UK Deal: Add Bluetooth to any speaker with these Mpow receivers, from £10

Just plug it in, turn it on, connect to your favorite Bluetooth device, and start streaming.

As part of its Deals of the Day, Amazon is offering several Mpow Bluetooth receivers for up to 20% off. For around £10, these devices add Bluetooth to your old car stereo or home speaker system and allow you to start streaming your favourite tunes quick and easily.

There are a few different options available, some of which plug directly into the cigarette adapter in your vehicle and some that plug into the 3.5mm headphone jack, so you’ll want to browse them all to see what may work best for your situation.

Some of our favourite deals include:

• Mpow Bluetooth Receiver, 3.5mm Aux Stereo Out – £9.76 (Was £13)
• Mpow Bluetooth 2 in 1 Transmitter & Receiver, 3.5mm Aux Stereo Out – £11.95 (Was £16)
• Mpow Bluetooth Receiver with Dual Microphones – £10.79 (Was £15)
• Car Bluetooth FM Transmitter with USB port – £11.99 (Was £17)

There are are few more options included in the sale so be sure to check out the full range and grab a device that suits your needs. These deals expire today, so take advantage of the savings while you can.

For more UK deals coverage, be sure to keep an eye on Thrifter UK, sign up for the UK newsletter and follow the team on Twitter.

See at Amazon UK

Watch: ZTE Axon 9 Pro hands-on video

Gunning for the high end.

It’s been an incredibly tough year for ZTE, watching its phone sales and revenue tank as it faces sanctions from the U.S. government. But the company hasn’t stopped development of new phones, including the just-announced Axon 9 Pro.

A follow-up to the Axon 7, the new Axon 9 Pro is … well, a bit generic. It’s a big 6.2-inch metal-and-glass slab with some nice colors on the back and a screen notch up front, filled with top-end specs like you’d expect in this segment. There are also two cameras on the back, of course.

The price isn’t too bad, though. When it goes on sale in Europe it will be €650, which somehow seems like a bit of a bargain considering how prices have gone up at the top of the market in the last couple of years.

Check out our hands-on video above, from IFA 2018!

• Android Central on YouTube
• More from IFA 2018

WhatsApp Begins Rolling Out Support for Media Previews in Message Notifications

WhatsApp now supports media previews in new message notifications, according to the latest update for iPhone users running iOS 10 or later.

For as long as WhatsApp has been on iPhone, any images included in messages have been replaced by a camera emoji in notifications, so you had to open the app to see the attached media.

Similarly, GIF messages sent over the chat platform are traditionally represented in notifications by the space invader emoji, requiring users to open WhatsApp to view the content.

That behavior is set to change in version 2.18.90, released today, with support included for full media previews. On devices with 3D Touch, a hard press on notifications should reveal the media without having to open the app. Alternatively, users can swipe left on the notifications and tap View in the revealed menu.

It’s also worth noting that the media preview feature allows users to download images and GIFs directly from the notification if they have disabled WhatsApp’s media auto-download option.

According to WABetaInfo, the media preview feature isn’t working for everyone who has updated just yet, but WhatsApp is apparently aware of the issue and is aiming to fix it server-side within the next few days.

Also in version 2.18.90, WhatsApp is introducing a feature that flags suspicious links sent over the chat platform. When a message is received that contains a link, WhatsApp analyzes the URL characters locally in order to detect if the link is suspicious and alerts the user in the chat thread.

WhatsApp is a free download for iPhone available from the App Store. [Direct Link]

Tag: WhatsApp
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‘Five Eyes’ Governments Urge Tech Companies to Build Backdoors into Encrypted Services

Five nations including the U.S. and the U.K. have urged tech companies to comply with requests to build backdoors into their encrypted services, or potentially face legislation requiring them to do so by law.

The statement is a result of a meeting last week between the “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing countries, which include the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

In a published memo, the governments claim that the use of such backdoors for accessing encrypted data would respect personal rights and privacy, and be limited only to criminal investigations by law enforcement.

Privacy laws must prevent arbitrary or unlawful interference, but privacy is not absolute. It is an established principle that appropriate government authorities should be able to seek access to otherwise private information when a court or independent authority has authorized such access based on established legal standards. The same principles have long permitted government authorities to search homes, vehicles, and personal effects with valid legal authority.

The memo goes on to note that each of the Five Eyes jurisdictions will consider how to implement the statement principles, including “with the voluntary cooperation of industry partners”, while adhering to lawful requirements for proper authorization and oversight.

The statement of principles underlines the fractious relationship between some governments and tech companies regarding encryption over the last few years, in which the popularity of digital messaging services has exploded.

The U.K. government has long argued that encrypted online channels such as WhatsApp and Telegram provide a “safe haven” for terrorists because governments and even the companies that host the services cannot read them.

In 2016, Apple and the FBI were involved in a public dispute over the latter’s demands to provide a backdoor into iPhones, following the December 2015 shooter incidents in San Bernardino.

Apple refused to comply with the request, saying that the software the FBI asked for could serve as a “master key” able to be used to get information from any iPhone or iPad – including its most recent devices – while the FBI claimed it only wanted access to a single iPhone.

In another potential test case, Facebook is currently contesting a demand from the U.S. government that it break the encryption of its popular Messenger app so that law enforcement can listen in to a suspect’s conversations as part of an ongoing investigation into a criminal gang.

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

Tags: privacy, Encryption
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‘Creative Selection’ Offers a Behind-the-Scenes Look Into Some Key Moments in Apple’s Design History

Former Apple software engineer Ken Kocienda is releasing a new book entitled Creative Selection today, presenting a look inside Apple’s design process through his involvement with a few key features across a variety of platforms and devices. I’ve had an opportunity to read through the book ahead of its debut, and it offers an interesting perspective on how Apple develops and refines features through an iterative process Kocienda terms “creative selection.”

Kocienda, who joined Apple in 2001 and spent 15 years with the company, identifies seven “elements” he deems essential to Apple’s success in software development, including inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy. He delves a bit into how each of these elements contributes toward Apple’s relentless pursuit of innovative ideas and solutions that end up being intuitive and useful to Apple’s customers.

The process of creative selection is the overarching strategy for Apple’s engineers, with small teams highly focused on rapid-fire demos of their work that allow the engineers to quickly iterate on their ideas and designs, saving the best elements of each iteration to rapidly reach levels of refinement required for Apple’s final product releases.

Back in 2001, Kocienda was part of a team from former Apple engineer Andy Hertzfeld’s software company Eazel that went defunct. Following Eazel’s shutdown, Kocienda and Don Melton were hired on at Apple to develop Safari for Mac, and a number of other Eazel engineers ultimately joined them on the project. But in the first days of Apple’s web browser project, it was Kocienda and Melton who got the ball rolling by trying to figure out how to port Mozilla to Mac OS X.

In Creative Selection, Kocienda spends several chapters walking through those difficult first steps, the inspiration of Richard Williamson to build Safari based on the lean and nimble Konqueror browser rather than Mozilla, and the Safari team’s relentless effort toward building out a working web browser with an obsessive focus on speed.

As we introduced new features like clicking the back button to return you to your previously viewed web page, we found we couldn’t perform the bookkeeping to manage the previous page at quick readiness without impeding the load of all pages. The PLT [Page Load Test] showed the slowdown. When we deemed such features too important to skip but couldn’t figure out how to add them without causing such slowdowns, we instituted a trading scheme, where we found speedups in unrelated parts of our existing source code to “pay for” the performance cost of the new features.

[…]

None of this optimization was easy, and it wasn’t always fun, but Don [Melton] always held the line. And in the year following the Black Slab Encounter [the first time the browser was able to load a real “web page” from Yahoo.com], we succeeded in making our code faster and faster.

Once Safari launched, Kocienda shifted to a project to bring WebKit-based rich email editing to Apple’s Mail app, and he details the lengths he went to in order to make insertion point cursor placement behave properly, a feature that’s more complicated than one might think.

Following a brief stint as a manager of Apple’s Sync Services team for cloud data synchronization in which he found the job wasn’t for him, Kocienda in mid-2005 boldly threatened to quit and perhaps move to Google if he couldn’t be switched to a new role on the “new super-secret project” that was rumored within the company. He soon found himself interviewing with Scott Forstall, who invited him to join Project Purple, the effort to build the iPhone.

Kocienda’s key contribution to Project Purple was the development of the autocorrect keyboard, and he walks through Apple’s early efforts to figure out how a keyboard could work on the small screen of the iPhone. As the keyboard quickly became a roadblock for the iPhone’s software design, the entire fifteen-person team was tasked with developing concepts. In demos for Forstall, Kocienda’s early idea of large keys preserving the QWERTY layout but with multiple letters per key and a dictionary used to predict which word the user was trying to type won out and he was placed in charge of keyboard development.

That was of course just the start of the keyboard project for Kocienda, and he walks through the evolution of the design, the trials and tribulations of building a comprehensive dictionary to drive the autocorrect functionality, and the decision to ultimately go back to single-letter keys with algorithms for key prediction and autocorrect.

Through all of this, Kocienda had never seen the design of the actual iPhone, as hardware design was completely separate from software and his team had been using “Wallaby” prototype devices tethered to Macs as their software development and testing platforms. It wasn’t until late 2006 that Kocienda got his first look at the actual iPhone Steve Jobs would show off just a few weeks later at Macworld Expo.

When Kim [Vorrath] passed the prototype to me, she asked me to handle it gingerly. I took it from her. The glass display was striking—far brighter and sharper than the Wallaby screen we’d been staring at for more than a year. I turned the device over in my hand. It felt solid, like it was filled to the brim with the latest technology, and it was. In fact, at that moment, it was overflowing a bit.

I paced back and forth a few times to feel the freedom of movement that came with untethering from a Mac. The Wallaby experience had been about feeling tied down to a computer on a desk with cabling spidering out everywhere. Now, for the first time, as I put the phone in my pocket, I got an idea of what it would be like to use a Purple phone.

Naturally, I was most interested in the keyboard. I typed out a few words in the Notes app. The keyboard worked without a hitch. My autocorrection code stepped in to fix all the mistakes I made. I could have spent all day with the device, trying out everything I could think of, but other people were waiting for their turn. As I handed the device over, I had no question in mind.

I wanted one.

Kocienda never had the opportunity to demo any of his iPhone work directly to Steve Jobs, but he did get that chance several times during his subsequent work on the iPad’s software keyboard. Kocienda shares the experience of that demo in the very first chapter of his book, describing how he was initially planning to offer users the ability to choose between a Mac-like keyboard layout with smaller keys and a scaled-up iPhone-like keyboard with larger keys more similar in size to physical keys.

He turned to look straight at me.

“We only need one of these, right?”

Not what I was expecting. I think I may have swallowed hard. Steve was still looking at me, and so, with a half shrug, I said, “Yeah . . . uh . . . I guess so.”

Steve sized me up a little and then asked, “Which one do you think we should use?”

A simple question, clearly directed at me and only me. Steve didn’t shift in his chair or motion toward anyone else in the room. It was my demo, and he wanted me to answer.

And then something happened. Standing there, with Steve Jobs staring at me, waiting for me to respond to his question, I realized that I knew what to say, that I had an opinion.

“Well, I’ve been using these demos for the past few days, and I’ve started to like the keyboard layout with the bigger keys. I think I could learn to touch type on it, and I think other people could too. Autocorrection has been a big help.”

Steve continued looking at me as he thought about my answer. He never moved his eyes to anyone or anything else. He was completely present. There he was, seriously considering my idea about the next big Apple product. It was thrilling. He thought for a few seconds about what I had just said and what he had seen on the iPad. Then he announced the demo verdict.

“OK. We’ll go with the bigger keys.”

Overall, Creative Selection is a worthy read, focusing on a few detailed anecdotes that provide a terrific inside look at Apple’s design process. Given Apple’s size and the way the company compartmentalizes its projects, Kocienda doesn’t necessarily have a high-level view of things, but he does a good job drawing on his experiences to discuss his individual philosophy and that of the teams he worked with, extrapolating that to the unspoken criteria used across the company to drive the creative selection process that has yielded the products and features we’ve all come to know.

Creative Selection is available now from Amazon, the iBooks Store, and other retailers.

Tags: Creative Selection, Ken Kocienda
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Use your messaging app to control your smart home with Line Things

Messaging apps are becoming more multi-functional. Apart from video calls and photo sharing, we can makes future plans through Facebook Messenger, and even shop through apps like WeChat. Line, the messaging app known for its cute stickers and artificial intelligence endeavours, showed off its plans at IFA 2018 to integrate the Internet of Things into the app.

Called Line Things, this is an IoT control platform with a Line-like twist. That means you can expect an eye-catching design and functionality that fits in with Line’s company mission statement of ‘closing the distance.’ What this means here is to make the complicated world of smart home products simpler and easily accessible through an app that has become ubiquitous in several parts of the world. Rather than a multitude of apps and hundreds of separate notifications coming through your phone, you just have one familiar source.

The platform is still in the very early stages of development and does have not have any compatible hardware yet, so our demonstration at IFA was more proof-of-concept using phones and tablets. The most intriguing was a connected plant monitor — the kind you stick in a plant pot that reminds you to water it — which showed how Line Things will work in the real world. The Bluetooth monitor would link with Line Things, ready to control through the app.

You could choose your plant type, and Line Things will assign health points to the plant, which change according to the amount of light, water, and ambient temperature the plant receives. This makes it easy to take care of the plant through an understanding of its environment. Alterations were made using sliders, and check out the cute emojis in the corner of the app screen showing the potential outcome of your ‘care.’

We also saw Line Things work with a connected microwave, where cooking instructions for meals can be pulled from the internet and automatically sent to the microwave. The upside here is instead of another app requiring setup, everything comes through Line — an app its users already know well. The other advantage is notifications. Instead of multiple apps, you get alerts from connected products linked with Line Things through one app, and interact with them in the normal way.

Familiarity is very important when adopting any new technology, and the smart home can be a dense, world of confusion the newcomer. Line Things could take away fears, and similarly make it easier for companies to link connected products together with others in an easy way. Line also has its own range of smart speakers available in Japan, potentially adding voice control through Line Things too. On the flip side of that, Line Things is another service entering the already busy smart home world. It also needs the involvement of developers and manufacturers to take off, which was likely part of Line’s intentions around showing Line Things at IFA.

According to Line, it plans to launch Line Things in the first half of 2019, and it will first be available in the messaging app’s core markets of Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia. Provided it’s successful, Line intends Line Things to become a global service in the future.

Editors’ Recommendations

• With Synaptics’ FFV tech, new TCL TVs hear your every word — even in noisy rooms
• It’s going to get crowded with Alexa, Siri, and Google in your bathroom
• Google Home too boring? You want Gatebox’s cute virtual character in your life
• How to set up your Lenovo Smart Display
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New iPad Pro Renders Depict Angular Chassis and iPhone-Like Antenna Lines

Serial mobile leaker Steve Hemmerstoffer shared high-resolution renders today, courtesy of tech blog MySmartPrice, that are based on supposed leaked CAD images of Apple’s upcoming redesigned iPad Pro.

Reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has said Apple is working on two new iPad Pro models that take design cues from the iPhone X, measuring in at 11 and 12.9-inches.

In addition to the thinner bezels, no Home button, and edge-to-edge display of the expected iPad Pro design, the mocked-up renders depict a device with an angular chassis boasting iPhone 4-style chamfered edges, rather than the rounded chassis of the current-generation tablet.

In another seeming nod to Apple’s evolving iPhone handset design, the device is shown with separate antenna strips along the top and bottom edges of the chassis, instead of the single continuous antenna lines on either side of the existing cellular models.

Elsewhere, a closer look reveals a distinct lack of headphone jack, two rows of speaker vents on either side of the Lightning port – similar to the alleged CAD images leaked last month – and two microphone ports located above the TrueDepth camera embedded in the bezel.

Also like the CAD image before it, a Smart Connector is positioned on the back of the device directly above the Lightning port, instead of the landscape orientation on current iPad Pro models.

MySmartPrice claims the positioning is related to the limitations of Face ID in landscape orientation, however well-connected Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman has said horizontal Face ID support is a feature in the upcoming iPad Pro models, which are expected to be announced this month.

The legitimacy of the additional details in the renders – and the alleged leaked CAD images they are supposedly based on – have yet to be confirmed, but Apple’s scheduled media event on September 12 should reveal all.

Related Roundup: iPad ProTag: OnleaksBuyer’s Guide: 10.5″ iPad Pro (Don’t Buy), 12.9″ iPad Pro (Caution)
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These are the best speakers to use with your Echo Dot!

We’re a virtual company made up of tech experts from across the globe. With the rise of virtual assistants, we have spent countless hours testing every aspect so we can offer the best ways to enjoy your Amazon Echo.

The Sonos Play:1 is hands down the best speaker you can add to an Echo Dot to create a compelling audio experience. Not only are Sonos speakers generally unmatched in audio quality, but the size of the Play:1 makes it easy to tuck away just like the diminutive Amazon Echo. If your goal is high audio quality without taking up a lot of space, this is the speaker for you.

Our Pick

Sonos Play:1

• $149 from Amazon
• $149 from Best Buy

Powerful, room-filling audio in a tiny box.

Sonos speakers have well earned reputation for delivering high quality sound, but the quality packed into its smallest speaker is something truly special. Available in white or black, these little speakers will repeatedly surprise you with how great they sound.

Who should buy this

Your Amazon Echo Dot can connect to anything with a 3.5mm jack in it, so you might as well make sure you have something great at the end of that cable. Sonos Play:1 speakers are for people who enjoy quality audio but haven’t shelled out for that crazy expensive whole-home stereo system just yet. If you’re looking for a great speaker to connect to your Echo Dot so you can stream your favorites as loud as possible, this is your speaker.

Is it a good time to buy this phone?

Sonos constantly updates its lineup with fun new things, but it doesn’t retire the good stuff. The Sonos Play:1 is not only a great speaker, it’s a popular speaker due to its price compared to the other speakers Sonos makes. This speaker is going to be around for a long time, making right now the perfect time to own one.

Reasons to buy

• Great audio quality
• Fits almost anywhere
• Has 3.5mm jack AND Bluetooth
• Available in multiple colors

Reasons not to buy

• No battery for portable audio

You Amazon Echo Dot deserves a quality speaker

While it’s inexpensive and designed so you can buy multiple to be tucked away in every room of the house, the Amazon Echo Dot is an incredibly capable gadget. But if you want to have one streaming audio in a noisy kitchen or a bathroom while you’re in the shower, the little speaker in the Echo Dot isn’t going to cut it. What you need instead is a quality speaker you can connect to your Echo Dot with a 3.5mm cable, and if you want the best you need to look at the Sonos Play:1.

Sonos speakers are awesome, and they have been for a long time. These are the original high quality wireless streaming speakers, which now have tons of competition everywhere. When you get a Sonos speaker you not only get a ton of features, you get amazingly good sound. For those of us who have never built a full stereo system from scratch before, these are some of the best speakers you can buy. The Sonos Play:1 speakers take this idea and shrink it down to something both affordable and small enough to tuck away somewhere, just like the Amazon Echo Dot.

This combination is unmatched, especially in rooms where you need something nice and loud.

This speaker pairs so well with the Amazon Echo Dot, Sonos started working on a way to integrate the Alexa service directly into its speakers in a different product line. And while those speakers are great too, the only way to get the full Amazon Echo experience with the best audio is to connect a Dot to a Play:1. This combination is unmatched, especially in rooms where you need something nice and loud. Best of all, you can get these speakers in white or black to match the decor in your room or to make it easier to hide the speaker when not in use.

Alternatives to the Sonos Play:1

If your goal with an Echo Dot speaker isn’t superior audio quality, you’ve got a few other options worth considering. VAUX makes a great battery-powered speaker that actually holds the Echo Dot inside it, while Bose makes a great portable speaker you can enjoy for pretty much any occasion.

Runner-up

VAUX Cordless Home Speaker

If portability is key for your Echo Dot speaker, VAUX makes something truly special.

$40 at Amazon

You can drop your Echo Dot right in the top of this speaker and walk around with it, thanks to the included battery. It’s also plenty loud enough for most places you’d carry your Echo Dot to.

This design is just plain clever, making your Echo Dot behave more like a full-sized Echo but also making it portable.

Value Pick

Anker Soundcore

This little speaker will surprise you with how loud it can get.

$27 at Amazon

Anker has a reputation for making inexpensive accessories that exceed your expectations, and its Soundcore speaker is high on the list of reasons why.

Available in red, blue, or black, this little speaker has a battery with upwards of 24 hours of playtime so you can take your Echo just about anywhere.

Bottom line

You really can’t do better than the Sonos Play:1 for quality audio for an Echo Dot right now. It’s a great speaker with tons of extra features, and when you add the full Alexa experience to the mix you get something well worth using to wake up the neighbors at 2am.

Credits — The team that worked on this guide

Russell Holly is a Contributing Editor at Android Central. He lives for the shiniest new thing, and loves explaining its potential to improve your life. Whatever you do, don’t tell his spouse about the drawer full of tech under the bed.

Update, September 2018: The Sonos Play:1 remains our pick for the best speaker for your Echo Dot, and we’ve replaced the Bose SoundLink II with the cheaper, more portable Anker Soundcore. Happy listening!

Casper mattresses, Hue lights, Instant Pots, and more are discounted today

Whether you’re looking for new tech gear or household items, we’ve got you covered.

We found plenty of great deals today that include big discounts on the 8-quart Instant Pot, all of Philips’ Hue lights, Casper’s newest mattresses, and more!

View the rest of the deals

If you want to know about the deals as soon as they are happening, you’ll want to follow Thrifter on Twitter, and sign up for the newsletter, because missing out on a great deal stinks!

Best Leather Cases for Samsung Galaxy Note 9

A strong, protective case is almost a necessity these days, especially for all-glass phones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9. But if you want to add a touch of refinement and luxury to your Note 9, then a great leather case, like the Amovo 2-in-1 wallet case is your best bet.

These are the best leather cases for your Galaxy Note 9.

Top pick

Amovo 2-in-1 wallet case

Amovo’s 2-in-1 case is an awesome wallet case, with room for three cards and some cash. The best part is the inner case detaches when you don’t need your wallet, leaving you an elegant, protective leather bumper case on it own.

$25 at Amazon

Budget sophistication

Maxboost folio-style wallet case

Maxboost’s very affordable wallet case has room for three cards, as well as a sizeable cash slot, and the cover folds back into a kickstand for watching videos hands-free. The triangular magnetic closure is an elegant and unique statement, while the white stitching is a stark accent to an already lovely-looking case.

$11 at Amazon

Non-wallet option

Mikki bumper case

You’re hard-pressed to find a leather case that isn’t a folio-style wallet, but Mikki’s option is a great back cover that comes in blue, black, tan, and red. The textured PU leather gives an added look of luxury, and the slim profile makes this perfect for anyone who loves a minimalist case.

$9 at Amazon

Samsung’s own

Samsung Leather Wallet Cover

Who better to turn to for a great case than the phone’s maker? Samsung’s Leather Wallet Cover is quite expensive, but it’s an awesome, slim wallet option for anyone looking for a leather case. These genuine leather cases fit your Note 9 perfectly, and it automatically sleeps when you close the cover.

$60 at Samsung

These are the best leather cases available for the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, and the list is admittedly short in the early days of the phone. If you’re using an awesome leather case on your Note 9 that’s not listed here, sound off in the comments below!

My favorite is the Amovo 2-in-1 because of that detachable inner case, which looks just as great as the whole wallet case. I also like that the detachable case has a rubber bumper, and the color options are dynamite!