Apple Stops Signing iOS 11.4 Following Launch of iOS 11.4.1

Following the release of iOS 11.4.1 on Monday, July 9, Apple has stopped signing iOS 11.4, the previous version of iOS that was available to consumers.

iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch owners who have upgraded to iOS 11.4.1 will no longer be able to downgrade to earlier versions of iOS.

Apple routinely stops signing older versions of software updates after new releases come out in order to encourage customers to keep their operating systems up to date.

iOS 11.4.1 is now the only version of iOS 11 that can be installed on iOS devices by the general public, but developers and public beta testers can download iOS 12, the next-generation version of iOS that’s in beta testing ahead of a fall release.
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TicWatch-E Review: the best value in WearOS smartwatches

Let’s be honest, Android Wear wasn’t exactly lighting the world on fire. Like iPads in the tablet world, the Apple Watch rules the smartwatch world. But, with WearOS, Google is making a strong push to try to save the struggling brand.

Unfortunately, newer features and better performance requires better hardware, and many of the original Android Wear watches are being left behind – even the venerable Moto 360.

And replacing them is pricy! Most WearOS-compatible watches are $200 or more, which is no joke considering you’ve likely already dropped $500+ on a phone it connects. MobVoi, though looks to make that hit a little more bearable with the Ticwatch E, a water-resistant WearOS smartwatch with modern features but a manageable pricetag.

Ticwatch E Features

The E – which stands for Express – comes with a number of modern smartwatch features, including WearOS (of course), a lightweight polycarbonate design, heart-rate monitor, GPS, Google Assistant, and a 48-hour battery.

It also features an IP67 rating – which means it’s waterproof up to 1m. MobVoi warns that it’s not “suitable for shower or swimming,” but that rating wouldn’t be given if it wasn’t certified. I even put it to the test by taking it to the lake, and it performed admirably.

Hardware-wise, the Ticwatch E is about on par with the rest of the smartwatch world. It’s powered by a MediaTek MT2601 1.2GHZ processor and 512MB RAM, with 4GB onboard storage.

It has a 1.4″, 400x400p OLED display, with 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy 4.1 for connectivity. There’s only so much oomph you can cram into a 45mm frame, and MobVoi has done about as well as can be expected here.

Ticwatch E Daily Use

From the first time I powered it on, the Ticwatch E performed better than my trusty second generation Moto 360. It’s snappier, smoother, and its battery lasts longer. The watch faces it comes pre-loaded with are…interesting, to say the least. Some of them are wildly garish, with very few of them anything resembling what you could call “understated.”

Luckily, the WearOS Play Store is packed tight with hundreds of apps to change your watch face, many of them with their own built-in marketplace. It was easy to find the one I wanted.

Unlike the Moto 360, which comes with a metal band and a charging dock in the box, the Ticwatch E includes a silicon band and a magnetic charging cable. And while both of those pieces are perfectly serviceable, it really reveals where MobVoi had to cut costs in order to provide the same specs as the Moto 360 for significantly less.

I personally bought a Myriann Charging Stand for my Ticwatch E, and it works great. It’s also easy to grab yourself a nicer band for the Ticwatch E, as it accepts standard 20mm bands. The included silicon band even includes quick-change pins, which are fantastically convenient.

In practice, that supposed 48-hour battery life is closer to about a day of heavy use. You can, perhaps squeeze two days by turning off ambient display and most notifications. The OLED screen definitely helps though, as it allows the screen to turn off pixels rather than dim them for the ambient display. It’ll always get you through a day of use, though – which should be comforting to most.

Value

When compared to most WearOs smartwatches (which routinely hit $250 or more) the Ticwatch E is an utter bargain. It features the same or comparable specifications as many of the top smartwatches on the market, without sacrificing too much in the looks department.

At $159.99, the Ticwatch E is a good $40 cheaper than most, though some lower-end attempts by Fossil and ASUS also hit that price point. Among the WearOS watches that come in under $200, I’d say the Ticwatch E is the best value.

Buy the Ticwatch E from Amazon for just $159.99

New light-emitting implant zaps cancer tumors with incredible precision

Toshinori Fujie

Remember that light-emitting tracking device that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character memorably pulls out of his nose in the 1990 movie Total Recall? A similar device might one day be implanted in your body to help you battle cancer.

The implantable device, which is held in place by sticky bioadhesive “nanosheets,” was developed by researchers at Japan’s Waseda University. It consists of an LED chip that’s wirelessly powered by NFC, the same technology used for mobile payment solutions like Apple Pay.

When tested under the skin of mice with cancer, the device was shown to be capable of effectively shrinking their tumors. It does this by using something called photodynamic therapy (PDT), a treatment which is already being used to fight some cancers. Photodynamic therapy requires the patient to take a drug that makes certain cells vulnerable to light. An endoscope is then used to shine light on the tumor for up to 45 minutes. However, this approach can make it difficult to control dosage, which is where the Waseda University’s new technology comes into play.

“The device can be easily pasted to the target tumor owing to the ultra-flexibility of [our] nanosheets, without conventional suturing,” Professor Toshinori Fujie, who led the research, told Digital Trends. “The beauty of this study is we succeeded in decreasing the light intensity, about 1,000-fold smaller than the conventional therapy, [so as to] avoid thermal damage of normal tissue — yet realized effective treatment of cancer by local light irradiation, thanks to the bio-adhesive nanosheet.”

According to Fujie, the approach could one day be used to help treat cancerous tumors in parts of the body like the brain or pancreas. These organs make it risky to use conventional cancer-treatment approaches, such as surgery or radiotherapy, because of the possibility of damaging surrounding healthy tissues, nerves, and blood vessels.

“Definitely, we should push forward this technology from benchside to bedside to improve the quality of life of patients,” Fujie continued. “We hope to start the translational research as soon as we solve the legal regulation in medical device developments. To this end, our next research is to consolidate the protocol and clinical design to show the effectiveness in the appropriate lesions, which cannot be accessed by conventional PDT, such as hard-to-detect micro-tumors and deeply located lesions.”

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

Editors’ Recommendations

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• Scientists gave gerbils a futuristic ear implant that lets them hear light
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MacBook’s price sliced for an Amazon Prime Day steal at $990

cheap macbook deals

The new school year is now officially just around the corner, which is evidenced by the book bags that are replacing beach chairs on store shelves. If you’re looking to purchase a new notebook for your student, Amazon’s Prime Day is offering a 12-inch Apple MacBook for a mere $989. It’s a solid MacOS-based laptop that’s thin, light and highly dependable, weighing in at a mere two pounds for easy portability.

This 12-inch MacBook, released in early 2016, sports a 12-inch screen with a 2,304 x 1,440 resolution. It’s backed by an Intel Core m5-6Y54 dual-core processor with a base speed of 1.2GHz and a boost speed of 2.7GHz. The graphics are handled by the processor’s integrated HD Graphics 515 component.

Other ingredients tossed into this MacBook include 8GB of LPDDR3 system memory (1,600MHz), 512GB of storage, a built-in FaceTime camera, Wireless AC and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, and a battery promising “all-day battery life.”

The drawback to this MacBook is that it provides a single USB-C port. Not only is it used to charge the MacBook, but it also provides support for data and video outputs. To expand the MacBook’s physical connections, you’ll need a USB-C hub with added ports for peripherals and/or an external display.

Amazon sells this MacBook in silver and gold finishes.

Buy Now

We strive to help our readers find the best deals on quality products and services, and choose what we cover carefully and independently. If you find a better price for a product listed here, or want to suggest one of your own, email us at dealsteam@digitaltrends.com.Digital Trends may earn commission on products purchased through our links, which supports the work we do for our readers.

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• These are the best headphones you can snag on the cheap this Prime Day

MacBook’s price sliced for an Amazon Prime Day steal at $990

cheap macbook deals

The new school year is now officially just around the corner, which is evidenced by the book bags that are replacing beach chairs on store shelves. If you’re looking to purchase a new notebook for your student, Amazon’s Prime Day is offering a 12-inch Apple MacBook for a mere $989. It’s a solid MacOS-based laptop that’s thin, light and highly dependable, weighing in at a mere two pounds for easy portability.

This 12-inch MacBook, released in early 2016, sports a 12-inch screen with a 2,304 x 1,440 resolution. It’s backed by an Intel Core m5-6Y54 dual-core processor with a base speed of 1.2GHz and a boost speed of 2.7GHz. The graphics are handled by the processor’s integrated HD Graphics 515 component.

Other ingredients tossed into this MacBook include 8GB of LPDDR3 system memory (1,600MHz), 512GB of storage, a built-in FaceTime camera, Wireless AC and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, and a battery promising “all-day battery life.”

The drawback to this MacBook is that it provides a single USB-C port. Not only is it used to charge the MacBook, but it also provides support for data and video outputs. To expand the MacBook’s physical connections, you’ll need a USB-C hub with added ports for peripherals and/or an external display.

Amazon sells this MacBook in silver and gold finishes.

Buy Now

We strive to help our readers find the best deals on quality products and services, and choose what we cover carefully and independently. If you find a better price for a product listed here, or want to suggest one of your own, email us at dealsteam@digitaltrends.com.Digital Trends may earn commission on products purchased through our links, which supports the work we do for our readers.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Save hundreds with the best MacBook deals for July 2018
• The best waterproof iPhone 7 cases
• The best TV deals for Prime Day 2018 will have you watching shows in style
• Here are the best laptop deals for Amazon Prime Day 2018
• These are the best headphones you can snag on the cheap this Prime Day

Man vs. machine: An A.I. algorithm attempts to break a world speed record

Artificial intelligence algorithms may be able to beat grandmasters at chess, defeat champion players at Jeopardy!, and vanquish the world’s best Go players. One thing they can’t do: Beat the world’s zippiest cyclist for the speed record of the fastest human-powered vehicle at 83.13 mph. After all, the record includes the word “human” in its name.

That may be true, but it doesn’t mean that A.I. can’t play a major role in helping design the world’s most streamlined bike by honing the necessary measurements to cut air resistance to an absolute minimum. This is what a new machine learning algorithm created at the Computer Vision Laboratory of Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is currently being used for. According to its creators, the algorithm was trained on the aerodynamic qualities of different 3D shapes and, as a result, has an understanding about the laws of physics that would put many flesh-and-blood designers to shame.

“Instead of computing solutions of equations or simulating moving particles, our algorithms predict the aerodynamic performances from previous experience, the same way a human engineer would do,” researcher Pierre Baqué told Digital Trends. “By doing so, we reduce the time to estimate the performance of a new design from several hours to a few milliseconds, which lets us implement computer-based automatic shape optimization.”

The technology has been spun-out as its own company, called Neural Concept, of which Baqué is CEO. It is now being used as the starting point for a newly designed “aero speed bicycle,” being built at France’s Annecy University Institute of Technology. This bike is due to have its first trials in the near-future, and will then be used (by a human) to attempt the World Human-Powered Speed Challenge in Nevada this September.

While current speed record holder Sebastiaan Bowier’s rocket-like bike looked about as optimized as is possible, it will be fascinating to see what Neural Concept’s algorithm is cable to come up with. Especially since, as Baqué has noted, it is sometimes capable of coming up with solutions that are  5 to 20 percent more aerodynamic than conventional methods.

As for the future of Neural Concept? “Our startup is developing commercial applications of the technologies for generative design, based on deep learning,” Baqué said. “We are starting collaborations with industrials, while continuously developing our software.”

Editors’ Recommendations

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• ‘The Crew 2’ hands-on preview
• Meet the man fighting plastic pollution with a fleet of A.I.-powered camera drones

Microsoft is digging itself a hole by giving away free Surface Docks

Technology companies sometimes do things that leave me scratching my head. I wrote about one example in my Surface Book 2 editorial, where I outlined a few of the reasons why I regret purchasing the innovative but inherently flawed 2-in-1 device. Now, Microsoft has done it again, with its latest offer of a free Surface Dock with the purchase of a Surface Book 2.

You might be wondering what I have against the company offering a promotion like this. After all, offering a free value to spur product sales is Marketing 101. And the Surface Dock is certainly a value, currently priced at $200 at the Microsoft Store and offering the best combination of ports you’ll find for Microsoft’s Surface line of portable devices.

But here’s my concern: The 15-inch Surface Book 2 still has a problem with its shipping power supply, which only provides 95 watts of power to the system. That means it can’t keep the CPU and GPU running at full speed without tapping into the battery. The Surface Dock only makes matters worse by providing only 60 watts to the system, less than what’s required even when barely using the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060.

The Surface Dock makes the power problem worse by providing only 60 watts to the system.

I tested a 65 watt USB-C power adapter with my 15-inch Surface Book 2 a few weeks ago, by running Diablo 3 — not exactly an intensive gaming test. The machine burned through 30 percent of its battery life after less than an hour of playing. If I’d played long enough, it would have throttled the GPU to avoid depleting the battery entirely.

Now imagine using the GPU for editing video or running any of the myriad creative apps that use the discrete GPU’s power to speed things up. With only 60 watts, chances are you’d tap into the battery the second you accessed the GTX 1060. That means you might get only a few hours into a working session when the system decides it’s time to slow things down.

What this means in practice is that if you use the Surface Dock with your 15-inch Surface Book 2, then you’re either limited to using the integrated GPU — and wasting your significant investment in such a powerful notebook — or you’re going to kill your battery. And I mean that literally — not only is it a serious inconvenience to have a battery that’s constantly running low on power, but all those extra charge cycles are like a thousand cuts. They add up, and your non-removable battery is going to die much sooner than it should.

So I just don’t get it, Microsoft. If I were you, I’d avoid referencing the 15-inch Surface Book 2 and the Surface Dock in the same breath. In fact, I’d avoid mentioning them on the same web page. Surely you recognize that the two are a poor pairing, and that you’re just rubbing a customer’s nose in what amounts to a serious engineering faux pas.

It may seem like I’m being overly harsh on Microsoft here. You might think I’m saying that the 15-inch Surface Book 2 is just a terrible product. The truth is that the notebook is a fine machine as long as you’re buying it for the right uses, which means that you don’t need a hardcore gaming system or one that can encode video for hours on end using the GPU. And if you want a portable notebook that does double-duty as an incredibly thin and light 15-inch tablet, the Surface Book 2 is a great choice.

The Surface Dock is the best way to connect peripherals to the Surface Book 2, but it comes at a cost.

But if you want to use your notebook as a desktop replacement, complete with multiple monitors and a handful of peripherals, then it’s still a questionable purchase. The Surface Dock is the best way to connect those external devices to the Surface Book 2, but it comes with a real cost. You can expand the notebook with the dock, but in doing so you severely limit its power.

Microsoft has done a lot of great things in the last several years. It’s designed several important, innovative products and it’s pushed the industry forward. We certainly wouldn’t have so many great notebooks if it weren’t for Microsoft’s Surface (along with Intel’s ultrabook initiative).

But Microsoft has made some boneheaded decisions along the way, and the decision to give Surface Book 2 15 users a Surface Dock that’s likely to make them unhappy is one of the most boneheaded decisions of all. I’ll close with this: if Microsoft is doing this to blow out its Surface Dock inventory to make room for a new Surface Dock that provides more power to the system, then I’ll revisit this piece with some new thoughts on its marketing strategy.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Microsoft Surface Book 2 15-inch review
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• Razer Blade vs. Microsoft Surface Book 2
• The best 2-in-1 laptops
• Microsoft Surface Pro (2017) review

Samsung’s S9 and S9+ Prime Day bundles include an Echo and an Echo Spot

If you’re in the market for a new smartphone and leaning toward a Samsung Galaxy S9 or Galaxy S9+, act fast for this Amazon Prime Day bundle available for one day only with either phone.

In addition to your choice of the latest and best Samsung smartphones, the Prime Day bundle sets up you with a powerful complement of smart home components. The bundle includes the Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit, an Amazon Echo, and an Echo Spot.

The Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit includes a hub, a multipurpose sensor, a motion sensor, and one smart outlet. The hub lets you connect a wide range of wireless smart home devices including the other components in the kit. The multipurpose sensor is a two-part unit that triggers alerts when doors or window open or close. The motion sensor acts as a switch when it senses movement and can turn on lights on or off, trigger alarms, and more. With the smart outlet, you can control anything plugged into the smart outlet.

The Amazon Echo and Echo Spot let you control your SmartThings Hub and all the devices connected to it using Alexa. Just ask Alexa to turn on the lights plugged into the smart outlet, show what is going on in the family room on the Echo Spot, or play Rodriquez with the Echo’s speakers.

The S9 and S9+ bundles set you up to control your smart home from any location with your new phone or using voice commands with Alexa.

The S9 Prime Day bundle costs $720, and the S9+ bundle is $840, in both cases a savings of $430 compared to purchasing everything in the bundle separately. Each phone is available in lilac purple, coral blue, or midnight black.

Also, any Galaxy S9, S9+ and Note8 purchases during July can qualify to receive a free microSD card from Samsung through its Double Your Memory promo.

See it

Editors’ Recommendations

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• Google Home vs. Amazon Echo

Look Ma, no hands! The Horizon watch discards tradition for daring simplicity

Who said a watch needs hands, and who said you always have to know the exact time? If you’re nodding your head in agreement here, then the Optik Instruments Horizon watch will make your eyes sparkle with its daring simplicity. The watch does away with hands entirely, and gives clear indication of 15 minute intervals during each hour, but nothing more. There’s no ticking second hand, and no bold digital display giving you hours, minutes, and seconds.

What you get is a new way of reading the time, which is more in tune with how we speak about the time. Optik Instruments argues that we rarely say the precise time down to the minute when relaying it to someone else, or internally in our head. Instead we say things like “about three thirty, or “quarter past five,” even if it’s closer to ten past or twenty past. The Horizon watch has a single red line on its bezel which points to the time presented on the rotating watch face. It’s broken down into obvious intervals, so you can still estimate the almost exact time, just like we do every day.

Horizon watch face

The name comes from the line on the rotating face, which separates day and night, and also gives it a distinctive design reminiscent of the artificial horizon dials used in aircraft. It completes a single rotation over a 24-hour period, and is adjusted using the crown on the side of the body. It’s otherwise completely free of complication.

We had a chance to try on an early version of the watch, which launched on Kickstarter earlier this year. Watches should be, “glanceable,” meaning a quick look provides the information we need, so we were trepidatious in our approach to the Horizon. It will take a while to adjust to the way the it presents the time, and while the concept is easy to understand, it’s a different matter when looking at your watch for a split second and seeing something unfamiliar. Optik Instruments told Digital Trends it’s common to take a morning to get used to it.

This is an electric movement with a 45-month power reserve. No nightly charging needed here.

The simplicity of telling the time extends into the watch’s design. The body and crown are made from stainless steel with a choice of coatings — we loved the Diamond-like Coating (DLC) coating on the Navigator model — and the face is covered by sapphire crystal with an anti-reflective coating. Despite the Horizon being the first to use a single rotating disc to tell the time, it’s still made in Switzerland with a Ronda 515.24 movement inside. This is an electric movement with a 45-month power reserve. No nightly charging needed here.

Wearable on all wrist sizes

Depending on the watches you’re used to wearing, the Horizon is quite small on the wrist. Its 40mm body will suit large and small wrists, and at 10.5mm thick, it won’t interfere with shirt cuffs. It’s very light, adding to its general wearability for everyone. Also, the simple time-telling system means the Horizon can be worn on either wrist, and it’s designed to operate normally with the crown on either side of the face. In addition to the sapphire crystal for scratch resistance, the Horizon is water resistant to 100 meters, so you can happily go swimming with it still on. That said, the Horizon doesn’t have a sporty design.

It’s interesting to see how watch makers are playing with time. Recently we’ve seen and been impressed by the SNGLRTY (that’s Singularity, for those who don’t work in marketing) watch with its single hand for telling the time, along with hugely complex, tech-heavy watches like the Sequent Supercharger. These, along with the Optik Instruments Horizon, all shift away from the established “rules” of watch making to give us something new and exciting. As smartwatches continue to increase in popularity and bring attention to non-smart watches, it’s these designs that potentially appeal to many new mechanical watch wearers. We like the Horizon because it’s different, a little geeky, yet still a proper Swiss watch.

However, we’re not convinced of its appeal outside of watch fans. It may be a little too niche for those who’re about to take their first steps into traditional watch ownership. Watch fans will appreciate the bravery in throwing out everything we expect to see on a watch face, and there’s no denying this has been made by people who appreciate watches, and the build quality proves it.

Get it soon

There are four different models being made, with the Navigator being our personal favorite, due to its DLC body, midnight blue/grey face, and yellow markings. There is also the choice of polished, brushed, or sand-blasted stainless steel. Since its successful Kickstarter campaign in February, Optik Instruments has been busily getting the Horizon ready for backers and general sale. It can still be pre-ordered on the firm’s website for 350 British pounds, or around $460, with the watch shipping in September.

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Dell’s refresh of the XPS 13 2-in-1 series dips its toes into Intel’s Amber Lake

Intel said in June that its eighth-generation “Amber Lake” Y-series processors would arrive later this year. One month later, the Chilean arm of Dell leaked an upcoming 13-inch XPS 2-in-1 device sporting five processor options, two of which are Amber Lake chips: the Core i5-8200Y and the Core i7-8500Y. The other three options are Intel’s older seventh-generation “Y” chips.

The “Y” used in Intel’s processor naming translates to “extremely low power,” meaning they merely sip from the battery. For instance, the older seventh-generation Core i7-7Y75, despite having two physical cores, only requires 4.5 watts of power. Meanwhile, the Core i7-7660U two-core processor draws 15 watts of power, with the “U” describing “ultra-low” power.

According to previous leaks, the Core i5-8200Y chip will have two physical cores, four threads, and 4MB of L3 cache. Its base speed will be 1.3GHz, while its two-core turbo speed will be 3.2GHz and its one-core turbo speed at 3.9GHz. It will support up to 16GB of system memory and include Intel’s integrated UHD Graphics 615 component with a base speed of 300MHz and a maximum speed of 1,000MHz.

The Core i7-8500Y will be a two-core, four-thread chip as well, but with a base speed of 1.5GHz, a two-core turbo speed of 3.6GHz, and a single-core turbo speed of 4.2GHz. The maximum supported memory and integrated graphics remain the same as the Core i5 chip. Both will have the same 4.5-watt power requirement as well.

As for the upcoming Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 refresh, it will sport up to 16GB of LPDDR3 system memory clocked at 1,866MHz, an SSD with storage up to 1TB, and a 13.3-inch InfinityEdge touchscreen with either a 1,920 x 1,080 or a 3,300 x 1,080 resolution. A pair of two-watt Waves MaxxAudio Pro speakers round out the multimedia aspect.

Port-wise, the listing shows one Thunderbolt 3 port, one USB-C port, one Micro SD card slot, and a headphone jack. Rounding out the feature list is a 720p widescreen webcam with dual digital array microphones, an illuminated chiclet keyboard with 1.5mm of travel distance, a fingerprint reader supported by Windows Hello, Wireless AC, and Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity.

As for other Amber Lake-based chips, there will reportedly be a Core m3-8100Y version as well. It will have a base speed of 1.1GHz, a two-core turbo speed of 2.7GHz, and a one-core turbo speed of 3.4GHz. All three Amber Lake chips are slated to arrive in “more than 140 new laptops and 2-in-1s” from Intel partners starting this fall. The chips are also expected to arrive in Apple’s 12-inch MacBook Pro refresh for 2018.

According to Intel, the Amber Lake Y-series will provide “up to double-digit” performance gains compared to the previous seventh-generation parts. The Core i5-8200Y would be an upgrade to the Core i5-7Y54 and i5-7Y57 chips with a 100MHz increase in the base speed and up to a 600MHz increase in the maximum speed. The Core i7-8500Y would be an upgrade from the Core i7-7Y75 with a 200MHz increase in the base speed and up to a 600MHz increase in the maximum speed.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Intel’s 10nm CPU finally makes it to retail in a refreshed Lenovo IdeaPad laptop
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• Intel’s next mainstream compact PCs won’t have discrete Radeon graphics
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