The Oontz Angle 3 Ultra Bluetooth speaker is down to just $27 today

It lasts for a long time!

Amazon has the Oontz Angle 3 Ultra Bluetooth speaker down to just $26.99 today as part of its daily deals, which is the lowest it’s ever sold for. This splash-proof speaker normally sells for around $40, and has even sold for as high as $50 this year. It has 14W speakers, 100 feet of range, and you can even connect two of them together to bring some awesome stereo separation to your tunes.

It’s IPX6 certified, which means that you can get it wet but not submerge it, making it great to use by the pool, while camping, in the bathroom, and more. Each charge will give you about 20 hours of battery life, and with its latest update you can now activate Siri from a connected iOS device by just pressing the speaker. The company also makes a nice carrying case with carabiner that you can use to store the speaker to keep it safe while traveling.

This price is good or today only, so be sure you don’t miss out.

See at Amazon

These truly wireless earbuds have a charging case that doubles as a speaker

These headphones are more than meets the ear.

Everyone needs a gimmick. In the case of truly wireless earbuds, the gimmick is the lack of wires themselves. Or at least that was the gimmick before every headphone maker on earth decided it needed its own version to compete with Apple’s AirPods.

Phiaton is one of the more underrated headphone companies out there, in my humble opinion. The company’s made some excellent noise-canceling buds over the years, even earning a recommendation from The Wirecutter for the inexpensive BT 100 neckbuds — a pair that I also love.

Now, the company is venturing into the lucrative truly wireless earbud market with the Bolt, a very decent pair of headphones on their own — pretty good sound, awesome battery life and, most important for me, excellent comfort — with a sizeable gimmick: the charging case doubles as a Bluetooth speaker.

Available for $89 on Kickstarter for a limited time before shooting up to $139 when it hits retail later this year, should you consider buying them?

Better in the ears than out

Phiaton Bolt

$89+ at Kickstarter

A great pair of earbuds let down by an unnecessarily massive case

Phiaton’s first truly wireless earbuds hit all the right marks as headphones themselves, with excellent sound, great battery life, and superb comfort. They’re well worth the Kickstarter discount, even if the oversized speaker case is disappointing.

Pros:

• Awesome sound quality
• All-day comfort
• Decent battery life
• Google Assistant / Siri support
• High-quality connection
• Great price

Cons:

• Case is big and bulky
• Case speaker sounds like a tin can
• Earbuds sync issues aren’t great for video
• Volume buttons are squishy and hard to press
• Lacks aptX codec support

Phiaton Bolt What I like

There’s a lot to like in the fundamentals of the Bolt as earbuds: the design, while relatively bulky, is extremely comfortable — perhaps more so than any other pair that I’ve tried (and I’ve tried most). The company provides four silicone tips of varying sizes in the box, and like the ginormous animal I am, the largest was most comfortable in my earholes.

There’s also something Phiaton calls RightFit+, a permanent wingtip that helps the buds remain in the ear during movement. I was skeptical of this design, especially since most wingtips are removable for a reason, but either I’m one of the lucky few with compatible ears, or Phiaton’s claim that it “tested this design with hundreds of testers during the engineering phase” is actually true.

Getting the fit right is key to allowing the earbuds’ sound to come through properly, but that would all be for naught if the quality wasn’t any good. Thankfully, the company pulls a win there, too. These don’t sound as good as Jabra’s excellent Elite 65t buds or Bose’s Soundsport Free, but for the price they don’t have to.

What you get is a healthy helping of bass, with a narrow soundstage, recessed but not unpleasant mids, and a lack of harshness in the high-end. That’s all good for how I generally use my headphones: during workouts or walking outside. With a good seal, there’s enough natural isolation that I don’t feel affronted by the lack of active noise cancelation, would have naturally added considerable cost to this product.

Along with excellent sound, the five-hour battery life per charge is decent, and the included charging case comes with three additional charges when full. It’s also easy to dock the buds in the case, which closes with a solid thunk. (Unfortunately, that’s about the only good thing about this disastrous case.)

Each earbud comes with two microphones — one to cancel external noise, and another for calls and dictation — and the side of each is touch-sensitive, allowing for handy gestures that actually work. The right earbud operates as a play/pause button when double-tapped. The left one activates “ambient” mode, which uses the two microphones to pick up outside noise so you can (theoretically) carry on a conversation. I’ve used ambient modes on other headphones like the Samsung Gear IconX and Sony WH1000MX2, and this one pales in comparison, but it sort of works.

Using Google Assistant on the go is a lot more useful than I thought it would be.

Holding down both volume buttons on either earbud (yes, each one has independent volume controls because Phiaton expects people to use them on their own for calls or podcasts) activates either Google Assistant or Siri, depending on the platform, and in my testing the integration worked flawlessly.

Finally, the headphones support Bluetooth 5.0, and in my time with them they never cut out or went out of sync. Perhaps it’s because of the relatively large antennas inside each bud, but they remained rock solid throughout my testing period.

Phiaton Bolt What I don’t like

There’s a lot to like about Phiaton’s first foray into truly wireless headphones, but there’s almost as much to dislike and nitpick, and that’s a problem.

Let’s start with the most egregious of issues: the carrying case. Phiaton touts the case as a Bluetooth speaker, which contributes to its added size and bulk, but if I had to choose to make that compromise, I’d throw the speaker feature into the garbage.

This case is an affront to good design, even by wireless headphone standards.

This thing sounds plain bad. Like worse-than-the-crappiest-phone-speaker bad. Tinny, shrill, and barely audible, there’s almost no situation I’d choose to use the Bolt’s built-in speaker over my phone’s.

Worse, the case is huge. At nearly four inches long and an inch and a half tall, the case is barely pocketable, making it unlikely that I’d want to bring it with me on an outing. Because the earbuds themselves have separate power controls, and a reliable auto-off feature, that’s not really a problem — I don’t have to worry about a depleted battery if the case isn’t nearby — but in my opinion, the point of truly wireless earbuds is for the whole package, buds and case together, to be portable.

Call me spoiled by the AirPods which, thanks to its diminutive casing end up in my pocket whenever I go on a walk, I don’t necessarily want to separate the earbuds and case. In such a situation, I’d rather just wear some neckbuds like Phiaton’s great BT 100s.

At the same time, I can also understand Phiaton’s position here: the case carries extra separate charges, totaling 20 hours of usage overall, and I can imagine there will be people who value portability less than an accumulation of features. For them, Bolt will be perfect. The oversized case charges with Micro-USB, too, not something that I want to be seeing in 2018 despite its lower manufacturing and licensing costs. I’m not happy about it, but not surprised.

Similarly, to keep costs down, Phiaton didn’t license Qualcomm’s high-quality aptX streaming codec, relying on the free and lower-fidelity AAC and SBC codecs built into iOS and Android.

Phiaton Bolt Should you buy?

The reality is that, despite a wealth of criticism-worthy flaws, I really like Phiaton’s first attempt at a truly wireless headphone. I can easily get over the minor issues, and even the case size isn’t an issue most of the time; in Canada, with the weather going down, I rarely leave the house without a coat or bag.

At its Kickstarter-backer price of $89, the Bolts are a steal. Hell, buy two and give one as a gift. At the impending $139 retail price, however, we’re only $30 away from the superior Jabra Elite 65t, and there are plenty of months remaining in the year for other companies to release standalone earbuds, too.

3.5
out of 5

There’s just under a month left in the campaign, and at the time of writing it just surpassed its $50,000 goal, so suffice it to say there are few impediments to success for Phiaton here. While the flaws are plentiful, the overall product is sound, and if you can get them for $90, the Phiaton Bolt headphones are a no-brainer.

See at Kickstarter

Apple Watch Nike+ Series 4 Launches With Limited Quantities Available in Store

The new Apple Watch Nike+ officially launches today and early pre-orders are being delivered to customers, with pick-ups available in stores in limited quantities.

The new Apple Watch Nike+ devices come with all the features new to the Series 4 models, including a larger screen, thinner body, a (currently U.S-only) ECG reader, fall detection, and more.

In addition, the Nike+ collection features redesigned Nike watch faces that match to the new band colors, including a Pure Platinum/Black Sport Band and a Summit White Sport Loop with reflective yarn.

Apple Watch Nike+ comes in four styles in both 40mm and 44mm sizes, with both cellular and Wi-Fi + GPS only models to choose from:

• Silver Aluminum Case with Pure Platinum/Black Nike Sport Band
• Space Grey Aluminum Case with Anthracite/Black Nike Sport Band
• Silver Aluminum Case with Summit White Nike Sport Loop
• Space Grey Aluminum Case with Black Nike Sport Loop

Apple Watch Nike+ models are priced between $399 and $499 in the United States. Additional Nike+ bands are $49 each.

Launch countries include Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guam, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Macau, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UAE, the U.K., and the U.S.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 5Tags: Nike+, Apple Watch Nike+ EditionBuyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Buy Now)
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Amazon Alexa App Gains Redesigned Interface for Controlling Devices and Groups

Amazon is currently rolling out an updated version of its companion app for Alexa-enabled devices that includes a significantly redesigned user interface.

The visual changes are immediately apparent on firing up the app, and center around a new Devices and Groups tab located in the lower right of the screen.

With the new menu selected, the devices are listed in a horizontal strip along the top of the interface, allowing users to control individual smart lights, audio devices, and power outlets all from the same screen.

Below that, Alexa devices are also grouped by room indicated by colored cards, which have on/off buttons and can also be tapped to control and edit included devices.

Elsewhere, users can add new devices by tapping a plus button in the upper right of the interface, while the original clunky sidebar menu remains available via a button in the upper right.

The changes to the app come on the heels of Amazon’s recent additions to its ecosystem of Alexa-powered devices, which include new Echo speakers, a subwoofer, amplifiers, a microwave, wall clock, and more.

The Amazon Alexa app is a free download on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. [Direct Link]

Tags: Amazon, Alexa
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Vending machines that do your laundry arrive at London subway stations

Time-pressed Londoners now have an easy way to get their laundry done thanks to a new vending-machine service launching there this week.

The brainchild of local startup VClean Life, the first “VDrop” machines are being installed at subway stations across the capital where your deposited dirties will be cleaned, folded, and ready for pickup within 24 hours.

To use the service, you need to sign up online to receive a QR code unique to you. When you reach the VDrop machine, all you do is flash your code to receive a bag, shove your garments inside, and drop it into the machine (or hang it up if it’s something more delicate).

In the following 24 hours, the garments will be collected and taken to VClean Life’s depot where they’ll be gently cleaned using biodegradable detergent and conditioners before being returned to the machine for collection, again by using your QR code.

VClean Life has even incorporated a tracking system into the process, so if you’re keen to learn about the status of your shirts and pants, you can log into the app and find out exactly how they’re doing and when they’re ready for pickup.

A standard-sized garment costs 3 British pounds to clean — that around $3.90 according to current conversion rates.

VClean Life

“There is nothing else like this on the market,” said Nick Harris, managing director and founder of VClean Life. “In just 24 hours, customers will receive a premium service at ridiculously cheap prices, with 200 machines being rolled out across London in the coming months, before going national.”

Many of the new VDrop machines will be appearing in the parking lots of subway stations rather than actually inside the premises. The first one has just started operating at Epping station in north-east London, with imminent launches lined up for others in Woodford, South Woodford, Loughton, and North Greenwich. More of its vending machines will soon be found at gyms, shopping malls, and offices, the company said.

VClean Life is going up against brick-and-mortar laundromat and dry cleaning services, as well as those that provide home collection. It’s hoping its convenience and environmentally friendly cleaning methods will help it to quickly win fans.

To help give it the best launch possible, VClean Life has produced (or over-produced) an absurdly dramatic promotional video in which the protagonist apparently reveals his penchant for a spot of cross-dressing. Or have we got the wrong end of the stick here?

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Samsung forecasts all-time record profit of $15.5 billion in Q3 2018

After a downturn in Q2, Samsung is once again back to shattering profit records.

Samsung is on track to beat the $14.6 billion in profits it netted in Q1 2018. In its Q3 2018 earnings guidance, Samsung is forecasting an operating profit of $15.5 billion (17.5 trillion won) on the back of revenues of $57.5 billion (65 trillion won).

That’s a 20% uptick from the $12.8 billion it recorded in profit during the same period last year, and 6% more than Q1 2018. The launch of the Note 9 wouldn’t have hurt the bottom line, but we’ll have to wait until the last week of October to get a detailed breakdown of where the profits came from.

For now, it’s safe to say that Samsung’s chip business is a key growth driver — as it has been for a few quarters now.

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Instagram Testing Feature That Would Provide Location History to Facebook

Facebook-owned social network Instagram is testing a feature that would allow location data collected by Instagram to be shared with Facebook, reports TechCrunch.

A prototype Location History being tested within Instagram suggests that a Location History stored when Location Services is turned on in the Instagram app will be used to bolster Facebook’s ad targeting. From the setting:

Allows Facebook Products, including Instagram and Messenger, to build and use a history of precise locations received through Location Services on your devices.

The feature was discovered by a TechCrunch reader who often digs into new functionality that Instagram is testing.

Instagram’s Location History test option collects GPS coordinates even when the app is not in use and adds them to Facebook’s Activity Log. It appears that the Location History setting defaults to “On” rather than being an opt-in feature.

This means that if Instagram does implement Location History in a future update without changing anything, Instagram customers could have their location data uploaded to Facebook without their knowledge. The feature is further explained in a “Learn More” button within the Instagram app:

“Location History is a setting that allows Facebook to build a history of precise locations received through Location Services on your device. When Location History is on, Facebook will periodically add your current precise location to your Location History even if you leave the app. You can turn off Location History at any time in your Location Settings on the app. When Location History is turned off, Facebook will stop adding new information to your Location History which you can view in your Location Settings. Facebook may still receive your most recent precise location so that you can, for example, post content that’s tagged with your location. Location History helps you explore what’s around you, get more relevant ads, and helps improve Facebook. Location History must be turned on for some location feature to work on Facebook, including Find Wi-Fi and Nearby Friends.”

A Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch Facebook often tests features that are not released and that Instagram does not store Location History at the current time.

“To confirm, we haven’t introduced updates to our location settings. As you know, we often work on ideas that may evolve over time or ultimately not be tested or released. Instagram does not currently store Location History; we’ll keep people updated with any changes to our location settings in the future.”

As TechCrunch points out, location data sourced from Instagram could allow Facebook to target users with local ads across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, showing ads for nearby restaurants or frequently visited locations.

It’s not clear if and when Instagram plans to launch this feature, but many other prototype features discovered by TechCrunch’s source have launched within a few months of being uncovered.

Tags: Facebook, Instagram
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Philips Hue bulbs can now seamlessly synchronize with Siri Shortcuts

Philips Hue bulbs and light strips are some of the most popular smart lighting options on the market. Their easy setup and straightforward operation make them a logical entry point into the world of smart home technology. Philips Hue bulbs are compatible with Apple Homekit, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa.

Thanks to iOS 12 and watchOS 5, Philips Hue lights now work with Siri’s new Shortcuts functionality. If you aren’t familiar with this function, it allows Siri to perform multistep routines with a single word or command phrase. Shortcuts replaces the Workflow app that Apple picked up last year and operates as an integrated IFTTT (If This, Then That) for Apple.

Siri Shortcuts do not add any more functionality to your smart lights, but they do make it easier to access the most commonly used tasks. The app also allows Siri to learn your habits over time. As you interact with Siri and give various commands, she will begin to learn what time you like to change your lights, the colors you prefer, and other data about you.

If you have a certain setting you use often, such as purple and blue lights for gaming sessions, or the “Relax” lighting preset for yoga, you can set up custom phrases to activate these. When you create the shortcut, you will record a voice phrase that Siri will respond to. These settings can be accessed quickly from your lock screen, through a Siri search, or from your watch face. If you sat down on the couch to dig into the latest Call of Duty, you could say, “Hey Siri, gaming mode,” and the lights would switch to your predefined colors.

Shortcuts can also be used to link your smart lights to music and other expanded functions. While these features can already be used, they require multiple steps to make work. For example, to sync your lights with music, you need to use Hue Sync on a laptop or a third-party app on a smartphone. The Shortcuts app lets you link all of these commands together so that a single phrase can have your lights pulsing to the beat.

The Shortcuts app is still new, but there are already a lot of user-generated shortcuts you can save to your device directly from the app. Create your own or browse the gallery to find the shortcut that works for you.

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Facebook’s latest data breach could earn Europeans thousands in compensation

Thanks to Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation, Facebook’s most recent security blunder could end up earning you a bit of money. If you’re located in Europe, the hack that left 50 million users exposed can result in monetary awards of as much as $7,800. According to a report on The Sun, legal experts say that if you can prove that you’ve been distressed as a result of the hack, you could be owed thousands of dollars in compensation.

According to GDPR rules, Facebook has an obligation to properly secure the data of its users. Facebook users can file “a claim for compensation against Facebook if they have suffered material or non-material damage,” according to Article 82 of GDPR. Because of how broad the law is, users don’t have to prove financial loss to file a claim against the social network, attorney Gareth Pope of U.K. law firm Slater and Gordon told The Sun. “You could say ‘hackers gained control of my Facebook account, that has caused me some sort of distress’, and that is now enough,” he said.

At this point, it’s still unclear of the amount, if any, a court in the U.K. or Europe would award to victims of the breach. Distress, according to Pope, could result in awards in the thousands for each victim, but if you suffered from any injury or harm resulting from the breach, the amount could be higher.

The hack occurred as a result of a flaw in Facebook’s code that allowed hackers to exploit compromised tokens that allow users to remain logged in to their accounts in order to access your Facebook profile, including your photos and private messages. Facebook discovered the flaw and it announced last month that the vulnerability has been patched. As a security precaution, it also forcibly logged off 90 million users; those who were logged off by the network could log in with their own credentials to regain access to the social network.

In addition to potentially be forced to provide monetary compensation to its users in Europe, Facebook faces a number of stiff fines and a class-action lawsuit in California. The Irish Data Protection Commission launched a formal investigation into Facebook’s data breach, and it is working with Facebook to learn more about what happens. If Facebook was negligent in providing proper data protection, GDPR could allow regulators to impose a fine of up to four percent of the company’s annual revenue. In this case, that amounts to a whopping $4 billion. Facebook may become one of the first tests of GDPR.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is also investigating the breach. Facebook also faces a class-action suit that was filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California. Facebook has not revealed any additional investigation about the breach. When it announced the breach last month, the social network said that it was only in the early stages of its investigation and that law enforcement was notified.

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Soldiers or Terminators? U.S. Army mulling rifle that fires 250 rounds per second

Let it never be said that the world-renowned United States Army isn’t willing to push the envelope when it comes to tech — or to look for it in unusual places. According to a new report, the U.S. Army is testing a prototype four-barrel rifle that’s capable of firing all four rounds simultaneously. With all four barrels housed in one metal sleeve, the next-gen rifle looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. Where did it find such a beast of a firearm? The sleek, futuristic-looking “ribbon gun” was designed in a garage in Colorado Springs by inventor Martin Grier, owner of Forward Defense Munitions, who spent an estimated $500,000 making his dream a reality.

While a vertically stacked, four barrel gun capable of firing all rounds at the same time sounds all kinds of deadly, an additional hair-raising detail is that the gun can alternatively fire at a theoretical rate of 250 rounds every second. It can house four-round blocks of ammunition, which are fed into the gun horizontally. Each ammo block is able to hold four rounds of 6mm bullets, a caliber that allows for increased range and penetration. The innovative firing system is based on an electric actuator that’s similar to electrically fired weapons such as the M61 Vulcan 20mm Gatling gun and M134 Gatling gun.

Despite all of these heavyweight features, however, the new rifle is anything but heavy. It weighs just 6.5 pounds, which makes it lighter than the U.S. Army’s 7-pound M4 carbine, the gun used by the U.S. Armed Forces as its primary infantry weapon and service rifle.

“Our guys have the same junk weapons as our adversaries,” Martin Grier told the Colorado Springs Gazette, which first ran the story. “I want to give them a Clint Eastwood kind of edge.”

Based on the footage we’ve seen of the weapon, as shown off at the 2018 SHOT Show in Las Vegas, the “Clint Eastwood kind of edge” description is about right. And to paraphrase one of Eastwood’s most iconic movie lines, we can’t imagine too many of the U.S. Army’s enemies are feeling too lucky right now. Punk.

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