Start scheduling the lights at home with the $56 Philips Hue Smart Bulb kit

You won’t want to miss this 20% discount.

Amazon has the Philips Hue A19 Smart Bulb Starter Kit on sale for just $55.79 right now. This deal marks its lowest price since early January of this year; it regularly sells for $70 when not discounted.

This offer is actually part of a larger sale on all Philips Hue products which are all currently 20% off at Amazon in celebration of Labor Day.

This Philips Hue Starter Kit includes two white A19 60W LED smart bulbs and the Philips Hue Hub which can maintain and control up to 50 Hue lights simultaneously. With this kit, you’ll be able to start scheduling your lights to turn on or off at specific times of the day. You could automate them to make it seem as if someone is home even when everyone’s gone, or set them to turn on around the time you get home from work each day. You can even begin voice controlling the lights with Amazon’s Alexa using a device like the Echo Dot.

Remember to head over to Amazon’s Philips Hue sale to check out the rest of the options available to you this weekend.

See at Amazon

The Microsoft Excel Master Certification Bundle is now just $49!

Microsoft’s Excel, the spreadsheet tool in its Office suite, has an incredible amount of depth that most people never touch. Figures and graphs are what Excel is usually used for, but there’s so much more potential if you have the correct knowledge.

Master Microsoft Excel for less than $50! Learn more

Whether it’s PivotTables, Pivot Charts, macros, or powerful formulas, in-depth Excel training to automate spreadsheets and solve complex problems can be quite expensive. There’s a lot of content to cover, and there are many questions to answer.

If you’re interested in extensive spreadsheet training, Android Central right now has a Microsoft Excel course that includes over 28 hours of content spread over nine courses. Instead of paying the regular price of $1,066, you’ll instead pay just $49. That’s 96 percent off the regular price! But that’s not all — if you buy this weekend and use coupon code LABORDAY30 at checkout you can save an additional 30% and pay just $34.50.

Use code LABORDAY30 for an extra 30% off — you pay just $34.50 Learn more

Access to this course remains open forever, so even if you don’t have the time at this moment, you can jump in whenever you’d like. At just $34.50 for extensive Excel training, how can you go wrong?

Spider-Man coming to PS4 on September 7!

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a gamer can!

There are some pretty amazing titles for the PlayStation 4, and we’re here to keep you updated on all the new ones! Be sure to check in with us every week to see what new titles you should be expecting, or excited for!

Notable release this month

Here’s what we’ve found so far!

Spider-Man

Coming September 7

We all remember playing the old Spider-Man games on our PlayStations when we were kids. Now, with a new one releasing, you can relive that nostalgic feeling with a lot better gameplay. You can pre-order it on Amazon for $59.88 to be one of the first to play as soon as it comes out! Not only that but with a pre-order you get access to more Spidey suits, 5 extra skill points to get ahead of the system, a Spider-Drone Gadget, and a custom Spider-Man theme to use on the home screen of your PlayStation 4!

See on Amazon

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Coming September 14

We have been waiting for this moment since December of 2017 when Square Enix leaked they were working on another Tomb Raider game. Finally, coming really soon, you can play Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Take on the role of Lora Croft and discover the demons around the world, but also this time from within yourself. Discover whether the worlds pending doom truly is your fault or not. Have you been making the right decisions for the good of humanity? Go down this emotional roller coaster in less than two weeks. Pre-order it on Amazon for $59.99 to get your own copy plus 3 collectible art cards and a steel casing for the game!

See on Amazon

Spyro Reignited Trilogy

Coming September 21

Seems like a lot of nostalgic value is coming to your PlayStation 4 this month! For $39.99 you can pre-order this title on Amazon and be prepared to relive the best parts of your childhood all over again. Join Spyro to save all of his family, friends, and neighbors from a stone-cold future. (Ha. See what I did there?) Collect the eggs, save the dragons, and kill Ripto. Are you ready?

See on Amazon

Other PlayStation 4 games releasing this month!

• Genesis Alpha One – September 4
• God Wars: The Labyrinth of Yomi – September 4
• Shadows: Awakening – September 4
• Super Street: The Game – September 4
• Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner MARS – September 4
• Immortal: Unchained – September 7
• NASCAR Heat 3 – September 7
• NBA 2K19 – September 7
• NBA Live 19 – September 7
• SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy – September 7
• Boundless – September 11
• Dakar 18 – September 11
• Black Clover: Quartet Knights – September 14
• NHL 19 – September 14
• Fishing Sim World – September 18
• Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk – September 18
• Mutant Football League: Dynasty Edition – September 18
• 8-Bit Armies – September 21
• Air Missions: HIND – September 25
• Metal Max Xeno – September 25
• Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom – September 25
• Omen of Sorrow – September 25
• Valkyria Chronicles 4 – September 25
• Life is Strange 2 – September 27
• Code Vein – September 28

Upcoming PlayStation Vita Releases

Nothing this month, stay tuned!

Upcoming Downloadable Content

There is no downloadable content coming this month, stay tuned!

• Destiny 2: Forsaken Expansion September 4

Q3 games you might be seeing soon

Stay tuned for more Q3 games to be released this year!

What are you playing?

Which PlayStation 4 game are you looking forward to most? Let us know in the comments section or shoot me a Tweet and tell me all about it!

Updated September 2018: We will continue to refresh this list at the beginning of a new month to ensure you’re in the know when it comes to the PlayStation games being released soon!

PlayStation 4

• PS4 vs. PS4 Slim vs. PS4 Pro: Which should you buy?
• PlayStation VR Review
• Playing PS4 games through your phone is awesome

Amazon

Philips Hue’s portable Go LED Smart Light offers millions of color options

Light up your night with your favorite shade.

The Philips Hue Go Dimmable LED Smart Light is currently on sale at Amazon for just $63.89. When not discounted, it can regularly be found selling for up to $80. This deal is part of a larger Philips Hue sale which is offering 20% off all Philips Hue products at Amazon over the Labor Day weekend.

This portable LED Smart Light is wireless and can be controlled using the Hue system or via its onboard buttons. If you want to control it using your phone and the Philips Hue App, you’ll need the Philips Hue Hub which is included in this discounted starter kit. Separately it’s $50, so it’s smart to get the kit which includes two bulbs.

The Philips Hue Go lasts for up to three hours on a single charge and is capable of changing between 16 million colors and various shades of white light. It can even be voice controlled using a device like the Echo Dot with Alexa. It’s compatible with Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit too.

There are a ton of other great deals to check out in Philips’ Labor Day sale, so make sure to take a look at that as well.

See at Amazon

Motorola One and Motorola One Power hands-on: Definitely not an iPhone X

Notches and flat backs highlight what are generally pretty basic devices with little advanced design.

We had quite the run-up of banter around the launch of the Moto P30, particularly around how the device has a striking resemblance to the iPhone X. The global variants of the device, the Motorola One and Motorola One Power, are built on the same basic platform and have very similar design cues … but it takes just a few moments to see that these are hardly iPhone X lookalikes.

The “iPhone X clone” similarities really come down to just a couple areas: the One Power’s camera pod, the One’s shiny flat back and gently curved corners, and both phones’ bottom edges and display notches. You’ll notice that each of those areas is a detail of the design, not a design element or theme itself. Yes when you add them up it’s pretty easy to see some design inspiration, but nobody’s going to hold or see either of these phones in person and actually think it’s a ringer for an iPhone X. The similarities really don’t go beyond a handful of easy-to-mock details.

Motorola typically offers different versions of devices for different parts of the world, and these are no exception — the Motorola One, which most of the world will see, is physically different from the India-specific One Power. It’s somewhat misleading to call these the “same” phone, and many of the design cues that were pointed out in the Moto P30 are split between the two.

These are distinctly different designs, and neither is particularly inspiring.

The standard Motorola One is smaller, with a 5.9-inch display, and with a shiny flat plastic back. The frame of the phone is consistently curved with a casual rounding of the corners that, when paired with the shiny back, definitely has hints of iPhone designs. Interestingly, the One looks more iPhone-like in many aspects than the One Power, but the latter is the one with the iPhone X-style oval dual camera system — the standard One has its cameras separated into their own stacks. Build quality is typical mid-range Motorola, very similar to what I saw in the Moto G6 earlier this year. It’s solid and built true to its materials, but you’re not fooling anyone in thinking it’s a Moto Z-level device.

The One Power has the size and massive battery to be very popular in India.

The larger 6.2-inch One Power honestly looks nothing like the iPhone X from the sides or back. Yes there’s the elongated camera pod in the top-left corner … but it’s sitting in a gently-curved metal back that’s segmented out at the top and bottom where it joins with the frame. With the larger screen and ridiculously big 5000mAh battery, the One Power is really heavy — but the Indian market values the larger screen and battery. Unlike the regular One, the One Power really feels like “specs over everything else” in terms of hardware. The casing is extremely generic with little grab your attention.

People are going to have to come to terms with the fact that there’s a difference between following industry trends and “copying” a phone design. The iPhone X, along with a couple other pioneering phones, set a trend with design decisions that have caught on across the industry. At some point, we have to stop comparing every phone with a notch and softly rounded corners a copy of the iPhone X — the phone’s been out for a year, and dozens of high-profile phones have been released since then with many of the same cues. Inexpensive phones, like the Motorola One and One Power, have always had simple hardware with little visual flair that’s cheap to implement — the difference now is that this particular design has reached the point of being cheap.

The One Power’s display looked much nicer than the 720p panel on the One, which makes sense considering its higher resolution and positioning as the better device. Though the One didn’t particularly grate on my eyes — I could just tell it was similar to a display from a Moto E5 or G6 Play. Yup they both have a notch at the top, and it’s a pretty darn wide one at that — big enough for a camera, flash and a large speaker, with room to spare. But with an 18:9 aspect ratio it doesn’t bother me; I’m far more annoyed by the sizable Motorola logo blessing the bottom bezel.

These slot right in the Moto E5 and G6 lines … with minimal differentiation.

If the Motorola One and One Power weren’t running Android One software, there wouldn’t be anything that would truly differentiate them from Motorola’s recent release of mid-range devices. Though both of these phones have merits as mid-range phones with modern looks, a solid build and good specs, it’s tough to pick out much in the Motorola One or One Power that isn’t available in Motorola’s current range between the Moto E5, G6 or X4 series.

As always, Motorola will likely find a place in its lineup where it can slot these phones in specific markets to complement the entire range. And as we’ve already discussed, the more modern design helps differentiate from the rest of the competition just that extra bit in the cutthroat mid-range market.

The ASUS VivoBook, Lego Harry Potter, 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 ASUS VivoBook, Lego Harry Potter, Philips Hue smart lights 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!

Huawei unveils EMUI 9 based on Android 9 Pie, beta applications start today

Pie on your P20.

The Huawei Mate 20 is launching in just over a month, and following on from yesterday’s Kirin 980 SoC announcement, we’ve just had our first glimpse of the software that’ll run on the new handset.

EMUI 9.0 is based upon Android 9 Pie, and brings improved performance, faster gaming, a streamlined UI, digital wellbeing features and visual improvements.

EMUI 9 beta screenshots

The new UI sees Huawei building upon the foundations of EMUI 8, with a focus on lighter colors, and improvements to the consistency of EMUI’s look and feel. New fullscreen visuals for alarms and incoming calls aim to take advantage of the large screens of modern smartphones, while artistic illustrations punctuate the Settings app and other preloaded apps. EMUI’s settings have also been simplified considerably, surfacing the most useful options in each section, and reducing the number of menus from 940 to 843.

EMUI 9 beta screenshots

And in Huawei’s own apps, controls and tabs have been relocated down to the bottom of the screen, where they’re easier to reach on larger devices like the P20 Pro and Mate 10.

The new EMUI is faster, prettier and smarter.

As you’d expect in firmware based on Android 9 Pie, there’s a new task-switching setup based around gesture input. A swipe up from the bottom bezel opens the recent apps menu, or sends you home. And a swipe inwards from the left bezel goes back. The new gesture navigation system wasn’t enabled in the beta version of EMUI 9 we tried at an event in Berlin today, but it’s likely this will be the default setup on the next Huawei flagship.

EMUI 9 also doubles down in performance; Huawei quotes 12.9% smoother operation on the new version, with app load times up 12% in Instagram, 16% in Amazon and 11% in Spotify compared to EMUI 8. Huawei’s GPU Turbo 2.0 feature also promises faster gaming on the new OS version, further improving upon the GPU Turbo feature pushed out to phones including the P20 Pro and Honor 10 in recent months.

The new software should also make it easier to track your usage and make it easier to disconnect, with digital wellbeing features built in as standard. This isn’t exactly the same as Google’s Digital Wellbeing features on the Pixel phones; rather, Huawei has built its own interpretation of those features, with the ability to limit app usage and “wind down” with a greyed-out interface as bedtime approaches. Parents will also be able to set limits on app usage for kids.

The EMUI 9 beta process starts today. Huawei announced that The P20, P20 Pro, Mate 10, Mate 10 Pro, Honor 10, Honor View 10 and Honor Play will be able to apply to test this early version of EMUI 9. Expect the full version to ship on the Mate 20 later this fall.

Huawei P20 + P20 Pro

• Huawei P20 and P20 Pro review
• Huawei P20 and P20 Pro specs
• The Porsche Design Mate RS is a P20 Pro that costs $2000
• Join the discussion in the forums

Best smartphones of IFA 2018

We’re never quite sure what to expect at IFA on the smartphone front. Occasionally a big name will release a flagship phone, but the majority of manufacturers seem to use it as a place to unveil lesser mid-range devices or skip it altogether. Samsung has already shown off its wares, Apple and Google are due to do so within the next couple of months, but there were still some smartphones of note on show in Berlin.

Sony Xperia XZ3

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Rich Shibley/Digital Trends

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Rich Shibley/Digital Trends

Rich Shibley/Digital Trends

The clear headliner at IFA 2018 was Sony’s new flagship Xperia XZ3. The design is a refinement of the Xperia XZ2, which saw Sony belatedly overhaul the old angular, big bezel look in favor of curves front and back. Those bezels are slimmed down slightly further in the XZ3, but it’s the screen that’s exciting as it’s the first OLED that Sony has put in a phone. It’s a gorgeous 6-inch display flanked by front-facing speakers, which makes the XZ3 a great choice for movie watching.

The main, single-lens, 19-megapixel camera is unchanged from the XZ2, but the selfie camera has been bumped up to 13 megapixels. There’s plenty of power here in terms of performance and battery life, there’s support for wireless charging, and it’s IP68-rated. It also runs Android 9.0 Pie out of the box. All in all, it’s a stylish smartphone with plenty of high notes, but the $900 price tag might prove hard to swallow.

Read our Sony Xperia XZ3 hands-on review to learn more.

ZTE Axon 9 Pro

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Simon Hill/Digital Trends

Simon Hill/Digital Trends

Simon Hill/Digital Trends

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Simon Hill/Digital Trends

Keen to make it clear its back is business after a highly–publicized U.S. ban, ZTE decided a new flagship smartphone was the best way to do it. This is ZTE’s follow-up to the ZTE Axon 7 – there was no 8. It jumps on the notch bandwagon with a 6.21-inch AMOLED display that ZTE promises is packed with TV smarts to help it optimize video.

It has a Snapdragon 845 inside with 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a big 4,000mAh battery. There’s also a 20-megapixel front-facing camera with face unlock software and the main camera pairs 20-megapixel and 12-megapixel lenses. There’s little prospect of the Axon 9 Pro being sold in the U.S. but it is coming to Europe for 649 euros (around $750).

Find out more our ZTE Axon 9 Pro hands-on review.

Huawei Mate 20 Lite

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Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

This svelte smartphone sports a 6.3-inch notched screen with a 2,340 x 1,080 resolution. There’s a Kirin 710 processor inside backed by 4GB of RAM. There’s a dual front-facing camera with lenses rated at 24 megapixels and 2 megapixels for perfect portrait selfies. You’ll find a similar combination in the main camera with 20 megapixels and 2 megapixels, though the aperture is wider for better low-light performance.

It shows off Huawei’s skill at turning out desirable mid-range phones, and it’s a perfect teaser for Huawei’s main event – the Mate 20 Pro – which lands in October. The price is 380 British Pounds, which is just under $500.

Read our Huawei Mate 20 Lite hands-on for more.

Honor Play

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Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

If you look beyond yet another notch-toting, derivative design, there’s a real bargain to be found here. For 280 British Pounds or 330 euros – there’s no U.S. release on the cards — you can snag a 6.3-inch screen, the Kirin 970 processor, and 4GB RAM. It has been built with gaming in mind, so there’s a grippy rear and something Honor calls GPU Turbo enhancements which boost frame rate and graphical quality.

The camera features a single 16-megapixel, f/2.0 aperture lens with a secondary, f/2.4 aperture depth-sensing 2-megapixel sensor and there are some A.I. smarts in there for automatic object and scene recognition. You’ll find Huawei’s EMUI version 8.2 installed over the top of Android 8.1. There’s also a decent-sized 3,750mAh battery.

Find out more in our full Honor Play review.

LG G7 One and LG G7 Fit

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We weren’t sure what to expect from LG this year, but the stripped back LG G7 One was a surprise. This stock Android phone is part of the Android One program and it’s a step down from the flagship G7 ThinQ. It looks pretty similar, with a 6.1-inch notched display and the same build materials, but inside you’ll find last year’s Snapdragon 835, with 4GB of RAM, and just 32GB of onboard storage. It also has a single-lens 16-megapixel camera, but we’re not sure about the price just yet.

The LG G7 Fit is another step down, with the two-year old Snapdragon 821 onboard, so presumably it will come in even cheaper.

Read more about the LG G7 One and Fit.

HTC U12 Life

While it won’t be coming to the U.S., the U12 Life will be a tempting, affordable option where it’s available. Ostensibly a scaled back HTC U12 Plus, the U12 Life actually has a couple of advantages in the shape of proper buttons – we didn’t like the digital buttons in the U12 Plus – and a headphone jack. It also boasts a 6-inch display, a mid-range Snapdragon 636 processor and choice of 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage or 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

Rounding out a decent package, we find a fairly big, 3,600mAh battery, and a 16-megapixel camera. All this can be yours for 300 British Pounds, which is about $390 right now.

Find out more about the HTC U12 Life.

BlackBerry Key2 LE

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If you’re craving some keyboard action, but the BlackBerry Key2 was out of your price range, then perhaps the Key2 LE is for you. It packs many of the same features, including the full QWERTY keyboard, into a cheaper, polycarbonate body with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor and 4GB of RAM inside. There’s a conservative slate finish and a champagne gold and blue, but it was the atomic red that caught our eye.

There’s 32GB of internal storage with a MicroSD card slot for more. The dual camera pairs a 13-megapixel lens with a 5-megapixel lens, but the front-facing camera is still rated at 8-megapixels. The battery has also dropped to 3,000mAh. All this cutting back has dropped the price by around $250, so it will cost 350 British Pounds in the U.K. and 400 euros in Europe when it launches in September. It will probably be around $400 when it launches in the U.S.

Read our BlackBerry Key2 LE hands-on.

Editors’ Recommendations

• The hottest phones of 2018 are still to come. Here’s what’s around the corner
• ZTE Axon 9 Pro hands-on review
• BlackBerry Key2 LE hands-on review
• Sony Xperia XZ2 review
• The best smartphones of 2018

Best of IFA 2018 Award Winners

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Maybe you’ve heard of IFA, the biggest technology show in Europe. Maybe you haven’t. It really doesn’t matter, because all anyone really wants to see are the hottest new gadgets, and IFA 2018 delivered them in spades. From wall-devouring 8K televisions to one of the most unique laptops we’ve ever seen, the biggest names in tech strutted their stuff in Berlin this week, and we saw it all.

As predicted, TVs were huge. Voice assistants were packed into absolutely everything. And even thought we didn’t expect much in the way of laptops, a few in particular blew us away.

But with 1,805 exhibitors, not every single one was a star. We stripped out the duds and swept away the clones to find the best of the best, and they’re all right here.

Best of IFA 2018 Award Winners

Share

Maybe you’ve heard of IFA, the biggest technology show in Europe. Maybe you haven’t. It really doesn’t matter, because all anyone really wants to see are the hottest new gadgets, and IFA 2018 delivered them in spades. From wall-devouring 8K televisions to one of the most unique laptops we’ve ever seen, the biggest names in tech strutted their stuff in Berlin this week, and we saw it all.

As predicted, TVs were huge. Voice assistants were packed into absolutely everything. And even thought we didn’t expect much in the way of laptops, a few in particular blew us away.

But with 1,805 exhibitors, not every single one was a star. We stripped out the duds and swept away the clones to find the best of the best, and they’re all right here.