promises to ‘do better for you’ in newspaper ads
• Another Facebook privacy scandal — 3 million users’ data exposed by quiz

Can this explosion-proof AR headset change how industries do business?

Augmented reality (AR) hasn’t truly permeated the mainstream consciousness yet, but the technology is swiftly being adopted by global industries. It’ll soon be unsurprising to find a pair of AR glasses strapped to a helmet sitting on the heads of service workers, and RealWear, a company at the forefront on developing these headsets, thinks it’s on the edge of something big.

RealWear has worked to ensure its headsets are both well-designed and easy to use. Think Google Glass, but bulkier and attached to a hardhat or cap. It’s immensely useful technology that can help workers access digital data without using their hands, stream video back to another team member, or receive guidance during training periods.

Christian de Looper / Digital Trends

The latest version of its AR headset is called the RealWear HMT-1Z1, recently unveiled at Augmented World Expo (AWE) in California. It’s billed as the first “intrinsically safe” headset — which in layman’s terms means it’s explosion-proof. 

Explosion-proof and designed for tight spaces

Perhaps the most important aspect of the RealWear HMT-1Z1 is its design. After all, the headset needs to be lightweight and comfortable to be adopted by industrial workers, and it must quickly get out of the way when the wearer doesn’t need it. The HMT-1Z1 is designed for tight spaces — it fits on standard hard hats, and while it does add a bit of extra weight and width to a helmet, it doesn’t extend anywhere close to the wearer’s shoulders — which means it should fit anywhere a human can fit.

There’s an arm on the side of the helmet that extends in front of the wearer’s eye, and it can be moved out of the way when it’s not in use. It’s here where a display is stored that workers will look at when they need visual information to help with the task at hand. RealWear said you can still use parts of the headset when you’re not looking directly at the display, which is why the camera is not directly attached to the arm (it sits higher up).

The whole thing reminds us a lot of Toshiba’s recently announced AR headset, which the company told us is as important as the laptop it invented back in 1985.

Christian de Looper / Digital Trends

Safety is a big deal in the industrial world. The headset is completely free from any sparks or micro-sparks that could result in disaster for certain hazardous environments, such as places with flammable gases, for example. Companies can begin to do away with those bulky, ruggedized tablets they’ve been carrying around factories and move to the HMT-1Z1.

Under the hood, the headset boasts a Snapdragon 625 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and a 3,250mAh battery rated for up to a hefty 12 hours of use, though that will depend on exactly what you’re doing with the headset.

Voice activation

What’s most impressive about the RealWear HMT-1Z1 is how you control it. There’s no touch-sensitive gestures you need to learn — it’s all managed with voice, and better yet, there’s no need for a hotword like “Hey Google.” The headset listens for certain commands. For example, from the home screen just say “show my files” to see files downloaded to the device, and you can go back to the home screen by saying “navigate home.” When you’re looking at documents — like schematics — you can say “zoom in” or “zoom out” to change focus. It worked almost flawlessly, even in a noisy environment like the AWE show floor.

That’s an important factor to consider. If you’re a worker repairing a factory component, you don’t want to have to mess around with physical controls, and you need to easily navigate through the software, which is based on Android. From each screen, there are a few voice commands you can give, and options are often numbered too, so instead of having to remember the names of things, you can simply select them based on their number.

The future of AR

AR has a place with businesses, and as RealWear explains, this interest will only grow as younger employees who grew up in the information age continue to join the work force. Some aspects of RealWear’s tech, we think, could very much be applied to consumer augmented reality in the future. It’s exciting to see the technology grow, and we can’t wait for AR glasses to trickle down further for consumers.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Head-up displays for smart helmets may have just gotten more affordable
• Companies in China are collecting data from their employees’ brains
• Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon chip will take VR, AR to the next level
• Lenovo Mirage Solo with Daydream review
• You AR what you eat — augmented reality menus are coming to Snapchat

Can this explosion-proof AR headset change how industries do business?

Augmented reality (AR) hasn’t truly permeated the mainstream consciousness yet, but the technology is swiftly being adopted by global industries. It’ll soon be unsurprising to find a pair of AR glasses strapped to a helmet sitting on the heads of service workers, and RealWear, a company at the forefront on developing these headsets, thinks it’s on the edge of something big.

RealWear has worked to ensure its headsets are both well-designed and easy to use. Think Google Glass, but bulkier and attached to a hardhat or cap. It’s immensely useful technology that can help workers access digital data without using their hands, stream video back to another team member, or receive guidance during training periods.

Christian de Looper / Digital Trends

The latest version of its AR headset is called the RealWear HMT-1Z1, recently unveiled at Augmented World Expo (AWE) in California. It’s billed as the first “intrinsically safe” headset — which in layman’s terms means it’s explosion-proof. 

Explosion-proof and designed for tight spaces

Perhaps the most important aspect of the RealWear HMT-1Z1 is its design. After all, the headset needs to be lightweight and comfortable to be adopted by industrial workers, and it must quickly get out of the way when the wearer doesn’t need it. The HMT-1Z1 is designed for tight spaces — it fits on standard hard hats, and while it does add a bit of extra weight and width to a helmet, it doesn’t extend anywhere close to the wearer’s shoulders — which means it should fit anywhere a human can fit.

There’s an arm on the side of the helmet that extends in front of the wearer’s eye, and it can be moved out of the way when it’s not in use. It’s here where a display is stored that workers will look at when they need visual information to help with the task at hand. RealWear said you can still use parts of the headset when you’re not looking directly at the display, which is why the camera is not directly attached to the arm (it sits higher up).

The whole thing reminds us a lot of Toshiba’s recently announced AR headset, which the company told us is as important as the laptop it invented back in 1985.

Christian de Looper / Digital Trends

Safety is a big deal in the industrial world. The headset is completely free from any sparks or micro-sparks that could result in disaster for certain hazardous environments, such as places with flammable gases, for example. Companies can begin to do away with those bulky, ruggedized tablets they’ve been carrying around factories and move to the HMT-1Z1.

Under the hood, the headset boasts a Snapdragon 625 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and a 3,250mAh battery rated for up to a hefty 12 hours of use, though that will depend on exactly what you’re doing with the headset.

Voice activation

What’s most impressive about the RealWear HMT-1Z1 is how you control it. There’s no touch-sensitive gestures you need to learn — it’s all managed with voice, and better yet, there’s no need for a hotword like “Hey Google.” The headset listens for certain commands. For example, from the home screen just say “show my files” to see files downloaded to the device, and you can go back to the home screen by saying “navigate home.” When you’re looking at documents — like schematics — you can say “zoom in” or “zoom out” to change focus. It worked almost flawlessly, even in a noisy environment like the AWE show floor.

That’s an important factor to consider. If you’re a worker repairing a factory component, you don’t want to have to mess around with physical controls, and you need to easily navigate through the software, which is based on Android. From each screen, there are a few voice commands you can give, and options are often numbered too, so instead of having to remember the names of things, you can simply select them based on their number.

The future of AR

AR has a place with businesses, and as RealWear explains, this interest will only grow as younger employees who grew up in the information age continue to join the work force. Some aspects of RealWear’s tech, we think, could very much be applied to consumer augmented reality in the future. It’s exciting to see the technology grow, and we can’t wait for AR glasses to trickle down further for consumers.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Head-up displays for smart helmets may have just gotten more affordable
• Companies in China are collecting data from their employees’ brains
• Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon chip will take VR, AR to the next level
• Lenovo Mirage Solo with Daydream review
• You AR what you eat — augmented reality menus are coming to Snapchat

Apple has finally allowed a Telegram update to go through, CEO says

It’s been a couple months since Russia banned popular encrypted communication app Telegram across the country. And while you may think that such a ban would only affect Telegram users in the Kremlin-run nation, that hasn’t been the case. Rather, ever since the Russia-wide ban, Apple has allegedly blocked Telegram from making updates to its services. That is, until now. Apparently, Apple has finally given in and allowed the app to push through updates that make it compliant with the new  GDPR privacy laws.

On Friday, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov tweeted  to both Apple and its CEO Tim Cook, thanking both Twitter handles “for letting us deliver the latest version of @telegram to millions of users, despite the recent setbacks.”

Thank you @Apple and @tim_cook for letting us deliver the latest version of @telegram to millions of users, despite the recent setbacks.

— Pavel Durov (@durov) June 1, 2018

These setbacks first began in mid-April with the Russian ban on the app. The government noted that the app continually refused to give the Kremlin access to encryption keys that would grant the nation’s Federal Security Service (FSB) access to Telegram’s user data. Once this ban was implemented, it meant that American tech companies (including Apple) had to pull the app from their app stores. In fact, Russia apparently sent a letter to Apple just a few days ago ordering that the company remove Telegram from its offerings within the month, or face legal consequences.

But apparently, Apple has been giving Telegram grief since before the ban was put into place.

“Apple has been preventing Telegram from updating its iOS apps globally ever since the Russian authorities ordered Apple to remove Telegram from the App Store,” Durov noted in a public Telegram message yesterday. “While Russia makes up only 7 percent of Telegram’s user base, Apple is restricting updates for all Telegram users around the world since mid-April.”

It seems that this message had its desired effect, as Apple has now apparently allowed the first iOS Telegram update in months.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Telegram’s woes are over. The company is still embroiled in a legal battle with the Russian authorities, and there’s no telling when Russian users will be able to access the app again. We’ll be sure to keep you updated as this story develops.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Telegram app is a favorite of Kremlin officials, but Russia wants to block it
• Russia bans Popular messenger app Telegram, Kremlin must use new service
• Instagram to unfollow Apple Watch as app support comes to an end
• France is making its own WhatsApp clone in response to surveillance fears
• iOS 12 will make your iPhone faster and less annoying. Here’s what’s coming

Meet the Australian ‘techno-artist’ growing a web-connected ear on his arm

There’s a body in Perth, Australia, one of the most remote cities on Earth, transmitting signals about how other bodies will behave in the future. It’s an unassuming body, bald-headed and fit, complete with organs and limbs in all their preordained places. Plus one.

On the fleshy side of the left forearm there’s an impression of an ear, emerging from the skin as if punching through from the netherworld. It’s bulbous, life-sized, firm to the touch. Pockets of biomaterial and porous Polyethylene form divots and contours around its edges. Living cells, blood vessels, and tissue have moved in, permeated the pores of the surgical implant, and made the extra ear an inarguable part of this man’s body. Today it’s a replica, a relief, rather than a functioning organ. But if all goes as planned, by year’s end it will be connected to the internet, equipped with electronic circuits and a microphone so anyone, anywhere can tune in to the sounds around it.

Ear on Arm is an ongoing endeavor by the artist known as Stelarc, whose eccentric performances put his mortal form in the indifferent grip of technology. Stelarc sees the modern body as a “chimera of meat, metal, and code,” and uses it as the map, the vessel, and the uncharted territory to be explored. Each ensuing experiment pushes the boundaries of his physicality and gives us a glimpse at the ways we’ll engage with the hyperconnected world.

“I’ve always been interested in comparative anatomies,” Stelarc told Digital Trends at the BodyHacking Conference in Austin earlier this year. “Not only the human body but also insects and other animals. All living things interact very differently with the world. We all have different capabilities. We all manipulate and operate in more or less subtle ways. That always fascinated me, and so the body became a convenient location of experimentation.”

“The body is a convenient location of experimentation.”

Over more than forty years, Stelarc’s art has put his body into precarious positions — both physically and conceptually — with visceral performances that probe the many tensions between man and machine.

In 1985, he was tethered to a construction crane by steel wires and body hooks, 100 feet above Copenhagen, Denmark. The crowd below seemed silent. Hanging in suspension, Stelarc heard only the whistle of the wind and the creaking of his stretched skin.

Thirty years later, in a performance called Propel, Stelarc was strapped onto an industrial robot arm in a factory in a suburb of Perth, then flipped and twirled like a human pinwheel for over half-an-hour. An anxious engineer stood near a control box, poised to smash the “kill switch” lest a glitch caused the robot to revert to its nesting position with artist still in tow.

Polixeni Papapetrou

During a marathon performance that same year, the artist donned a video headset, noise-canceling headphones, and a partial exoskeleton in an act of abandoning his “eyes,” “ears,” and “arm” to the Other. The artist toured London through a video feed sent to his headset, as impromptu videographers carried a camera are town. Audio from New York City filled his headphones with sounds of traffic, chatter, and shuffling feet. His right arm contorted involuntarily, controlled over the internet by digital puppeteers. The performance, Re-wired/Re-mixed, spanned five consecutive days, six hours a day. Stelarc took one break to urinate.

The artist is often hooked up to contact mics that amplify the internal audio of his body. But noisy as his art may be, he isn’t necessarily trying to say anything through his performances. Instead he says he’s making “gestures” towards strange possibilities of the human body, dragging technology down an unpaved path to augmented, alternative anatomies.

Which highlights the two most common threads that run through his work: exploitations of the body and apparent apathy towards technology. To the average viewer, his performances are fraught with uncertainty. They’re the sort of thing you’d spend weeks preparing for. And yet Stelarc says he rarely prepares. His performative face is almost always that of a man at a bus stop with no particular place to go — unconcerned even if his ride will arrive. The rare wince you might catch is more likely the result of an electrode zapping his body into motion than some existential distress. When sic-fi author William Gibson met Stelarc, he said the artist “struck me as one of the calmest people I’d ever met.”

“I approach these performances with a posture of indifference,” Stelarc said. “Indifference as in being open to possibilities of minimizing expectations and allowing the performance to unfold in its own time, with its own rhythm.”

Apathy is arguably the most authentic mindset in which to survey the meeting of man and machine. Today’s consumers are groomed to purchase the latest device, but little within our DNA prepares us to take on each next technological leap and we aren’t especially discrete about how we adopt tech into our lives. Negligent indifference could be the tag line of our digital age.

Ad agencies roll out algorithmic targeting, apparently unconcerned about its potential impact on the psyche. Consumers adopt new products without caution or conceit, like infants given a grenades to play with. Apple has been accused of failing to protect the Chinese workers who manufacture their products, and yet consumers continue to buy their products. Plenty of Facebook users were well aware of the company’s complicity and shoddy privacy policies, even before the wake of the Cambridge Analytical scandal, and yet most have stayed logged in.

Stelarc’s performances are caricatures of our relationship with technology.

Stelarc’s performances are like caricatures of our relationship with technology, carnival mirrors that reflect distorted forms of the human-machine intimacy.

In Re-wired/Re-mixed, the 2015 performance that saw Stelarc decked out like a Gibsonian cyborg, the artist offered himself to strangers, allowing them to command his senses. Throughout the 1990’s Stelarc engaged in similar internet acts, such as 1995’s Ping Body, during which his muscles were stimulated in accordance with ping response times from 40 global locations, effectively turning his body into a “barometer of internet activity.”

In 2000, Stelarc wore an upper-body exoskeleton controlled by a genetic algorithm in a performance called Movatar. Through random mutations, the genetic code forced the artist and the metal apparatus into an involuntary choreography. A panel of control pedals on the floor gave Stelarc some degree of moderation over his movements, enabling him to modulate but not fully neutralize the system when things got too hectic. In a more recent performance, 2017’s StickMan, the artist wore a full-body, algorithmically controlled exoskeleton, fitted with microphones that amplified the sound of the moving limbs.

Today, algorithms pull the strings on our everyday lives, curating what we buy on Amazon, watch on Youtube, and read on Facebook. The social media giant’s infamous social experiment highlighted the interplay between our news feed and our emotions.

Evan Selinger, a philosopher at the Rochester Institute of Technology and co-author of the book Re-Engineering Humanity,  thinks these technologies have the power to corrupt our very identities.

“Technology affects our humanity because it impacts of senses…our thoughts…and how we think,” he said. “It impacts our decisions, including our judgement, attention, and desires. It impacts our ability to be citizens, what were informed about and how we stay informed. It impacts our relationships… It even impacts our fundamental understanding of what it means to be human, who we are, and what we should strive to become.”

Where many people see our dystopian future play out as a robotic revolt, Selinger said his concern “is that we are going to be programmed to want to be placed in environments that are so diminishing of our agency and deliberation that we outsource our emotions and capacities for connection.”

In an inversion of a gamer playing a video game character, Stelarc has turned himself into a real-life avatar played by an algorithm. Through compounded feedback loops, classical conceptions of the self are broken down, raising questions about agency and control that are ever more poignant in today’s hyperconnected society.

“With all of these performances [I was] blurring the distinction between the biological, technical, and virtual,” Stelarc said. “And increasingly now we’re expected to perform in these mixed realities. So how do we seamlessly slide between these operational modes? I mean, we’re all doing it in some way or another.”

Stelarc ReWired ReMixed RWRM @ STRP 2017

In Stelarc’s view, we’re building up a certain “thickness,” a melding between the physical and virtual worlds. Our embrace of technology is “not merely happening at a thin screen level,” he said. “The experience is deeper and much more profound.

“Our faces have become flattened onto screens, and so in one sense our experience is at screen level. But because these experiences are becoming more high-fidelity, immediate, and haptic, this flat-screen interface becomes a much more optically ‘thick’ and haptically ‘thick’ experience. We’re blending our biological bodies with technological and virtual systems. It’s not that the screen is interfacing this body and that body. We’re kind of blending into one thickened system of experience.”

Stelarc’s performances embrace a fairly unsafe relationship with technology that in many ways mirrors our own dependence on it. His posture may be indifferent but the artist is almost worryingly committed to his craft. The devotion runs deep enough to put his life at risk.

In one such event, called Stomach Sculpture, the artist swallowed a small robot — two inches long and half an inch wide — tethered to an external control box, which, when activated, caused the capsule to unfurl like a tulip, flash a light, and emit a beeping sound from within his stomach cavity. An endoscope followed closely behind, filming the gastric performance.

Anthony Figallo

“Obviously if it malfunctioned and it couldn’t close again, there would have been a problem extracting it,” Stelarc said. “I mean, a serious problem. In fact, [the performance] was done within five minutes of a major hospital,” just in case.

Stelarc has a tendency to preface technological progress in unexpected ways. The capsule used in Stomach Sculpture was coated in biocompatible materials like silver, gold, and stainless steel, but at the time, he had an idea to use copper, which would react with his stomach acid and potentially create a sort of crude battery, powering the robot and freeing it from its tether to the outside world. That proved unfeasible in 1993, but in 2017 engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed it wasn’t such a ridiculous idea.

And in an announcement earlier this year, surgeons said they’d successfully transplanted an ear that they’d “grown” through cartilage cultured in a soldier’s forearm.

“People are becoming portals of internet experience.”

The artist’s own ear is still a work in progress — his longest performance to date. When he first conceived of the idea in 1996, Stelarc wanted to clone an ear on the side of his head. When that proved too dangerous and technically challenging, he settled on a medical scaffold that would be implanted into his forearm. It’s took another decade to find doctors willing to perform the operation, but he finally linked up with some plastic surgeons who coordinated the surgery in Los Angeles.

The fact that Stelarc convinced certified surgeons to slice open his arm and slip in a prosthesis for no medical purpose, is a provocative performance in its own right. For Chris Hables Gray, author of the Cyborg Handbook and lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, it’s a significant act of dominion over one’s own body.

“Stelarc got doctors to overcome their own medical guidelines to do this surgery. They violated the Hippocratic Oath,” he said. There’s since been a big debate about this among doctors. “Some say this is a violation of the Oath and others say that fundamentally patients should have a right to control their own bodies, especially if they’re an artist exploring what it means to have control of your body with technology.”

Stelarc is now coordinating with members of the biohacking community to fit Ear on Arm with electrical components that would connect the organ to the internet, allowing anyone with web service to tune in to the artist’s surroundings.

“The ear is not for me,” he said. “I’ve got two good ears to hear with.”

Ear on Arm Stelarc wants to engineer a kind of “internet organ” to literally, physically integrate with the digital world. It’s more than just a remote listening device. It’s the artist’s most earnest attempt to explore the human body of tomorrow — an alternative anatomy that can jack in and even be hacked.

“People are becoming portals of internet experience,” Stelarc said. “In my Re-wired/Re-mixed performance I effectively outsourced my senses to people in other places. It was a gesture towards future bodies, where you would be able to incorporate vision, hearing, and haptic experiences of people in other places. Your body is not this locally operating, locally perceiving body, but rather a body that’s distributed and can form beyond the boundaries of its skin, beyond the local space that it inhabits.

“That’s what’s sort of significant about what’s happening today [with Ear on Arm]. On the one hand it’s hacking a body to locally insert some chip circuitry, but the implications of that are once we’ve got chip circuitry, it can wirelessly connect online. Then it’s performing globally, not only locally. Of course, the other implication is that the body can be literally hacked, all the technology in the body can be hacked. This will generate some other interesting possibilities of interaction.”

Steven Aaron Hughes

If that sounds like Stelarc is inviting people to hack his artificial organ, that’s because he is. Or, at least, he’s not taking steps to prevent it. The artist has been letting people remotely control his limbs for years. Why stop now?

“I don’t really think in either dystopian or utopian terms into it in the sense of what technology is or does,” Stelarc said. “Having said that, yes, there are there are ethical concerns. There are physical dangers. There are going to be increasingly complex accidental situations, or situations that generate accidents. And on the one hand, you have a kind of a gung-ho cowboy approach to new technologies. Every new gadget seemingly enables the human body. You become part of this sort of capitalist consumer society of new technologies.

“I can only evaluate through my own actions,” he added. “And I typically see the possibilities rather than the negative connotations.”

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Awesome Tech You Can’t Buy Yet: AR globes, laser cutters, autonomous luggage

At any given moment, there are approximately a zillion different crowdfunding campaigns happening on the web. Take a stroll through Kickstarter or Indiegogo and you’ll find no shortage of weird, useless, and downright stupid projects out there — alongside some real gems. We’ve cut through the fidget spinners and janky iPhone cases to round up the most unusual, ambitious, and exciting new crowdfunding projects out there this week. That said, keep in mind that any crowdfunding project — even the best intentioned — can fail, so do your homework before cutting a check for the gadget of your dreams.

June 3rd

Earth — Interactive AR globe

Spherical scale models of our planet have existed for centuries. Ever since we discovered the Earth is a sphere (which it most definitely is) back in the 3rd century B.C., humans have been building globes and using them to make sense of this pale blue dot we call home. But despite the fact that globes have existed for so long, they haven’t received a significant design update for quite a long time. This Kickstarter project aims to change that.

Earth, as it’s called, is essentially a high-detail physical globe with augmented reality superpowers. Fire up the accompanying smartphone app and you can access information about the planet — in real time — as you hold it in your hands.

“Beyond the physical globe of EARTH, the AstroReality App contains a wealth of scientific knowledge selected to show our planet as a dynamic and interconnected system,” the creators explain on Kickstarter. “This knowledge was developed by researchers from around the world and made public for us to share with you. AstroReality’s developers are working with our science advisor, J.R. Skok, PhD, a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute, to put the stories of EARTH into your hands.”

RaceYa — STEM-teaching RC cars

Robots that teach kids STEM skills are a dime a dozen these days. Most are just a slightly different take on the same exact idea, but RaceYa is special. Of all the coding/STEM skillbuilding toys we’ve ever seen, it’s arguably one of the best. Why? Well, in addition to being a fully functional RC car, RaceYa is also designed to teach kids STEM principles in a very hands-on and interactive way — a function that doesn’t require them to gaze unblinkingly into a screen for hours on end.

“Tons of studies have shown kids get excited about STEM when they get to do science, not just look at science,” creator Abigail Edgecliffe-Johnson explains on her Kickstarter campaign page. “RaceYa is all about hands-on learning through play. Our activities were designed with Next-Gen Science Standards in mind and have been tested by incredible teachers at science camps, schools and hack days.”

Zen Float — inflatable float tank

Sensory deprivation float tanks are awesome. If you’ve never used one before, or haven’t heard some new-age hippie talking about them, here’s a quick rundown. Essentially, the idea is that you lie down in reservoir of very salty water inside a small pod that’s sealed shut so that no light or sound can enter. As you float there in complete darkness, suspended in the salty water, you’re essentially weightless — which means that your muscles don’t need to stabilize you, and suddenly your body has all these extra resources it can direct back to your brain. With all that extra energy, and no external stimuli to analyze and process from your eyes and ears, your brain gets a chance to relax.

After about 40 minutes into a float, your brain stops producing its normal Alpha waves, and begins to pump out Theta waves — lower-frequency waves that generally only occur during deep meditation or just before you fall asleep. This state is where your mind’s most deep-seated programs are — the state where people often experience vivid visualizations, great inspiration, and profound creativity.

The only problem? Float tanks are notoriously expensive, and generally take a ton of effort to set up and maintain. Zen Float aims to change that. It’s a fully-capable float tank that also happens to be inflatable, making it a breeze to set up.

“Since this is for the home, we wanted to make sure it looks great in any room.” the creators explain on Kickstarter. “Our new inflatable design is a breeze to set up and looks fantastic right out of the box. We’ve used the same tried and true inflatable technology that can be found in popular stand up paddle boards. When inflated, the tent is completely rigid like solid walls. The barrier of air in the walls also acts as a natural insulator, making the tent extremely efficient.”

Beambox — desktop laser cutter

Laser cutters/engravers are arguably one of the most versatile tools you can have in your workshop. With the right laser diode, they can do everything from etching patterns into leather to cutting super-precise shapes in wood. They can handle a massive range of materials and can be used in a wide variety of different ways. Unfortunately, there aren’t many on the market that are designed for the casual tinkerers and novice DIY types among us. If you want to fiddle with laser cutters, you typically need to know your way around all kinds of complex software and calibration procedures.

Not so with the Beambox. This beast has been designed from the ground up to be ridiculously simple to use. Simply connect your PC, Mac or tablet via Wi-Fi, choose the design you’d like to cut/etch, and hit go. The software makes it nearly foolproof and the machine has presets for just about every material under the sun. Wood, leather, fabric, and even mirrors or anodized aluminum are no problem for Beambox. The integrated software allows for pictures to be engraved directly onto your material, no matter what picture or material you choose.

ForwardX Ovis — auto-follow suitcase

Here’s DT’s Brandon Widder with the scoop: “CES 2018 brought with it a deluge of smart appliances, larger-than-life screens, and a bevy of notable tech that will begin rolling out throughout the course of the year. (Suit)case in point? The recently unveiled ForwardX CX-1, an autonomous piece of luggage that’s designed to follow you around as you make your way from point A to B, and everywhere in between.  Now, four months after its Las Vegas debut, this autonomous suitcase has launched on Indiegogo, with early bird pricing beginning at $399.

Ovis has been branded as the ‘world’s first self-driving carry-on,’ and features an array of advanced tech, including a 170-degree wide-angle lens and built-in facial recognition software, which allow the device to follow you at up to 7 miles per hour throughout the terminal. Other nifty features — namely those tailored toward obstacle avoidance — work in tandem with the suitcase’s tracking algorithms, while a smart wristband works to keep would-be thieves at bay. If the suitcase happens to wander out of range, the bracelet will let you know. When production is complete, the suitcase will allegedly weigh in at just under 10 pounds, and be made of polypropylene and carbon fiber. It’ll also be waterproof and carry an IP56 rating.”

Awesome Tech You Can’t Buy Yet: AR globes, laser cutters, autonomous luggage

At any given moment, there are approximately a zillion different crowdfunding campaigns happening on the web. Take a stroll through Kickstarter or Indiegogo and you’ll find no shortage of weird, useless, and downright stupid projects out there — alongside some real gems. We’ve cut through the fidget spinners and janky iPhone cases to round up the most unusual, ambitious, and exciting new crowdfunding projects out there this week. That said, keep in mind that any crowdfunding project — even the best intentioned — can fail, so do your homework before cutting a check for the gadget of your dreams.

June 3rd

Earth — Interactive AR globe

Spherical scale models of our planet have existed for centuries. Ever since we discovered the Earth is a sphere (which it most definitely is) back in the 3rd century B.C., humans have been building globes and using them to make sense of this pale blue dot we call home. But despite the fact that globes have existed for so long, they haven’t received a significant design update for quite a long time. This Kickstarter project aims to change that.

Earth, as it’s called, is essentially a high-detail physical globe with augmented reality superpowers. Fire up the accompanying smartphone app and you can access information about the planet — in real time — as you hold it in your hands.

“Beyond the physical globe of EARTH, the AstroReality App contains a wealth of scientific knowledge selected to show our planet as a dynamic and interconnected system,” the creators explain on Kickstarter. “This knowledge was developed by researchers from around the world and made public for us to share with you. AstroReality’s developers are working with our science advisor, J.R. Skok, PhD, a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute, to put the stories of EARTH into your hands.”

RaceYa — STEM-teaching RC cars

Robots that teach kids STEM skills are a dime a dozen these days. Most are just a slightly different take on the same exact idea, but RaceYa is special. Of all the coding/STEM skillbuilding toys we’ve ever seen, it’s arguably one of the best. Why? Well, in addition to being a fully functional RC car, RaceYa is also designed to teach kids STEM principles in a very hands-on and interactive way — a function that doesn’t require them to gaze unblinkingly into a screen for hours on end.

“Tons of studies have shown kids get excited about STEM when they get to do science, not just look at science,” creator Abigail Edgecliffe-Johnson explains on her Kickstarter campaign page. “RaceYa is all about hands-on learning through play. Our activities were designed with Next-Gen Science Standards in mind and have been tested by incredible teachers at science camps, schools and hack days.”

Zen Float — inflatable float tank

Sensory deprivation float tanks are awesome. If you’ve never used one before, or haven’t heard some new-age hippie talking about them, here’s a quick rundown. Essentially, the idea is that you lie down in reservoir of very salty water inside a small pod that’s sealed shut so that no light or sound can enter. As you float there in complete darkness, suspended in the salty water, you’re essentially weightless — which means that your muscles don’t need to stabilize you, and suddenly your body has all these extra resources it can direct back to your brain. With all that extra energy, and no external stimuli to analyze and process from your eyes and ears, your brain gets a chance to relax.

After about 40 minutes into a float, your brain stops producing its normal Alpha waves, and begins to pump out Theta waves — lower-frequency waves that generally only occur during deep meditation or just before you fall asleep. This state is where your mind’s most deep-seated programs are — the state where people often experience vivid visualizations, great inspiration, and profound creativity.

The only problem? Float tanks are notoriously expensive, and generally take a ton of effort to set up and maintain. Zen Float aims to change that. It’s a fully-capable float tank that also happens to be inflatable, making it a breeze to set up.

“Since this is for the home, we wanted to make sure it looks great in any room.” the creators explain on Kickstarter. “Our new inflatable design is a breeze to set up and looks fantastic right out of the box. We’ve used the same tried and true inflatable technology that can be found in popular stand up paddle boards. When inflated, the tent is completely rigid like solid walls. The barrier of air in the walls also acts as a natural insulator, making the tent extremely efficient.”

Beambox — desktop laser cutter

Laser cutters/engravers are arguably one of the most versatile tools you can have in your workshop. With the right laser diode, they can do everything from etching patterns into leather to cutting super-precise shapes in wood. They can handle a massive range of materials and can be used in a wide variety of different ways. Unfortunately, there aren’t many on the market that are designed for the casual tinkerers and novice DIY types among us. If you want to fiddle with laser cutters, you typically need to know your way around all kinds of complex software and calibration procedures.

Not so with the Beambox. This beast has been designed from the ground up to be ridiculously simple to use. Simply connect your PC, Mac or tablet via Wi-Fi, choose the design you’d like to cut/etch, and hit go. The software makes it nearly foolproof and the machine has presets for just about every material under the sun. Wood, leather, fabric, and even mirrors or anodized aluminum are no problem for Beambox. The integrated software allows for pictures to be engraved directly onto your material, no matter what picture or material you choose.

ForwardX Ovis — auto-follow suitcase

Here’s DT’s Brandon Widder with the scoop: “CES 2018 brought with it a deluge of smart appliances, larger-than-life screens, and a bevy of notable tech that will begin rolling out throughout the course of the year. (Suit)case in point? The recently unveiled ForwardX CX-1, an autonomous piece of luggage that’s designed to follow you around as you make your way from point A to B, and everywhere in between.  Now, four months after its Las Vegas debut, this autonomous suitcase has launched on Indiegogo, with early bird pricing beginning at $399.

Ovis has been branded as the ‘world’s first self-driving carry-on,’ and features an array of advanced tech, including a 170-degree wide-angle lens and built-in facial recognition software, which allow the device to follow you at up to 7 miles per hour throughout the terminal. Other nifty features — namely those tailored toward obstacle avoidance — work in tandem with the suitcase’s tracking algorithms, while a smart wristband works to keep would-be thieves at bay. If the suitcase happens to wander out of range, the bracelet will let you know. When production is complete, the suitcase will allegedly weigh in at just under 10 pounds, and be made of polypropylene and carbon fiber. It’ll also be waterproof and carry an IP56 rating.”

Automate your life with Apple Workflow, the most powerful app you’re not using

Few things in life are as convenient as automation — IFTTT, anyone? — which allows us to blaze through life’s more monotonous tasks with the utmost ease. Apple knows this, which is why the Cupertino-based company has developed Workflow, a powerful automation tool that’s designed to expedite your everyday tasks.

The concept is clever: The app has a bunch of triggers and actions you can set from within the app, which you can then execute from top to bottom with the mere press of a button. Moreover, because the app was made by Apple, it can access a host of system-related utilities that third-party apps wouldn’t be able to access. Using Workflow, you can quickly grab the top stories from Apple News, for instance, or create a collage using some of your most recent photos.

Apple’s suggested uses for the app, however, are only the tip of the iceberg. To make the most of the app, you should use it to automate the tasks you perform on a daily basis. If you save a little bit of time here or there on things you do all the time, it’s going to have a far greater impact than if you were to set it up to automate something you do once a month. The app is really only limited to your own imagination.

To begin automating a task, download the Workflow app from the App Store. Then, launch the app and tap the My Workflows tab — or the Gallery tab, if you want to use a pre-made action — in the upper-right corner. Once there, select Create Workflow and choose one of the four workflows outlined below.

Type of workflow
Accessible from:

Normal
The Workflow app (iOS)

Today Widget
The Today View (iOS)

Apple Watch
Your Apple Watch (WatchOS)

Action Extension
The Share Menu (iOS)

Once you’ve chosen a workflow, swipe right, which will bring up the Actions menu. From here, you can search for your desired action or select an action from the list of available suggestions. Once you’ve settled on an action, drag it to the right to add it to your current workflow. If you want to include an additional action, one that will take place after the first, swipe right and repeat the process.

To edit your workflow, tap the gear icon in the upper-right corner. The resulting menu will contain a slew of different settings, allowing you change the workflow type and name it, among other things. When satisfied, tap Done in the upper-right corner to leave your workflow within the app, or select Add to Home Screen to launch the workflow within Safari. From there, you’ll want to tap Share and Add to Home Screen.

That’s it! Again, the app is only limited by your imagination, so experiment with different workflows. Makng your life easier has never been, well, easier.

David Cogen — a regular contributor here at Digital Trends — runs TheUnlockr, a popular tech blog that focuses on tech news, tips and tricks, and the latest tech. You can also find him on Twitter discussing the latest tech trends.

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